THE DEVIL’S BABY

by Naomi West

  I pick up the rope and start tying her up, binding her hands and legs, the back of my hand brushing her breast. When I’m done with her, she watches me for a few moments and then sighs, shaking her head, as though giving up at trying to get me to talk. I go to the door, meaning to close it and leave her in here for a few hours, let her listen to the men in the bar and wonder what will happen to her. That’s the way to get someone to talk, I know. That’s the way to make somebody nervous. Let them wonder what bloody things these bloody men will do to her.

  But when I get to the door, I can’t resist a look back. She doesn’t look scared. She looks calm, her face composed. In a flash, my mind takes me to dirty images. I see my fingers wrapped around her blonde hair, tugging, her body arching back, opening for me.

  A flash moves across her blue eyes. She knows what I’m thinking, I sense. I turn away and close the door behind me.

  I join Justin and Knuckles at a table in the corner, one of the pledges bringing me a glass of whiskey. Sipping it, looking over the bar as the club girls circulate, handing out drinks and shaking their asses in their tight dresses, I can’t stop thinking about Yazmin, sitting in my office, her body looking like it was made for fucking. I swallow, trying to tell myself that this is business, trying to tell myself that I can’t let myself go crazy like this. I have to stay focused. But she’s too damn hot, too tight, too tempting. I close my eyes, sipping my third—or maybe my fourth—whiskey.

  “You all right, Spike?” Justin asks.

  “Fine,” I mutter. “You know.” I open my eyes and look at my ginger-haired VP. “I remember when you first joined us, Justin. I remember you walking in here like you were applying for a job at a bank, in a suit holding your résumé, outlining how you could help us with the business side. You were just a new blood back then, weren’t you? A square, never fought a day in your life.”

  “He doesn’t fight now!” Knuckles roars, chuckling.

  “He does.” I smile. “He fights because he’s got something worth fighting for.” Maybe I’ve had more than three or four whiskies. Maybe I’m tipsy.

  “My mom,” Justin says, when Knuckles looks at him for an explanation. “She has cancer.”

  “So you need the money.”

  Justin nods. “I need the money.”

  “Well this just got fucking morbid,” Knuckles grumbles and then jumps to his feet, walking over to one of the club girls and pawing at her. The girl giggles and jumps into his arms, wrapping her legs around him. I look around the room. Fifty or so men, just as many club girls. I could have my pick of any of these girls, take three to bed if I wanted. I’ve done it before, lost myself in their flesh until the next morning I feel like a new man. Christina could make me feel that way, too. But as I sit here, looking at the girls and remembering Christina, I don’t want that. I find myself wanting Yazmin in the next room. I force myself to stay in my seat, worried I might stumble in there and forget she’s a prisoner, not just a sexy-as-hell woman.

  We’re just finishing up the burgers some of the girls have cooked for us when one of the men stumbles in, looking like he’s just gone ten rounds with a heavyweight champion. His face is a ballooned mess. He clutches onto a plastic bag, limping, bleeding all over the floor. I recognize him when he gets closer, his face emerging through the mess. His name is Ryan. He’s one of the men I’ve kept posted on our warehouse in San Diego for almost a year now. Twenty-two years old, an ex-bouncer, tough, with a twice-broken nose and a deep voice.

  He stumbles over to me, holding that plastic bag between his thumb and forefinger like it’s something nasty. The music goes quiet. So do the men. Some of the girls whisper to each other. Others just stare.

  “Boss,” Ryan says, standing near my table.

  I gesture to Justin’s seat. Justin stands up and steps aside, letting Ryan sit down. He slumps in his chair like he’s about to fall out of it, breathing heavily. His hair is usually blond, I think, but right now it’s crimson. He places the plastic bag on the table, wheezing and shaking his head slowly. Something in the bag rattles.

  “Tell me what happened,” I say, once he’s been given some water.

  “We were at the warehouse like usual, overseeing the merchandise, when they hit us, boss; they just fuckin’ hit us. Like a wave breaking, they just fuckin’ hit us. I don’t even know where they came from. It must’ve been through the service entrance, you know, the one we keep locked except for deliveries. I’m the only one with the key for that. Well, and you and Justin, so they must’ve broke the lock or something.”

  “The men?” I ask, but I don’t need to. I know the answer. Fucking Snake.

  “Dead,” Ryan says,

  “And the shipment.”

  “Burned.” Ryan looks around the room like he’s expecting a bullet to come whizzing at his face. I know that look. I know that feeling. Everything’s a potential source of death for him right now. “They burned the whole warehouse down, boss. They left me alive to deliver a message, that’s all.”

  “Message? What kind of message?” Knuckles peers down at the plastic bag.

  “This.” Ryan tips the bag open. The jar lands on the table, rolling before becoming still. Inside the jar, the scorpion jabs at the glass with its pincers, its tail flailing behind it, the glass making a tiny tinkling sound.

  I stand up slowly, looking over my men. “We’ll get them back for this. I swear to fucking God, we’ll get them back for this.”

  I think of Yazmin, tied up, hopefully getting more scared by the minute. She’s more important now than ever.

