Spiders in the Grove

by J. A. Redmerski

  He can’t look at me; I get the sense he wants to, but he’s too angry; there’s a tiny twitch on one side of his face.

  “No more lies, Javier. No more pretending with you, not even to save myself. I refuse to spend my last moments pretending that I love you. The truth is, I fucking hate you. And if you don’t kill me while you have me bound to this chair, then I’ll be the one killing you when I eventually get myself out of it.”

  He chuckles.

  “Is that right?” he mocks. “While I don’t doubt you can free yourself, I know you won’t kill me.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Alejandra,” he says. “I’m the only one who knows where our daughter is.”

  A daughter? I gasp quietly, and lose my train of thought as I try to envision her face. Alejandra. My daughter’s name is Alejandra…

  Javier stands tall in front of me, and I look up at his looming form. His expression has changed. And it puts fear in my heart that I feel deep down in my stomach.

  He smiles. “And if you don’t cooperate with me this time, I’ll have her killed before I kill you.”

  No…

  My unblinking gaze floats around the room drunkenly; I stop breathing for a moment; my hands sweat profusely; my stomach churns with bile. I look up at him again, deep into his eyes, and I see it, the seriousness of his threat: he will do it; he’s not bluffing—he will kill my daughter.

  “You should be grateful I didn’t kill her when you betrayed me the first time, Sarai. I thought about it. I almost did it.” He sits back down on the chair in front of me, seizes my full attention. “But I thought I’d wait just a little longer”—he moves his hands, palms up, outward—“for precisely this moment. I just had to be patient. And patience paid off because here you are. And because I didn’t kill her, I still have the only leverage I could’ve used against you. Tell me, Sarai,” he says, “other than love, why did you betray me when you knew that I knew where our daughter was? Do you love a man more than your own child?”

  “No,” I answer right away, glaring at him. “I just knew that no matter what I did for you, you’d never tell me where she was. You’re a cruel, heartless animal, Javier, and I knew I would’ve betrayed the man I love for nothing in the end. So, I gave up hope; I stopped dreaming about something I’d never have. And I made the decision to come back to Mexico the first time to kill you. To be rid of you.” I sigh and pause before continuing. “But you weren’t here, and so I killed most of your family. And I don’t regret it. And before I leave here, I’ll finish the job.”

  He smiles. And then he stands.

  “Maybe so,” he says, “maybe I’ve underestimated you, and you truly are the badass everyone says you became. But if anything happens to me, you’ll never find her. And you’ll never know the truth, Sarai. About how you really ended up here all those years ago. And you’ll never find the man you’re looking for. I have so much to offer, I doubt you’ll let vengeance get in the way of all that.”

  “What do you mean, how I really ended up here?” I can’t lie, he’s got my attention.

  Javier reaches up and taps the side of his head with his fingertip, grinning. “It’s all up here,” he says. “All you have to do is finish what you started, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I shake my head. “Maybe you will tell me, sure, but then you’ll kill me after you get what you want.”

  “No,” he says. “I’ll give you everything you want—Alejandra, information on Vonnegut, your freedom, and your life—if you’ll bring Victor Faust to me.”

  “I still don’t believe—”

  “I’ll even give you a freebie,” he cuts me off, “as a gesture of good faith.”

  “There’s nothing you can say to convince me you’re telling the truth.”

  “Do you want the freebie, or not?”

  I ponder it for a moment. What other choice do I have? What other potential ways out of this are there? No one’s coming to ‘save me’; I either agree to this, and at least buy myself some time, or it’s all over and I die right here, right now, never knowing anything.

  “Yes,” I say, and brace myself. “I want it.”

  Javier reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out his cell phone; he runs his finger over the screen in search of something, and smiles when he finds it; the dread grows in my heart.

  Turning the screen toward me, I look down at the picture staring back at me. It’s a girl—a young woman. She’s wearing a hoodie, but I can see her face, and her eyes, and her hair peeking from beneath it. Confused, I look up at Javier, waiting for him to tell me who she is.

