The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used

by Cari Silverwood

  The Book of Red

  USED

  ISAK & Red

  CARI SILVERWOOD

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  CONTENTS

  USED

  ISAK & Red

  About Cari Silverwood

  Also by Cari Silverwood

  Acknowledgements & Copyright

  USED

  This is an extremely dark piece of carnal horror

  set in the Dark Hearts series world

  It was a mistake to seek him out. Now she’s caught, again.

  “Tell me why I should let you go? Give me reasons,” he says, as he writes upon her naked skin with his calligraphy pen.

  While she struggles to remember why she should be free, he will use her and use her, and twist her around his fingers.

  He will make her forget her name, her sanity, and how to be a good girl.

  Once upon a time, he was nice.

  CHAPTER 1

  Years ago, I caught an infection that made me into an apex predator of certain females.

  I was a mesmer, a collector – a man with all the right gifts. I could make them do anything.

  Within reason? Someone might ask me, if I ever took questions.

  No.

  Anything.

  And yet... Used. That was how I felt when I thought of Red.

  She was coming. I would’ve known even without Wolfe’s emailed forewarning. I could feel her, as if the wake of the jet plane she rode in sifted essence of her over me, essence of her femaleness, her sodden cunt, from miles away, high in the atmosphere.

  When I spoke a word or whispered my fingertip down the undulations of her spine, how wet she’d become. I remembered this well.

  I’d hidden. She’d found me.

  A soldering iron applied to the surface of my brain couldn’t burn that day away – the day in Cuba when I met Wolfe and I met Red. Hot, sun-bleached air, and my power sparkling new.

  Her real name? I’d forgotten it. Why bother asking, reading her passport, when she’d do anything for me, despite knowing nothing about me?

  The first time I detected her, she smelled incandescent...like gold, like power, like money, like every barbaric, sadistic, perverted sexual act one human being could do to another.

  I wanted her. Still did.

  If I had her, the world would never be the same. She gave my monster permission to do things.

  The paradox of a man who loves control being in a perverse situation.

  Cuba had been days after my fiancée left me on the eve of our wedding. Arranged for months. The invited had travelled from the UK and Sweden. Chaos spawned from her whim. She loved another. Hilariously devastating.

  After the infection, the mesmer revelation, I cared nothing for her or her whim.

  I’d thrown her cellphone in the sea.

  Now. Red was up there, flying to me, probably to kill me.

  I shifted my back on the deck chair and eyed Vitor, where he played with one of my girls. She swayed, hands cuffed and caught in ropes attached to the ceiling of the patio. Below, the sea sloshed against the pylons. Beyond was blue water, a far and beautiful curve of sea, lined by beach and the square dots of houses. The mostly naked girl, clad in shreds of lingerie, rocked back and forth, jarred and made to squeak as he screwed himself into her ass. I kept Vitor happy with fucking and a second-hand power over what was mine.

  Blood was dribbling down her inner thigh.

  Years ago, becoming jaded had seemed ridiculous. I had my town by the sea, I had my collected ones, but the girls grew dull with use and I had my moments of morality.

  Red...

  Wolfe said he’d broken something in her to give me access to her head. Wolfe could grab almost any girl. To me and to most mesmers, only some females were susceptible. Red was different.

  He’d snapped something inside her and it’d stayed snapped. Before releasing her, I tested her. There’d been risks with letting her go but Wolfe could go fuck himself. He wanted me to keep the little CIA agent and make her vanish so she couldn’t chase him. Since I was a novice mesmer, he thought I’d be eager for my first. And I had been. I was also smarter and stronger willed than most men.

  My way had worked. Until today. Why else would she chase me except to kill me?

  Three years had passed since Wolfe handed me the facts.

  “You will be a monster, unless you’re careful.”

  I didn’t want to be a monster controlled by an infection.

  As a lawyer, logic took precedence. I lived control.

  I took steps. Rigorous and repetitive steps.

  Red was coming.

  She was my talisman, my potential key. I’d pushed her away because I feared the unlocking. In a way that meant I feared the key but I hadn’t deduced that straight away.

  Fear was a mind killer. I detested my own fear, even if I loved inducing fear in others.

  I was comfortable, here, in my South American town, but I could be doing more. The world tantalized me.

  If Red returned, I had that choice again to turn the key or throw it away.

  I’d thought back then, it would trigger me and make me worse if I kept her, my little redhead.

  Keep, kill, maim her beyond the point of wanting her? Talk to her?

  One of those needed doing. Red’s plane swept overhead, roaring toward the nearest airport. The contrails from the engines prettied the sky.

  I rose from the chair and strolled into my study. All the doors to this upper story were rolled back exposing the rooms to the breeze and the morning sun.

  This was my ritual. It kept me in check and sane.

  All of these things before me reminded me of that day when I was barely a mesmer and could recall what it was like to care for others, to empathize. Twice daily, I forced myself to remember.

  Knife.

  The written story.

  The unsullied blister pack of capsules. Wolfe had given me that – a drug that could help dull the power and the aggression. I hated drugs. Artificial shit.

