Depraved 2 (13 page)

After a few more moments of watching Bradley struggle and weaken, Sienna grabbed the absinthe bottle and downed the remainder of its contents. She then put down the hammer and retrieved her knife, putting it to the boy’s throat as she closed her eyes, focused her energies, and repeated the reanimation incantations. The temperature in the room plunged as the blade pushed through tender flesh with delightful ease. Blood jumped from the severed carotid vein, coating her hands with gore that turned cold as it encountered the room’s unnaturally lowered temperature. Sienna dropped the knife and brought her hands to her face, painting it with the dead boy’s blood as the volume of her voice rose and the candle flames guttered. The trance she entered this time made her brain explode with undiluted pleasure.

When she opened her eyes again, she was writing on the floor in an orgasmic frenzy and something somewhere above her—something on the bed—was moaning. But the sound drifted away as the beautiful white light took her again.

11.

The silence was heavy in Jodi Baker’s rental house. The house had been a busy hub of Baker family activity Jodi’s first couple years in her new town, its several rooms occupied by a rotating cast of various members of the Baker clan, several of whom had also escaped from Hopkins Bend. Most of them moved on after a couple years, leaving Jodi and her sister as the only regular occupants, though Delmont was around most of the time..

Delmont was not a well-liked man in general, but this was especially so within the Baker family, which was mostly of the opinion that the story Arlene had told after her so-called accident was a load of horseshit. It didn’t matter that the law had elected to accept her preposterous version of events. The man had attempted to kill one of their own and everyone knew it. He was the main reason hardly any of her kin ever came around to visit anymore.

And now Sienna was gone, too.

Except for the woman in the basement—and she didn’t really count, being a future meal—Jodi was the only person in the house. The emptiness depressed the hell out of her. Jodi sat at the kitchen table, nursing a gin and tonic. She stared into her drink and wondered how she could have let things go so wrong.

The talk about Arlene’s accident being a failed murder attempt was true. Jodi knew this because it was something she and Delmont had discussed before it happened. In fact, killing Arlene had been her idea. She had been in helpless, total blind lust with Delmont since her arrival in Bedford and had been desperate to have him all to herself. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew people would talk. It was why she’d been in favor of taking their time and devising the perfect way to get rid of the bitch. What she hadn’t counted on was Delmont getting drunk and impatient one night and impulsively taking matters into his own hands. The idiot had botched the job, of course, and had failed to finish off his useless wife.

In retrospect, Jodi had to wonder if putting the idea in his head in the first place might have been the kind of colossal mistake from which a person could never come back. The ongoing fallout had simply never stopped. And now everything and everyone she had ever really cared about was gone—with just the one exception.

Jodi sipped her drink and stared at her silent cell phone.

Delmont had left a while ago to clean up some unspecified mess phoned in by one of his hunter buddies. He had a regular crew of men whose job it was to clean up after the hunters and dispose of any cars or other belongings their catches had left behind. It was rare that Delmont was out on a call more than a couple hours.

He had now been gone more than three hours.

It was possible he was on a complicated job, requiring more time to resolve than usual. She knew it was too soon to start worrying, but her anxiety was soaring with each passing minute regardless, propelled by an intuition so strong it felt more like genuine precognition. The problem was she’d already called three times in the last hour and had left three increasingly distraught voicemails. There was nothing to be gained from leaving yet another one. She tried telling herself the man had either lost his phone or had forgotten to charge it. These were perfectly reasonable explanations for the lack of response.

But they failed to reassure her at all.

Fuck.

She picked up her drink again and knocked back the rest of it. After giving some consideration to mixing another one, a better way to kill the time until Delmont got back to her came to mind.

Jodi grabbed her phone and went down to the basement.

The bound catch screamed behind the dirty rag in its mouth when it saw Jodi. Its eyes got so big they looked like they were about to pop out of its head. Jodi smiled. The poor thing was probably remembering the last time she had paid it a visit. Seeing the creature’s terror took the edge off her anxiety. It also motivated her to make this visit at least as memorable as the previous one.

Arrayed across the surface of a table in the center of the room was a wide assortment of tools, many of which had been put to good use over the last several days. This was the other thing she had missed about the old ways. Eating human flesh was a delight without equal, but abusing that flesh while it was still alive was almost as good. This was tradition. Everyone in a household was expected to participate, even children. Nothing was more important than bringing young ones up right and teaching them the old ways. Many of the menfolk took it even further, of course, using the catches for sexual release. That wasn’t a part of it for Jodi. She just enjoyed causing the things pain.

After mulling over the possibilities a bit, she put her phone on the table and picked up a wood carving tool with a short, curved blade.

She approached the catch and held the blade in front of its face so it could have a good look. Then she laughed. “I don’t think anyone’s used this one on you yet. See the way the blade is curved?” She turned the tool so the catch could see what she meant. “This will be good for scooping out bits of meat from some of your fleshier parts, like your thighs and tits. What do you think? Sound like fun?”

