We reached the rock and Ricardo dropped me unceremoniously into the dirt. My temple slammed against an upturned stone lying on the ground and I saw stars. Dust spiraled around me and swooped down my throat and nostrils. I coughed until my eyes watered.
"Please … " I said again between hacks. "Please don't do this."
For the first time since we'd left the car, he stopped and looked at me. "You stupid girl, yes, you dumb, ignorant little slut, don't you know what they did to me?" His voice started as a whisper, but as he talked, it grew louder and louder, until the last words of his sentence boomed across the landscape below, rebounding and reverberating until they took on a life of their own. Did to me, did to me, bounced from rock to rock until I imagined that everyone in the state could hear him shrieking.
His eyes were completely bloodshot, now. The veins in the whites of his eyeballs were engorged to the point that there was hardly any white left. It was a hideous, devilish look, like he was barely human anymore. I wondered for the umpteenth what horrific substance was clawing at the inside of his veins.
I didn't know what to say. He was beyond reason. He wasn't going to stop.
Ricardo stooped down and threw me over his shoulder, then tossed me on top of the flat rock. He reached into the small satchel he'd brought from the car and withdrew another long coil of rope. Dropping one end to the ground, he sidled down to my feet and began the work of binding me to the rock.
This was my chance. If I was going to make an escape - somehow, some way - it had to be now. My head was still ringing and my hands and feet were still bound, but if I just gave in and laid there, he'd have his way with me. I refused to imagine what that might look like just yet.
As he bent over to tie a knot around an outcropping of rock below, I swung my feet together as one, like a long, whipping fish tail, right into his jaw. I connected with his lip. Blood flew. He stumbled backwards.
I rocked onto my side and tried to throw my weight around so I could stand up. But I barely got the chance to move. I'd hit him as hard as I could, and as he turned to face me again, I could see that I'd made a disgusting mess of his lip. It was bloody and torn. The white gleam of a shattered tooth shone out among the crimson chaos. But he didn't seem to notice or care. The drugs had made him damn near invulnerable.
He reached a hand far above his hand and delivered a vicious backhanded slap to my face. My teeth clacked together and I fell from the top of the rock onto the ground a couple feet below. Now, it was my turn to taste blood. I could already feel the bruising and swelling along my cheekbone. My jaw was a blazing star of pain. It hung limply, maybe even broken.
"Stupid, stupid whore!" he bellowed. He grabbed me roughly by the front of the shirt and threw me back across the top of the rock. His muscles were ropey and stood out in high relief along his forearms. "Why must you struggle so? Yes, learn your place, you whore, you bitch, you wench, yes!"
He grabbed the loose end of the rope he'd started tying and cinched it tightly around my ankles. I was crying, I noticed, tears pouring down my face like waterfalls, mingling with the blood trickling from the inside of my mouth. But I didn't feel anything. I was too numb, too scared. I always thought that I'd feel afraid right before I died. It turned out that I wouldn't feel anything at all.
He pulled out another rope and tied this one across my chest. His hands flew, wrenching knots into place. The tightness of the ropes was cutting off the circulation to my hands. I felt harsh pins and needles in my fingertips before they lost all circulation.
Ricardo started at my head and moved down, checking each knot carefully, testing it to make sure it would hold if I struggled. "You will not go anywhere again, yes, yes, you will make this rock red and beautiful, won't you? Yes," he mumbled as he worked.
I watched his face while he talked. His lips were as blue as his eyes were red. Everything about him screamed of wrongness. He was burning up in front of me. His humanity withered more with every second. And he was going to let me die with it.
Satisfied that I wasn't going anywhere, he reached into his bag once more and retrieved a whetstone. He picked up the knife he'd set down and started sharpening it. Every pass of the blade over the whetstone made a shink noise that hung and vibrated in the air for long seconds. He studied it cautiously, holding the weapon up to the light after a few passes to see if it was enough yet. He gave an unsatisfied grunt and went back to sharpening.
