He looked her over suspiciously then untied her. He had knotted the ropes so tightly he needed the blade of the knife to tease them apart. He waved the knife at her again. “If you try to escape, you know what will happen.”
Freda nodded. Eviscerate. She knew it. In any case, her limbs were so numb she could hardly move them. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, rubbing the life back into her heavy arms. She couldn’t feel her feet at all.
He stood near the door, the blade held aloft. “Hurry. Don’t take so long.”
Freda put some weight on her right foot and felt her leg cramp. She groaned in agony and saw the knife flash dangerously.
“Silence!”
“It hurts,” she told him. “I need to get the circulation back.”
“Do it quickly.”
Every time was the same. Hurry up. Do it quickly. Don’t take so long. What was the urgency? He was probably just as scared of her as she was of him. But that made him even more dangerous.
The blade flashed again. “Stand up.”
She shifted her weight onto her legs using the bed as support. A jolt of pain shot through her right leg, but she swung it forward, shuffling across the room to the door. He stood aside to let her past and watched as she hobbled across the hallway to the bathroom.
“Be quick,” he told her. “And don’t lock the door, or I’ll break it open. Try to scream and I’ll—”
Freda tuned him out. If she heard the word eviscerate one more time she really would scream. She closed the bathroom door behind her, leaving it unlocked like he’d said. The room was tiny, just a toilet and a wash basin. That was all the freedom she knew those days, and she was grateful for a brief moment of privacy.
Her urine was thick and dark, not dissimilar to the soup she’d just eaten. Dehydration, she supposed, and perhaps the drugs too. She used the toilet quickly but left it unflushed. She might have only a minute to spare, and there was work to do.
The bathroom had no window, and no way to signal to the outside world. The cabinet beneath the sink was bare. A search for useful tools had revealed nothing except soap and toilet paper, and no amount of ingenuity could muster an escape plan with just those. But the mirror on the wall held promise.
The reflection of her hollow face stared back at her and she almost recoiled in horror. Her long black hair had lost its shine. The congealed blood from the head wound was gone, but a scar would remain for the rest of her days, whether they numbered few or many. Her red eyes were ringed with black circles, and her whole face seemed to have sunken somehow. The soup-and-sedative diet had taken pounds off her.
A fierce knocking on the door brought her out of her drug-induced reverie. “Hurry up in there. Be quick!”
Concentrate, Freda. There really isn’t much time.
Four screws fixed the mirror to the wall. She had already succeeded in loosening one, using her fingernail as a screwdriver. She set to work on the second now.
Righty tighty, lefty loosey. That’s what Pépé had taught her, in the days when he’d still been able to tell the difference between left and right. She dug the remnants of her thumbnail into the head of the screw and twisted counter-clockwise. It didn’t budge, just hurt like hell. Thank God for the drugs, or it would be even worse.
The knocking came again. “Why do women take so long in the bathroom?” he demanded. “I’m going to count to ten.”
She dug in harder and twisted with all her strength. The screw turned a quarter of a notch. She tried again, applying pressure with both hands. It turned again, but it still had a long way to go. Patience, Freda, you can do a little more tomorrow. And then again the next day.
“Six, five—”
To hell with patience. She was done with that. There might not even be a tomorrow. The mirror had loosened from the wall a fraction and she slid her little finger under the free corner. She pushed and wriggled it as far as it would go. If she could just lever the mirror off the wall…
“Three, two—”
She flushed the toilet with her free hand and called out. “Okay, I’m done. I just need to wash my hands, now.”
She held her breath until the answer came. “All right, but don’t take long.”
She turned the water and let it gush into the hand basin. The sound would mask any noise she made removing the mirror. She pushed again, this time with her middle finger. The edge of the glass lifted slightly away from the wall. She strained, forcing two slender fingers behind the mirror.
