by Ace Gray
“Where else did you go?”
“Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Akumal...” He spoke almost wistfully about the month or so we’d spent apart.
“And there was a trail to follow?” I rubbed my fingers up and down in the condensation collecting on my bottle.
“A photo on a bar wall here, children running up with his picture there, things I just knew were his or were left by him.” He gnawed on his lips to keep the smile from breaking like sunshine across his face.
“You were happy?” I asked and the words, the emotion, burned my throat like hot ash.
“Yeah, I know him better now, I think I love him more, understand him better…” He couldn’t stop the dopey grin that put his big, brash smile and deep dimples on display. “But the second I found out that Fucktart was gone, that you were desperate, I left. I think he’d understand this time.”
“So you know everything?” My voice cracked as I took inventory of what that actually encompassed.
“I know he took Elle.” The snarl in his voice gave me strength, her name gutted me.
“It’s not that simple.” I snatched my beer and slugged the cool liquid. “Dos cervezas,” I said gruffly, finishing the one I’d had and reaching for the two sliding my way.
I carried them to a table in the back and Horse naturally followed. We fell into our patterns so easily, each scanning the room as Horse puffed up behind me and my hand rested on my gun in front of me. The reflexes were unnecessary though, the cantina was relatively empty and no one paid us any attention.
“What happened?” he asked as he pressed the sweating bottle to his bottom lip.
My world tilted then spun for a few moments thinking back through everything. Red. So much red. Blood and wounds and wicked dreams swam before my vision. I wobbled on my chair.
“Hey, Cole…” He shoved his face in front of me. “Calm down. One word at a time. I’m here, we’ll do it together.”
I blew out a deep breath, and the world settled back on its axis.
“He set me up and took her. He fucking took her.” I swore as my fists banged on the table and wobbled the bottle in front of me. My shoulders heaved and the muscle in my neck feathered with the grind of my teeth.
“And you’re okay?”
“Are you fucking serious?” I shot up and my chair tumbled behind me.
He reached for my chair then fisted his big hand into my t-shirt and pulled my ass back down.
“He got you in the neck.” He studied me and his thumb traced over a scar he’d barely missed when he’d done it before.
“And the thigh,” I spat out and snatched my beer.
“And you let him live?”
“It was The Butcher and he bled like a stuck fucking pig.” I hunched as I nursed the beer.
“You need to knock off this vengeful cryptic shit and tell me what happened.”
So I did, painful foul word by painful foul word. The past two—or was it three?—weeks had muddled together. I’d lost track of time, of whether I ate or drank or slept. Pure, unadulterated anger had fueled me well enough.
Horse’s face was bleak and twisted when I finished. “Fucktart,” he whispered as his eyes searched for the small girl that had represented everything we feared for Elle. The things Mickey had done time after time in that room, the things he’d happily do to her in the dark.
I wasn’t the only one that shivered.
“So what do we do?” Horse asked, now fully focused on the Spanish label in front of him.
“We find her. We tear any wall down brick by brick to get to her, and we save her.” My mind couldn’t help but flick to the tiny bird that I knew was somewhere suffering. “I have to save her the way she saved me.”
“You will.” He clapped my shoulder. “We will.”
“How?” Utter depression ripped my chest open. I needed her back, her safe, in my arms, more than I needed to keep breathing.
“Well you’re going to get your shit together.” He shot me a look.
“He took her…” I snarled, all the emotion I’d kept behind my lonely wall was tumbling out now that he’d arrived.
“I know. I fucking know.” Horse got pissy right back. “But she needs you with ice in your veins and vengeance in your heart. She needs you to fight and fight fucking hard.” He blew out a deep breath. “The nightmare’s playing over and over in my brain, too.” He stared off into the distance for a moment and I knew I didn’t want to see through his eyes. “Don’t focus on what he’s doing now. Focus on what you’ll do when you get her back.”
