Unearthed, p.27
Unearthed, page 27
part #4 of Southern Watch Series
*
The cowboy had the better part of two toes remaining on his left foot when Kitty sighed, dropped her crotch back on his chest and started rubbing against him. It wasn’t personal; there was nothing at all she found appealing about him, really; she just liked rubbing herself on things, liked breaking the tiny little wills of these insignificant people. He might as well have been a rock or a feather bed save for his ability to resist, to scream, to bleed. That was all that was intriguing about these sacks of meat and soul, really. That, and their capacity for hilariously bad decisions and hurting one another.
“You’re surprisingly, annoyingly resistant thus far,” she pronounced, a little bored. She stared down at him, but his eyes were a little dull. There was a little spirit there, though, him with his gritted teeth. She raised herself up and then dropped her crotch on his face hard enough to jar him good. “Go ahead and get mad, take a bite if you want. It’ll be like a tender caress from your weak little mouth, a little more foreplay until you figure out that you’re going to do what I ask you to do anyway, given time.”
He made a grunting sound, and she levered off of him. Human bites really weren’t all that impressive, not against a shell. She preferred the caress of the tongue, but biting could be a little fun sometimes. Not enough to get her across the finish line, but enough to keep her in the race. “What?” she asked.
“Not … gonna …” he was fighting for breath; she had just covered his mouth for a few seconds, after all.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “You don’t have to hurt like this. It can all be over. All you have to do … is lick me until I cum. Then, I’ll let you die in peace instead of in pieces.”
“I don’t … believe you.” His eyes were almost rolling back in his head now.
She laughed, a rueful sound even to her. “Sweetie, when it comes to pain, you should believe my every word.”
He had no reaction to that. Shock had set in; there was some serious bleeding from the toes. She’d need to deal with that, she supposed. At least it would go nicely along with what she’d just suggested. She closed her eyes for a moment, brought the dagger to her lips, and this time she exhaled. She could feel the heat as she drew it up from within. Some of their kind had other forms of breath—toxic, corrosive acid, ice, some had none at all—but the most common seemed to be fire, naturally. She ran a hot breath across the blade until it glowed, and then she turned, rubbing herself against him as she did so, and pressed the searing metal against the blood gashes where his toes had been, cauterizing them.
He screamed and screamed, and she relished the sounds while twitching idly on him. It wasn’t exciting, exactly, but it was kind of fun in an offhand sort of way. The screaming was an eight, the sensation a mere three at best, but it kept her going, kept her anticipating how much fun it was going to be when he finally broke down. That was all part of the game, though, the fun, feeling someone wilt a little at a time until they just cracked. One little hole in the will and it was over; they could never rebuild the wall again.
Of course, they got sort of boring after that, but she didn’t need them for very long anyway, so it all worked out.
When she turned back around, she found his face slack, his muscles utterly relaxed, and she frowned. It wasn’t unexpected, him passing out; she had just applied hot metal to fresh wounds and tender skin, after all. He’d probably screamed until he had no more air in his lungs. She’d barely noticed; the screams were nice and all, but she’d heard screams before that were louder and more voluminous. More pitiful, too.
There was a knock at the door and Kitty straightened, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Rousseau, you know not to interrupt me when I’m in the middle of—”
“My apologies, madam,” Rousseau called from outside, his voice muffled by the door between them, “but I have retrieved what you asked from Trinculo’s home, and Mr. Bardsley and Mr. Lawrence have arrived—”
“Good call,” she said, standing up. She stretched, putting her hands above her head. It wasn’t that she had muscles that needed to be worked; it just allowed the essence that had been pooling in her legs to escape. She looked down and saw the veiny surfaces, places where the essence had pooled a little too close the surface, like cracks running across her, watched them disappear back to puckered flesh.
Kitty walked to the corner where her pants hung and put them back on. “Be out in a second,” she said and did not acknowledge nor care when Rousseau replied. She had other thoughts on her mind; if he had retrieved Trinculo’s part of the Rog’tausch and Bardsley brought another, that was four out of six accounted for. She was in the middle of trying to decode a complex bit of writing and couldn’t even remember which primitive language she was having to recall in order to figure it out. She was lucky in that she remembered it at all; they were doubtless one of the groups of little significance who had bitten the dust in the wars, anyway.
She paused at the shed doors while putting her blouse on and looked back at the form of the man chained to the floor. He was really quite sad, just a pathetic little lump. The sooner he saw it that way and stopped resisting her, the more likely he’d be to die with a little of his dignity remaining. Only once had a man failed to relent before she’d cut him bad enough to kill him. She hadn’t even gotten one lick from him. A few she’d gotten close to—they’d died after their surrender, giving her at least a little bit before croaking. That was uncommon. Most were like the thief in New York the night before she left: protest in the chains, give it up when she threatened their main vein.
When Kitty made it back into the new house, she took only a moment to look the place over. It wasn’t as nicely furnished as the Venus Plantation, that was for sure. This was a simple enough house, not opulent, because now that she’d made the big noise, she needed to keep a lower profile. It wasn’t that she couldn’t kill every cop and however many demon hunters were left in this town, it was that she didn’t want to right now. She had other things to do, other interests to pursue, and they were all nuisances that she’d get to in her own time. What if one of them came knocking when she was busy breaking the cowboy or excavating one of the last two pieces of the Rog’tausch? Then she’d have to stop what she was doing and engage them, beat them senseless, chain them up for later submission … who had time for that right now? Not her.
