The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used

by Cari Silverwood

  “Get out! Get the fuck out and put your hands up where we can see them! Now!”

  “Be calm. Behave for them, Red. I’ll fix this.” Eventually. I raised my hands, wondering how they thought we could do this and also open the doors.

  The drug was keeping me too fucking calm, but even so my jaw ached with fury.

  The doors were ripped open to either side, and they shoved guns at us while the others hauled us out. Punching anyone was pretty futile.

  I thought of telling them they’d be dead soon, but it would be more satisfying to simply show them. They would see.

  A distant throbbing sound in the sky grew louder, and a helicopter flew overhead then landed somewhere ahead. The organization in this was pretty daunting. So much money was being expended on catching me, or catching us.

  I exchanged a last reassuring glance with Red.

  “Move!” Most of these guys wore sunglasses and baseball hats, along with cheap jeans and T-shirts. A mob of short-haired, muscular grunts who’d been paid to do a job.

  Our hands were zip tied, and a sack was pulled over my head and fastened. I was sure Red had the same treatment from the noises she made.

  “Find that drug. Check them both.”

  Hands patted me down, and the box of pills was removed from my pocket.

  They guided us up the road, and the smell of aviation fuel became obvious, then the sounds of the chopper with the engine throttled down. We were hustled on board, strapped in, then the doors closed. A minute later, we were rising into the air.

  There were no women here, none anywhere within hooking distance, and though it was unlikely their abduction squad would have females, still, I felt it was an indicator of their planning.

  They began to strap my right arm to a board, an immovable board, and I figured out where this was going. The scent of medical alcohol stung my nose. A needle pricked my skin below the elbow.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You?” a gruff voice answered. “To sleep. Then you get to see Ted, and he said to tell you he is really looking forward to seeing you and your girl again.”

  Ted. Of course it was Ted.

  He laughed. “You are so fucked.”

  Something cold flooded into my vein and the sterile bliss of drug induced oblivion took me away.

  CHAPTER 20

  ISAK

  The blur of what happened focused in and out, scenes sharpened and faded. Men talking. Walking on tiles. An elevator. A room, a very blank room and pale walls, and then… Red beside me on the floor, sleeping with her head on my lap.

  I faded into full consciousness slowly, with the distinct awareness of the lessening in my blood of the Keppra drug.

  They’d taken my supplies. I blinked at the door ahead of me with the handle being the one solid thing. The door itself was some sort of glass. Meters away it stood, across the bare floor.

  I looked down and saw that Red was stirring on my lap, her eyelashes moving, then her body. That part was real, if blurry.

  I shook my head and tried to focus.

  This was a room with nothing in it, except us and what we lay on. Even the power points had been removed. The cream paint on the walls had damage, and dust showed where furniture once stood, but all we had were cushions and a quilt that spread across our part of the floor. Red levered herself into a slewed sitting position and blinked at me. She swept back those long locks with a shaking hand.

  My heart, I swear it pined with sadness and regret. I wanted to hold that unique emotion, but it slipped away.

  “You’re awake?” she said quietly.

  “Yes.” Obviously. Then I noticed the camera mounted in the high corner of the room. “They’re watching, recording.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen anyone?”

  “No.” Her frown lines came and went repeatedly.

  Worry was to be expected, considering.

  “I’m going to fix this.” A repeat of earlier words? I couldn’t remember much, except that the ambush had happened and the helicopter. I struggled upright, stood with my back propped to the wall, and a guard appeared outside. He spoke into a mic pinned to his shirt, and never took his eyes off me.

  “They’ll be coming soon.”

  “Can you do… anything?”

  I reached out, searching for susceptibles – for those women I would have collected casually in the past. We were at the top of a tower of several floors and my consciousness descended through them and found them empty… empty… empty.

  “They’ve cleared this place of people, of females.” I pushed myself off and walked to the door on jelly legs.

  “I saw some. It’s a resort tower by the sea. On the Gold Coast of Queensland, I think. There were beaches. Signs. The bag on my head was removed when we landed on the roof.”

  Neglectful of them.

  The glass door swung open, and the guard was there, gesturing for us to leave.

  “Out! The boss is here.”

  After I emerged, the door was shut behind me, and I was spun and handcuffed. Four guards, all in dark buttoned shirts and black pants, but not armed, curiously, or not with anything more lethal than what looked to be tasers. They wore holsters for guns, but those were empty. This had to be Ted’s doing.

  His daughter snatching a gun from his man must have stuck in his head. Guns? Hah. He had no idea what I could do.

  None.

  Then an outer door opened, revealing Ted framed in it with a corridor behind him. Two men entered with him. More of his little army.

  The new guards shut the door then stood beside it.

  “You.” I smiled.

  “Me.” He stayed where he was, arms relaxed at his sides, but his fingers twitched and curled. “I’d kill you now if you weren’t potentially useful. Beat you to death with a chair then skin you while you watched.”

  “Thank you. The feeling is mutual. Though if dead I wouldn’t feel the skinning.” Amateur.

