vanquish (verb): defeat thoroughly
Noelle's POV
The trenchant blade clatters to the floor with a light pang, my hearing and vision starting to become distorted. My mind is clouded with disorientation but I know from previous happenings that this is only a side effect of the blood oozing from my lower abdomen and seeping through my fingers.
In a delayed vision, I see my captor stare at me with wide eyes full of perplexity. The tight grasp he has on the backs of my elbows begins to give away as my knees hit the cool ground, shooting a numb pain up my spine. This is no contrast to the incessant pain splitting through my side, even the slightest movement causing a loud wince to escape my parted lips.
The shock of being stabbed is almost worse than the feeling itself. I wasn't expecting such a wound, nor one that would quite literally split open my skin and pour my innards out onto the cement with no regrets. The emotional side of this acquired wound hasn't infiltrated my head yet, but I know the repercussions are going to be strong when they hit.
I was just stabbed.
By a knife.
It is already hard to swallow, but this thought is shooed away as quickly as it was thought up. My eyes hazily pan down to my shirt, stained with red and sticking to my sore skin. My fingernails are drenched in the red liquid, my insides feeling cut and torn as easily as a piece of thin paper.
With the throbbing of my pulsing head, I am laid down on the cool floor and then my vision turns black. Faintly I see visions of his body above mine, but my eyes are so heavy and energy is draining from my body every passing second. Is this what dying feels like? I hope not, but if I need any more mental willpower to stay alive, I give no promises of a return.
-
My head shoots up in a quick motion as if I am awakening from a horrible nightmare, except my reality is worse than any nightmare I have ever dreamt up. The late November breeze is gusty and shovels my tangled hair upon my face, matting it upon the blood specks littering my face. I can feel my lip bruising and how tight the skin around it seems to throb with every heavy thud my heart dares to beat.
The breeze is cold, winter staring dead in my eyes with a wicked grin, but I can't help but appreciate how great it feels to be out of that dusty basement where the air was stale and my mind was blocked off. My head is clearer than before, but as I lurch forward in my sitting position, that confusion is brought back and multiplied.
The rough tree bark scrapes my skin as I try and pull free both of my hands. The lower part of my back is cut up by the harsh exterior and I can tell that even from my efforts, finding a relief is highly unlikely. I would be better off saving my energy and waiting for him to come back to attack than further injuring my exhausted self now.
As devastating as it is to be tied to a tree, both my legs lying in mud in front of me, I do take a second to scan my surroundings. I have never been one to become subject to aesthetic contemplation, but the sight of a light grey sky and tall trees lining it prove me otherwise. This little cleared area of landscape is something you would see in a camping scene; very bushy, peaceful, and smack-dab in the center of nowhere. This alarms and eases me. At least I have time to think for myself until he comes back.
Once again I am proven wrong when a very dry, familiar voice is heard through the breeze. I can't make out where it is coming from or why it sounds so familiar, but I know I have heard it before. "Noelle," it says again. "Is that you?"
Then it clicks.
All those times sitting in front of his desk for hours on end, listening to him teach a class that surely wasn't as intrigued as I was. All the times we spoke outside of class about extracurricular activities and how he loved his wife so dearly. I feel rejoiced for her now, but just barely. He sounds as if his vocal cords have been cut in half just like his hope.
"Professor Donovan?" My voice is even more surprised than I thought manageable as I find myself trying to twist around in my spot and make sight of the voice I thought to be dead. "What- what are you doing here?" I ask, dumbfounded.
Even if some air has been replenished in to my lungs hearing his voice and knowing for certain that he is not what everyone thinks to be: dead, I do feel a bit torn as to why he isn't. We all clearly saw his car run off the road and take some hard tumbles. How could he have survived such a huge accident? And why hasn't he shown himself? I remember our current state and mentally smack myself for wondering the last question.
"He brought me here, just like you," he responds in a voice less authoritative than I am used to hearing. Realization just now seems to kick in; Professor Donovan was never washed out to sea, he was kidnapped by the same person I was.
"How long have you been here?" I question, voice low and quiet just in case anyone ever decides to show up. I hope for his sake that he gets taken care of better. I know I will be because in some sick, twisted way, I hold importance to the man who has decided to cause havoc on my life.
"A few days, perhaps," my professor answers, clearing his throat without any avail. "I can't remember exactly what happened or how. I am still trying to put everything back in order. Nothing makes sense to me right now, but I should have been more proactive and seen this coming."
"Don't blame yourself," I try to bandage his bruised feelings. "No one saw this coming."
