“Who?” A brief spark of interest crossed my mind as my brain scrambled for ways to avoid the fate I knew was moments away.
A shrug from the beast. “Wolfe doesn’t know. Wolfe doesn’t care.” A grin. “Wolfe cares about you, little doll. Wolfe knows from the little samples how good you taste…now he wants the full course.” He paused and wagged his finger at me. “Wolfe thinks you know that you can’t beat him. But before we start, he wants to hear you promise you won’t try.”
An involuntary shudder passed through me and I gave my full effort to blotting out thoughts of what was about to happen. “I can’t beat you,” I admitted. “And if I kept running, I believe you will keep killing forever; everyone you could – men, women and children. It would never get better. It would be my fault. And that realization would sap every ounce of joy from my life – or what passes for my life – forever.”
He took another step closer. “Wise, for one so young, to know the Wolfe so well. Wolfe is amazed that one so cut off all her life can feel connected to this world…but it matters not.” He swept closer in one swift movement and I didn’t resist as he closed his hand around my neck. “Wolfe is going to hurt you now…and this will go on for quite some time…until you can’t resist even if you want to…and then, when you can’t move, but you can still feel…then we’ll start the real fun…”
He slammed me against the wall and it felt like the world ended. My ears rang as though someone had set off the planet’s worst rock band in them, and it hurt like hell. My brain was swimming and for a moment the world spun upside down and then righted itself. Wolfe was still staring back at me with those black, lifeless eyes, like I was an insect he was studying. “I don’t want you to move for your own good, little doll…dolls shouldn’t move themselves when Wolfe plays with them…so this is for your own good…”
He reached back for a windup and threw me across the room and headfirst into the concrete. I don’t know for sure that it fractured my skull, but the gawdawful cracking noise told me that either my bones or the wall had given. Blood covered my face, trickling over my eyes. I could only feel it, not see it, because my eyelids had snapped shut. He grabbed hold of me again and hauled me into the air. My hands twitched at my side.
“Wolfe wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t hurt him. He would have handed you over to his masters, like they wanted, all safe and sound, but you had to hurt the Wolfe…not once, not twice, but thrice…and now you’re in his blood, and he needs you…and you need to learn not to trifle with big men…bad men…”
My eyes were lolling in my head as I tried to brace for the next impact, but I relaxed myself. Then he started to choke me, hard. I felt the stifling as I tried for a breath, then attempted to will myself not to breathe, hoping to get it over before he started having his fun with me, but I couldn’t. My lungs strained and I began to panic.
I tried to gasp, but couldn’t. No M-Squad was coming to save me. No cops. No…Mom. I was on my own.
Completely alone.
My eyes opened and my gaze lifted over his shoulder and I saw the box in the corner, door still open, almost leering, as though it were taunting me. Now the flashbacks came, at the end, as my pitiful life waited in the balance and I remembered moments I had tried to forget. All those years, Mom had held me in this house, like Wolfe was holding me now, keeping me captive, slowly squeezing the life out of me – and I let her, afraid of the box. Years of helpless imprisonment, putting aside everything I wanted out of my life.
It taunted me, in that corner. Years of being stuck in it, trapped, helpless.
Emotions poured over me like the icy water that had hit me earlier, a sudden, sharp shock. I remembered the last time I was stuck in that metal coffin, days without getting a breath of fresh air, and my fear built and built until I exploded, anger and hatred and sadness all rushing out. I pounded on the metal of the door, put everything into it and felt something I had never felt in all the times I had been in there.
It moved. The door moved, just a little. I hit it again and again and it budged a little more, and a crack of light from the outside peeked in. I hammered at the door, kicked, pushed at it, screaming, grunting, my weary and cramped muscles crying out to get free. The corner bent enough that I could stick my fingers through, and I pushed and the metal bent as I applied more and more pressure. With a final kick and punch I heard the top and bottom hinges strain and break and I ripped the door free, sucking in the breaths of life and falling to the basement floor, the cold concrete and breathable air letting me know that I was alive, and for once…I wasn’t helpless.