Feegan Bardsley waited inside with one of the sealed boxes in his arms. He sat in the living room of the country house Rousseau had rented for her, with Detmar Lawrence next to her, his eyes on another box that waited on a coffee table in the middle of the room. Everything here was so simple; it lacked class. It was all frilly, overwrought, and looked like someone had come through with doilies aplenty. Tacky, tacky, tacky.
Bardsley scrambled to his feet as she approached, and Lawrence made it up a half-second after he did. Kitty noted it, of course, because Bardsley had his arms full and still made it up first. That was a sign of a man who was looking to make the right impression. Lawrence lost points in her estimation for his failure to be quite as quick.
“I bring you what I promised,” Bardsley said, bowing. More points.
“I see you’ve found another,” Lawrence said, inclining his head toward her.
Kitty breezed past Bardsley and took his box, giving him a gentle nod in acknowledgment of his kindness. She set it upon the table next to the other, then paused, repeating those same words again, at the top of her lungs, the ones that made the Rog’tausch submissive to her. “Et-esh-komn-bah et-anyana-seer-la-oranlee.” She said them loudly enough to be heard through the wood encasement, and in the distance she could hear the arm and the leg shuffling their way toward her from another room.
“Let’s see what we have,” she said and opened the first box. This one was obvious from the shape; it was just like the one she’d gotten from the dig site, and as soon as it was open a hand stuck out, all Frankenstein in asserting its liveliness. She placed it upon the floor as gently as she could. “And now you,” she said, turning her attention to the much larger parcel beneath the first.
This one was massive. It filled the surface of the coffee table and then some, hanging off the edge on either end by several inches. It was oblong, rectangular. When she pried the top off, the whole box shuddered slightly. “It’s like it’s my birthday,” she said under her breath.
“How many have you had now?” Lawrence asked, sounding almost polite. Almost. But you didn’t ask a demon lady that fucking question.
“More than you,” she said, keeping it cool. She threw the lid off, letting it fall to the floor with a clatter. Within the box she found exactly what she expected—a torso, bare from the neck to the groin, a Ken-doll in its absence of exterior anatomy. “Oh, yes, my dear. You are just what I’ve always wanted.”
“Seems a bit … lacking,” Lawrence said. She didn’t know where this annoying smugness had sprung from, but she didn’t like it. Yesterday he’d been ever so humble in his proposal for alliance. “You know, for what a lady would be looking for.”
She looked up at him without amusement. “I don’t need one of those, thank you.” She ran a hand across the muscled chest, the odd colored skin of the torso. “Well … I think it’s about time we start putting together the pieces.” She wavered, just for a moment—considering how best to have Bardsley and Lawrence remove themselves from the room so that she could do this privately. Uniting the Rog’tausch had been her longest dream, the one thing she’d wanted above all else, the one thing she was willing to put her favorite hobby—rampant torture and forcible knifepoint cunnilingus—on hold for a few minutes to achieve.
It only took a moment for her to concede that there was little hope of this being a private moment, though. Bardsley had done his part, and she’d made her deal. She looked up to find him staring just as intently at the torso as she had. He was a true believer, and she couldn’t fault him for that. Be annoyed that he was here now, stepping on her moment, but she could hardly fault him for feeling the same as she did.
Lawrence, on the other hand, seemed to be watching with thinly veiled disinterest. She caught him looking at her instead of the Rog’tausch, which revealed his hand probably more than he’d intended. This wasn’t his game; he didn’t care for the Rog’tausch so much as he wanted something from her. Well, that would keep. She had work to do now in any case—
“Madam,” Rousseau said, sticking his head in. The man looked pale, face color all washed out. It was one of the less charming attributes of humans, always being dependent on their blood to flow. “You have another … caller.”
“Tell them I’ll call them back if they’re on the phone,” Kitty said, waving him off. “And if they’re here, I’m busy and they’re uninvited.”
“They’re here,” Rousseau said, and she looked up to see him flushing. He was only sticking his head in the door, which was unusual—and a breach of some protocol, probably. “You will need to take this appointment.”
“Will I?” She could feel the crackle of flames in the back of her throat. She didn’t breathe fire unless she got truly angry, but she felt it now. She ran a hand into her pocket and felt that rune that the vendor had sold Rousseau to keep her cloaked from mystical influences and seekers. “I’m not in much of a mood for—” She paused, realizing what he’d just said. “Need?”
Rousseau nodded, once, slowly. The meaning was unmistakably clear.
“Out,” she said, standing abruptly. “Wait outside. I’ll call you back in as soon as I’m done.”
“But the—” Lawrence began. Bardsley knew better or sensed what was afoot, and Kitty respected him all the more for it. Lawrence caught the feeling, just a little late. “Oh.”
