The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Twenty Nine: Mercy

Jasper shook with a mad man's laughter. "After all these years...you've finally come for me." His dark eyes glittered with what almost looked like joy. "The angel told me you would, but the years passed, and you never came. I was afraid you'd forgotten about me...sister." He went limp in my hateful claws, prey accepting its fate. His lips stretched wide. "I built this house exactly as she told me to, to protect Lily and Catherine, but I knew it would do no good for me. Not against you. Not after what I did. I knew you'd find your way in someday...to punish me. God knows I deserve it. I know it doesn't matter now," His voice shook as tears wet his eyes. He reached a trembling hand towards me. His fingers, now thick with callouses, brushed my cheek. "But I am so sorry, Matilda."

My insides twisted at those words. My chest suddenly tightened. "You're sorry?!" How dare he. How dare he try to soften my heart now. Now. When he was finally within my clutches. I slapped him across his face with all my Hollow given strength. Blood and teeth went spraying across the floorboards. "I'm going to kill you, Jasper! I've waited and waited and waited for it! To see the fear in your eyes and hear your screams! You will not take that from me now with more of your lies! Now scream!" I drove my fist into his nose, breaking it and spraying my face with more blood. He sputtered another apology, spitting blood from his mouth. "Scream! Damn you! Scream!" My fist came down again and again and still it was not enough. The only words that came from his mouth was that damned apology.

"Papa!" A child's cry brought the room around me back into focus and filled my chest with bitterness until it overflowed. Catherine grabbed my arm, trying to keep my fist from hitting her father again. "Leave him alone! Please!" She begged. Her eyes were round with fright, her face streaked with fat tears.

"Knut, get the girl." I hissed through my teeth.

She'd been so focused on me, on saving her father, she hadn't noticed the inhuman figures that filled the room. She showed no fear of Knut but took one look at those behind him and screamed with all her breath. Foolishly, pathetically, she bolted for the alcove, running towards the comfort of her mother instead of the door.

Knut frowned as he followed her. I could tell that the child's presence was bothering him just by his posture. Perhaps she reminded him too much of himself. She certainly was having that effect on me. "Hurry and shut her up." I barked.

"No!" For the first time, Jasper showed fear. He reached for his daughter with desperate clawing hands. "Catherine is innocent! Leave her be! I beg you!"

Knut slipped into the alcove. There was the sound of a struggle. Catherine screamed and her mother moaned in her perpetual agony. I doubt she was even aware of what was happening. "Sleep now, child. Pleasant dreams." I heard him coo and the screams stopped, the house went eerily silent. A moment later, Knut walked out of the alcove carrying Catherine's small, limp body in his arms.

Jasper moaned beneath me, his whole body shaking with sobs.

I climbed to my feet and brushed off my dress, wiping the blood from my face with a velvet sleeve. "Don't fret. Your daughter is fine. She's merely sleeping...for now." I admired the girl's peacefully slumbering face and brushed her dark hair from her cheeks. "Such a pretty little thing. She looks like you. I couldn't help but notice that you named her after our mother...even after murdering her other children. Tell me, what gives you the right to use that name?"

"She isn't my daughter." He replied. "She's some sailor's bastard."

"Liar." I laughed coldly. "She has our father's eyes. Distancing yourself from her won't do her any good." I turned to the waiting goblins. "Bind him." My goblins surged past me in a wave of black wings, fang and claw. At the forefront were the doppelgangers. It was they that seized Jasper, those living corpses, and that's when I finally got the scream I was hoping for. One filled with absolute fright. The goblins shoved him into the small chair by the hearth and held him there. The goblin twins each held back one of his shoulders while goblin me knelt in front of him like a child and stared at him with her dead eyes. He tried to turn his head, to look away from her, but the goblins grabbed his jaw and held his head fixed, ensuring that he could not ignore her...or his sins.