by Rucker, Shay
Zeus felt the blood of all the other kills coating his skin. He knew he looked like something spit from hell, but Eddie wasn’t afraid. He was aroused by the sight of Zeus. It meant something to defeat the killer of killers. What Eddie was feeling was the power play that existed between a sadist and his intended victim.
“Get off raping men?”
The man grinned as he unzipped his pants. “I’m not particular.”
Zeus spit out a stream of blood. “Don’t like men fucking me, Eddie.”
“Guess I’ll have to like it enough for both of us. And after, I’m gonna go back to the house, and when my boss gets done with your woman, I’m gonna do the same thing to her that I do to you. I will be the last thing you two share in this life.”
Eddie approached slowly. Dude was huge. He could give Big Country a run for the most bulked-out muscle strapped on a human frame.
Zeus took a step, and his leg buckled. Eddie kicked out, knocking the knife from Zeus’s hand before slamming his fist into Zeus’s face. The darkness was falling fast. Zeus blinked back starbursts as he fell sideways, covering the dead man’s head and part of his torso. Reaching beneath the body, Zeus found his hand lodged as Eddie kicked him onto his back.
“You ready to beg yet?” Eddie asked as he stood, straddling Zeus. His dick was erect and free of the pants and boxers that hung low on his hips.
Zeus squinted, trying to see Eddie’s face beyond the man’s erection. He snorted. He wasn’t one to judge a man’s dick, but Eddie’s was pretty unimpressive.
“Won’t feel a thing.” Zeus laughed, nodding toward Eddie’s dick.
Eddie retaliated by stomping his foot over the bullet wound in Zeus’s leg. Zeus bit back the curse rattling around in his chest and throat. It was the closest he had ever come to screaming in pain.
When he opened his eyes, Eddie was shirtless, and his hand was stroking his bared erection. All else around them was darkness, and Zeus knew this darkness. Knew he was losing this battle, but he couldn’t stop the descent.
“She likes…brown skin. Like yours. But loves…”
Precum dripped onto Zeus’s chest. “I expected more fight from you, killer. Got you rambling, and I haven’t even put you on your knees.”
“I’ll be better. After this.”
“You’ll be dead after this.”
Zeus smiled through the pain. “Already dead. But it never stopped me.”
Zeus pulled his hand from beneath the body. The backup blade he’d hidden beneath, after taking the man out, whispered as it sliced clean through flesh. Eddie’s worthless appendage fell against Zeus’s abdomen before tumbling onto the ground.
Screams. Ear-shattering screams. They would have shaken a feeling man to his very soul, but Zeus could only reflect on how much of a bitch it would be to go into the afterlife without your dick attached. Eddie crumpled to the ground next to Zeus, clutching between his legs. Zeus made it to his knees. Life-preserving instinct must have kicked in, because the other man, still holding on to the gaping wound, scooted on his side toward the gun he had tossed away, but it was too late. Zeus buried his blade into Eddie’s thigh, then his abdomen, then his chest. But not in the heart. He had no heart.
“Eddie?”
The man attempted to struggle. To fight. His fist connected with Zeus’s already busted nose, destroying the reset Sabrina had done earlier. The impact disoriented Zeus for a moment, but he was beyond feeling. He reacted by pounding the hilt of his blade against Eddie’s temple twice, leaving the man dazed.
“Can you even be called a man?” he asked Eddie as he slit the muscles and tendons on each side of Eddie’s shoulders, rendering him unable to lift his arms. He sliced through the corresponding places on Eddie’s thighs, essentially making him a quadriplegic.
“This,” Zeus said, sweeping the dripping blade over the length of Eddie’s body. “This is how I chain a man. And this,” he said, holding up his bloody fist, showcasing his blade. “This is the last thing you fuck with in this life.”
Zeus straddled Eddie’s body and placed the tip of his blade right below the hollow of Eddie’s throat. Zeus closed his eyes, nearly losing consciousness. The image of Sabrina in the doorway of Kragen’s house flashed through his mind. He shook his head slowly and opened his eyes. “My woman. She loves skin like yours.”
