by Kaia Bennett
“Tell me then, where did he go, that he’ll be right back from? The corner store?”
“He didn’t say.”
I didn’t meet Vaughn’s glare. The heat of his hatred burned my cheeks.
“No? Maybe that’s because he won’t be back till tomorrow, you lying slut.”
I swiveled to stare at Vaughn and wished I hadn’t.
I’d been in a state of fear of one kind or another since they took me. I knew fear intimately, like a secret part of my own anatomy.
I met a new crevice of fear when I stared at the barely-contained glee on Vaughn’s face. His eyes were glazed, like he was high.
“You waited for Jesse to leave.” The words tumbled out of my mouth.
Vaughn’s smile widened, teeth glinting and smashed together. Where once, his eyes had been glacial, now they seemed dead.
“You’re smart. I bet you got good grades in school. Straight A’s without having to suck off the teacher.”
I tried and failed to stop my lip from wobbling.
“Did Jesse give you the grand tour yet?”
“Yes.” Like a mouse caught in a snake’s hypnotic stare, I couldn’t look away.
“How about the basement?”
I blinked back tears, but a stubborn one fell. Vaughn leaned in and licked the drop. I squeezed my eyes shut when he slid the same drop into my mouth with a sloppy kiss.
He squeezed each of my breasts with the hand not gripping my shoulder, mauling my flesh. Then, he shoved a hand between my legs so hard I’d have jumped a full foot if he weren’t holding me down.
“You should see the basement. It’s my favorite part of the house. Liam’s, too.”
Vaughn swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. A speckle of dried blood clung to his pale neck. He’d hunted without permission.
“It was Liam’s favorite, too.” He wiped away the melancholy look and put his creepy mask of excitement back on. “C’mon, let’s go see the basement.”
Under the stairwell stood a door, and within, a winding stair case led us below. Vaughn didn’t turn on the lights. I stumbled down the steps in the dark, expecting him to kick me down them at any moment. He didn’t. Instead, Vaughn took his time, following me step for step until we reached the landing, as if I had a choice.
Another door with a keypad awaited us. Vaughn pushed me aside and punched in the code.
The lights automatically turned on when the door opened.
I froze.
Then I broke.
I burst into hysterical screams at the sight of the illuminated room, and scrambled back up the stairs as fast as I could. When Vaughn grabbed my ankle and yanked me to him, I broke several nails trying to claw a stronghold into every stair on the way down.
“No!”
“You haven’t even seen the whole room, baby.” Vaughn wrapped his arms around my waist. "You’ve gotta go inside to get the full effect.” I screamed, kicked, clawed the walls, and gripped the door jamb.
“You’re being rude when I’m trying to show you something special!”
On the last word he tossed me into the completely-white room. I ricocheted off a soft, plastic-covered wall and bounced onto a soft, plastic-covered floor.
The lights were fluorescent and penetrating. Their eerie glow reflected off every glossy inch of the torture room. There were no devices here, not racks nor chains nor whips. Just a large room covered in slippery material where carmine life could flow away against a Clorox-white relief. I would bleed and bleed until buckets of merlot puddles gathered on the floor and he would lap them up like milk. I saw this all as if I’d already experienced my death. As if everyone who’d died here before me were wailing from beyond the grave and trapped in the walls.
I scrambled to throw my back against the farthest wall, chanting, “Please don’t do this! Please, please, please, please, p-please. P-please, Vaughn.”
Vaughn closed the door, calmly. I heard the electronic hiss of the door sealing. The beep that confirmed I’d been locked inside rocketed my speeding heart to a painful pace.
“Jesse’ll be angry! He wants me alive.”
“Does he?” Vaughn’s sweet tone didn’t match his sinister strut toward me while he peeled off his t-shirt. “What about what I want, Evie? How come no one ever asks me what I want? What I need?”
He touched his chest in dramatic fashion, like a sulky child. His words were true, though.
I shook my head, weeping and trying to keep my eyes clear enough to see Vaughn’s every move. He pushed a panel on the wall, which revolved to reveal a wall filled with knives, a table of scalpels, a small section for pliers.
