Chapter 27
Jiya
“What the fuck?”
My breath catches. The words die in my throat.
The light from the fluorescent tubes overhead hits the ball return, and the objects in the cradle gleam with a moist, waxy sheen. My brain tries to connect the dots.
A sour, metallic taste floods my mouth.
And yet, some morbid, professional curiosity pulls me forward, my feet moving against every screaming instinct to flee. They are actual heads. Or parts of them, anyway, preserved and suspended inside crystal-clear resin spheres.
Each face is a frozen mask of its final moment.
A large, brown mole dominates one man’s cheek.
Another bears yellowed, crooked teeth in a silent, eternal scream.
The third is the worst. His nose is flattened, his lips distorted, as if his face was pressed against the inside of the mold while the resin was still setting.
“These are...people,” I whisper, my voice barely audible even to myself.
My gaze drifts lower, to the finger holes.
My stomach clenches into a tight, painful knot.
The holes are drilled with horrifying, intimate precision.
One through a wide, terrified left eye. The other two through the cheeks.
The thumb hole is punched through his open mouth.
To hold it, to bowl with it, you’d have to violate it.
Your fingers sinking into its face, your thumb jamming down its throat.
I snatch my hand back as if the air around the ball has burned me. I turn to find Thorne watching my reaction with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a lab rat.
“Breathe,” Calloway murmurs, stepping closer so his voice is for my ears alone. “It’s just decor. A bit gauche for my tastes, but Thorne has a flair for the dramatic.”
“Are they real?” The question is a ragged whisper.
“Real, yes,” Thorne says, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the weather. “Though to be precise, it’s only the facial dermis, stretched over a standard core.”
The clinical term makes it worse. “The…what?”
“The skin of the face,” he clarifies, picking up the screaming man and turning it over in his hands like a trophy.
“You can’t fit an entire human head inside a regulation-sized bowling ball.
The dimensions, the weight… It’s a logistical puzzle.
This,” he gestures with the grotesque sphere still in hand, “was a more elegant solution.”
I lean closer despite myself, examining the construction. “You peeled their faces off?”
“I prefer the term ‘harvested.’ Peeled sounds so crude, don’t you think?” He looks from the face in his hands to mine. “Does it bother you?”
I swallow, forcing the bile back down. “It’s a lot.”
“But you’re a serial killer,” Thorne points out, one eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, but I don’t do...this.” I wave my hand at the display. “I mean, I just leave them dead in their beds with their hard-ons and walk away. I don’t make arts and crafts projects out of them.”
Thorne smiles at that, a thin, appreciative curve of his lips. He places the head back on the rack.
“I prefer poison as well. It’s elegant.” His gaze sweeps over the grotesque display.
“But The Society is a collection of artists, each with a preferred medium. Membership means appreciating the entire gallery. Sometimes,” he adds, his eyes meeting mine, “it even means helping another artist clean their brushes.”
“He gets poetic when he’s showing off his toys,” Calloway mutters, draping a casual arm over my shoulders and pulling me against his side. The gesture feels less like comfort and more like a claim.
“So this isn’t your work,” I state, not a question.
“No,” Thorne says. “It was a gift.”
He offers no more information, letting the implication hang in the cold air.
“I’ve already proven I can handle the cleanup,” I remind him, crossing my arms. “The garbage disposal. I was there.”
“I know,” Thorne says, his smile thin. “That’s why we’re skipping the ‘prove you can murder bad guys’ part. I just want to make sure you will fit in with the group.”
Calloway watches me, his face a mask. That stillness, that quiet observation, makes me want to prove something. To show I’m not just some squeamish amateur.
I tear my gaze from the heads and lock it on Thorne. “And you’re not worried? Having all this in your home?”
The faces of dead men preserved in bowling balls, the entire underground complex. It’s a treasure trove of evidence that would put him away for multiple lifetimes.
“This level doesn’t exist on any blueprint, any city record.
Geologically, we are standing in solid granite.
” He runs a hand along the seamless wall.
“The entrance is hidden. It opens for my biometrics and my biometrics alone. Even if the police were standing in my foyer with a warrant, they would find nothing.”
His confidence borders on arrogance, but I can’t deny the security I’ve witnessed. The biometric scanners, the series of doors, and the elevator that required both retinal and palm verification.
“I’ve had police chiefs at dinner parties in the room above our heads.
