Chapter 27 Cord #2
The vamp howls in shock as his lifeblood spurts from the wound, running down his arm and soaking his side before dripping into a puddle on a concrete floor that has seen its share of bloodshed over the years.
Unfortunately, cutting off his hand frees one arm from the restraints around his wrist, but I don’t think he’s all that invested in escape right now.
I wipe the overspray from my face and grin. “Now that I have your attention.”
“You sick fuck,” he croaks.
“Careful. You don’t want to piss me off.”
I drop the bloody bolt cutters on the table and look over my choice of tools.
Over the years I’ve amassed quite a collection for just these purposes.
I’m not saying I’m an expert in pain, but I have developed a healthy respect for its use.
I take a moment to rein in my bloodlust; as much as I’d love to indulge it, I need information.
I pick up a particularly cruel serrated blade that I’ve had good success with and turn toward Vamp 2. He watches me warily as I step across the cell, holding the knife up so he can get a good look at it. Visual intimidation is its own form of torment.
The blade is a thing of beauty. I had it custom made for me about a decade ago by a master craftsman in Chinatown.
The polished steel is as heavy as a cleaver, with half-inch-wide teeth along its foot-long length.
It’s more of a saw than a knife, but it does come to a jagged point that can tear flesh from bone when driven into a body.
I bring the tip to his neck, pressing just enough to draw a thin line of blood, then slowly drag it down his torso, the razor sharp steel slicing through his shirt and flesh like butter.
The defiant bloom of terror in his eyes makes my dick start to harden.
He wants to act tough, but the element of the unknown is fucking with his resolve. I lean closer, breathing in his fear.
“Let’s see how big a badass you are.”
Because I still want to be able to get him to talk, I choose his abdomen as my target, shoving the blade halfway into the soft flesh before twisting and yanking it out.
Vamps don’t usually have food in their stomachs, but there’s still acid involved to digest the blood we consume, and the bitter stench of it overwhelms the scent of blood. He yells even louder than his buddy as he stares down at the mangled mess of ruined flesh and guts.
That’s a fatal wound for a human. For a vamp, it could lead to a slow deathlike state if left unhealed.
Dante keeps a steel coffin in the basement to imprison stubborn captives, and I’ve locked vamps in it with wounds like that before. Usually after a couple of days they’re willing to give up their own mother for a taste of blood.
Trouble is, we don’t have a couple of days. We need answers out of these assholes now.
Doesn’t mean I can’t threaten him with it.
I walk across the room and kick the lid open, then turn to get his reaction.
“A few days in here with that wound should give you a whole new perspective on life.”
He struggles against the chains, causing his gut to leak more blood. And just to give him something more to think about, I ram the blade into his thigh and take my time jerking it out. He’d have a hard time running away without blood to heal that wound.
The noise has awakened the third vamp, whose eyes widen at the sight of his two companions.
Since I don’t need all three of them, I decide to sacrifice this one to loosen up the tongues of the other two.
I convinced Uno to give me a couple of bolts filled with the fatal poison he developed, LTS3.
0, and I pick up the crossbow now and load it with one.
“That won’t kill me,” Vamp 3 sneers.
“You sure about that?” I ask as I take aim at his neck. To be honest, I’m curious to see what the poison will do to him. Even Uno asked if he could be present to witness it, but I don’t get off performing for an audience. I do promise I’ll give him a thorough account, however.
I pull the trigger and the bolt splits Vamp 3’s throat. His eyes widen, like he can’t believe I just did that.
Nothing happens at first. I set the crossbow down to observe, waiting for the first sign that the poison is working.
The vamp coughs, a gurgling sound, as a small trickle of blood leaks from the wound, then his eyes tear up and take on a yellowish hue.
As I watch, his skin begins to darken, turning first a rosy pink, then a coppery red, like he’s suffering from an extreme fever.
He breaks out in a sweat and starts fighting against the chains.
The rattle of metal on metal almost drowns out his fractured breaths.
The other two vamps have forgotten their own wounds as they watch their companion, who’s now emitting a keening whine that grates on my last nerve. Just die, already.
“Get it out! Get it out!” he screams.
The unpleasant smell of burning flesh fills the basement, melding with the scent of his companions’ torture. What I wouldn’t give for an exhaust fan right now.
Vamp 1 narrows his eyes at me. “What did you do to him?”
Vamp 3 is writhing and shrieking in pain while his flesh starts to tighten and shrink against his bones. I step closer to him, intrigued by the effect.
“Fascinating.”
“What the fuck did you shoot him with?” Vamp 1 demands.
I turn to him and grin. “Same thing I’m going to use on you if I don’t get what I want.”
Vamp 3 fights against the chains, their clatter and his anguished cries filling the air, the smell of his burning flesh overwhelming everything else in the closed space.
Uno wasn’t kidding when he said it would burn him from the inside out.
A few crossbows loaded with this stuff could nip the Python’s little rebellion right in the bud.
If we could find them.
Smoke starts wafting up from Vamp 3’s body as his skin turns first brown, then black. It’s a noisy, messy process that seems to go on forever, but it actually takes less than ten minutes for him to die. When his cries finally cease, I step over to him and listen for the sound of breathing.
Silence.
After all the noise he made, it’s a welcome relief.
“Is he…dead?” Vamp 2 asks.
“It would appear so,” I reply.
Dante is going to love this.
As much as I’d like to go report it right now, I still have a job to do. I pick up another blade, this one a well-used Damascus claw talon knife, and approach Vamp 2.
“Tell me about the Python.”
