Take the sheet. Put a new one on, or get her to do that. Get handbag and clothes. Tiptoe out. He hadn’t made much more than thumping noises.
My mouth twitched.
I was going to leave this poor woman to rot in jail, after making her do this?
Yes.
It wasn’t the first time.
Kneeling there, with tears wetting her face, she looked the most innocent of any collectable I’d yet seen. Young and vulnerable.
But it was her or me.
I could get rid of more of them. She couldn’t.
I made her cut me free, bundled up the sheet and the rope, watched her remake the bed with a sheet already bloody from her hands. I wiped my face with both my hands while pins and needles tortured my nerves. I cleaned myself with a wet edge of the sheet I was taking with me.
I shouldn’t touch anything on the way out. Dress and go.
She’d get a lesser sentence surely, due to it being self-defense? The Germans loved their kink. Maybe they’d think her in the wrong?
Maybe. Nothing I could do. With the sheet rammed into a plastic bag, I silently paced to the front door, and I paused at a mirror there.
That was me. The tired woman with the ruffled hair and the blood speck on her forehead.
I put my hand on the glass of the mirror, covering my face, hiding me.
Who was I now? Some evil witch? That I could walk out on that...scene behind me and barely blink?
Who was I?
I cleaned away the palm print and the speck, walked out the door and closed it.
Sometimes the means justified the ends.
I paused, my footfalls muffled by rug. I should’ve drunk some water. So thirsty.
Or was it the other way around? Ends then means?
Either way they died.
The bus I’d scrambled to catch went past two men emerging from a car.
Grimm and Mavros. I ducked my head and refused to think as the engine roared and took me farther away from them.
Grimm and Mavros? How had they found me?
I’d been so many months without seeing, or talking to, another human being who knew me. Who had liked me, loved me. Now though, I wondered why they were here. I’d tried to kill Grimm, left them both bleeding, maybe dying.
That wasn’t right, or nice.
I’d thought the blood today was pretty.
Pretty.
The rage deformed me when I let it take over.
For a moment, just a moment, I wanted someone to hold me, someone to hold onto. Once the rage drained away I was left hollow, empty of anything worthwhile. People made you worth something and all I was doing was killing people, even if they were bad people.
What I did was right yet awful.
Eyes shut, I slumped into the seat and every rock and vibration of the bus seemed to sink me closer to the upholstery. I splayed my hand, pressing my finger and thumb into my temples as if that could make me think better.
I’d lost my identity, my future...I’d lost Grimm.
How sick was I that I wanted to feel his arms around me? I shivered and hugged myself.
The video sprang to life in my head – of Grimm slashing Cherie’s throat while she hung upside down, tied up and helpless.
Fuck him.
I think I moaned then, out loud. I bit my lip and pretended it was nothing.
My stop was three past the one we’d just pulled out of. I’d get off, pack up, go elsewhere, like always.
The last clue had said the man I wanted most might be in India. So be it.
Onward. I’d haunt the airport, find someone similar and susceptible who’d let me borrow their passport and ticket. When I killed the man who’d owned Cherie, I could rest.
When I stepped off the bus, two heavily armed police officers were patrolling the stop. I ignored them, keeping my head down as I walked by. If the law ever caught me, I’d have no excuse for what I’d done. I still couldn’t say a word about mesmers to anyone outside the circle of their influence.
Käthe, the woman whose apartment I was temporarily sharing, knew nothing of mesmers, because she’d never met one, never been taken by one. Worst of all, I couldn’t warn her. It seemed I wasn’t quite the same as a male mesmer.
People bumped past, flowed around me, and none of them recognized me as anything more than another nameless person caught in the machinery of this vast city. The difference between me and them? They could go home and talk to and touch and cry with and take joy from their friends and family.
I could never again be plain Zorina Brown. I was Zorie, a woman who sought revenge for a friend and for herself, and in so doing I had killed my own self.
