Beauty and the Dark (19 page)

Jack

I
crouch low, and keeping in the shadows of the wall, make my way to the back door. I notice there is a window open upstairs. Good. I will climb the drainpipe if the kitchen door is locked. 

I look in through the window and the kitchen is empty. I try the door and it turns. They were obviously expecting the dogs to protect this door. Very careless. A good sign. I open the door and step into the house. The microwave is on and something is slowly turning inside. I look at the display panel on it. In thirty seconds it will ping.

I pull open the side door and step into the pantry. The microwave pings. Through the slit I see a bald hulk of a man come into the kitchen. Chest to chest he might have three inches on me. He takes his food out of the oven and opens a drawer, the engorged muscles in his meaty arms flexing. He has size but I have speed in both feet and hands.

While the three-hundred-pound gorilla is riffling for cutlery, I slip out, my body seeming to act without conscious thought when I bash him over the head with my champagne bottle. I’ve been in a lot of bar room brawls and nothing beats the solid weight of a champagne bottle.

Unlike the Hollywood movies where the sugar syrup bottles smash into a thousand pieces, the champagne bottle stays completely intact. There is nothing more than a dull thump when the bottle makes contact with his skull, but his massive legs give way under him and he drops to the floor. I hook my wrists under his armpits and drag him into the pantry. Quickly, I remove the plastic cover from the tranquilizer syringe, and stick the needle into his bulging arm muscles.

Strange. He has a tooth missing.

I open the door a crack. No one has come looking for him yet, but they will. I don’t have much time. Carrying the champagne bottle, I slink down the corridor like a shadow. There is no one in the small reception room, but I can hear voices coming from the large main room. At least one male and two female voices. I look in through the crack of the door and see a very young woman. She can’t be more than twenty.

She is wearing tight pink shorts and a bikini top. There are blue-black choke marks around her neck. One look at her and I know she’s not here willingly. She is sitting on a sofa looking at the two other people speaking in the room. 

I take a big risk.

I step into her vision. Her eyes widen and her mouth drops open, but I place my finger over my lips. She swallows hard. Her eyes dart first to her left then to her right, and I know instantly that the real danger is on her left. I make a beckoning motion with my hand and point upstairs. She frowns and I do it again. She nods, stands up, and adjusts her tight shorts, pulling them down.

“Candy,” she says. “Can you come upstairs with me for a minute? I need you to help me with something.”

“What now?” Candy asks.

“Yeah, I better do it before the customers start arriving.”

“What is it?” the man asks. His voice is stern.

“I just need Candy to help me camouflage some bruises on my back with make-up. I just remembered I got Anderson coming today, and he doesn’t like to see bruises that he didn’t cause himself.”

“Go up with her,” the man orders.

Silent as a beetle I scuttle back into the kitchen. I wait for the girls to leave the room. When they are halfway up the stairs I steal back into the corridor and walk boldly into the room. The man stands up, his face amazed. I recognize him from Kaja’s description. The big guy with the red hair.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demands as he walks aggressively towards me. His accent is thick.

I put my hands up as if in surrender, one fist curled around the neck of the champagne bottle. “I’m just here for a bit of ass, mate. I even brought my own champagne.”

His pale eyes flicker with uncertainty. He’s obviously not the sharpest pencil in the box, but he doesn’t stop moving towards me. When he gets close enough I brace myself, bend at the waist and ram my head into his stomach. Fuck. He’s fit!  It’s like driving my head into a fucking concrete wall. Sparks of pain shoot up my neck and into my skull. 

He stumbles, but manages to grab both my shoulders and shove hard, making me stagger backwards.  I right myself, wheezing in and out. A look of amusement comes onto his face. Grinning and bending at the knees, he curls the fingers of both hands, motioning me to come forward.

He wants a little fun. A wrestling match.

I can hear the girls moving around upstairs. I don’t know yet how many other people are up there so I don’t have the time to indulge in his invitation. I put the champagne on the floor.

“No sense wasting good champagne,” I say with a smile, but I’m so high on adrenalin my heart is skipping beats.

“None at all,” he agrees. “Let the victor have it.”

“May the best man win.”

