Unearthed, p.29
Unearthed, page 29
part #4 of Southern Watch Series
“Possibly,” Bardsley said. “I have people on it. They’re combing the entire web for other users named DonkeyHotay69, deriving any personal details they can from those accounts, and combining it all together to determine the real identity of the user. So far they’ve narrowed it down to Calhoun County, Tennessee. There are some other tricks they’re using, I’m told, that should bear fruit soon—calling the ISP—”
“Okay, I’m bored again,” Kitty said, feeling the sense of rising irritation that told her that her essence was restless. “Find out who this person is so we can pay them a visit. Now if you’ll excuse me, my earlier meeting has left me needing to blow off some steam.” She pointed down to herself. “And not in the Gwyneth Paltrow sort of way. Same ballpark, different sport.” She started toward the door and shot a look at Rousseau. “Don’t disturb me unless you have a location on the next piece.” And she left, one purpose alone in her mind—to break the cowboy once and for all.
*
“Sheriff Reeve?” Lex Deivrel’s much-loathed voice rang out in Reeve’s empty office, as disheartening as opening a beer bottle to find out on your first swig it had gone skunky. He was facing away from the door, staring out the window at his little slice of an unmowed field. He knew what was coming, like the five o’clock train bearing down on him, but he couldn’t even jump out of the way. Mentally, he composed himself, ran a sweaty hand over his face and felt the perspiration wipe off on his lip. His hand was pungent, the oil from his pistol still there from where he’d handled it during the arrest earlier. Then he turned to face the devil herself, plastering a smile across his face that was as fake as a starlet’s tits.
“What can I do for you, counselor?” That wasn’t the c-word he had in mind for her, but it was the one he could get away with.
“You can turn my client loose,” Deivrel said, standing there with her smart suit, and her sharp leather briefcase. She wasn’t even smiling in triumph. Instead, she had a serious look, laced with menace. “You’ve got squat on him, and we both know it. Stop the charade and let him out.”
“I’ve got a few charges I could make stick,” Reeve said.
“This is pin-the-tail on the donkey, and you’re blindfolded and facing in the wrong direction,” she said, shaking her head at him. “You’ve got nothing but your dick in your hand.”
Casey Meacham’s words came back to him. “Like that’s a bad thing,” Reeve said.
“Let him go,” Deivrel said, not reacting to his comment. She wasn’t being half as malicious as usual. “You’ve already exposed yourself to a big fat lawsuit. Don’t make it worse for yourself.”
“Why would you say that?” Reeve asked, finding a sudden need to stand. “If you’re his lawyer, isn’t it better for you if I keep digging myself a bigger hole?”
“If my client were in a mood to sue, yes,” Deivrel said. She crossed her body with her arms and sighed, deep, then spoke in a commiserating tone. “For some reason, though, he just wants to get out. Doesn’t seem to care about making enough money off of you idiots to live the rest of his life in comfort.”
For Reeve, that hinted at one thing—Arch was up to his eyeballs in something that didn’t bear scrutiny. It wouldn’t do to suggest such a thing to Deivrel, though, not if he wanted to keep pursuing it. “Really?” he asked instead. “That’s interesting.” It was.
“It’s actually fairly boring,” Deivrel said, and he had no doubt she was telling the truth as she saw it. “I do so enjoy sticking it to you overzealous law-enforcement types when you step out of line.”
“But if someone ever breaks into your house, you’ll dial 911 and hope we show up lickety-split, right?” Reeve asked.
“Hell no,” Deivrel said, looking at him like he was an idiot. “I’ve pissed off the Chattanooga cops with enough lawsuits that I wouldn’t count on them showing up if I phoned in stating that my house had been stormed by terrorists looking to set off a bioweapon. The 911 response time would be measured in decades; I find a .44 responds considerably faster.”
Reeve’s eyebrows crept up a little in surprise. “Is that so?”
She smiled a little. “I’m pretty good with it, too.” The smile left as quickly as it appeared. “You gonna let him go or not?”