  Ted grunted. “We already have tissue and blood from you. I have a patron. He’s seen the bit of a vid one of my men took of our last encounter, knows you can make women do stuff. That drug you need for your abracadabra stuff will be given to you tomorrow, if you agree to show us your… skill on a young woman I’ll give you. Here in the room.”

  I shrugged. Noncommittal seemed less likely to trigger him.

  “This will be taped for my patron. Refuse and first your companion, then you, will suffer physical damage.” He grinned. “I have a script to say or this would just be do as your fucking told. We are going to learn how you do it, and we are going to replicate it.”

  Again, I shrugged.

  Fucking asswipe. Even as I listened to his speech, I was searching, stretching. The fourth floor down was empty too, though I could feel a few males. They were mindless ghosts compared to how I registered females.

  I could not use them, alas.

  Go farther down. My face was growing hot, and probably red from the pull on my mind.

  “You look a bit wasted, man. Poor fucking you.” He stuck up a finger. “Before I go get some beauty sleep and have a lovely meal, I need to show you what we are capable of. Get her.”

  A guard opened the glass door. He vanished inside.

  “No!” I blurted that through a thick throat, almost growling it. Whatever this was, it involved hurting Red.

  Three of them pinned me to the wall as they marched Red from the room.

  She was wrestled into a chair and held there while a guard picked up a pair of garden secateurs from the table beside the chair. They shone.

  “Clean metal. But I guarantee this will hurt a lot.” Ted grinned.

  I stayed silent and only tried to kill him with my glare.

  “Yeah. This room is pretty soundproof, especially with all the balcony doors shut, and then of course we have four floors of nobody who will say a fucking thing if they hear screams. Still. Gag her.”

  They strapped a full gag onto Red – one with a dick-shaped inter
nal protrusion. That would stop most noises and clog her tongue. They held her down even harder, two men at her, while the other one sauntered in with the secateurs. From his cruel snigger, and the way he fucked her with his eyes, this man liked cruelty.

  He would’ve made a great mesmer. I bucked against my captors. I would murder him and smear him to the floor.

  They weren’t after Red’s tongue, so where? When he aimed the secateur at her hand and settled it on a finger, I stared at her, willing her to not feel this.

  Even I could not remove all the pain.

  Her scream was muffled, and the way her body jerked and arched off the chair was almost more than the men could handle.

  Blood squirted a meter before they staunched it.

  “There. We bandage it now.” Ted smiled, pointing as they wrapped a white bandage over the gushing stump. Her head lolled backward.

  Hate thrived, rose in me to heights I had never felt before. I dug the hate from my bones, tasted it on my tongue, and reveled in this raw power.

  The hate oozed and flooded my head, thumping, thumping.

  My mesmer senses leaped and curled, wriggled dark tendrils, and I freed them and whipped downward through the tower, questing. My eyes were seeing a blur of two scenes: Red in her agony, the blood; and the walls peeling past me, the floors, the ghosts of men.

  Find them.

  They finished the bandage and left a torniquet on her finger.

  “Take that off in a few minutes or she will lose that stump too,” someone said.

  I ceased my search but kept a hold on the power, that bundle of wriggling tendrils. Stay with me.

  Dragged back into the room, I watched them make her stumble inside then they dumped Red at the back wall beside me. My handcuffs were unlocked, and the guards backed away to the door and locked us in again.

  She was weeping and clutching her maimed hand, still with that gag strapped on and digging into her cheeks. I freed her from it, tossed the gag, then pulled her to me and kissed her tears.

  The rage flailed and filled me still – too much to allow me to say anything of comfort. I contented myself with making soothing baby noises and clutching her to me.

  After a while, I undid the tourniquet and observed her hand. Whatever blood vessels were cut, they only oozed at first. When more blood flooded the bandage, I reapplied it.

  I did that over and over for an hour until the bleeding stopped. Undo, observe, bleed, reapply. By the end, the floor was bloody, my hands were, Red was. She had lost a lot of blood but seemed okay. Alive anyway.

  Her cries when I had to compress the stump to stop some of the bleeding, again it tore at me inside. I had some sort of heart after all, I decided. Deep inside me was compassion.

  None of our enemies would ever know this. None. I would obliterate them.

  Fuck them.

  Finally, after eons had passed, I croaked out a few words. “They will be sorry.”

  Red snuggled into me even closer. I felt her trembling. “What can you do?”

  I eyed the damn camera with its blinking red light. “Something.”

  I ground my teeth, set my jaw. I stared at Red, my beautiful red-haired maiden now bloodied and maimed and torn by other men.

  Then I activated these new, stronger powers. I reawakened them.

  I reached again as I had done several times, down through the floors, down. The strength of my anger, and perhaps the lack of Keppra, let me invade the fifth floor with my seeking tendrils, twisting like vines of black smoke through walls and doors.

  Nothing. Yet.

  I grimaced and imagined myself as a gigantic octopus with a thousand tentacles.

  It helped. I poked through doors and walls, and prodded girls awake. I saw their eyes open and blaze with the knowledge I fed them, Suck from me, take my ire, my vast cruel rage. Feed from me.

  Or maybe I was a spider? The analogy was evil. That much I recognized. Which nicely suited my intentions.

  Tomorrow would be too late. I needed this finished now.

