Chapter 20
5:53 AM
"You want us to kill you?" Alice asked, looking at Lawdale.
Lawdale took the back of his hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "We can't put this off any longer. Someone has to die so the rest can live, and I am willing to do just that. Do it now before I change my mind."
Jasper still had a shotgun in his hand. He could have very easily lifted it chest level and shot. If he had listened and understood Susan correctly, Jasper would be killing White.
On the other hand, if Susan were wrong, Jasper would be killing a cop. And she could very easily be wrong, couldn't she? The way he saw it, Susan was not the most predictable or reliable person.
"Are you all deaf?" Lawdale snapped as he began to tremble. "Someone has to die here or we all will die. Now kill me!"
Jasper lifted the gun on instinct, but he just could not pull the trigger. From where Jasper stood, Lawdale deserved a medal of honor, not a bullet through the chest. How could he possibly be the Tin Man?
"Edwaaard!" Susan's voice screamed from the upper level of the house where Emmet had evidently taken her.
Edward snapped his head up toward the sound. What if Susan were working with the Tin Man to destroy their only hope of escape, namely Lawdale, who had managed to rescue them from the basement?
"Edward, what is it going to be?" Lawdale asked, his voice shaking as he took a step closer to Jasper's gun so that the tip was just inches away.
"Emmett is going to kill Susan," Edward said.
Lawdale pulled the gun from Jasper's hands and pressed it against his forehead just below the bloody bandana. "Now pull the trigger. Do it before he kills her. Save her. Do it like you despise the ground I walk on, with malice and hate. With the evil sickness that is raging inside you, boy. Do it!"
Edward took hold of the gun that was facing toward Lawdale's forehead, his hands shaking. He pumped the action to chamber another round.
"Now!" Lawdale screamed.
Edward's mind began to race, folding in on itself. He gripped the shotgun, the skin on his knuckles pulling tighter, and began to scream. Out of frustration, out of hatred, but more importantly, screaming for what he really was deep down: a soulless monster.
"Do it!"
Edward dropped the gun, he couldn't. He had put that life behind him. Instead he took the barrel of the gun and flicked up the bloody bandana. A two-inch gash over Lawdale's right eye glared at them. Red.
No smoke.
Edward's scream caught in his throat as he stared at the cut in shock.
No black smoke. He had almost killed an innocent man, taking Susan's assumptions at face value.
"Please, Edward," Lawdale began to plead, his eyes now clenched shut, waiting for an impact of some sort. "I am losing my nerve, do it now."
No black smoke.
He had come within a blink of an eye of blowing the man's head off of his shoulders because he had been led to believe that Lawdale was Tin Man. But there was no black smoke!
His family just froze. For the first time, it seemed they were all in control of their bloodlust. Even Jasper. There was just something different about the smell of the man's blood. Almost unappealing.
Lawdale's mouth gaped open in a soft cry. His eyes still clenched shut, his face wrinkled in agony. The man was breaking down, losing his nerves. And so were the rest of the Cullens, but namely Edward. He had come from within an inch of killing someone and not because of his thirst, which he had never done.
Black smoke suddenly began to ooze from Lawdale's gash, falling past his right eye, smoking all the way to the ground – black, as dark as coal.
How…how was that…what was happening?
Black smoke is what was happening.
Edward jerked the gun away and stepped back, making the family take a step back as well.
Lawdale's eyes were still closed and his face began to tremble with fear. A man who was about to die.
The black stuff began to flow freely from the cut now. A thin black fog swirled around Lawdale's feet.
"Kill me, Edward," Lawdale pleaded, seemingly oblivious to what Edward was seeing.
"Edward?" Rose said. "He is leaking smoke, Edward."
Clearly. Edward's hands began to shake even more.
"Kill him," Alice chirped.
"Kill me, Edward," Lawdale cried.
"I…I…" Edward stumbled among his words, not really knowing what to do.
"Pull the trigger!" Jasper hollered out.
Edward pulled the trigger.
Click!
Lawdale gasped. His mouth parted, eyes still closed, but no longer clenched tight. He looked unsure of whether he had indeed been shot.
Edward took a step back and pumped the gun again then pulled the trigger again.
Click!
For what seemed like eternity, the air seemed to have been evacuated of oxygen. Someone had emptied the gun of all but one shell before saving Susan from the flying ax just a few moments before.
Lawdale. It could only have been Lawdale, so that the gun would be empty after he shot the last round at the furniture in the foyer.
So that it would be empty for when Edward tried to kill Lawdale. So that he would be rewarded with nothing but the clicking sound.
Empty so that Edward could not use it to kill Lawdale.
The cop's face was still gripped by false surprise, mouth gaping, eyes closed. Lawdale slowly closed his mouth. He swallowed hard and deliberately and then cocked his head down.
All of a sudden, he snapped his eyes open and Edward stared into the black, pupil-less eyes that sent an unnerving chill down his spine. He knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he was staring into the eyes of Tin Man.