With a sudden release of pressure the glass broke. It shattered with a loud crack, spraying fragments of glass across the small space of the bathroom. A splinter entered Freda’s finger and she watched in fascination as a tear of blood wept from behind her fingernail, matching the chipped remnants of her red nail varnish. She plucked the glass needle out and dropped it into the sink. The churning water there turned red.
Behind her the door burst open in fury and the man rushed in, blade first, hands shaking and eyes everywhere.
Freda grabbed a long shard of glass, wincing as it sliced into her palm and fingers, but she gripped it tightly. The drugs quenched the pain. The man’s knife came at her fast, but she moved faster, despite the fog that filled her head. She plunged the glass into the back of his hand and watched it split the vein that pulsed there so angrily.
The man recoiled with a deafening roar, dropping the knife and snatching his hand away.
She lifted the splinter of glass again, ignoring the pain as it dug into her injured hand, and waved it in his direction. He stepped back, fear on his face. For once, his eyes remained fixed on hers.
“Get back in the bedroom, and close the door behind you,” Freda ordered him. She waved the glass fragment in front of her. “Hurry,” she added, when he hesitated, “or I’ll eviscerate you.” She pronounced the word carefully, just the way he liked it.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Marais Street, New Year’s Eve, 1pm, full moon.
It was nearly time for the Templeton Brothers to change. Mary had already explained the process to the Axeman in detail. Now the time had come. New Year’s Eve. The night of the full moon.
It had been a month since the Brothers had first encountered Mary in Back of Town. So much had changed since that night. The Brothers had been twelve originally. Now they were nine. Toad had died early on, and two others had succumbed to the fever. Mary had forbidden the survivors to mourn the fallen. The weak did not deserve it.
The Axeman had never doubted his own strength. The fever had proved it once again.
Now they were hungry. Hungry for blood.
They would change that night, Mary had promised, when the full moon rose. And then they would hunt, for the first time. The Axeman could still hardly dare to believe it. Becoming an animal, something other than what he was born, had been a childhood fantasy. As an adult, he had learned that it was an impossible dream. Now it was a reality. If this could be true, then anything could.
But while they waited for moonrise, Mary had other matters she wished to discuss with him. In private.
The Axeman nodded as Mary briefed him. They sat in comfortable armchairs in the house on Marais Street where Mary lived with her friends. The domestic setting unsettled the Axeman. It was no place for a rat, and he had never felt comfortable in suburban houses, even though he had grown up in a posh one. Their dullness constrained him. He longed instead for the freedom of the open road, a powerful steam engine throbbing beneath him. Dressed in his leathers, he could imagine himself as a knight of old, an adventurer on a quest. A life without such dreams was not worth living.
Mary’s voice cut through his drifting thoughts. “So I have two close advisers,” she told him. “They’re smart, but perhaps too smart.”
The Axeman listened carefully. She was talking about the friends she shared the house with, Mose and Virginia, both rat-kin like her. The three of them were the first of their kind, bringing the condition from Chicago. The Axeman disliked them already. He had never enjoyed
being a follower.
“Mose is a power-seeker,” Mary continued. “He has a hunger in him that makes him very dangerous. Virginia is loyal, but she’s got the white liver. Do you know what I mean?”
The Axeman grunted in acknowledgement. He had no idea what the white liver was, but he understood Mary’s real problem. It was leadership—leadership and trust.
The Axeman had the same issues with the Pack. Frog was perhaps like the power-seeker, Mose—a strong man with his own agenda. Frog could be slow-witted at times, but once he grasped a situation fully, he acted with brutality and a cold ruthlessness. He was the Axeman’s most valuable ally. But he needed to be watched, to make sure he stayed on plan.
Toad had been like the other one Mary spoke of, far too clever for his own good. He’d read too many books, too. Myths and mumbo-jumbo. Yet, despite his brains, he had no street smarts. He’d always had the knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. That’s what had gotten him killed that night. Mary had been looking for someone to make an example of, to demonstrate her power, and Toad had as good as raised his hand to volunteer.