Chapter 3
Johann
“Toss me a Singha.” I held out my hand and Rudy dutifully fished the bottle of beer from the ice and threw it over. The condensation made it a slippery catch.
I twisted off the top, then dragged the ancient folding chair a little closer to the edge of the concrete-encircled maw and settled it in place. There wasn’t much in the way of safety mechanisms left after years of neglect. No fences, just fallen leaves, branches, miscellaneous rubbish, and straying soil. This missile silo had been doomed from the start – a secret neither the Americans nor the Thais could admit to, or ever would.
“You’re sure this is a day off for the contractors?” Rudy asked this every time. The man was paranoid about interruptions.
“Absolutely.”
The barbed wire fences were maintained when the military contractors decided to come out here. Tuesdays, always Tuesdays. This was a Saturday.
The old base was swathed in jungle with most of the above-ground buildings swamped under vines. Some of the roofs had collapsed.
“Is it eight years now?” He screwed the line leading to the antenna into his controls. The line led to the hole and the antenna hung down ten yards – enough to improve reception immensely. We’d trialed it many times.
“Yep. Last month was the anniversary.”
Eight years since we’d closed down the secondary usage of this site, since research had ceased. Governments...when the divide between right and wrong was fuzzy, you could never tell which way they’d jump.
The lack of unwanted humans made these little celebrations more relaxed. The screams of monkeys and raucous calls of parrots, the rich moist scents that came with such surroundings, all this along with a good beer and good company colored these days for me.
“Love this.” I grunted as I sank into the chair and swatted a mosquito. My joints were getting as rickety as the chair. I leaned forward, eyeing the drone Rudy had set on the two-meter-wide concrete edge then I took a pull from the beer. Sunlight dappled the edge, though we’d found a nice bit of shade for the chairs and equipment.
The red arm of the crane hung out over the edge with the chain dropping from it almost dead center, disappearing from view into the dark hole. Flakes of the red paint had lifted and bare metal showed here and there, but the motor still worked well enough. I paid a man to keep it right for us. The chain jerked to a stop as the crane hit the set limit, the engine idling.
“It’ll work fine, Johann.” Rudy flicked on a switch on the drone controls and the drone rose a foot in the air its engines humming. “Got an hour on this one’s battery. Camera works well too.”
The monitor in front of us showed the flare of light from the jungle and sky. Way too bright for details to show up.
“Once she’s down there –” Rudy began.
“I know,” I murmured. “It’ll look better. I think I can get us an infrared cam though. I saw one online yesterday. That damn light seems to tip him off.”
“Think he’s still alive?”
I chuckled. “You know it. The bastard is tough.”
“When did you last feed him?”
“A week ago. Some monkey meat. Some of them fall down there too. Sick ones. Dumb ones. Kim Phuang brings his carcasses here too.”
“Huh.” Rudy screwed up his face in disgust
. “Something about dumping corpses from his criminal messes makes my stomach turn. I don’t like Wolfie down there having them as well as what we bring.”
I raised my eyebrows, said zero. I didn’t understand his morality. And, we didn’t know for sure Wolfe, or Subject 31 as we used to call him...didn’t know he ate them. In the depths, there’d be plenty of water. The rainfall here was high. There were cisterns below, fed by rainwater, though no longer filtered and sterilized. There must be small critters too, lizards and so on. Though the light seemed to peter out in the depths, plants grew down there in the detritus. Whatever it was he ate, it’d kept him going for years.
The chain dangling from the crane clinked and swayed and, for a few seconds, a human scream punctuated the noise from the wildlife. My balls tightened. It never got old. Not for me.
“He’s alive.”
“Of course. You’re such a doubter, Rudy.” I hunched forward, trying to see details as the drone sped across to the hole then zoomed into the missile pit. Ten stories down, it’d find him. “Get that thing down there. Show’s on.”
If he was too slow, we’d miss Wolfe taking her. He always killed the drone after a while but last time we’d had nearly ten minutes of footage. Dark, mostly blurred, but good.