I really tried for a few moments. I thought about her skin and what it would feel like under my fingertips, of the sheer beauty that I’d be allowed to look at again. Her plump lips as they pulled in small breath after small breath to fill her tiny bones. And giant doe eyes that watched in wonder as I played with the silken strands of her hair or handed her a folded paper crane.
The cranes!
I’d folded at least a thousand of them. A thousand tiny ways to tell Elle what I already knew, she was mine to love forever. One wish, she’d said if I folded till my fingers bled, the gods would grant me anything. They already knew what I wanted, they always had.
“Let me in, Cupcake.” Horse’s voice drew me back to the brass cutting through the wall of humid.
“She’s mine.” The sure and steady of my voice surprised even me. I stood, slamming the rest of my beer and walking toward the front door, a new sense of determination flooding through me. The wall of Horse behind me didn’t hurt. “And not even God would take her from me. On this one, he owes me.”
33.
Elle
I wished I could say that the things Mickey showed me on that iPad horrified me, but that would imply that I still felt anything at all. My fingers and toes went numb first, bound as they were to the bed. My insides had followed shortly after.
Girl after girl had been tied and usually in more acrobatic positions than me but not always. Rope usually dug into their skin pushing their breasts or parting their sex in odd geometric shapes. Their skin went purple with how long they were left. Left to cry, left to beg, left to break, I swear, sometimes even left to die.
I was each and every one of them.
When the men, the women, the monsters came to finally have their way with them, I saw the world through their eyes. I felt the slap of hands, the fast wrap of the whip or cane. The alien objects and toys shoved into them. The stolen kisses.
And each time someone pressed into them, for that one solitary moment that it was pleasure not brutal pain, I felt a flash of something jolt my body.
It was that something that Mickey came to watch. Every few hours he’d pop in and casually fold into a high-backed wicker chair that framed him similarly to the way his dark throne had. He’d cross his legs casually, resting his ankle on his opposite knee and he’d temple his fingers in front of him as he leaned forward, his eyes locked on the spread of my thighs.
That moment of fullness, that moment of connection never failed to get me wet. I could feel arousal spread along my sex and seep onto my thighs. Even if the warm air didn’t kiss the sudden slickness, Mickey’s intensity sweeping across my skin told me plenty about my reaction. I hated myself for it. I hated that I couldn’t be completely empty.
He’d watch me watch unspeakable things, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours, his eyes always leveled directly at my sex.
“Why?” I croaked one time, my lips only making words because the small old woman had continued to force broth down my throat.
“So that you know what’s expected of you once you’re healed.” He rose and pulled back the smaller bandages. A wicked smile spread across his face. “And I know what turns you on.”
“None of this turns me on,” I said weakly.
“On the contrary, Lass…” His fingers moved from my bandages to the slickness I couldn’t hide between my legs. His fingers wandered around, pushed inside and then flicked my clit. Mercifully my bod
y didn’t flinch. “How wet you are tells me exactly what I need to know.”
He twisted and sat beside me so he could see the gang bang playing out in front of me. The girl was bent over a metal bar then tied securely to it. Her ass was peppered with hard smacked welts. She was collared with a rope that went taut to the ceiling. Her nipples held clamps that were similarly anchored taut to the floor. And she was filled. Everywhere. If she didn’t work with such fever on the men surrounding her, I would have thought she was a prepared sacrifice.
There was nothing sacrificial about the way she rode out each slap, each tug, each cock. When the man assaulting her face pulled back, pinched her cheeks and spit at her mouth, she moaned and lapped at any stray drops before popping her mouth back open for him to slam inside.
In the recesses of my mind, the spots I tried desperately to keep hidden, I remembered reveling in the savage taking of my body. I would have let Cole tie me up exactly like the girl in the video. I would have let him do anything he wanted, including sharing me, because I would have known there was a tender heart beneath his vicious touch.