"But from my own brother?" his voice suddenly rises in volume and like a deer under a hunter's watch, my body immediately freezes. He continues talking, but I can't hear him through the muffled images in my mind. "How could Amon do this?"
Amon. Now that name sounds familiar. It rings a bell in my mind and I can't push aside all my thoughts long enough to put a face to his name. "Your brother? His name is Amon?" I retort as if I hadn't heard him correctly. I can only hope I didn't.
"Well, adopted brother," Professor Donovan clarifies and suddenly it all comes rushing back.
Amon - the out of state family member my professor was meeting the night that I was kidnapped. Amon - the man we watched on videotape outside of Jeremy Shawing's office. Amon - the man who poisoned his wife's father after manipulating him to forge his handwriting on Mendy's stalker notes. Amon - the killer who has killed almost two dozen girls without even flinching. Amon - the man dressed up as a doctor to get into his father in-law's hospital room to poison him. Amon - the man I made eye contact with in the way beginning, but never expected. Amon - the man who wants me dead. Amon - the one willing to do anything to get what he wants.
All this information falls on me like a drenched blanket, my chest rising and falling rapidly which somehow reminds me of my wound. I glare down at the stab puncture, but see thick, white athletic tape overlying gauze wound around my waist and under my shirt. He saved me? The bandage needs to be trashed due to blood staining the fabric, but I am still breathing and moving so I must be somewhat okay.
"Noelle, did you hear me?"
"Sorry, no."
"I said I was sorry. I should have known something was wrong when he didn't show up for dinner that night and then you were missing from the next class," he sighs in defeat. "I thought he had asked me for my student attendance sheet for his work. Amon said he was doing a work related poll and needed kids of the same age group to test. I am such an idiot."
These words don't faze me as much as they should. My head is still wrapped around the fact that he has lived with and next to a man who is willing to kill him just to feed his own obsessive mental illness. Instead I feel spite for my professor; anger that he had had even a sliver of a bad feeling and never came to turn him in.
"Why didn't you come to the police for help?" I say roughly.
"I wasn't sure it was really him. I love him like a brother, Noelle. I didn't want to see him locked up in jail or investigated on if he wasn't guilty. He has already had a tough enough life and I was trying to give him the better side of my optimism."
"He wouldn't have been put in jail if he weren't guilty!" I grit, but my voice comes out louder - more accretive. My face would surely be red right now if I were standing in front of a mirror. I have never spoken to anyone with such a dark tone before. I know I am being heartless, but I have the right to.
"He's a killer !" I continue to tell him, pausing to listen for a response. When he only sighs, I add: "A criminal at least ! He deserves to be put away for the trouble and pain he has caused! He mistook your kindness for weakness and look where that has gotten us now; you've been here for God knows how long and we are both about to be killed while covered in dirt!"
"They would have locked him up if I had told," he reminds me. "I am so sorry for what he has caused you to go through. If I would have known the repercussions of my obliviousness would have been so detrimental, I would have involved the police right away. I never wanted this to happen to anyone. Especially one of my favorite students."
"It wasn't for you to decide whether they locked his ass away or not," I spit, aggravated and confused and tired of these constant whiplashing reveals. "Now he is going to kill you just like the others - including me."
"No, he won't."
"He already tried to kill you, what makes you think he won't go through with it this time?" I scoff, taking my anger out on him. Spite fills my tone to the point where the air between us has stopped moving and become stale.
"I meant he isn't going to kill you."
I scoff again. "Doubt it."
I am just as cynical as Harry now.
"I won't let him," my professor assures. "He has hurt you enough."
"Unless you have a plan to get us both out of here, I don't think it is up to you whether we are dead or not," I look around, searching for movement or noise but not hearing anything. "No one even knows that we are alive, better yet missing and about to be killed."
My professor makes a loud groan noise, one I would normally find humorous if we weren't having this conversation in the middle of this situation. My head is spinning and thoughts are bubbling over too quick for me to pick up on them.
"I appreciate what you are saying," I state. "But you have to see where I am coming from on this. It is already very evident what I have to do to make sure he won't hurt anyone else that I love, and I can't live my life knowing I caused more death than I already have."
"What do you mean you know what you have to do ?"
"When he gives me the option, which I know he will, I am going to decide to go with him," I gulp, swallowing down the outcome I knew was coming all along. Since he blocked me in the doorway I have known what I would have to do, realizing it just makes it worse.
"You don't have to give up, what about the people you are leaving behind?" he asks sounding more serious than before. I look up at the clouds trailing by overhead and bite my lip.