  “Her name was Sela. Sela Cohen. She was your sister, about four years older than you.” He casually pockets the phone again, taking his time. “Your White-trash madre sold her to me—technically to Izel, who unsuccessfully tried to train her—when she was seven-years-old. But Sela, much like you, couldn’t be controlled. Unfortunately, she attacked Izel, and my sister killed her of course; you know how Izel was.”

  “What does this…girl, have to do with me?” I really don’t care much that I had a sister; I never knew her, don’t even recall ever seeing her before, so if he’s trying to play the family card…

  Javier smiles with satisfaction.

  “Your mother sold you to me, Sarai,” he says, and I admit, it doesn’t affect me much. “For drugs. You wouldn’t believe how many mothers sell their daughters for a high. In fact,” he goes on, “that woman pumped out at least four daughters I know of, before you.”

  “That’s it?” I ask, unimpressed by the information—OK, it hurts a little that my mom sold me, but the problem is that it doesn’t surprise me much.

  “That’s it,” he confirms with a shrug. “I thought you’d be more—”

  “Hurt? Shocked? Emotionally invested?”—I shake my head—“Javier, I’m nothing like I used to be.”

  “You’re everything like you used to be, and more,” he comes back. “In a sense you’ve always been this”—he looks me up and down—“Izabel Seyfried. You’ve never been weak; you played me from the start; you did whatever you had to do to survive, and then eventually escape, because I never broke you—I made you. You killed your own mother; and your fake mother”—he smirks—“yes, I heard about her death; was sure it was you, and I look in your face now and I know I was right. Sarai, weak people could never kill those they love the most, not even to put them out of their misery, much less feel no guilt afterwards.” (No, you bastard—you’re wrong! He’s wrong! He’s…right.)

  “You risked the life of your own child when you came back to kill me, when you betrayed me,” he continues, “because you knew, no matter what your heart tried to make you believe, that I’d never tell you where she was even if you helped me. A loving mother would never risk their child, she’d never give up hope, even if she knows, deep down, that there is no hope”—(my fingernails are digging into my palms; my teeth are grinding to dust in my mouth)—“You risked yourself and your relationship with Victor Faust to come here, right back to a place you knew you’d be…spoiled for him later. Or killed and never see him again.”

  He stands up, clasps his hands behind him, and looks down at me as I feel my face falling deeper and deeper under a shroud of shame and realization and hatred for this piece of shit who dares to tell me the things about myself I never wanted to know. I never wanted to believe…

  “You’re just like me, Sarai,” he says at last, and I flinch. “You’re a wolf in the chicken pen; you kill because you’re hungry, because it’s in your nature, and your remorse only goes as far as what you’re willing to let affect you. Because you secretly despise affection, companionship, and love. You crave power above all things, because up there, at the top where no one can touch you, influence you, or love you, you know you can never be hurt.”

  He crouches in front of me, and he kisses my lips. “We are one in the same, Sarai,” he says, looking into my eyes but not seeing me. “And that�
��s how I know you did love me. Once. Because darkness is attracted to darkness. And the only reason you came here is because Victor Faust has become a sort of light in your life, and you fear it as much as he probably does; you hate yourself for loving him because you care what happens to him. But with me, you loved me without stipulations; you could live with yourself if I died—but it was still love; the darkest kind of love. The safest kind of love.”

  “Tell me about Vonnegut,” I say, teeth clenched.

  Fuck you, and your words of truth!

  Javier—the darkness in my life—smiles, and then rises into a towering stand.

  “The freebie wasn’t enough?”

  “You knew it wouldn’t be,” I say. “I want something I can use—not a piece of the past, Javier.”

  He nods a few times, thinking about it.

  “Because I love you, and I always have,” he says, “I’ll tell you one thing about Vonnegut that I believe to be true. But anything else will come only after you bring me Victor Faust.”

