Pike nodded, face screwed up in thought. “That’s an interesting perspective,” he said, and Reeve heard, That’s total bullshit, but I don’t want to argue with you.
“I don’t reckon any of that’s all that helpful in the moment though, is it?” Reeve asked, allowing himself to crack a smile.
Pike’s eyes seemed to flicker. “No, you may be right. Maybe … in our headlong rush into progress, in our eagerness to move forward and make things better, we lost touch with a few fundamental truths, tossed ’em aside to make way for the new order.” He looked introspective, and Reeve got the feeling he liked to bloviate like this fairly often. Ought to introduce him to Guthrie; that lady seemed to like to bend an ear and talk philosophy. Pike smiled again. “How’s that headache?”
Reeve could feel the strains of it in his skull, still throbbing, radiating outward from a central point like someone had dinged him right in the dead center of the brain with a sledgehammer. “Still feels like my head’s in a vice. It takes like forty minutes for these things to work, you know—”
He stopped abruptly, because he’d just noticed something on one of the papers on Pike’s desk.
Little dots of red, four or five of them, wet, and spreading through the paper.
He sniffed again, and put a smile back on his face. He was pretty sure he’d tensed, and he tried to put that off. “This headache, I swear,” he said, faking it, blinking his eyes, as if that would help.
Blood. There was blood on those pages. Little spots of it, sure. It could have come from a paper cut, except—
He could smell the undertones of blood under the shit and piss stench. That was the thing that set his head to tingling even harder, and Reeve cursed this goddamned headache. If it hadn’t been drill-pressing into his skull, he would have picked up on it sooner, that familiar stink, because he knew it from every goddamned crime scene he’d ever been in where they’d had a bleeder, that coppery, metallic, distinctive smell that—now that he was paying attention—shit, it was as obvious as the smug on Pike’s face.
Those droplets were not from any paper cut, and that smell of piss and shit wasn’t from any kid’s accident.
It hit him like the roof had caved in. Someone had died in here, someone had been killed, and they’d done what a dead person did—they bled, they pissed, they shit, and they’d …
He let his gaze drift down, and then coughed, hard, a couple times, and bent over to pretend to be polite.
Fuck. There were dark stains on the cheap blue government carpet, and when he put his foot down he could feel the squish. Someone had soaked the motherfucker, trying to get it to come clean.
Reeve coughed again, and let his hand fall to his chest, then, when his head came up, he let it linger there. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to cover his shock with the aftermath of the fake coughing fit. It wasn’t that fake; he did feel like he had a frog in his throat after the fire, and it was all scratchy in the back. “Think I must have breathed in enough smoke back there to put the mill to shame.”
Pike made a face; the mill did stink. “I don’t envy you that.”
Reeve let his hand drift down from his chest to his belly, rolling along that right side. If Pike had killed someone here, who would he have—
His secretary. Of course. Mrs. Pike—stiff-assed bitch—no way would she have been caught dead answering phones and fetching water for visitors. He’d met the woman a few times, and she was the kind of—I’m sorry for the language, Donna—he thought; couldn’t help himself—cunt that wouldn’t have been caught dead waiting on another person. She was a high and mighty if he’d ever met one. No way she thought her shit smelled like anything other than fresh apple pie—though maybe even that would be a little too middle-America for this—this cunt, and her pussy-ass coward of a husband, who Reeve was suddenly sure had overpowered and murdered his goddamned secretary.
Reeve let his hand rest on the right side of his belly and blinked his eyes again real quick. He grabbed the water cup from the desk with his left hand, downed it in one as he was staring right at Pike, and then, as he swallowed, held it up again. “You mind if I go get a refill?” He was trying to decide which direction the danger was coming from, and he deemed County Administrator Pike, the dickless weasel, the bigger threat than Mrs. Pike, the cunt. It was about 80/20 in his mind, but he didn’t want to turn his back on either of them, and if he could get out the door and put both of them in front of him, that’d beat the shit out of where he was sitting now.
“Oh, Darla can—”
“No,” Reeve said, shaking his head and trying to clear his throat. “I think I need to—” He gestured with the cup, trying to make a face of pure misery.
