Mal was impressed by his wife’s compassion. Apparently, so was Franklin, because he quickly pointed down the tunnel.
“Thanks,” Deb said. Then she took off in that direction at a quick jog.
Mal ran after her. “What about helping him?”
“I did,” Deb said between breaths. “I helped him get to hell faster. Besides, do you want him and six of his brothers to show up at our doorstep a year from now?”
She had a point.
Incredibly, after following the tunnel a hundred meters, they were back to the concrete stairs. Mal had taken so many twists and turns down there that it hadn’t occurred to him to try a straight course.
Deb stormed the stairs like a champ, and then they were jogging down the hall and heading for the front door.
“Keep your eyes straight ahead,” Mal warned her, wary of Wellington’s headless corpse/cattail vase. “Focus on the door.”
Mal positioned himself between Deb and the circle of chairs, and when they reached the front doors he paused. The last time he opened them, Mal had run into that giggling freak in the gas mask.
“Floor is slippery with blood,” Deb said, placing a hand on Mal’s shoulder.
“I’m opening the door. Get ready to run. Either outside, or back into the house if something bad is out there.”
“Got it. What about the others?”
“Once we find the car, we’ll drive until we get a cell phone signal, then call the police. We’ll make them send the entire National Guard.”
“Mal?”
Mal had his hand on the door knob, but he paused. “Yeah, babe?”
“Coming here… you were right. This wasn’t my best idea.”
He smiled. “Are you serious? I’m thinking we do this every weekend. We rent a car, you send some psycho to hell… it sure beats the hell out of therapy.”
And the crazy thing was, it really did. There were no guarantees they’d live through the night, but Mal felt better than he had in months.
So it was quite a nasty shock when he opened the doors and found himself face-to-face with two people holding machineguns.
Moni
This guy was definitely not Luther Kite.
Kite had enjoyed making Moni suffer. It had been a turn-on for him. More than that, he’d considered it an intimate act, drawing it out while asking her mundane questions about her life. When he had finally broken her, he hadn’t bothered to finish the job and kill her, leaving Moni in a state of shock so deep it took her weeks before she could speak again. It was almost as if allowing Moni to live had been a testament to his art.
This guy, with the black eyes, was going through the motions. And what he was doing hurt Moni, no doubt about it. Getting pierced with an antique medical device was fucking awful. But after a dozen lacerations his heart just didn’t seem to be into it.
And surprisingly, Moni wasn’t terrified. She was actually more angry than she was frightened. Like this was a bad BDSM session that wasn’t working out.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the less she feared for her life and the more she got pissed off. This jackass didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
And she was just the person to tell him that.
“You’re pathetic,” she said, using her dominatrix voice.
The wannabe Luther Kite stopped poking with the artificial leech and stared at her.
“You’re a pathetic, worthless, sissy boy. Take off your pants right now.”
He remained still, his expression confused.
“I told you to take off your pants!” she ordered.
As dommes went, Moni was good at her job. She had a deep, commanding voice that scared the crap out of guys, and she knew what the little perverts wanted. In a sick sort of way, Luther Kite had saved her life. After her ordeal with him she’d kicked heroin and stopped being a victim. No more street tricks. No more pimps. She took control of her life, and her clients paid her well to be a dominant man-hater.
“Take off your pants, and show Mistress Moni what you’ve got. Now!”
Incredibly, the freak began to unbutton his pants.
Just as Moni had suspected. He wasn’t a top. He was a bottom.
“Show it to me.”
He did. And with his dick out, he was a lot less frightening. Even though she was tied up, Moni felt the balance of power shifting from him to her.
“Get over here and put it in my mouth,” she ordered.
Naturally, he complied. What guy wouldn’t? And this was most certainly a guy, not a ghost. Not a demon. Not even a serial killer. Just a worthless little worm who wanted to hurt her, like so many men had before him.
But Moni had other plans.
As she worked her lips and tongue, she gave him just enough to make him want more.
“I can make it better,” she said, deep and breathy. “But I need my hands free.”
Without hesitating he undid the buckle on her right hand. Then Moni did something she’d been fantasizing about ever since she turned her first trick at sixteen years old.
She bit down, hard as she could.
It didn’t come off as easy as she’d thought. Sort of like chewing through a tough steak. A tough, bloody steak, with lots of gristle. But she used her incisors, grinding and tearing, protecting her head with her hand as he screamed and beat at her with both fists.
And then her teeth met, and he fell away from her.
Moni spat his cock on the floor as he sprayed blood like fire hose. While he knelt down with his hands between his legs, wailing and trying to stop the hemorrhaging, Moni undid the other buckles holding her to the rack, pulled out the hefty metal bar used as a crank, and hit the son of a bitch hard enough on the back of the head to see brains come out the split.
They sort of looked like grits.
Wiping off her mouth and spitting several times, Moni got her shit together. She was free. For the moment she was safe. Now she needed to get the hell out of there.
Moni left the torture chamber, metal bar still in hand, and found herself in some sort of mine shaft. The floor was dirt. The walls braced with logs. Lights were bare bulbs, hanging from old rafters.
She spat again, hurrying down the tunnel, stopping when she heard talking.
“You, Jebediah Butler, are are are a jerktapus. That’s a jerk multiplied by eight.”
It sounded like Dr. Belgium. Moni snuck up to an open door, saw the doc was bound to a table. Some guy was standing next to him with a mallet. The mallet guy was covered, head to toe, with blood, but he didn’t seem injured at all.
Another fake ass ghost.
The bloody guy hit Frank with the mallet, right on his arm, which was all twisted and swollen up to twice its normal size.
That son of a…
Moni rushed up to him, angry and pumped, and brained the bastard with the metal bar. He went down, and she kept hitting him, over and over.
“Looks like you invited the wrong goddamn dominatrix to your little party, bitch!”
His head was harder to crack open than the Luther Kite wannabe, but she kept at it until she got the desired results.
“Moni!” Frank said, smiling at her. “Your mouth is bleeding.”
“I bit a guy’s dick off.”
“Great! That’s great!”
She undid Frank’s straps, wincing when she saw his arm. “Jesus, Doc. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“I’m medicated,” he slurred. “Tell me something… how hard is it to buy heroin?”
“It’s all about who you know.”
“Great great great!”
“Is that what you’re on? Heroin?”
“Yes. I believe it’s your stash. It’s awesome.”
He’d be singing a different tune when withdrawal kicked in, but Moni saw no reason to bring that up.
“I have to go and save Sara,” Belgium said. “Want to come with?”
“Sure.”
Frank picked up the mallet in his good hand, and then they were back to prowling the tunnels.
“Doc?” she asked.
“Yes yes yes?”
“We’re not going to get our million bucks each, are we?”
“It’s not looking too promising, Moni.”
Moni frowned. The dozen or so lacerations on her body hurt like crazy, but the fact that she’d been played for a fool felt even worse.