Chapter Twenty-Two
Lilith
Three Days Later
The Rusty Hook is almost calm. Sure, I have a feeling of dread that’s building with every passing second as Dylan’s show nears its end, but it’s the first place I’ve been to in Midnite City, when it isn’t lit up like a Fourth of July night sky.
It shares some of the city’s typical ambience, with cheap neon strips set up to mimic the outside style, but other than those, the bar is dimly lit.
A small crowd has formed in front of the knee-high stage, bobbing their heads and dancing to the music. The rest of the room is quiet. People can lean close together to whisper their conversations, instead of shouting to get their point across.
I kinda love it. And sitting at the table opposite Raymond Lincoln, my feelings of playing a spy in the Crawford house return, in full force.
“Are you absolutely sure you weren’t followed?” It’s the third time Raymond has asked this since his arrival, and that was no more than fifteen minutes ago.
He isn’t young, but he isn’t old either. His greying black hair confirms he has passed the first flush of youth. His gaunt face and thin body are signs that he hasn’t been taking good care of himself for at least a few months, and I have to wonder if this is the case.
“Yes, I’m sure. I’m here to see a work friend play.” I point at Dylan, who is twanging his bass guitar on stage. “Now, please, go on.”
He scans the bar once more, suspiciously. After his inspection, he lights a cigarette and exhales the first puff of smoke with a sigh.
“They aren’t what they appear to be. The Crawford family, I mean.”
“You’ve said that already,” I urge him on. The uninhibited manner in which he shouted to me through my car window isn’t repeated tonight. Raymond is keeping a sterner hold on himself, as though his view of me has shifted, and I’ve also become a candidate for his mistrust.
“You said Dr. Rice sent you to meet with me, and that you were following me around to see if I was one of them. I’m not. I’m looking for answers too.” I explain again.
My reasons for seeing him concern the night when everything changed, more than wanting to know whatever the Crawfords are up to.
And Raymond was adamant that Alistair had a hand in the conclusion of what happened after I passed out.
However, the longer I sit here with him, the more it feels as if I’m grasping at straws.
But, if there’s even the smallest chance of getting an answer, I will take a gamble on it.
“He’s part of something,” he speaks again finally, once the cigarette has burned halfway down. “Sorta like a cult. Secret meetings, strange occurrences when things go wrong…”
“Like what?” I lean closer to prove he has my undivided attention.
“Remember a couple of months back, when—” He stops himself to crush the cigarette into an ashtray. He lights another without waiting. “When that guy got trampled to death near the harbor?”
“Sure. Some gang-related thing, wasn’t it?
” Crime isn’t anything new, here. You can’t get through even a day without hearing about some commotion in the streets.
Most people think it’s caused by disgruntled Bleed-dwellers, who want to open a few spots in the city so their families can move in.
The rest of us, who don’t buy into what’s said on the news, know that the whole world turns on violence and cruelty.
He shakes his head gravely, inhaling a lungful of smoke.
“He was a friend of mine. The one who put me onto this case.” Another low sigh breaks his rhythm. “He started barking up the wrong tree, and targeting the mega-corps. They dealt with him by bashing his head in with a fisherman’s hook.”
I feel my brow furrowing before I can stop it. Given his doubts about me, the last thing I need is for him to think I don’t believe what he’s saying. “And you’ve got proof of this?”
“Just a picture from some surveillance tapes.” He reaches into a satchel he brought with him, sitting on the chair next to him.
He hands me the picture, and seeing it makes my blood run ice-cold.
“That’s—”
“Yup,” he says. “He was a couple of hangars over from the body when he took this one.”
The photograph, which is a snapshot of a camera’s live video feed, is grainy and blurred. But even with its distortion, there’s no mistaking the mask on the culprit’s face or the maroon robes on his shoulders. I stare at it for what feels like hours before I can look away.
“This isn’t him,” I say, when I’ve concluded my study of the picture.
“It isn’t.” Raymond sips at the last few drops of beer in the bottom of his bottle.