I wasn’t.
I stared back at Wolfe’s soulless eyes and the same fury washed over me, the same desperate hunger for air and life. He held me at arm’s length and my bare hands came up of their own accord and surged forward, wrapping themselves around his hairy neck. The black eyes looked at me in surprise and a smile found its way to his lips. His grip tightened on me as mine tightened on his neck. There was no way I would be able to kill him before he killed me, I knew that. And I didn’t care. I would not die without him knowing that I wasn’t a helpless, defenseless little doll just here for him to play with.
My fingers dug into his throat and he laughed. “You’re going to have to squeeze much harder than that to make Wolfe feel it, my little doll. All you’re doing is giving Wolfe a case of the tingles.”
I gripped him tighter and he squeezed me so hard my head pushed back. I worried for a moment it was going to pop off, but I maintained my furious hold on him. I could feel a tingle of my own in my hands, likely from the fact that he was depriving my brain of oxygen. I dug my fingernails into his skin and I saw faint trickles of blood well up beneath them, even as I started to feel a sensation of lightheadedness percolate through my being.
“What…what are you…doing…?” Wolfe’s words were choked, his eyes wide. I felt his grip slacken on my neck. I didn’t dare loosen mine, and the lightheadedness I had experienced was growing into something more. The light in the room seemed to be brightening, amplifying.
“It…it BURNS!” He let out a howl of pain and batted at my hands. His claws dug into my wrists, scratching at them, drawing more blood that trickled down his fingers. I looked down to see it pooling in little drips on the concrete and then looked back to his face, awash in agony, and felt his weight start to drag me down. My hands were clutching his throat; my skin was hot and my head was throbbing, rushing with blood. I felt a heightened sense of…everything.
I suddenly realized the room reeked of blood and fear, and I drew in another sharp breath. Faint thumping noises upstairs were audible to me for the first time, and I could hear noises in the pipes and sirens blocks away, and all this over the whimpering and screaming of Wolfe. My skin was on fire with the heat of his throat in my hands, and I could feel the veins in Wolfe’s neck pumping blood past my fingers.
“PLEASE!!” His voice shrieked, begging, pleading, filling the air in the basement. It was at that moment that I realized that if he could speak, I wasn’t choking him – at least not effectively. “It hurts…SO…MUCH!” His words came out in a whimpering shriek. “Wolfe is sorry, little doll, please let him go, pleasepleaseplease…”
A few more wails of agony, one last whimper, and a death rattle filled the air. I held Wolfe by the neck and there was a bitter taste in my mouth as he went slack; his black eyes rolled back in his head, now truly lifeless. The lightheaded sensation filled me and I felt like I was floating, then flying, but not like I had when I went unconscious…instead it was like I was flying at a hundred miles an hour, even though I was still there in the basement, looking at Wolfe’s dead eyes.
Though he weighed several hundred pounds, I held him up by the neck for several minutes, afraid to let go and empowered by the rush of whatever it was that was causing my head to spin. I finally let him slip from my grasp, and his body fell back, knocking over the box, which landed on the ground with a horrendous crash. Wolfe’s body rolled off the side of it and
slid to the floor, unmoving.
I took two steps back and slumped against the wall. My head felt like it was about to explode. My mind was so jumbled I couldn’t control it; leaping in every direction, thoughts I could not have conceived of just a few minutes earlier were dashing through my head so quickly I couldn’t even track them all.
I looked back at the two objects of my greatest fear and a heady feeling settled over me. I kicked Wolfe’s shin with an outstretched leg. He didn’t budge, didn’t blink. He was dead.
And I was free.
Twenty-four
I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath as thoughts whirled in my head. The creak of a floorboard focused me. I saw a foot appear at the top of the steps and tried to stand, then collapsed when I saw whose foot it was.
