14. Jackal
FOURTEEN
JACKAL
The seconds ticked by as she taunted Coyote beside me, the discomfort growing in my extremities as I tried desperately to restore the feeling to my toes. I had to figure out a way out of this, and fast—before she figured out killing us quick was the smartest option, and just ended it all.
Then we could fucking kill her and wander home, all in a day’s work.
Or maybe post up at a bar and drink the pain away.
Bitch swung a bat like she was trying out for the major leagues.
My eyes watered as I wriggled again, wishing the chains would just fall off me, save me some of this fucking work. I still had no idea who this bitch was outside of ‘the girl from the club’, and I didn’t really care to know, anymore.
The realization that she was turned on by the torture, though, was an interesting development.
Maybe I could use that to unsettle her long enough for one of us to get loose.
Yeah, and maybe pigs would fly.
“Who picked the names?” she asked him, setting herself on his lap again as his discomfort grew. She’d gone from throwing some fancy-ass Shakespeare at him to asking him to tell her all our secrets.
Too bad she didn’t know that Coyote didn’t talk much—and especially not to strangers.
“We named ourselves,” he muttered, his eyes on the floor. His tongue darted out to wet his dry lips, and the psycho bitch’s gaze followed the movement, giving herself away. Whether it was us, or the torture, she got off on this.
Her hands settled on his shoulders, and he froze like a deer in the headlights of a semi on the highway, still not daring to look up at her.
“You picked Coyote?” she asked quietly, her lips parted as she trailed her nails down the side of his throat. “Why?”
“He won’t tell you shit,” Dingo muttered from the table. “He doesn’t talk much at all, to anyone.”
“Shut up, Dingo,” I shouted, hating him for giving up one of our secrets. For outing Coyote like that. “At least he doesn’t cringe every time a fucking woman makes it on our list.”
Dingo’s form went still, and he turned his head away from me, not bothering to deny it or to fight back.
One more thing I was beginning to hate about him.
The people we killed didn’t deserve our sympathy. And I damn sure wasn’t about to waste a second of my time feeling bad for a single one. If Dingo wanted to be a martyr and take that guilt, more power to him.
The girl, who still hadn’t bothered to introduce herself, let her gaze wander from me to Dingo, then back again, obviously measuring the discord there. The bitch pulled another chair from the shadows and set it right in front of me, a new toy in her hands.
A pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
What, was she planning to smoke me to death or something?
She must’ve registered the destination of my stare, because she laughed, that beautifully broken sound making my cock fucking jump, the traitorous bastard. I was half shocked there was even any blood left down there to fill it.
“Do you smoke, Jackal?” she asked calmly, knocking a single cylindrical stick just far enough out of the pack to put her lips around. I had a sudden, confusing image of her wrapping those lips around a different cylindrical shaped object thrust into the forefront of my mind, and groaned, the rush of blood to my heads– plural– making me a bit woozy.
Her gaze flicked to my hands, which flexed open and closed, and I flinched when she reached out and put her fingers atop my wrist, measuring my pulse. She didn’t look at me while she did it, but I looked at her .
In her eyes, was she just prolonging the pain? Was she checking to see if I’d survive the torture?
“What the fuck did we do to you?” I rasped, the words slightly fuzzy as she cut that piercing gaze to meet mine, then looked away again. It was like she didn’t want to tell us yet, like she was saving it up for some grand reveal.
What was the point in all that? She had us captive. And unless Coyote or Dingo managed to get free, there was no hope for any of us. Obviously, she’d decided I was the most dangerous one here and took extra steps to ensure I wouldn’t get away.
Why me?
“Who are you to ask me questions?” she demanded as she brought the lighter to her lips and lit the cigarette hanging from them. “What right do you have to demand?—”
“Obviously, you hate us, or we wouldn’t be strung up in some torture chamber in who the fuck knows where. So you have to have a reason, right?” My eyes narrowed, and a new thought formed in my head. “Unless you’re just a psycho, and we’re really, really unlucky.”
“I’m not a psycho,” she whispered, more to herself than to me, her eyes on the cherry of the cigarette now resting between her fingers. “I’m broken. And no amount of glue will ever put me back together again. You can never really line the pieces of shattered glass back up perfectly the way they were before you damaged them, now, can you?” Her eyes glazed over, and suddenly, she was off in her own little world again, contradicting her ‘I’m not psycho’ insistence. “There’s always a shard missing, one that got shoved under the cabinet, or ground into dust beneath a careless booted heel. And without that shard, things will never be quite as they were. It’s like looking through a window at a busy street—the things on the other side will never be exactly the same, no matter what you do.”
Okay, that was it. This bitch was certifiable.
Wait .
Wait.
She’d mentioned we knew her father before. Maybe that was where the overlap was. Maybe I could make her angry and buy the others enough time to figure out an escape plan.
Or maybe it would just make her angrier and I’d end up dead faster.
All in all, both options were absolute shit, and had about the same likelihood of success.
“Did we know your daddy, little girl, or did we kill your daddy?”
The light in her eyes changed so fast I had to blink to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. There was nothing in their depths now, nothing but anger and rage and hatred so heavy it constricted what little capacity for breathing I had left.
Her hand darted out in a flash, pressing the hot cherry against the sliver of exposed flesh on my neck, and I didn’t have time to prepare for the pain. I cried out in shock, the smell of my own burning flesh turning my stomach as she pulled the cigarette away and admired her handiwork.