“His mask is different. This one’s too colorful.” I hand him the picture. He takes it and puts it back into his satchel.
“Different people, same cult.” His neutral tone slips back to the same as the other day, a man bordering on lunacy.
Either my replies, or whatever’s happening on my face has convinced him that we’re on the same page.
“I’d bet the farm that the man in this picture is Alistair Crawford.
And the guy you saw, the one who killed Tom, is—”
“Colter.” It sounds stupid, I know, but letting him say Colter’s name in such a disgraceful connection feels wrong.
“Looks like I better shove off.” Raymond says, as the singer announces the song they just finished was the last of the night. “But before I go, do you want a piece of unsolicited advice?” he asks, collecting his things and standing up.
I nod.
“Keep your head on a swivel around ‘em. Don’t let them taint you with their bullshit.”
As if I wasn’t going to be doing that already…
To distract myself from the bombshell Raymond has dropped on me, I turn to the stage to see what’s happening there. This shit with Dylan seems like a walk in the park to navigate now.
The smoke that hangs in the air coats the room in a thin white haze, when the band breaks up. Rather than help his siblings pack away their instruments, Dylan comes straight over to me.
“You guys killed it up there.” I say. The thought of complimenting him alone makes me sick, so I give praise to the band as a whole instead.
“You think?” He pulls out the chair next to me and flops onto it, using his wrist to wipe away the bullets of sweat on his forehead.
“Who was that guy you were talking to?” I detect a hint of jealousy in his voice, but he doesn’t wait for my response before he speaks again. “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
Just play along a little while longer. Give him what he wants so you can keep on doing what you love.
Then again, under different circumstances I might’ve liked hearing it. If he’d spoken to me like this in the office, he might’ve stood more of a chance than threatening my job to get me to go out with him.
“Your fucking mouth drives me crazy,” he goes on, and any nice thought I had about him, evaporates to dust.
“I’ve had a great time, Dyl, but I really should be heading out,” I say. He’s starting to give me the creeps, more than he’s ever done before. “I still need to make it to work in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah,” he checks the time on his cellphone. “Shit, it’s ten already? Let me walk you out.”
I accept with a sigh, because I don’t see him letting me leave alone.
We don’t speak on the walk over to my car, and as I begin to thank him for the nice night out and reach for the door handle, Dylan leans his back against it and stops me from getting in.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said your mouth drives me crazy. It’s plump and juicy.” He raises a hand up to my shoulder, and rests it there gently. “I bet they’re soft, too.”
Touching is a no-no…
But I can’t manage to pull myself away. My entire body seizes up, which gives his fingers unspoken consent to move against my cheek, and his eyes linger on my lips for an awkwardly long time.
“I’m not sure what to say to that.” I reply. Every stroke against my cheek makes me lock up harder until my muscles are screaming for release.
I suspect that’s a learned reaction. One created on the night Tom Henderson strapped me to a table and—
Oh fuck.
“Then don’t say anything.” Dylan twists his wrist and latches onto my shoulder in a firm grip. “Just get on your knees and show me if I’m right.”
“What the fuck?” I spit, my body finally finding enough strength to pull back from his hand.
My sudden jerk makes Dylan tighten his grip even more, until he’s pinching against a nerve that radiates a dull ache throughout my body.
“Dylan, stop. You’re hurting me,” I plead, leaning into his hand in search of reprieve.
“Come on, Lil. Don’t you like working at The Barkhouse?” he asks, changing tactics when he sees the direct approach isn’t working.
“Not if it means—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Darkness flickers in his eye and the boyish smile he was wearing twists into a scowl. “You’re going to suck my cock one way or another, Lil. Wouldn’t you prefer doing it on your own terms?”
He presses down on my shoulder with so much force that my knees buckle and I fall onto them. Asphalt shreds the bare skin beneath my skirt, and I yell out. But shouting isn’t going to get me anywhere.
