Neon is the Colour of Vengeance (Flappers and False Gods)

SAMUEL

“Look at me, Mari, you are going to be fine. I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re going to be okay. I will get you out of this.”

“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Samuel and Mariam hadn’t noticed Hugo’s return. He slunk from the shadows into the church proper, nothing but revenge on his mind. He looked at the couple. Both were tied to high backed barstools and positioned facing each another several feet apart. Samuel looked terrified as he gazed at his wife, tied up and out of reach. Hugo had never seen him show fear before. They had been his parents once, but he couldn’t remember loving them; it, like so many other things, was lost to him now.

The lights shining through the stained-glass windows made Hugo feel like he was travelling the river Styx—how fitting. The inside of the club was how he imagined purgatory and he couldn’t think of a better place for it.

“I’m sorry, all right?” Samuel shouted. “I’m sorry about Evan, but Mariam has nothing to do with this! Let her go!”

“What do you mean you’re sorry about Evan? Tell me you didn’t? Samuel, tell me it wasn’t you.” Mariam looked heartbroken, like she was seeing her husband for the first time.

“He can’t. He can’t tell you that because it would be a lie,” Hugo said blandly.

“Let her go, Hugo! If you touch her, I will kill you.” Samuel fought and strained against his bonds but could do nothing to shake them.

“It feels like you’re dying in slow motion, doesn’t it? Knowing the person you love is in danger, but you can’t help them.”

“Please, Hugo.” He was actually begging.

“Why?” He pulled the blood-encrusted knife that was to be the beginning and the end of it all and stabbed it into the lacquered wood of the bar. Mariam let out a little squeal of fright; Samuel watched his every move.

“I don’t understand.” Panic was a new colour on Samuel. It didn’t suit him.

“Why should I let her go? Why should I spare the person you love?”

“She’s treated you like a son. She was a good mother to you—doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You’re my father, my blood. That didn’t stop you from murdering the man I love.”

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know how much he meant to you. I thought it was just a fling! That you’d get over it. I didn’t know how much he meant to you.”

Hugo walked slowly up to Samuel’s chair and crouched down to look directly into his eyes. “But you did know. I begged for his life. I got down on my knees and begged while you pressed a gun to his head. I had never asked you for anything, not a single fucking thing in my entire life, but I asked you for him. You knew.”

Hugo righted himself and crossed back to the bar to retrieve the knife. Slowly and deliberately, he moved to stand behind Mariam. Never taking his eyes off Samuel, he pressed the knife to Mariam’s throat.

“No, Hugo. No. Please no. I’ll do anything.” His eyes were wide and wild as he watched his wife shake in fear.

“I would have done anything, but you didn’t give me that chance.”

“I’d take it back if I could.”

“Only because we’re here.” Hugo waved a hand at the room.

“Hugo, son, please don’t do this.”

“Admit it,” Hugo snarled. “Admit that you knew what it would do to me, and you killed him anyway.”

“I just didn’t want to lose you.” A half-truth.

“Because of you, I will never hear his voice again. His laugh. He will never tell me he loves me. I’ll never feel his lips on mine—you took EVERYTHING FROM ME!” Hugo’s shout was so loud it reverberated around the room like an explosion. “And for what? So I would fight in your war? So you could squeeze just a little more power for yourself?” The knife slipped in his hand and cut into Mariam’s skin ever so slightly. A delicate stream of red ran down her neck.

“I’m sorry! I am sorry! Kill me! Kill me but not her!”

“No!” Mariam shouted.

“Looks like we’ve found the one life you wouldn’t sacrifice for the cause. But it’s only ever going to be her, isn’t it? You love your wife, but you never cared about me or Bobby, or Gen. We were just pawns. Disposable. Things to manipulate to your will.”

“That’s not true—I love you all. You are my son. I love you.”

“Liar! If you loved me, you wouldn’t have sent Alice to torture him. To kill him and throw him away like trash! You wouldn’t have made my best friend lure me away so I couldn’t save him. You wouldn’t have pretended that it was a rival family who killed him so I would fight for you.” Hugo was shaking now.

“I didn’t want any of that, I just wanted him gone. I didn’t want him to suffer.”

“Yes, you did, or you wouldn’t have sent Alice. She was kind enough to tell me what she did to him before she died. How she cut him and burned him and took his eyes. Maybe I’ll do those things to Mariam, and you can watch, and you can tell me how it feels. You can tell me if you’d be happy to just live and let live.”

“Please no,” Samuel moaned. “Please don’t hurt her.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been blinded by war. I lost sight of the things that were important, but Evan is dead. I can’t bring him back! Killing Mariam doesn’t change that. Please.”

“But it will let you feel how I feel. How betrayed and helpless and empty. It’s a pain that I wish would kill me, but it never does. I am hollow, a husk but I just keep on living. That’s what you’ve done to me and that’s what I’m going to do to you.” Hugo leaned forward and kissed the top of Mariam’s head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, as he dragged the knife across her throat.

Samuel screamed a horrible raw sound as his wife bled out in front of him. She twitched and gasped, her mouth working furiously but no sound came out as a tide of blood flowed over her chest onto the floor. There was a horrible bubbling, gurgling sound as her heart slowed and then stopped. She slumped forwards, the last drops of blood falling sluggishly to the floor.

The whole thing took less than three minutes. Samuel had screamed himself horse in that time. Now, he slumped against the ropes that bound him, sobbing.

Hugo dragged Mariam’s chair and her limp body forward so her knees touched Samuel’s. He let out a wail as he gazed up into her blood-flecked face.

“Now you’re where I’ve been for the last month.”

Hugo left him there, staring into the face of his dead wife for hours. He sat back and watched, expecting the weight to lift from his own chest, to feel something other than crushing despair, but the respite never came.

“People will be looking for me,” Samuel said eventually. His eyes were squeezed shut.

“I’m counting on it.”

“I will kill you, so help me, God. I will expose every nerve. You will feel a kind of agony you have never dreamt of.”

Hugo laughed grimly. “It’s too late for that. There’s nothing more you can do to me. It’s the worst pain in the world, isn’t it?”

“I’m done playing your games. Even if you kill me, you will be hunted to the ends of the earth.”

“The body of your wife is slowly cooling in front of you, and you still think death is the worst fate. I welcome it. Haven’t you been listening?”

“Then let me do you one final kindness.”

Hugo had no idea how or when he had freed himself, but Samuel was free. He charged at Hugo, grief and madness pouring off him in waves. Hugo caught him in his arms, almost like a hug. Samuel pushed him away and stepped back. Shock registered dimly on his face as he saw the hilt of a blade sticking out his chest. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground.

“I should have left you in that gutter, Little Wolf,” Samuel spat the words through a mouthful of blood.

“Yes, you should have.”