The Fallen (A Sons of Wrath Prequel) (5 page)

Nervous. Probably scared shitless. Just as he’d hoped.

The cross always meant something new. Something unexpected. Pain, pleasure, she never knew because Xander enjoyed the torment too much to say. Even if she’d been deep into BDSM and other methods of masochism, nothing could possibly prepare her for what twisted pleasure the supernaturals considered good fun.

He focused on her pale, white skin, marred with skinny red welts, smiling with satisfaction as she trembled like a wet kitten.

Just two days prior, she’d approached him, high, squealing on the back of his ride all the way to the gates of his home, when shit suddenly took a sharp turn to
what the hell have I done
. Still, the younger ones always clung to some fucking invincibility cloak. Like convincing a child to give up a toy, their dreams of belonging to the club outweighed logic, it seemed.

Brown, shoulder-length hair lay soaked against her skin. Small breasts curved slightly upward. He could’ve easily crushed her petite frame, if he’d wanted.

Energy coursed through his body, electricity building beneath his skin. Prickling. Like a well-trained slave, she waited without a word or protesting movement, but Xander could only imagine the intense anxiety whirling just below the surface. Without touching, he smoothed his hands over her body.

She jerked against her chains and let out a gasp as the current, tiny volts of heat, moved from his hands across her flesh. For her, it’d seem no more than anticipation building, her body responding to the fear and apprehension without any knowledge that Xander had manipulated that sensation.

“I must admit,” he whispered in her ear, “I do enjoy whipping you. But I cannot wait to watch the blade slice through your flesh.”

Her body sagged against the binds and she let out a whimper. “Please, Master—”

“Yes, it pleases your Master.”

Xander lifted a white feather from the safe—one he’d plucked from his own wings. Smoothing his hand along the quill, he allowed the current to flow into the object and lifted it above his head.

One quick slash across her chest and she screamed. The charge, much like a electrostatic shock, carried the same burn as a knife piercing her flesh. The opposing forces acted like two magnets dragging the charge beneath her skin. Another cut across her abdomen and she screamed again, crumpling into a sob. Chains rattled against steel, as her body shook.

“Please!” Her mumbled cry for help only brought a smile to his face. “Stop! Please!”

He slashed down her arm. Across her breasts. Over her exposed sex. One swipe across her face had her hysterical and he waited for the tantrum of screaming and wailing to subside before slicing her again.

By the time he finished, she’d become frantic, weeping, tugging against her chains as he held back the urge to slice her again. The snot oozing from her nose had her sniveling and coughing.

Xander gripped her throat and yanked the gag from her mouth. “How was that?”

“Please …” She quaked in his grip. “Please, I just want to go home.”

“I think you’re ready for the next level.”

“No, please. No more.”

“You wanted this. You asked to join us. You
begged
me for pain.”

“Not this.” She shook her head, drew in a sharp breath and spoke on another sob. “Oh, God, not this.” The quiver in her voice stirred his blood, excited and made him want to slice her once more just to up the intensity of her obvious fear.

Xander kept his breaths steady. She must’ve been the easiest to break yet.

Two days.

He removed her blindfold and her head fell forward. She gasped as if preparing herself for the mutilation. The mutilation that …

Wasn’t there.

With jarred breaths, she slowly lifted her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, brows furrowed in what must’ve been absolute confusion. “I thought …” She glanced to the side, where the knife still lay without a trace of blood, and whimpered, burying her head in her still slung arm.“Oh, God …”

Xander grinned.
Mind-fucked
.

***

Karinna looked up at the seedy motel-wannabe-apartment that her sister had called home. Even in daylight, the place gave her the creeps—where bad shit went down. Kids molested. Women raped.

The blackened windows of the adult toy store below only added to the unsettled feeling in her stomach. A few months ago, she’d have never strolled up by herself to a place like that.

How quickly the mind changed when reduced to survival. Though sheer curiosity had been the culprit, prodding her to return to the apartment, she hadn’t bothered to visit since Lolita’s death.