Mayors. Judges. This place is a ghost.” He turns to face me, his steel-gray eyes pinning me in place.
“The members of The Society are the only ones who know it exists, and even they can’t get in without me.
The greatest security isn’t technology, Jiya. It’s control.”
I hold his gaze, a silent battle of wills. He’s laid out the terms, the threats, and the grotesque culture of his little club. Now it’s my turn to move.
I let my eyes drift back to the head with the mole on its cheek, then look back at Thorne.
“Fine,” I say, my voice steady. “Rack ‘em up.”
I reach for one of the heads, my fingers tracing the cold, smooth resin before settling on the one with the screaming mouth. The plastic is slick, flawless. I hook my fingers into the drilled-out eye socket and cheek, my thumb pressing into the cold, dark void of the mouth.
“I never stuck my fingers into a head before.” A sharp, brittle laugh escapes my lips.
Thorne selects a head for himself. He moves to the line with the economy of a predator. No flourish, no wasted motion. Just a smooth, powerful swing that sends the head gliding down the polished lane.
The impact isn’t the sharp crack of wood I expect. It’s a dense, heavy thud, followed by a clatter of something hard and hollow. My eyes narrow, focusing on the objects at the end of the lane. They’re long, white, and vaguely familiar.
“They’re not pins,” I say, the realization dawning.
“Human femurs,” Thorne confirms, watching the automated sweeper clear the lane. “Bleached, weighted, and reinforced with a steel core. They have excellent durability.”
He curses under his breath as the machine resets the three bones he left standing.
“Tough split,” Calloway observes from the console.
Thorne picks up another head. His second throw is just as precise, taking out two more femurs and leaving one standing alone. He makes a sound of quiet disgust.
“Your turn,” he tells me, gesturing toward the rack.
My turn. I take a deep breath.
“First time?” Thorne asks.
“With a human head?” I adjust my grip, my fingers sinking deeper. “Yeah, surprisingly.”
“I meant bowling.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Keep your wrist straight and follow through.”
“I've played before.”
I approach the lane, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. I take a breath, swing my arm back, and release.
The head rolls before veering right, crashing into the bone pins with a sickening crunch and clatter. Seven femurs scatter like broken matchsticks.
“That’s my girl!” Calloway’s voice booms, full of proprietary pride. “Told you she was a natural, Thorne. A natural-born killer.”
“Statistically, a first-timer’s emotional state leads to a right-side drift,” Xander observes, looking at the scoring screen. “Impressive compensation.”
For my second throw, a strange calm settles over me. The head feels less like a desecrated corpse and more like a tool. I release it with a newfound confidence, watching it curve into the remaining three bones. They explode outward.
A perfect spare. The screen flashes above the lane.
Thorne gives a slow, deliberate nod, a look of genuine approval in his cold eyes. “Well done, Jiya,” he says, his voice carrying a note of finality. “Welcome to the league.”
I flex my fingers, the phantom sensation of the cold resin and the drilled-out holes still lingering. I sit, a wave of nausea and exhilaration washing over me in equal measure.
“So who were they?” I ask, nodding toward the head-balls while Xander takes his turn.
“Child traffickers,” Thorne says. “Part of an international network. The courts couldn’t touch them. Diplomatic immunity, destroyed evidence, witnesses who had a habit of disappearing.”
“And the femurs?”
“Their clients,” Thorne replies.
A knot in my chest loosens. The weight of the head in my hand is now different in my memory. Not a desecration. A trophy.
The game continues, and Thorne maintains a narrow lead.
By the tenth frame, my arms ache, and my face hurts from smiling. The grotesque reality of it has faded into a background hum. It feels normal. Like a night out with friends, if your friends were all apex predators.
Xander steps up for his final throw, squinting at the pins. “Last year’s Christmas party, we used elves as pins,” he says. “Thorne dressed as Santa.”
I snort at the mental image. “Please tell me there are pictures.”
“Absolutely not,” Thorne says, but there’s a tenderness in his expression as he watches Xander bowl.
Calloway leans in. “There are definitely pictures. Lazlo used them as blackmail for a month.”
Thorne’s final throw delivers a perfect strike. He dusts his hands together. “You’re up, Jiya. You need eight to beat Calloway.”
I stand, selecting the head of a man with a nasty sneer frozen on his face. As I take my stance, Thorne’s hand rests on my elbow, his touch gentle.