Here goes, buddy. No retreat now.
He squirmed onto the platform. He lay flat on his back, hearing it squeak as it began to raise him to the Perspex roof of the cage. Toward the hole that he’d slipped himself through so many times before.
He had to go through with this.
Even though it had been different tonight. He’d heard a lot of movement. Clanking sounds. Rattling. The squeal of a mechanism. A door to the outside had opened nearby. Even though it had been dark, he’d fancied he’d caught sight of some dim radiance. He’d felt fresh air come blowing through the bars of his cage.
He’d heard Virginia catch her breath before whispering, “They’re bringing someone new in.”
“But they’ve never done it like this before.”
“No,” she’d agreed. “Must be someone special.”
Then there’d been the smell of onions and spices. A musty smell. Stale. Unpleasant.
“Lake! Present yourself! Hurry… Hurry!”
Okay, here goes nothing.
If it works… payback time!
If not, he’d be joining the late Marco and Cardinali before you could say, “RIP.”
He slipped the wooden stool leg from the waistband of his pants. Quickly, he pressed his thumb against the point.
Just checking.
Gotta make sure it goes in sharp end first. And, my God, it’s sharp. The barb too. Wickedly sharp.
Please, Jesus, bless this weapon of vengeance.
For vengeance shall be mine, sayeth the Lord. Vengeance shall be mine.
Ed exulted.
I’m in!
April Vallsarra’s body burned with exultation. Tonight she’d done it all by herself. She hadn’t needed Lettie to help her.
Tell the world blindness isn’t a handicap!
Tell the sighted they’re not all-powerful!
Because I’ve done it. I’ve caught one all by myself.
Exultation melded with excitement. Excitement generated lust. White-hot lust that flamed and burned and seared.
Got to have release. Got to let it out!
As she fastened the belt that held the radio mike transmitter about her slender waist, she reviewed the stages of her near-miraculous feat. She’d moved unerringly downstairs after telling her visitor to wait.
She’d switched off the lights in her father’s basement studio, then moved swiftly down the steps with the confidence of a sighted person in brilliant daylight. There, she’d unlocked the padlocks that held the empty transfer cage in place. This she’d wheeled single-handed to the steel roller door.
If you could have seen me, Lettie. The times we hauled that together. Today I did it by myself. I don’t need you anymore.
I’m self-contained.
I need no one to nursemaid me.
After that it was surprisingly easy. With the open-ended transfer cage close to the roller door, she’s pressed the switch to open it. It had scrolled up.
In the darkness her visitor had unwittingly walked forward. Not knowing they were entering the cage.
Not realizing they were entering the trap. Then it had been simplicity itself. She’d pressed the quick-release lever. The cage door had clanged shut trapping her visitor. By touch, using her bare feet, she’d located the loops on the floor, and quickly snapped the padlocks in place, locking the cage in place so its occupant couldn’t tip it up and escape.
Then she’d returned to the roller-door controls and pressed the button. Seconds later it had rolled back, clanking into place, sealing the basement studio from the outside world.
Now she had a third prisoner.
She’d done it all by herself.
April wanted to laugh and to spin around and around, her arms out, reveling in the moment.
Relishing her victory over the world of sight.
Instead, she knew to keep silent until the microphone was in place. In a second she’d slipped on the headset. Now whenever she spoke, the radio mike would carry her voice to the electronic synthesizer that her father had once used to compose his music. Its circuits would transform her voice into one of those deep male movie-trailer voices.
Her captives would believe they were dealing with some thundering giant of a man. Not a slightly built blind girl.
Now she was so horny she could burst.
She would have loved to pleasure herself using her new guest, but that would have to wait, until all the formalities had been gone through, when the new guest would be transferred to the third, static cage and conditioned to obey her orders.
No… it would have to be Lake tonight. She would make good use of his body.
She switched on the radio mike, issued the order: “Lake… Lake, move up onto the platform.”
She would enjoy his body tonight. She’d make good use of him as she had before.
She thrilled at the recollection of his male hardness entering her. How she’d knelt on the cool Perspex and felt his hot erection jutting proud of the hole in the cage roof to work inside of her. Exciting her. Making her shudder with pleasure, until she…
No, don’t hurry.
Don’t rush this.
Take your time.
Virginia and the new guest—the oh, so silent one—would hear the sounds of love tonight. Now isn’t that an exciting concept? They hear. Only they do not see.
Tantalizing, isn’t it?
Teasing.
Might make them want to touch themselves.
And what of her new guest? April Vallsarra didn’t even know its sex. Not that it mattered. Like many an adventurer before her, she’d drunk deeply of many different springs.
By sense of touch alone, she moved from the elevated walkway that ran around the basement studio and onto the Perspex roof of the cage. Her body throbbed with anticipation. She hungered for Lake’s hard member to push deeply into her.