It was a terrifying sight. This tall man with blond cropped hair, his head tilted down and the black eyes staring up at them with the black smoke coming from his cut. Dark, evil, black.
Black.
Rose and Alice both screamed.
Tin Man's mouth turned up slowly as a smile appeared. "Never leave your gun unattended."
"Run!" Edward yelled, shoving the shotgun toward Tin Man as the girls bolted to their right. Jasper and Edward ran toward the kitchen, hot on the girls' heels. Jasper picked up a knife from the counter and threw it skillfully right into the man's bicep.
Lawdale flinched, but no more. He held fast to the gun that he had caught quickly. He was a man of supreme confidence. With good reason. He played his own game flawlessly.
But he could be wounded, which meant that he could be killed, just like Stewart. White reached around with his free hand and pulled out the knife.
Edward and Jasper bolted through the foyer still close behind Alice and Rose.
"Tear him up!" Rose called out over her shoulder.
"We don't even know what he is," Jasper replied.
A low chuckle reached through the wood walls. "Very good, Edward. Anger is good. Run!"
Edward flew up the stairs. Susan was right about Lawdale, which meant her claim that White intended to kill all of them also had to be true. Never mind the fact that most of them could not die. This was his house, his rules. Edward did not know what could really happen.
"Emmett," Rose screamed. "Don't do it! Don't kill her!"
A scream.
Was it too late?
Rose and Alice ran up the steps quickly and easy, while Jasper and Edward flung themselves over the banister.
"Emmett!" Edward called out as he tore down the hall into the first room.
Edward saw it all in a flash. The orange glow of a dim overhead light bulb. Bella standing to one side of the guest room; Emmett beating at a locked closet door with a crowbar.
"Lawdale's the Tin Man," Edward said quickly, "The killer is Lawdale."
Emmett kicked the door. His mind was on other things that were more important.
"He is going to kill all of us if she dies," Jasper said, coming up behind Emmett.
The door began to splinter and cave in from all of Emmett's beating. Edward looked over to Jasper and nodded his head slowly. Jasper dived at Emmett, knocking him to the floor.
"How do you know that?" Bella asked.
There was no sound of White's presence or his pursuit, but in this house, Edward knew that meant nothing. White could already be on the stairs, or even standing outside the bedroom.
Susan ran from the closet and sprinted out of Emmett's reach and hid behind Bella.
"Edward!" Rose screamed from the doorway, looking back down the stairs.
Alice and Rose took the final step into the room and slammed the door shut, pressing their backs against the door, their eyes wide.
"He's coming!" Alice said.
"I don't believe you!" Emmett called out from under Jasper. "Get off of me!"
"Shut up, Emmett!" Jasper growled.
"He's going to kill us!" Bella said.
Knuckles rapped on the door, Rose and Alice jumped and backed away from it. Jasper stood up as the girls ran toward their mates. They had nothing but their gifts, to fight him off. But they did not even know what they were really dealing with. Any other vampire or werewolf, they knew, but this…not a clue.
The brass handle turned. The door swung open with a long creak.
Tin Man stood in the opening with his tin mask in place as they had seen him before, only now he was dressed in the Budweiser t-shirt and the gray patrolman's pants. Blood soaked a strip of cloth that he had hastily wrapped around the wound on his bicep.
He held Edward's now empty shotgun in one hand, the knife that was thrown at him in the other.
"Hello," he said.
5:59 AM
The game had played out even better than Barsidious White ever dreamed.
The girl was still alive, but that would soon change. He relished in the thought of ending it all precisely as he had foreseen.
The Tin Man stripped off the mask Susan had dropped and placed it by the door. After taking a second to study the drawn faces, he addressed them all calmly.
"Sit along the wall."
They all moved obediently, the arms of the men wrapped tight around the women's waists.
Now he had them all in a row. Seven of them. The one called Bella, the one called Rose, the one called Alice, the one called Jasper, the one called Emmett, the one called Edward. And the one called Susan. Like seven pigeons in a cage, all staring at their captor.
White looked at Susan. The mysterious girl who had appeared at the inn without warning three days ago. An apparently easy prey, but then she disappeared into the basement as if that was her whole intent. At first, he had tried to kill her, but then discovered something quite unnerving about this child.
She was a good person, too good.
Not a person who just did good things to show how good they were, but a person who really was good straight to the bone. The rest were "guilty as sin," as he liked to say.
But White was not so sure that Susan was guilty at all. She had not once talked maliciously or revealed any character traits less than virtuous. He always killed the guilty, proving to them that they were as guilty as his own murderous self; every single one of them eventually turned to murder to save their own necks.
For the first time, however, White had met a participant who did not fit the profile and therefore wrecked the significant havoc with his game. Then there was, of course, the fact that five of them were not even human. Not only where they considered damned creatures of the night, he was basically fighting with his own kind. Yet, they all seemed to have some sense of morals.
