I followed him once. Peered in his windows feeling like some sort of messed up creeper, sure the cops would pull up any second. His place isn’t exactly in the kind of neighborhood where people bother calling the police, but I crouched in the shadows, shaking anyway, watching him inside where it was warm. He’d had a girl over, some brown haired girl he never introduced me to or mentioned. From what I saw through the window though, they were close. I left after that.
“Hey,” he says, snapping me back to the living room, the dead body and the tarp. “This is just a snag. We’ll sort it out, right? I mean, we always do.”
He’s asking me, needing reassurance. Maybe with the right words, the right tone, I can get him to let Allie go, Talia, me, without anyone else ending up a pussing mess on a tarp. But something in his eyes makes me hesitate. He’s watching me as if taking in every detail, every shudder of faith in him, and weighing it out. “Fuck,” I say at the last minute. “I just want to get this done and eat something. I’m starving.”
For a second he looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, which is saying something, and then he starts to laugh. “You’re messed up,” he says as he strides toward the body. “How can you think about food with this asshole in front of us?” He draws back his foot, sends it sailing forward into the ribcage. There’s a crack buried under the wet gelatinous smack. He shakes his shoe off and something slimy drips to the floor. “Dick,” he mutters.
I hesitate and then move forward, grip Jamison’s shoulder. I don’t know why I do it. Maybe I know it’s over. Maybe I’m saying goodbye. He closes his eyes for a beat and then shrugs my hand off. “Whatever,” he says as he bends down to flop the arms onto the tarp. He grabs two corners of the plastic and glances up at me. “Ready for the heavy lifting?”
We drag the body in stages, tugging for a few stumbling steps before we stop to regain our balance. The tarp mostly keeps the fluids in, but every time we pause, Jamison drops his side and a trickle seeps onto the floor. The second time it happens, I point. “You know we’re going to have to clean that up, right? That, the walls, the floor. I don’t know if we can get those stains out enough to make it look like this never happened.”
Jamison’s brow pinches. “Oh,” he says, deep in thought. “I wasn’t really counting on clean up. I figured I’d just torch the place when I was done.”
Done with what? I want to ask. Moving the body or figuring out somewhere else to take the girls. But he must mean the second one. He needs them alive. If they’re dead, he can’t have what he wants. Speaking of, he hasn’t talked much about that, the power. I can’t figure out why he didn’t want me to inject him right away.
Jamison switches places with me and pulls the plastic through the kitchen, almost to the side door we came in through. “Tell me about Allie,” he says.
“Um, sure. What about her?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Anything.”
“She’s...” I know I should be spilling everything I can think of, anything. But I don’t know what direction he wants me to go. Does he want to know about her or about the things I know he could use to break her. There’s not much.
“Relax,” Jamison says. Something in the tarp bangs against the doorframe and he juts his chin at me to pull the tarp and readjust. “There’s not a right answer. You like her.” It’s not a question.
“Yeah,” I admit. I jerk back until he has the clearance he needs. “I didn’t mean—”
A burst of air escapes him. “If things hadn’t gone how they went, we wouldn’t be where we are,” he says. He shoots me a smile. “And we’re doing pretty good. So you like her. What do you like about her?”
People don’t talk like this. At least, Jamison and I don’t. I know he’s fishing for something, but I can’t figure out what to give him, what he wants. If I can make him see her as a person, maybe I can keep him under control, keep him from hurting her. “She’s...She’s strong,” I say finally, because it’s the truest thing. She’s beautiful and nice and before everything got all complicated she used to be funny. We used to laugh together. I frown. “She does what she has to. She’s a survivor. At any cost.”
“So she’s like me,” Jamison says.
I scoff before I can help it. “No, she’s not like you. She’s not at all like you.”
