The whole room was cold, bitterly so, as bad as winter, and I wished for the first time that day that I’d been wearing my gloves and jacket. I felt goosebumps rise on my arms as I approached the center of the room. The catwalk gave way for the circular platform, which looked like it had a segment of metal in the middle that was removable. Exactly what it slid away for, I wasn’t sure, but it was obvious that it was patterned differently than the rest of the platform.
“Sienna?” The man’s voice caught my attention, turning me around. He was behind me, in front of the doors I had just come through, his face barely visible in the dim light of the room. He was wearing a tight shirt, no buttons, and jeans that would have stirred my imagination even if I hadn’t seen him naked the night before.
“James?” I let out a deep breath, all tension. “You found me.”
“It wasn’t that hard,” he said. “There’s only one Omega facility in eastern Wisconsin – or anywhere east until New York.” He walked down the catwalk, approaching slowly, his hands extended. “God, it looks like they tore you up...what happened?”
I brushed a strand of bloodied hair out of my face. “They fired an RPG into the duct I was using to enter the building.” I laughed under my breath, a dark chuckle without any real humor. “I wish I’d stayed in Eau Claire with you. I think it would have been less painful.”
“No kidding.” He was only a few feet away now, easing closer, when he came to a stop. “I don’t mean to be rude, because I know we’re in the middle of kind of a hostile place here, but are you gonna keep pointing your gun at me?”
“For now, yes,” I said, and the playfulness was out of my voice. “Sorry, James. I don’t really know you all that well, do I? You turn up in an Omega base at a convenient moment, and although you may genuinely be here to help me, I can’t rule out the possibility that you’re working with the enemy.”
He flushed but managed to keep his expression under control. “Ouch. So our time together doesn’t count for much, does it?”
I stared at him evenly. “Our time together was less than a cumulative hour. So, no...I don’t entirely trust you. I’m sorry if that offends you. If you turn out to be on the level, I promise I’ll make it up to you in spectacular fashion, but you’re going to have to forgive me if I don’t trust you with my life yet.”
He looked at me in cool amusement, hands at his sides. “You were going to sleep with me not twelve hours ago.”
“I was. I might still, depending on how this turns out.”
“Do I need to point out how screwed up that is?” he asked.
I cocked my head at him. “I’ve yet to touch another human being for more than ten seconds without killing them. Just because I wanted you badly doesn’t mean I unconditionally trust you. My life is on the line here. Respect that, and we can see what Omega is up to together.”
“I’m afraid I can’t respect that,” he said, one of his hands coming to rest on the railing. His face was calm, still, almost a mask compared to the sly, seductive man that had been unable to keep his hands off me for the last two days. “It hurts, Sienna.” He turned his face away, clutching the railing with both hands. “It really hurts.” He looked back at me and I caught a glimmer of something that scared me. “But not as much as it’s going to hurt you.”
The railing snapped off in his hands and he whipped it at me. I fired, missing him twice before the metal rail hit me in the hands, jarring my gun out of them and sending it spiraling away. The end of the rail hit me in the side of the face as I tried to dodge, drawing a cry of pain and causing me to fall down, landing on my back, the metal of the catwalk clattering as I landed.
I felt the pain running down my spine, but I only had a moment to feel it before he was there, grabbing both my arms and forcing me down. He was strong, and his face was twisted with rage. All the handsomeness that I had admired was gone as he put his weight and strength into holding me against the catwalk. He slammed my head into the hard metal and I felt the room spin. “You should have stayed with me in Eau Claire.” He was spitting as he said it, little flecks dropping onto my face.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that I didn’t,” I said as I brought my leg up and hit him on the side of his thigh. I aimed for the groin but he had angled himself so that I couldn’t. He grunted and slapped me, hard. I gasped at him in surprise and bucked my entire body, flexing the muscles in my abdomen, bringing my forehead up fast. I felt it make contact with his nose, and I heard the break, felt warm blood wash down my face as he rolled off, shouting and cursing.
“You bitch!” He was clutching his face, a splatter of red smudging his mouth as I struggled to my feet. He rose, a few feet away, glaring at me, his eyes on fire with rage, a world of difference from when he had been kissing and caressing me only the night before.
“So, you’re with Omega?” I kept my distance; my right shoulder still in agony, my leg hurt unbelievably and was slowing me down. In addition, I had a host of aches and pains that filled my body, and made me want to just lay down and die. “They sent you to sleep with me?”
“No, they sent me to recruit you,” he said, holding his nose with one hand while he watched me. “The sleeping with you would have just been a bonus. I usually don’t get to take my time with a woman, you know. They all die so quickly, and it’s not much fun then. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the rush from the absorption is amazing, it’s like a drug, but when that’s done they just lie there—”
“You’re quite the disgusting pig.” I felt a shudder of revulsion run through every part of me. I wished I could parboil my skin off and replace it with a new set. For all I knew, I could and it would just grow back.