She felt the hole with its smooth edges in the Perspex. There would be Lake lying just below her now. He’d be anticipating too. She knew he loved this as much as she did now. She’d felt his tremors of excitement through his cock as he entered her. And felt many times his passionate eruption that flooded her with his liquid warmth.
Oh yes… yessss. She couldn’t bear to wait another minute.
Kneeling down on the cool roof of the cage, April reached down, clasped the hem of her negligee, and raised it up to her hips.
When she spoke, her voice came back to her in a boom. “Lake, present yourself.”
She went down.
Ed Lake heard the command.
“Lake, present yourself.”
Above him a weight settled, slightly flexing the Perspex.
What if she reached down to touch his cock with her fingers first? Then she’d feel the wooden stool leg. She’d know what he planned. His heart hammered in his chest as he lay there, gripping the pointed shaft in his hand.
Because it was too long to push straight up, and his own body was still partly in the way, he’d have to push at an angle. He clenched his fists around the wooden shaft, ready to force every ounce of his strength into the upward thrust, through the hole into the most intimate part of her body.
“Lake. Present yourself. That is in an order.”
I hear and obey, oh mighty one!
He drove the point up through the hole. Thrust as hard as he could.
Then flinched at the sound of the deafening scream.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Jesus H. Christ! What’s that?
Grace smacked her palms to her ears. That screaming… hell, it sounded like sheet metal being torn in two.
Her eyes stretched wide. But she could see nothing in this darkness. It was black as damnation down here. Not a glimmer of light.
And the place shook with screams.
Deep male ones.
Only they were weird.
There was no single direction to them. Like being in a cinema with surround sound. The yells came from everywhere at once… they were distorted too, with a kind of electronic overdr
ive that powered them to a nerve-stripping intensity.
Madhouse.
Freaking madhouse.
Now Grace really did want out.
Had a burning need to bug out of the house. A burning need to run into the woods and hide in the cool silence until her ears stopped ringing.
“Aaaaa—hhh—gugh.” Skull-cracking decibels. “Lake… why? Why! Uhhhgh!”
Now Grace heard rushing sounds. The same you get when someone breathes into a microphone. Snapping and deep umph sounds too. A mike being knocked.
Then came the sound of amplified weeping. Someone was in pain. In real pain that you couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Another voice rang out in the darkness. “You deserved that, you bitch!”
“Lake. I loved you.”
“Yeah, loved me enough to keep me in this stinking cage. Loved me enough to put me in fear for my life every single minute of the damn day… that’s what I call tough love.”
A third voice; this one female. “Ed. Can you reach her? Can you find a key?”
“I’ve got her hooked, Virginia. Got her damn well hooked. All I have to do is twist the shaft a little.”
“Lake, no. Please!”
“What’s it like to be on the receiving end, huh?”
“Lake, pleee—”
Grace cringed as the voice rose into a scream.
The one called Lake must have twisted the shaft and caused pain. Whatever that involved.
“Uu… ugh!”
“You took us for a pair of saps,” Lake said. He sounded triumphant. “We know that you’re a woman. We know that you altered your voice with some gizmo.”
Grace had to get away from the madhouse. She started crawling along the floor on her hands and knees.
“Lake, please! I’m hurt real bad…”
The female voice pitched in. “And serves you right. Suffer, you bitch!”
Grace wanted to curl into a ball until the screaming stopped. Only, by now she thought it never would.
Gotta get out…
Gotta get away…
Must be a door somewhere near.
She felt along the wall, fingers hunting for an exit… a door… even a window…
What’s that?
Her fingers found something.
Hard. Oblong. Fixed to the wall. Size of a peppermint. Her mind swum dizzily.
It’s a…
… light switch…
Not being able to see in the darkness, Ed Lake could still feel.
He lay on his back on the platform and hung on to the harpoon he’d made from the stool leg.
Fish wriggled.
Fish squirmed.
But let go?
Never!
No sirree.
He’d caught her. He’d felt the point of the stake punch through skin deep into flesh. In his mind’s eye he saw how it was. He was lying flat on the platform, she was directly above him just inches away on the other side of the Perspex roof panel. The two people were connected by the stake passing through the hole into her… well… go figure.
What made it difficult now was the blood. It ran hot down the wooden shaft.
Blood’s slippery stuff, he thought, surprised. It made it hard to grip onto the shaft. What’s more, his Sex Queen writhed and screamed. One hard tug and she could pull the slippery thing from his hands.
Then what?
She’d order her accomplice to slit his and Virginia’s throats.
Or may be she’d just abandon them here. Leave the two of them to die of thirst in the dark.
And where was the accomplice?
Maybe she’d panicked when she saw the Sex Queen suddenly convulse in agony.
Ed Lake knew he must hang on to this bloody pole, slippery as it was. Sex Queen could have keys to the cage. They could bargain. Her life for their freedom.
“Hang on in there, Ed!” That was Virginia shouting encouragement. “And while you’re at it, hurt the bitch!”