He feigns hurt and then holds out his gloved fingers, pressing them down one by one. “She does what she has to. Me. She’s a survivor. Me. At any cost. Me.” He makes a face as if waiting for me to agree. I won’t give him the satisfaction. Allie’s nothing like him. He draws a breath to go on. This time the words come slower. “You can count on her.” He ticks off another finger. “You listen to her. Even if it means hurting people.”
I narrow my eyes. “Allie would never ask me to hurt people.”
We’re on the back porch now. It’s just as hot outside as in. I wipe a sweaty arm across my forehead but it doesn’t do much. My shirt’s almost soaked through.
“She asked you to hurt me, didn’t she?”
“No,” I say quickly.
“No?” He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the side of the house. “After she saw her aunt, she wasn’t out for my blood?”
“That’s not—”
“We were going after this together,” he says, holding out a hand to cut me off. “And I depended on you. Trusted you. You almost screwed me over, you know that, right? Never thought you’d turn on me for some girl.”
“I didn’t turn on you, though, did I?”
“No, but you thought about it.” Jamison stares at me, waiting me out.
“I thought about it,” I admit. “Is that what you want to hear? I thought there was a chance you’d both come out of this alive.” Everything inside me feels like it’s crumbling.
“You don’t think there’s a chance of that anymore, then?” he asks.
“Nope.” There are wooden benches along one side of the porch. I drop onto one.
Jamison moves to sit beside me. “You’re wrong.” He sounds like he actually believes it. “I’m not going to hurt her. As long as she cooperates, she’ll be fine. I need her,” he says. “She told you the second time she uses the blood on someone it takes way more right?”
Uncertain, I nod.
Jamison slaps his gloved hands against his thighs. “Okay. We’re not doing that then. It’s bad business.”
“Bad business?”
He tilts his head as if he’s sure I’m messing with him. “For us. We’ll take the blood, a syringe at a time, and sell it. They heal.” He grins like he’s watching me finally put together the puzzle pieces he solved long ago. “We’ll bleed them dry and they’ll fill right up again! Same plan we originally had, just adjusted a bit.”
“That’s not the same plan. That’s torture.” He has to know that. “She’s supposed to be cool with being locked up the rest of her life?”
He gives his head the slightest shake. “You think I like what we’re doing to her? Chaining her up like some sort of animal?”
We. What we’re doing to her. I could have fought him at Talia’s. I could have done something. I could do something now. But I don’t. It only makes me hate myself more.
Whatever Jamison plans to do with the powers he gains, I know it’ll make him unstoppable. I have to end this before he gets her blood. He’ll listen to me. He always does. Every time he’s done something crazy, it’s been because I wasn’t there. I can keep him under control. “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe we should let them go?”
He clomps a hand on my back. “I don’t think you want that.”
I can’t help the glare I give him.
He frowns. “Look, you’re trying to do what’s right for everyone. Me included, even though I don’t deserve it. I’m fucked up. We both know that,” he says when I start to protest. “But I promised you money. More than enough to get you out of that fucking junkie haven you’ve been living in. Enough to get you shoes. Two pairs,” he adds, smiling as if he’s proud to have remembered my pathetic d
reams. “I need to know you’re in this.” He tips his head up to glance at me through the glare of the sun. “Are you in?”
My eyes dart to the body wrapped in the tarp. That’s what happens when you cross Jamison, I think. If I don’t get Allie and Talia out of here, he’s going to torture them until there’s nothing left but blood and bones. I have to stay close. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m in.”
I expect him to say something else. Smile. Congratulate me on a choice well made. Instead, he goes back to dragging the body. What’s left of the head clunk-clunk-clunks down the wooden stairs.
He’s gathering the corners, gray-brown liquid leaking onto the planks through the blue tarp as he lifts his dead father into a wheelbarrow, legs first, then torso. The scene sinks in and I know the Jamison I grew up with is gone. I don’t know this monster in his place. For the first time through all of this, I’m more than just scared. I’m utterly terrified of him.
