Vice

by Callie Hart

  “Lot of people live here, huh?” I ask. Ocho probably doesn’t hear me over his Walkman. He gets out of the car and walks around the vehicle, opening my door for me and jerking his head back toward the house. Still, not a word comes out of his mouth. I could speak to him in Spanish, but I don’t think he’s in a very chatty mood. And besides, Fernando doesn’t know I understand Spanish yet. Better to keep that card up my sleeve. Might be useful if he takes any calls or talks to his men in his native tongue, expecting me to be oblivious to his words. I follow Ocho, allowing him to shepherd me into the mansion through the back door, through what once would have been the servant’s entrance. The place looks old enough to have once been staffed, in any case. Orellana was very little more than a shanti boat town kind of affair, and yet this mansion would be quite at home in Victorian England.

  Inside, the floors are pale, polished marble, shot through with threads and fractures of gold and gray. It looks wet somehow. Liquid, like the calm, flat surface of a milk bath, yet it’s reassuringly solid underfoot. There are more pillars in the foyer, and strange, musty paintings on the walls of austere military figures in colorful, unfamiliar uniforms. Sabres are mounted to the walls. Bronze cast busts of angry looking men with moustaches rest on walnut sideboards, and ceramics of graceful and elegant naked women pose an on shelves—all of which seem to be headless. A woman in a full-blown black and white maid’s outfit hurries into the foyer, a tray of empty glasses in her hand; she looks up, sees Ocho, sees me, yelps, and nearly drops the tray.

  “Dios Mio!”

  Ocho growls at her, and the woman crosses herself, as if the mere sight of us is enough to put the fear of god into her. She turns on her heel and disappears back the way she came, muttering frantically under her breath.

  “I am not the first white man that woman has seen,” I mutter under my own breath.

  Another sharp prod from Ocho. He places a hand on my shoulder, and he hurries me down a wide, beautifully decorated hallway, until we round a corner and we’re faced with a massive sweeping staircase, carpeted in a plush, rich cream. Ocho’s eyes flicker upwards, and I get moving. No point in hanging around, pretending like I don’t know what he wants from me. I need to behave myself until I’ve been able to recon the entire house, search every room, and find Laura. That’s going to take time. More time than I anticipated, now I’ve seen the size of the damn place.

  Up the stairs we go.

  On the second floor, I can hear talking. The sound of many people talking. I can’t make out the words, or even the language, but as Ocho guides me down a series of hallways, the talking gets louder. He reaches the end of a particularly long, straight hallway and then throws open a blue painted door to the right, revealing the source of all the chatter—a small room, packed with people, at least twenty of them. Twenty-five, perhaps? Most of them are men. Women walk around the room, scantily clad, some of them not dressed at all, some of them wearing sheer material that gives the hint of nipple here and the suggestion of ass there. A tall guy with raven-black hair sees me standing in the doorway and smiles, heading straight for me. He’s Caucasian—most of the people inside the room are—and he’s wearing a white tuxedo.

  “You’re late. What took you so long?” he asks, slapping me in an overly friendly manner on the shoulder. He shoots Ocho an annoyed look and hisses at him, frowning. “Well? Go on, Ocho. You’re not needed here now. We have everything under control.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman in a pink bra and panties drop to her knees, and the man standing in front of her slowly slides his bare cock into her mouth. I blink, looking away. Ocho isn’t paying attention to the guy with the black hair; he’s looking at me, looking at me intently, eyes narrowed. I think he’s gauging my reaction to what I’ve just walked into, so I make a show of smiling and allowing my eyes to wander again. Are my pupils still blown from the coke? Do I look turned on right now, or angry as fuck? Because I am angry as fuck. I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier than I am right now. I can’t let it show, though. That would be seriously disastrous.

  Ocho makes a low rumbling noise, but he doesn’t argue with the guy. He backs out of the room, closing the door behind him, and the tuxedo guy is suddenly grabbing hold of me by the arm and dragging me off to one side.