He tried to wipe the blood away from Eddie’s chest to give himself a clean palette, but the flow continued.
“Doesn’t it sound something like love to want to give the woman who loves you anything she loves?”
He looked at his blade, and he looked at Eddie, feeling a little ashamed. It was always best to have the right tools for the right occasion. “It’s not a filleting knife, but it’ll have to do, Eddie.”
Zeus dragged the blade’s tip across the other man’s clavicle and reset at the hollow of Eddie’s throat, cutting down to his belly button. He tried to keep the blade steady and shallow despite the way Eddie bucked beneath him.
It was a testament to his skill and an honor to the blade that he could skin the man with so many of his own injuries, yet render skin from flesh he did.
“Stop screaming, Eddie. It’ll be over soon.”
Eddie didn’t stop. Zeus closed his eyes. Eddie’s wails were causing the pain in his head to expand, almost fracturing his mind. Zeus lifted the blade and let it fall with finality. Gurgling sounds, then silence. Zeus sighed.
The sound of the ocean waves battering against immovable stone met him in the silence. He cocked his head. Was that thunder he heard in the distance? He had no time to wonder. The darkness wouldn’t be stopped. He slid off the partially skinned body and fell to the ground, looking up into a mist-cloaked world that held no answers about how he could save Sabrina before he died.
* * * *
“Is he dead?”
“God, I hope so.”
Silence. Then laughter.
“Hell, son, didn’t know you had the hater gene in you.”
Fingers touched Zeus’s neck. He gripped the blade that had been loose in his fingers and moved to ram it into whoever hovered over him.
“Hold on, Humpty Dumpty,” a voice said as a foot slammed down on his wrist, pinning it to the ground. “You kill Lynx, ain’t nobody else got the skill to put you back together again.”
Zeus opened his eyes, one nearly swollen shut, and looked up at the group standing around him. The Brood.
“Sabrina.”
“Gone. House was empty when we got here.”
“Basement,” he said as he struggled to sit up. Bride assisted him. “Hidden.”
“Big Country here is good at finding hidden spots. It’s empty.”
Zeus remembered the thunder. “Car?” he asked, trying to remember the brand of car they had shoved him into. “Lincoln.”
Big Country rubbed a slow hand over his jaw. “Passed one on the road not ten minutes back.”
“Kragen,” Zeus grunted.
A flurry of curses and recriminations rang out in the darkness.
“Help me up.”
Zeus’s request silenced the Brood.
“Did the half-crazy man just ask for help?” Price asked.
“Half?” Lynx said. “He ripped through the poor bastard’s throat.”
“Gives another meaning to the term deep throatin’ it,” Big Country said.
Zeus was lifted off the ground by Big Country and Bride. He balanced on one leg, not trusting that the other would support him.
“Chief’s got eyes on all Consortium and Kragen-related locations within a hundred mile radius. He’ll show up at one, I’m sure,” Coen said, rubbing his head as he eyed one of the bodies. “Think I would have wanted to be this one,” he said, toeing the first of the four men Zeus had killed in this spot.
“Yeah, definitely wouldn’t want to be him,” Lynx said, pointing to the man lacking the eyeball.
“Tell y’all what, I’d rather be any one of these poor fucks if I can keep my skin and dick attached,” Big Cou
ntry drawled.
“Jesus, Zeus,” Price said, rubbing his head.
He didn’t understand what the big deal was. Every one of the dead men had tried to kill him. He just refused to let them. With Bride’s help, he limped his naked ass toward the Suburban, its headlights illuminating the bodies on the ground.
“Take me to the cabin,” Zeus said once he’d settled on the blanket Price had covered the middle seat with. The others piled into the vehicle.
“What fucking cabin?” Price asked.
He gave them directions as Lynx draped a blanket over his lower body and worked on the new injuries he’d accumulated as well as the ones Sabrina had doctored earlier. He didn’t reject the second dosing of pain medications. He needed to find Sabrina. Kill again. He would kill until the fear of losing her disappeared or his body gave out.