Reed tiptoed down the stairs and froze when he caught sight of Wolfe, then charged down the last few steps after he saw me, dropping to his knees at my side. “Sienna!”
“Yes?” I looked back at him, still wobbly.
“Thank God you’re alive, you look…” He frowned in concern and his hand patted my forehead. “Uh…you…uh…”
“I think Wolfe did a number on me before I killed him,” I replied through bloody lips.
He nodded agreement, looking somewhat gray in the face. He shifted from me and eased over to Wolfe on his knees and felt the monster’s cheek. He looked back to me with an expression of fear and amazement. “He’s dead.”
“I just said that,” I replied with an eye roll that left me feeling like my entire brain had done a backflip.
Reed shifted back to me. “I didn’t believe you.” His hands went to my neck and I felt the pressure of his touch for a few minutes; then he raised them in front of my eyes, covered in blood. “To answer your earlier question, yes, he did a number on you.”
“Not the first time,” I replied with a grunt. “But it’s the last.” I laughed, a light, airy laugh that turned into a hacking cough. Ouch.
He placed a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.” He tossed a look at Wolfe’s body, then back to me. “How did you kill him?”
“I don’t know…I just grabbed him around the throat and held on.”
“So you strangled him?” His hand was resting on my forehead, as though he was trying to take my temperature.
“No…” I thought back to my hands around his throat, about him talking to me, pleading for his life. “He was still talking, so I couldn’t have choked him to death.”
Without warning, Reed yanked his hand away from me and toppled backward to the floor. He shook for a moment and stretched out as though he were convulsing. Crawling on my hands and knees, I moved toward him. “Are you all right?” I asked as he bucked once more and pulled himself to a sitting position. I reached out a hand and he batted it away, hard. I looked at him and his brown eyes came up at me laden with suspicion, a haggard look etched on his face, which was suddenly worn.
“Don’t…touch me.” His voice was violent, edgy.
I reached out again and he slid away in a hurry, hitting his back against the wall and sliding to his feet, looking down on me, his chest heaving as though he were fighting for a breath. “I said DON’T TOUCH ME!”
“What…is it?” I looked up at him from the floor, stunned at his sudden change in persona.
“Don’t you get it?” He slid against the wall, moving toward the stairwell, still leaning against it for support. “You killed Wolfe…with your touch.”
“What?” I asked, horrified. I looked at my hands and back to Reed, who had a look of revulsion on his face. “What…what am I?” A concern grew in me as I tried to wrap my still reeling mind around what had happened.
There was a sound upstairs, the noise of a door exploding open. Reed looked up and back to me, then took two steps toward a basement window and broke through it, springing with amazing agility through the hole and leaving a pile of broken, white-covered glass on the floor behind him.
The door to the basement flew open and heavy footfalls came down the stairs. I struggled to my feet once more, looking at my hands, wondering if what Reed said was true and if I would have to use them again on whoever was coming after me.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Old Man Winter appeared at the top of the steps. He took a quick look at Wolfe, then called up the stairs, “Sienna is all right and…Wolfe is dead.” He hurried down the last few steps to me, followed by a half dozen agents, all of whom goggled at the body of Wolfe, laying supine on the cold concrete floor next to the overturned box.
I braced myself against the wall as the agents formed a semi-circle around Wolfe and Old Man Winter stooped next to him. Ariadne came down last, followed by two more figures; Dr. Perugini and Dr. Sessions. Ariadne made her way over to me, following Dr. Perugini. Sessions made his way to Wolfe’s corpse.
“No pulse, but no sign of trauma…” I heard Dr. Sessions rattle off as he leaned over Wolfe. “Are we sure he’s dead?”
Sessions cast a look at Old Man Winter, who nodded. “He would not lie down like this. He is dead.”
“I need you to sit down, sweetie.” Dr. Perugini’s thickly accented words washed over me and she and Ariadne eased closer, each going to one of my elbows.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” I screamed at them, the thought of Reed’s words still hanging in my mind. They both jumped back a step when I exploded, and I held my hands out to put them at arm’s length.