  “Who are you? Where have you come from?” he demands, talking out of the side of his mouth. He’s smiling, eyes wrinkling at the corners, as if he’s reacting to something funny I’ve just said, but his voice is low and urgent.

  “I came from New York. My name is Sam.” Giving him any further information than that would be foolhardy. I don’t know who the fuck this guy is, after all.

  “New York, New York,” the guy chants. His fingers continue to dig into my arm. “Nope. I don’t know anyone in New York. Fucking awesome.”

  He has no accent, well trained to make it sound as though he could have come from anywhere, but as he talks I hear a hint of a Southern twang slip through, giving him away.

  “Did he mark you, yet?” the guy asks.

  “Mark me?”

  “Yes. Y’know. Did he brand you?”

  My look of confusion must speak loudly enough, because he rolls up his sleeve and holds out his arm, showing me what he means: a small, angry, red burn mark in the shape of a wolf’s head, with a large V underneath it. “He marks his property,” the guy tells me. A shadow of doubt flies across his face then, appearing out of nowhere. “Unless…”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless you’re a player, not a member of the Servicio.”

  “I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about right now.”

  “Did you pay to come here? To fuck? Or are you one of us, one of Fernando’s servants?”

  I take a step back, putting a healthy amount of space between us. “I’m neither. I just came to buy drugs.”

  The guy in the tux visibly calms. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his pants and rocks back onto his heels, a manic light flickering in his pale blue eyes. “You have no idea where you are, do you?”

  I refrain from answering. I don’t like the madness hovering over his head, this strange Southern, dark-haired man; I’m beginning to think he might be a little crazy. He tips his head back and laughs.

  “You’ve strayed far from the path of civilization. No one just comes here to buy drugs. He’ll have you playing this game soon enough, or he’ll turn you into a pawn in it, Sam. You’d better clue yourself into your surroundings and quickly, otherwise you might end up the used instead of the user.” He steps back, a quirky, unsettling expression on his face. I think he’s going to go and stand back by the door, but before he can reach it a tall, blond-haired guy with neck tattoos places a hand on his shoulder and stops him in his track. The blond guy already has a woman on his left arm. She’s completely naked, apart from what looks like a necktie looped tightly around her throat, biting into her skin. Her dark brown, almost black hair is arranged into a perfect mess of curls, which fall way down her back. Her breasts are perfect, nipples peaked and standing to attention. The blond guy hugs her to his side as he reaches out and strokes his fingers down Tux Guy’s cheek.

  “Care to introduce yourself?” the blond guy asks.

  Meeting my eye instead of the newcomer’s, Tux Guy smirks, a false air of confidence rolling off him. He sighs. “Of course. I’m Plato. I see you’ve already met my friend Persephone?”

  Plato’s fingers skate over the creamy, perfect skin of the woman on the blond guy’s arm; he traces them over her stomach, up, so that he’s skimming the swell of her breast. The girl doesn’t move. She remains glued to the spot, allowing Plato to explore her body, seemingly unfazed, as the blond guy watches on.

  “Oh yes. She’s fucking perfect. And so are you.”

  Plato looks hungry, but it seems false. Like he’s acting. “Would you like for me and Persephone to put on a show for you?” he asks the blond guy. He steps closer to the man, so close that their chests are almost touching. The
blond guy’s eyelids droop as he looks from Persephone to the other man.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I want you to fuck her good for me, man. I’m going to watch.”

  Plato pouts. “Is that all? I was hoping…” His hand disappears between their bodies, and suddenly the blond guy is stiffening, his shoulders growing tense. He makes a low, warning growl in his throat.

  “I’m not fucking gay,” he hisses.

  “I never said you were,” Plato offers. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t suck your dick. And it doesn’t mean you can’t fuck my ass, either.”

  I stand back as the three of them move toward a low couch in the center of the room, where Plato begins to slowly strip out of his suit. His attention is fixed on the woman and the man in front of him, but his gaze flashes to me every so often. He’s trying to see if I get it now. And I do. This place is full of rich bastards, willing to pay to have their deepest, darkest desires fulfilled. It is also full of people, held here in this room against their will, who are forced to submit to whatever is asked of them. On pain of…I don’t know. I’m not sure what the punishment would be if any of these “workers” refused to do their jobs, but I’m sure it can’t be good.

