by Jeff Lindsay
Alana clearly enjoyed the performance. She went to stand closer, where she could gloat at Debs properly, and then turned and said something to the bouncer. A moment later he wrestled the decrepit boarding ramp over the side and thumped it down onto the dock.
“Come on up, dearie,” Alana said to Deborah. “Use the ramp.”
Deborah stood still and looked up at Alana. “Don’t hurt that girl,” she said.
Alana’s smile grew huge. “But she wants us to hurt her; don’t you see?” she said.
Deborah shook her head. “Don’t hurt her,” she repeated.
“Let’s talk about that, shall we?” Alana said. “Come on aboard.”
Deborah looked up at her and saw nothing but happy reptile. She dropped her head and trudged up the ramp, and a moment later two of the shotgun-toting lackeys grabbed her, jerked her arms behind her, and duct-taped them in place. A mean little voice in the back of my head suggested that this was only fair, since very recently she’d merely watched them as they did the same thing to me. But kinder thoughts emerged and shouted that one down, and I began to fret and scheme on how to get my sister loose.
Alana, of course, had no intention of allowing any such thing. She waited for a moment, looking out across the park, and then cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “I’m quite sure your charming companion is out there somewhere!” She looked at Deborah, who stood with her head down, saying nothing. “We saw him at the carousel, dearie. Where is the bugger?” she said. Deborah didn’t move. Alana waited for a moment with a smile of pleasant anticipation on her face, and then called out loudly, “Don’t be bashful! We can’t start without you!” I stayed where I was, frozen motionless among the thorns.
“Well, then,” she called out cheerily. She turned and held out a hand, and one of the lackeys put a shotgun into it. For a moment I was torn by anxiety, and it was worse than the thorns. If she threatened to shoot Debs … But she was going to kill her anyway … and why should I let her kill me, too? But I couldn’t let her hurt Debs—
Unconsciously I raised up my pistol. It was a very good pistol, extremely accurate, and from this distance I had about a twenty percent chance of hitting Alana. The odds of hitting Debs were just as good—or hitting Samantha, and as I thought that the pistol rose higher, all by itself.
Of course, such things would never happen in a just world, but we don’t live in one, and this small movement must have caught a glimmer from one of the few battered lights still working in the park, and it gleamed just enough to attract Alana’s eye. She pumped the shotgun, briskly enough to leave no doubt about whether she knew how to use it, and she raised it to her shoulder, pointed it almost directly at me, and fired.
I had only a second to react, and I just barely managed to dive down behind the nearest palm tree. Even so, I felt the wind from the pellets as they slashed into the foliage where I had so recently been hiding.
“That’s better!” Alana said, and there was another blast from the shotgun. A chunk of my protective tree trunk vanished. “Peekaboo!”
A moment ago I had been unable to choose between leaving my sister in danger and placing my own head into the noose. Suddenly my decision was a whole lot easier. If Alana was going to stand there and remove the trees one shot at a time, my future was bleak either way, and since the more immediate danger was from buckshot, it seemed like a much better idea to give myself up and count on my superior intellect to find a way out of captivity again. Besides, Chutsky was still out there with his assault rifle, more than a match for a couple of amateurs with shotguns.
All things considered, it was not much of a choice, but it was all I had. So I stood up, staying behind the tree, and called out, “Don’t shoot!”
“And spoil the meat?” Alana called. “Of course not. But let’s see your smiling face, with hands in the air.” And she waved her shotgun, just in case I was a little slow in getting her point.
As I’ve said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven’t seen the shotgun aimed at our navel.
I put down my pistol, raised my hands as high as dignity would permit, and stepped out from behind the tree.
“Lovely!” Alana called. “Now over the river and through the woods, little piglet.”
It stung a little more than it should have; I mean, on top of everything else, being called “piglet” was not much. It was just a minor indignity tossed lightly on top of some rather major calamities, and it may be that my new-grown semihuman sensibilities encouraged me to take it harder than necessary, but really: piglet? I, Dexter? Clean-limbed, physically fit, and tempered to a fine edge in the furnace of life’s many fires? I resented it, and I beamed a mental message to Chutsky to shoot Alana carefully, so she would linger and suffer a little.