Shit, here she came. He could hear her stepping, and he turned to look at her.
A loud thump from behind him jerked his attention back to Pike at the desk, and away from Mrs. Pike—Reeve couldn’t help it; he did it on instinct, jerking his pistol at the sound—
Pike had thumped the desk with his palm, and when he saw Reeve draw, his face went fucking white, seeing the Sheriff’s gun aimed right at him from the hip. Reeve stared at the man for only a second, saw his hands, both of them on the desk, empty of weapons, and then turned his head—
The thunderous blast of a gun came only a couple feet from his face, and Reeve caught the round right in his forehead as he turned. The bullet came crashing into his skull like a nail driven in, like an icepick crushing its way through, and—strangely—made a lot of the pain disappear as the bullet passed through and blew out the back of his head.
Reeve jerked the trigger of his own gun as he sat there for a second, stunned, the nerves in his hand firing off one last time. County Administrator Pike jerked and the window behind him spiderwebbed with cracks as Reeve slid off the chair and lost sight of them both, his hands useless and his vision blurring around the edges.
Damned if she hadn’t cured his headache. Mrs. Pike leered over him, smiling a smile that was a hundred times—a thousand times—as smug as her husband’s. Reeve couldn’t fully process what he was seeing, but he knew that face, the one standing over him, framed by that blond hair. He knew and he hated it, instinctively, down to the bottom of him. The fact that she was pointing a gun down at him, well, that would have been the icing on the cake, if he’d been able to actually think about what it was he was seeing.
But the world was darkening around him, and Reeve’s face squished against the wet carpet. He’d have known the smell was blood, if he hadn’t been fading, would have known that some of it was his and some was older, from the last person these two had killed right here in this spot. He was past all that now though, and all he could focus on was the face staring down at him from above as the pain—and his life—receded.
He thought of Donna, for just a second, and then she faded away. He’d see her soon, maybe, if he was lucky. The light was blotted out, darkness rising. He fought to keep his eyes open, but they fought back, winning the struggle.
One last word popped in as he closed his eyes, and that headache went away, along with everything else, forever.
Cunt.
*
“Jesus Fucking Christ, Darla!” Pike was on his feet, holding his ear. Not only had the sound of those fucking gunshots—first hers, blasting a hole in Reeve’s head right in front of him, and then his, in response—deafened him, but the sheriff’s had taken off a piece of his goddamned ear!
“Don’t whine like a little bitch or I’ll slap you like one,” Darla said, turning her smiling face from Reeve to him. She pursed her lips in fake concern, blood spattering her face from brow to chin. “Pull your hand away from it for a second.” He did, grimacing all the while. “You’re fine, you big baby.”
“Really?” His hand came away bloody, but it wasn’t gushing. That was good, right?
“You don’t even look like one of those kids that stuck those fucking plates in their earlobe to stretch things out,” she said, waving the gun at him illustratively. “I
t’s a little nick. They seem fine with those giant things in theirs, and you’ll be fine with this little baby scratch on yours.” She shrugged like he hadn’t just been fucking shot. “Come on, pussy,” she said, slinking over to him and setting the gun on the desk, letting it rattle. She grabbed him by the crotch and ran the thumb along his shaft, hidden beneath the zipper. He felt it move a little. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Uhm, hello, I just got shot.” He pointed at his ear, letting off a little steam heat as he spoke. His ears were still ringing pretty fucking fiercely.
“Yeah, I was watching.” She nuzzled in on his neck. She had blood on her, all along the side of her body, and his hand found it as she leaned in to him. “But you’re gonna be okay, and we’ve got a ritual to complete.” She brought her face up to look at him. “So … get naked, honeybunch.” And she gave him a slap on the ass, then grinned, picking her way away from him and over to the closet, which she threw open.
Jenny came tumbling out, stiff as a fucking board, bent in an L shape and a rictus of horror on her face. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was purple. Darla unbuttoned her bloodstained blouse and put it gently on a chair in the corner of the office, one of the only places that wasn’t covered in blood. She then stooped down and rubbed her hand along the back of Jenny’s head, coming up with it smeared in blood. She undid her bra with the hand that wasn’t bloody, and Pike admired that she could do it so easily; he still fumbled that motherfucking latch to the honey jugs every goddamned time he tried. Darla tossed that off too, her tits swinging free, unbound and unconstricted, and she let out a long breath before rubbing Jenny’s blood across her nipples, which were already erect.