  Chapter Six

  Yazmin

  Something I’ve always done when I’m nervous is talk and talk and talk. When I was a girl and my friends discussed their dads, I would always spin fantastical lies, telling them that my dad was an astronaut on his way to Mars or a secret agent who could only visit me in the dead of night. If I kept talking, I thought, then they would be forced to believe me. If I never stopped talking, they wouldn’t have a chance to prove me wrong.

  This is exactly what I’ve been doing with Spike, just talking to fill the silence. I’m on his side, but I don’t know how to broach the topic without seeming like I’m trying some sort of plan. I need to bide my time. I need to wait until he’s desperate to hear something. For the first time in my life, I need to learn how to shut up.

  So when the men walk into the office, all seven of them, and when the ginger-haired man is holding a roll of duct-tape, I’m almost glad. It gives me a chance to keep my mouth closed. He wraps the duct-tape around my head, sticking it to my neck, clamping down on my lips. The men fill the room, the seven-foot giant looming over me, Spike leaning against the wall watching me. None of them say anything.

  This is a scare tactic, I know. Dad has used it on me before, just stare and let the person they’re staring at imagine what’s going on behind the cold gaze. I’m scared, I have to admit. When the giant man steps forward, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake. Maybe I should’ve blurted that I wanted to help right away. But he doesn’t lay a finger on me. He just kneels down, staring at me, trying to psych me out.

  At least I have a roof over my head. There is that, I suppose. And at least I have a vague chance of getting Dad back for killing Mom—I push that thought far away. I can’t think about that, not now. It’s too painful. The giant wide man turns to the men behind him and laughs, a laugh that shakes my bones. “I reckon I should go first, lads. She looks like she needs breakin’ in.” The men behind him laugh, all except Spike. He just smiles. But it looks like a forced smile. It looks like he doesn’t have a taste for this at all.

  Who knows, maybe he’s as interested in me as I am in him.

  He’s tall and lean, his muscles sinewy, the sort of muscles men who work with their hands develop. His hair is jet black and cropped close to his head, his eyes a bright green which seem all the brighter for his clipped black beard. At the moment he’s wearing a black T-shirt which shows the viper tattoo which slithers around his arm,
ending with an opening mouth on his hand.

  “Nah, I reckon we should all just go in on her,” the ginger-haired man says. “She looks like the sort who’d like it in the ass.”

  They have no idea that I’ve spent almost a year hearing the same shit from the Scorpions. They think I was in there being pampered by the Scorpions, protected. I’m accustomed to this, jaded by it, even. I just watch Spike, watching me. It’s like a little game we’re playing to see who’ll look away first. In the end, he does. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that there’s an attraction here. Despite everything, there’s an attraction here. I think about meeting Spike in a club, his bright eyes, his dark hair, the way his body moves as though ready for action at any minute. I’d be all over him in a second.

  “She looks like a bleeder,” another man croaks. He’s the oldest man I’ve ever seen. He looks like a skeleton. He leers at me. “But that don’t have to be a problem.”

  The way they see it, they’re softening me up for later. They want me to be so scared that when they leave, my mind will go into overdrive thinking about all the horrible things they’re going to do. Everything is in place. They’re doing a good job. The room smells of oil and cigarettes and whiskey. The men are big and scary and some of them ugly. Any woman would be quaking in her boots right now. Maybe I am, deep down, but I can’t let it rule me. I have to remember Mom, the bed of blood, the crimson sheets, the lifeless eyes, judging me. I have to remember Dad and his desire to turn his only child into a stripper or trade her off like a pet.

  “I’m going to hurt her,” a kid squeaks out, younger than me. He looks sick as he speaks. “I’m really going to make her hurt.”

  I think I would be more scared if Spike looked like he would let them touch me. I’ve seen the look in men’s eyes when they want me, and Spike wants me. He looks as though he wants me with the intensity that causes men to fight off anybody who tries to touch their woman. He even winces as the men talk about hurting me. The performance hinges on his reactions, and his reactions are plainly negative. He wants me all for himself. I wonder what he’d look like without that black T-shirt on, wonder how many scars he has, wonder what it would feel like to have his hands on my thigh. If this is a strange train of thought to be riding in a situation like this, then I’m a strange woman, there’s no question about it. But I’ll never claim to be anything different.

  A man with the flattest nose I’ve ever seen and the reddest eyes I’ve ever seen takes out a knife and waves it around while pacing back and forth in front of me. “I want to hear her moan,” he says casually. “I want to hear her scream.”

  Fear pricks me. He’s the only one so far who I believe would actually do it. He stumbles as he paces, clearly drunk, and his words come out slurred and hungry.

  I see Spike move as if to push away from the wall. I see his fists clench as though to punch this man in the face for going too far. I see his eyes flit to me, not just to my body, but to my face, too. I heard that my father killed his girlfriend recently, last week, if the gossip is true, but he doesn’t seem at all traumatized by it. Maybe it wasn’t serious.

  The red-eyed man lurches at me. I flinch back, a scream stifled by the duct tape.

  “All right, let’s get going,” Spike says. He’s at the man’s shoulder, his hand on his arm, squeezing so hard that the red-eyed man drops the knife.

