CHAPTER 31 #3
“ You are not going to die. Pull yourself back onto this ledge, you fucking sap! ”
“No.” I loosen my muscles and hang from my treacherous grip. “No, Caedmon. I don’t want to.”
“ I need you, Brother. I’m begging you. Try. ”
I imagine my brother, wherever he is, holding on. Clinging to hope.
At that, I breathe through the cramping ache, fingers digging into the rock.
Gripping tight and sure, I pull myself up, and before I can slip, I quickly adjust my arms so they’re anchoring me to the ledge.
I kick my leg up, using my muscles in my thigh to propel me upward.
In a concerted effort of all limbs, I manage to pull myself back onto the ledge and away from its precarious rim.
Lying flat on my back, I breathe through my nose, desperate to catch breath in lungs that feel as if they’ve been crushed by an iron palm.
Caedmon stands staring down at me. “ Set me free. ”
I stumble back home, thoughts of my brother sobering me along the way.
Through the front entrance, I plow past Dmitry, our butler, who calls after me, but his words are lost to the mire of thoughts racing through my head.
He tries to stop me when I reach the door to the cellar, but I push him off in a rage.
The air cools as I make my way down the long, winding staircase, towards my father’s laboratory.
Shouts from behind grow wilder, the words a blur in my drunken state.
Down a lengthy corridor, I reach the lab, where the door stands cracked.
From inside, I hear my brother’s screams.
Caedmon!
I push through the door to find my father standing over a box on one of the examination tables. His hand is curled around a small camcorder, his face a mask of rage and tears.
“Father?” I lurch toward him, confused. “Caedmon?”
He drops the camcorder and stumbles backward, as if he almost passed out.
Before he can swipe it up again, I scramble for the machine and lift it, eyes instantly finding the small screen, on which my brother sits tied to a chair. From the cameraman’s view, I watch as flames spray out from a blowtorch, licking my brother’s raw and blistered legs.
Panic rises into my throat. I fall forward, my palms slapping the concrete. A torrent of vomit pours past my lips, splashing onto the floor. Another round hits the pooling fluids, splashing up into my face.
On shaky legs, I push to my feet and peer down into the box. My father rushes toward me, but I turn in time to give one hard shove that knocks him backward onto his ass. From inside the box, I remove a small black box with a note attached:
As requested, we’ve returned your son.
Hands trembling, I open the lid to find a pile of ashes inside.
My breaths come too fast. The room spins out of control.
I slip into the blackness.
“They killed him.” Barletta’s grim tone pulled me back into the present.
My muscles tensed at the question. “I find it amusing that you listen to this story as if it’s the first time you’ve heard it.”
His brows flickered, his reflective eyes shifting in his dark cell. “I don’t …. I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re the one who transported my brother to his killer.
” There it was. The reason I’d taken a man off the streets and infected him with the deadly worms that had begun to ravage his body.
Revenge. Revenge for my twin who’d been brutally slain for greed.
For the very research to which I’d dedicated my life.
Barletta’s gaze shifted away and back to me. “Me?” he asked on a nervous laugh. “Nah, you got the wrong guy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t insult me. On the night of October twenty-third, you drove two associates and my brother to an abandoned building outside of the city. You were the last to see him alive.”
Silence hung on the air, as he rolled his shoulders back and fidgeted, perhaps realizing there was no way I planned to let him live. “I only did that gig for about a year.”
“Gig. Is that what you call handing over humans for slaughter?”
He shook his head, the sickening denial painted on his face making me wish I could cut it away with a sharp blade. “I didn’t know anything about him, or you, or your old man. I was told that I’d be taking some kid to a place on the east side. I didn’t know who for, or why.”
“Yet, you did it, anyway.” My voice held no inflection. No empathy. As lifeless as a corpse. “You never questioned, nor followed up to make sure said kid was still alive.” I shrugged, easing back into my chair. “Why would you, when you beat the shit out of your own son?”
Expression screwed up with fear, he rocked back and forth in his chair. “That’s why I’m here, then, huh? That’s why you brought me here. Some sick fucking revenge plot?”
“You’re too brilliant.”
“I never meant to hurt any kid. Had I known that they were gonna torture him …”
“You’d have what?” I tipped my head, watching the man spew lies as easily as if they were truth. “Saved him? Called the police? Done what any decent human being would’ve done?” I let out a mirthless chuckle. “No. I don’t think so, Mr. Barletta. You’re shit. Food for the worms.”
“What do you want? You gotta want something.”
“It so happens I do. And now is the time to request it, before your brain begins to deteriorate.”
“What?” He fell out of the chair onto his knees and gripped the bars of his cell. “Anything! I’ll do anything!”
Unimpressed with his plea, I watched with an air of disgust as the man shed his worthless tears. “The reason I brought you here is simple. I need a name. A name only you can give me.”
“Who? Who!”
“It seems I was too late getting to Victor Rossi, one of the two associates who transported my brother. He unfortunately passed of a heart attack. The other succumbed rather quickly to the worms. But not before he offered up your name. So, it’s up to you, Mr. Barletta, to tell me the name of the man you handed my brother off to. ”
“You’re talkin’, what? Almost twenty years ago?” He released the cell bars, slouching in defeat. “How the fuck would I remember that?”