And I still help him. One good thrust from me and the body’s in the wheelbarrow. Everything’s taken on a surreal quality as we wheel across the gravel drive, through the grass and to the hole Jamison’s dug on the side of the barn. The sun’s high. It must be around eleven. The air’s so thick it makes breathing an actual chore. The hole’s deep—not six foot, but close. I look at the two shovels, the giant mound of loose earth. I’m already exhausted and we haven’t even started yet. “That’s a lot of dirt to move,” I say.
Jamison doesn’t ask for my help when he upends the wheelbarrow. “It’s not getting filled in until night. Too damned hot.” The body slips half out of the tarp on the way down, lands bent over itself, like his father stopped mid-somersault on one side of the makeshift grave.
“We need to spread this over him,” Jamison says, pointing, and I notice the bag of lye leaned up against the weathered boards of the barn. “Saw it on a movie. It turns the bones to mush.”
“Yeah, okay,” I manage.
“So...” He fades off, and then raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
He runs his arm over the beaded sweat on his forehead, his eyes squinted against the sunlight. “You didn’t help me push him down here. The least you can do is make sure he’s got an even coating of that stuff on him.” He hefts up the bag. “Go ahead and jump down and I’ll pass it to you.”
Not a damned chance. I’m not getting in that hole. “Jamison—”
“Are you in this or not?” he snarls and I take an involuntary step back.
I think of Allie in the cellar. The chains on her wrists. I think of him drawing syringes of blood, her arms covered in bruises that would heal if he gave them time. I’m starting to think my imagination isn’t twisted enough for what he’ll really do. I can’t help them if he doesn’t trust me. I swallow hard. “I said I was in, didn’t I?”
I lower my legs over the edge and slide into the hole. More than the body, the tarp, the lye Jamison’s passing down to me, it’s the cold that unsettles me. The air swirling around my ankles is least twenty-five degrees colder. It makes me think of the cellar again and Allie. I just want to get this over with and get to her.
I set the bag down and reach for my knife. “All of it?” I ask, glancing up.
Jamison’s silhouetted against the sunlight. His gun is out. It’s pointed at my chest.
“Your problem,” he says quietly. “Is that you want to save everyone.” I hold up a hand, the knife dropping onto the cold dirt below my duct-taped sneakers. “We were going to be gods, remember?”
“We are,” I say. “You and me.” Words babble out of me. “I’m on your side. You don’t have to do this.”
“I don’t want to.” His face is pinched, the gun trembling in his hands. “You said Allie was strong, right?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. I’m not even sure it’s loud enough to hear.
“Then I’m more like her than you thought,” he says. “I do what has to be done. I’m a survivor.” In his hands, the gun steadies. “At any cost.”
He fires.
Chapter 22
Allie
I don’t know how much time passes before I hear footsteps cross the floor again. The door unlocks and when the light clinks on I wince against the sudden brightness. There’s only one shadow at the top of the stairs. From the movements alone, the stiff set to his shoulders, the cocky carefree way he clomps down, I know it’s Jamison. Where’s Ploy? I think frantically.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Talia calls. “Seriously, do not make me pee on this floor.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve had a busy afternoon.” Jameson holds two bowls balanced on top of each other as he slips the key into his pocket. He moves one bowl into each hand. “Are you hungry?” he asks as if nothing’s wrong. As if we haven’t been locked up in some dingy cellar in the dark for hours.
“No.” I hold the cuffs out in front of me. “I could use a Band-Aid.”
His eyes flick to my wrists. “What the fu—”
For the first time, there’s light to see what damage my escape attempts have done. Blood crusts the manacles, the skin of my hands, my mouth. The scabs on my wrists are wide and raw where they’d tried to heal and were ripped open again. They’re already starting to scar. Seeing them makes it hurt that much more. He shuffles forward and sets the bowls down. I clutch my hands to my chest protectively.
When he reaches for me, I let him unfurl my arm. It’s not like resisting is going to get me anywhere. His fingers skate along the wounds. “What the hell did you do?”