Her thumb pressed against the burn, and even as I winced, I had to fight to keep from egging her on more.
When the fuck did I turn into a masochist?
This new fixation on pain as pleasure had only surfaced when I ran into her. What could possibly be so different about her that I lost all my self-respect and wanted to be put down like the dog I pretended to be?
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she cooed at me, feigning concern though her eyes gave her enjoyment away. “Did that hurt?”
I bared my teeth at her as she leaned down and gripped my hair in her fist, yanking my head around to hover above her knees. “Fuck you,” I spat, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t look up and catch my shame in full view, just above her head. “I’ve had worse.”
“Oh, I know,” she murmured darkly, the implied threat an undertone to her words that gave me pause. I know all about how hard it is to kill you, Jackal.”
She gripped the cigarette between her lips, moving a hand on each side of my shirt as she wrenched it open, buttons flying as it tore open to expose my chest. “You’ve taken quite a few bullets and lived to tell the tale, isn’t that right?” She took a long pull off the cigarette, relishing the smoke filling her lungs, her eyes drifting shut for a brief moment as she parted those lips and French inhaled the smoke like some sort of exotic dragon.
Fuck, that was hot.
“Here,” she said viciously, stabbing the lit end of her cancer stick into the scarred skin of my shoulder, just above the collarbone. “I wonder who put this mark in your filthy hide. Was it a target who refused to go down without a fight?” Her nails dug into the skin of my fresh wound, and I whined under my breath, hating and loving this at the same time.
At least if she killed me, I might get to come in my pants before I died.
Her eyes traveled to my arm, where a second scar sat at the juncture of my elbow–a bullet had only grazed me there, an accident, really, more like friendly fire borne from terrible communication and sheer stupidity when I was younger. “What was this one? Were you running away from someone?”
The pain lanced through me again as she pressed that fiery ball of hell to the second scar, practically stubbing the damn thing completely out. “Fuck,” I whispered, closing my eyes as the smell of my barbecued ass filled my nostrils yet again.
“Oh no, the big, bad Jackal’s a pussy when it comes to pain.”
From the other side of me, I heard Dingo let out a little laugh. “That’s hilarious.”
Don’t even fucking say it, you asshole.
“Don’t worry, Dingo, dearest,” she tossed out flippantly, her eyes on my chest again. “I’ll get around to you soon enough. ”
“Take your time,” he muttered back, his voice suddenly less enthusiastic than before. “I’m in no rush.”
“Yeah, he’s not exactly going anywhere,” I huffed, already frustrated that she’d turned her attentions elsewhere, and slightly afraid that she might turn them on Coyote next.
Those long, pale legs crossed right above–or below–my head, almost causing me to swallow my tongue. Her new position meant I could see the edge of her panties peeking out from beneath the too-short pleats, an oversight on her part, most likely. But that didn’t stop an anticipatory shiver from running down my spine, causing those pesky chains of mine to rattle ominously.
She caught me staring and instantly tugged the edge of her skirt down, eyes burning a hole into my chest now.
“Get a good look, did you?” Her mouth pursed into a straight line as she regarded me warily, angrily. “It’ll be your last.”
“Don’t worry,” I lied, hoping she couldn’t read the truth in my hungry gaze. “There wasn’t anything worth looking at under that skirt.”
Liar.
Yeah, so what if I was a liar? I would take the knowledge to my grave.
“Where were we?” The cigarette was nearly out now, so she flicked it across the floor and lit another, the fire at the tip reflected in the deep blue-grey of her eyes. She looked like a demon, the way the light changed everything about her image, her profile more like a dangerous demon from hell than a mere girl we met in the club.
Again, I wondered who she was. But there was no use in wondering—she made it perfectly clear she wasn’t interested in telling us.
Or, me. Maybe it was just me she didn’t want to tell.
“Ah, yes. Your bullet wounds.”
Those claw-like, sharpened fake nails of hers drew a trail from the edge of my elbow to my side and then up and over the shape of my pecs, coming to a halt on the final scar I wore as a result of someone’s bullet.
I sucked in a breath as she traced the outline of it, obviously more interested in it than she wanted to admit.
“This one feels personal.”
It was.
“Like a shot from someone you’ve betrayed. Someone who wanted to break your heart like you broke theirs.”
Was she just guessing, or did she know?
There weren’t many people who knew the real story behind that scar, and almost all of them were dead. And since the other two were in the room with us, I was pretty sure none of them had given up my secret.
“A jilted lover, perhaps?” She brought the cigarette to the edge of my wound, and I recoiled, not because I feared the pain, but because I didn’t want to lose the reminder of the biggest mistake I’d ever made.
The only mistake I wished I could take back.
“Don’t,” I begged, eyes drifting shut to hide my shame for pleading with the enemy. “Not that one. Anywhere but there.”
She pressed the cigarette to the edge of that scar, and I felt my whole world shift on its axis. The heat was inescapable, but when I looked up—or down, direction was really starting to fuck with me, being upside down—she had just narrowly avoided the scar, almost like?—
—like maybe she had some of her own.
“Who scratched up your pretty little heart, kitten?” I mused, loving the way she clearly hated not only the nickname, but that I dared to ask her such a personal question. “Who broke the glass window and changed the view of your world from the inside?”
She sighed, her eyes only holding a fraction of the enjoyment that they’d had when she was actively burning me, her lit cigarette forgotten as it fell to the floor only half-smoked.