Chapter 3
WINDSHIELD WARRIOR
BAZ
Orson was crawling over a still sleeping Nemo in the backseat when I woke up. Levi was missing, but the scent of his saltwater rot lingered on the upholstery. Blearily, I eyed the inside of the car until I remembered what was going on.
Orson was trying to murder us.
He’d likely already chopped Levi into snack-size pieces to suck on like Werther's Originals. The sick fuck.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Orson commented.
He wanted me conscious while he cut me into pieces?
I pushed Nemo, shoving him closer to Orson in an attempt to create a barricade to prolong the inevitable.
I’d never tell anyone this, but I was afraid of Orson.
What was scarier than a therapist? Oh, wait, I knew …
a serial killing one that was immune to my venomous touch.
I’d had nightmares that involved him demanding I face all my trauma while cutting off my limbs. Absolutely terrifying.
My attempt to use Nemo as a meat shield didn’t work. Orson was already out of the car and walking over to my side. I fumbled around trying to shove hundreds of pounds of dense muscle off my legs so I could scramble away from the approaching serial killer.
My car door clicked open, and hands landed on my shoulders.
Swiftly and effectively, I was ripped from the vehicle and deposited on rough concrete.
Verfallen was nowhere in sight. Nothing was.
We were pulled over on the side of a road in the dead of night.
The hood of the car was peeled back, and smoke was billowing out.
The silence was strange. Lights out at Verfallen had offered a calming combination of muffled sobbing, pillow screams, and the headache-inducing buzz of faulty electric wiring.
Here, there was just my own breathing loud behind the mask.
So, obviously, I stopped breathing, because why sound like an asthmatic pervert panting in the dark?
Seconds later, my lungs were rebelling. I tried to inhale quietly.
Orson loomed over me with judgmental purple eyes. The color had a way of slicing through shadows. My mouth went dry as the chorus picked back up in my head—hacked limbs, drained blood, signs of prolonged captivity.
“Why aren’t you breathing?” he asked.
I let out my breath and gasped through a few lung-filling inhales. Think, think, think. What would distract Orson?
“Let’s fuck,” I barked out. “Just don’t make me talk about the Oedipus Complex again.” That therapy session still haunted me.
“Although I do appreciate the enthusiasm, I need you to stop yelling before the Uber gets here,” Orson said.
“The what?” My eyes bugged. Shit, what was that? Orson tapped his jaw in thought.
“A taxi.”
“Huh?” I asked. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“A chauffeur.”
“Ohhh. Why didn’t you say that?” I asked.
“Because most people are far more familiar with taxis than chauffeurs. But, your time in Verfallen was preceded by being a spoiled rich boy.” He bent over and forced me to sit up. “Emotionally poor, though.”
“Why must your physical torture include therapy?”
“I’m not torturing you.” The crunch of gravel broke through the conversation. A large vehicle slowly moved past us before pulling to the side of the road.
“Hurry, get up. Since you handle toxins better, you get to help me move them. They might not wake up for hours; it’s hard to tell.” The driver of the SUV squinted at us through his window.
“No more yelling,” Orson added with a hiss under his breath before walking away. My head still felt thick as the drug slowly worked its way out of my system.
“Ivan?” Orson asked the driver.
“Yeah. Why are those two asleep?” The guy, Ivan, asked over the hum of his idling car. He peered at me through his cracked window.
“Drunk,” Orson offered. The driver went from apprehensive to irritated.
“That’s extra. They won’t throw up, right?”
“No, they’re out for the night,” Orson said.
Ivan sat there, staring at Orson for a while, trying to decide whether he looked trustworthy.
Eventually, a click sounded, the doors unlocking.
Either this man was a terrible judge of character, or Orson had far too much experience pretending to be trustworthy.
My guess was the latter. Orson trotted back to me.
“You get Bree,” he commanded. “I’ll get Nemo.”
“Where’s Levi?” I asked.
“We aren’t taking him,” he said, before walking away.
I sighed and stood up. The book was still on the floorboard.
Quickly, I slipped it into my pants. In theory, I could read it.
However, it was going to take dusting off mental cobwebs since, at the ripe age of eight, I’d killed my French instructor.
C’est la vie, or c’est la mort, in this case.
Really, I'd been fluent, but a couple of decades rotting my brain in Verfallen was going to make remembering difficult.