“I preferred the sweet nothings you whispered to me last night,” he said, jumping at me, swiping out with his hand to grab me. I dodged and maintained my footing, just barely, but my leg screamed in pain. He came at me again, grasping with his hands, and I caught one of them and pulled, taking him off balance. He started to fall and dragged me down with him. Had I been in peak condition, I would have been able to avoid it; as it was, I just tried to land with a knee in his belly. He grunted and slapped me again. I felt a sharp pain and blood started to trickle down my lips as I landed on him.
I tensed my guts, trying to protect myself, and tucked my elbows close, using my left to hit him across the face. He took another swipe at me but I fended it off, keeping my elbows locked and my hands up, guarding my face. I hit him in the nose twice, causing him to cry out, then his whole body heaved as he bucked and threw me forward. I tried to catch myself and roll out of it but my head hit the metal of the platform and I saw stars. My body came to a landing, pain racing down my back, and while I was trying to shake the colors out of my vision he got on top of me and punched me in the face twice.
I was stunned and he grabbed hold of me by the front of my blouse, holding me up while he hit me again. I heard the cloth tear and felt my head hit the cold metal, a fog surrounding me. “It could have been really nice between us, Sienna, but you just had to go and screw it all up.” He was pacing around me now, and I saw him raise a leg and then felt a searing pain in my ribs. “Now you’ve exposed our location, you’ve ruined any chance of us having a pleasant evening, and what am I supposed to tell my bosses when I bring you to them? I was supposed to deliver you alive, but honestly, I don’t think that’s gonna happen now.” He kicked me again, and I heard a scream, and it took my sluggish mind a minute to work out that it was my voice doing the screaming.
“I mean, look at this.” He grabbed me by the face and shook me, forcing me to look at him. “You broke my nose. Sure, it’ll heal, but nobody does that. Not to me. Especially not some little teenage bitch that should have been grateful I even took the time to pay attention to her.” He punched me in the face again, but I could barely feel it by this point. “I mean, it would have been good between us. Better than you’d ever have again, that’s for sure. But you had to go and—”
I had steadily inched my left leg up
, resting the bottom of my foot on the ground. I hoped he would just assume I was trying to curl up in the fetal position. I wasn’t, although I was sure that’d feel better than the way I was laying presently. My hand reached down, grasping, trying not to be obvious, while he was directing all his hatred at my face. I pulled the knife Glen Parks had told me to carry as a backup out of its strap. I was grateful, not for the first time in the last few minutes, that James had never gotten me out of my pants, or he would have seen it.
I brought the knife across his face with a blind stroke. I had aimed to land it in his temple, but he moved at the last second and I caught him with a jagged slash just under his left eye and punctured his nose. He let out a cry and screamed as he dropped me, my shoulders hitting the metal catwalk again, but without much pain this time. I rolled to my hands and knees, still clenching the knife. “I had to go and what? Save myself from doing something I’d regret?” I spit blood in his face as I got to my knees. “Thank God. I can’t believe I let you touch me, you soulless piece of filth—”
He yelled and jumped from where he lay to come at me, grabbing my hand that was holding the knife before I could attack him with it. He slammed me down again and I struggled, but I felt him reversing the grip. I poured the last of my strength into it, but he was too strong, too vicious. I stared into his scarred face as blood dripped down from his nose onto my forehead, smelled his breath, the foulness of it, all trace of sweetness gone. I felt the very tip of the knife against my belly, felt the first sting of pain as it pierced me, just a centimeter, as I fought to keep him from killing me.
He wore a satisfied leer, and the darkness and shadows made him look demonic. “You could have just had me inside—”
Something hit James in the side of the head with devastating force and he flopped off, unconscious. I was breathing deep, panting, and a gloved hand reached down, offering me help. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Charlie said, looking at the little bit of blood running down my belly where he’d stabbed me. “I’ve been with him; you’re not missing anything.”
Chapter 20
“Charlie,” I said, breathing the word like it was the sweetest thing I’d ever said. She helped pull me to my feet. “Please tell me you’re not with Omega too.”
She laughed. “I’m not with Omega. I’m not with anybody.”
I found the strength and balance to stand on my own, and she let me go. She was wearing a man’s jacket, which she had kept between us while she was helping me up. I saw a watch on her wrist, a shining, gold one that looked like it was at least a couple sizes too big. As I stared closer at it, I realized it was a man’s watch. She caught me looking and glanced down. “Oh, yeah, this? From that guy in the bar last night.”
“Oh?” I didn’t really care. My head was still spinning. “That was nice of him.” I looked around and saw a small control panel a few feet away, built into the railing, almost nondescript. “I thought you were gonna stay in Eau Claire?”
She shrugged. “I did, until I got bored. Then I just looked you up through your phone’s GPS and headed this way. Things got a little dicey when I found your flamed-out vehicle, but the guards were all pretty distracted by something going on over on the other side of the building. Sounded like a tornado or something.”
I hobbled to the nearest railing and leaned against it. “Sounds like Reed. How long ago was that?”
She shrugged again, uncaring. “I dunno. Ten minutes? I came in through one of the unguarded doors while it was going down. Looked around the building until I stumbled in here. Looks like my timing was good. What are you doing here?”