Mary was still talking, but the Axeman had stopped listening. He had already grasped what he needed to know. The details of her two so-called advisers were unimportant. What mattered was that an opportunity existed for them to be replaced. “I know what you mean,” he told her. “You need a right-hand man. Someone you can trust.”
Mary smiled her cold smile at him. “I need a strong man. A born leader. Can you be that man, Axeman?”
The Axeman freed himself from the constraints of the comfortable chair, straightening himself to his full height and puffing out his chest. “I’ll be your man.”
Mary stood, too. She was tall, but not as tall as him. She pushed her long, slim body against his. “I’d be your woman too, if you were a born man. If you had what a born man can give me.” She grabbed the Axeman’s crotch. “Perhaps tonight, after the change, you will.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Robert could hear voices coming from the front room, a man and a woman deep in conversation. The woman’s voice was Mary’s, but he didn’t recognize the other. He had seen a stranger arrive at the house earlier—a man dressed in all leather, with a clean-shaven face, riding the biggest velocipede Robert had ever seen. Robert had watched him from the upstairs window, but had not dared show his face. The man scared him. He acted like a man, but had the scent of an unclean woman… between his legs.
Mary scared him, too. She didn’t like him, even now that he’d fully changed, and she made it clear every time she encountered him. He didn’t really like her much either, nor Mose with his sneering disdain. Both were cold, selfish people. Only Virginia made him feel comfortable in the house. He kept his distance from the others. He believed they feared him because he was superior. Reptiles at rodents, after all.
He slipped quietly down the stairs, taking care to avoid the step near the bottom which creaked loudly. He had become adept at creeping around the house without drawing attention to himself. Sneaking, Mose called it. But Robert was no sneak. He just preferred to avoid confrontation.
The stranger had an almost overpowering smell—a mix of leather, sweat smoke and vagina. And there was another smell, too. The whole house reeked of lust.
He reached the bottom of the stairs. He tread quietly past the room with the voices. The door opened. The strange man stepped into the hallway, blocking his path. Robert could smell the rat in him, although the man wasn’t fully rat. He hadn’t yet changed. He wasn’t fully a man, either.
The rat-man with the woman’s scent regarded Robert with undisguised hostility. “Is this the one?” he asked.
Mary appeared beside the man. “Robert, this is the Axeman. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Pleased to meet you, um, Axeman,” Robert said. He offered a hand, but the man ignored it.
“Later,” the Axeman said. He gave Mary a kiss on the mouth and turned to leave.
Mary stopped him. “Robert, I want you and the Axeman to be friends. We’re on the same team, after all. Do you think you can do that?”
“Sure,” Robert said. “I want to be friends with everyone.” It was Mary and Mose, and now this Axeman who were being unfriendly. Why couldn’t they just accept him for who he was? He was crocodile-kin, they were rat-kin, but they were both gods over the humans. They should be getting along.
Mary held his gaze with her cold stare. “Tonight’s a very important night. The Axeman and the Templeton Brothers will change for the first time. It will be a turning point for all of us. Tonight, the balance of power begins to shift. Can we count on you, Robert?”
The Axeman had turned to stare at him, too. Robert needed all his courage to withstand the combined force of those two hard gazes. “Of course. We’re all on the same side, right?”
“Right,” Mary said, although he sensed her reluctance to admit it. “This is your chance to prove it.”
The Axeman gave him a firm punch on the arm that might have been friendly if it hadn’t been quite so hard. “Right,” he agreed. “Until tonight, then?”
“Until tonight,” Mary said.
Robert watched the man leave the house without another word. He listened to the harsh roar of the velocipede starting up, and waited until the sound of the engine had faded to nothing. Even after the Axeman had gone, the smell of engine oil, leather and unwashed vulva lingered on.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Bourbon Street, French Quarter, New Year’s Eve, 1:30pm, full moon.
