Dangerous (36 page)

The men held drinks in their hands, and one puffed on the cigar I had smelled. The woman in the evening gown sat at an angle, with her back against the arm of the couch and her legs crossed, dangling over the side. Their combined gaze felt like ghostly hands touching my body. I shivered.

When my eyes adjusted and revealed the darkened corners beyond the glare, what I saw there made me gasp.

I recognized Val immediately, despite the gloom and her blood-red mask: pale as a ghost in her vest and tweed pants, sitting on a love seat. And the young woman at her feet, in the black sweater dress, could only be Grace. Her matching black mask gave her a cat’s inscrutability. I guessed the cocktail she held in her hand was Val’s.

I heard the door close behind me.

Val studied me with the glowing eyes of a predator waiting just beyond the campfire’s light.

“And here she is,” announced the woman with the white mask, referring to me. She pointed to me and said, “Turn around.”

I looked pleadingly to Val, but her only reply was a narrowing of the eyes behind her mask.
Do it.

So. This was to be a game of humiliation.

I turned obediently, stumbling once when my heel caught the rug. After a complete turn, I saw Grace offer Val the drink, which she savored with a practiced sip.

“She’s fresh meat, obviously, and very pretty,” said the first woman, with the white mask. “The bidding starts at one thousand for an hour with this exotic Asian beauty.”

That took a moment to process. Bidding? An auction? My knees almost gave out. I would do—had done—much as a down payment for Val’s trust, but this was way out of bounds. That’s when I knew it had to be a game, because such things are totally illegal. Even so, I was livid.

“She’s thinner than your last, Red. Feeding them less these days?” asked a man behind me, with an accent I couldn’t place; Eastern Europe, or maybe Russia. I turned to see who was speaking. It was the man with the green mask, and the cigar. He had thick lips I didn’t like.

The first woman snapped her fingers. “Eyes down and forward,” she told me. Then she rose to fetch something, and it turned out to be the blindfold I’d worn earlier. The last thing I saw before the velvet-black descended was Val’s inscrutable gaze, and Grace’s triumphant smile.

“Ah, we have a thousand,” White said, but I didn’t know who had made the first bid. “Do I hear fifteen hundred?”

“Hmm, too much, I think,” said another man, “for a girl who lacks discipline.”

From the corner, Val said huskily, “And here I thought you’d enjoy a spirited girl, Gray. A chance for a bit of whip-work.” This seemed as much a warning to me as a goad to him.

I was already fleeing in my mind’s eye, running down the steps and through the door, out onto the street where I’d wave down a passing car. But I couldn’t take that first step. This was all a big prank, and I wouldn’t let her win so easily. I almost wanted to see how far she’d take it. And when this was over I’d make her pay, oh yes.

I heard someone rise and walk close, before a hand firmly grabbed my breast. I pulled away. My defiance sparked quiet laughter among the others. “Fifteen hundred,” he said.

“Thank you. Do I have two thousand?”

When a finger traced my lips I protested, and received a slap for the outburst. Growling, I started to remove the blindfold until someone caught my wrist and held it tight.

This was getting
way
out of hand.

When I tried to pull free, several hands held me and handcuffed my wrists in back, before pushing me off the rug and down onto the couch. I started to cry at their rough handling, hot tears wetting the blindfold. Someone chuckled derisively.

Now I believed this wasn’t a charade. Who
were
these people? I had long suspected Val worked for the mob, and this seemed to confirm it. My anger melted into fear.

“Let me go,” I pleaded, mostly to Val. “Please don’t—”

Another slap, this one hard enough to make me cry out.

“Quiet!” snapped the woman with the white mask. I stopped crying, more out of shock than ordered calm. “Two thousand, anyone…ah, yes. Thank you. Do I hear twenty-five hundred?”

I scarcely heard what followed.

When I drew my knees up into a fetal position, hands firmly pushed them back down. It was terrifying, humiliating. If I’d had a gun I could have shot everyone in the room, including Val.

Finally the bidding was over. Someone—the man whose breath smelled of cigars, Green—pulled me to my feet. It was hard to rise, with my arms locked behind my back. He placed a leather collar around my neck and clipped on a light chain, where it briefly dangled, supple and cold, against my sternum. Then the chain went taut and I was pulled close to him.

“If she is not all you say, I expect my four grand back,” he chided in his Slavic accent.

From the corner, Val laughed. “You wound me, Green. When have I ever disappointed you?”

“Val!” I wailed, but a sharp jerk of the chain choked me to silence, and I nearly fell. With the leash in one hand, and his other on my arm, he guided me toward the hallway.

Behind, I heard a sharp
clap clap
and Val said, “You’re next, pet. Hop to it.”

On any other day I would have cherished Grace’s disbelieving wail.

§

I spent the next ten minutes sitting on a bed somewhere on the second floor of that house. The man had tied the leash to something, probably the bedpost, and warned me to stay put, before leaving the room himself. A clock ticked somewhere behind me in that dreadful stillness, and muted voices floated from the other room. I thought I heard Grace crying. Then, people leaving. The house fell silent.