Karinna glanced to the side, reading the names on each of the dilapidated mailboxes. As she expected,
Lita Roy
still remained taped to the face of it. Number 225. Perhaps they hadn’t rented the place out yet. She brushed her finger over the puckered metal, where her sister’s name barely clung to surface, and pushed through the wooden door. Masculine shouts from the first level overpowered the crying of children. A crash against the wall stopped Karinna in her tracks. A thump damn near punched through the drywall, and silence chased after.

Asshole must’ve knocked someone out.

She continued up the dark staircase, where shadows below could easily hide a rapist or murderer.

To think, her sister had come home to this shit after a night of men groping and touching her.

Two doors stood across from one another at the end of the hall. On the right, two-twenty-five. She placed her hand on the knob, and when it didn’t budge, Karinna glanced around and knelt on the dirty paisley carpet. Fishing into the back pocket of her jeans, she pulled a switchblade, flipped it open, and inserted it into the lock.

“Do you know her?”

At the calm, smooth voice behind her, Karinna spun around, falling back against the door.

A tall, gaunt man stood just outside of the slightly cracked door across the hallway. His pale white face, balding head and sunken eyes put him somewhere around fifty—a harsh fifty, like he’d spent the better half of it on the streets. Aside from the fact he managed to sneak up on her, he looked like a normal guy, but something about him had her bullshit sensors flaring.

“Yes. She was … a friend.” Karinna pushed up against the door until she stood.

“Do you need something inside?”

“I wasn’t sure if someone else was living here yet?”

His brows knitted. “No. No one else.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Of course. I’m the building manager. Just started a couple months back.”

Jesus Christ
. Manager? The slow and level way he talked reminded her of something straight out of the
Silence of the Lambs
.

It puts the lotion on its skin …

Panty sniffer. No doubt.

“If you could let me inside, that’d be great.”

After a moment of uncomfortable staring, he jumped toward her, pulling a ringed set of keys from his back pocket, and opened the door.

Cold air breezed past Karinna, digging deep inside her bones, like a stony fist around her lungs. Broken glass revealed the source—the pane of the window had been busted out. Even in the darkness of the room, the destruction was discernible. Ransacked. The nightstand had been turned on its side. Bits of the ceramic lamp lay in sharp tines scattered across the floor. Dirty, white papers lay strewn about. All of her clothes had been yanked from drawers and baskets, littering the bed and carpeting.

She glanced back. “Look, I’m all set. I’ll lock the door when I leave.”

“I’m afraid it’s policy. I can’t let you roam about by yourself.”

“Looks like someone already did.”

“Yes. A break-in, perhaps.”

Whatever.

Karinna turned back to the mess.

Lolita
.

Ghosts of her remained, but for the most part, her scent, that signature perfume she always wore, and the essence of her, had vanished. A black and empty hole seared Karinna’s heart, muscles in her limbs weakened, and she bit back the urge to tear up in front of the stranger.

Gone.  Lolita was gone.

Mold and the staunch scent of destitution—exhaust and sewer seeping in through the window—polluted the one-bedroom flat.

She looked around in the darkness. A pan with desiccated popcorn kernels sat on the stove.
Jesus.
She actually
lived
in the place as if it was any normal apartment building, as if the world outside her door hadn’t been teeming with sadists and rapists, just itching to get their hands on her.

Inside her little haven, she was simply Lita.

“I’m surprised everything’s still here.” Karinna regretted the words the moment they tumbled from her mouth.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m … assuming she hasn’t paid rent. I’m just surprised you haven’t put her stuff out to the curb.”

“She fulfilled her contract to the end of the year. Paid in full.”

“You know Lita died almost a year ago,” she said, hoping the guy wouldn’t ask her to take all the shit with her.

“Dead.” There was an incredulous air of wonderment in his tone. “How?”

How? Who the fuck asks that?

Karinna flinched at a memory of her sister hanging from the rafters of her apartment on campus. Ignoring his question, she crossed the room to the nightstand, set it upright and lifted a framed picture that’d been taken the prior summer. Before her sister had gotten into the drugs. Lita smiled back at her, arm wrapped around something in the half of the picture that looked like it’d been torn out.

Her stomach reeled at the thought that
she
was the other half of that picture.

