12. Jackal
TWELVE
JACKAL
“—is too much?”
Fuck.
My head was splitting, I was dizzier than fuck, and up felt like down. It wasn’t my first rodeo waking up in a weird position, but it most certainly was my first time waking up this way involuntarily. And another first—I was pretty confident I was chained up from head to toe.
But the rest was . . . a bit fuzzy.
I didn’t dare open my eyes, since there was no way to tell what I’d open them to, so until I was convinced opening them wouldn’t hurt, I stayed still, flexing one small muscle at a time to see what predicament I’d wandered into.
And tried to remember what the fuck happened to me.
Last thing I remembered was dragging that fucking sleazeball into the storage unit, just like the contract said. We propped him up against the chest in the corner–or was it a cabinet? Fuck, I couldn’t remember.
And then . . .
And then something bounced across the floor, and before I could react, the place was full of gas, hissing out of the top of that fucking thing, choking my airway and blinding us.
And the face of?—
“Dammit, I don’t need to know how much to use; I need to know if I used too much!”
I knew that voice.
“Did I interrupt something?”
No fucking way.
No. Fucking. Way.
The girl from the club? But why?—?
I wanted to look, to confirm my suspicions so badly, but I’d tip my hand if she caught me.
I flinched as a finger jabbed angrily in the center of my forehead, the sharp claw at the end of it startling me as my eyes flew open in response and met the most beautiful blue ones I’d ever seen in my life.
Fuck, there was no blue on this Earth that described that shade, that hue, that particular color. An artist could search every pigment known to man, spend a decade crafting new ones, and still fail to bottle that perfection.
“Oh, good; you’re awake.”
The slow smile that spread on her lips made my blood run cold.
She stood over me with her hands on her hips, those long nails sharpened like actual claws peeking out over the waistband of a?—
Is that a school uniform?
Oh, fuck me, she’s underage. Great; now we’re inspiring miscreant youths.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, Jackal.”
My wandering brain snapped back to attention. “How do you know my name?”
I tracked her movements as she turned from me and strode over to a nearby table, her hand dragging across the surface that I couldn’t see from my position on my back on the floor. I let my thoughts race another second, and then panic set in.
Dingo and Coyote would never have let me be taken if they weren’t incapacitated.
So what happened to them?
Suddenly, a bright light flooded my field of vision as the girl switched on some construction spotlight, pointing directly at me. I heard a groan to my left and turned my head, though the ache in my neck nearly made me wince.
“Fuck,” I heard him whisper, his voice hoarse and tired. That was all he said until his gaze turned to me, and I managed to squint him into a meaningful blob in the blinding glare.
“Coyote?”
Somewhere off in the distance, I heard the girl’s voice again. “ Oh, right, your partners are all here. Coyote there in the chair, Dingo here on my table.” At her admission, I strained to see that original table, but spotted a second one to my right. And sure enough, arms and legs tied tightly to the steel legs of the thing, was the third in our little group. His eyes were still closed, but I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or just faking it, not from this angle.
I hoped for his sake it was the former. I had no illusions that this would end positively for any of us.
“I was going to wait for your other man to wake up before we started the party, but I suppose I can get things cracking without him.”
My head throbbed, but the sound of a suddenly moving chain grabbed my attention. I wriggled my feet and heard the telltale rattle there, too. And so, like any man who found himself chained up, I braced for the inevitable tug on that chain.
But instead of moving sideways, I felt my feet lift from the floor and keep going, up, up, until my hips were just barely resting on the floor. Then, the chain ground to a halt, and I heard her swear as my eyes locked onto Coyote again.
“Fuck! I knew I should have brought grease. Stupid fucking rig.” I put her out of my mind as she clanked and clanged around in the shadows, obviously playing around with a motor that had decided to spare me.
“Are you okay, Coyote?” I whispered, knowing damn well she’d probably still hear me. All I got in return was a grunt, but it didn’t sound too negative, so I took it as a positive. “Can you see anything?”
“Not much,” he growled, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor in his direction making me wonder if we’d all been given a different kind of restraint for any particular reason. “You?”
I shook my head, and then laughed at myself. “I’m chained up and half-suspended in the air, but other than that, I’m alive.”
Her laughter echoed out from the far corners of the darkness beyond the light, and I felt the tug of the chain start up again, the faint mechanical whirring making my heart sink. “Oh, don’t worry about that. You won’t be alive for long.”
“And why’s that?” I heard Dingo murmur from his table of torture, finally awake.
“Because,” she said, her voice a little too happy, too sing-songy. “I plan to kill you all tonight.” Suddenly, she was blocking the light for me, and as I felt my shoulders begin to leave the floor, she bent over at the waist, her face inches from mine. “After all, an eye for eye and all that.” Her face hardened, and the smile died on her lips, everything about her aura turning blacker than my soul. “But I’ll be taking interest for the two you stole from me.”
She pressed a button in her hand, and the chains stopped again, my whole body hanging in the air now, head at about her waist level, the metal links of the restraints digging into my body in a most unpleasant way. I had to bite my tongue hard enough to taste blood to keep from making a snide comment about her choice in height.
“Welcome to the party, boys. I’ll be your host.” She paraded in a circle, tilting the lights downward so that it bathed her like a silhouette. “I don’t think we’ve formally met, but you all knew my father.”
She lifted a bat from the table, swinging it wildly in my direction. The sickening thud it made as it connected with my torso brought tears to my eyes. She turned it on Coyote next, and I heard a painful crunch as she brought it down across his back. The wood undoubtedly carried that force through his ribcage like a painful reverberation, like a xylophone with no music. But he didn’t even wince, just closed his eyes and sucked in a breath of air. Enraged, she turned on her heel and marched over to Dingo and brought the damn thing down on one of his shoulders. He wasn’t as strong as the two of us; he didn’t do pain well. So when he cried out, it stung a little inside .
“I’m Ivy Cullough. And I’ll be your tour guide as I lead you into your final resting place.”
The bat swung at me again, stopping just a hair away from the tip of my nose. If I’d been a weaker man, there’d be piss running down my leg—or up it, I suppose.
“Hell.”