Luca glances over at me as I walk down the stairs. I expect him to be riled up, angry, taking out his many frustrations on his houseguest. Instead, he is the picture of calm and control, which is all the more terrifying. Blood spatters his bare chest, marring the tattooed skin and drenching his sweatpants. He’s holding a paring knife—the kind you might peel an apple with. Except it’s not an apple he’s been peeling.
His expression shows a flicker of doubt—of regret. He doesn’t want me to see him like this. He doesn’t want me to witness how good he is at inflicting pain. That he’s a professional. It moves me, seeing him so vulnerable, much as he tries to hide it.
I walk straight over to him, place my palms on either side of his face. My fingers slip and slide in the blood, but I stand on tiptoe and kiss him firmly on the lips. “I know who you are,” I say quietly. “And I love you.”
Not the most romantic of places to bust out the L-word for the first time, but our lives are not like other people’s. We could be waiting forever for the right moment. There’s unlikely to be a long walk on the beach at sunset, an intimate dinner for two, or a vacay to Paris. We could both be dead by tomorrow.
So we have to live for today.
He pulls me into his arms, crushing me tight to his body, and buries his face in my neck, where he plants a trail of kisses. Despite the circumstances—half-dead vamp in a non-sex torture dungeon—my body responds.
He doesn’t say it back, but I’m not surprised. Not disappointed. None of this comes easily to him, and he shows how much he cares about me with every action he takes. It’s a sweet moment, but I feel the outline of his hard cock shoving against me and smile. Some things never change, thank god.
I pull away and take in my surroundings. It’s pretty much as you’d imagine: bare walls, stone floor with a drain in the middle to get rid of the blood, a small box that I’m guessing emits UV light. The metal table near the door comes complete with a hand drill, blowtorch, spiked baton, stun belt, and all manner of blades in different shapes and sizes. All your basics.
There’s also a couch, presumably so tired vamps can rest after a long day of torturing the shit out of their victims. I sit on it and tuck my legs underneath me. “So, how’s it going?”
“He’s told me a lot, but not everything,” Luca answers.
Kurt rallies, dragging up his ruined face to glare at him with some defiance. Got to say, I kind of admire his spirit. “I’ve told you everything, you twisted motherfucker!”
“I don’t think you have.” Luca uses the tip of his knife to lift a flap of skin from Kurt’s chest. His whole torso is covered in these flaps, a few inches long, bright red and bleeding. Some are half healed, others fresh. His face is battered and broken, and one eyeball is hanging out, connected to his socket by a repulsive string of flesh.
“I’ve told you!” Kurt shrieks as the flap of skin is pulled back to reveal fat and muscle. “We weren’t supposed to hurt her. The others, yes, but not her.”
I frown. “Me? You weren’t supposed to hurt me?”
“No! You were off-limits. He said he’d done it before—said he organized the death of the Lombardi bitch decades ago. Now he was ready to get rid of the rest of the Seers, apart from you.”
“But I was getting the same Calls as the others. I was under the same pressure.”
Kurt sneers at me—as well as a man with one eye, a broken nose, and a busted lips can sneer. “We had to make it look good. He wasn’t ready for the others to know his plans, so we had to make it look like you were being targeted too. He was gonna blame it on the vamps. On the Coscas, who he’d say were out of control and needed taming.”
“And then take all the glory when he stepped in to clean up the mess?” I ask.
“I suppose. I don’t fucking know! The man is demented. But he pays well, and the work was steady.”
The work was steady.Jeez. He talks about it like he had a pleasant office job, like it was a vocation. That steady work almost killed Paola Bianchi, and it definitely killed her precious baby. I look at this piece of shit hanging from Luca’s basement ceiling and feel nothing but contempt. Contempt, and a fuckload of rage.
“Luca, will his eye heal?”
“Not if I sever the nerves and remove it completely. The skin will just heal over.”
“Right, interesting. Why don’t we do that and then take his other eye? What do you use, a spoon?”
“Ice cream scoop,” he replies calmly. “On the table.”
Ingenious, I think as I pick up the blood-stained scoop. Amazing what uses one can find for everyday kitchen implements. I take note of the pizza wheel and imagine what I might do with it as I move to stand in front of Kurt.
He tries to spin away from me. “There’s more I can tell you!” he screams, slobber and blood spraying from his mouth. “I have details. Dates and names.”
I tap the scoop against my palm. “I thought you said you’d told him everything?”
“Yeah, well, I lied! There’s more, I promise.”
I turn to Luca. “He doesn’t need eyes to talk does he?”
“No, my love, but in my experience, once you take both eyes, they lose the will to fight. To live. It might be best to save that for later—unless he talks.”