“How’d you find me?”
“We went to extract Sabrina only to find her motel room busted up to high hell. The guy at the front desk gave descriptions we reasoned were Kragen’s goons. Big Country deep scanned the properties nearby. We figured Kragen had to be close to get there before we did, and oh my lucky charms, what did we find? This place deeded to a Mr. Reed Miller. Kragen’s assistant.”
“Unfortunately we also happened to find you bare-assed and half-dead,” Coen muttered.
“Sabrina loves me and my ass.” Zeus smiled, once again feeling smug.
Price frowned at him in the rearview mirror. “Was that a smile on your lips?” He looked over at Lynx. “Did that creepy-ass mothafucka just smile?”
“Coulda been gas,” Big Country said. “Ya know, like babies.”
Zeus tuned out the chatter about how delusional he was, and laid his head back and half closed his eyes. Not a couple of weeks ago the constant banter between the Brood could have driven him to homicide. Now it eased him, distracted him from the fear he felt over the situation his woman was in. I am becoming more normal, he thought as he mentally cataloged which weapons he could use to quickly slaughter with only one arm at full strength. The image of the short-handled, dual-sided ax filtered through his drug-induced peace, further calming his mind. The original ax blade had taken down hundred-year-old tree trunks, which meant it could hack through the human body with little effort on his part.
“But what if?” Lynx said in a reflective silence. Zeus opened his eyes. “What would it mean if Zeus was able to find someone to love him, yet none of us have?”
“Who the hell would want something as merciless and deceitful as a woman’s love?” Price said. “Might as well strip naked, cover yourself in blood, and walk into a cage full of starved lions.”
“Looks like Zeus already did.” Coen snorted, eyeing Zeus from the passenger seat.
“Okay, this foolishness ends,” Big Country said decisively. “We’re all capitalistic-minded men, and I tell ya it’s bad business to waste time on entanglements with women. You put a couple hundred on the table, and that’ll pay for the best kinda lovin’ a man can hope to have…the temporary kind. Of a sexual nature, mind you.”
“Pathetic,” Bride said behind him. Zeus heard the flick of her lighter, the sound and smell of paper and tobacco turning to ash.
“Turn up here,” Zeus said as they approached the road to his cabin.
A few minutes later they were parked in the clearing outside his front door.
“It looks scary as hell out there,” Lynx said, looking out all the windows to get a panoramic view of Zeus’s forest.
Zeus and Price stepped out of the Suburban and looked around.
Lynx was an idiot. His forest was serene.
With Price’s assistance, Zeus made his way to the door, his limp less pronounced because he could hardly feel any pain. Zeus didn’t have his keys, so Price picked the lock and entered the cabin behind him.
* * * *
“Thanks,” he said to Price as he closed the front door. Sabrina had been saying he needed to show gratitude. “I appreciate it.” He didn’t, but he could at least tell Sabrina he’d said it.
The other man looked at Zeus as if he’d sprouted three more heads. “Well, fuck me,” Price muttered.
Zeus snorted. “Won’t ever be that appreciative.”
Back in Price’s truck, Zeus noticed a tension among the Brood members who’d remained inside. All four held weapons in their hands.
“This forest is haunted,” Lynx said as he scanned the area outside his window.
The ever-tedious Coen took a deep breath, secured his gun, and asked, “So where we headed?”
“To Sabrina,” Price said, starting up the Suburban. “Zeus placed tracking devices in some of the weapons he gave her. She only has one left on her. Zeus’s device will lead us to wherever she is.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sabrina sat in the ornately upholstered wing-backed chair as she observed Kragen and his assistant speak with the older Middle Eastern man.
“Well, I must say, Maxim, she is quite beautiful. In an untamed sort of way. I can understand your need to see her safe and protected, but I can’t quite determine why you would bring her to my home. Unless…”
The older man eyed Sabrina with a disturbing heat in his gaze. Kragen had built an elaborate delusion about her, about them, that had yet to advance beyond unthreatening displays of affection. This other man, however, looked at her as if she were a purely sexual instrument. He was not someone she could seek help from. He was another Consortium member, which meant he’d likely given up his soul so long ago that there was something hideous housed in its place.
