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CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

February 12, 2019

Agnes shoves herself backward on the couch, trying to gain some distance from the man, bringing her one good knee into her chest. Thor is too quick, and he has the luxury of two working legs. He’s up in a flash, reaching for the length of rope that had once been ása’s prison. Now it’s going to be hers.

Kicking out desperately, Agnes aims for his head. But it’s like fighting in a dream. Nothing moves the way you want it to. She hardly connects with any force. Instead, she only jolts her other leg. And she’s wasted precious time, she understands in the instant she’s lost that moment, she should have used trying to get off the couch. She’s scrambling, trying to summon her strength, when he lands on top of her.

The arms on her shoulders. The burn of the rope on her skin, connecting with her windpipe.

“Stop struggling,” he says.

She chokes on the pressure.

“You’re making me do this,” he tells her. “Stop struggling, and it will be easier.”

She reaches up with both hands. Aims for his eyes. One thumb actually slips into the gooey flesh of an eyeball, but then he’s jerked himself away. She manages to scramble off the couch, landing with a terrible jolt on the floor, her leg hitting hard enough for her to heave from the pain. She’s at Thor’s feet. She crawls, ignoring everything except the desire to get away from him, but she can’t move fast enough.

A hand curls around her left ankle, dragging her away from the relative safety of the coffee table, out into the open. She had thought, somewhere in the attempt to rescue ása, that she had surpassed her pain threshold, that there was nothing else that could hurt more on this earth. She’d been wrong. She’s not herself. She’s not a person. She’s a hurricane of agony, of mortal terror.

She’s stopped. Thor’s left her underneath him. But still she feels like she’s moving, like she’s sliding down the cliff into the dark void.

“Don’t make this worse,” she hears him say. “Please. Don’t force me to make this worse.”

It’s everything she can do to breathe. She savors each new rush of air, wondering when she will reach the point when she can no longer take it in.

Then he’s gone. Walking away from her. Agnes twists her head to the side and watches as Thor stoops down to collect the pills she’d scattered on the floor a lifetime ago. “How much have you been taking?” he asks her. He wanders through the kitchen, as casually as if he were in search of a snack. He uncorks the wine bottle next to her already full glass. He fills it to the brim. He gathers the pills into the bottle.

Haltingly, Agnes props herself up on one elbow and reaches for her makeshift cane. This isn’t how it goes. This isn’t how she dies, prone and obedient. Making it easy for him.

“You hurt your leg,” he says. “You take more pills to soften the pain. Only, you take too much. And you don’t wake up. It’s a tragedy. It really is.”

“ása’s safe,” she tells him. “No matter what you do to me—” Her voice falls apart. She balances on her right leg, holding the makeshift cane in one hand. “She’s out there telling everyone what you did. You’re going to get caught. Killing me does nothing.”

“She’s frozen in the snow,” he says. “ You are responsible for her death. I was only trying to make her stay.”

He comes within reach, walking toward her with the wine, the pills. Raising the cane, the only weapon left at her disposal, Agnes aims for his head. He blocks her easily, and he retaliates, sweeping one leg to knock at her left knee. Through a howl of pain, she grabs at him, dragging him down with her. They land in a horrible twisting heap, because he’s trying to muscle his way out of her grip and she won’t let go. She can’t. There’s the shatter of the wineglass, a splash of the acidic liquid exploding across her face, and the wind has been knocked out of her, but for the moment, she’s winning. She’s fighting for her life.

An elbow rams into her stomach and she rakes her fingernails over every exposed piece of flesh. The world spins out from underneath her and there he is, looming over her, his face an unearthly shade of red. He shifts his hold to lock one hand over her throat, and she becomes a live wire.

She hears his grunt of effort. Feels the strength of his body clamping around her. But she can’t give up. She’s going to get out of this. And she’s going to kill him.

Bucking. Reaching. Searching for anything. A hot line of fire drags along her right palm, and she grabs for it. A shard from the broken wineglass. Gripping it, despite the searing burn of it tearing into her skin, she rams her fist upward.

The glass finds purchase in his cheek.

It’s a sensation unlike anything she has ever experienced before, the brief resistance of his flesh, then the jolt when the glass sinks in. The grisly satisfaction she feels when it penetrates. When he shrieks, when he rips himself away, rending a longer split of his cheek, she aims again, for anything, catching his hands when they fly upward to protect his mouth.

And then everything moves so quickly she can’t keep track of it. She hears a roar, and she sees a blur of movement, and then the man on top of her disappears. There’s a sickening, dull sound of a body being hit, and the unmistakable crack of a skull ricocheting off a hard surface.

Then there are hands on her. Everywhere the hands. On her face, swiping at the wine, the blood, clawing at her jacket, checking her legs. She whimpers at the touch, and she hears a “Sorry, oh, I’m sorry.”

There, above her, face frantic and more beautiful than she could ever put words to, is Ingvar.