But of course, I also moved slowly down to the bank of the river with my hands in the air.
On the bank, I stood for a moment, looking up at Alana and her shotgun. She waved it encouragingly. “Come along, then,” she said. “Walk the plank, old sod.”
There was no arguing with the weapon, not at this range. I stepped onto the ramp. My brain whirled with impossible ideas: Dive under the boat, away from the aim of Alana’s weapon, and then—what? Hold my breath for a few hours? Swim downstream and get help? Send more mental messages and hope for rescue by a gang of paramilitary telepaths? There was really nothing else to do except climb up the ramp to the deck of the Vengeance. And so I did. It was old and wobbly aluminum, and I had to hold on to the frayed guide rope that ran up the left side. I slipped once, and held tightly to the rope as the whole rickety thing pitched and yawed. But in far too short a time I was on the deck, looking at three shotguns pointed my way—and even darker and deader than the weapons’ barrels, Alana Acosta’s blue and empty eyes. She stood much too close, as the others duct-taped my hands behind me, looking at me with an affection I found very unsettling.
“Brilliant,” she said. “This is going to be fun. I can’t wait to get started.” She turned away and looked off toward the park’s gate. “Where is that man?”
“He’ll be here,” Bobby said. “I got his money.”
“He’d better be here,” Alana said, and looked back at me. “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“I really would like to get started,” Alana said. “There’s rather a press of time this evening.”
“Don’t hurt that girl,” Deborah said again, through her teeth this time.
Alana turned her gaze on Debs, which was nice for me, but I had the feeling that it was going to prove very unpleasant for my sister. “We really are rather mother hen–ish about this little girl piglet, aren’t we?” Alana said, stepping toward Deborah. “Why is that, Sergeant?”
“She’s just a girl,” Debs said. “A child.”
Alana smiled, a wide smile filled with hundreds of perfect white teeth. “She seems to know what she wants,” she said. “And since it’s the same thing we want—where’s the harm?”
“She can’t possibly want that,” Deborah hissed.
“But she does, dear,” Alana said. “Some of them do. They want to be eaten—just as much as I want to eat them.” Her smile was very large, and almost real this time. “Almost makes one believe in a benevolent God, doesn’t it?” she said.
“She’s just a fucked-up kid,” Deborah said. “She’ll get over this—she has a family that loves her, and she has a life ahead of her.”
“And so, overcome by remorse and the beauty of all that, I should let her go,” Alana purred. “Family and church and puppies and flowers—how lovely your world must be, Sergeant. But it’s somewhat darker than that for the rest of us.” She looked at Samantha. “Of course, it does have its moments.”
“Please,” Deborah said, and she looked both desperate and vulnerable in a way I had never seen before, “just let her go.”
“I don’t think so,” Alana said crisply. “In fact, with all this exc
itement, I find that I’m getting a bit peckish.” She picked up a very sharp knife from the table.
“No!” Deborah said in a violent, hissing voice. “Goddamn you, no!”
“Yes, I’m afraid,” Alana said, looking at her with cold amusement. Two of the guards held Debs in place and Alana watched them struggle, clearly enjoying it. And with one eye still on Deborah, Alana stepped over to Samantha and held the knife up indecisively.
“I could never really do the butchering part properly,” she said. Bobby and his posse gathered around, jiggling with barely suppressed excitement like kids sneaking into a movie. “This is the whole reason I put up with tardiness from that saucy bastard,” Alana said. “He’s very, very good at this. Wake up, piggy.” She slapped Samantha’s face, and Samantha rolled her head upright and opened her eyes.
“ ’S it time?” she said dopily.
“Just a snack,” Alana told her, but Samantha smiled. It was very clear from her drowsy happiness that she had been drugged again, but at least it wasn’t ecstasy this time.
“Great, okay,” she said. Alana looked at her, and then at us.
“Come on, go for it,” Bobby said.