  In no time at all, Plato is completely naked and he’s inside Persephone, fucking her hard and fast while the blond customer watches, stroking his hard cock through his black pants. I can see the desire in his eyes. I can see violence, too. This whole thing has started off pleasant enough, but I know men like this fucking blond dude, and I know what he really wants to do. He wants to hurt them. He wants to watch the pain in their eyes—pain that he causes—and he wants to get off on it.

  The room is full of violence, shame and terror, all of which is thinly disguised by a grim patina of desire and lust. The woman on her knees, blowing a guy a few feet from me, is fingering her own pussy, palming her tits as she works her lips and her tongue up and down the guy’s shaft, but her moans are forced. She’s not enjoying herself, and she sure as shit doesn’t want to be here. Plato’s cock is rock solid as he uses it to pound Persephone in the ass, but I get the feeling there might have been some sort of stimulant involved on that front.

  I stay exactly where I am, and I try to keep my head down. The occupants of the room all seem to be fairly involved in their activities at hand (or mouth, or ass, as the case might be), but I don’t want to draw attention to myself, so I stand perfectly still and I watch.

  The blond guy with Plato and Persephone finally gives up the pretence and gives in to what he really wants. He grabs hold of Plato by the hair and kisses him roughly, jamming his tongue into his mouth. Plato responds, sucking on it and groaning while Persephone rocks her hips against his, the two of them still fucking. The blond guy lets go of Plato’s hair and runs his hand down Plato’s back, until he’s reaching in between his legs and he’s cupping Plato’s balls. With his other free hand, he cups and squeezes Persephone’s tits, so that he’s touching and caressing them both while they writhe against each other.

  The next twenty minutes are pretty damned uncomfortable. I lean back against the wall, watching the door, waiting for Ocho to return to see that I’m not enjoying myself, but he doesn’t show up. Instead, I’m treated to the vision of Plato sucking the blond guy’s dick. I know shit is going to get real when the blond guy strips off, but things don’t go as I expect. He doesn’t bend Plato over and screw him in the ass. He bends over himself, burying his face between Persephone’s thighs, and he has Plato fuck him in the ass. Dark haired Persephone comes loud, and she comes hard. It’s a real orgasm, by the looks of things. Some of the other men standing around the edges of the room, quietly talking to other beautiful women in various states of undress, all stop their conversations to watch as Plato puts on the performance of a lifetime.

  His skin is shining with sweat as he works himself in and out of the blond guy, who grabs handfuls of the thick carpet beneath him, head bowed, eyes closed tightly. A couple of the guys on the peripheries of the party subtly take hold of their erections through their pants, running their hands up and own themselves as the small space fills with the sound of Plato’s exertions.

  “Goddamn he’s good,” someone mutters close by.

  “The best.”

  “Well, he’s had practice. Three years’ worth.”

  Three years? Plato has been here for three years? That doesn’t seem as though it can be true. Surely not. How long can a party like this continue, after all? A night? Nothing more. People sleep. People have work. Responsibilities. Even if Plato is here against his will, the people who have paid to attend this…event have to return to their lives at some point.

  One of the men watching the display before us steps forward. His pants are unbuttoned, his dick in his hand. He doesn’t even hesitate as he pushes himself into Persephone’s mouth. She accepts him; her eyes are clamped shut, and her hands are balled into fists, but she accepts him. The guy shudders pleasure as she licks and sucks at him. The blond being fucked by Plato watches with stunned, wide eyes as the other well-dressed man fucks Persephone’s mouth. He moans, a ragged breath of ecstasy escaping his lips, and then he’s coming, his dick pulsing as he spills his come everywhere into the carpet.

  “Holy fuck,” someone whispers.

  “Quite the show.”

  Next to me, a tall guy with a black button-down and black leather gloves turns to the woman kneeling naked at his feet and strokes a hand over her hair. “Do you see?” he whispers. “This is how it goes. This is everything. This is what is expected of you.”