Reeve turned his head, looked out the window again. The weed-filled field was highlighted under a nearby lamp, showing a dim assortment of utter mess, scraggly green stalks growing in all directions. That was the problem with weeds; you let one grow and pretty soon it took over a field when you weren’t watching. Corruption, too, Reeve figured. That was the point of the law, after all. They were supposed to keep these things in check.
“I don’t want to let him go,” Reeve said quietly.
“You don’t have much choice,” Deivrel said. “You have nothing of substance to hold him on. Misdemeanors at best. If you push me, I will get in front of a judge first thing tomorrow and cut your legs out from underneath you like you’re wheat and I’m a scythe.”
“They use tractors to harvest wheat these days,” Reeve said, all energy gone from him. “But your point is made.” He drew a deep, difficult breath. “All right. I’ll let him run for now. But you know I’m not letting this go.”
“Don’t push it, Reeve,” Deivrel said, shaking her head. “A harassment lawsuit in this case would not play well for you, and you got enough problems right now without adding that to the pile.” She turned and left, and Reeve was left staring back at the field, wondering if he’d just let another weed grow.
*
Hendricks lay flat on his back, the chains keeping him anchored to the floor. He could see that they’d been staked into the ground, but there was zero give there. They might as well have been planted in concrete for all they moved when he struggled against them. She’d been gone for some time, that fucking cunt. That was the only way he could think of her now, now that she’d shoved her nasty beaver right in his face. Hendricks had gone down on women a fair few times in his life, and had always enjoyed it in the past. He wasn’t sure he’d ever think about it in quite the same way again, though, after this. The whole thing was different because she was a demon. The smell was repulsive, unlike anything he’d ever caught a whiff of before. It was like a cross between a rotting corpse, curdled milk, and eggs that had been left in the sun for a good week. It felt like he could still smell it, even though she’d been out of the shed for quite some time.
The pain in his foot alternated between dull and severe, a steady, beating reminder that this bitch was aiming to cut him up. He knew it was coming, knew that if she kept her grubby, stinking hands on him that it was going to be a slow death. He didn’t hold much hope that Arch and the crew were going to find him in time, either. That was basically the only hope, too, that they would come in like cavalry, that they’d thunder through the door and toss her on the floor before them, Duncan in the vanguard with his baton, ready to spear her.
That was just idle wishing to hold off the pain, though, and he knew it.
He heard the footsteps before the door opened, and it was like an electrical current ran down his muscles, like he was on patrol and someone had opened up with an AK-47. Instant reaction, and it wasn’t good. His ass puckered tight, like she’d threatened to violate it. Actually, that was maybe the only thing she hadn’t threatened yet.
“What a day,” she said as she came in, pausing just inside the door. There was a nail with a coat hanger on it just inside, and she paused there, kicking off her shoes and unfastening her pants. “You have no idea what I’ve got going on right now. Just a whole heap of crap to deal with, idiots to order around, unpleasant visitors from days of yore.” She grimaced visibly. “Ambitions run amok, power-infighting among demons, worries about who to trust—no one, by the way, that’s the safe answer.” She folded her pants delicately on the hangar, then slipped out of the white granny-panties that she wore underneath and strung them carelessly around the hook before hanging the whole thing back up. She kept her blouse on, but he could see the veins appearing on her legs, that odd shade of glowing purple. Her eyes were a more or less normal color at the moment, like a faint brown. That would change soon, he knew.
“I like that you’re keeping your mouth shut,” she said as she stepped astride him again, giving him a straight up view to her crotch and everything above. Hendricks felt the rote desire to vomit, to just turn his head sideways and chuck acidic bile, to let himself spasm and turn the dirt wet, to let the gawdawful smell of his stomach contents fill the room, cover up the sulfur that was permeating the air even now, fresher than it had been a minute ago when it had only been him in the room. “If I had to listen to your stupid voice talking about stupid human feelings right now, I think I’d just … I don’t know.” The knife appeared in her hand, displayed like a gift for him, something she was so happy to hand over. She eased down and planted her snatch right on his bare sternum. She didn’t drop as hard as she could have, but she still knocked the air out of him. “Did you miss me while I was gone?”