“Yes,” Kitty said and turned her head to Rousseau. “See these gentlemen to the sitting room and then … show our guest in. The Rog’tausch will simply have to wait … until this is over …”
*
“What does he have on you?” Lex Deivrel asked as soon as Reeve was out of the room. Arch felt himself look around instinctively, as though Reeve would have structured this as a trick just to get him to talk. It was pretty doubtful, though, since Reeve hated Deivrel, but …
“Who hired you?” Arch asked, getting right to the nub.
“Your father-in-law,” Deivrel said, not backing off. “What does Reeve have on you?” She paused, waiting, and when Arch didn’t answer after a moment she favored him with a patronizing smile. “Listen. I bill by the hour, so if you just want to sit here and stare at each other, I can do that. I can do that all day, all night, for the next six weeks until Sheriff Montresor decides to brick up that doorway and rid himself of his problems at a rate of two for one.” She leaned in a little, and her smile got a little more patronizing. “But it’d cost your father-in-law money I suspect you wouldn’t want him to spend, so … I’m your lawyer, you’re protected by attorney-client privilege. Spill.”
“He’s got cartridges,” Arch said, after considering it for a moment. “Shell casings from shots I fired in the town square a couple months ago.”
“Anyone harmed there?” Deivrel asked. She had a pad out, was jotting notes.
“Not exactly,” Arch said and felt the tension keeping him from just lying and saying no.
She looked up, giving him an eyebrow. “Was anybody hurt or not?”
“No person was hurt,” Arch said.
She stared him down. “Any animals?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“All right, then,” Deivrel said. “Property destroyed?”
“No.”
“That’s going to be an easy charge to get rid of,” Deivrel said. “Police officer accidentally discharges his gun under mysterious circumstances, no one harmed, yadda yadda. Done. What else?”
“He caught me with a rifle tonight,” Arch said.
“Where?”
“In the woods next to the Venus Plantation,” Arch said.
She looked up at him, and he saw a flicker of something. “So, you were hunting.”
He stared back. “It was pretty well after sundown, so I don’t think he’s going to buy that.”
“Because people never break the rules while hunting?” Deivrel was grinning now. “I handle a dozen cases like that each year. This one’s easy, too.”
“The rifle he caught me with will match ballistics for shots fired at the Summer Lights festival a few weeks ago,” Arch said.
She put her pen down, made eye contact, and didn’t let it go. “Did you fire those shots?”
“No.”
“Were you present when they were fired?” She brought the pen up, touching the tip to the corner of her mouth. She had little in the way of lines, enough to tell Arch she was probably in her early forties, maybe late thirties.
“I was down in the crowd,” Arch said.
“Anyone see you?”
“Hundreds of people,” Arch said.
She shrugged. “Basically, thus far he’s got shells from an accidental discharge, and you with a rifle that was used in a crime at some point which you have an ironclad alibi for. Anything else?”
Arch stirred, felt the cuffs as they rattled when he shifted. “He suspects me for—”
She waved a hand. “I don’t care what he suspects. What does he have?”
Arch thought about it, running his tired mind through the possibilities. “Some vague eyewitness testimony about a giant, flaming cow, maybe.”
She dropped the pen from the corner of her mouth. “You set a cow on fire?”
“No!” Arch said, felt the vehemence pour right out on the table between them. “Not a—it was a—I don’t know what they saw. Something strange.”
“Any provable crime being committed?”
Arch thought it over. “I don’t think so.”
She made a few more notes and then stopped, placing the pen perfectly even, lined up with the edge of the pad. “Okay. You’ve been gone from work for a while now, right?”
Arch blinked. “Uh, yes. A few weeks.”
“Why?”
Arch ran through possible explanations before settling on one that was closest to the truth. “On the night of the Summer Lights Festival, the sheriff and I had a confrontation in which he accused me of being corrupt.”
“While you were standing in the crowd during the incident you mentioned before?” Deivrel smiled. She already knew.
“Yeah,” Arch said, watching her carefully. “How did you—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Deivrel said. “Did he bring a formal inquiry or complaint against you, based on the procedures in place to handle workplace issues?”
“What?” Arch asked. “No. No, he just said—”
“Okay,” Deivrel said and started jotting furiously again. “Do you want your job back?”
Arch blinked. “Do I want—how would I get my job back?”
“The sheriff created a hostile working environment,” Deivrel said. “He threatened you, impugned your reputation, and accused you of crimes with no basis in fact in the middle of a crowd of your fellow citizens of Calhoun County.” She looked straight at him. “I see harassment. I see racial discrimination from a white sheriff against his only African-American deputy. I see stereotyping, I see—”
Arch felt his hand go straight to his face, thumb and forefinger finding the bridge of his nose and giving them a good rub. “You’re seeing an awful lot. Not sure much of what you’re seeing is actually there, though.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Deivrel said. “What matters is what a jury sees, and with what’s happened to you, I can paint a picture so vivid and bright that any jury around is going to see a man who was systematically intimidated by his boss, harassed out of town—this is some serious Jim Crow stuff here. These charges are easy.” She waved her hand. “Consider them gone. But better than that, if we sue Calhoun County to get you your job back on this basis, you could get a seven-figure cash settlement. Maybe eight figures if we go to court.”
