"Tell me where they are, Thompson, and I'll go get them."
"Fuck you! You're going to kill me, anyway."
"I give you my word that if you tell us where they are, and we get them out alive, you get to live."
"I don't believe you, bitch."
"Problem with being a traitorous, untrustworthy, wretch, Thompson, is you begin to believe everyone else is the same way." I put the safety on the Browning and reholstered it. He watched me do it, puzzled. "I keep my word, Thompson. Do you want to live or not?"
"Niley and Linus Beck are a hell of a lot scarier than you will ever be, chickie."
He'd called me bitch and chickie. He was either stupid, or ... "You're trying to get me to kill you."
"If I talk, my life is over. And Niley won't just shoot me." Thompson stared up at me, and there was a knowledge in his eyes that he was already dead. It was only a matter of how and who. And he preferred me, now, to Niley, later.
"He doesn't fear death," Asher said softly.
I shook my head. "No, he doesn't."
"We could call the cops," Jason offered.
"If he's not scared of you guys, he won't be scared of the state cops." I stood staring down at Thompson. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you, Thompson, but I'll tell you what I won't do. I won't sit here for two hours and watch the time tick away. I won't let Daniel and Charlotte die."
"Then leave town," Thompson said.
"I've met Niley, Thompson. Do you really expect me to believe that he's going to let them go?"
"He said he would."
"You believe him?" I asked.
Thompson just looked at me.
"I didn't think so."
Asher's fingers kneaded the man's shoulders almost like he was massaging them. "There are other things to fear besides death, Anita. If you have the stomach for it."
I looked into that beautiful, tragic face and couldn't read it. "What do you have in mind?"
"An eye for an eye, I think," the vampire said.
I stared into crystalline blue eyes and let the idea grow in my head like a horrible flower. A lot of people who could face being shot, quick death, blanched at torture. I was one of them. And that's what we were talking about.
"I believe the deputy will tell us where they are within the next half hour, if we are ruthless," Asher said. "I will do the dirty work, as it were. You need only permit it."
Thompson looked worried. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Jason," I said.
He came to stand beside me. He stared down at what lay on the table. He didn't say anything, but tears slid silently down his face. He'd been over at the Zeeman house for a lot of Sunday dinners.
"Help hold Thompson," I said.
Jason went to stand on the other side, pinning one arm to the top of the table. Asher still held his shoulders.
I looked at Asher and nodded. "Do it."
"Damian, if you would be so kind as to fetch me a knife. One with a serrated edge would be best. It will go through bone better."
Damian just turned and walked across the kitchen. Zane and he started opening drawers.
"What are you going to do?" Thompson said.
"Guess," I said.
"I didn't cut anything off of that bitch. I didn't touch them. It was that strange goon that Niley has. Linus Beck. He cut the finger off. He did it. I didn't do anything."
"Don't worry, Thompson. We'll get to Linus. But right now, you're all we've got."
Damian had a big serrated butcher knife. He stalked towards the table with it.
Thompson was struggling now. It was hard to hold him sitting. "Better take him to the floor," I said.
Nathaniel helped. They held him facedown, one on each arm, Nathaniel pinning his legs. Thompson was a big, strong man, but he couldn't fight them. They were too strong. Far too strong.
Thompson was screaming. "Fuck you!"
Damian held the knife out to Asher. "I'll hold him."
I touched Damian's arm and shook my head. "No, I'll do it."
Damian looked at me.
"The rule is never ask anyone to do something you won't do yourself. If I can't do this, then we won't do it at all. We'll find another way."
Jason looked up from holding the struggling man. "There is no other way." I'd never seen such rage in his eyes.
"Could you do it?" I asked. "Could you chop him up?"
Jason gave a slow nod. "I could bite his fucking fingers off one by one for what's in that box." He seemed to mean it, and it made me think I didn't know Jason at all.
"We can do this, Anita," Asher said, "and it will cost us nothing."
"It should cost, Asher. If we're going to do something this evil, it should bother whoever does it."