“I missed my toes while you were gone,” he said, when he caught his breath again. He held back the gag reflex at the putrid scent in the air.
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re ever gonna walk right again,” she said and brought the knife down, poking him right in the chest with it. He recoiled by instinct from the touch of the point, even though it was only a little prick, nothing in comparison to the sawing sensation of the knife going through toe bones.
“I think that’s the least of my worries at this point,” Hendricks said.
“True, true,” she said, nodding along. “Have you given any more consideration to my offer?”
“I still stand by my previous position and say, ‘fuck you.’”
“I hate the word ‘fuck’ as a concept,” she said, seemingly no more irritated than if he’d just told her he wanted a cup of coffee, black. “See, fucking is like … well, how to describe it? It’s like someone’s getting something over on you. When someone screws you over, you say you ‘got fucked,’ right? It’s a power thing. Those with power do the fucking, those without it get fucked. Same old story.
“But,” she went on, “I always want the power. So, if I were of a mind to, I could just plow a finger up your ass, really show you who has it here, yes?” She brandished a hand, three fingers up like a salute of some sort. “But that doesn’t really do anything for me. I mean, I guess it would be fun watching you squirm, debasing your very sense of self and identity, tearing up that hetero concept you probably cling to like it’s the last life raft in a tsunami, but it’s not nearly as fun as say … slowly sawing off your penis.” She grinned and wagged the knife. “That’s much more emasculating. I could do both, but I can only get so excited about ramming my hands into your defecatory organs versus tearing away from you something you hold so very, very dear.
“Forcing you to eat my pussy, though?” At this she smiled. “It is the most emasculating reversal, and it’s got something for everyone. You feel like shit, like I’ve put a saddle on you, made you a domesticated donkey that will carry me anywhere I want you to, and I get to experience the joyful sensation of orgasm that echoes through my essence in ways you flesh baggers can’t possibly imagine. It’s win-win—I break you and I get fun times, all in one magical licking of the clit package.” She placed a hand over his throat, an almost gentle motion, like she was going to massage his trachea for him. “What do you think of that?”
“Everyone’s got their vices,” Hendricks said, feeling the need to ram his head against the soft dirt, wishing it was concrete. Then at least he could have battered himself unconscious, or to brain damage, whichever came first.
“Yes,” she agreed and then started to squeeze his throat, “and mine’s where I keep the balls of the men who piss me off. Now … are you gonna lick or do I have to show you what it feels like when I really start applying pressure to sensitive areas?”
Hendricks felt the hard push on his throat, started to feel a little lightheaded. She eased up on him, inching her crotch closer to his face. If he could have gotten a breath, he might have gagged now for more than one reason. As it was, he writhed, his vision starting to spot. She wasn’t just choking him, she was closing off the blood flow to his brain. Not for the first time since he’d entered this predicament, Hendricks found himself wishing he’d listened to Duncan and stuck with him and Alison instead of charging in after this bitch because of …
Renee …
The pressure slackened, and her face came back into view after being washed out, blurry. He could see the clear lines of her face, the pronounced blackness of her nostrils flared. From below she looked even more demonic than when he’d looked into her eyes at their first meeting. She’d almost looked normal there; everything he’d seen of her in the shed, from the way she moved to the way she talked about what she’d do to him, all of it lacked any sense of humanity. She was just a shell with something dark inside, some … thing, not some person.
He felt his lower lip quiver, his breath come back in raggedly, and he pondered his future. It wouldn’t end, not until he was carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and in his lightheadedness part of him ultimately welcomed that fate. Losing himself a piece at a time, a section of flesh and bone every few minutes until he was no more, that was what was coming.