I start flailing my arms and twisting my body to break free. I yank and pull and tug in every direction, but his ironclad grip doesn’t release me.
“It would’ve been so much easier if you weren’t so fucking stubborn,” Dylan growls. He adjusts his hand, moving it from my shoulder to the back of my neck and pulls me forward against his groin.
He groans in a delighted way.
I scream into the night. It’s a mix of nonsensical words and noises aimed to catch anyone’s attention.
The closest I’ve come so far was the yelping howl from his initial grab, but if no one came then, I doubt they’ll run over now.
It doesn’t help that the parking lot is empty apart from a few drunken stragglers, who are limping lopsidedly to their cars.
They can’t even stand upright, there’s little chance they’ll rush to my aid.
“Stop this,” I beg, but it’s far too late for that. I know it. He knows it.
Savoring his twisted control, Dylan moves his free hand back to my face and drags his thumb over my lower lip.
He shudders, forcing the digit between my lips as an appetizer for what’s to come.
My gag reflex goes off at the metallic taste of his thumb being forced to the back of my throat.
Tears flood my eyes and my stomach threatens to spill its contents all over his shoes.
“That’s it, baby,” he whispers. “No one’s coming to save you. Enjoy yourself.”
“You’re right.” A new voice comes from out of nowhere.
I crumble forward, heaving oxygen into my lungs like a starving man at a five-star meal. He wasn’t strangling me, sure, but he lodged his finger far enough down my throat that it restricted my breathing.
“Who the fuck are you?” Dylan’s screech reaches a level so high-pitched, I’m sure it’s caught the attention of every dog in the neighborhood.
“I’m no one.”
That voice…
I recognize it.
The world and everything in it stop. Even though the parking lot is bathed in the glow of Midnite City’s brightest lights, I sink into a cold, black pit. There’s no need to look up and see him. No need to reach out and touch his polished black boot.
This all-too-familiar situation has taken place once before.
And I’m the one who lived to talk about it.
I wonder if that same luck will extend to tonight.
“It’s you,” I say to the ground. Too weary to face him, too afraid of what I might see if I do.
I hear a swish and a rustle of clothing, followed by a choked whimper. Dylan attempts to speak, but no words come. There are only the panicked, garbled sounds of someone having the life squeezed out of him.
“You can’t seem to keep yourself out of trouble,” he says, his voice distorted behind the mask.
For three years, I’ve built this man up as a monster in my head.
Seen him as a demon lurking in the shadows, waiting for his moment to strike.
Now that he is here, rescuing me again, I can’t help but feel that Dr. Rice was right all along.
Maybe his cruelty isn’t directed at any one thing, but injustice as a whole.
I look up in time to see a single fist being thrown with an incredible strength, and Dylan goes limp in an instant.
“Who is he?” the man in the mask asks, tapping his foot against Dylan’s shoe.
I don’t know what comes over me, but I can’t manage a straight answer in my head. Maybe the drink I had with Raymond is making me loopy. More likely, it’s the fact that the man in the mask is Colter.
Everything about him becomes clear with that realization. The way he looks at me, his strange mannerisms, why he could spank me like a naughty child, but I still felt so safe…
And as if that wasn’t enough, when the masked stranger offers me a hand to stand up, I see the very same ink on his wrist that I saw the night we met.
“You…” I whisper, his question disappearing somewhere far away in the back of my mind.
“Me?” He sounds confused, thinking it is an answer.
I reach up to his mask without thinking. He stops me by grabbing my wrist.
“Wait,” he says.
But I don’t listen. I break free from his grip and take the mask between my fingers. And after a rushed internal count of three, I pull it away from his face.
And there, in all his stern, stoic glory, stands Colter Crawford.
My legs tremble, delayed shock finally catching up with me.
My pulse hammers painfully hard, and I suck in a breath, reminding myself that I’m standing, that I’m breathing.
“How am I supposed to kiss you,” I say, “if you’re wearing this?”
He moves his hands around my waist, and pulls my head under his hood, to do just that.