“See if you can spot those tentacles.”
“Don’t joke.”
Rudy had a theory that Wolfe had grown new appendages and, since we could never quite see him properly, I humored Rudy. Wolfe hid. That we saw what he did to the women we gave him only reinforced my theory that he hadn’t gone as crazy as we’d suspected.
Through the drone’s speakers, we picked up more noises. The screen stabilized, revealing the entrance to the upper story of the underground complex. It was a damn maze. The US forces had abandoned the place. The Thais hadn’t committed to cleaning it up, not once they heard the stories about monsters roaming the facility. People shuffled files, memories faded, and only the maintenance company kept track. And us.
It was our weekend amusement arcade. Wolfe was also the one remaining creature that I could harvest my research from again, if I needed to. He was a living, breathing, infection soup.
If they gave me a lab and a research fund again, would I step up? Maybe not. I was comfy now. I had things to do, interests I hadn’t foreseen back then.
All my other significant test results had been destroyed. The frozen CSF fluid, brain specimens, the cultures. Not that I’d ever been convinced I had cultured anything of significance.
In theory, Wolfe was a source. I didn’t really know what he carried. In the meantime, us voyeurs benefited. One day he might die. I wasn’t sure if I’d care.
Chapter 4
Mavros
“We missed her, again. The closest yet.” I leaned on the metal railing and stared across the river. Like leaking watercolors, lights from the bridge and buildings dribbled into the dark glasslike surface of the Rhine. A frigid wind buffeted us, whining as it swept past.
Grimm grunted and bent over the railing. His gloved fists clenched and unclenched on the top rail. The man was agitated more than I’d seen him in a while, but he stayed quiet.
“The app has never tracked well. I’ve spoken to my IT guy and he’s going to try optimizing it.”
“About fucking time. It’s been four months. I need to find her.” The last was muttered into the night, as if he barely recalled I was beside him.
“Need?” I raised an amused brow, knowing he wouldn’t see. “You’re a mesmer. What you need is sex.”
He swung his head, staring at me. “With some anonymous acquired woman? No.”
Mesmers didn’t get this focused on one woman. It was unnatural. I almost laughed aloud at that thought. “Only Zorie?”
I knew why. Grimm was in love. Love was such a weird notion.
“You know it. We were within yards of her, over there.” He flicked a finger, extending it toward the brilliant jewel-like peaks and spires of the cathedral. The hood of his anorak hid much of his face with night-time shadow.
“This new hack will cut down lag time. We’ve been piggy-backing on the original app all these months.”
“Why the hell did you wait?”
“It might expose our program hack. Then we’ll lose it and her forever. No links at all, just detective work to try to trace her.”
“And you never asked me if you should do this?” He spoke through his hands as he smeared them over his face, then he held out his arms and stared at the backs of his hands.
“You’re not my nanny, Grimm. It’s a risk I wanted to take. She’s going to go down in a screaming heap soon. She can’t keep killing forever and ever without being caught.”
“So. I guess you care for her too,” he mumbled.
Then I noticed what he had – his hands were trembling. Was he losing the mesmer infection again? If he was, he’d likely never get it back again.
“Do you think it’s you-know-what? The infection. It’s been happening for days. Getting worse. Fuck it.”
I shook my head, hunched my shoulders to try to hide deeper in my coat as the wind picked up. “I don’t know.” It’d been so many months that it seemed unlikely but there was no point in saying it. It wasn’t fact.
“Let’s get back to the hotel. My balls are freezing off, as well as my hands. Good to see you again though, Mavros.” He shot me a sidelong glance as we set off walking on the wide pathway beside the tree-lined Prachtstraße. “You’ve never said what’s keeping you doing this. Months and months of chasing her over Europe. You’re financing this and you’ve gone back to your practice a few times, but you always return.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and went on a few more paces. When I didn’t reply he stopped and faced me. “Spit it out. Why?”