So White had to act quickly and decided that he would make her part of the game. Now it was not just kill each other, all ye who are as guilty as sin. Now it was kill this innocent one, removing from amongst you the last vestiges of goodness, all ye who are as guilty as sin.
Susan stared at him, fearless, and then she opened her mouth to speak. "I know how…"
Tin Man shot out a round into the wall next to Bella, who shrieked.
Susan snapped her mouth shut. She understood. If you speak, I will kill Bella.
He withdrew the small roll of tape from his pocket, crossed over to Susan and placed a long strip across her mouth and around her head. Then he proceeded to tie up her hands. He did not know how well the house could obscure what she said, but he did not want them listening, especially now. She knew too much.
White picked up the knife and began to pace deliberately, enjoying the sound of his heavy boots on the wood floor.
"It is time for you to know your own fate. We still have a few minutes to play the game."
No one said a word; they just sat, looked, and listened.
"I have a confession to make," White said, "Officer Lawdale will not be coming to rescue you. Unless by 'rescue', you think in terms of being delivered unto death."
They still did not speak or move. Pigeons. Stupid Pigeons.
Edward snapped his head up and looked straight at White.
"You must appreciate the way I have taken such care in planning your deaths…all of your deaths."
Edward and Jasper stared at him stoically, while the rest of them glared, only little Bella looked confused.
White walked over to Bella and gently slid a finger across her cheek, she flinched as Edward began to growl.
"Now, now, Edward. You must behave. All of that self control that you have been practicing, I would hate to see you lose it, when you are so close to finishing the game," White stood up, "I went down to Lawdale's house, which was just a few minutes from here, and slashed his throat. I then took his cruiser. This was only so I could make sure that there would be enough players for tonight's game."
"You…you're going to kill us?" Bella asked.
"If you don't kill each other first," White answered, "And if you ask anymore stupid questions, you will be the first to die."
"Why don't you just kill us now?" Edward asked, calling White's bluff.
White looked over to Edward. Out of all of them, Edward was the only one who was thinking straight. The man was strong. Resolute.
"Patience, Edward. I will kill you. I will because my eyes are black. Black much like your own. Are you not going to ask why, Edward?"
"Why are your eyes black?" Edward asked without hesitation.
"Because I am not really White in the house. I am really Black in the box, and this is my showdown. Good versus evil, only in your case it is evil versus evil. All of you are the same as me; evil, monsters. There is no contest."
The girl was the only one that made a motion of understanding.
White threw the knife with a flick of his wrist; it twirled in the air a couple of time and landed with a thunk in the wall between Edward and Bella.
"Do you know what evil is, Edward? The black stuff."
Edward did not respond.
White lifted up his bandana and let the black fog dribble then begin to pour out of his cut. It pooled on the floor and began to its way toward the group pressed up against the wall.
"Evil, the stuff in your heart. It is in my head."
White replaced the bandana.
"I have decided to give you all one last chance to figure this mess out. Most people are quiet dense. They like little white houses with big stained glass churches and prefer to do their killing with looks and words behind one another's backs. Is that not right, Rose?" White turned his attention to Rose, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "All of those thoughts that you have blocked from your brother regarding your true feelings about Bella."
White paused and then took a deep breath.
"Welcome to my house. No secrets allowed. Here we all do our own killing. It may be bloodier." White's eyes furrowed together. "Well, maybe it won't be too bloody, but it will be far less brutal."
Surely, they all understood some of this.
"The wages of sin is death and this time, we are going to the blood, what do you say? No more stained glass windows or white houses. Now it is White's house and in White's house we follow White's rules. House rules."
White could hear his breathing growing heavy, but he easily calmed himself down.
"One last chance to rethink rule number three. The girl was right on two accounts: you have not been listening to her. We can blame the house for that, though. And yes, I do want you to kill her. The game will just keep going until she is dead. But she is also wrong. If you do kill her, I will let whoever's still alive live."
He let that sink in for just a second.
"And if you don't kill her. I am going to slaughter the two of you that I can like a precious little lambs. Being sure that I start with the girl, just to show you how it should have been done from the beginning."
Emmett's eyes flittered toward his left where the girl sat, then back onto White. Good sign.
"Dawn is coming. I never let the game go past dawn."
He withdrew a match and struck it on his belt, and tossed the flame at the pool of black smoke that had fallen from his cut. The fog ignited with a whoosh as if it were gasoline. Firelight danced on their cold, hard stone faces.
"I never told you that I knew how to kill all of you. Fire is not really your friend, now is it, Edward? As you can see, the black stuff likes to burn. This place will go up in flames at first light. That is in six minutes. Six minutes to make a choice."
White moved to the door, stopping to pick up his mask, then opened the door and backed out of the room.
"Six minutes."
White slammed the door shut and began to tremble, knowing that the game was just minutes from ending.