Alana smiled at him, and then snaked out her hand and grabbed at Samantha’s arm so quickly I saw almost nothing but a blurred gleam from the blade, and before I could blink she had sliced off most of the girl’s triceps.
Samantha made a sound that was somewhere between a moan and a grunt, and it was neither pleasure nor pain but somewhere in between, a cry of agonized fulfillment. It set my teeth on edge and made all the hair on my neck rise straight up and then Deborah exploded into an insane fury that sent one of her guards spinning to the deck, and the other one dropped his shotgun and held on until the huge ponytailed bouncer stepped in and clubbed Debs to the floor with one gigantic hand. She went down like a rag doll and lay there unmoving.
“Take the good sergeant below,” Alana said. “Make sure she’s very well secured.” The two lackeys grabbed Deborah and dragged her into the cabin. I did not at all like the way she hung between them, so completely limp and lifeless, and without thinking I took a step toward her. But before I could do much more than wiggle my toes in her direction, the enormous bouncer picked up the dropped shotgun and pushed it into my chest, and I was forced to do no more than watch helplessly as they took my sister through the doorway and into the cabin.
And as the bouncer prodded me back around to face Alana, she lifted the lid from the barbecue and placed the slice of Samantha-flesh on the grill. It hissed, and a tendril of steam rose up from it.
“Oh,” Samantha said in a muted, faraway voice. “Oh. Oh.” She rocked slowly against her bonds.
“Turn it in two minutes,” Alana said to Bobby, and then she came back to me. “Well, piglet,” she said to me, and she reached over and pinched my cheek; not as a doting grandmother might, but more like a shrewd shopper checking the cutlets. I tried to pull away, but it wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, with a very large man pushing a shotgun into my back.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” I said. It sounded more petulant than it should have, but I really didn’t have a terribly strong position at the moment, unless you count the moral high ground.
My question seemed to amuse Alana. She reached forward again, both hands this time, and she grabbed my cheeks and shook my head fondly from side to side. “Because you are my piglet!” she said. “And I am going to absolutely devour you, darling!” And a small and very real gleam showed in her eyes this time, and the Passenger rattled its wings in alarm.
I would like to say that I had been in much tighter spots, and I had always found a way out. But the truth was that I could not think of any time I had ever felt quite so uncomfortably vulnerable. I was once again taped and helpless, with a gun in my back and an even more lethal predator in front. As for my companions, Deborah was unconscious or worse, and Samantha was truly being put over the coals. Still, I had one small hole card left: I knew that Chutsky was out there, armed and dangerous, and as long as he was alive he would never let any harm come to Debs or, by extension, to me. If I could keep Alana talking long enough, Chutsky would be here to save us.
“You have Samantha,” I said as reasonably as I could. “There’s more than enough of her to go around.”
“Yes, but she wants to be eaten,” Alana said. “The meat always tastes better if it’s reluctant.” She glanced at Samantha, who said, “Oh,” again. Her eyes were wide now, wild with something I could not name, and focused on the grill.
Alana smiled and patted my cheek. “You owe us, darling. For escaping and causing all this trouble. And in any case, we need a male piggy.” She frowned at me. “You look a bit stringy. We really should marinate you for a few days. Still, there’s no time left, and I do love a nice man chop.”
I will admit that it was a strange time and place for curiosity, but after all, I was trying to stall. “What do you mean, there’s no time left?” I said.
She looked at me without expression, and somehow, the complete absence of emotion was more unsettling than her fake smile. “One last party,” she said. “Then I’m afraid I must flee once again. Just as I had to flee England when the authorities decided that too many undocumented immigrants had gone missing there, as they now have here.” She shook her head sadly. “I was just getting to like the taste of migrant worker, too.”
Samantha grunted, and I looked. Bobby stood in front of her, slowly working the point of a knife across her partially exposed chest, as if he were carving his initials on a tree. His face was very close to hers, and he wore a smile that would wilt roses.