  The photos of her after I had her, and before.

  Who needed luxury settings when you had your first collected girl?

  I remembered the alley between tall buildings.

  One photo of her freshly brought to heel. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, her back to the grubby brick wall. Tongue in mid-sweep across her red lips. That dark yet sexy pantsuit with the thin red tie. Her neat short hair. I could see the swell of her breasts beneath the cloth, and her hips.

  Red hair. Red lips. Red tie.

  CIA? I saw only a thing I could have.

  Have. Keep. Fuck.

  Outside, Vitor made whacking noises as he slammed into the girl. Seagulls screamed. The girl gurgled and gasped incoherently like an animal caught in a delicious trap. My nostrils expanded, smelling the sex. My cock livened, swelled.

  The monster pumped with searing rawness in my veins, same as it had then. It desired all of me. Sometimes I could almost see it – sucking on me, flowing like raw and bloody sex in my veins. I wrapped my hand over my forearm and felt the swell of muscle, the bump of my pulse. I was a bigger, bulkier man than I was then – a mesmer side-effect.

  The monster could never be allowed full rein. I wanted to remain me.

  Hence my ritual.

  What if I didn’t need it anymore?

  I fingered the second photo of her – kneeling on the pavement, her head angled up
, my cum splattered on her face and dribbling from her swollen mouth.

  Wolfe: “Take her, put semen in her, touch her, make her orgasm, and you will have her fully.”

  I’d done that.

  She couldn’t tell tales about us. Couldn’t orgasm by herself.

  I’d kept her a few days but I’d not let her or myself come again, just to prove I could be that restrained. Then I let her go with a smile.

  I’d leaned on the corner of the hotel and waved. Bye bye.

  So smart, I’d thought. Restraint was my answer.

  And the ritual.

  Carefully, I drew the knife across my arm. The pain yanked the room into startling focus. I bled. Red leaked through the hair, dripped onto the timber of the desk top. I’d heal from this quickly. I picked up the worn pages, the small digest of that day, to relive what it was to be Isak Bain, a man who cared.

  The girl outside groaned then screamed in climax, for the third time. I blinked away the monster. Mechanically, I touched the photos, the knife, the capsules, then I mouthed the words. I only read a few of them nowadays, and it was enough.

  “It was a bright day in Cuba when I first saw Wolfe and I first saw Red...”

  This was my shrine to the day Isak Bain went bad but stayed a little good.

  The girl was sobbing and I matched the rhythm of my words to her sounds.

  When I finished and stood, she lay curled on the stone. Vitor was taking down the ropes. Her breathing was still rapid, she was mottled and striped with red, but she was fine. I clicked my tongue.

  “Vitor, take her downstairs. She’ll get sunburned there.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I flew in, went through customs, and hired a local taxi, within an hour of landing. With my innocuous luggage in the trunk, I was on my way to where he lived. I knew his name, couldn’t think it without fearing retribution. I couldn’t think it without feeling ill.

  As we drove down from the hills surrounding the town, it unfolded like some perfect, pop-up children’s book. Small and peaceful, on the surface. The vast and sparkling blueness of the sea overwhelmed me more than the cuteness of the houses.

  If this was the last thing I saw before I died, at least it was pretty. Such dark musings.

  A dull gnawing in my stomach reminded me of the stupidity of my plans.

  I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, smearing lipstick. I rubbed off the marks on my skin with a tissue until all of it was gone. Cleanliness was close to innocence.

  Could you become innocent after being dragged through the dirt? Not that he’d done much to me physically – it was having someone inside my head that bothered me. It’d left a stain, a dirty, stinking, life-wrecking stain.

  Most of this trip was arranged and planned. Being downgraded to an analyst hadn’t deprived me of the ability to get things done. I’d manipulated the system and would get fired and arrested, if I returned. When.

  Who gave a fuck? Except it limited my free time here. The agency would catch up with me soon.

  Years of agonizing lay in my wake.

  I had the names of illegal gun dealers but hadn’t been able to arrange a weapon, and I couldn’t kill him up close.

  Those years...

  No lovers. No orgasms. No intimacy. Crying myself to sleep because I could tell no one what had caused my so-called breakdown in Cuba.

  That first time I encountered a mesmer in the US...

  Luckily, he’d died before he could do anything except brush across my mind, adding another microscopic layer of grime to what the other man had left. I took it as a warning and hired protection for when I wasn’t at work – briefed my bodyguard on possible actions if I did anything odd. I took other precautions, as a suspicious, over-paranoid agent might do.

  Then...nothing.

  No one came near me and no one obstructed my search for him. A fingerprint on my handbag was my treasured clue and I’d used it to find him – Isak Bain.

  After three years of looking, the database had coughed up a match. A routine police investigation in a South American country, to rule out the innocent, had been picked up by NSA scans. His print was one of those tested and discarded, because he was innocent. As if he could ever be.

  The taxi thumped over potholes, rattling my luggage.