“I don’t know.” From the inside pocket of my coat, I pulled a capped syringe and held it up for him to see. “This is the antidote that will keep you from dying. I suggest you remember. And if you lie to me? You can kiss it goodbye.”
“Ahhh, Jesus. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what the fuck?” He rubbed a hand down his face. “Victor Rossi … yeah … I know the name. So … the guy … he was …” Frowning, he seemed to think hard on the name, desperate to remember. “From New York ... It was … Angelo. Angelo! It was Angelo! Angelo DeLuca!”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Yeah. The guy was a prick. I can see his face clear as day.” His eyes lit with a sickening hope that I was all too eager to snuff. “His nose was crooked, like he’d been punched too many times. And he had a nasty scar at his eye.” Amazing what a person could remember under the right circumstances.
I made a mental note of the name–my next test subject. “So, you’re going to sit tight while I do some research on Mr. DeLuca.”
“What about these worms, man? I can’t take them moving around inside of me. It’s freaking me the fuck out!”
I shrugged with a smile. “Hopefully, I’ll find him fairly easily. But before I begin this goose chase, you’re absolutely certain this is the guy?”
“Yes. I swear on … on my own fuckin’ grave. It’s him. Please. Get these goddamn things out of me!”
I pushed up from the chair and straightened my slacks, unaffected by his desperation. I had no intentions of helping him. The syringe I lifted held nothing more than sterile saline. “I’ll let you know how the research goes.”
“Please hurry, man. I can’t take this shit anymore.” Rubbing his skull, he rocked back and forth on the floor. “I can’t. It’s fuckin’ with my head.”
“Yes. It does fuck with your head. That is the nature of it. We’ll speak soon, Mr. Barletta. Enjoy your evening.”
“Enjoy …. Enjoy my fuckin’ evening? In a prison? Where’s my water? I want my water!”
“Ah. Yes, I almost forgot.” I strode down the hallway, where a plastic cup sat beside a hose that I’d fed down into the lower levels. I twisted it on and filled the cup half full–about twice the amount I’d given him every other time.
His eyes lit up when I returned with it, his hands outstretched through the bars of his cell.
“Please,” he said in a shaky voice, carefully accepting the drink, and he took a hearty sip.
His brows pinched to a frown, and he opened his mouth, as if to gag.
A long black worm slithered past his lips into the cup, and he slowly lowered it with trembling hands, eyes wide and panicked.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “Oh, fuckin’ hell.”
I reached through the bars, urging him to pass it to me.
As if in a trance, he didn’t take his eyes off the cup as he handed it over. “This …” He swallowed a gulp and stifled another gag. “This is what’s inside me?”
Holding up the scant bit of water left to the naked bulb, I studied the worm coiled at the bottom of it, noting the teeth that attempted to latch at the surface. “Yes. It seems they’ve evolved.”
He slapped a hand over his mouth, breathing hard through his nose. “I don’t want to throw up. I’m afraid more of those fuckers will fly out!”
“Yes, it’s better to keep them contained, otherwise they’ll try to get away.” I lowered the cup and turned back to Barletta, who crouched in the corner of his cell, shaking.
“You’re not right in the head, are you? Ain’t no way you’re right in the head.”
The sound of my chuckle echoed down the corridor. “Says the man who beat his son with a bottle?”
“I was drunk. I would never intentionally hurt someone. But this? This is sick!”
Sighing, I stared down into the cup at the fully grown worm. One who’d spent the last few weeks feeding on the man’s liver. “I suppose you’re right. Must’ve been all those knocks to the skull.” I tapped a finger to my temple. “Have a look at what happens when you beat your children.”
“You’re not letting me go.”
Head tipped in disbelief of the man’s ignorance, I snorted a laugh. “Is that what you thought? That our time together would end with me setting you free? I’m afraid not.”
Whimpering, he rocked back and forth, his hands running across his skull. “I was in a bad place when I was working for those assholes who took your brother. I’m not there anymore.”
“That’s great. Truly. I suspect the next time we chat, you’ll be a bit preoccupied.”
He stilled and looked up at me, the desperation in his eyes almost laughable. “With what?”
“Trying not to vomit your own bowels.” I strode back down the corridor, and at the sound of Barletta’s outcry, I smirked, glancing over my shoulder. Something caught my eye.
A shadowy figure at the opposite corridor, past Barletta’s cell.
Frowning, I turned around, examining the shape, and walked back in that direction, until I was standing in front of Barletta once again.
The figure didn’t move. He only stood staring, mostly hidden by the shadows.
“Who’s there?” I called out.
“Someone’s there? You see someone?” Barletta slammed himself into the bars of the cage and reached out for my coat. “Get me out of here, doc! I want out!”
Scowling, I looked down to see his fingers curled into my coat, and I pried him loose. When I lifted my gaze again, the shadowy figure was gone. To be sure, I strode closer, the cup holding the worm still clutched in my hand.
Nothing but the empty corridor stood ahead of me, brimming with the sound of Barletta’s screams.