She dotted her chest with red and then turned to favor him with a look. “Chop chop, hon,” she said, false sweetly, “we don’t have all day. The babysitter’s waiting and we have a dark, sexy ritual to perform.” She smiled at him, impish in a way that he didn’t feel right now, standing in a room with two corpses and watching his wife strip.
His dick didn’t exactly thrill to this environment. For fuck’s sake … there were corpses in here. And he’d just gotten his rocks off with both Jenny and Darla in succession. She was the one running this show, and he didn’t want to tell her how to conduct her business or anything, but he had his doubts he was going to be able to perform in this instance, even if he hadn’t already been fucking wrung out.
But Darla was stepping out of her pants, as she folded them over the back of the chair. She was muttering under her breath, too, as she smeared more of Jenny’s blood on her belly, then picked her way over to where Reeve lay, almost facedown, pointed headfirst toward the door. Pike would have figured he’d have fallen backward, but no, he’d actually taken a nosedive toward Darla after she shot him, like the bullet passing through his head didn’t push him back hardly at all. She was stepping out of her panties now, that folded ring of flesh he called her muffin top being drenched with blood as she covered the belly overhang above her pubic region with Reeve’s blood.
“Blood of a righteous man,” she said under her breath, then looked at him. “Blood of my lover’s lover.” She glanced back at Jenny with a contemptuous little smile. She smeared her thighs with Reeve’s crimson lifeblood, then stood, and clapped her hands together. “Come on, sailor, get out of those fucking pants and get red.”
Pike didn’t normally consider himself squeamish, but in this case, he was willing to take his time and cop to it. “I don’t know how much luck I’m gonna have here.” He vaguely thrust out his pelvis as he took off his shirt. “I mean, I think you drained me pretty good earlier.”
She rolled her eyes as he stepped out of his shoes and unzipped his own pants, letting them fall behind the desk. He felt chilly standing there in his boxers and socks, but his wife was in less. “You know, most of the time, I admire the fact that you sort of let me steer the ship. It’s refreshing to be with a man who’s not so focused on himself that he can’t get out of his own way when I want to shove a hand up your ass and work you like my own personal puppet.” She was working her way around the desk, and she had a look of pure intensity.
“It’s nice that we’ve evolved as a society,” Darla went on, “to the point where I can lead us in this endeavor, and know that you’re following me. That I’m not worrying about who’s wearing the pants, because we’re on the same page, and mutually supportive, and all that other happy bullshit.” She sidled up to him and yanked his boxers down with one hand, sending them to his ankles. She reached out for him with her wet hand and smeared his ass with blood, both Jenny’s and Reeve’s, and pulled him close, kissing him with a fervor that made him worry that she might bite his lip and then, possibly, just chew it off. Instead, she broke away. “I like that you’re secure in your masculinity.” She rubbed that bloody hand on his chest. “That you know I’m the brains of this operation, and that the only reason you’re up front is because the misogyny of this world would never let me lead here, in this shithole Southern dump of a town, where we have to be.” She brought her bloody hand down, leaving a trail from his chest to his belly to … lower. “But every once in a while,” she said, leaning in and whispering, as she started to sink to her knees, “I wish you would just take charge and be a fucking man in the old way. Just get shit done.” She gripped his balls and squeezed them, lightly but enough that he felt it, and then she put his dick in her mouth, her lips running over the tip and then swallowing him all the way to the back of her throat, before pulling him out again before looking up at him with blazing eyes. “Every once in a while, I just want you to lead, Jason.” Her eyes were burning, and she sucked him again. “Now, don’t you dare fucking cum in my mouth, or there’s going to be three bodies on the floor here.” And she went to work.
