Chapter 31: Leda and the Swan 02
Hestal’s hand was still tightly gripping the front of Albarino’s shirt. He had this hallucination, as if the blood surging within his fingers was burning. He could feel his fingers slowly squeezing Albarino’s blood out of the fabric.
And the other merely gazed at him, a lingering dazed bewilderment still in his eyes. Albarino blinked, that expression looking as if it hovered on the edge of a smile. Then, he slowly licked away the blood still flowing on his lips, hissing softly from the split in his skin.
A drop of blood slid down along the edge of the wound, red as the pomegranate seeds of Hades, and struck somewhere with a splat.
The next second—for some unknown reason—Hestal’s lips had already crashed against the other’s mouth. His teeth caught that warm flesh between them, sucking blood from the split wound.
Albanino let out a low hum, a sound caught somewhere between genuine surprise and feigned amusement. The fingers that had been wrapped around Hestal’s wrist loosened, instead grabbing onto the fabric of Hestal’s shirt at his shoulder.
Sleeping with one of the most dangerous people he knew was obviously a bad idea—an idea that was perhaps only marginally better than sleeping with Officer Bart Hardy himself.
In any case, when Hestal forcefully pinned Albanino against the wall and licked the blood off his lips, he could feel that this genuine psychopath was already hard, that bulge pressing right against his thigh.
“How boring it would be to put me in the position of your previous victims—especially when you yourself admit that we are different.” Albarino murmured against his lips, his tone hovering at the boundary between extreme calm and utter madness. “In that case, dismantle me, reconstruct me, brand me, display me before them, and perhaps you will—”
And then his voice ceased.
Though Albarino had no intention of struggling, Hestal still pressed one hand against his neck—with more force than necessary, carefully controlling the total amount of air the other could inhale, and certain to leave bruises on that skin.
As Hestal gnawed his way from Albarino’s lips to the blood-stained skin at the corner of his mouth, a hand suddenly crawled up onto his jaw—Albarino’s hand.
Albanino had once failed in an attempt to wipe the blood off his cheek with that hand, and now there was still some blood on his fingers that had not yet dried, and just like that he smeared a dark red streak across Hestal’s chin. When he spoke, Hestal could feel the vocal cords trembling beneath his fingers, and his voice was still hoarse.
“Hey,” Albanino said in a low voice, a strange, tipsy smile hanging on his face, “careful, don’t leave DNA.”
Hestal stared at him.
A almost gloomy look flickered briefly through Albanino’s eyes, and the shadows cast by the flames on his cheeks still made him look strangely as if he were smiling: “Otherwise, by the time you leave me in pieces and put me on display in front of the police, they will find you.”
How could those startled, faltering fingers push away,
That feathered favor between her slackened thighs?
Beneath the white-hot thrust, how could that fallen mortal frame
Not feel that throbbing, unearthly heart?
When Albanino was pinned to the floor by the other man, the back of his head struck the floor with considerable force. His hair was still matted with blood that had not yet dried, and the stinging came in waves—one could surmise that somewhere on his scalp had split open.
Albanino hissed, and when he laughed it sounded breathless: “You wouldn’t want to give your victim a concussion, and then while you’re slowly killing them, they can’t help but vomit—that wouldn’t be very dignified for the Pianist.”
“You seem to have no difficulty placing yourself in the victim’s position,” Hestal observed. He slid his fingers beneath the hem of Albanino’s shirt, touching his abdomen, and the other man flinched slightly at the coldness of his fingers.
But for the most part, he simply lay there—uncomfortable yet composed—half his body steeped in the glow of the stove’s lingering fire, the other half submerged in darkness, every so often illuminated by lightning flashing past the window.
The rain still hadn’t stopped. If Elliot Evans didn’t die, Hestal would most likely become a corpse after this rain.
“Why not? I really am curious to see what you would do.” Albanino answered calmly. “When you face a situation completely different from anything before, you often unleash an entirely new strength. At times like that…”
He lowered his voice slightly.
“I start to feel that compared to decorating you with larkspur, your reason for living seems a bit more important.”
Hestal stopped unbuttoning Albanino’s buttons, and just sat astride his lap like that, pulling a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and beginning to slowly put them on. In that moment, the fury in his voice seemed to briefly recede, the embers cooling into something colder and harder: “So, you went to find the killer Johnny just to watch how I would kill him.”
“I have to admit,” Albanino revealed a smile, “your process of killing is far more exquisite than those mediocre displays you create—when you take a person’s life, you yourself are truly a feast for the eyes.”
Hestal finished putting on the latex gloves, then pulled a bundle of metal wire from his pocket. He pressed Albanino’s hands above his head and tightly bound his wrists with that bundle of wire.
“Piano wire? Really?” Albanino asked with great interest.
“I’m not planning to hang you with this, if that’s what you’re asking.” Hestal replied. Some part of him knew that Albanino probably didn’t want to struggle at all. But on one hand, he didn’t want to take that risk, and on the other hand, of course every step of the process had to be executed with absolute precision.