"I am doing this for them, can't you see? If I hand myself over, I can end all of this and prevent it from happening to another clueless girl." My mind has been made over at this point and it isn't going to budge no matter what he tries to instill into my head.
"How could you change that?" he asks, frustrated. I hear a swaying of bushes to my right and am about to warn him until he starts speaking louder. "You could leave here without him and go back to your life before he ruined it! He is only going to kill you or force you into doing something that isn't right. I will kill him if I have to! Don't let your mind make decisions when your head isn't in the right place!"
All of a sudden the bushes are pushed apart. "Have you come to your decision?" Amon taunts, smiling devilishly down at me as he walks toward us. His brother abruptly stops his rant, the shift in mood throat-splitting.
I gulp but nod, forcing myself to not change my mind and ruin the whole plan. "I have."
"And what will your answer be?"
"I'll come with you," I choke. "On one condition."
His eyebrows meet in the center of his forehead, the police uniform he is wearing torn by twigs and muddied by the floor he was stomping on. ''I don't usually allow such alterations, but considering we are meant to be together, I guess I could allow one fatal flaw."
I nod. "Don't kill anymore people."
Eyes blowing wide, he smiles and shakes his head. "I'm afraid we will have to postpone that law until . . ." pulling a gun out of his waistband, he cocks the handgun at me, then twists his body leftward. A bullet flies through the air, damaging my hearing and making my body start to flake out. The sound of his step-brother's body being hit and thrown back against the tree is heard.
"Well, until now," Amon laughs.
"How could you do that?" I shout, for the first time pulling on my hands and trying to sit myself up. Bringing my knees to my chest, I am able to push against the bark with my back and walk myself up the tree into a standing position. "He loved you!" I yell once again, voice torn.
"He said he'd kill me," Amon shrugs casually, eyes not leaving his brother's dead body.
I twist around and regret it when doing so, seeing my loved professor's body slumped against the tree, shirt filling with blood and face bruised. His cheek is sliced with a hairline wound and no movement rattles from his chest, just both of his shoulders fallen forward and head slumped back; blood drips from the right corner of his chapped lips.
"You're disgusting!" I challenge, feeling powerful. "I hope you rot in hell!"
I feel as though I am suffering from Professor Donovan's death all over again, this time the pain being intensified by a thousand. The thought of him dying was bad, but seeing it happen and seeing death before my eyes has changed me, or matured me, in a way that I would have never wanted. His poor wife. He shouldn't have died. I am reminded just again how another person lost their life for me, which encourages my decision even more.
Amon doesn't say anything, but starts to walk toward his adopted brother's body and stares down at him. I can't depict the emotion in his eyes as he does so, and I start to think that maybe he feels guilty, but the thought is wiped away just as quickly as it appeared when he grips his knife and stabs the poor man in the forehead, pinning it to the tree.
I gag and look away. I can't have this image fill my brain and torment me for the rest of my life and I know that if I continue watching, it will.
"Now that that has been finished-"
"You can't just leave him here like this," I plead. "Please."
"Watch me," he chuckles, kicking his boot against the lifeless foot. "I'm glad you see things my way, Noelle. I promise after a few hours, when we've gotten to where we need to go, no one else will come between us."
"Where are we going?" I dare to ask, voice low. My chest rises high and low as I await the demented answer I know I am about to receive. I need to stay strong, though. Since I am this valuable to him, he won't kill me unless I give him reason to. Then when he least expects it, I will be gone.
Amon chuckles. ''Somewhere no one will be able to find us."
Royce's POV
"ID, sir?" the woman blocking Quinn's doorway asks, making my annoyance grow to an incredibly high point. She looks at me with knowing eyes, both her lips pursed tightly as she tries to remain pleasant but is dying to pull out her gun and shoot me on this step.
"I told you," I sigh, "I'm an analyst; I need to get in there!"
"You must have an ID to evaluate the crime scene."
I glare at her before Winnie tugs on my shoulder. She pulls me back a few steps and I keep eye contact with the belligerent woman the whole time. Bringing her lips to my ear, Winnie whispers, "Why don't we just sneak in?"
"Do you know how much trouble that could get us in?" I bark, not trying to necessarily be so mean but not having enough patience for the whole situation at hand. "I need to get back to my office and grab my ID. It's the only way she'll let us pass."
"We don't have time for that, c'mon." Once again, her palm is tightly grasping my elbow as she pulls us through the crowd of cops all rushing around and carrying bags of evidence in their hands as they speak to other important figures.
