Bullet Page 0,116

than most people did. He got the true brokenness of her.

“Yeah,” I said.

“She wanted me to help her by seducing some of the other wereanimals into some bondage sex and then she’d help me play with them, but her idea of play is something that even a pain slut wouldn’t be able to enjoy.”

“They’ll heal, Nicky. They’ll heal if I don’t use silver metal,” she said, hands still on her waist, face in that perfect little-girl scowl.

“When she found out I wouldn’t help her lure the wereanimals in for torture, she tried to mind-fuck me.”

“I take it that she couldn’t roll you.”

“There’s too much of you in him,” Valentina said. She stamped her foot again. “There’s no room for anyone else in his mind, or in most of their minds. You’re like Belle Morte was, Anita. You fill them up so that they think of only you, but she would give them to me when they disobeyed her or made her mad. I had more fun there.”

“I didn’t make you stay here,” I said.

“No, we have to help Stephen and Gregory. We have to make up for scaring them.” Her face went from pouting to serious. She and Bartolome had tried to take blood from the twins, but feeding for Belle’s line is a kind of sex, and the thought of the child vampires feeding on them had terrified Stephen and Gregory. It had been too close to their past with their sexually abusive father. When they’d discovered why the twins were so frightened of them, they’d stopped tormenting them and stayed in St. Louis to make it up to the men somehow. We were going on two years and the child vampires were still trying to find a way to cleanse their honor with the brothers. Now, of course, they couldn’t go back to Belle’s court, because she was on the run with her court.

“If you would just let us kill their father,” she said.

“Stephen’s therapist says that he needs to handle his father personally. That you killing him might actually cause more damage.”

“I know”—she sighed—“and so we are trapped here. At least Bartolome will have a lover now and I still have nothing.”

“I never know what to say to you, Valentina. I can’t give you people to torture.”

“You could, but you won’t,” she said. She threw her tiny hands in the air in a gesture years beyond her size and stomped to the door. Her hands were a little small for the door handle, but she opened it hard enough for it to slam the wall.

“Nicky, find out what she was hiding on the computer.”

He walked over and started hitting keys as the fat cartoon sheep bobbed around the screen.

Damian hugged me, burying his face in my hair. I hugged him back, my face pressed against chest. Nicky made a soft whistle. I turned in Damian’s arms so I could see the screen.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Just keep looking at it, your eyes will make sense of it.”

Damian put his hand in front of my face so I couldn’t see. “And then you’ll never be able to not see it.”

“Damian, move your hand.”

“I have to do it, because you ordered me, but don’t look, Anita.” He moved his hand, and I looked.

Nicky was right, my mind did see it eventually, and Damian was right, too. It was one of those images that once you see it you’ll remember it. I’d seen cut-up bodies in person, but it was still gruesome even by my standards.

“Does she have a file of this kind of thing?” I asked.

He hit more buttons. He started opening files and all the pictures were like that. Images from actual war casualties, crime scene photos that had made it onto the World Wide Web, bondage images, but only ones that were serial-killer bad. Image after image flickered across the screen.

“It’s all like this,” Nicky said. “Even I have pictures of other things; women, weapons, online cartoons. There’s nothing but this on here.”

“You should kill her,” Damian said.

We were both standing behind Nicky, staring at the screen. I noticed that Damian’s eyes had gone back to their normal green. Mine felt back to normal, too.

“She hasn’t done anything here to earn an execution, Damian.”

“I didn’t say execute her, I said kill her. The baby vampires always go mad, Anita. I don’t know any as young as her that didn’t have to be put down.”

“Put down? You make her sound like a rabid dog. She’s not an animal.”

He