𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐎𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐨𝐬 [𝟏𝟖+] ✓

36

Realisation dawned on me with startling clarity in a way the voice that haunted me could never be. The diabolic voice wasn't a trick of my mind. Nor a raging force of justice. The voice had a life, a face, a name.

Spams wrecked my body as my startled gaze travelled from her red pumps to her burgundy dress to the blood packet leaking in her hands, coating her skin with crimson rivulets. Tired from my pulverising strength and no help on my radar, I was truly trapped with the woman who had caused me nightmares. The very real monster that tormented me—Gladys Lee, in the flesh.

"What are you?" I queried as her betrayal scythed through my heart.

"One of a kind." She chuckled, crouching in front of me. "The closest thing to a vampire, except I'd only eaten properly cooked animal blood so far. However, I have got an inexplicable fascination with your blood. For years, I dreamed of lacerating you, letting you bleed a pool of fresh blood before placing my hands in it to experience the thrill of warm lifeblood."

"Fuck you!" I grunted.

A wicked gleam touched her eyes. "I hadn't expected you to lock me up. But breaking locks was an old trick of mine. Even if you would have escaped me now, the tracker in my car would've led me to you."

My glare intensified when hit by an avalanche of bloodied images. Every cut, every scar, every hurt screaming for retribution.

Bone-deep fury found its voice. "Why?"

"For as long as I could remember, I had always been fascinated by the colour red. Always been fascinated by vampires, by homicides, by surgeries — by blood. I had convinced myself that I was psychopathic and tried to rein control and repress my urges, but one night, my late husband hit me so hard during the abusive episode that I had to kill him to survive. To get away with the murder charges, I ran away from my country and made it to London as a homeless person.

"Diana Winters, an aspiring doctor, was volunteering at a trust that gave homes to the homeless. That was how she changed my life. She helped me build a house, got me a job at the hospital where her mother was working, and gave me access to blood. Free blood with no consequences.

"She never knew about my urges, and I didn't need her help to get what I wanted." A conceited smile pulled at her lips. "Shortly after her death, I was jobless again because the management found out about the missing packets. Vanessa wouldn't help me, not like Diana would. And I had no person I could turn to for help, all because you killed her."

I didn't.

Seeing no point in arguing with a psychopath, knowing I could never change her shrewd point of view, I pushed the words down my throat, wondering how blind I had been to all the signs.

The fact that she now worked in a clinical laboratory where they work vigorously with blood. I'd heard rumours about her eyes going wanton at the sight of blood. I had seen her rip the hair out of Matilda's scalp. I had seen her silently inspect my scars. I had blinded myself even when everything was out in the open.

My eyes flicked to the secret door to the bedroom in the beside house— a secret door that I had only known as a bookshelf. Seeing a pair of holes in the wooden shelf, I realised that I hadn't just been promoted by her to self-harm myself, but I had been watched every second of it as I bled, cried and pleaded with a voice that had visited me only at nights. A voice that had haunted me when I had been alone. A voice that had threatened me with my dad's life and had acted on it when I had defied her.

She had only been behind the door, yet she had punished an innocent girl that survived because of a heroic death.

I wanted to punch her and rip out her guts for what she had put me through, but I didn't have the strength to so much as roll my body.