Ash adjusted the handcuff on Shane's wrists. "Do they hurt much?"
"No," Shane replied.
Ash clicked the cuffs tighter and giggled. "How about now?"
"Yes, definitely now," Shane gasped, feeling as if her veins had collapsed with the final click. She wiggled her fingers effetely to keep her blood flowing. The pins and needles of paresthesia already pricked her. She panicked, unsure if she could restore a limb she could no longer feel. She'd pondered the source of her restorative ability since she discovered she had it. Was it in her blood or brain or somewhere else entirely?
Ash watched Shane's fingers squirm. She tickled the palms and looked like a child on Christmas morning as Shane's fingers squeezed in like a dying spider. "I've got to admit, you're taking this whole 'being kidnapped and mutilated' thing better than most. Like this girl I killed over the summer? Crystal Something… Davis, I think. Maybe Dennis. I probably kept her alive five hours, just poking needles into her to see how much she could take… A lot, actually. Way more than you'd think. I had to go out and get more pins and some thumbtacks. She was more silver than pink at the end, though that could have been the blood loss too. It was really kind of sad when her body just gave out. Bitches should be able to take more punishment." Ash looked into Shane's eyes a little too happily and Shane fought back the urge to wince. "That stupid whore thought she could criticize my earrings last year. Seems poetic, right?"
Shane remembered the girl. Crystal had been in her Avian Biology class over the winter break. A little snotty, but she couldn't help but mourn Crystal's final hours in agony. She was not eager to incur a similar wrath. It was plain the Ash already knew Shane could stand up to a lot more punishment. She kept her mouth pressed shut. She wouldn't even give Ash the pleasure of her groans.
Ash moved away from the table on which Shane was strapped. The room had been totally dark when she was brought in, though Seth and Ash moved with a purpose that belied that their eyes needed very little light. She knew it was only for her benefit that they were on now, though there was little to see.
Shane had struggled for only a few minutes when first they entered the blackness, when Seth had fastened a belt around her waist. In a movement Shane could not see and so could not anticipate, he slapped her across the face with such strength that she discovered her mouth could grow new teeth as readily as it could heal a jaw fractured in three places. She spat the broken teeth and a mouthful of blood on the floor. It distracted her captors only for a moment, then they moved to strap the rest of her limbs. Only once there were two leather straps on each limb, three across her torso, and one on her forehead did Noah begin tearing her clothes. Shane tensed, more frightened of molestation than mutilation since she could only restore from the latter. Seth stopped short of disrobing her. He left her bra and most of her jeans intact, but carefully removed her sleeves and pant legs, as well as the pendant around her neck. The handcuffs only became a necessary when the room was quiet for a moment and Shane began trying to push her arm up with her fingers.
With a sneer, Ash loosened the cuffs just enough to restore the flow of blood through Shane's veins. "I guess you've got more guts than Crystal, but I'll know that for sure soon enough." With that statement, she plunged the first of the needles into Shane's arm.
Roselyn looked up from the sofa at Eliot, her eyes darker than usual. "El, you'd better sit down. There are some things I should tell you. Things you probably should have been told sooner but… Shane made me promise not to. Ever. Under pain of… well, just that I wasn't supposed to ever tell you, but I figure that this is an exceptional occurrence and you should know the score."
She motioned to the ratty couch and he sat next to Noah, feeling as though he was about to be lectured about the birds and the bees.
The three sat silently, each waiting for one of the others to begin. "Well?" Eliot finally asked.
Roselyn finished and the three sat in silence for a long minute. "It's all just a little much to take in, don't you think?" asked Eliot finally, fumbling nervously with the clasp on Shane's diary that rested in his lap. "You're suggesting that I've been dating some sort of immortal… thing."
"I'm not sure she's actually immortal," Roselyn corrected. "Just more or less impervious to lasting damage. So far."
"Right. And this has something to do with her pet, the bird?"
"Yeah, I think so. It's not all clear to me. And she brought you back from the dead. Or from… not being real or--"
"Which I don't remotely remember?"
"I think that was part of the deal, actually. That you wouldn't know about any of this. Knowing these things changes you. It changed me. Like, if you can see the darkness, the darkness can see you. She didn't want that for you, she wanted you kept out of it because she loves you."
Eliot was quiet a moment longer, looking anywhere but at his two companions who suddenly seemed even more alien than seemed possible. "Are you like her? Supernatural?"
"I'm a witch," she stated immediately.
Noah interjected, sneering. "No, Rose isn't supernatural, just likes crystals a lot."
Roselyn shot him a look, wishing it could kill or at least cripple. "No, I'm not in any way supernatural, Eliot," she said to him, but did not take her eyes from Noah.
"We were out hunting vampires," Noah stated flatly, proof that Eliot shouldn't be quite so skeptical.
"Which we didn't find."
"But you know they were there and you know they have your girlfriend."
"Yes," he finally admitted.
"And you know that being 'impervious' won't save her. They will find some way. They can and will hurt her anyway."
Eliot stood and walked from this scene, from his own angst and confusion. "So what do we do? How do we figure out where they've taken her?"
Noah snatched Shane's diary from his hands. "We use that book."
The door to the farmhouse swung wide as Dryden approached. This was so recently his prison that he stood before it until pushed in by Wick. It was unlit, but Dryden no longer needed light to see. It actually stung his eyes a little when Wick turned on a flashlight and moved the beam from side to side down the hallway.
Dryden entered a room only once Wick and Jo had entered, though he lost his fear as his new companions gained their anger, both for the name reason. The house was vacant, abandoned. Seth and Ash knew someone would be coming and had cleared out of their lair in a hurry.
Soon in their searching of barren rooms, Wick and Jo neglected to keep watching Dryden. Dryden did not wish to venture from the house, but he did wish to examine on his own. Though he'd seen so little of the building when he was one of its occupants, he had little trouble rediscovering the room that had been his cage for the first nights of his rebirth.
He felt like an adult revisiting his childhood bedroom. Everything seemed smaller and more confined. It smelled familiar, but he could not place why. Dryden sniffed around for its source until he came to the mattress. He smelled it more and the realization dawned on him. This is how he smelled… No. This was how he smelled, when he was alive. He could detect notes of his blood and sweat that glowed red and yellow in his mind. He raised his hand to his nose and realized that he no longer had a scent. There was a sheen of the diner, even the odor of Wick's car's upholstery, but nothing beyond that.
He thought of Roselyn's perfume, the earthiness of patchouli and leather in contrast to her roommate who smelled always of vanilla and spring, and flounced on the mattress. He had failed her. Somewhere out there, the creatures who made him were holding her hostage and doing horrible things to her. The longing to smell her again overwhelmed him and he fell onto the mattress.
Then he sat up, rigid. He could smell the flowers outside. He could smell Wick moving downstairs. He could smell the old leather aroma of the shoes Seth had worn. He could smell gallons of delicious blood. But he could not smell patchouli.
He ran out of the room, sniffing all the way, but nowhere did he smell Roselyn. Not her perfume, not her shampoo, nothing. She hadn't been here. The message on the door must have been a bluff, one he'd fallen for without question.
He found Wick and Jo in the basement of the house, a dirt floor turned dark by months of blood. "Guys! They didn't get Roselyn! They don't have my girlfriend. It's all a game! I smelled and there is nothing in this house that smells like her."
Jo stared at him in his excitement. "So?"
"So she's safe!"
"Then whose blood is this, dead thing?" Wick asked.
Dryden inhaled and instantly though of an ice cream cone in April. "Shane's. Oh damn."
Red Hook is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is published by Cave Drawing Ink and syndicated throughout the internet.
