Soulless The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,66
she said again. “Why must all you people lead such mundane little lives? I thought maybe you were different than the rest. I thought you were like me.”
“Umm.” I tried to focus on the panel, tuning out her prattle, ignoring the fact that she sounded almost offended. “I don’t know what to tell you. I have a job to do, and it’s pretty serious—”
She grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, causing my head to wobble, as she slammed my back against the railing. “Hey, kid! Wake the hell up!” She slapped me for good measure, not hard, but enough that I felt it and it pissed me off. I stared back at her, at the intensity in her eyes as she glared at me. “We’re at the top of the food chain, darling. Ain’t nobody can stop us: not Omega, not the Directorate, nobody. Women want to look like us and men want to grind up against us. You can have anything you want, take what you want, and nobody can stop you, and you’re killing time with these white hat Directorate wankers.” She let out a sigh of disgust. “Stop wasting your time doing all this crap when you could be having fun.”
She slackened her grip on me and started to back off, but I grasped the watch on her wrist and held it tight in front of her. “Ow! What are you doing?”
“What happened to the man who had this on last night?” I twisted her arm to put it right in front of her face. “Where is he now?”
“Who cares?” She said, ripping it out of my grasp. “They’re all interchangeable, men. They only last a very short time,” she got a wicked grin that I found damned unsettling, “so you have to use them wisely – and I do mean use. I keep looking for a man who can last longer, but even he couldn’t—” She waved at James. “Though obviously for different reasons, in his case.”
I felt a pit of disgust in my stomach. “You’re like...you’re a serial killer.”
“You’re so immature.” She made a noise of disgust, waving her hand as though she were dismissing me. “We’re succubi, Sienna; draining men’s souls is what we do. They’re there for us; it’s why we have the thrall, the dreamwalking, all of it. The world of men is our cup: we’re supposed to drink it, and you’re afraid to even take a sip.” Her face twisted into a humorless smile. “Just like your mom.” Her dark hair fell around her shoulders, framing her face in a different light than I’d seen before; she looked almost cronelike, emaciated. “Well, I’ll drink enough for all three of us, I don’t care. I’m not scared. I’m ready for all of it.”
I leaned on the railing for support, trying to edge away from her. “Why?”
“You know. Haven’t you ever felt the rush?” She looked at me in disbelief. “I know you’ve taken souls; haven’t you felt it? When you take them, how they scream and rattle in your head at first, how it spins you around? It’s the greatest high you’ll ever feel, trust me, way better than anything else. I mean, I know it’s tough the first few times, like losing your virginity, but it gets so good, so powerful, it feels so right.” She let out a little sigh and had her eyes closed. “You have no idea.” Her eyes opened and she focused on me.
“I don’t want to have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m not a murderer.”
“Don’t play games with me,” Charlie said, a smile on her lips. “I know you’ve killed.”
“Twice,” I said. “Once to save my own life with Wolfe and once to save the city of Minneapolis from Gavrikov.”
“Oh, right.” She pirouetted and sent me a mischievous glance. “Why would you bother doing a thing like that?”
“Because I owed them,” I said, trying to catch my breath and push the pain away. “Because it was the right thing to do. I don’t kill in cold blood. I might not even have killed Wolfe, but I was so afraid of him I couldn’t let him go.”
“And what about the other guy? The one you sent for a long fall off the IDS tower?”
“That wasn’t me.” I grabbed a segment of rail in my hand, wondering if I had the strength to rip it loose and use it as a weapon like James had. I looked around for my knife,