Blistering heat seared my insides. Then a cold chill prickled my skin with goose bumps. My skin crawled as as Vaughn caressed knife after knife, searching…for the best one to kill me with?
“See I wanted to fuck you and drain you. That’s it. Simple. Easy. Your blood was enough for me. But Jesse wanted to keep you around.” Vaughn darted a malevolent glance over his pale shoulder. “You really pussy-whipped him. Sure you knew that, though.”
He turned back to choose the perfect carving knife while I struggled to shake off my shock.
You waited too long. You waited for the leader to save you. There’s no more time to wait, the beast growled. One after another, Vaughn’s victims stood in the cage with the beast and the girl I used to be. They grabbed the bars. All were silent while the beast spoke.
You have the blood of monsters in your veins. Become one, or die a slow, pitiless death.
“You paying attention?” Vaughn had chosen a knife, which he touched to his lips while he propped an arm against a shelf that glittered with razor-sharp steel, as if deep in thought. “Oh, you poor thing. That’s the shock that’s got you fucked up. Your body goes hot, then cold. Shuts down. It becomes hard to think. You want to escape but can’t breathe, let alone move. It all seems futile and you can’t focus on anything but the total loss of control.” He manipulated the blade so light danced along the cruel curve.
“That’s how I felt when he decided to keep you. You rummaged around in my head, pulling out secrets you had no right see, Evie. And Jesse let you live because you moan like a bitch in heat when he fucks you.”
Vaughn unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped. I shook my head as I sobbed.
“You had him fooled, but you don’t fool me. He’s gone weak since he started drinking from you. I’m not gonna make that mistake. In here, there’s no escape. You pull a mind trick, and as soon as I recover, I’ll gut you.”
He crouched to untie his boots, then stood to his full height while he kicked them off. The plastic creaked under his feet when peeled off his socks.
“Don’t just sit there.” Vaughn waved his knife at me in an up and down fashion. “Strip.”
I bit my lip to silence my weeping.
“Can’t we talk? Can’t you let me a-apologize?”
Vaughn seemed intrigued by this. “Apologize? For what?”
I struggled to my feet, because if he rushed me I’d have a better chance of dodging him.
“For everything. For distracting Jesse. For Liam. For what happened in the shower, what I saw in your head—”
“I told you to strip, bitch. You can apologize and strip at the same time.”
The beast growled and the shock that sieged my body abated to make way for fury. I kept my eyes on Vaughn and unbuttoned my jeans with one hand.
“I’m sorry I saw that man beat you and make you cry. I’m sorry I mocked your pain.”
Vaughn tilted his head, his lips parting. “I’m not sorry you saw.” Vaughn’s eyes bled black and his fangs peeked from beneath his top lip. “He made me what I am. I was weak and he made me strong. He made me so I’ll never be that weak again.”
I nodded. “You’re so strong. Stronger than Jesse. I couldn’t get inside your head. You threw me out.” I peeled off my tank top. “I still think about the one time you let me in, how good that felt.”
I thought I’d vomit, b
ut I held his eyes. Vaughn laughed and licked his teeth. “So we’re gonna play seductress and stupid villain?” He pointed his knife at me and then at himself.
“I’m not seductive. I’m nobody.” I unhooked my bra. “I’m terrified. I’m weak. But, if I’m going to die, I might as well die telling the truth. I never had a chance to tell you any of this. Jesse always had his claws in me. You were always with Liam. But now….”
I peeled off my panties and stood before Vaughn naked. Not an uncommon occurrence. He’d seen every part of me, been inside parts of me no one else had.
He’ll see me inside out when he cuts me up.
The plastic clung to the sweat on my back, to my ass and thighs where I leaned as close to the wall as I could.
Vaughn stalked toward me.
Not yet. Don’t try anything yet.
“You smell good. Better than usual.” He scented the air the way Jesse had. A faint trickle of my already dwindling period made an appearance. I thought I’d finished, so I hadn’t used a tampon. Go figure.
My fucking uterus.