  I inhaled and let my hands rest in my lap. All I had to do was get a long gun, stay distant, and kill him before he realized I was here. The CIA had taught me to shoot and I’d enhanced my combat skills over the three years since, anticipating this day.

  If he closed in, if I was brought within range of his freaky mind control, I would fail.

  The longer I took, the more likely he or the CIA would find me. I’d been bad.

  I stepped out of the cab into the shadow of a roof outside Reception. My apartment in this up-and-down, dilapidated little resort was elevated and on the fourth floor.

  Signed in, keys given to me, and after a quick shower I walked onto the balcony and stared across a half mile of night. My first sighting of his dwelling.

  Be still my wretched, hateful heart.

  I could see over the white walls surrounding his compound – all the way to his bedroom which occupied the entire top floor – or I assumed it was his from the building plans. The mansion sat at the tip of this small peninsular, where the land wrapped about the north of the bay. No one could reach his house without travelling along the narrow road below and I was under no illusions – the compound gate would be guarded.

  A bullet could leap his walls.

  I walked inside, drew a breath, and punched the number for the gun dealer, praying I’d not get robbed, assaulted, or killed trying to do this.

  That night, I bought a rifle. I walked into a room of men and bought a gun. Chutzpah, balls, whatever, it worked. Maybe they thought I had connections.

  One AM.

  I opened the French doors wide, tied back the lace curtains, and sat on a chair at the back of my bedroom, in the dark, in my black negligee, with the rifle over my lap. My hands liked the solidness of this weapon. I could smell gun oil, could feel my heart thumping.

  While my heart beat, I would try to kill him. Failure would only be admitted if I were dead.

  This was not a gun I knew well. The scope was ancient. If I could’ve practiced, I would improve my chances but being this close to him was shredding my insides.

  The longer I stayed, the higher my chance of being discovered.

  With a good sniper rifle and scope, with practice, I could hit a small six-inch circle at this distance. The wind speed would be nearly zero, if I chose well. Elevation was equal, plus or minus a couple of feet. Tomorrow night – a date on my dance card. I clenched my hands over the metal, drawing forthrightness from the weight. I prayed he’d switch on a light before going to bed.

  If not tomorrow night, the next.

  Being in the CIA meant I knew the basics of assassinating someone with a long gun. I smiled, realizing I was dressed in black. Appropriate, though I lacked the savoir faire of a Hollywood assassin, the black gloves, the case with the gun in pieces so it could be assembled from the parts.

  Tonight was for assimilating the atmosphere and lessening my nerves. Imagine doing this. A glass of tequila, ice, and lemon kept me company, as well as a lone mosquito blown in by the sea breeze.

  The old clock on the wall cut at my nerves. Tick, tick, tick, tick. I smirked and considered shooting it, downed a gulp of tequila instead. The tang sang to my throat as I swallowed.

  Streetlights bathed the road as it climbed to the point where his villa perched – the globes casting circles of brightness.

  There was the pathway to evil.

  “Melodramatic, baby.” I felt like giggling.

  A light came on in the villa bedroom – a big square of light that demarcated the floor-to-ceiling window. A man walked from left to right then disappeared. Had to be him? I nestled my hands around my instrument of vengeance and stroked the trigger guard with my finger.

  Should I load it
? Do it now? That might not be him. I hadn’t seen him in years. At the very least I should use the binoculars sitting on the coffee table to my right.

  “Die you fucker,” I whispered, lovingly.

  Do this...kill a man, and I hoped to be free of this influence. I could be normal, couldn’t I, though I wasn’t sure what that was anymore.

  The rifle wasn’t silenced. I’d get a few shots then have to run. How to leave the country was planned but it wouldn’t be as simple as arriving had been.

  And if I missed?

  The man stood in that distant window, silhouetted. Fate was nudging me. Binoculars. I reached for them, and a key scratched in my door, followed by a sulking truckload of heaviness of thought that I recognized instantly.

  Him. My stomach lurched.

  This was not how it should have been.

  I hadn’t fired a single shot.

  I’d rehearsed this – sudden departure in the face of threat – somehow it carried me. I heaved aside the gun. In a few strides, I was on my balcony with my leg vaulting the railing. The door to my apartment swung. A sting on my skin warned me as my inner thigh was lacerated on a bastard-sharp piece of iron.

  Lights flickered...on.

  By the door, a hand showed on the wall, fingers leaving the switch.

  A dark-haired man appeared, gun high, sweeping the room. He saw me and my mouth twitched.

  Bye, asshole.

  I was outside the railing, balancing, ready to...

  What?

  Fall and die? Four stories down, unless I accurately judged the swing to land on the balcony below.

  To die... Not yet. Please.

  He walked into my room. Though briefly eclipsed by the man with the wavy, black hair, I knew him.

  Isak.

  Blond hair cinched at the back. Tall. Broader of shoulder, heavier of build, than I recalled. The shirt he wore was red – burgundy red. Good for masking blood.

  His thought or mine?

  My lips parted, skin peeling from skin.