  “But I only want to find Vonnegut for Victor Faust—what good does it for me if you have Victor?”

  “That’s for you to figure out,” he says. “But that’s the price.”

  Contemplating it a moment, I look at the floor, and I picture Victor’s face, the light in my dark life.

  I raise my eyes to Javier. “I’ll bring you Victor Faust.”

  He smiles, and then slides his hands into the pockets of his pants.

  “I’ve never spoken to Vonnegut personally,” he begins, “but I know someone who has; she’s his liaison.”

  So then Iosif isn’t Vonnegut—figures. And that means I was wrong all along about Vonnegut being one of the wealthy buyers.

  “How do you know she’s spoken to him—seen him?”

  He glances at me. “Because she’s confident,” he says, and then paces slowly. “The times I’ve met with her to do business with The Order, she’s carried herself a certain way; she’s more than an employee—she’s important to Vonnegut somehow. A mere messenger doesn’t make decisions for the boss; she’s confident enough to make decisions without first consulting him. She’d never do that if she didn’t have some kind of personal relationship with him.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Lysandra Hollis,” he says with a shrug, “if that’s her real name, of course.”

  “Profile?” I ask.

  His mouth pinches on one side, and I know what he’s thinking: Should he give me anything else?

  “Blonde hair; brown eyes; she has a tattoo of a hummingbird on her ankle; twenty-eight to thirty-years-old—that’s all I have.”

  “Good,” I say, “then let me go, and I’ll do what I agreed.”

  Javier laughs under his breath.

  He looks right at me. “I never said I was going to let you go, Sarai—I told you when I walked in here that I could never let you leave alive. And I said you’d bring Victor Faust to me, but I didn’t say how.”

  I know; I haven’t forgotten.

  “And you also told me,” I say, and I smile at him, “that I betrayed you long ago because I knew you’d never tell me where my daughter is even if I helped you.”

  The smirk vanishes from his face. His eyes drop from mine, homing in on the gun in my hand that I took from the guard I choked to death an hour ago, and the ropes I wormed my way out of before Javier entered the room, lying on the floor at my feet.

  The gunshot briefly deafens me, and Javier stands there for a moment, his features beset with shock. Blood seeps through the gray of his shirt, and through his fingers.

  He drops to his knees, his hands still pressed to his midsection; he coughs and blood trickles from his mouth.

  This is how it should’ve been the first time. And it feels good righting that wrong.

  “Sarai…” he reaches out one hand to me.

  I crouch in front of Javier, the one who made me, the darkness that’s been inside of me, and I kiss his bleeding mouth; I kiss him long and soft so that he’ll remember me, so that I’ll never forget him.

  “You were right,” I whisper onto his lips, “I am the wolf in the chicken pen, mi amor”—I kiss him again—“and though I do have love for you, I can live with myself if you die.”

  I put the gun to his temple and pull the trigger.

  His body falls, and quietly I say goodbye before I’m ducking and rolling to dodge the spray of bullets coming at me from the doorway.

  The second I have the opportunity, I take the shot from behind the sofa, and the guard falls. Running on bare feet toward him as the sound of boots and shouting fills the hallway just outside the room, I grab the semi-automatic from the dead one, and rush the others through a storm of bullets.

  Niklas

  Dead bodies litter the mansion grounds; no one guards the gates; I’d passed a small group of slave girls walking on the dirt road on my way in, and I knew something was up, but I didn’t expect this.

  Fredrik is standing in the foyer when I walk inside, and I step around more bodies as I approach him.

  I lean over and pick up a gun at my feet—it’s empty.

  “A lot of them are empty,” Fredrik says. “That’s how she got out of here—she took one gun, killed everyone in her way, dropped it when it was empty, and then as she moved forward, took another gun off the dead, and another, and killed her way right off the mansion grounds.” He points here and there as he explains, carving the invisible path that Izzy must’ve took.