But what was he, really? Flesh, bone, tissue, brains, some other assorted stuff. A mind that was certain to end when she either cut too deep or he ceased to be useful in generating pleasure for her. As soon as he stopped giving her something, some satisfaction of one kind or another, he was going to be done, his little flicker of time in the universe at an end. And not for the first time, he wished he had believed like Arch that there was something beyond, some reunion with Renee, because then he’d at least have something to look forward to other than a nasty, brutish end.
His choices were pain and suffering, or to hold his breath and move his tongue, in hopes that the pain and suffering would be done quickly rather than prolonged beyond his capacity to handle it. Hendricks no longer had any illusions; help wasn’t coming. It never had been, not any point in his life. There was nothing for him beyond this moment.
This was the end, and he wasn’t sure he had it in him to just sit back and suffer his way through to it, not if it could just be … over … with a minimum of difficulty.
He looked up into those red eyes, those eyes he hated, that nose and the line of a mouth that he could barely see, just above the pointed chin and jawline, and he felt the waver that signaled his surrender. It was a nod of the head, so subtle he wondered if she’d even seen it.
But she did, and she moved to show that she had. She pushed forward, and he felt himself retch as much from the gut-punch indignity of it, from the sheer violation of his sense of himself as a human being as he did from the sulfur cloud that seemed to hang over him. She was strangely cold, almost room temperature as she pushed her vulva against his chin. It was like some sort of raw, almost chilled sea creature against the bristles, like the scent of a dumpster on a hot summer’s day poured out over him.
He held his breath, and closed his eyes, and he did what the demon told him to do, all the while trying to pretend he was somewhere else, with someone else, even as she ground his head into the dirt under her weight. Her unmistakable, deep, feral grunts filled the air and left him no illusions about who he was with, what he was doing and who had won the battle.
10.
Arch had been let out by Reeve himself, wordlessly, with nothing more than a few hand gestures to indicate that he could go. It had been a nearly surreal experience, having the sheriff merely open the door, come over and unlock his handcuffs, pocket them wordlessly and wave a hand to suggest he get out of the interrogation room. Arch had been expecting something else entirely and hesitated before complying. What if it was a trick? Reeve probably wasn’t the sort to shoot him in the back, but the silence was eerie.
Arch made his way out anyway, though slowly and without taking his eyes off Reeve. He kept his hands raised in front of his chest, out from his body, trying to project as nonthreatening an image as possible. His height and size were threatening enough all on their own.
He made it out of the interrogation room and down the hall without incident. Lex Deivrel was nowhere to be seen when he made it out into the bullpen. The place was pretty empty save for one lone occupant of a desk. He caught a glimpse of the blond-headed bob as Erin looked down at a piece of paper, probably filling out her report from the party. She said nothing as he entered and made his way over to the property locker and found his belongings. Arch assumed Reeve meant for him to handle this on his own since he hadn’t even bothered to escort him the way any other prisoner would have been.
“Hey, should I—” Erin looked up at him, ready to ask a question, but cut it off mid-sentence when she saw it was him. Her already tired features darkened, the curtain falling to show nothing but a moment’s displeasure. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t know you were getting out, but I should have guessed when I heard Deivrel was your lawyer.”
“Reeve didn’t really have anything he could hold me on,” Arch said. “Misdemeanors.”
“Huh,” Erin said and ducked her head back to look at the desk. “If only he knew.”
“Yet you didn’t tell him anything,” Arch said, opening the little metal storage box that held his stuff. It almost looked like a cheap safe deposit box from a bank, the kind that would only cost a few dollars a month.
“You sound like you’re sorry I didn’t,” Erin said, not looking up.
“Just a mite curious,” Arch said. “I tell you what happened to Hendricks, and you basically say, ‘Best of luck.’ Seems if you were feeling that raw about what’s happened with him and the rest of us, you’d be ready and able to contribute to hoisting us up the flagpole by our underpants a little farther.”