"It isn't evil," Asher said. "It is practical. It is even justice."
I held my hand out for the knife. "It's evil, and we all know it. Now, give me the knife. Either I can do this, or we do something else."
Damian just stood there, holding the knife. "Let me do this for you, Anita, please."
"Give me the damn knife."
He gave it to me because he couldn't do anything else. I knelt down by Thompson. "Where are they, Thompson?" I asked.
"No, no, Niley told me what they'd do to me if I helped you. He's fucking crazy."
"Wait," Zane said. He had found a small cleaver. "This will work better."
"Thanks." I took it, checked it for balance. I wasn't sure I could do it. I wasn't even sure I wanted to be able to do it. In fact, I knew that I hoped I couldn't do it. But if we were really going to do this, I had to be the one. I did it, or we found another way. Charlotte Zeeman's finger was lying in a box. In less than two hours, they'd cut something else off. I'd killed the vampire, splattered Thompson with blood and brains, and he wasn't talking. He was a mean son of a bitch, but he was tough, too. Charlotte and Daniel didn't have time for him to be tough. We had to break him, and we had to break him fast. I gave myself all the reasons. They were good reasons, real reasons. And still, I didn't know if I could do it.
"We'll start with a finger, Thompson. Just like Linus did," I said.
He was screaming, "Don't, please, don't! Oh, God, don't!"
Asher was leaning almost his full weight on the flat of the man's palm, forcing his fingers to spread wide. "Tell me where they are, and it won't happen," I said.
"Niley said they'd cut me open and make me eat my own intestines. Says he did it once in Miami. I believe him."
"I believe him, too, Thompson. And you don't believe we'll do it, do you? You don't believe we're as crazy as Niley."
"No one is as crazy as Niley."
I raised the cleaver up. "You're wrong." I stayed frozen for one long moment. I couldn't make myself start the stroke. I couldn't do it. Daniel, Charlotte.
"Has Niley raped Daniel yet?" I asked it in a voice that was so empty, it was like I wasn't there.
Thompson stopped struggling. He lay very still. He rolled his eyes upward. "Please don't."
I stared into his eyes when I said the next, "Did you rape Charlotte Zeeman?" I saw the fear in his eyes. That flash that said he'd done it. It was enough. I could do it. God forgive me. I got the little finger and the tip of the next one, because he moved. But they got better at holding him down, and I got better at cutting. Thompson told us where they were keeping Daniel and Charlotte Zeeman. In less than fifteen minutes he would have told us the ingredients to the secret sauce or anything else. He'd have confessed to killing Hoffa, or dancing with the devil. Anything, anything to make it stop.
I threw up in the corner until there was nothing but bile, and my head felt like it was going to explode. And I knew that I'd finally done something that I wouldn't recover from. Somewhere in the first blow or the second, I'd broken something inside myself that would never heal. And I was content with it. If we got Daniel and Charlotte back, I was content with it. A hard, cold knot filled me. It was beyond hate. I would make them pay for what they'd done. I would ki
ll them. I would kill them all.
I felt strangely light and empty, and I wondered if this was what it was like to be crazy. It didn't feel too bad. Later, when the shock wore off, I'd feel worse. Later, I'd wonder if there had been another way to get Thompson to talk. Later, I'd remember that I wanted to hurt him, wanted him to crawl and beg. That I wanted to take all the hurt that had happened to Charlotte and Daniel and carve it out of his flesh. Now we had to go rescue Daniel and Charlotte. Oh, one last thing. Thompson was screaming, high and piteously, like a wounded rabbit.
I shot him in the head. The screaming stopped.
43
I was driving the van down narrow gravel roads in the dark. I'd insisted on driving because I wanted something to do. I didn't want to just sit and stare out the window. But I was beginning to think I should have let someone else drive, because I didn't seem to be too real yet. I felt light and empty, shocky, but not guilty. Not yet. Thompson had earned his death. He'd raped Richard's mother. They'd tortured Richard's mother. They'd raped Daniel. They'd tortured Daniel. They all deserved to die.