My parents' twisted family line had mostly been in French-speaking countries before settling here. So the language was deemed necessary. Apparently, abominations need schooling too. A mini-peek inside the book earlier had revealed that it was a personal journal. I’d figure it out when I had more time.
The partially melted soles of my boots were somewhat uneven, making me wobble the first few steps rounding Orson’s car. I pulled my mask up slightly and spat the taste of chemicals from my mouth. Grass sizzled where my saliva landed.
Just past the tree line, I saw a body and made my way over. Levi had been dumped unceremoniously. We must not have been on the road for long because his eyes were still bright blue, facing the sky.
Levi was a mystery. The life he’d had at Verfallen was equivalent to torture and he’d been there a very long time.
Long enough to know things no one else did.
I tapped the journal in my pants, wondering why he was determined to give it to me.
How did Levi know the man behind Supra, or that he’d be after me?
Could Levi have been there when the place was made? And why was he in that locked hall with no other creatures? There was only him and rooms filled with files—things Supra didn’t want anyone to know about. Why hide Levi?
I eyed the state his corpse was in, half man, half sea snake.
The odd thing was that the asylum’s shifting suppressant had to be injected monthly and it held shifters in their human state.
Levi had been stuck in the wrong form, and no one had visited him in years.
I’d wiped layers of dust off his door when I first found it.
“Bise,” I imagined him saying again. See you later.
“Not really something I want to hear from a dead man.” I left his body there, trailing back to the car.
Bree was nestled into the front seat, sleeping peacefully.
She looked fragile this way. My gloved fingers moved hair from her face.
I’d never seen her in moonlight. Her skin almost glowed, and her long red hair begged to be pet.
I could stare at her for hours. Part of me wanted to waste time doing just that.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled to keep moving in the opposite direction of my fucked up home-slash-prison.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much argument left.
Verfallen was gone, and I could hear bugs in the trees at my back.
It sent a chill up my spine. The other inmates discussed insects in horror—miniature monsters that could crawl in your holes.
Apparently, it was called a cockroach for a reason.
I never ran across anything that traumatic before Verfallen, and I hoped I didn’t now.
With great care, I picked Bree up. Orson was fighting to move Nemo. His shiny dress shoes dug into the outside of the car while he pulled Nemo’s arms with all his strength.
“Good luck with that,” I said, moving Bree towards the large vehicle.
Gently, I slid her into the back seat, then buckled her in.
Orson stomped back to the driver and asked for his help.
Eventually, they both managed to shove Nemo into the ass of the vehicle, tucking him in next to a cooler, a condom wrapper, and a suspiciously dirty towel.
“He's not going to throw up back here?” The driver demanded, needing more confirmation from Orson. Ivan seemed really concerned with vomit. Which was silly—it was nothing a high-powered hose couldn’t fix.
“I swear he won't," Orson said, smoothing over the driver's worries. Had to admit … I was impressed. Not sure I ever made anyone less worried.
“Shotgun!” I yelled. Quickly, I darted to the front and climbed into the seat next to Ivan. Orson slid in the back next to Bree while shooting me an irritated glare.
Ivan got in and flicked an electronic brick attached to the car's vents.
“Just to the hotel?” He asked no one in particular.
“That's right,” Orson said. The car pulled back onto the street and took off. I felt unmoored, like a lost animal. There were probably questions I could ask, the name of the hotel, how far it was, but I knew it wouldn't help. The issue was bigger than that.
The trees beside the road were shadows, and the car's vents expelled cold air, making me shift uncomfortably from the chill. It'd been months since the asylum air conditioning worked, and I'd grown used to the warmth.
After several minutes of silence, I looked in the backseat at Orson. We had some unfinished business to discuss.
“What the fuck was that earlier?” I asked him. The driver eyed me before looking back at the road.
“The car broke down. It had been sitting for a while.” Orson shrugged.
“Maybe the oil,” Ivan commented. “Or the coolant if you had a leak.” I watched the two of them make small talk.
“I’m talking about you drugging us,” I said to Orson. My fingers mindlessly tapped my knees as I eyed Ivan resting his arm on the center console between us.
Orson barked out a laugh. “Good one,” Orson said with a smile.
“Did he say you drugged them?” Ivan asked.