“There. Done.” He beamed at me and at Jazmine on the bed. She’d sat there the whole time, stiff and pale of face.
When they all left and I was freed via the hatch, I went and sat beside her.
This was going to be bad. I waited.
“Why?” She shook her head, tears in her voice. “Why? He was alive! I mean, I know Gregor said...all that.” She waved her hand vaguely, while choking up so that I could barely understand what she said. “But why? It was too quick. You could’ve talked! You could. How could you kill a boy like that?” She glanced at me then away. Afraid I’d see how blotchy red her face was? If she didn’t burst into tears soon she’d crack.
Finally she stopped talking. I took her hand and she wrenched it away. Her fingers were cold and trembling. Emotional shock – it wouldn’t kill her but I wasn’t going to just leave her to suffer.
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you even feel anything? God.” She put her hand to her mouth and swallowed. “I think I might throw up.”
I couldn’t answer that. Not easily.
“Well?”
What I’d felt for a few seconds after his death, I’d locked it away. Opening myself up to feeling grief and remorse wasn’t worth the fallout. Her, I felt for. Her distress was eating at me.
“I do.” Truth.
“If you’d just waited. I’m too important to this client for Gregor to kill, yet. He wasn’t going to do it.” She nodded to herself. “He wasn’t.”
Could she be right? I didn’t think so. “Gregor isn’t a man who issues empty threats. This wasn’t something small. He said he’d skin you alive.” Imagining her being sliced up by Gregor sickened me. I reached across her back and pulled her close. Fuck her pushing me away. She needed a hug. I ignored how she stiffened.
“Listen to me. Look at me.”
Though she hesitated before she turned to meet my eyes, she obeyed. Good.
“Someone has to be strong here. It’s me. I can’t afford to be weak. I can’t afford to think I was wrong. I won’t. Gregor is one of the coldest, most sadistic killers I’ve ever seen.”
“One of?” She huffed.
I ran through my reasons. It hadn’t been fear for myself. Yeah, she was right in one respect. I might’ve taken longer to kill the boy if she hadn’t been in the room, though I was sure it would still have come to that. It was she who’d pushed my hand. Telling her that would be cruel.
I guess this was evidence I cared for her more than was healthy for a man who wanted to survive. Funny really. I searched within, trying to figure myself out. It wasn’t likely to be love. It was the same intense feeling I’d get if I saw a dog shivering by the roadside.
With the hand I’d wrapped around her shoulders, I touched her neck, marveling at her softness.
The light bulb came on. Who was I kidding? It was far more than what I’d feel for an abandoned pet. When it came to women, I was a fool. I sighed, wanting to kiss the top of her head but sure it was too early.
“Listen, meisie, I’m not ever going to risk you dying because I hesitated at the wrong time.”
“Fuck.” She ducked her head into her open hands. “I’m still shaking. Don’t know if I’ll ever stop.”
“You will. It will pass. Lie down with me for a while. Please.”
She let me pull her over so we could lie together on the bed and slowly the tension ebbed from her muscles and her shaking did stop. I played with her cold fingers until they warmed, stroked the curls of hair at her nape.
“I won’t ever compromise on keeping you safe.”
Her silence stretched awhile. “I don’t know if I will ever get over what you did.”
My stomach seemed full of cement. She hated me right now, or at least the part of me that had killed the boy. Though ever, like never, was a silly word. People could get over a shitload more than they gave themselves credit for, if they tried.
“Killing a boy in front of me, a boy who was helping us, will never seem right. Even if there is some horrible logic to it.”
There was the never word too. How did I fix this? A boy? He was a guard first of all and a young man, an adult. She was ignoring that. A criminal who’d likely maimed a few in his rise to becoming a guard here. That he’d baulked at women being tortured, or men being skinned, was a point in his favor but he was no angel.
“You’d have died, if I’d done anything else.”
This time she remained silent.
A few times during the night I felt her tug to get loose but I woke and held her to me.
Nevertheless, when I woke at the approach of boots outside the door, she was huddled in the corner of the room, her head hung low, as if she tried to sleep sitting up.
“C’mon!” yelled a guard. “Gregor wants you chained up again, Pieter. To the door, if you please, sir.” He laughed at his aping of Gregor’s voice.
Kak. Jazmine was awake too and staring at me.
I went to the door, turned, and shoved my wrists at the hatch. Once I was manacled, Gregor himself entered with three of his guards. Overkill, as always, but I guess being sure of men like me was how he stayed alive. It wouldn’t help him in the end. I would kill this man one day, unless he killed me first.
“Good morning, you two!” His booming voice brought Jazmine to her feet, wary.
She was right. The more cheerful Gregor was, the nastier his surprises. From the neatness of his scalp, he’d recently shaved it. His blue eyes fastened on me while his men added more leather to my bonds and shook out the bag they used on my head.
Fok. What was up?
“You are wondering, sir? Hmm. Today is Saturday!” He swept his arm about to include Jazmine. “Tomorrow the client arrives for a show. And, after I told them of your little ruckus last night, they were most happy to try something I suggested. You.” He prodded my chest with his leather-gripped cane. “Are going to do something special. Hmm?”