Even in darkness, Amara saw.
Amara waited…
April Vallsarra writhed in agony. The pain was overwhelming. Could hardly form two words in a row before the sheer hurt overwhelmed her thought process. Then she howled in pain.
At first the synthesizer returned the screams to her in a deep bass roar.
Then the microphone headset was thrown clear of her by the convulsions. Instantly, her cries of pain became a high shriek.
But down through the blazing red inferno that was her pain one word roared through her head.
Revenge.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Grace wrestled with the problem. If she switched on the lights, she’d be able to see. But then the people doing the shouting and the terrifying screaming would be able to see her.
Then maybe it would be the turn for one Grace Bucklan to do all the screaming.
Shit to that, she thought.
But if I switch on the lights, then run for the door, maybe they’ll never catch me? Besides, they sound too busy doing stuff, freaky stuff, to one another. Just listen to that woman howl. Sounds as if she’s making out with a branding iron.
And if I stay hiding in the dark here, they’re going to find me sooner or later.
What about the woman and her baby?
Uh… solve that one when you get to it.
Still keeping her finger on the light switch, she levered herself to her feet. When that light came on, she wanted to be running hard.
Away from this madhouse. Back to Cody.
She took a deep breath. Here goes.
Grace flicked the light switch.
Still lying on the platform, still gripping the slippery shaft, still praying for a miracle, Ed Lake blinked in surprise as the light came on.
He looked at his hands.
Somehow he was wearing crimson gloves.
Ugh… only they weren’t gloves.
Contorted with agony, April Vallsarra gulped down lungfuls of air, trying to suppress the pain.
Blind, she didn’t see the light.
Grace raised her hands to shield her eyes. The strip lights were dazzling.
She’d intended to run.
Run like greased lightning for the door.
But she didn’t.
Couldn’t.
What she saw fixed her tight to that square yard of concrete.
She looked at the scene, which could have come from a carnival for the damned. In the harsh light were four cages. Three were the size of pickup trucks. One was a smaller wheeled cage.
But Grace’s eyes were drawn to the cage nearest her.
Now that was weird.
That was a tableaux as bizarre as it was terrible.
A young guy dressed in pants, shirt, and with no shoes lay on a platform just below the underside of the cage roof. On the cage roof knelt a beautiful woman dressed in nothing but a flimsy negligee—the same woman Grace had seen on the roof of the house.
She was kneeling with her face down, almost touching the roof that was made out of glass. She was writhing, her two hands gripping a dark stick that protruded from the guy’s hands below into her throat.
A splash of ice shivers crashed over Grace’s body.
Dear God…
She saw what was happening now.
The guy had stabbed the woman in the neck with some kind of spike. The woman couldn’t drag herself off the point. She was caught. Bled profusely.
Blood ran down the spike, over the guy’s hands, dripped down onto the cage floor.
Gross-out… she must be in agony.
Must be dying too.
Holy shit!
Ed Lake stared up at what he’d done.
Now in that brilliant electric light he could see the damage. And what exactly had been damaged.
It wasn’t as he’d thought.
She hadn’t sat on the hole this time to receive his cock into her. No. Instead, she’d been going down on him when he stabbed upward in the dark with his homemade harpoon.
The point had gone into her throat just below her jaw.
Gone in deep enough for the barb to hook.
She was going nowhere now.
No escape.
But, Jesus, look at all that blood.
The red stuff gushed from her.
Wet his hands, slicked his chest, pooled on the raised platform. For the first time he got a good close look at his Sex Queen as she knelt above him on the Perspex. He was looking through a rose-tinted smear of blood on the transparent material. But he saw enough.
She was around thirty. Shoulder-length dark hair. Slim. Wore a negligee. Its transparency permitted him a glimpse of curved orbs of breasts tipped by dark nipples.
But no nightscope goggles?
“Ed… Ed…” Virginia called him. “Ed. She can’t see you. She’s blind!”
Blind?
Holy shit. So that’s how she moved through the darkness.
The Sex Queen was weakening. The microphone headset that piped her voice through the synthesizer had slipped off to lie on the glass roof of the cage. She still cried out, but it was softening to a moan.
So when the next scream came, Ed was startled by its power.
It also came from another part of the room.
Virginia?
No.
Not from her.
Still holding on to the wooden shaft, he twisted his head. There, outside the cage, was a girl in her late teens.
Who the hell was she?
But there was no time to worry about identities. The girl screamed again. The scream was pure terror. She was pointing too.
But not at the skewered blind woman.
At something else entirely.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Just when it seemed as if it couldn’t get any worse, it did just that.
Grace had watched the guy holding the blind woman down in a kneeling position. The spike he held driven deep into the woman’s throat. Harpooned.
Sickened by the scene, Grace wrenched her gaze from it.
Only to see something else.
Something far worse.
TO WAKE THE DEAD Page 31