“That’ll be me,” he snarls, and moves, damn fast. So fast that I nearly miss seeing his change of tactic. He slides to the right, opposite to the direction he has been circling and throws a blow with his left hand and tries to hook my leg and hurl me to the ground. I sidestep, whirl and come face to face with him again.

He lunges.

I avoid one flying fist only to reel under the impact of another. My vision blurs. Fuck, he got me in the jaw, but I’m so pumped up on adrenaline I don’t even feel the sting.

He charges like a bull straight into my stomach, but I’m prepared. I tighten my muscles, and he sees stars. I bring both my elbows down hard on his back, right between his shoulder blades. With a grunt of agony, he drops to the floor, rights himself up, and stands swaying. He stares at me panting hard, wanting blood.

We circle each other. Like animals. He brings his left fist up to fool me into thinking he is about to strike. The real blow waiting is his powerful right fist. I skip back and his flying knuckles miss me. I feel my hair ruffle with the force behind his blow, even as I land my own solid uppercut to his chin.

He sprays blood and saliva as the flesh around his mouth vibrates with the impact. He staggers back. My fist burns with pain, but I actually enjoy it. It helps banish the surreal feeling and makes me more focused.

With a look of stunned fury, he lurches towards me to try and bulldoze me to the ground, but I’m ready for him. I crouch to the floor. Rolling clear and stretching forward, I swipe the bottle off the floor. In one smooth action I stand and slam the bottle into the side of his head. Playtime is over, motherfucker.

The effect is instantaneous. His eyes dim and he starts going down. I catch his dead weight before it flops to the floor. I stab him with the tranquilizer and drag him behind the couch. I tuck his legs up so he is completely hidden.

Picking up the champagne bottle I go swiftly into the corridor. I start up the stairs and try the first door. It opens. Inside it is crammed full with four bunk beds. The girl who helped me and three other girls are huddled on one of the beds. I go in and shut the door.

“Who else is in this house?” I ask quietly.

The other girls are too terrified to speak, but the girl who helped downstairs stands up and whispers, “I’m not sure. Venus is next door with a client. The big boss is around too. They have brought a new girl in today. I think she is still in the last room.”

“What does she look like?”

“I didn’t see her. I just heard.”

“I saw her,” a girl with black hair says. “She is pretty with long hair the color of honey, and she is wearing a purple hat with a floppy flower on it.”

That’s my Sofia. There isn’t another girl in London who’d wear something that ridiculous. “There’s no one downstairs and the dogs are asleep so if you want you can run, but be quiet,” I tell them.

The women look at each other, too frightened to save themselves. Only the girl with the bruises on her neck nods.

I go out and close the door. I avoid the next room. There is a bathroom on my right. I open the door to make sure it is empty. I don’t need any nasty shocks, then I make for the last room.

To my surprise the door to the last room opens and a man walks out. The moment my eyes fall on him, blood slams so fast into my head it’s like a baseball bat hitting a ball. I feel my whole body vibrate with tension as more rage than I’ve ever known pools in my gut. My right hand clenches into a violent wrap of bone, sinew and skin. Only one thought echoes in my mind. Over and over again.

Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!

Jack

H
e lifts his eyes, sees me, and his head jerks back. It’s a pure
what the fuck?-how the hell?-Oh shit!
moment.

Then our eyes lock and the moment hangs suspended, counted only in our heartbeats. They say that in times of extreme danger, the pathways between people open, they become connected, and there are no more secrets between them.

In that second, I see him in all his rotten glory: his narcissism, his arrogance, his sadistic cruelty, his dirty soul, his innate cowardice, and the demon sitting on his shoulder whispering dark thoughts.

And him?

He sees a man with hellfire blazing in his eyes and nothing to lose.

Then the pathways close and his tremendous opinion of himself takes over. His eyes snap to the champagne bottle in my hand. He schools his features into a taunting mask.

“How kind. You brought a bottle,” he remarks, his voice smarmy, oily, repulsive.

“It seemed rude not to.”

“I wonder about you, Jack. You don’t look like a fool and yet you’re on a fool’s errand.”

I unclench my balled up fist. “I’ve come for what’s mine.”

His eyes narrow. “She’s
my
bitch, but for the right amount of money I can … lend her to you.”

“She’s not yours. You sold her.”

He makes a dismissive waving gesture with his right hand. “It was in a moment of weakness. A simple mistake that I rectified earlier this evening. Now she’s mine again.”

