Almostscarlet.
I slide the sharp surgical knife underneath the flap I created in this man’s abdomen, popping out a corner so I can peel it down and fold it into his lap.
“Please, please stop...” he mutters. The scrap of fabric covering his mouth muffles his voice.
It’s not there to shut him up, but to keep his drool away from me.
I look away from the newly exposed muscle and a thin layer of fat attached to the peeled skin now almost completely folded over in his lap. Cocking my head, I meet his teary, bloodshot gaze, which is devoid of the hope his voice still seems to hold.
I have nothing to say to him. Never really do. Vincent is the one of us with the golden tongue that can make almost everyone talk. If that doesn’t work, I come in. I’m the one with the scalpel, the knives, the pliers, and many other tools that don’t require questions to be asked. Pain makes pretty much everyone talk, and I’m here to listen.
I’ve been doing this for years, though not to this particular man. I’ve only been at him for a couple of hours. At a grueling, calm pace that made him spill all his secrets. At least, the ones I’m interested in.
Back when I only had a few victims in my repertoire, I thought the infliction of pain itself pulled me in so fiercely that it made me want to do it slower, longer, and so much more often. I couldn’t understand I didn’t know myself then. It took a few years to see what fascinates me so—emotions.
Because pain brings forth emotions which are deeply visceral and amazingly unique. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. An opera of feelings within that rainbow of expressions and reactions.
It’s not that I can’t feel emotions myself. At a certain level, I do, but states of mind are what I feel the most, like anger, slight joy, contempt, annoyance.
But when I look in my victim’s eyes, I find a deep fascination in the complexity of emotions looking back at me. It took me a long time to attempt pinpointing them through association with body language and physical reactions.
They’re painted in colorful shades, cycling between hope, fear, regret, and maybe a tinge of love for someone he’ll never see again. Probably many more emotions that I can’t yet recognize.
Sometimes I carve for the sole purpose of feeding this need with unfamiliar emotions I cannot seem to experience or understand myself. I feed it because it’s the only way I can step away from the dominant, inhuman part of me. The only way I can attempt to understand and perhaps relate to others. It’s necessary in my line of work.
“Please . . . just kill me,” the flayed man begs.
Strips of flesh are missing from his thighs, biceps, and now his abdomen. I cut him. I stabbed him. And yet he looks nothing like Diana, the escort from Katya’s team that his associate dropped at our doorstep.
She was half-dead. Barely able to move or talk. Broken so deeply, we’re not sure she’s going to make it. But she’s in surgery now, with doctors fixing her badly damaged spleen and internal bleeding.
Katya and some of the others are currently in the hospital waiting room. Finnigan and a couple of security guys are lurking in the hospital too. Staying close, just in case.
Somehow, through a blinking consciousness and barely any strength, Diana managed to give us a glimpse into what happened. The man dying before my eyes gave me the rest.
She was assigned to Frank Duval, a politician we’ve known to be dirty for a long time. But even as he’s slowly digging his claws through so many pockets in Queenscove, obtaining proof of his dodgy dealings is almost impossible. He covers his tracks too well.
Our escorts are so much more than their given names. They’re spies. Skilled ones at that. And even though they’re part of our syndicate, they’re our best kept secret. We’ve held that business separate from the very start. We protect them, take care of them, but their official leader is Ekaterina—Katya.
If Queenscove and beyond learned the escort firm is ours, they wouldn’t use our services, and we wouldn’t discover their secrets.
But Diana got caught tonight as she was cloning a phone. She thought she was safe, but Duval must have suspected something, or maybe it was pure dumb luck. He then brought in my little friend here, and together they proceeded to torture her for information. She begged and begged, she fought and resisted, but pain does terrible things to the human psyche. It twists it and bends it until you can’t distinguish dream from reality.
The man bleeding before me said that she was barely conscious when she muttered our name...The Sanctum. She gave us away on a platter to Duval, and after seeing the state of her, I can’t blame her.
Our escorts are trained in various skills, including combat and manipulation, but we don’t expect them to be soldiers conditioned to torture methods. This should never have happened to her.
This asshole gave me every bit of information he had about an hour ago, but his pleas and pain have coaxed me on. Diana’s agony too. This second hour has been for her and me. I needed to draw more out of him until that wretched, hungry creature within me grew satisfied.
And it finally is.
I, on the other hand, am exhausted.
Standing tall and straightening my back, I look at the man tied to the chair before me in the center of this cold, gray room glowing in nothing but artificial light. Bruises have developed, swollen cheeks and eye. Around the flayed skin and sliced muscles, the man is covered in blood on almost every inch of his body. Only the adrenaline I administered keeps him alert.
He’s positively demonic.
Nothing like the arrogance he regarded me with when I found him smoking by the back entrance of a busy downtown bar. The guy who delivered Diana to us gave him away. He’s currently lying dead on the floor a few feet to my left.