Jamil and Nathaniel were in the back of the van with Roxanne and Ben. The lupa would not be left out of the fight, even though she'd had to be carried out to the van by her bodyguard. I didn't have time to fight with Roxanne, so she got to come.
Jason and Dr. Patrick got to ride up front with me. Zane and Cherry had been sent to the lupanar to get Richard and the rest. But we weren't waiting. I didn't trust Niley not to get creative. No, I didn't trust Linus and his master. How much control did Niley have over his pet psychopath? They'd already raped them. What else had happened to them by now? Niley had no rules. I knew that.
I was gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurt. The headlights cut a golden tunnel through the blackness. Trees crowded the road so close that they scraped at the van's roof with thick, clawing fingers. The trees seemed to squeeze down around us like a fist. The headlights glowed over the dirt road, but it wasn't enough light. It would never be enough light. There wasn't enough light in the world to chase away this darkness.
"I can't believe you did that," Patrick said. He was on the far side, pressed against the passenger-side door as if afraid to get too close to me.
Jason was in the middle. "Let it go, Patrick," he said.
"She chopped him up like an animal, then she shot him."
This was the third time he'd said pretty much the exact same thing.
"Shut up," Jason said.
"I will not. It was barbaric."
"I'm not having a good night, Patrick. Drop it," I said.
"The fuck you say," he said.
"Thompson was screaming, in pain," I said.
"And you killed him," Patrick said.
"Someone had to finish it," I said.
"What the hell are you talking about? Finish it!" His voice was rising, and I was beginning to debate how angry Roxanne would be if I shot him. After what I'd already done tonight, it didn't seem like such a big deal.
"How long have you been lukoi?" Jason asked.
The question gave us a moment of surprised silence, then, "Two years."
"And what's the rule about hunting?" Jason asked.
"Which one?"
"Don't be coy, Patrick," Jason said. "You know which one."
Patrick was silent long enough that the only sounds were the whir of the engine, the wheels on the road. The van rocked softly over the rutted road. Was it just my imagination or was there a sound underneath the engine's roar, a high, keening, scream? Naw, my imagination. My imagination was not going to be my friend for a while.
Patrick finally said, "Never begin a hunt unless you mean to kill."
"That's the one," Jason said.
"But this wasn't a hunt," Patrick said.
"Yes, it was," Jason said. "We just weren't hunting the deputy."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.
I answered, "It means we're hunting the people in that house."
Patrick turned a pale face to me in the dark. "You can't mean that we are to kill all of them. Only one man cut off her finger. Only one man is guilty."
"They watched. They did nothing to prevent it. It's the same as doing it in the eyes of the law," I said.
"You are not the law," he said.
"Oh, yes, I am."
"No, you're not. Damn it, no, you are not!"
"Anyone who harms the pack without just cause is our enemy," I said.
"Don't quote pack law to me, human."
"How do we deal with our enemies?" I asked.
Jason answered, "Death."
"Most packs don't hold to the old laws anymore, and you both know it," Patrick said.
"Look, Patrick, I don't have time to explain it all, so here's the Reader's Digest version. Niley and crew raped and tortured Richard's mother and brother. We are going to kill them for that. All of them."
"What about Sheriff Wilkes and his men?"
"If Thompson helped rape Richard's mom, then he wasn't the only one. Anyone who touched either of them is dead. Do you understand that, Patrick? Dead."
"I can't do it," he said.
"Then stay in the car," I said, "but shut the fuck up or I'm going to shoot you."
"See," he said, "see, your conscience is bothering you."
I glanced at him huddled in the dark. "No, my conscience isn't bothering me. Not yet. Maybe later. Maybe not. But now, tonight, I don't feel bad about what I did. I wanted Thompson to hurt. I wanted to punish him for what he did. And you know what, Patrick? It wasn't enough. It will never be enough, because I killed him too fucking quick." Tears were threatening at the back of my throat again. When the numbness and anger wore off, I was going to be in trouble. I had to hold onto the adrenaline, the rage. It would see me through the night. Tomorrow, well, we'd see.