What the fuck did special mean? If there was one man who could scare me, if I relaxed an inch, it was this one. The client probably just nodded a yes to all his ideas.
Though she was trying to look calm, I could see the fright in Jazmine’s eyes. They were taking me away from her so she’d be terrified when next she saw me. I hadn’t even managed to explain the killing to her yet.
I dared a comment to her. “Don’t worry.”
“The bag, please.” Gregor whacked his cane across my chest. “Quiet, Pieter, or I shall do something to her now.”
I seethed inside but I smiled as they bagged me again.
This bastard deserved death like no one else. I’d never before spent so much time imagining so many ways to kill another human.
Chapter 16
It was Sunday.
They didn’t bring me breakfast, though the cleaning lady came in and quietly left a paper plate with a pile of bandages, gauze swabs and iodine over against the wall. I didn’t go closer but I thought I glimpsed a needle and thread too. She’d smiled sadly before leaving.
No breakfast? To make me hungry? Or were they afraid I’d throw up when they did whatever they were going to do to me?
The boy’s death never left me, but it receded before this new threat.
My headache vied with the nausea and the trembles. I was a big ball of cheerful healthiness.
Obviously, the bandages weren’t needed, yet. They were to make me nervous. Despite resolving not to look at it, the plate drew my eye. Gregor was capable of anything, both deliberately scaring me for no reason, and getting Pieter to do something that would hurt me terribly.
What was it to be? Iodine could mean wounds. Cutting. Piercing.
If they had brought food I doubt I’d have eaten it. Such a small innocuous pile of things. Most people carried all that in their medicine cabinet.
If I’d had paper and pen, a book to read, or a laptop, I’d have diverted myself, and fuck me how likely was that? I craved reading and writing. The other thing I craved was him. Pitiful.
I still hadn’t wr
apped my head around the fact that he’d killed, exterminated, another human being so easily. It wasn’t simply the quickness or the efficiency; they were expected considering his training. It was the lack of effect on him. He’d done it, dusted his hands, and moved on. Mister Cold-blooded Robot-killer.
Cliché alert.
I sighed.
I still wanted him here so I could wrap my arms around him. So abnormal for me – I’d never been one for excessive hugs and had never even kept a teddy bear when I was a kid. Pieter was my teddy bear cross killer. A little hard to accommodate those two together.
When you make yourself not look at something, the mind has a way of seeing it. The plate pulsed like some black creature hiding in a corner. I could’ve pointed to it without turning around.
Don’t look.
My stomach growled but I ignored it. I smoothed out the sheets, plonked myself down on the bed, and covered my face with my hands. Imagine you’re about to write an article on all that has happened, plan that out, Jaz.
It worked. I sank into the mind space where words were my playthings, my slaves, my pieces of a big literary jigsaw. Damn this would make an amazing story, if only I could survive. Pulitzer Prize, here I come.
There was always hope.
When the key turned in my door, my heart flip-flopped and I nearly swallowed my tongue.
Being led, blind, along the corridors, off to become Gregor’s screaming plaything had never been so terrifying. Every time I went there it was worse.
The opening door into the Room, the echoes of their boots and pat pat pat of my bare feet on the cool concrete, the tinkle of the chains and the laughter of the men – these were as familiar to me as the decoration of a Christmas tree in that season of joy.
Chapter 17
A splash of water across my floor reminded me of playing noughts and crosses with her. The flutter of bird wings up high, outside my pillbox-style slit window, reminded me of looking up at her window while lying on her bed, with my arm under her shoulders. When I sat and regarded my open hands, I recalled spanking her, holding her throat, and the wet warm lick of her tongue on my skin.
I’d doomed myself in her eyes. I’d come to see that within a few hours. Maybe I could still make her understand. I’d try.
For a man trying to become better than I was, I was good at fucking up. What to me had seemed the only solution had made her see me as evil. If I’d had time to think more... My naive librarian angel had seen me murder someone. Even if it was a kill or be killed situation, what else would she be but shocked?
I paced up and down then saw sense and went through an exercise routine. Chin-ups on the window edge. Star jumps. Push-ups. All the while, I thought through the routine in this House, looking for flaws. The place was built so soundly I’d need locksmith skills, explosives, or some free time with a jackhammer to break down the walls or door. Concrete and steel, that was it.
There was only one weakness I could see so far – the cleaning lady. She never spoke to me, hadn’t answered my few trial questions, but this last time, after the boy’s death, she’d given me this determined look, with her lips pressed together. There’d been a nod. A nod could mean anything, but in that second, I’d seen sympathy. Had she perhaps known the guard?
If that was so, possibilities opened up.
I’d keep trying. I couldn’t talk to her anyway. My room would be bugged but maybe I could pass a note? I just had to figure out how to do it secretly.
Sometime late morning, they came for me, locked me up, bagged me, and marched me away.
If only I was Bruce Lee and able to defeat armed men with my kung fu skills while blind and restrained. I’d loved those old movies but I knew when not to push, when to cooperate. Rebelling might get me injured and I needed to be fit.
The guard had been stupid to take a job here, and stupid to blurt out his plans to us like he had. When a cop, I’d reserved my sympathy for the victims, not the criminals. Always.
