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He laughed.
She fell silent.
So he whipped her across her belly and she screamed in pain.
“Better,” he said.
“You’re a sick person, Drake. You sick creep!”
“Who, me? Hey, who was it who put whose head in a beer cooler and weighted it down with rocks? I’m sick?”
“Go ahead and kill me, because if you don’t, when Brittney comes she’ll let me go.”
He cocked a pistol finger at her. “You know: I thought about that. I get a few seconds of warning before the changeover, so what I’ll do is kill you as soon as I feel it coming on. But until then . . .”
He slashed at her again. Again. Again, and she tried not to scream, but she did, she screamed: she screamed and he laughed.
“Sam will burn you to ashes!” she gasped out.
“That would be the only thing lacking now,” Drake said, sounding genuinely disappointed. “I wanted him here. It would be way better if he could see. If he could watch. It’s a hard thing to watch someone you care for being hurt.”
She heard something there. Something.
“Who did you watch being hurt?” she asked, desperate to engage him, stall, distract . . .
“Really? You want to get into my head? Figure out what makes me me? You’re not here to play shrink. You’re here to suffer.”
He slashed at her again. Astrid cried out. The pain was too awful to endure. She wished for unconsciousness. She wished for death. She sobbed quietly.
Petey.
Jesus.
Anyone . . .
But she felt no presence. Just the psychopath in the shadows cast by firelight.
“Gaia wanted me to bring you to her. So she could use you as a hostage. But I don’t take orders from her anymore. I wasted too much time following. I followed Caine. I followed the gaiaphage. But she’s not the gaiaphage, not really, not in that body, not with that face . . .”
“She’s pretty,” Astrid managed to say, gasping out each word. “Is that what you hate? Is that the sickness in you?”
Drake barked out a laugh. “Do you have any idea how many shrinks have tried their words on me? You think you can do better? It has to be some sickness, some syndrome, right? Put a label on it and everything will be all better.” He laughed at the idea. “Are you as clueless as the rest of them, Astrid? It’s simple. Here it is, here’s the answer, Astrid the Genius: it’s fun to hurt people. It’s such . . . it’s such joy, Astrid. Such joy realizing that all the power is yours, and all the fear and pain is right there, in your victim. Come on, smart girl, you know what it’s called. You know the word for it. Come on, say it.” He cupped his hand to his ear, waiting for the word.
“Evil,” Astrid said.
Drake laughed, threw up his hand wide, and nodded his head. “Evil! There you go. Good for you. Evil. It’s in all of us. You know that, too. It was in you. I saw it in your eyes as you looked down at me in that cooler. Evil, hah. We all want to have someone powerless beneath us while we stand over them.” His voice had grown husky. “We all want that. We all want that.”
He slid his whip arm over the painful wounds on her belly.
“I wish Sam was here to see. But he’s probably dead by now.” He sighed. “And if he’s not, well, we’ll tell him, won’t we? We’ll tell him every little detail.
“Be sure to scream,” he said.
“You too,” she said.
He looked at her, puzzled, his face inches from hers.
Astrid jerked her face forward, clamped her teeth down on Drake’s nose, and bit down as hard as she could.