  The woman looks shocked. She can’t be more than twenty, and her bottom lip is wobbling. Her tits are small, less than a handful, and they look bruised, as if someone has been biting them. Small wheels of purple and black mark her skin on her stomach and on her shoulders, too. On the flesh between her thighs. She shivers as the guy wearing the gloves reaches into his back pocket and produces and short, rigid whip with a flayed leather tassel on the end. He runs the end of the whip down her back, between her shoulder blades, stopping short just above the curve of her buttocks, which look as though they’ve already been treated once or twice with the whip prior to now.

  “Behave yourself and you’ll come to like this,” the guy whispers. “Misbehave, and it’s within my power to make your time here the most unpleasant thing imaginable. Unbearable, even.”

  I have a rage inside of me the likes of which I have never experienced before. I am boiling. My veins are filled with bubbling battery acid, and if feels like my lungs are about to explode. I clench my hands into fists.

  “Do you understand?” the guy whispers.

  The girl looks up at him, and there are tears in her eyes. Her whole body is trembling. “Please. I just want to go home. Please. I swear I won’t tell anyone about this. I promise, I—”

  A gloved hand flies out, cracking across her cheek, sending her sprawling out on the floor, and that’s it. I have had enough. I’m reaching for my gun before I even realize what I’m doing. It’s instinctual, and I’ve never been very good at ignoring my instincts. A loud crack splinters through the air, and then I’m staring at the naked blonde girl on her knees, because her face is splattered with blood and her eyes are bugging out of her head.

  The room is silent.

  The guy who was schooling her on how to behave a moment ago sways a little, a bizarre, confused look on his face, and then he slumps to his knees right in front of the girl, slowly touching a hand to a smoking hole in his chest. He looks down at the hole, and at the blood that’s slowly beginning to trickle from the wound, and then he laughs. Just once. One surprised, disbelieving snap of laughter. His eyes roll back into his head, and then he topples forward, head first into the blonde girl, who shrieks and scrambles back, terrified.

  Plato and his companions have stopped fucking and are all looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. In fact, everyone is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “You…that was…really fucking dumb,” Plato says. His dick is still hard,
which is kind of off putting, but impressive. None of the other assholes in the room have managed to maintain an erection. Their balls look like they’ve well and truly shrunk up inside their bodies.

  “You have no idea what you’ve just done.” Plato grabs his boxers and his pants from the floor, hurrying towards me. Another guy steps out, trying to block his way. He’s huge, well over six feet; he looks like he’s just processed the fact that I killed a man at their fuck fest, and he’s really not happy about it.

  “I hope you like pain, new guy. We’re about to break every bone in your goddamn body.” He rushes forward, murder in his eyes, and I hold up the gun, closing one eye and aiming the thing directly at his head. My hand is steady. I don’t need to close an eye to squeeze off a shot and put an end to this motherfucker, but it makes it look like I mean business. The guy stops in his tracks, and his face turns a frightening shade of crimson.

  “You’re not seriously going to shoot two of us,” he snarls. “Fernando will have your head for this.”

  “He can have it, if he demands it,” I say. “I have seven bullets left in this gun, though, and I’m a crack shot, asshole. I’ll take eight of you before I leave this room, and I’ll die without a single regret.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “No, man. I have just had enough.” And it’s true. Years of men abusing young girls. Years of raiding warehouses in the middle of the night, to find teenagers handcuffed to gas pipes, while lines of guys take their turns with them. And years of looking for my sister, never finding her, thinking with each new obscene horror I find that this could be what she’s been going through for so long. It’s taken its toll. Every second has left a black mark on my soul that’s slowly but surely tarnished me. There’s no good left in me. There’s nothing to keep me from killing as many of these sick motherfuckers as I can and welcoming death with open arms.

  I’m about to pull the trigger, to kill this motherfucker right where he’s standing, but then a small voice whispers in the back of my head: Laura. What about Laura? She could be here. She could be here, and then what? If you die, she’ll never escape this place.