It occurred to me that I’d not have thought much of myself for falling into my current predicament. I’d have shrugged, muttered poes and moved on. Those who live by the gun die by the gun. Only in Gregor’s case, it was often the knife.
When they took off my bag in the Room, I saw that today the knife wasn’t being featured. Under the center lights, they had a roll of single-stranded barbed wire, pliers, and a pair of heavy gloves.
And...
I swallowed.
Jazmine, naked, hands tied above her head to the chains, with her head still bagged. Seeing her like that always shot a jolt of lust into me.
I’d have bet a million dollars they hadn’t told her what was at her feet. They wanted me to show her the surprise. My mouth was dry and my hands were sweating as the last guard unlocked them.
Be good, man. Be good.
“She’s waiting for you,” he said, chuckling. “Give us a fucking good show, man. I wanked ten times a night all week after the last show.”
Driving my fist through his chest would have to wait, but I made a rare exception to my rule of disengagement and mouthed you bastard in the direction of the dark window.
Gregor started up. “Go to her and take off the bag, please, Pieter. We want her to see what is coming.”
Her feet shifted on the floor, toes clenching. As I approached, her head swung my way and I could hear rasping breaths. Getting enough oxygen in those bags was often dicey.
Looking wasn’t a crime if she didn’t know, surely?
The peekaboo secrets of her sex where the beginning of her slit showed and the cute round targets of her nipples were blatant advertisements of her femaleness. I lingered, willing my cock to behave.
She was the definition of alluring.
“It’s me, Jazmine. Ignore him. Just listen to me. What you’ll see isn’t good, but it’s not that bad either. Think of it as creative wrapping. ” I whispered the last. “I will be as gentle as I can.”
Their no talking rules may or may not have been in effect. I didn’t care.
Then I undid the neck cord and took off the bag. Her gasp and facial flinch made me want to hug her. Fuck no. I needed to make this look worse than it was, not better.
“Is that barbed wire?” Her question was so quiet I had to strain to hear it.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” She sucked in her bottom lip and looked to me.
“Keep watching me. Don’t look down.”
The speaker clicked on. “You are going to wrap the little miss here in the wire. It should be most interesting when you make her orgasm. Hmm? All those nasty fucking sharp wires. Digging in? Hmm?”
Where was a rocket-propelled grenade when you needed one?
“Answer me, Pieter.”
I nodded slowly, while I looked at her small feet and the remnants of red toenail polish. That reminder of normality disturbed me. “Yes. It will be interesting.”
Then I found a blindfold and fastened it over her eyes.
“Why’d you do that,” she asked.
“I think it’ll be better for you if you can’t see the wire.”
Her breasts rose and fell. The overhead lighting painted her nipples glossy and luscious and shone on the upper slopes of her breasts and her long thighs. I resisted touching. Pretend she’s made of thorns.
“Answer me this,” she added quietly, her voice wobbling. “Are you afraid I’ll see you enjoying this? Have you got a hard-on, Pieter?”
You clever girl.
I said nothing, afraid the thickness in my throat would mess up my words. She’d hear my excitement. I couldn’t afford that. I’d lose her.
“Shhh.” I put my palm over her mouth. If she continued, I’d gag her.
I hadn’t expected my reaction to be this extreme. It didn’t matter. I’d be careful, like I’d told her. This was happening whether I enjoyed it or not.
How could I not? She was female and I was a sadist given carte blanche with a roll of barbed wire and her naked body.
But with
the roll of wire at my feet, glinting like the silver angel on her wrist, with the gloves in one hand, and the heavy pliers in the other, I made myself stop and think. What was tumbling around in my head was making me feel like a schizoid evil clown.
I’d vowed to help her, not feast off her defilement.
I sauntered over to pretend I needed something at the rack of implements, but all I was doing was staring at the wall. Dirty red-brown rust marks meandered across the cracks.
Victim. She’s a victim. I care for those, remember? I’d never have done anything like this to Elenor, or not and enjoyed it. Why was this different?
It shouldn’t be. Where had my resolution to be good gone?
Perhaps because, deep down, I’d convinced myself that I could make her like this?
Yay for me, and what a good convenient excuse. I’d beat the most hard-core alcoholic at this game – how to get your fix without breaking the rules.
I didn’t need to be a switched-on sadist to make this particular scene work. They’d left me an electric vibe to make her come. The white lead trailed across the floor to where it lay near her feet. Wrapping her in wire wasn’t a delicate composition of pain and pleasure like before. This was construction work.
Pretend you’re wrapping a cake in wire. Where was the pleasure in that?
If I got off on this, I’d be one step closer to the gutter.
“Are you doing fine, Pieter?” Even through the crackles I could hear Gregor’s amusement. “We are getting just a little bored here.”
I clenched my hand on the pliers then shuffled on the gloves. I turned and made for the wire.
“Good man!”
Fok jou.
I picked up the coil and played with the wire – bent it, got the feel of it and its springiness, tested the points on my skin. At least it seemed super clean. I looked her over, ambling in a circle while trailing my fingertips at her waist.
Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) Page 11