“Your name, girl.”
“Sabrina.”
“Ah. The infamous Sabrina. Your father had much to say about her at one time. That was many years ago, I know, but I believe he would have no greater esteem for this woman with the passage of time.”
He walked toward Sabrina and stood beside her chair. She cringed when his thumb slid down the unbruised side of her face.
“Soft,” he muttered. He turned to Kragen, who was currently two shades of crimson. “I can almost understand your obsession with this one.”
“A night here would be a favor returned to you tenfold, Basir,” Kragen said. Though his voice was respectful, Sabrina heard the steel within. “Erani informed me your family left town yesterday, so I’m sure my companion and I will bring little disruption to your household.”
“But you misunderstand. As I couldn’t join the others at the Consortium’s gathering, I have created my own celebration here.”
“When have diverging desires ever stopped our members from getting their needs met?”
“Please forgive my bluntness, but I don’t particularly like or trust you, and I have no desire to have you roaming about my home.”
Kragen grinned. “Lucky for us both, neither like nor trust are qualities that bind our group. And as for roaming, I have no desire to leave whatever room you assign me to until we depart in the morning. I’m sure I’ll be busy with far more important things,” he said, gazing at Sabrina before turning his gaze back to the other man. “So I’ll ask again, before walking out of your home never to return, ensuring nothing linked to me and mine is ever extended to you and yours, will you allow us the generosity of your home for the night?”
Sabrina watched as the silent animosity between the two men swelled, but then the older man capitulated, nodding to Kragen. “Very soon there will be a vote coming up on who will succeed Answorth on the procurement and care of the women. I want you to not only back my bid for this position but to lobby for me to win.”
Kragen leveled the other man with a calculating gaze before nodding. “One of the specialty suites will be at my disposal?”
“None of my guests have yet to be assigned rooms. Which one would you prefer?”
Both men turned to look at Sabrina. She couldn’t run. Not yet. Not with at least three of Basir’s guards dressed as servants and three of the men accompanying Kragen just beyond the door. The white minion, Kragen’s assistant, more sleekly dressed
than Kragen himself, had a hardness beyond his wiry body and lifeless eyes. His constant regard promised he wouldn’t hesitate to intervene physically before she could take two wrong steps.
“Might I suggest the Black Room?” Basir said.
Sabrina frowned at him. “The Black… You racist son of a—”
“The Black Room is fitted for those whose spirits need to be broken by the subjugation of the flesh,” Kragen explained to her before turning back to Basir. “And it’s altogether inappropriate for the woman who will be my wife. Let me make this clear. Sabrina is not to be harmed in any way. If she is, there is only one consequence. Death to the offender.”
“Ah, young love. It will soon pass.” Basir turned to Reed. “And you, little viper, what room would you prefer?”
“I won’t need a room,” the white minion said without looking up from his tablet.
“We’ll take the Gold Room. Sabrina has always had a love for gold.”
She hated gold. It was Sam who had liked the flashy metal.
“Decadence is the order of the evening for you,” Basir said. He motioned for the thin servant hovering near the room’s entrance. “Salim, have everything made ready for our guests. Until then perhaps you will join me for tea.”
She hated tea, but Kragen nodded.
Across the room, Kragen’s minion glared at Sabrina. She rubbed her temple with her middle finger, smirking when his face flushed. He could fuck himself six ways to Sunday and she wouldn’t give a shit. Thinking about it, she doubted this man could do anything to her. Kragen wouldn’t allow it.
She prayed Zeus was free and alive, that someone had found him like he and the rest of the Brood had once found her, that someone had saved him. She needed him to live even if she didn’t. She had no illusions. If Kragen succeeded in getting her on his plane in the morning, taking her away with no money, no ID, no means of communication, she’d probably never be found again. Not until she was dead like the others.