“I doubt our shitty old flagpole would support your weight, even if your Underoos did,” Erin said. “But I reckon I’d have a hard time explaining any of what I’ve seen to Reeve, just the same as you struggled with it.” She looked up, and her lips were drawn. “It’s a fantastical explanation, pretty difficult for most to understand.”
“Okay, I’m bored again,” Kitty said, feeling the sense of rising irritation that told her that her essence was restless. “Find out who this person is so we can pay them a visit. Now if you’ll excuse me, my earlier meeting has left me needing to blow off some steam.” She pointed down to herself. “And not in the Gwyneth Paltrow sort of way. Same ballpark, different sport.” She started toward the door and shot a look at Rousseau. “Don’t disturb me unless you have a location on the next piece.” And she left, one purpose alone in her mind—to break the cowboy once and for all.
*
“Sheriff Reeve?” Lex Deivrel’s much-loathed voice rang out in Reeve’s empty office, as disheartening as opening a beer bottle to find out on your first swig it had gone skunky. He was facing away from the door, staring out the window at his little slice of an unmowed field. He knew what was coming, like the five o’clock train bearing down on him, but he couldn’t even jump out of the way. Mentally, he composed himself, ran a sweaty hand over his face and felt the perspiration wipe off on his lip. His hand was pungent, the oil from his pistol still there from where he’d handled it during the arrest earlier. Then he turned to face the devil herself, plastering a smile across his face that was as fake as a starlet’s tits.
“What can I do for you, counselor?” That wasn’t the c-word he had in mind for her, but it was the one he could get away with.
“You can turn my client loose,” Deivrel said, standing there with her smart suit, and her sharp leather briefcase. She wasn’t even smiling in triumph. Instead, she had a serious look, laced with menace. “You’ve got squat on him, and we both know it. Stop the charade and let him out.”
“I’ve got a few charges I could make stick,” Reeve said.
“This is pin-the-tail on the donkey, and you’re blindfolded and facing in the wrong direction,” she said, shaking her head at him. “You’ve got nothing but your dick in your hand.”
Casey Meacham’s words came back to him. “Like that’s a bad thing,” Reeve said.
“Let him go,” Deivrel said, not reacting to his comment. She wasn’t being half as malicious as usual. “You’ve already exposed yourself to a big fat lawsuit. Don’t make it worse for yourself.”
“Why would you say that?” Reeve asked, finding a sudden need to stand. “If you’re his lawyer, isn’t it better for you if I keep digging myself a bigger hole?”
“If my client were in a mood to sue, yes,” Deivrel said. She crossed her body with her arms and sighed, deep, then spoke in a commiserating tone. “For some reason, though, he just wants to get out. Doesn’t seem to care about making enough money off of you idiots to live the rest of his life in comfort.”
For Reeve, that hinted at one thing—Arch was up to his eyeballs in something that didn’t bear scrutiny. It wouldn’t do to suggest such a thing to Deivrel, though, not if he wanted to keep pursuing it. “Really?” he asked instead. “That’s interesting.” It was.
“It’s actually fairly boring,” Deivrel said, and he had no doubt she was telling the truth as she saw it. “I do so enjoy sticking it to you overzealous law-enforcement types when you step out of line.”
“But if someone ever breaks into your house, you’ll dial 911 and hope we show up lickety-split, right?” Reeve asked.
“Hell no,” Deivrel said, looking at him like he was an idiot. “I’ve pissed off the Chattanooga cops with enough lawsuits that I wouldn’t count on them showing up if I phoned in stating that my house had been stormed by terrorists looking to set off a bioweapon. The 911 response time would be measured in decades; I find a .44 responds considerably faster.”
Reeve’s eyebrows crept up a little in surprise. “Is that so?”
She smiled a little. “I’m pretty good with it, too.” The smile left as quickly as it appeared. “You gonna let him go or not?”
Reeve turned his head, looked out the window again. The weed-filled field was highlighted under a nearby lamp, showing a dim assortment of utter mess, scraggly green stalks growing in all directions. That was the problem with weeds; you let one grow and pretty soon it took over a field when you weren’t watching. Corruption, too, Reeve figured. That was the point of the law, after all. They were supposed to keep these things in check.