  “We need to find her.” I start to leave, but he stops me.

  “She’s long gone by now, Niklas.”

  “She could be walking alone in the fucking desert.”

  “Look for her if you want,” he says, “but if she could get out of this by herself, I doubt she’s walking alone in the desert. She’s probably halfway to Arizona by now.”

  OK, he has a point.

  “How’d you know to come here?” I ask.

  “Probably same as you,” he says. “I sent someone to watch Izabel; I came when I got word she was in trouble. And when I heard—”

  “That Javier is alive,” I add.

  “Was,” Fredrik says. “I found him dead in a room down that hall. I think that’s where they were keeping Izabel.”

  Reaching up behind me, I scratch the back of my head. “She lied. All this time, she’s been lying to us—to Victor.”

  “I’m sure she had a good reason,” Fredrik says.

  “Yeah, she probably did.” I gaze around at all the bodies. “How do you know she didn’t have help getting out of here?”

  “I don’t,” he says. “I guess I just have a feeling.” He makes eye contact for the first time since I walked into the room. “Izabel doesn’t need our help anymore—I think even Victor would agree. And I for one won’t be following her, or sending someone else to watch over her. For the first time since I met Izabel I can honestly say she doesn’t need anybody’s help.”

  I take another look at the bodies laid out haphazardly all around me, and I think about the first time I met Izzy.

  Maybe Fredrik’s right…

  I look up when movement catches my eye. A woman, Mexican, with blonde hair, stands in the doorway; blood splatters stain one side of her face and neck. She looks like she’s been through hell.

  She stumbles forward, one hand covering her stomach where I notice blood seeping through her dress, and through her fingers.

  She falls to her knees, unable to go any farther.

  “She said…she wanted me to…suffer before I died,” the woman says.

  “Who?” Fredrik asks, pretending he doesn’t already know.

  “La Princesa”—she coughs blood onto the floor—“I…deserve what I got,” she says between breaths. “For the…things I’ve done. I deserve it because…” Her eyes flutter; her upper body sways. “…because I don’t regret…anything. Tell her I said…I regret nothing.”

  The woman falls forward, dead before she hits the floor.

  Fr
edrik and I glance at each other, shrug, and then do a sweep of the mansion.

  We find more slave girls huddled together in a closet, and we give them money and encourage them to leave this place. Two guards, soaked by their own piss, are found hiding in an upstairs bathroom. Fredrik kills one, and I kill the other. And in a more extravagant room, we find a man, dressed in an Armani suit, shot in the forehead, slumped against a chair. I can’t be sure who he is, but it’s obvious he was important to the running of this place. The paperwork scattered all around the room, and on the desk beside him, shows numbers and money amounts and slave girls names and the names of buyers. I know this because I see Jackie’s cover, Frances Lockhart, among the names, and all the money she spent on the girls she saved.

  I flinch when I see my sister’s photo.

  “She was here, too,” Fredrik says, as I hold the photo of Naeva in my fingers. “My guess is that she came here with Izabel.”

  “Is she alive?” I’ve been gritting my teeth since I took up the photo.

  “I’m not sure,” Fredrik answers. “You didn’t know?”

  Absently, I shake my head. No, Jackie didn’t name her when she told me all that happened—but I never imagined the girl she told me about involving the fighter was my sister.

  “Maybe she’s still alive,” Fredrik offers.

  I pocket the photo, holding down the anger boiling inside of me.

  Everybody else is dead. Seventy, eighty people, at least.

  How in the hell did Izzy pull this off by herself?

  I smile thinking about it. Because I know she’s still alive. And Fredrik’s right—she’s halfway to Arizona by now, if she’s not already there.

  But where’s Victor?

  And Nora?

  “Looks like we were the only ones who gave a shit.” I tell Fredrik. It pisses me off just thinking about it, that my brother didn’t send someone like we did, and that he’s not here right now, like we are.