I spread my thighs, touched myself and held my fingers out to show him. Vaughn’s growl made every hair on my body stand at attention as I cowered from his imposing frame.
“You wouldn’t have to bite me… or c-cut me.”
Vaughn leaned over me, flipping the knife in his hand in swift motion so the handle and his fist could rest beside my face on the wall. I didn’t dare close my eyes when his lips enveloped my fingers, though I wish I had. The twisted look of pleasure on his face, like I’d just given him a taste test of a gourmet meal I’d prepared, rattled me.
My blood painted his lips red.
Vaughn swallowed and licked his lips clean. He pinned me with a hungry stare and he smiled like he’d been put under a trance.
“You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.”
I reached between my legs again and rubbed my pussy in wide circles, coating my fingers with the blood that tantalized him. If not for my period, I’d have been dry as a desert in summer—or I hoped I would have been. No telling with my freaky abilities.
“You don’t have to cut me, Vaughn. Not when I can give you what you want.”
Vaughn grinned and flipped the knife into an attack grip so quickly I didn’t have time to flinch. He placed the blade against my cheek.
“I don’t have to cut you. I want to cut you.”
He used the point of the knife to pluck the gold feather away from my chest. I saw the glint of light off the feather and the pristine surface of the knife in my peripheral vision.
“Present from the boss?” With one swift motion the chain snapped and fell from my neck. He caught the chain in midair and stuffed the necklace into his jeans pocket.
A serial killer had just collected a trophy from me before the killing began.
He lay the tip of the knife against the dip where my shoulder met my chest. “Don’t scream, you’ll fuck up my lines. I get mean when they mess up my lines.”
He cut a steady line across my chest, from one dip to the other. I screamed on the inside. Though I tried to stay still and filter the pain out, I shuddered at the stinging rip of my flesh under the sharp surface. Tears rained down my cheeks at the pain, the slow pace of Vaughn’s cut forcing me to feel every thread of skin and flesh separating. My blood dripped like hot candle wax. Dozens of individual trickles tickled my chest, but the stinging agony intensified. Vaughn leaned over and coated his tongue with a crimson line.
“So pretty. So sweet.” Vaughn said. “You should’ve been my toy.”
His gaze flashed with jealousy and longing so intense a blaze of heat scalded my face. I followed his stare down the length of my body.
He pulled me off the wall and shoved me to the middle of the room. I tried to face him, but he held me by my hair, kicked out the back of my knees and knocked me to the ground.
“Please don’t do this.”
“This is what I want. You said you could give me what I want, didn’t you?”
The rustle of his jeans moving down his hips right behind my head sent me into hyper focus. I couldn’t do anything with my back to him. He’d start carving while he raped me, pinning me down with his weight like he’d done with the girls in the motel.
I spun, spotted his cock, and licked an awkward, sloppy trail over the bobbing shaft. When I gained my bearings, I swallowed the head in a vice grip of heat and suction.
Vaughn hissed and laughed, shoving my head all the way down so no inch of his shaft was exposed. His pale abdomen and the downy blond fluff trailing the taut flesh advanced and retreated as he fucked my mouth.
I moaned and sobbed. The cut on my chest opened farther every time I moved. Blood splattered to the plastic floor as I bobbed, the rest trailing over my breasts and down my belly.
I have to time it just right.
I pulled my mouth off him, meeting his hooded stare. “Fuck me. Please, Vaughn. Please, fuck me.”
Then I lay back and focused on him as if he were the only man in the world I wanted inside of me at the moment.
He pounced, wary but confident he could take me in this enclosed trap. I helped him push his jeans down and he kicked them off.
He settled over me, knife still clutched in his hand.
With a determined grimace, he buried his cock in me, as far as he could go, as hard as he could. My pussy pulsed with pain, the flesh on my chest tearing more. I lost focus for a moment as the world went red.
He dipped his hand in the blood coating my breasts and smeared the sticky fluid over my face with cruel hardness, before wrapping his hand around my throat. I clenched the plastic floor, nails breaking, rather than sinking into the slick, foam-like surface.