My heart was beating a crescendo in my chest. It was such a funny feeling to realize that what remained of my life could be measured in minutes or seconds instead of months and years. I was scared and calm at the same time. Both feelings froze me in place. I didn't even struggle anymore. The blood in my veins retreated to my core, leaving my extremities feeling cold and lifeless.
I turned my gaze to the sky. It was a bright, beautiful morning. The blue of the day had just started to push away the purplish night. I could still see the hint of stars between the setting moon on one side and the rising sun on the other. The air was warm and soft. As good a day to die as any other, I guessed. At least the last thing I saw would be something pretty.
The sound from the final pass of the knife on the sharpening stone had died down. Ricardo was incanting something under his breath that I couldn't make out, and then that, too, fell to silence. I heard the crunch of gravel under his foot as he took a step closer to me. He brought the knife high over his head with both hands wrapped around the hilt. The reflection of the sun off the knife flashed across my face.
"They took what's mine," he said. "Now, I will take what is theirs."
I closed my eyes. Everything was still. Time paused.
The next thing I heard was not the sickening thud of the knife into my chest or the whoosh of my soul leaving my body, whatever that might actually sound like. It was a sound I never expected to hear again.
The roar of a motorcycle.
I opened my eyes and saw that the knife had not moved. Ricardo's attention had switched from me to something below us. He peered out over the edge of the plateau to where the entry road snaked around the foot of the hill. The roar had grown louder, and as he saw whoever it was, he smiled.
I grimaced when I saw his foul teeth again, but the sounds and smells of the world around me came careening back into my senses. The engine was deep and throaty and it grew louder as the biker screeched around to the base of the trail that we had taken.
Ricardo looked at me. "They have come, yes, yes, just like I supposed. Now you will not have to die alone!" His grin stretched another tooth wider. Then he turned and ran. I craned my head as far as I could to see him race into the trees huddled on either side of the mouth of the trail. His eyes gleamed from the darkness between the trunks.
Whoever was coming, I prayed they were ready to fight. Ricardo was waiting.
Chapter 13
Croak
I'd taken off from the clubhouse like a bat out of hell. My baby had been retro-fitted and fine-tuned until she was the hottest thing smoking in the whole damn state. It was time to see what she could really do when I pushed her to her limits.
The bike was a roaring, bitching beast beneath me as I flew down the road. The heat and smoke from the engine, the crackling thunder of the exhaust - it was music to my ears. Under normal circumstances, I might've had a shit-eating grin plastered across my face as I sat back and enjoyed the ride.
But these circumstances were far from normal. I had one thing on my mind: blood.
Steezy had said that Ricardo was headed for Devil's Skillet. I made it there at lightning speed. The sign came swimming into my vision as I rounded a long curve in the highway. I barely slowed down as I moved from the smooth asphalt of the road to the packed dirt trail. Every bump jolted my frame, but I was tensed against it. The muscles in my body were all coiled, ready and eager to spring into action.
I emerged onto a straightaway that aimed for the base of the plateau before swooping around to the right. The rock towered above me, easily a hundred yards high. A pile of huge, pillar-like rocks stood sentry at the foot of the hill, their tops sharpened into needle points by endless days and nights of the weather carving them into weapons.
I reached the kink in the road and swung hard to the right. My right leg skimmed the ground as I lowered the bike as far as she could go. The frame groaned under the stress of the throttle opened wide and the crazy angle, but there was no time to spare. I had to shave every second possible. If I was even a moment too late, there was no telling what this crazy son of a bitch would do to Corinne. I wasn't about to wait and find out, either.
The curved road led me to the beginning of the forest that clustered along the slanted side of the hill. I saw a bright orange sedan parked ahead with the trunk left open. It must be Ricardo's. That meant they were on top of the hill.
I slammed on the brakes and leaped off the back of the bike after it had come to a near-halt. As I sprinted up the hill, I reached for my belt and withdrew the knife I always kept with me. I had left in such a hurry I hadn't even bothered to grab a gun. Looking back on it, that was about as dumb of a decision as I could have made, but it was too late to worry. The knife would have to do. She was a pretty little baby and she'd gotten me out of plenty of scraps before, so I had to trust that she'd get the job done this time, too.