I had clung desperately to the hope this was all a joke, but it was too elaborate, there were too many participants, for me to truly believe it. People could go to prison for this kind of thing.

I hated Val. I hated her endless appetite for tormenting me. No matter how ravenously she fed, it was never enough, something worse always lurked in that evil brain. With each new degradation, I’d told myself it was simply the Ferryman’s coin, the necessary price of passage to Val’s lonely isle. But just as I gained that shore, she had tossed me aside, made me a whore.

This was unbearable.

The door snicked open and shut again, and I heard a rustle of cloth in that direction, the sound of breathing. I suppressed a whimper. If not for the cuffs I’d have ripped off the blindfold long ago.

He came close and stroked my cheek. I turned my head away with a growl. The hand traveled down my neck, my breast, my belly, before coming to rest on my bare leg.

I could kick him; I had a good idea where his crotch was. My leg actually tensed with temptation. But what would it gain me, handcuffed like this? His hand, flat on my left thigh, slipped upward, beneath the hem of my dress.

I resolved not to cry, but at his touch between my legs I did anyway, a ragged sound forced from me by dark despair. It was too much, too much.

Then the hand withdrew, and I didn’t know where he was, or what would happen next. I flinched and cried out at the touch of hands at my neck, but they were only removing the leash. Then the blindfold went away. I blinked away the sudden, blinding light and blurring tears.

It was Val who stood before me. We were alone in that room. She was unmasked, and her expression spoke of total satiety. It
had
been a game, after all.

She smoothed my hair and lifted my chin, then bent to lick away my tears. I felt sick, as if in total free fall. Val pulled a key from her pocket and turned me slightly in order to release the cuffs. I didn’t resist.

She put the open cuffs on a nightstand and turned back to me. She stood with her arms uncharacteristically at her sides, rather than with hands on hips. It made her seem unguarded, open.

As she regarded me with her gray-green eyes something broke loose inside me. And then I attacked her, slapping her hard again and again, sending her white hair flying with the force of my blows. I was dimly aware of my hands stinging, as I screamed out all my rage in one long, incoherent sound.

And she took it.

My assault forced her back against a dresser with a loud thump, knocking over a plastic bottle of lotion that had been resting on top. After a dozen blows I stood before her, gasping, murder in my eyes.

Val regarded me with a reverence I couldn’t process. There were angry hand prints and a scratch on her face. Blood welled from a split lip, bright as a rose petal on white silk.

“I
hate
you,” I hissed.

She made no answer, but only looked at me through the strands of hair that had fallen over her face.

But I wasn’t finished yet.

“You are one messed up bitch, you know that? I gave you everything! I
loved
you!” I sobbed. “But you just can’t handle that. Well, I’m sorry you had a shitty life, Val, but I’m not doing this any more. I’m
done!
I’m just fucking
done!
”

My shouts rang loud in that enclosed space. I steeled myself for her counterattack, but none came. The moment dragged out to the breaking point, marked only by the quiet tick of the clock.

At last Val nodded humbly. “I’m not a well person, as you know. I’m the first to admit it.” She wiped blood from her chin, studied it, then sucked it from her finger. “But I do care about you, believe it or not.”

“I don’t believe anything about you any more,” I spat.

Dizzy with rage I stormed out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door into the gathering dark. No one intervened, and I sensed we had been alone in the house. Val’s was the only car in the driveway.

The night air was warm and still. Fragrant eucalyptus leaves crunched underfoot as I found the switch for the driveway gate and stomped into the sloped, tree-lined street. This was a wealthy neighborhood where the houses were large and far apart. I looked both directions for the nearest yard lights, and decided to go uphill, to the left. From there, I could call a cab, or maybe even the police.

But then I was bathed in cool blue headlights. Val drove up in her electric car, slowing to roll beside me as I trudged down the street. She leaned across to speak through the passenger-side window. “Let me take you home, Koishi. Please.”

“
Fuck
you.” I didn’t stop walking, but she kept pace, tires crunching on pavement.

“I just want to see you home safely. No more games, I won’t even talk. And you forgot this.” She held up my purse, shaking it so I could hear my keys rattling inside. In my fury it had slipped my mind entirely.

I reached in and yanked the purse out of her hand.

“Please, Koishi.”

I heard genuine contrition. I didn’t really care, but being lost miles from home without money, a phone, or ID left me few alternatives.

Val pressed a switch and the passenger-side door unlocked. After a brief hesitation, I got in and slammed the door shut, but refused to look at her.

“Seat belt,” she said quietly as she made a U-turn. I ignored her. Let the police give her a ticket.

On the way back down the twists and turns of Laurel Canyon, my right middle finger began to hurt. The nail had broken in my attack. My wrists still ached from the metal bite of the handcuffs. I knew I was a wreck, even without a mirror to check.