Don’t drift off. Stay here. Stay with him. The time to wait is over.
My body wanted to disassociate, to numb the pain. I wanted to block out Vaughn’s grating laughter, the grunts of pleasure against my cheek when he licked my faced clean. But, to survive, I couldn’t allow myself that luxury.
Nobody fucks you better. His voice echoed within my head.
The same words Jesse made me say. Vaughn had watched us, had listened on the other side of the room while Liam basked in afterglow. Vaughn had raged at those words, at being forced to wait his turn like a good boy. He would be first in line this time. He’d take what he wanted now and suffer the consequences later. Liam had died, Jesse had been turned by me. He had nothing to lose.
“You’re the best, Vaughn.” I gave my tone of voice weight. I turned the pain he inflicted into pleasure. His violent thrusts into my cleft summoned a slickness beyond the blood between my legs. “You’re the best. Nobody fucks me better than you.”
I cooed in his ear and bit down on his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. His muscular back flexed under my nails where I dug them into his skin. I drew jagged, broken nails over his back, gripped his ass and pulled him in deeper, wrapping my legs around him.
I sensed him lower his guard in his quest for release, the exaltation of victory. He’d fuck me, then, with the first rush out of the way, he’d take his time making me suffer.
Vaughn’s whore. Witch bitch. Property of Vaughn.
This one’s for Liam.
I saw my back carved in delicate script, endless words scrawled on every limb. No need to tie me down, either. The fun would be watching as I forced myself not to squirm. I’d be his last masterpiece after a hard fuck, since Jesse would probably kill him. He’d take me many times before the end, never giving me blood to heal the ache like Jesse did.
He was weak, I whispered in his mind. I showed him a flash of his fantasy, of Jesse tied up in the corner of this room. Jesse, gagged and helpless, wearing every injury he’d inflicted on Vaughn over the years. You’re so strong. You’re the best. My true master.
“I’m. Your. Master. Now.” Vaughn punctuated each word with a thrust.
His fingers loosened on the knife. It slid from his palm. He used his now-free hand to grip one of my t
highs and wrench my leg higher on his pumping waist.
Good. I locked my ankles. Setting my trap. He wouldn’t feel the chains wrapped around his body until he had no chance of escape.
He bit my neck to draw on my blood, I dug my teeth in deeper.
I had him.
We rode the wave in his mind, taking me back to a place Vaughn had never been able to bury. No matter how many people he killed or how many bodies he’d dumped in shallow graves, this scene kept rising like a ghost. I made myself the ghost. I amplified the sounds and scents, the immediacy of capture he’d long since escaped. I became Vaughn’s fear, watching from the shadows as he lay covered in the sticky remnants of the assault he’d suffered. Worse had been how copious his own release had been, how he hadn’t been allowed to clean away the evidence that, for all the pain, he’d come over and over.
Vaughn stared up at the man who’d taken him. The overhead light swung, but always the illumination seemed to elude Vaughn’s captor.
“I’ll be good, okay? I’ll be good.”
My voice. Vaughn’s voice. We both tilted our faces up to receive the kiss we didn’t want, the kiss Vaughn had been beaten for denying. In the memory, the man licked Vaughn’s lips, parting them and slipping a freshly-bitten tongue inside Vaughn’s mouth. This time Vaughn didn’t bite.
This time, neither did I.
In the real world, Vaughn sighed against my mouth, my blood on his lips, and kissed me deep. He searched for something he couldn’t find in my mouth, in my body, but he searched all the same.
I can take it all away. I can soothe all that pain. But I can only do it if I’m alive.
Vaughn moaned and so did I, both of us close to the peak and ready to fall into the abyss of climax.
I can make it stop, baby.
In the memory the man grabbed Vaughn by the neck and shoved him to the hard floor.
I can take all the pain away.
The man gripped Vaughn’s cock and once again slid deep inside his body.
I can make anyone who hurt you pay.
I showed him Jesse, his brother and leader, kicking him in the face the night they attacked me in the woods.
I want you, Vaughn. I want you inside me. You’re my master now.