of the living room behind me, replete with the smell of gore. The lights were still hanging overhead, the mats still bloody where Zack and I had left our contribution from the fight with Wolfe. I stepped over them and made my way to the corner to look at it.
It didn’t matter if I grew ten feet taller, I would still look at it as a huge, metal, imposing figure. The side that swung open hung off its hinges, moved from where I left it. The last time…I tried to put the hinges back together, tried to set it right again, to make it look like it wasn’t broken. It stood open, the darkness inside a silent reminder of days spent within.
I wish there was some brave, exciting reason why I tried to fix it, but the truth is that as irrational as it sounds, I feared Mom’s reaction when she saw I’d broken out. It was the act of a scared little girl that vainly hoped her mother wouldn’t realize that when she left the house, I was locked in a metal sarcophagus and when she got back, I was sleeping in my own bed and sitting on my own couch and going about my life unfettered by the metal prison she’d confined me to before she left.
Of course, she never came back, so it didn’t matter. I wondered what Mom would say when she found out what happened to me. If she found out. I wondered if Wolfe had caught up with her, as well. Mom was a fighter; way better than me. If he did, I bet she hurt him before the end. The thought of the pen sticking out of his ear, blood trailing down his face, came back to me, along with the thought of tranquilizer darts and the knife I had buried in him last time I was here. Yeah. Mom would have given him hell.
“Little doll,” I heard from behind me, turning to face the staircase. He strolled down, an idle man with all the time in the world. His nose was sniffing, as if he were savoring the meal he was about to eat. He paused at the last step. “So nice of you to call on Wolfe. I was beginning to question how many people I was going to have to kill before you’d pay attention…of course,” he admitted with a broad grin, worthy of his name, “Wolfe can’t take credit for all the kills the news has been giving to him…someone else has joined in on Wolfe’s good times…”
“Who?” A brief spark of interest crossed my mind as my brain scrambled for ways to avoid the fate I knew was moments away.
A shrug from the beast. “Wolfe doesn’t know. Wolfe doesn’t care.” A grin. “Wolfe cares about you, little doll. Wolfe knows from the little samples how good you taste…now he wants the full course.” He paused and wagged his finger at me. “Wolfe thinks you know that you can’t beat him. But before we start, he wants to hear you promise you won’t try.”
An involuntary shudder passed through me and I gave my full effort to blotting out thoughts of what was about to happen. “I can’t beat you,” I admitted. “And if I kept running, I believe you will keep killing forever; everyone you could – men, women and children. It would never get better. It would be my fault. And that realization would sap every ounce of joy from my life – or what passes for my life – forever.”
He took another step closer. “Wise, for one so young, to know the Wolfe so well. Wolfe is amazed that one so cut off all her life can feel connected to this world…but it matters not.” He swept closer in one swift movement and I didn’t resist as he closed his hand around my neck. “Wolfe is going to hurt you now…and this will go on for quite some time…until you can’t resist even if you want to…and then, when you can’t move, but you can still feel…then we’ll start the real fun…”
He slammed me against the wall and it felt like the world ended. My ears rang as though someone had set off the planet’s worst rock band in them, and it hurt like hell. My brain was swimming and for a moment the world spun upside down and then righted itself. Wolfe was still staring back at me with those black, lifeless eyes, like I was