The man crept backward into the bedroom that had been Freda’s prison cell for so long, and closed the door behind him, just as she had ordered. So far, so good. She stumbled down the hallway, legs moving jerkily, ignoring the searing cramp that hobbled her every step. The shard of glass digging into her palm helped to distract her from the pain of walking. The drug-induced haze that filled her body helped too. That, and the thought of what the man would do once he gathered his wits again.
Eviscerate her. Hadn’t he told her enough times?
She was halfway down the hallway when she remembered the key in the bedroom door. The drugs had muddled her head, made her forget. She should go back and turn it. Lock him in. But that would waste time, and time was one thing she didn’t have.
Hurry, his voice nagged in her head. Be quick. Don’t take so long about it. That was damn good advice, and she accepted it with pleasure. Speed was her only hope now. That, and the fragment of broken glass she clutched in her bloody hand. That might be useful, too.
Step left, step right, step left again. Ignore the pain. Every move was a monumental struggle, but each step brought her closer to freedom. It was that simple.
She reached the front door of the mansion, and suddenly it wasn’t that simple anymore. Metal bolts, a chain, a deadlock and even a padlock sealed the door. Freda screamed inside.
Keys, there must be keys.
She turned and looked around the hallway. Nothing. No hooks, no shelves, not even a coat stand. An open doorway led off the hall and she rushed through it as quickly as her half-lame feet could carry her.
The room was a lounge or study of some kind, lined with bookcases and filled with clutter. Cardboard boxes were piled high against the walls, even in front of the bookcases. More boxes teetered on a desk, and the table in the middle of the room held a tower of books.
Keys. Where are the keys?
The sedatives that coursed through her bloodstream blurred her thoughts and made her slow. She turned her head at a snail’s pace, scanning the room from one corner to the other. Still no keys.
Think, Freda. Concentrate.
She stumbled forward to the table and collided with it. The mirror fragment in her right hand bit into her palm. She had almost forgotten it, but there was no forgetting now. Fresh blood dripped from her hand. With her other hand she fumbled to open a box. It was packed with more books. She shoved the box onto the floor, watching the books spill out in crazy patterns.
Whe
re are the keys?
Coats, jackets and an umbrella hung on a coat hanger on the wall by the door. She limped over to it and started rifling through the coat pockets. It didn’t take her long. Her fingers found a bunch of keys dangling from a large key ring and she pulled it out of the pocket as quickly as she could.
She listened at the door and peeped her head cautiously back into the hallway. There was still no sign of the man. She must have totally terrified him. But he wouldn’t stay in the room forever. She hurried to the door and started working through the keys. How many keys did the man own? A crazy number. She couldn’t imagine what locks they opened. Maybe he had dozens of women locked up all over town. The idea was noxious and helped her focus on her task. The ninth key she tried unlocked the padlock.
She pulled the heavy padlock out of the chain it secured and dropped it to the floor with a clunk. In her hurry, her still-numb fingers fumbled the keys and the whole bunch crashed to the floor next to the lock. As she stooped to pick it up, she heard the bedroom door open down the hallway.
She slipped the brass chain off its hook and slid open a bolt. A roar of anger erupted from the man. Freda ignored him and slid open the second bolt. Now only the deadlock remained. But the keys—there were so many keys.
She clutched the fragment of mirror tightly in one hand and started trying keys in the lock. One, two, three… there were just so many. Footsteps and heavy breathing drew closer. The fourth key fit the lock. She was turning it when a hand fell on her shoulder. She spun around in frustration, swinging the sliver of glass upwards. Something flat and heavy knocked it out of her fingers.
The man stood there, eyes wilder than ever, but his bloodied hand held no knife. She wasn’t going to be eviscerated after all. Instead he swung the cane—she knew it was a cane—a second time and Freda’s world exploded in a burst of violet stars.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Gunsmoke Blues Page 22