“If you tie someone up like this, you’ll cause acral necrosis sooner or later. Trust me, I’m a doctor.” Albanino reminded him.
Hestal let out a cold laugh. “If only you’d remembered that when you saw how the killer Johnny ties people up.”
Albanino muttered something low in his throat, probably just cursing him for holding a grudge. In any case, he quickly fell silent—because Hestal had drawn a knife from the sheath at the small of his back, the blade flashing a cold gleam in the darkness, and the tail of that reflection caught the corner of Albanino’s eye in a single instant.
For a brief moment, Albanino seemed to hold his breath—even if he truly was a psychopath, this was clearly nothing more than a conditioned reflex. His eyes still glimmered with the look of keen interest, like a university student staring at an impossibly difficult proof problem; but his body had instinctively tensed up—this was the most straightforward reaction Hastur had ever seen from him.
Hastur held the knife in his left hand—when he used the knife with his left hand, his movements were always more nimble than with his right. It suddenly occurred to Albanino that in Elliot’s basement, using his right hand to kill that man had been a tremendous loss for the audience—and with deft precision, he flicked away the topmost button of Albanino’s shirt with the tip of the blade.
They listened to the crisp clatter of the metal button rolling into the darkness. Hastur said in a low voice: “You appreciate my killings—even when the target is you.”
“Even when the target is me,” Albanino agreed. He let out a light, breathless laugh—after all, Hastur still had one hand pressed against his neck—”though I very much doubt you would actually do it. Your victims meet that end because you’re certain they don’t deserve your respect.”
The tail end of that sentence stretched into a soft, pained groan, because Hestal had released Albanino’s neck, his right hand instead pressing against his chest; then the tip of that knife traced downward along the spot where the button had been pried open, the sharp blade easily slicing through the fabric of the shirt, while the tip sank slightly into the skin, creating a long, thin cut.
—Angling from the chest downward toward one side of the ribs, the point of entry was the shallowest, just a thin superficial wound; as the cut extended, the wound gradually deepened, and at the point where the blade was withdrawn, the depth of the wound was roughly one centimeter.
At that depth, it only reached the skin, the fat layer, and the capillaries—no one would die from a wound that shallow—but the abundant nerves would forever dutifully transmit the sensation of pain to the brain.
Hestal could feel the soft skin of the abdomen beneath his fingers trembling wildly, while blood, like overturned paint, began seeping out from beneath the fabric.
He used the tip of the knife to pry open this piece of torn fabric. The cut edges of the cloth were wet and sticky, soaked with heavy, sinking blood, and when it fell and piled into a heap, it gave a heavy smack. Thus Hestal could look directly at that knife wound, spreading wantonly across skin gilded with a warm orange halo by the firelight. The edges of the knife wound would soon gradually become red and swollen, and blood would keep spilling out from between the skin, presenting under the firelight a full, near-black color.
Albanino’s voice was low and hoarse, sounding a little unsteady, and he said: “Hestal.”
“Soul-stirring,” Hestal answered in a low voice.
Albanino’s heart beat powerfully where his fingers pressed, still steady under pain and the threat of the blade, which was almost enough to make one jealous. He could feel a string of low, almost laughing sounds trembling out from within that chest, and then those sounds were pulled into a gasp by the noise of the next knife stroke falling.
—This was how Hestal cut the clothes on Albarino’s body into shreds, then pulled them off him strip by strip; meanwhile, those thin knife marks spread across his skin like cobwebs: most of them were very shallow, merely seeping along the edges of the wounds a string of blood beads like coral necklaces, not even requiring stitches.
But those deep red lines wrapped around him like silk threads, leaving on his skin gradually rising red welts, a faint stinging sensation, and a pain truly like needle pricks.
As Hestal did this, he could feel that body twisting and struggling half-heartedly under his restraint, the wounds seeping blood with Albarino’s every movement, smearing everywhere as Hestal’s hands moved across his chest, like ochre and deep red scraped across an oil painting canvas.
Albarino lay beneath him, his hands bound, completely naked, looking almost submissive. The scene was in a certain sense truly ironic: because his skin was covered in knife marks, almost entirely painted with fresh and half-dried blood, his penis had already gone soft from the pain, yet some part of his slightly unfocused green eyes was proclaiming this fact: it was precisely because of his permission that things had developed to this point—it was a kind of joyful radiance belonging to the victor.
Exactly so—the gardener even had the leisure, amid the pain from Hestal’s fingers brushing over those wounds, to remark with considerable originality: “The box of condoms is in the cabinet against the wall.”
His tone sounded almost gentle, even interwoven with pain-laced gasps, as if Hestal were not currently squeezing blood from a slightly deeper wound on his waist.
It was on the way to fetch that box of condoms that Hestal truly tasted the flavor of this irony, because the other man was clearly still planning his strategy of “leaving no traceable DNA”—the Sunday Gardener’s vice was precisely his attempt to drag this game out infinitely.
Hestal was careful when he opened the drawer, not smearing the blood from his gloves on it. Perhaps the last thing the crime scene investigation team needed to see was a bloody handprint left by the Westland Pianist on the outside of the condom drawer.
