V's eyes, so he ducked back into the house and sat down behind his bank of computers. Firing up the coordinates on the Escalade, he saw that the SUV was parked behind Screamer's.
Which was good. At least Butch wasn't wrapped around a tree-
V froze. Slowly, he pushed his hand into the back pocket of his leathers, a horrible feeling coming over him, hot and prickly like a rash. Flipping open the Razr, he accessed his voice mail. First message was a hang-up from Butch's number.
As the second message clicked on, the Pit's steel shutters started to come down for the day.
V frowned. There was only a hissing sound coming from the voice mail. But then a clatter had him yanking the phone away from his ear.
Now Butch's voice, hard, loud: "Dematerialize. Dematerialize now."
A scared male: "But-but-"
"Now! For fuck's sake, get your ass out of here..." Sounds of muffled flapping.
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"Why are you doing this? You're just a human-"
"I am so sick of hearing that. Leave!"
There was a metallic shifting, a gun being reloaded.
Butch's voice: "Oh, shit..."
Then all hell broke loose. Gunshots, grunts, thuds.
V leaped up from his desk so fast he knocked his chair over. Only to realize he was trapped inside by daylight.
Chapter Four
The first thing Butch thought when he came around was that someone needed to turn that faucet off. The drip, drip, drip was annoying.
Then he cracked an eyelid and realized his own blood was pulling the Kohler routine. Oh... right. He'd been beaten and he was leaking.
This had been a long, long, very bad day. How many hours had he been interrogated? Twelve? Felt like a thousand.
He tried to take a deep breath, but some of his ribs were broken, so he picked hypoxia over more pain. Man, thanks to his captor's attentions, everything hurt like a motherfucker, but at least the lesser had sealed up that gunshot wound.
Just to keep the questioning going longer.
The only saving grace to the nightmare was that not one thing about the Brotherhood had passed his lips. Not a thing. Even when the slayer went to work on his fingernails and between his legs. Butch was going to die soon, but at least he could look Saint Peter in the eye and know he wasn't a squealer when he got to heaven.
Or had he died and gone to hell? Was that what all this was about? Given some of the shit he'd pulled on earth, he could see why he'd ended up in the devil's guesthouse. But then wouldn't his torturer have horns, like demons did?
Okay, he was flirting with Looney Tunes here.
He opened his eyes a little farther, figuring it was time to try to separate reality from mind-grinding nonsense.
He had a feeling this was probably his last shot at consciousness, so he should make it count.
Vision was blurry. Hands... feet... yup, chained down. And he was still lying on something hard, a table. Room was... dark. Dirt smell meant he was probably in a basement. Bald lightbulb revealed... yeah, the torture tool kit. He looked away from the spread of sharp things, shuddering.
What was that sound? A dim roar. Getting louder. Louder.
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As soon as it was cut off, a door opened upstairs and Butch heard a man say in a muffled voice, "Master."
Soft reply. Indistinct. Then a conversation, with one set of footsteps pacing around, causing dust to filter down from the floorboards. Eventually, another door squeaked open, and the stairs next to him started to creak.
Butch broke out in a cold sweat and lowered his eyelids. Through the cracks between his lashes, he watched what came at him.
First guy was the lesser who'd been working him out, the guy from over the summer, from the Caldwell Martial Arts Academy-Joseph Xavier was his name, if Butch remembered correctly. The other was draped from head to foot in a brilliant white robe, his face and hands completely covered. Looked like some kind of monk or priest.
Except that was no man of God under there. As Butch absorbed the person's vibe, he couldn't breathe from his repulsion. Whatever was hidden by that robe was distilled evil, the kind that mobilized serial killers and rapists and murderers and people who enjoyed beating their children: hatred and malevolence in an upright, solid form.
Butch's fear level shot through the roof. He could handle being knocked around; the pain was bitch, but there was a definable end point marked by when his heart stopped beating.