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Chapter Eight
Ace
I want a turn. I thought I could be calm. Dispassionate. Use my training. But I’m staring into the eyes of a monster. A real monster: the one who hurt Raven. Not Baxter and his demons. He just likes to think he’s a monster.
It’s clear that there’s a darkness in him. Rebel only ever mentioned that they were friends before some big tragedy struck and that they drifted apart afterwards out of guilt. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I’m almost certain it has something to do with Rebel’s sister and his baby niece. He never talks about them, but Thorn accidentally let their names slip once. Casey and Beth.
I’ve always itched to know their story, but would never dare ask. How can I when I keep my own secrets and tragedies wrapped up tighter than a boy scout’s best knot. I love the guys like brothers, but I’m not convinced they would feel the same if they knew the things I was forced to do back home, and at such a young age too. It’s why I send every penny I earn back home: to save my sisters from a fate worse than death.
“Shall we bring him round?” Baxter’s voice brings me back to the present. Back to my anger.
“Huh?” I blink.
“Shall we wake him up?”
“Yeah.” I nod. Let’s do this.
I exit the bedroom to find something to revive the creep with. It helps to clear my head, getting out of the small room with the overwhelming stench of blood and fear.
I like that Baxter’s incapacitated his tongue. I don’t ever want to hear tortured screams again. Even if I’m the one inflicting them.
I find a cooler filled with beers and ice. Perfect. I could use a drink about now but I don’t want to touch anything belonging to this baraba. I dump the beers in the sink and carry the cooler back to the bedroom where Baxter is lighting a blow torch. The fierce jet of purple-blue flame and the unique roar of the torch captivates me.
I dump the water over the bastard’s head and he immediately comes round, spluttering and coughing.
“May I?” I ask, nodding at the blow torch. Baxter does a double take before wordlessly handing it to me. The smell of propane envelopes me and drags my memories, kicking and screaming, back home. It burns nearly a thousand degrees hotter than a butane torch, and the differences the two have on the skin are remarkable.
Captured in a trance, I marvel at how it is always the colour of the flame that I love. How something so pretty can be so lethal. How at just the right temperature the flame matches the violet of my eyes.
“Open your fucking mouth or I swear to god the next thing I feed you will be your own rapist cock,” Baxter growls in a low, terrifyingly dangerous voice.
I glance over just in time to see Charlie reluctantly opening his mouth and Baxter dropping slivers of his own flesh down his throat. My stomach churns but I ignore it. He deserves so much more.
With that, I turn back to my own task and start with the bare soles of his feet. It’s a love hate relationship, the smell of burning flesh. I miss home sometimes. But I don’t miss this.
While the worm writhes on the bed in a desperate – but futile – attempt to avoid my flames, Baxter moves to the head of the bed. Fisting Charlie’s blonde locks, he effortlessly slices a circle around his scalp. His head falls back to the pillow but there’s more than just hair left behind in Baxter’s fist. He’s scalped him. A perfectly neat little round bald patch like an old man. He flings it carelessly over his shoulder somewhere and I’m glad he’s not into taking trophies back home with him. Imagine giving that to Nix to play with.
I let the blowtorch heat his balls until he’s twitching and the smell of singed hair turns my stomach. Flesh I’m fine with. Blood’s okay. Fear is...harder to ignore. But hair’s a fucking trigger.
Shutting it off and tossing it away in disgust, I palm a knife instead. Baxter’s carefully digging the tip of his blade in a neat circle around the guy’s nipple, the way you’d carefully try to detach a cake from a tin. The guy’s whimpering around his swollen face – obviously Baxter threw in a few punches while I was distracted – and sobbing silently too, if the jerking motion of his chest is anything to go by.
I figure I may as well do the same with his fingers, switching out a knife for pliers. Can’t marry if there’s no ring finger to slide it on. Not that any woman will even think about looking his way by the time we’re done. The blistering burns running all up his legs alone are sickening.
Baxter grins wickedly at the sound of the metal crunching through the bone.
“Do his dick next.”
The worm whimpers.
“Did I say you could make a fucking sound?”
The second nipple comes off in a furious slash and then he straddles the guy, right on his bleeding chest, and gets to work carving up his face. I don’t need to watch, I know what’ll be written there by the time he pulls away.
Rapist Scum.
If it were up to me I’d carve it on every inch of his skin, though I expect Baxter will do the same anyway.
I scan my eyes down the piece of shit’s body, unsatisfied with the damage inflicted so far. It’s not enough. I don’t want to kill him – it would be too easy for him – but I want to do more.