“I already know how much you like being shared,” Mickey said as he leaned down and nestled into my chest. “You were Cole’s after all.”
My heart slammed against his ear but otherwise, my body didn’t react to his name.
“But you’re going to be mine.” Mickey turned and bit my breast.
I swallowed my whimper until he bit harder.
I can’t feel. My body is empty. My soul is gone. I am nothing. Nothing can’t feel.
The words repeated over and over in my head willing me to stay back and numb against the bed I was chained to. But his teeth were like small razors against my skin, even with a thin piece of cotton beneath them. The pain cut through the fog and the words that filled my mind, couldn’t deaden my body. A cry clawed at my throat until it split free. With it, I felt everything I’d been pushing aside.
Fire lapped at my skin and pain at my bones. The dull ache from the almost healed gashes thumped in time with my suddenly rowdy heart. Where the metal cuffs cut into me was almost biting. Something slithered up my spine, bringing bile with it because of Mickey’s touch.
“You can still feel.” Mickey’s eyes glinted as he looked up at me.
He kept his pale green eyes on me as he pulled up the cotton shirt I’d been wearing for days. His tongue lazily lapped at the skin wearing his teeth marks. I flinched against him, desperate to keep my body hidden. He barely even noticed.
“Tell me, Lass, what did Cole do to your breasts?”
My heart went wild again, but Mickey didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he pushed the iPad aside and smoothly took its place, seated on my chest.
“Did he gently rub your nipples?” His fingers barely grazed my skin, forcing the pale pink skin to peak up into his hands. “Or did he pull?” He pinched down and yanked.
I screamed despite myself. His whisper touch had been too gentle, tingling nerve ends, then he abused them as he pulled into fully stretched flesh.
“Did he knead?”
My breasts fell back to my chest and Mickey massaged them, letting his thumbs graze over my still throbbing nipples.
“Or maybe he slapped.”
Three quick, hard, stinging slaps sang across one breast, forcing tears to the corners of my eyes.
“Something rougher?” His hands went to his belt, fiddling with the buckle for just a moment before he pulled it free.
That motion, those illicit sounds coming from Cole were enough to make me come. With Mickey, they were enough to make me cry. The tears I’d kept at bay fell freely like small waterfalls down my temples to the pillow behind me.
“Yes, rougher it is,” he purred as he slid off me and stood beside me. “Rougher is exactly how Cole would take you.”
He doubled the stiff leather and snapped it softly against his hand. Before I could steel myself, before I could process the way my body was reacting to the memories of Cole, or the sudden assault of pain, the belt cracked across the breast that Mickey’s hand hadn’t.
Heat bloomed across my skin only to morph into searing pain that made me jolt off the mattress and yank at the metal binding me despite its wicked bite. The ragged cry on my lips didn’t even sound like me, it was something from the depths of hell itself. It made Mickey smile as he whipped the belt across my skin two more times.
The world was a blinding white, the edges turning flaming red to match the blood that throbbed in the thick tracks along the edges of where the belt defiled my skin. My throat throbbed as if I’d swallowed the same hot poker it felt like he abused me with. The sound was hot coal ricocheting off the walls.
“I can’t help myself when you bleed.” Mickey’s voice was a mix of lust and wonder as he pressed his finger roughly to one of the throbbing stripes.
He’d drawn the slightest bit of blood and let it coat his finger before shoving it into his mouth, lapping at what very little was left of my life. This time it wasn’t just tears streaming down my face but real and violent sobs shaking my shoulders.
“Oh, Elle,” Mickey feigned concern, “would Cole kiss it and make it better?”
He laughed as he bent down, my blood still obvious on his lips, and took mine. I tried to stop him, to get my lips away, to bite at him, but he didn’t stop. He took and took and took, leaving the salty taste of my life on my lips, and me with zero desire left to have one.
34.
Cole
“So God owes you a favor, huh?” Horse couldn’t completely hide his smirk from me out on the bright street.