“I don’t want to let him go,” Reeve said quietly.
“You don’t have much choice,” Deivrel said. “You have nothing of substance to hold him on. Misdemeanors at best. If you push me, I will get in front of a judge first thing tomorrow and cut your legs out from underneath you like you’re wheat and I’m a scythe.”
“They use tractors to harvest wheat these days,” Reeve said, all energy gone from him. “But your point is made.” He drew a deep, difficult breath. “All right. I’ll let him run for now. But you know I’m not letting this go.”
“Don’t push it, Reeve,” Deivrel said, shaking her head. “A harassment lawsuit in this case would not play well for you, and you got enough problems right now without adding that to the pile.” She turned and left, and Reeve was left staring back at the field, wondering if he’d just let another weed grow.
*
Hendricks lay flat on his back, the chains keeping him anchored to the floor. He could see that they’d been staked into the ground, but there was zero give there. They might as well have been planted in concrete for all they moved when he struggled against them. She’d been gone for some time, that fucking cunt. That was the only way he could think of her now, now that she’d shoved her nasty beaver right in his face. Hendricks had gone down on women a fair few times in his life, and had always enjoyed it in the past. He wasn’t sure he’d ever think about it in quite the same way again, though, after this. The whole thing was different because she was a demon. The smell was repulsive, unlike anything he’d ever caught a whiff of before. It was like a cross between a rotting corpse, curdled milk, and eggs that had been left in the sun for a good week. It felt like he could still smell it, even though she’d been out of the shed for quite some time.
The pain in his foot alternated between dull and severe, a steady, beating reminder that this bitch was aiming to cut him up. He knew it was coming, knew that if she kept her grubby, stinking hands on him that it was going to be a slow death. He didn’t hold much hope that Arch and the crew were going to find him in time, either. That was basically the only hope, too, that they would come in like cavalry, that they’d thunder through the door and toss her on the floor before them, Duncan in the vanguard with his baton, ready to spear her.
That was just idle wishing to hold off the pain, though, and he knew it.
He heard the footsteps before the door opened, and it was like an electrical current ran down his muscles, like he was on patrol and someone had opened up with an AK-47. Instant reaction, and it wasn’t good. His ass puckered tight, like she’d threatened to violate it. Actually, that was maybe the only thing she hadn’t threatened yet.
“What a day,” she said as she came in, pausing just inside the door. There was a nail with a coat hanger on it just inside, and she paused there, kicking off her shoes and unfastening her pants. “You have no idea what I’ve got going on right now. Just a whole heap of crap to deal with, idiots to order around, unpleasant visitors from days of yore.” She grimaced visibly. “Ambitions run amok, power-infighting among demons, worries about who to trust—no one, by the way, that’s the safe answer.” She folded her pants delicately on the hangar, then slipped out of the white granny-panties that she wore underneath and strung them carelessly around the hook before hanging the whole thing back up. She kept her blouse on, but he could see the veins appearing on her legs, that odd shade of glowing purple. Her eyes were a more or less normal color at the moment, like a faint brown. That would change soon, he knew.
“I like that you’re keeping your mouth shut,” she said as she stepped astride him again, giving him a straight up view to her crotch and everything above. Hendricks felt the rote desire to vomit, to just turn his head sideways and chuck acidic bile, to let himself spasm and turn the dirt wet, to let the gawdawful smell of his stomach contents fill the room, cover up the sulfur that was permeating the air even now, fresher than it had been a minute ago when it had only been him in the room. “If I had to listen to your stupid voice talking about stupid human feelings right now, I think I’d just … I don’t know.” The knife appeared in her hand, displayed like a gift for him, something she was so happy to hand over. She eased down and planted her snatch right on his bare sternum. She didn’t drop as hard as she could have, but she still knocked the air out of him. “Did you miss me while I was gone?”