The lid of that box had already been torn open, but the contents inside hadn’t been touched at all—honestly, this wasn’t surprising. Hestal couldn’t imagine Albanino bringing any of his one-night stands into this house; he was definitely the type to spend the night at the other person’s place. This could be inferred from the personalized decor of the house: this was Albanino’s territory, and he truly disliked any coyotes that invaded his domain.
Yet if that were truly the case, the very presence of this box here was a paradox in itself.
Hestal didn’t want to think too deeply about the implications behind this fact—at least not today—when he turned around and saw Albanino lying on the floor, shrouded in the faintest sliver of skylight leaking in from the rainy night outside the window, his chest rising and falling, his whole body drenched in blood.
The fire in the hearth had finally burned down to mere embers, with some orange sparks still smoldering among the black carbon. Losing those light sources, Albanino’s skin tone looked like a pallid corpse in the dim interplay of shadow and light, and Hestal’s night vision was good enough to let him see the swollen, twisted wounds covering that skin, like a black net.
Hestal finally knelt down beside him, pushing his legs higher with his knees, dipping his fingers into the trickling blood and probing into the cleft of his buttocks. When his fingers pushed in, Albanino’s legs trembled violently, his voice chopped into broken fragments by the dry pain, yet between the words something scorching still pulsed and leaped.
“I thought you’d find wearing gloves not intimate enough,” he said stumblingly.
“Wearing gloves when there’s blood everywhere isn’t a bad idea.” Hestal scribbled in expansion, lightly retorting.
“Really? I’m quite certain you didn’t wear gloves when you removed those victims’ internal organs. If you had to feel the heat inside their bodies through a layer of latex, what meaning would it hold for you?” Albanino let out a laugh, a sound that seemed like a physical entity formed from scorching heat and pain fused together.
“Because afterward, I’ll clean up the bloody fingerprints they leave on the bodies,” Herstal roughly shoved in two fingers, feeling the ring of muscle clench tightly around the base of his fingers, “but today I don’t plan to do that.”
Albanino laughed breathlessly. “Because cleaning up the blood would ruin the aesthetic.”
Herstal didn’t answer him, but they both knew Albanino was right.
Then came a long silence: the soft thud of a knife being placed on the floor, the rustle of fabric and the faint sound of a zipper being pulled open, the sharp snap of plastic packaging being torn—every sound announcing what was about to happen.
—And then that burning organ pressed against his thigh, probing and rubbing at his entrance, where the wet, sticky fluid held nothing sensual at all—it was all his blood.
Albanino looked at the other man. Sometimes, the way Hestal scrutinized him seemed almost troubled, as if he were agonizing over why he hadn’t just used a knife to slit this person open and gut him.
Some part of this fact still made Albarino want to laugh, though he wasn’t sure he even had the strength for it anymore. He lifted a leg almost exhaustedly to hook it around Hestal’s waist, and indeed every movement he made hurt all over, and he could just imagine the miserable sight of these wounds slowly healing.
Though he wasn’t a masochist and couldn’t get hard under these circumstances, somehow he could still use his leg to lock around Hestal’s waist, twisting suggestively, almost lewdly grinding his buttocks against the other’s groin.
This movement squeezed a roar from Hestal’s throat, and then Albarino obligingly yielded the initiative—letting the other thrust in brutally, and for a moment it was hard to tell which hurt more: his lower body that hadn’t been sufficiently stretched, or the bleeding wounds all over his body. Hestal pushed his legs higher, almost folding Albarino’s body in half, and these movements forced more dripping blood from his wounds.
The other’s hip bone slammed mercilessly against his skin, and fingers once again clamped onto his neck, blood-soaked fingertips pressing into the skin. Albarino felt almost nauseous amid this continuous pain, and when he reflexively tried to curl up, Hestal gripped his neck and pinned him to the floor as brutally as prying open a clam.
This could hardly be called “good,” even by the standards of the Sunday Gardener, but the taste was almost like victory; because there was something in Hestal Amalite’s eyes—those things he kept hidden beneath the heavy lead mask—finally flowing out through the vast, irreparable fissures.
That was the essence of the beast, pure, metallic sweetness belonging to evil.
Albanino’s fingers weakly clawed at the floor, sensing Hestal once again reaching for the knife from somewhere beside him, his grip on the hilt almost elegant.
When Hestal slammed viciously into his body, the knife cut into his skin—deeper than every time before, even managing to force a hoarse scream from Albanino’s throat, the orifice convulsing and clenching in pain forcing Hestal to curse under his breath. It was like a hot knife plunging into butter, the sizzling, bubbling soft edges overflowing with blood.
The wound was restrained, deliberate, beginning at the lower edge of his ribs and running straight down in a long line, stopping precisely somewhere on his abdomen.
“I suppose you did prepare a brand after all,” Albanino murmured, his voice slurred, perhaps from excessive pain or blood loss.
“Indeed I did,” Hestal replied, while studying the other’s temple hair, soaked through with sweat and blood, plastered against his pallid forehead.
“Then Psychopathy