“I’ll let you know when I get close,” he said, already hardening in spite of the fact he was smeared with blood and standing in his office, getting a hummer from his wife while surrounded by two corpses, one fresh and one getting pretty sour now. He just closed his eyes and blotted it out, opening them every once in a while to look down at his wife, smeared in the blood of their enemy and his last girlfriend as she moved his cock in and out of her mouth to warm him up. She gripped him by the ass, and started to put a finger up there. He didn’t cringe as she smoothed it down inside him, working the prostate and giving his erection a little extra oomph as it unfurled.
Once he was good and hard he beckoned her up, and, taking her advice, bent her over the desk like he’d bent Jenny. She sighed in pleasure as he entered her, already wet with anticipation, and he started sliding in and out. He came quickly, before she’d really had a chance to get close herself. Normally, this might have bothered him, and she’d have cussed a blue streak at him for failing to get the job done.
Here, though, she just stayed bent over as he felt his dick sting with overuse. She’d had to practically force him to get a hard-on, and then worked him so long in her mouth that he’d almost been over the top when he’d entered her. He was just lucky she hadn’t gotten too wet or too excited, because then he might not have got off at all.
Pike lay there, gasping, pressed with his pubic bone against a woman’s ass for the second time this afternoon as she lay draped over the surface of his desk. Darla’s mouth was open and a little drool trail had fallen out across the papers they’d scattered to cover up the blood. Darla had her head sideways, blond hair fallen all down her neck and partly obscuring her face, but he could see the tight line of her mouth and one of her eyes, just staring at the open closet, where Jenny had come tumbling out.
“Whatcha thinking?” Pike asked, leaning over on her. He could smell the sweat, the sex, her ass right there in front of him. Her anus was puckered tight, tighter than his probably was right now.
“Just burying my disappointment,” she said, stroking her own hair back behind her ear. “Whatever. At least you came, which—surprise, this fucking ancient ritual is misogynist too—was the point, I guess.”
Wha
t did you say to that? “Yeah,” he said, kinda shrugging. He just stayed there, because she wasn’t pushing him and wasn’t standing up yet.
“I heard what you two were talking about,” Darla said, face still against the desk. She arched her back enough to get up on her elbows. “Reeve bought into that ancient wisdom bullshit, it sounded like.”
“Seems like,” Pike said.
She spat on the desk—actually spat, right over the edge of his desk and at Reeve’s corpse. She hit it too, dead center on the back, staining his khaki uniform in one of the few places where blood hadn’t already done the job. “Fucking dinosaur. We’re going to sweep your bullshit away, you pig. You probably kept your wife at home like a caged bird, afraid to let her out while you were fucking around with anything that moved. Fuck you to fucking death. I’m not sorry I blew your goddamned caveman brains out, I’m only sorry I didn’t do it forty years ago so your wife could have had a fucking life without you heaving over her like a dead weight while you were trying to fill her with your backward ass seed so she could be a goddamned baby factory for you and nothing else.”
Darla was breathing heavier now, like she had gotten her rocks off even though she plainly hadn’t. Or maybe because she hadn’t, he thought. He waited a second, then said, “You done?”
She stirred, bare ass brushing against his pubis, sticky from the sweat, the scent of her sex, well used this afternoon, wafting up at him. He found it distasteful now that the deed was done, like he never needed to smell pussy again. That’d change, of course, as it always did, but for now … he’d be glad to get clean and into fresh clothes.
“Yeah, I’m done,” she said, letting her head sag back down onto the table. She reached back and shoved him so that he exited her, and he grimaced at the sting. She was dry, now, and it was like raking his cock across the desert sands. “Get the fucking book and let’s finish this,” she said, standing up. She was drenched with drying blood. “I want to get this over with so we can set this goddamned building—and that fucking fossil over there—” she pointed right at Reeve’s corpse “—on fire.” Darla adopted a sneer so fearful Pike took a step back. “Let’s burn this place to the ground, Jason.” She didn’t look at him, preferring instead to keep staring at her handiwork, the dead sheriff, facing toward the empty receptionist desk. “Let’s burn this building down, then burn down the goddamned town, and then—” Now she did turn on him, and the furious sneer she wore just about chilled his blood as cold as the two corpses in the room. “Let’s burn the whole fucking world.” And she meant it, too.
Starling (Southern Watch Book 6) Page 45
