Heat Stroke(71)

Bitch.

There had to be something I could do.

She unzipped the black leather jacket, slowly, sliding her hands inside on the warm gold skin. I gritted my teeth. You can’t hurt my mother. Kevin had given me that command. Since he hadn’t been specific enough about his command to kill her, the two orders were floating around in limbo, the first one still applying. I wanted to wrap my hand around her throat and squeeze until she came apart, but I wasn’t sure I should even try it. And trying and failing would be far worse, just now.

“Take that off,” she told him. He stripped off the jacket and let it fall in a glistening heap to the floor. “You know what I want, David. What I always want.”

Oh, I had a pretty good idea, too. Or thought I did.

He proved me wrong.

I watched, sickened, as he reached out for her….. grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her face down on the carpet.

Still no change in him. Controlled, calm, utterly emotionless.

Oh God.

He rolled her over, and the flushed, breathless excitement on her face said it all. No wonder this place reeked of sickness. Yvette was one very sick lady.

I dropped the concealment. She spotted me instantly over David’s shoulder as I walked slowly forward, and the insane glee in her eyes was almost as nauseating as what she was about to force David to do. I remembered the dream, David’s desperate attempt to make Jonathan understand. It’s rape.

“I thought you were there,” she said. “Excellent. Maybe I’ll have you join us.”

“David,” I said calmly. “Would you like for me to do something about this?”

He couldn’t speak, of course. Couldn’t do anything. He was fixed on her, and I thought I read utter despair in those dark, alien eyes.

“What do you imagine you can do?” Yvette asked me, sugar sweet, looking ravishingly beautiful spread out on the floor. So very pretty. So very twisted. “Other than admire his technique.”

I crossed my arms and maintained my cool. “Well, I could do what your son suggested and kill you. What do you think?”

She froze, staring up at me, and her face was for a few seconds comically surprised. “You’re lying.”

“Well, yes, we Djinn do that. Believe me or not.”

I shrugged to show the depth of my not-caring. “Suit yourself.”

I looked at David, who was still frozen, waiting for her command. Leashed, but far from tame. She got up, still watching me, and put her hand on his shoulder to bring him up with her. Slid it in a proprietary way along the warm glory of his skin, up his neck, over a well-shaped ear, to dig her fingers luxuriously into his hair. No protest from him, and no flinch. I knew he had more latitude than that—didn’t he? — but he wasn’t refusing anything from her. Maybe she’d already given that command before I came on the scene. Or maybe he was drawing her in, making her careless.

I hoped.

“Did he used to be yours?” she asked me, and made the hand into a fist, jerking his head sideways toward her. Still no change of expression from him. I tried to listen, to see if he was sending me any whispers along the shared bond between us, but all I heard was silence. He’d gone deep, and far away from me. What was left might be something I didn’t know and couldn’t count on.

“I don’t own people,” I said. God, I sounded self-righteous. I decided that was okay, because I felt pretty self-righteous, too. “We freed the slaves in this country, or did you flunk history along with your sanity test?”

She turned and looked at David, pulled his head closer to hers and whispered something in his ear, then turned back to me, cheek pressed against his.

They both smiled. I felt a cold streak form along my spine, felt goosebumps rising under it, because those smiles were soulless, and dead, and dreaming of something awful. I remembered David smiling at me, the day I’d met him on the road after I’d spun the car out in a cloud of dust. I remembered the sharp, intelligent wit in those beautiful eyes. I remembered his skin, waking and shivering at my touch.

She couldn’t own any of that. What she did own was a shell. Skin. A ghost.

I kept telling myself that, but I couldn’t stop the sick, awful horror of this from threatening to choke me. Her hands were still moving on David. I wanted to rip them off at the wrists.

“My little Kevin finally grew some balls? You’re bluffing, sweetie pie. He couldn’t.”

I looked around the room. “He’s been in here, hasn’t he?” No answer. Yvette sat up. Her blouse had popped a couple of buttons, but the view didn’t impress me. “You and little Kevin, playing games. How heartwarming. And you think he wouldn’t want you dead? Honey, I just met you and I so want you dead.”