Alana sighed and shook her head fondly. “Don’t play with your food, Bobby,” she said. “You’re supposed to be cooking. Turn it now, dear,” she said, and he looked at Alana. Then he reluctantly put down the knife and reached onto the grill with a long-handled fork and flipped the flesh. Samantha moaned again. “And put something under that cut,” Alana said, nodding at the growing pool of dreadful red blood dripping from Samantha’s arm and spreading across the deck. “She’s turning the deck into an abattoir.”
“I’m not fucking Cinderella,” Bobby said happily. “Stop the wicked-stepmother shit.”
“Yes, but let’s try to keep things a bit neater, shall we?” she said. He shrugged, and it was very clear that they were as fond of each other as two monsters could ever be. Bobby took a pot from the rack under the grill and placed it underneath Samantha’s arm.
“I actually did straighten Bobby out,” Alana said with just a trace of something that might have been pride. “He hadn’t a clue how to do anything, and it was costing his father a small fortune to cover things up. Joe just couldn’t understand, poor lamb. He thought he had given Bobby everything—but he hadn’t given him the one thing he really wanted.” She looked right at me with all her very bright teeth showing. “This,” she said, waving at Samantha, the knives, the blood on the deck. “Once he had a small taste of long pig, and the power that goes with it, he learned to be careful. That dreary little club, Fang, that was Bobby’s idea, actually. A lovely way to recruit for the coven, separating cannibals from vampires. And the kitchen help provided a wonderful source of meat.”
She frowned. “We really should have stayed with eating immigrants,” Alana said. “But I’ve grown so fond of Bobby, and he begged so prettily. Both girls did, too, actually.” She shook her head. “Stupid of me. I do know better.” She turned back to me, her bright smile back in place. “But, on the positive side, I have a good deal more cash this time for a new start, and a smattering of Spanish, too, which I shan’t waste. Costa Rica? Uruguay? Someplace where all questions can be answered with dollars.”
Alana’s cell phone chirped, and it startled her for just a second. “Listen to me prattling on,” she said, looking at the phone’s screen. “Ah. About fucking time.” She turned away and spoke a few words into the phone, listened for a moment, spoke again, and put the phone away. “Cesar, Antoine,” she said, becko
ning to two of the shotgun flunkies. They hurried over to her and she said, “He’s here. But …” And she bent her head down next to theirs and added something I could not hear. Whatever it was, Cesar smiled and nodded and Alana looked up at the revelers by the grill. “Bobby,” she said. “Go with Cesar and lend him a hand.”
Bobby smirked and lifted up Samantha’s hand. He took a knife from the table and raised it up, looking expectantly at Alana. Samantha moaned.
“Don’t be a buffoon, love,” Alana said to Bobby. “Run along and help Cesar.”
Bobby dropped Samantha’s arm, and she grunted, and then said, “Oh,” several times as Cesar and Antoine led Bobby and his friends down the wobbly ramp and away into the park.
Alana watched them go. “We shall be getting started with you shortly,” she said, and she turned away from me and walked over to Samantha. “How are we doing, little piggy?” she said.
“Please,” Samantha said weakly, “oh, please …”
“Please?” Alana said. “Please what? You want me to let you go? Hm?”
“No,” Samantha said, “oh, no.”
“Not let you go, all right. Then what, dear?” Alana said. “I just can’t think what.” She picked up one of the oh-so-very-sharp-looking knives. “Perhaps I can help you speak up a bit, little piglet,” she said, and she jabbed the point into Samantha’s midsection, not terribly deep, but repeatedly, deliberately, which seemed more terrible, and Samantha cried out and tried to squirm away—quite impossible, of course, lashed to the mast as she was.
“Nothing at all to tell me, darling? Really?” she said, as Samantha at last collapsed, with terrible red blood seeping out in far too many places. “Very well, then, we’ll give you some time to think.” And she put the knife down on the table, and lifted the lid of the barbecue. “Oh, bother, I’m afraid this has burned,” she said, and with a quick glance to be sure that Samantha was watching, she took the long-handled fork and flipped the piece of flesh over the rail and into the water.