  Arise and come to me.

  Female after female woke to my call and sat up in bed, or from sofas and chairs. A few had to kill their companions before they could come to me. They came to the stairs and gathered there in silent, swaying ranks. The doors between us were blocked. The elevators ditto. I had an army, and the way was blocked.

  I’d never tried to hold so many to one task, never orchestrated females in such huge numbers. More than ten… My eyelids flickered as I counted them. When past thirty in number, I gave in. Enough.

  Only Ted was left to be discovered. He was no longer up here with me. I sent a squad searching for him.

  My solution to the blocked doors? Go around. Crawl. Climb.

  This tower had opening windows. If any fell, the cops would come. Do not fall. This must be swift and irresistible, and precise.

  As they opened windows and stepped out onto balconies some of them joined with others and they began to climb, helping each other to reach what would otherwise be unreachable. The floors were scalable, with care.

  Do not fall. Be silent.

  It was amazing what female muscles could do when there was no great aversion to pain or injury. A torn muscle here, a bruise there. These sensations were nothing to my collectables.

  The time was past midnight. The Witching Hour. I smiled.

  My puppets would soon be killing and ripping apart men to my and their dark soul’s content. I licked my tongue across the join of my lips.

  “What is happening?” In the light that constantly flooded our room, I could see Red’s eyes flickering, searching my face for clues.

  “Shhh. I told you I would fix things.”

  They thought that depriving me of Keppra took away my powers because I had told them this was the way I worked. Fools. It was the opposite.

  And now I had evidence that purity of anger and a body clean of Keppra gave me abilities I had never dreamed I possessed.

  I scrunched my hand into Red’s hair and smiled inside as she stirred and shot me a worried look.

  Soon they would be dead fools.

  CHAPTER 21

  ISAK

  In my mind’s eye, I watched them climbing the outside of the tower, fingers finding holds as they clung to the façade, arms reaching higher, toes digging in. Most had shed their shoes and in places there were so many clinging to the tower that they resembled a horde of mindless zombies. They were not mindless of course. It was only that I had overridden their natural control of their selves.

  My control did not need to be constant, fleeting touches would succeed, and this was what saved me from overload.

  Once commanded I need only to, now and then… nudge them.

  To re-enter the tower, they sought open windows and they found them – the sea breeze must have tempted the men. They climbed onto balconies in a pretty tide. Some gained entry via the lower three floors. Though the elevators would not ascend past the obstructed floor without some sort of authority, the fire exit stairways then allowed them to ascend from floor to floor.

  As they cleared the levels, gunshots began to occur, but I heard them through the women and not through my own ears. Silenced weapons, I assumed. Ted would not want the police called if he had to shoot me. His precaution was my advantage.

  By numbers, by stealth, by their very unexpected appearance, my private army swarmed into the bedrooms and killed sleeping men – sometimes by weight alone. A few of my females died, but most lived and came onward, sneaking down the corridors until the only room unconquered was the one outside my own.

  “Enter!” I said aloud, as well as mentally. I pulled Red to the floor and lay flat beside her with my arm over her back.

  My rage had not ceased, it seethed, and my dick hardened at the prospect of death, destruction, and vengeance.

  The outside door to the corridor flew inward, banging into the wall and bouncing. The three guards drew guns. By then, my army of women was armed, and bullets found as many guards as i
t did women.

  Red had sat up and gasped at the gunfire. When she spotted the milling figures in the outer room, when the first hand turned our door’s handle, she swiveled to look at me.

  “Isak?”

  “They are ours.” I drew her to her feet. “Our help is here.”

  “This easily?”

  “You lost a finger.” Muscles twisted at my jaw. “Not so easily.”

  Women stepped away from our glass door, parting to clear a ragged road to the door that led to the corridor – like the parting of the Red Sea. I smirked and pulled Red with me, stepping from our little internal room.

  My assembled army was silent, except for their breathing. They waited.

  “I…” She shook her head. “This scares me.”

  I knew that already. Her heart thundered. I stared at the bloody bandage on her hand.

  I looked around the room. So many nubile females, and all of them in my thrall.

  A dead guard lay on the floor, blood spilling from his chest and mouth onto the white tiles. Another curled in a corner, sorely injured, judging by widening splashes of red on his shirt. A third cowered, also wounded but alert. Pistols were aimed at him from above.

  I felt Red’s fear relocate from being for her own safety to a fear of something else.

  A fear of me.

  I ignored it. Later, I would deal with her. My hate needed an outlet. I strode to the least hurt guard and delivered a kick to his side where the blood showed.

  His scream took a few seconds to die to a whimper, but his gaze showed defiance. Good. I cracked my knuckles and smiled down at him.

  “You will communicate with your boss as you label him. Tell him he is needed, using convincing words. Disobey me or lie and this will happen to you.” I pointed sideways at the other guard. Though almost dead, his sudden cries still made this one’s eyes fix on him and widen.

  I listened to the soft sounds and his blubbers and weeping as my girls removed his eyes then cut open his belly without bothering to strip him. The slop of his intestines hitting the floor was a nice punctuation to his final whistling wail. The blood caught my eye as it spread nearer but I focused on this one below me.