Too many questions. I tried to keep my glare at low heat.
None of his business? Untrue.
“I want her too. Of course. You forgot that?”
“What happens when we find her?”
I smiled, and strangely it wasn’t a hostile smile. I was looking forward to the day, even to facing off with Grimm. “Toss you for her. Heads or tails?”
The silence stretched, transformed slowly into some sort of mutual contemplative assessment.
“Good question,” he said, wryly.
I held my tongue on my, almost, automatic riposte: Or both. “When the time comes, we can figure this out.”
“Yeah. We will.” His smile was a little harder than mine. “We will.”
Grimm was a possessive asshole, but so was I.
If he stopped being a mesmer, I’d almost be sorry. Without that, of course, he had a snowball’s chance in Hell of keeping Zorie.
There was something he should’ve done long ago. “Have you ever told her about your stepbrother?”
The jerk in his next stride gave away his anxiety, or surprise, one of those. I was sure I could feel shock radiating from him.
He kept walking. “How’d you find that out?”
My shrug probably wasn’t seen. “Research. I had to dig up all your skeletons when you ended up with us in Greece. So you haven’t told her?”
“No.” More walking. “If you use that to –”
“I wouldn’t. I never play that dirty unless I detest the man. I respect you. I think you respect me, no matter our other problems with each other.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks. So why mention it?”
“Tell her. When we catch her. It’s best to get it done.”
He didn’t answer. This was his Achilles heel and I’d handed the secret over.
I’d only spoken my mind and the truth. He’d see that eventually.
“I won’t tell her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Same as you didn’t tell her about the knife you were sticking in her vagina?”
It was my turn to falter in my step. “You don’t believe me?”
Brown leaves swirled up and spattered us.
He stopped and eyed me, hands still hidden in his pockets. “I
believe you. Just not sure she will forgive you.”
Touché.
Grimm was trying to get one-up on me. He didn’t understand. I’d mentioned his stepbrother to help him. Though even I wasn’t sure why my thoughts had led me there, it’d made me feel good.
I wasn’t chasing Zorie just to take her from Grimm. I needed to atone for making her exact my revenge and for Grimm’s injuries too. Maybe some other things. Things that hung around at the edges of my brain that I couldn’t decipher and pin down.
I must be getting old.
Chapter 5
Zorie
I had to leave soon. Staying in Cologne was bad for my health, but this woman had internet and the urge had taken me. I’d sent her out to wander the shops for a few hours.
Tumblr. My craving, my curse.
It was the best substitute for unencumbered sex I dared to play with. On Tumblr I could find almost anything. Videos, pics, women having it off with one man, two, while tied up, upside down, dressed as a furry bear even. That one had made me laugh, though I guess to each their own.
Forced sex, even when simulated, it grabbed hold of me some nights.
I’d watch, mesmerized. Haha. The word was so apt. Wide-eyed, unblinking. My eyes almost turned to dust.
I had to try. As always, I could never get off. That was the curse. Turned on to the most extreme level but the mesmer thing ensured I couldn’t reach climax.
So here I was again. Hand worn out, fingers numb, clit numb, my panties soaked.
At least I hadn’t descended to the depths and used her vibe.
I turned off her laptop and sat back exhausted.
Time to move on.
I showered, dressed, found all my gear and left, locking her door behind me.
The airport would have a new victim for me, a new ID.
Where would the tickets take me this time? Hopefully, India.
Chapter 6
Zorie
Mumbai had to win a prize as the smelliest city I’d ever been in. India had called me, mainly because the man who’d owned Cherie had lived here, once upon a time. Or so Einar had told me before he’d died. Truly, my search for her owner had been pretty fruitless. Most of what Einar had said was false or distorted somehow. The flash drive I’d plugged into their computer had downloaded some encrypted mishmash that nobody seemed able to unencrypt. Not that I’d had the time or freedom to seek out the best way to unencrypt anything.
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