I wondered how long I had been down here. I looked at the panel again, sliding down the railing toward it. “Omega attacked the Directorate. We came to find out what they were hiding here.”
“Oh?” She made her way over to me, leaving James unmoving in a pile on the platform. “So what is it?”
“Something called Andromeda.”
“Huh,” she said, disinterested, as she looked over the edge of the platform. “Sounds boring. And old.”
“I don’t know what it is, honestly.” I stared down at the panel, trying to make sense of it. There was only one button lit up, and it was an option to unlock something, a thought which made me uneasy. I took a deep breath and thought it over. I was here to find out what they were doing, but what if it was a monster of some sort? Between Wolfe, Henderschott and James, Omega certainly loved their monsters. I stared at the unlock button until a finger came down from behind me and pushed it.
I turned and Charlie was there, smiling at me, impish. “No guts, no glory, kiddo.”
A slight rumble ran through the room and lights came on, casting it in blue and orange light. There were four different catwalk bridges that led to the central platform we were standing on. Below us, there had to be at least a hundred chemical tanks surrounding an oversized apparatus that was circular, and lined up perfectly so that something could be raised from the top of it into the center circle of the platform.
The control panel lit up, giving me a host of options. I stared at it, trying to take it all in. Charlie peered over my shoulder, her breath heavy and kinda sour. “What’s this one do?” She pushed a big red button, and I heard a rumbling from below us as machinery sprang to life. The circular grate in the middle of our platform squeaked and retracted to the side, leaving a hole in the middle of the floor.
“Stop,” I said.
“Soooo cautious,” she said. “Boring, boring, boring. You need a little metal in your life, kid, a little action.”
I felt the result of all the action I’d experienced today in my bones, in the pains, the aches and blood that still ran freely from different places on my anatomy. “Actually, I could do with a little less action at this point.”
“Boooring,” she said again. “Why must all you people lead such mundane little lives? I thought maybe you were different than the rest. I thought you were like me.”
“Umm.” I tried to focus on the panel, tuning out her prattle, ignoring the fact that she sounded almost offended. “I don’t know what to tell you. I have a job to do, and it’s pretty serious—”
She grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, causing my head to wobble, as she slammed my back against the railing. “Hey, kid! Wake the hell up!” She slapped me for good measure, not hard, but enough that I felt it and it pissed me off. I stared back at her, at the intensity in her eyes as she glared at me. “We’re at the top of the food chain, darling. Ain’t nobody can stop us: not Omega, not the Directorate, nobody. Women want to look like us and men want to grind up against us. You can have anything you want, take what you want, and nobody can stop you, and you’re killing time with these white hat Directorate wankers.” She let out a sigh of disgust. “Stop wasting your time doing all this crap when you could be having fun.”
She slackened her grip on me and started to back off, but I grasped the watch on her wrist and held it tight in front of her. “Ow! What are you doing?”
“What happened to the man who had this on last night?” I twisted her arm to put it right in front of her face. “Where is he now?”
“Who cares?” She said, ripping it out of my grasp. “They’re all interchangeable, men. They only last a very short time,” she got a wicked grin that I found damned unsettling, “so you have to use them wisely – and I do mean use. I keep looking for a man who can last longer, but even he couldn’t—” She waved at James. “Though obviously for different reasons, in his case.”
I felt a pit of disgust in my stomach. “You’re like...you’re a serial killer.”
“You’re so immature.” She made a noise of disgust, waving her hand as though she were dismissing me. “We’re succubi, Sienna; draining men’s souls is what we do. They’re there for us; it’s why we have the thrall, the dreamwalking, all of it. The world of men is our cup: we’re supposed to drink it, and you’re afraid to even take a sip.” Her face twisted into a humorless smile. “Just like your mom.�
� Her dark hair fell around her shoulders, framing her face in a different light than I’d seen before; she looked almost cronelike, emaciated. “Well, I’ll drink enough for all three of us, I don’t care. I’m not scared. I’m ready for all of it.”
I leaned on the railing for support, trying to edge away from her. “Why?”
“You know. Haven’t you ever felt the rush?” She looked at me in disbelief. “I know you’ve taken souls; haven’t you felt it? When you take them, how they scream and rattle in your head at first, how it spins you around? It’s the greatest high you’ll ever feel, trust me, way better than anything else. I mean, I know it’s tough the first few times, like losing your virginity, but it gets so good, so powerful, it feels so right.” She let out a little sigh and had her eyes closed. “You have no idea.” Her eyes opened and she focused on me.
“I don’t want to have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m not a murderer.”
“Don’t play games with me,” Charlie said, a smile on her lips. “I know you’ve killed.”
“Twice,” I said. “Once to save my own life with Wolfe and once to save the city of Minneapolis from Gavrikov.”
“Oh, right.” She pirouetted and sent me a mischievous glance. “Why would you bother doing a thing like that?”
“Because I owed them,” I said, trying to catch my breath and push the pain away. “Because it was the right thing to do. I don’t kill in cold blood. I might not even have killed Wolfe, but I was so afraid of him I couldn’t let him go.”
The Girl in the Box 03 - Soulless Page 15