“Someone does.” I sighed.
“Call me crazy but we’re not exactly on his good side. Satan, Hades, demons, maybe, not that I think you want their help on this one, but…”
I shot him a frigid glare that had him trailing off.
“Okay,” he began again. “God’s gonna grant you a favor, got it.” His lips went thin but his eyes bugged, and despite it all, I laughed at his goofy face.
“It’s just a wish…” I started, my voice still laced with laughter. “Based on paper cranes, no less… But damn do I have to believe someone, some force, some whatever, will grant it.”
“You finally folded her a thousand?” His big, broad and genuine smile was back.
“And when she’s back I’m gonna fold another thousand so she can wish this all away.” As soon as I said it, I felt the truth of it in my bones.
I would get her back. I would fold a thousand paper cranes. And she could wish for anything she wanted. Hope blossomed in my chest like the flowers inked here and there. The red that filled them seeped in to brighten my world. The killing calm I felt so often came over me and with it, the detached and cold smirk I’d worn to protect Elle months ago tugged on my lip.
Horse noticed and a matching swagger blanketed his body. “He’s gonna regret the day he was born.”
“He’s gonna regret the day he dies.” A full-blown and utterly wicked smile replaced the smirk. Something equally dark and monstrous thudded through my veins.
I’d slept that night but only for a few hours. They were restful while they lasted. Elle visited me, but I could only remember seeing her toes in the sand, her white dress draped across her shins and her beautiful soul as she made those familiar gestures.
Eye. Heart. You.
I didn’t mind seeing it again as I polished the barrel of my gun as I sat on the cobbled street curb, watching, waiting. For what I wasn’t sure but the only other thing I remembered from the dream was the old woman from Laredo grabbing my arm and cawing the word despierto like a crow.
Sweat had coated my skin, dripping down my brow, and my hair had been matted in different directions when I woke at her command, and I sucked in sharp, shallow breaths. Fear hadn’t crept back in, but the reality of the frail woman, her intensity and sharp eyes, had been tangible. She’d smelled like warm broth and sunbaked tile, both of which seemed to linger in the room. The curtains rustled in a nonexistent
breeze as I shoved my hands through my hair. Only Horse’s deep breaths—and the fact that there were only Horse’s deep breaths in the seedy motel—calmed me. And sent me onto the street.
To watch. To wait. As if something greater had wanted me too.
The stagnant air hung around me and made me shift more than the hard cobbles against my ass. This place was desperate. Desperate for something fresh—fresh air, fresh life. Desperate for salvation that the alabaster Christ would never give.
The slow click-clack of heels teetering on the lopsided streets pulled me from my thoughts, back to watching and waiting as a young girl strode shakily toward me. She wore tights with holes in them, each big enough to put her dark Spanish skin on display. The too short pleated skirt she wore was much the same, showing off absolutely everything her G-string didn’t cover. Her top was more of a bikini than an actual shirt, showing off the fleshy expanse of her stomach. And as if the get up wasn’t enough, the way she swished her hips was an invitation to poke.
She was what would make me snap and succumb to the red and blood fueled determination filling me. If numbness hung around her like the little girl from earlier, and I pictured it filling my favorite blue eyes, my hands would beg to snap her neck. But something stilled my hands.
“Ángel oscuro.” A quiet voice, tentative like it wanted to bleed into the wind if one ever rolled through town, came from the woman in front of me. The name, the tone, were too familiar, too exact to the grandmother in my dreams, to do anything but send chills racing through my veins.
She crouched down and studied me. Her eyes flitted first across my neck tattoos then up across the contours of my face. Her eyes met me straight on. I gasped. I knew those eyes. I knew the glassy, warm chocolate and the far too deep wrinkles around them.
I shot back from her, scrambling awkwardly without standing up until I crashed into the building behind me. She didn’t follow me though, and the darkness between us gave me a small comfort.