“You can’t have her back.” My voice is low. Calm.

His eyes glitter with something unholy. “I own her ass. She’ll eat my shit if I tell her to.”

I’m so repulsed, so horrified I can’t even speak.

He thinks he sees a chink and pounces. “Why would a fine, upstanding man like you want a low life, dirty bitch like her? She’s had more cocks inside her than you’ve had fancy dinners.”

He’s trying to get under my skin. The smug smile, calling me by my first name in that sardonic, superior tone, the fake concern for my wellbeing. This is passive-aggressive at its best. I’m not stupid enough to fall for it. I smile slowly. He thinks I can’t play this game.

“I don’t care how many cocks she’s had inside her. From now on my big cock’s the only one going into her.”

He smiles, a dead, mirthless smile. “I know what. Let’s ask her to choose. My big cock or … yours.”

I shake my head. “This is not a democracy.”

His lips tighten. “I don’t think you realize who you are dealing with. You may have …” he shrugs nonchalantly, “overpowered a couple of my men downstairs, but there are more coming. Every moment you stand here you are getting closer and closer to your own demise.”

I shrug. “Let them come. I’m not leaving without Sofia.”

“Then you’ll leave in a black bin bag.”

I lift my shoulder carelessly. “So be it.”

He lifts his right hand and scratches his chest. What a fool. As if I’d buy that old card shark trick. His hand slips into his jacket, but before he can even aim his gun, I have pulled my knife out from the back of my waistband and have it ready to throw at him. He panics, turns, and tries to reenter the room he came out of.

Cat quick I throw my weapon. With impeccable aim it enters dead center into his left buttock, exactly where I wanted to plant it. He falls down and screams like a stuck pig.

I walk up to him, grab a handful of his greasy hair, and pull his head up.

“Fuck you,” he spits. “You think you can get away with this? I’ll hunt you down.”

That’s the problem with psychopaths. They just don’t know when to stop, pull back, rethink the strategy, and maybe say sorry, I was wrong. Show a little respect to someone else. I shake my head in wonder. He’s so fucking screwed and he doesn’t know it. He actually thinks I’m just going to take Sofia and leave him here alive so he can then wreak his revenge at his own time.

“You’ll be running for the rest of your life,” he threatens wildly. Even at this late stage it doesn’t cross his mind that he could have underestimated me. I could be a killer like him.

“Not that it’ll help,” I say, “but if you have any last minute prayers you want to say, now might be the time.” My voice is icy cold, deadly.

It hits him then. Finally, but damn, does it hit him! The swagger evaporates. His eyes bulge with the shocking knowledge that I’m not some lily livered, soft-touch, plastic surgeon that he can ‘lend’ his whore to. That I, a doctor tasked with saving lives, am prepared to kill in cold blood. That I’ve come to watch him die.

His face becomes a mask of raw terror. His hands start flailing, hitting out at my legs. He belly-crawls forward and tries to bite me. He has a split second of warning before I swing the bottle into the side of his skull. His head jerks so hard, it looks like it’s coming off his neck.

Bright lights must be exploding across his vision right now. The screaming pain epic. His eyes are full of disbelief. He can’t believe that it is over.
It can’t be. I can’t die on the filthy floor of one of my brothels. I’m still young. This can’t be the end.
He blinks rapidly, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t clear his blurred vision. He struggles vainly against the rising blackness.

He gasps.

Everything is dimming, blurring, fading.

He reaches for me, his killer, blindly in a last act of clawing desperation. Then the world goes dark for him. The great Valdislav is no more. Gone to meet his maker, or those demons that surrounded him and whispered all their sadistic perversions.

I step over his body and go into the room. A part of my brain notes how chilly it is in there. A window is wide open and cold air blows in ruffling the curtains. My eyes go to the king size metal bed. I’m so sure I’ll see her on it, that it is a shock to find it empty. My heart is beating so fast with fear I feel dizzy. I whip around looking for her. She’d better be here. I’ve killed the only man who might know her whereabouts.

Then I see her … and the air leaves my lungs. My heart feels as if it is being torn into two halves. Fuck. I want to shake. I want to sob. My vision blurs as I lurch forward, hand outstretched, whimpering inside like a hurt animal.