I draw a long slice down the length of his arm. It’s not a deep cut; after the wounds in his gut and thigh, he can’t afford to lose much more blood and remain conscious. Just enough to remind him who’s in charge. “By all means, take your time. I got all night and a healthy imagination.”
I’d actually prefer he get on with it as I don’t want to spend any more time than necessary in this stinking cell.
“You can’t defeat him.”
Now he sounds like the other two I put down. I roll my eyes. “Can we skip the hero worship and get to the facts? Besides, if I get bored, I might just shoot you.”
I hear his heartbeat quicken, so I know I hit a nerve with that statement. To be honest, I’m surprised he has this much fight left in him, considering the damage he’s taken. This may take more effort than I thought.
“Your boss isn’t the king of this city anymore,” he declares.
Something about the way he says that makes me wonder about his origins. I rake the blade down his other arm. He’s shivering with need now, his veins no doubt screaming for relief. Probably on the verge of blood fever.
“How long have you been in the Clan?”
“L-long enough to know t-true power.”
So he’s not an Outlier. I don’t know if that’s good news or bad. On the one hand, it’s one less piece of shit to get rid of, but that means this Python dick is recruiting people who were once loyal to Dante. That won’t sit right with the big guy.
“So how did you hook up with him?”
“Not another word,” Vamp 1 snarls to his buddy.
I have half a mind to shoot him with the other bolt, but I might need him later.
Instead, I drop the knife on the table and snatch up a large corkscrew drill bit.
I stalk over to him and shove it into his eye.
The ruined eyeball flies across the room when I yank the bit out, splatting against the opposite wall.
“You’ll speak when spoken to,” I warn him when he finally stops screaming. This whole session is giving me a headache. Unfortunately, I know it won’t respond to anything as pedestrian as aspirin. A few hours of sleep in a dark room would do the trick, but first things first.
I turn back to Vamp 2. “Again, how did you and the Python meet?”
When he doesn’t answer right away, I turn back to the table to look for something interesting to stick in his body.
He’s already gone as pale as a sheet and his words are slightly slurred and stuttering.
If he loses much more blood he’ll pass out and that’ll leave me with his less cooperative buddy.
Instead of sticking him, I settle on pain as a motivator, and pick up a large metal clamp.
“Still feeling rebellious?” I cross the room and squeeze the clamp open and shove it in his gut wound to grab onto his flesh then release it. He shrieks in pain, calling me some very creative names.
“There’s a simple solution to this,” I offer. “Tell me what I want to know.”
“You’re g-going to k-kill me anyway.”
“True, but how much do you want to suffer first?”
“You t-think you b-belong to the sane choice?” he blubbers. “T-this is exactly why I joined him.”
It takes all my concentration to keep listening to him. “So what does the Python do? Kill people with kindness?”
“He listens!”
“Is that so? Did he listen when you gunned down nearly a dozen innocent donors?” I push the clamp in deeper. “At least we don’t involve humans in our battles.”
“They’re just humans.”
I grab another clamp and dig it into his thigh wound, clamping it to his bone. He starts breathing heavily, trying to get on top of the pain, but I don’t give him the chance. I pull my foot back and deliver a solid kick to the clamp, nearly snapping his leg in two.
“You’re just another piece of shit vamp.”
He slumps against the chains holding him up, his eyes tearing, his teeth barred to me. I want to punch them all out. Maybe later.
“Say I want to meet with this Python. See what he’s all about. How would I do that?”
“Fuck you.”
“Wrong answer.”
I pick up a hammer and take a swing, smashing it into his teeth. Okay, so maybe it sounded too good to wait for.
“We could avoid all this drama if you’d just tell me what I want to know.”
To be honest, I’m not sure he can even talk now. He spits out pieces of his teeth and glares at me. He’s looking pretty bad, but he’s still hanging in there, though for how long is the question.
“H-he’ll f-find you,” he finally manages to sputter before passing out.
“Well, damn,” I sigh, turning to Vamp 1, who’s watching me warily with his remaining eye. “Looks like it’s up to you now.”
“You might as well kill me cause I’m not telling you anything.”
I walk back to the table and pick up the crossbow, taking my time reloading it and pointing it at him. “You sure about that? It seemed like a pretty nasty way to die.”
He gulps loudly and squeezes his remaining eye shut. When he opens it, there’s resignation there. “Go ahead. Take your best shot.”
Fuck me. I’ll say one thing for the Python’s men. They’re loyal.
Still, Dante won’t be happy if I kill them without getting anything out of them. I cross the room and unfasten his wrist then shove him in front of me toward the coffin. When we get there, I kick his legs out from under him and stuff him in the box then slam the lid shut and click the locks.
“Maybe some time in there will loosen your tongue.”
I grab a towel off the table and wipe my hands and face before grabbing my jacket and heading upstairs to report to my boss. He’s not going to be happy that I didn’t get any real intel out of them, but maybe after they’ve had a few hours alone with their suffering, I’ll have more luck.
Gio is in Dante’s office when I get there. “Where’s Dante?”
“He left about an hour ago. How did it go?”
I run my hand back through my hair and sigh. “I’m still working on them.”
He grabs a fat envelope off the desk and hands it to me. “Dante has business outside the city tomorrow afternoon, so he won’t be back till around six. Go home and get some rest.”
I check the contents of the envelope and stuff it in my pocket. At least torture pays well.
“See you later, then.”
I don’t even remember the drive home, or the walk up to my apartment.
I nearly fall asleep in the shower, and crawl into bed half wet and naked.
As I’m dozing off, I don’t think about what happened in the basement.
Instead, Asher’s green-eyed stare appears in my mind, along with one of the last things he said.
“I never stopped wishing.”
Maybe he should have.