"There had to be another way," Patrick said.
"I didn't hear you offering any suggestions at the time."
"What's bothering the good doctor," Jason said, "is that he didn't say anything. He didn't do anything to stop us."
I appreciated the "us."
"I didn't hold him down," Patrick said. "I didn't touch him."
"All you had to do was say, 'Stop, don't,' but you kept quiet. You let us chop him up. You let us kill him and didn't say a damn word," Jason said. "Your conscience wasn't working so hard while he was still alive."
Patrick didn't say anything for a long time. We bumped over the road, avoiding tree branches and dirt-filled holes. There was nothing but the darkness, the golden tunnel of headlights, and the engine-filled silence. I wasn't sure silence was my favorite thing right now, but it was better than listening to Patrick tell me what a monster I was. I agreed with him, which made it harder to hear.
Then something filled the silence that was even harder to hear. Patrick was crying. He huddled against the far door, as far from both of us as he could get, and cried softly. Finally, he said, "You're right. I did nothing, and that will haunt me for the rest of my days."
"Join the club," I said.
He peered at me through the darkness. "Then why did you do it?"
"Someone had to."
"I will never forget the sight of you chopping him up. This little girl ... The look on your face when you killed him. God, you looked blank like you weren't even there. Why did you have to be the one to do it?"
"Would it have been better if one of the guys had done it?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Please don't tell me this is some macho shit. That you're this upset because a girl did it?"
Patrick snuffled. "I guess it is. I mean, I guess it wouldn't seem so horrible if one of the others had done it. You're this pretty little thing. You shouldn't be chopping people's fingers off."
"Oh, please," I said.
"I will go to my grave seeing the look on your face at the last."
"Keep it up, and you'll go sooner than later," I mumbled.
"What did you say?" Patrick asked.
"N
othing," I said.
Jason made a small sound that might have been a laugh. If he only knew how unfunny the comment had been. I was having enough trouble with what I'd just done. I didn't need a sobbing Jiminy Cricket to emphasize the fact that I'd fallen into the abyss. The monster wasn't breathing down my neck; it was inside my head. Inside my head, fat and well-fed. What made me so sure the monster was home was the fact that I didn't feel guilty. I felt bad because I was supposed to feel bad and didn't. I had to have some personal line that could not be crossed, and I'd thought torture was it. And I'd been wrong.
Tears tightened my throat, but I'd be damned if I'd cry. It was done. I had to let it go -- or at least push it back long enough to get the job done. The job was to rescue Daniel and Charlotte. If I didn't get them out, then it had all been for nothing. I'd added a new nightmare for nothing. But it was more than that. I couldn't face Richard if I let them die. I'd been angry with him, pissed, but now I wasn't. I'd have given a great deal for him to hold me right now. Of course, he'd have probably agreed with Patrick. Richard would be a very wise man if he didn't attempt to lecture me tonight.
But it wasn't just Richard. I'd met the entire Zeeman clan. They were so close to perfect that it made my teeth ache. The family might never recover from a loss like this. My family hadn't. I was counting on Daniel and Charlotte to recover from the torture. I was counting on them being strong enough to not let that alone be enough to destroy them. I hoped I was right. No. I prayed I was right.
Thompson had told us what room they were keeping them in. It was in the back, near the woods, as far from the road as possible. Not a surprise. There might have been information that Thompson had that could have been useful. Maybe I should have used less torture and more threat. Maybe that would have gotten us more detailed info faster. Maybe, maybe not. I was new at interrogation by torture, lacked the proper technique, I suppose. I would have said I'd get better with practice, except I wasn't doing it again. I might have the screaming meemies forever from just this one incident, but if I did it again, it was over. They'd have to wrap me up and put me away. I kept flashing on the feel of the cleaver biting into the floor. I remembered thinking that I didn't feel it go through the bone. I just felt it bite into the floor underneath. I saw the fingers go in a wash of blood, but not as much blood as you'd think, for some reason.
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