Chapter 8
8
“ T here are only a very small handful of individuals who have access to the security footage you distributed.”
Gurgling, the man before me swings around. He’s strung up on a meat hook by his wrists and I’ve stopped paying attention to how many hours this has been dragging on. His bloodied toes, long since with the nails removed, scrabble at the concrete floor for purchase.
“So… I’m gonna ask you again.”
As I run my blade up the man’s sternum, he coughs a river of blood down his chin. The pale line of his abdomen caves and heaves with the force of his retching.
“Unless you want to donate a lung to my collection?”
It’s far too tempting to start slicing away flesh and simply be done with it.
“You see that jar over there among all the others.” I lean in close, and use the flat of my knife to guide his bruised chin up, tilting the prick’s attention toward the assortment of body parts floating in their baths of preserving alcohol.
“The one on the end there is currently empty. That’s been longing for a piece of shit like you to come along and fuck up well enough that I get to keep a little memento of our time together.”
His noises of protest are pathetic really.
“They han—handed it to me.” He retches into his mouth. Face white and clammy with pain. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Who?” The tip of my knife traces his jugular. Just enough pressure to set him off, now twisting more violently against his restraints.
I tut softly, stepping around to his front now.
“Wouldn’t keep doing that if I were you. Unless you want both arms dislocated, of course? Then, by all means, carry on as you were.”
His body sags like a wet rag, dangling in the middle of my workroom surrounded by the assortment of animal carcasses I have hanging in here, ready to be carved up.
“Why did they want that particular footage?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why the girl?”
“They didn’t tell me anything. Just people in masks, dressed in black. The same way that shit always goes.”
“Masks like that one?” I extend my knife in the direction of my own, sitting on the shelf staring back at us with soulless empty eye sockets and copper sprayed up one side.
“Yes—almost—that, but in black. Almost shiny.” He coughs, and blood dribbles over his busted lip and drips to the floor in a brilliant crimson swathe against the concrete.
“So… you’re telling me you were given possession of a video recording taken here inside the mansion, by some unknown figure in black, who then instructed you to hand it to someone else, conveniently also dressed in black?”
“Yes. I’m telling you, I don’t know anything.” His whines are getting tiresome.
This guy keeps harping on this same tune, except it isn’t the particular song I care about .
“And you never took a little peek at what was on that footage? There wasn’t a moment when you were curious enough to plug it into your laptop and take a little glance yourself?”
He’s already ashen with delicious, drawn-out hours of pain eating up every inch of his rotten flesh, but pales like a bleached intestine at my words.
“Ahh, so you did.”
“I just—”
“Uh uh. No. That’s quite enough. I don’t really give a shit who you offered up your filthy ass to in order to be bent over and torn in half by agreeing to be part of stealing that footage.” This time, I fit my blade against the point just below his ribcage, that lovely soft spot where cartilage and bones give way and grant me access to his lung.
“What I do care about, and what makes me very upset, is that you watched her. She wasn’t for your eyes, and now you’re going to give me the satisfaction of knowing that you will have learned your lesson. Not to rub your pathetic excuse for a dick while watching a girl who isn’t yours to look at.”
As I sink the pointed tip forward, there’s the usual resistance there for a moment as it drives through layers of flesh and muscle tissue, until I reach the soft core of him.
His anguish and screams echo off the concrete, as if he thinks someone might hear, or care.
“Butcher.” A heavily tattooed man with dark hair and an even darker soul appears behind me on silent steps.
At the sound of his voice, I leave the knife embedded deep and step back to survey my handiwork for a moment.
“Hello, handsome.” I untuck the rag from my back pocket and wipe the fresh, wet streaks of crimson from my hands. “Wondered what time you might grace us with your presence.”
The scent of copper and the tang of fear so thick it sticks to the back of your throat hanging in this room might leave some people crumpled to the floor.
Not this particular beast.
This is much more akin to his preferred territory for hunting.
“Ky said he’d dropped you off a toy to play with.” He leans his ass against my workbench, the one covered in bone saws and forceps, hooking one booted ankle over the other. Tattooed arms and hands fold over his thick boxer’s torso.
Dark eyes roam over my guest, the pathetic scene writhing in front of us.
“Much obliged for any fun Harris decides to send my way, as always. We should have a playdate together sometime. I know this is your idea of a good time.”
He arches an eyebrow my way. Amused, perhaps, but unwilling to give an inch.
“I know how you like to play, Greyson .”
“Ahh, my sweet Ven. Don’t get coy now. Bloodlust is just as much one of your great loves as it is mine.”
He swirls one of his silver rings.
“Games aren’t my scene.”
That makes me smile. “Anytime you change your mind, you’ve got my number.”
“I’ve already got one brat to contend with.” He scratches at his beard, as if the sight of a bloodied and broken man hanging from a meat hook is all in a day's work.
Which in his case, it absolutely is.
“Consider me an equal opportunist. I see the need to cause a little chaos; I’ll always be willing to toss that rock in the pond and create a few ripples.”
“Good thing you have an Angel on your shoulder to keep you from lighting too many fires.”
“He’s a little distracted. Makes it easier for me to go about causing havoc where it’s needed, mind you. ”
Blood drips a steady rhythm on the floor as the man starts coughing bright red air bubbles.
“The girl’s recovering?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“She tried to stab you yet?”
That draws a broad grin to my lips. “I wish.”
Ven shakes his head and proceeds to pull out his phone. After a quick glance, he shoves the thing back in his pocket as if it personally offended him. “All in good time, I suppose,” he says.
I toss the rag on the floor and stand in front of the bloodstained soon-to-be corpse.
“You want a warm one or a cold one to take outta here?” I ask the man behind me.
Ven pushes off the workbench and comes to stand beside me.
“That depends. Did you get anything useful out of the fucker?”
“He watched the video.”
I already know this shit stain’s fate. And that detail is the only thing the man standing alongside me needs to hear.
“In that case, I’ll take him warm.” Reaching forward, he wraps a tattooed hand around the handle of my knife and slides it out with all the seductive, slow care, as if he were peeling off a pair of silk pantyhose.
Holding out my own blade, he offers the handle to me, with red now smeared over those inked knuckles.
“We’re gonna take a nice little trip to the pig farm.”