The restraints encircling the catch’s wrists and ankles were bolted to the brick wall behind her. There was a bit of room to maneuver, but it couldn’t go very far without the noose looped around its neck tightening and cutting off its air. The thick length of rope the noose was fashioned from was tied to a beam above it and there wasn’t much give. It knew this by now, of course, but the knowledge didn’t stop it from cringing backward when Jodi came at it with the gouging tool. Jodi giggled when the noose tightened and the creature’s face started turning red. She slipped fingers beneath the coil of rope and loosened it for the poor thing.

“There. Is that better?”

The catch hung its head and sobbed through the gag as air whistled through its nose.

“I know you’re scared, but you’ll be better off if you just hold still while this happens. You can take comfort in knowing it’s not time for you to die.” Jodi smiled. “Not yet.”

Tears spilled in endless streams down the thing’s flushed cheeks.

Then it screamed and thrashed against its restraints as the gouging tool shredded flesh for the first time. The noose tightened and its face turned red again, necessitating another assist from Jodi. It only took another couple times of having its air cut off before the thing learned its lesson and held still so Jodi could work on its flesh without interruption.

This went on for some time and Jodi found it relaxing. All the tension went out of her and for a while she forgot all about Delmont and his troubling silence. When she felt like she’d worked on the catch enough for a while, she swept up the scooped-out bits of flesh and carried them up to the kitchen along with her phone. The shredded meat went into a pan on the stovetop along with some cooking oil and spices. But she wasn’t hungry. Her intent was to take the meal back down to the basement when it was ready and force the catch to eat its own yummy flesh.

The meat was sizzling up nicely when she thought to check the time again. She frowned when she looked at her phone’s display. Another half hour had passed with no word from Delmont. Her anxiety returned in full force.

“Fuck this.”

She punched in a number she knew and put the phone to her ear.

Floyd Poteete answered on the second ring. There was a slight slur in his voice when he said, “What’s up, Jodi Lynn?”

Jodi frowned. “Have you been drinking?”

Floyd burped. “A wee bit. There some kind of problem, girl? You sound worked up.”

Jodi filled Floyd in regarding her concerns about Delmont. “So I need you to head out to Hopkins Bend and check up on him, okay?”

Floyd groaned. “Lord, woman. You got worried shitless about nothin’.”

“Do you want me to tell Delmont later you wouldn’t help me?”

Floyd grumbled something indecipherable.

“What was that?” Jodi’s tone was sharp. “I didn’t hear you.”

Floyd sighed. “We’ll do it. Jesus.”

“Good. Call me as soon as you know anything.”

She hung up.

The delicious scent of cooked meat had filled the kitchen by then, making Jodi’s nostrils twitch and her mouth water. She decided she was hungry, after all. Satisfied that she’d addressed the Delmont problem as best she could for the time being, she scooped the meat into a bowl and carried it down to the basement, where she and the catch shared a tasty meal.

12.

The single bullet Jessica fired tore through Billy’s left bicep and sent him howling in pain to the street. That the bullet had found a non-lethal target was pure chance. Jessica had drawn a bead on him too fast for true precision. Her only goal had been to prevent him from getting the shotgun. If the bullet had instead pierced his skull and blown out a sizeable chunk of his brains, she would have considered it an equally successful result. The sparing of life was incidental.

Giving the writhing, screaming man a wide berth, she walked over to the shotgun and picked it up. She then took a look up and down the street to see if anyone else was around and watching. It didn’t seem likely, but she hadn’t expected to encounter the cop impersonator, either. This area had been a commercial district. On the opposite side of the street was the former location of a used cars dealership. The standard colorful pennants flapped in the light breeze, but the big lot was empty and the showroom windows were boarded up. The same went for all the other shuttered businesses in the vicinity, including a pawnshop, a CVS drugstore, and a tanning salon. There was no more evidence of a recent human presence anywhere. Even the graffiti tags she saw here and there looked old and faded.

Her gut told her they were alone for now, but this guy she had killed looked like a local. He probably lived in one of the neighboring towns. He might well have friends who would know to come looking for him in Hopkins Bend if he went missing. So finding a place to hole up and stay out of sight as soon as possible was still her top priority. There were just a few minor issues to take care of first.

She put the shotgun in the back of the truck and returned to where Billy lay bleeding in the street. He held up his good arm when he saw she was aiming the gun at him, his eyes brimming with tears as he begged for his life.

Still conscious of the need to act with ruthless efficiency, Jessica nonetheless took an additional moment to further weigh her limited options. Killing him now would be the simplest solution. It would allow her to work faster, among many other advantages. But there was still a potential upside to holding a hostage. He could be used as a bargaining chip under circumstances. Or as a human shield.

Billy sniffled. “Please don’t kill me. Please…”

Jessica took a closer look at his wounded arm. “You’re lucky. That’s a through and through wound.”

His face contorted in pain. “What does that mean?”

“The bullet passed all the way through your bicep. It’s not inside you. That would be worse.”

“But you’re gonna kill me anyway, right?”

“Depends.”

Billy grimaced. “On what?”

“On whether you can behave. That means no more escape attempts and no more being stupid. Because being stupid again will get you killed. You need to understand that you can’t outsmart me and you can’t overpower me. Can you accept that or do I need to put a bullet through your head?”

“What choice do I have?”

Jessica knelt next to him and placed the suppressor against his forehead. “That’s not the subservient tone I was hoping to hear.”