Лорел Гамильтон: Blue Moon

Thompson was screaming. "Fuck you!"

Damian held the knife out to Asher. "I'll hold him."

I touched Damian's arm and shook my head. "No, I'll do it."

Damian looked at me.

"The rule is never ask anyone to do something you won't do yourself. If I can't do this, then we won't do it at all. We'll find another way."

Jason looked up from holding the struggling man. "There is no other way." I'd never seen such rage in his eyes.

"Could you do it?" I asked. "Could you chop him up?"

Jason gave a slow nod. "I could bite his fucking fingers off one by one for what's in that box." He seemed to mean it, and it made me think I didn't know Jason at all.

"We can do this, Anita," Asher said, "and it will cost us nothing."

"It should cost, Asher. If we're going to do something this evil, it should bother whoever does it."

"It isn't evil," Asher said. "It is practical. It is even justice."

I held my hand out for the knife. "It's evil, and we all know it. Now, give me the knife. Either I can do this, or we do something else."

Damian just stood there, holding the knife. "Let me do this for you, Anita, please."

"Give me the damn knife."

He gave it to me because he couldn't do anything else. I knelt down by Thompson. "Where are they, Thompson?" I asked.

"No, no, Niley told me what they'd do to me if I helped you. He's fucking crazy."

"Wait," Zane said. He had found a small cleaver. "This will work better."

"Thanks." I took it, checked it for balance. I wasn't sure I could do it. I wasn't even sure I wanted to be able to do it. In fact, I knew that I hoped I couldn't do it. But if we were really going to do this, I had to be the one. I did it, or we found another way. Charlotte Zeeman's finger was lying in a box. In less than two hours, they'd cut something else off. I'd killed the vampire, splattered Thompson with blood and brains, and he wasn't talking. He was a mean son of a bitch, but he was tough, too. Charlotte and Daniel didn't have time for him to be tough. We had to break him, and we had to break him fast. I gave myself all the reasons. They were good reasons, real reasons. And still, I didn't know if I could do it.

"We'll start with a finger, Thompson. Just like Linus did," I said.

He was screaming, "Don't, please, don't! Oh, God, don't!"

Asher was leaning almost his full weight on the flat of the man's palm, forcing his fingers to spread wide. "Tell me where they are, and it won't happen," I said.

"Niley said they'd cut me open and make me eat my own intestines. Says he did it once in Miami. I believe him."

"I believe him, too, Thompson. And you don't believe we'll do it, do you? You don't believe we're as crazy as Niley."

"No one is as crazy as Niley."

I raised the cleaver up. "You're wrong." I stayed frozen for one long moment. I couldn't make myself start the stroke. I couldn't do it. Daniel, Charlotte.

"Has Niley raped Daniel yet?" I asked it in a voice that was so empty, it was like I wasn't there.

Thompson stopped struggling. He lay very still. He rolled his eyes upward. "Please don't."

I stared into his eyes when I said the next, "Did you rape Charlotte Zeeman?" I saw the fear in his eyes. That flash that said he'd done it. It was enough. I could do it. God forgive me. I got the little finger and the tip of the next one, because he moved. But they got better at holding him down, and I got better at cutting. Thompson told us where they were keeping Daniel and Charlotte Zeeman. In less than fifteen minutes he would have told us the ingredients to the secret sauce or anything else. He'd have confessed to killing Hoffa, or dancing with the devil. Anything, anything to make it stop.

I threw up in the corner until there was nothing but bile, and my head felt like it was going to explode. And I knew that I'd finally done something that I wouldn't recover from. Somewhere in the first blow or the second, I'd broken something inside myself that would never heal. And I was content with it. If we got Daniel and Charlotte back, I was content with it. A hard, cold knot filled me. It was beyond hate. I would make them pay for what they'd done. I would kill them. I would kill them all.

I felt strangely light and empty, and I wondered if this was what it was like to be crazy. It didn't feel too bad. Later, when the shock wore off, I'd feel worse. Later, I'd wonder if there had been another way to get Thompson to talk. Later, I'd remember that I wanted to hurt him, wanted him to crawl and beg. That I wanted to take all the hurt that had happened to Charlotte and Daniel and carve it out of his flesh. Now we had to go rescue Daniel and Charlotte. Oh, one last thing. Thompson was screaming, high and piteously, like a wounded rabbit.

I shot him in the head. The screaming stopped.

I was driving the van down narrow gravel roads in the dark. I'd insisted on driving because I wanted something to do. I didn't want to just sit and stare out the window. But I was beginning to think I should have let someone else drive, because I didn't seem to be too real yet. I felt light and empty, shocky, but not guilty. Not yet. Thompson had earned his death. He'd raped Richard's mother. They'd tortured Richard's mother. They'd raped Daniel. They'd tortured Daniel. They all deserved to die.

Jamil and Nathaniel were in the back of the van with Roxanne and Ben. The lupa would not be left out of the fight, even though she'd had to be carried out to the van by her bodyguard. I didn't have time to fight with Roxanne, so she got to come.

Jason and Dr. Patrick got to ride up front with me. Zane and Cherry had been sent to the lupanar to get Richard and the rest. But we weren't waiting. I didn't trust Niley not to get creative. No, I didn't trust Linus and his master. How much control did Niley have over his pet psychopath? They'd already raped them. What else had happened to them by now? Niley had no rules. I knew that.

I was gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurt. The headlights cut a golden tunnel through the blackness. Trees crowded the road so close that they scraped at the van's roof with thick, clawing fingers. The trees seemed to squeeze down around us like a fist. The headlights glowed over the dirt road, but it wasn't enough light. It would never be enough light. There wasn't enough light in the world to chase away this darkness.

"I can't believe you did that," Patrick said. He was on the far side, pressed against the passenger-side door as if afraid to get too close to me.

Jason was in the middle. "Let it go, Patrick," he said.

"She chopped him up like an animal, then she shot him."

This was the third time he'd said pretty much the exact same thing.

"Shut up," Jason said.

"I will not. It was barbaric."

"I'm not having a good night, Patrick. Drop it," I said.

"The fuck you say," he said.

"Thompson was screaming, in pain," I said.

"And you killed him," Patrick said.

"Someone had to finish it," I said.

"What the hell are you talking about? Finish it!" His voice was rising, and I was beginning to debate how angry Roxanne would be if I shot him. After what I'd already done tonight, it didn't seem like such a big deal.

"How long have you been lukoi?" Jason asked.

The question gave us a moment of surprised silence, then, "Two years."

"And what's the rule about hunting?" Jason asked.

"Which one?"

"Don't be coy, Patrick," Jason said. "You know which one."

Patrick was silent long enough that the only sounds were the whir of the engine, the wheels on the road. The van rocked softly over the rutted road. Was it just my imagination or was there a sound underneath the engine's roar, a high, keening, scream? Naw, my imagination. My imagination was not going to be my friend for a while.