Who would’ve torn her out of it?

A closer look confirmed no band across Lita’s throat.

She set the picture down and rifled through the drawers. Two more pictures lay inside a page of the bible. One of Lita and their mother. How odd to see them side-by-side—the stoic face of her mother such a contrast to Lita’s softened, happy smile. The second picture showed Lita and Shannon, who stuck her tongue out at the camera. Lita’s red hair gave away the likelihood that the picture had been snapped recently—and the black shadow beneath her chin could only be a replica of the band she’d seen on the woman at the club.

God
.

She’d been marked. As she stared at the image, thoughts surfaced inside her head—a conversation she’d had with Lita about a month prior to her hanging.

“I’m looking into a new club. I might be getting out of this shithole, Rin. Bigger and better things.”

“What kind of club?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” Lita chuckled over the line.

Karinna brushed her finger over the picture and she set it back down. A nagging sensation prickled her nape, of probing, pervy eyes, no doubt undressing her, probably imagining her skin as a nice trench coat.

She spun around, eyeing the distance between the man who blocked her from the exit behind him. “I’m all set. Thanks for letting me in.”

“Say, can you … help me with something?” He pointed across the hall in the direction of his apartment. “Something I can’t seem to lift by myself. My back …”

Fuck no. Typical serial killer move.
Very fitting for the crazy, poodle-doting tranny image she’d already conjured in her head.

“I need to go.”

He tipped his head. “Where?”

Armed with a fake smile, she stepped to the left, hoping to simply bypass him. An arm gripped hers, and she stared down at his long white fingers circling her wrist.

“I’m not fond of being touched,” she said past gritted teeth.

“We find ourselves in a bit of a catch-twenty-two.” A sharp yank of her body pulled her against him. “I fully intend to touch you. Inside and out,” he whispered, his breath smelling like rancid fish, hands snaking between her legs. He groped her ass before pulling her switchblade and bracing it under her chin. “I see we both share a love of knives.” A nick in her flesh caused her to flinch, and a warm bead trickled down her throat. He slid the knife down the front of her and held the base of it between her thighs. “I’ll bet you’re a little teasing whore.”

Karinna threw her head back and inwardly cursed at the lack of contact with his face.

On the hand crossed over her chest, she bent his fingers, spun herself out of his grip, holding his upturned arm outright and slammed her knee against his elbow. The thunderous crack had him crying out in pain. A clang rang out as the knife hit the floor. The second he dropped to his knees, she drilled her fist into his cheek. Over and over, she pounded his face until his body fell limp to the floor.

She should’ve killed him.

Something told her that his face would end up on the news for holding girls prisoner in his apartment. The thought curled her lip. Her own sister could’ve been subjected to the sick fuck.

Karinna tipped her head and picked up her fallen switchblade.

Part of her wondered how much she’d brought on herself, pretending to be nothing more than a sweet, helpless woman. Cordiality served one purpose—to lure. The unexpected fiends with whom she sometimes crossed paths always surprised her, though.

Her gaze fell to the man lying on the floor. Men like him
created
monsters—tore down a woman’s natural kindness and turned it to fear.

Catch and release?

Hell, no.

She leaned forward and huffed. Fuck if she could fit it all on his skin, but she’d sure as hell try. Karinna bent over his body, frowning as she carved
Panty Sniffer
into his forehead before slashing two long gashes across his cheeks.

“How’s that for a cock block, asshole?” She stepped over his passed-out body and left the apartment.

***

The scent of Karinna hung on the air as Xander trod over clothes and broken bits of the ceramic lamp scattered all over the floor of Lita’s apartment. The gaunt looking male lay cold-cocked, and a grin tugged at the corner of Xander’s mouth, as trickles of blood dripped down his forehead where
Panty Sniffer
had been carved into his flesh.

Shit, that’s funny.

At least it might offer a warning to the young girls he seemed to like taking back to his apartment and burying riverside after strangling and raping them. In a city where every day brought some new horror, bastards like him walked the streets without a care in the world. No one gave a shit about some white trash teenage girl gone missing—not when dozens of them went missing every month.