“I missed my toes while you were gone,” he said, when he caught his breath again. He held back the gag reflex at the putrid scent in the air.
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re ever gonna walk right again,” she said and brought the knife down, poking him right in the chest with it. He recoiled by instinct from the touch of the point, even though it was only a little prick, nothing in comparison to the sawing sensation of the knife going through toe bones.
“I think that’s the least of my worries at this point,” Hendricks said.
“True, true,” she said, nodding along. “Have you given any more consideration to my offer?”
“I still stand by my previous position and say, ‘fuck you.’”
“I hate the word ‘fuck’ as a concept,” she said, seemingly no more irritated than if he’d just told her he wanted a cup of coffee, black. “See, fucking is like … well, how to describe it? It’s like someone’s getting something over on you. When someone screws you over, you say you ‘got fucked,’ right? It’s a power thing. Those with power do the fucking, those without it get fucked. Same old story.
“But,” she went on, “I always want the power. So, if I were of a mind to, I could just plow a finger up your ass, really show you who has it here, yes?” She brandished a hand, three fingers up like a salute of some sort. “But that doesn’t really do anything for me. I mean, I guess it would be fun watching you squirm, debasing your very sense of self and identity, tearing up that hetero concept you probably cling to like it’s the last life raft in a tsunami, but it’s not nearly as fun as say … slowly sawing off your penis.” She grinned and wagged the knife. “That’s much more emasculating. I could do both, but I can only get so excited about ramming my hands into your defecatory organs versus tearing away from you something you hold so very, very dear.
“Forcing you to eat my pussy, though?” At this she smiled. “It is the most emasculating reversal, and it’s got something for everyone. You feel like shit, like I’ve put a saddle on you, made you a domesticated donkey that will carry me anywhere I want you to, and I get to experience the joyful sensation of orgasm that echoes through my essence in ways you flesh baggers can’t possibly imagine. It’s win-win—I break you and I get fun times, all in one magical licking of the clit package.” She placed a hand over his throat, an almost gentle motion, like she was going to massage his trachea for him. “What do you think of that?”
“Everyone’s got their vices,” Hendricks said, feeling the need to ram his head against the soft dirt, wishing it was concrete. Then at least he could have battered himself unconscious, or to brain damage, whichever came first.
“Yes,” she agreed and then started to squeeze his throat, “and mine’s where I keep the balls of the men who piss me off. Now … are you gonna lick or do I have to show you what it feels like when I really start applying pressure to sensitive areas?”
Hendricks felt the hard push on his throat, started to feel a little lightheaded. She eased up on him, inching her crotch closer to his face. If he could have gotten a breath, he might have gagged now for more than one reason. As it was, he writhed, his vision starting to spot. She wasn’t just choking him, she was closing off the blood flow to his brain. Not for the first time since he’d entered this predicament, Hendricks found himself wishing he’d listened to Duncan and stuck with him and Alison instead of charging in after this bitch because of …
Renee …
The pressure slackened, and her face came back into view after being washed out, blurry. He could see the clear lines of her face, the pronounced blackness of her nostrils flared. From below she looked even more demonic than when he’d looked into her eyes at their first meeting. She’d almost looked normal there; everything he’d seen of her in the shed, from the way she moved to the way she talked about what she’d do to him, all of it lacked any sense of humanity. She was just a shell with something dark inside, some … thing, not some person.
He felt his lower lip quiver, his breath come back in raggedly, and he pondered his future. It wouldn’t end, not until he was carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and in his lightheadedness part of him ultimately welcomed that fate. Losing himself a piece at a time, a section of flesh and bone every few minutes until he was no more, that was what was coming.
But what was he, really? Flesh, bone, tissue, brains, some other assorted stuff. A mind that was certain to end when she either cut too deep or he ceased to be useful in generating pleasure for her. As soon as he stopped giving her something, some satisfaction of one kind or another, he was going to be done, his little flicker of time in the universe at an end. And not for the first time, he wished he had believed like Arch that there was something beyond, some reunion with Renee, because then he’d at least have something to look forward to other than a nasty, brutish end.
