Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

aloud.
    Stefan knew he was a phantom, belonging to the shadows, but at least he knew exactly who he was and how he had gotten there. Judith didn’t trust herself—didn’t realize that by creating this place, she only reinforced her own belief that she was twisted. Five years of rage and sorrow were held suspended in one space. No one could stay in this room for any length of time without the unrelenting destructive emotions affecting them.
    He stepped close to the painting she was working on, slowly removing the cover and shining his light over it. His breath stopped in his lungs. Something hard blocked his throat. This was Judith’s nightmare. The torture and death of her beloved brother. Jagged glass, tipped with dark blood, slashed angry lines through the canvas. Bold angry strokes with a broad brush, none of the fine little brushstrokes for this painting that he’d observed in all of her other works. The only real color was a bright, bold Japanese character. He knew it was her brother’s name painted over the rivers of blood and the broken, tormented body.
    He peered closer and Judith’s eyes eerily stared back at him filled with a mixture of grief and anger. His own eyes burned and his gut churned. Shame and guilt descended over him, a heavy blanket weighing him down, nearly crushing his chest in the vicinity of his heart. Intellectually he knew he was feeling her emotions, the intensity she felt each time she gave into the concentrated, unrelenting sorrow and came into this room where she felt it was safe to allow her emotions free rein, to rework the painting.
    She hadn’t signed the graphically detailed depiction of her brother’s death, but she’d brought it to life. He could almost see the figures moving in that room of blood and pain. The men turning on one another as her brother lay in agony, gasping for his last breaths. The policeman’s lifeless body crumpling over the top of Judith, driving her down into the blood and torn flesh of her brother, while the policemen’s blood and fragmented flesh sprayed over her like a fountain.
    It was a ghastly scene, even to a man used to violence, mostly because it was viewed through the eyes of a woman who loved the victim—through the eyes of Judith. He knew she wasn’t finished with it because she hadn’t signed her name. It didn’t matter how much he told himself it was Judith’s feelings, his heart nearly exploded in pain. Looking at her eyes, the guilt there, the anger and grief, he felt a murderous rage begin to smolder in his belly, growing stronger the longer he stared at the painting. He needed to make this right for her.
    A muscle ticked in his jaw as he covered the painting. He’d told her he was her man. He was certainly capable of vengeance. Her brother hadn’t been tortured to extract information vital to the safety of a country; it had been done as a lesson. He knew he was justifying his own life, his own terrible sins, but at this point, he couldn’t change what the men who had shaped his life had made him into. He could do this for her and if anyone deserved to suffer before he died, it was Jean-Claude La Roux.
    In the center of the room a dark cloth covered a large object. The cloth seemed to stir, although there was no way for a breeze to have moved it. The slight ripple of the fabric drew his attention. The room whispered, an insidious buzz in his ears, never quite grew loud enough for him to make out words.
    He walked around the object, which nearly came up to his chest. He used the tips of his fingers to remove the cloth. The kaleidoscope was large, almost as big as a telescope to view the night sky, and sat on a tall tripod. Four individual sealed cells were stacked in a black canister and a fifth, which she appeared to working on, was on top. He assumed each cell represented a year gone by without her brother’s killer paying adequately for his crime, yet when he picked them up, he couldn’t make out the images inside of them.
    Puzzled, Stefan examined each cell from every angle, laying them out carefully in order. His mind always remembered the smallest detail, but he was still methodical, always double-checking the small things, taking no chances anyone would feel his passing. No real phantom could afford to overlook the tiniest detail.
    He turned the first cell over and over. It was filled with mineral oil and sealed, clearly finished but no matter how much he shined the penlight on it, he couldn’t make out the