“I don’t get it; I see no cause of death.” Dr. Sessions’ words felt like an indictment of me.
“I killed him,” I said into the silence that filled the room. “I killed him with my touch…”
Ariadne and Dr. Perugini exchanged a look. “If you say so,” Dr. Perugini said with an air of patronization. She reached for me again, Ariadne a step behind her. “I need you to sit down and relax…”
Old Man Winter took two long strides from where he stood at the side of Wolfe’s body and landed a long arm on the shoulders of Dr. Perugini and Ariadne. “Don’t…” he mumbled in quiet warning, “…touch her.”
They both looked at him in surprise, but Perugini’s turned to annoyance. “She’s injured. I need to get her back to the Directorate and treat her wounds.”
Old Man Winter did not budge. “She’ll be fine. Do not touch her without heavy gloves.” His gaze fell over me again, and he turned back to where the agents stood around the body of Wolfe.
“Or what?” Perugini spat at him. “She’s hurt, she’s delusional, Erich! She’s just been through a ridiculous level of trauma – you can’t possibly think she killed this maniac by touching him.” She looked after him, and he hesitated, and the chill of the cold air from the window filled the room, swirling around him as though it were embracing a very old friend. “Erich?” she asked again, note of disbelief filling her voice. “You don’t actually believe her?”
He stared down at Wolfe for a long moment before he answered. “Certainly I believe her,” he replied. His cold blue eyes swept back to Dr. Perugini, then to Ariadne, finally coming to rest on me. “It is as she said. She touched him, and he likely screamed and begged for his life, and she killed him with her hands. With her touch.”
I felt a chill unrelated to the broken window as my eyes followed Old Man Winter’s down to the corpse of Wolfe, the scariest maniac I’d ever heard of, dead, helpless, on the floor – the way I’d made him. I looked back up and the biting fear ate at me, doubts, horror, still swirling in my brain, which was rocketing at a mile a second. “What…am…I?” I croaked out at him.
“What am I?” I asked again, stronger this time. He did not answer me, instead turning away after gesturing at Wolfe’s body as he swept up the stairs. Dr. Perugini reached for my elbow and I brushed her off, knocking her aside.
“WHAT AM I?” I howled at him as he retreated.
A voice, deathly familiar, prickled at the back of my mind, instilling a sense of calm that came from deep inside, an answer to a question that was asked and answered somewhere in the dep
ths of me.
Soul eater , it said in a raspy, whispering voice.
Succubus.
Twenty-five
“You’re what would be known in mythology as a succubus,” Dr. Sessions said in a voice pitched with excitement. We were back at the Directorate hours later. I had let Ariadne and Dr. Perugini coax me upstairs and into a waiting car after my question was answered from within. Although I was familiar with the myth of succubi, I knew that the answer hadn’t come from me. And that left another question that I was sure I could answer, but didn’t want to.
After a visit to the medical unit to make sure I was all right, Ariadne had asked me to see Dr. Sessions. I’d agreed. So there I sat, clad once more in a long sleeved turtleneck, jeans, and with a pair of heavy mittens they’d rummaged for me, on his examination table, him keeping an arm’s length away while he talked.
“I thought that succubi…uh…” I blushed as I thought about having to ask the doctor the question that was on my mind. Ariadne and Dr. Perugini were both in the lab as well, hovering in the background. Perugini, in particular, looked as though she was ready to level Dr. Sessions, staring at him from across the room through half-slitted eyes. “…slept with men in order to steal their souls.”
Dr. Sessions smiled, which at the present moment didn’t creep me out as much as it might have a week ago. “No. Well,” he rescinded, “you could, I suppose, but all that’s necessary is the touch of your skin. You touch someone with your bare hands, or your face – anything involving flesh to flesh contact, and they’ll start to feel the effects of your power.”
“Mom knew,” I said in a low whisper. “That’s why she had rule #4.”
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