I think about Klara and seeing her lifted onto the stretcher and be taken to the hospital. I know, though, that she would want me to be here – helping find Noelle. Klara has dealt with worse injury before from what I could see, and she is strong enough from all the training she had to endure to make it to where she is now. Noelle on the other hand – is unreliable in a sense where we have no idea what the hell she can do and would try to do to her captor.
"There," she points, nodding her head. "Climb through the window."
"Me? Climb?" I scoff, defensively.
"Stop being an asshole and climb the fucking window. We don't have time to test your limits and we sure as hell all know that this is the only way in without alarming any of the tens of policemen out front. Just go," she spits, starting to latch her fingers onto the vines and pulling herself upward.
I take a moment to catch my breath before mimicking the same movements, my fear of heights becoming very strong. I have no choice but to push it down, though, and when she finally reaches the window, she latches her hand down onto mine and lifts me up with her. Clapping off her hands, I nod at her with a tight-lipped smile.
The room we appeared in seems very placid. The dark floor covered in a carpet, nothing out of the blue or different than what it is supposed to be like. The door is closed, and out of the corner of my eye I see a spot of red coating the wall behind the door.
"Winnie," I warn, but she already sees it.
"Take these," she pulls out a pair of gloves from her back pocket and hands them to me. I am surprised at how prepared she is when I am a mess, while she shoves her fingers in through the rubbery finger holes. The snapping of plastic tells me she has a difficult time, as do I.
"Do you think this is the actual scene?" she asks, studying the room like I had previously.
I don't know why I am letting her stay in here when she isn't certified for this type of job, any kind of job that is relevant to the New York Police Department really, but without her I would be driving south back to the department, so I stay quiet.
"I don't know, I want to go out into the other rooms and piece everything together," I tell her and open the door. To my luck, when we exit the room and trail in to the main area, there are too many field agents taking pictures of evidence with large cameras and uniform-wearing workers jotting down notes on inspection sheets to notice our sudden appearance.
Paramedics wheel a man in uniform out the front door when we pass by, his shirt soaked in blood and a bullet hole gaping in his chest area. "Jeez," Winnie winces, noticing the floor. When my eyes find themselves looking in the same direction, a large bump clogs my throat.
"You don't think that is all Klara's blood, right?"
"I-," the truth is I don't want to know. "I hope not."
Winnie opens her mouth to speak before shutting up quickly, eyes darting over my shoulder and sticking there. A hand grasps my forearm, tightly spinning me around and I am faced with the same woman as before, eyes beadily shining with anger and authority.
"I told you that you cannot be on the premises without an ID!" she yells, but no one takes notice as the buzzing in the room is too loud. "This is a serious offence, you could go to jail for breaking and entering, plus tampering with evidence!"
"I have an ID, it's just not with me," I yell back, red-faced. I pull my arm from her grasp and she just frowns harder, the wrinkles near her lips and eyes becoming ever-more noticeable. Her blonde hair tucked tightly in a bun on the lower space of her neck makes her look even more intimidating.
"You're coming with me," she demands, grabbing both our arms again. I feel like a kid being yelled at by his parents by the way she grudgingly drags us through the room and to the door.
"Nancy!" a familiar voice sounds. When I turn around, I am surprised to see Arthur, strutting up in uniform with his hair pushed back and gelled to perfection like always. His cologne is very strong and almost makes me gag as he jogs over closer, pushing through officers.
"What are you doing?" he asks and I begin to answer him when I see that he is actually speaking with this so-called Nancy. Her hard features start to falter as she lets go of Winnie and I's arm and straightens up.
"These two were trespassing, sir," Nancy tells our French friend.
"They're with me, leave them alone."
"As you wish." As fast as she scampered up, she scampers away.
"Thank me later, we have a job to do," Arthur says, ticking his head to the side, motioning back to reality. The hustle in his step makes him look authoritative and serious, but also like he cares very much. I stay behind him while we follow, looking back at Winnie to make sure she didn't lose her temper and go back to that woman for some type of revenge.
Instead she nods at me, absentmindedly taking her bottom lip captive between her teeth and biting down to the point of white fogging up under her red skin. Looking back in front of me, I try to concentrate on the situation. All I know for sure is that I am not ready to see what lies ahead.
Hello my danisaurs! (Is that name already taken? I don't even know but I like it, haha.) I hope you have had a wonderful week. I wanted to tell you that I won't be on Wattpad for a few days, or be able to write, because I have surgery tomorrow morning and I will be recovering until the middle of next week.
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