His choices were pain and suffering, or to hold his breath and move his tongue, in hopes that the pain and suffering would be done quickly rather than prolonged beyond his capacity to handle it. Hendricks no longer had any illusions; help wasn’t coming. It never had been, not any point in his life. There was nothing for him beyond this moment.
This was the end, and he wasn’t sure he had it in him to just sit back and suffer his way through to it, not if it could just be … over … with a minimum of difficulty.
He looked up into those red eyes, those eyes he hated, that nose and the line of a mouth that he could barely see, just above the pointed chin and jawline, and he felt the waver that signaled his surrender. It was a nod of the head, so subtle he wondered if she’d even seen it.
But she did, and she moved to show that she had. She pushed forward, and he felt himself retch as much from the gut-punch indignity of it, from the sheer violation of his sense of himself as a human being as he did from the sulfur cloud that seemed to hang over him. She was strangely cold, almost room temperature as she pushed her vulva against his chin. It was like some sort of raw, almost chilled sea creature against the bristles, like the scent of a dumpster on a hot summer’s day poured out over him.
He held his breath, and closed his eyes, and he did what the demon told him to do, all the while trying to pretend he was somewhere else, with someone else, even as she ground his head into the dirt under her weight. Her unmistakable, deep, feral grunts filled the air and left him no illusions about who he was with, what he was doing and who had won the battle.
10.
Arch had been let out by Reeve himself, wordlessly, with nothing more than a few hand gestures to indicate that he could go. It had been a nearly surreal experience, having the sheriff merely open the door, come over and unlock his handcuffs, pocket them wordlessly and wave a hand to suggest he get out of the interrogation room. Arch had been expecting something else entirely and hesitated before complying. What if it was a trick? Reeve probably wasn’t the sort to shoot him in the back, but the silence was eerie.
Arch made his way out anyway, though slowly and without taking his eyes off Reeve. He kept his hands raised in front of his chest, out from his body, trying to project as nonthreatening an image as possible. His height and size were threatening enough all on their own.
He made it out of the interrogation room and down the hall without incident. Lex Deivrel was nowhere to be seen when he made it out into the bullpen. The place was pretty empty save for one lone occupant of a desk. He caught a glimpse of the blond-headed bob as Erin looked down at a piece of paper, probably filling out her report from the party. She said nothing as he entered and made his way over to the property locker and found his belongings. Arch assumed Reeve meant for him to handle this on his own since he hadn’t even bothered to escort him the way any other prisoner would have been.
“Hey, should I—” Erin looked up at him, ready to ask a question, but cut it off mid-sentence when she saw it was him. Her already tired features darkened, the curtain falling to show nothing but a moment’s displeasure. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t know you were getting out, but I should have guessed when I heard Deivrel was your lawyer.”
“Reeve didn’t really have anything he could hold me on,” Arch said. “Misdemeanors.”
“Huh,” Erin said and ducked her head back to look at the desk. “If only he knew.”
“Yet you didn’t tell him anything,” Arch said, opening the little metal storage box that held his stuff. It almost looked like a cheap safe deposit box from a bank, the kind that would only cost a few dollars a month.
“You sound like you’re sorry I didn’t,” Erin said, not looking up.
“Just a mite curious,” Arch said. “I tell you what happened to Hendricks, and you basically say, ‘Best of luck.’ Seems if you were feeling that raw about what’s happened with him and the rest of us, you’d be ready and able to contribute to hoisting us up the flagpole by our underpants a little farther.”
“I doubt our shitty old flagpole would support your weight, even if your Underoos did,” Erin said. “But I reckon I’d have a hard time explaining any of what I’ve seen to Reeve, just the same as you struggled with it.” She looked up, and her lips were drawn. “It’s a fantastical explanation, pretty difficult for most to understand.”