“I tried to tear my hands off.” The truth is worth it to see the horror on his face. “Didn’t you both think of that? I could rip them off and worry about reattaching them later. Be gone before you noticed.” I savor every bit of his revulsion, holding my arms out like an accusation. “I couldn’t chew through the tendons. It hurt too much.”
For the first time he seems to make the connection. The wounds on my wrists above where the cuffs are, the blood dried to a tight mask on my lips and face. “Like an animal in a trap,” he says softly. The contrast of his voice to the anger in his eyes almost makes me flinch, but I hold my ground until he speaks. “If you’re going to act like an animal, Allie, I’ll have to start treating you like one.”
A chill rushes through me.
“Jamison,” Talia calls. “Please. I promise I won’t try anything. I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Just a second,” he says. His eyes don’t leave my wrists. “Don’t ever try anything like that again.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Why? The waste of blood makes you mad?” Anger brings tears to my eyes and with them comes a vicious disappointment. I don’t fight it. This time, I let him see. My voice comes out quiet and broken. “Where’s Ploy?”
“Not here,” he says as he tosses my wrists free. He shoves a bowl into my hands. I can’t help my wince as I grasp it out of instinct. “You are a special breed of crazy, Allie.”
I raise an eyebrow at Jamison in mock amusement. “Still better than the murdering kind, I suppose.”
I’m never going to get out of here. The realization pounds through me. I can’t even imagine that I’m going to be killed quickly. No, we’ll stay locked in this basement until we’re bled dry or he loses his temper. Which I’m not really helping with right now, I think. I have to get on his good side, convince him I’m a docile little victim.
When I glance up at him though, there’s none of the rage I expected. For the first time since Talia’s apartment, he looks uncertain. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “I promised I wouldn’t. I know you won’t believe me now, but give me an attempt to prove it before you do something like this again, okay?” There’s something so close to kindness in his voice that part of me aches to latch onto it, accept his words as true.
I think about my plan to play nice. “Okay.”
“Promise me,” he says. He grabs my chin and forces me to look at him when I say it.
I want to spit in his face. Claw his eyes out with the broken shreds of f
ingernail I have left. “I promise,” I say instead. “Talia has to go to the bathroom really bad.” It’s his chance to prove himself to me and we both know it.
“That’s why I came down.” He releases my chin and moves around to Talia. “I’m trusting you not to do anything stupid,” I hear him say. The chains clank to the ground one by one.
“I’m not going to make it,” she says. “Can we run?”
I close my eyes as Talia and Jamison bolt up the stairs. I wonder if I should start over on the wrists again and get the job done this time. It’d be awful hard to make it upstairs without hands though, and Ploy and Jamison would be back before I heal enough for my hands to be decently reattached. Not to mention I’ve got nothing to stitch with. Also hard without hands. The blood loss alone would probably kill me. By the time I came to, they’d have found out what I did and it’d all be for nothing anyway.
I sigh hard and my eyes drift down to the bowl. In it is a hamburger on a bun and a handful of salad. There’s no fork. I dig in with my bloody fingers, not caring, ravenous. Healing takes energy and I haven’t been able to bring myself to sleep. The next best thing is calories. I need to be strong. Maybe Talia’s right and I shouldn’t count Ploy out yet. He might be our only chance to get free.
As Talia comes down the stairs, I’m picking the last crumbles of meat from the bottom of the bowl. Jamison is behind her. He’s got the gun, and Talia’s medical bag over his shoulder. He waits while Talia clamps her wrists into the manacles, checks the locks, and then comes toward me. “You ate,” he says, sounding almost surprised. I wonder if he expected me to go on some sort of hunger strike.
“It helps with the healing,” I tell him.
He nods once. “I’ll bring you another one if you want?”
“That would be nice.” For a moment, we only stare at each other. Finally, he takes one of my wrists. He brushes a cold, wet towel against the worst spot and I hiss a breath through my teeth.
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