  One by one, the men spill out of the room, leaving Spike and the knife. Outside, music starts blaring and drinks are being poured. A woman giggles. The party resumes.

  Spike cuts away the duct-tape. He doesn’t say a word, just stares at me. I don’t say a word, either. It doesn’t feel like the right time. I need to judge the moment just before he’s going to be forced to do something he doesn’t want to do. I need to reveal myself as his ally just as he’s ready to make me his enemy. He doesn’t want to hurt me. I have to believe that.

  He silently moves from the room, leaving the duct-tape sticking painfully to the back of my neck. I sit there for two hours, or more, staring at the wall and wondering how my life became this. It’s strange how life can be fairly normal one day and completely batshit the next. I mean, I’m not saying I was the most well-adjusted woman in the world. I was coasting through life, certainly. I was lost, and I had no clue what I was doing. I wasn’t being fair to my mom, going out and getting drunk when I could’ve been helping her with bills. But I was normal. I wasn’t a criminal. And now, I’m tied to a chair getting a crush on the man who may very well be torturing me soon.

  If life is strange, lust is stranger. It’s the strangest thing a person can experience, I think, or one of the strangest. It can hit in the most unlikely places. At the grocery store. At an interview. In the gynecologist’s waiting room, even. And apparently when I’m meant to be terrified out of my mind by the hard-as-nails biker who is keeping me prisoner.

  About three hours later, the party pounding next door, a woman about my age walks into the room holding a can of polish and a dusting pad. She’s short, with small dark eyes and a small mouth. Her hair is combed back into a tight ponytail. “They do this sometimes,” she says quietly, as she goes around the room dusting. “A party that lasts all day and all night.”

  “You shouldn’t be talking to me!” I hiss. I think of what Dad would do if one of the girls talked to a prisoner. “They’ll kill you. They’ll torture you. They’ll rape you.”

  The woman laughs softly, making sure to be quiet. “You’re in the wrong place for that. They don’t do that here, not to innocents, anyway.”

  “Who says I’m innocent?”

  The woman turns to me, a crooked smile on her face. “Are you hungry or thirsty?”

  My stomach is growling and my throat is dry. “Yes, both. But I don’t think you should try and bring me anything. They might see.”

  “Oh.” The woman’s grin gets wider. “Don’t worry about that.” She approaches me, bringing a bottle of water out of one pocket and a candy bar out of another. “I can’t untie your hands.” She kneels next to me and brings the water to my lips. I drink greedily, the water cold and refreshing in my bone-dry throat. Then she feeds me the candy bar. I feel like a little kid, but I’d rather feel like a little kid than have my belly twist in angry hunger.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, once she’s stowed the trash in her pockets.

  “My name? Why do you want to know my name?” She continues with her dusting.

  “Because you’re my Good Samaritan, that’s why. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” I smile at her, wiggling my eyebrows.

  She hides her laugh behind her hand. “You’re weird,” she says. “Tied to a chair, acting like that. You’re very, very weird, do you know that?”

  “You just told me they won’t hurt me.”

  “Only if you’re innocent,” she shoots back.

  “What’s your name?” I repeat.

  She sighs. “I shouldn’t tell you. But it’s Georgia Castle, okay?”

  “Yazmin Lafayette.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Georgia rolls her eyes.

  “So are you the cleaner and the cook and the—” I don’t know how to phrase it without causing offense.

  “Whore?” Georgia offers.

  I nod.

  “You only do that if you want to. We have a lot of girls who used to be with pimps who wanted to go independent but didn’t know how, so they come here where the pimps can’t get them; the men hurt the pimps if they try. The girls get to keep all their money. And they can leave anytime they want. Lots of girls have left and bought nice big houses. But no, I’m just a cleaner and a cook. You can’t imagine how messy this place can get.”

  Outside, somebody crashes into the wall.

  “Oh, I think I can.”

  We giggle together and then Georgia makes to leave.

  “Wait,” I say, when she’s at the door. “He sent you, didn’t he? Maybe you shouldn’t have talked with me, maybe you went too far there. But the food and the water, Spike sent you with t
hose.”

  Georgia’s hand pauses for a fraction of a second before turning the door handle and I know I’m right. Despite his performance, Spike wants me to be as comfortable as a woman awaiting torture can be.

  Chapter Seven

  Spike

  The party goes on for hours, the girls bringing out food and more drinks, some of the fellas and some of the girls going into the dormitory wing to have their own private parties. I sit in the corner with Justin, watching over the party, staring at the scorpion which jabs at the glass. There is a vicious energy in the air now, the sort of energy which can only come when some of the men have fallen. Their bodies are being taken to our guy in Sunnyside who’ll handle the police and morgue reports and then get them ready for burial. A funeral always brings the men down, reminds them that they could be next.

  I can’t stop thinking about Yazmin in the next room. She’s supposed to be in there getting more scared the longer we leave her. I look at the clock and see that it’s almost six o’clock in the evening, which means she’s been in there for seven or so hours. And yet I know that she isn’t scared, or if she is, she’s amazing at hiding it.