Enticed by the Satyr (Kindred Tales)

The thought made him so angry that if he’d had his sledgehammer handy, he would have brought it down on the piano right then and there. It would have been so satisfying to see the broken, horrified look on Mia’s face as he slammed the sledge into the old wooden upright, smashing its keys and splintering the wooden frame…

And then maybe after that, he’d bring the sledge right down on her lying, cheating head, Hank thought darkly. Watch her brains splatter over the black and white keyboard, turning it red, teaching her one final lesson the bitch would never forget.

“If I could get her back down here, I’d do it,” he muttered, giving the piano another hateful look. “But she’s up there and there’s no fucking way they’d let me get anywhere near her!”

Which was a fucking shame, because Hank didn’t care what kind of papers they’d forced him to sign—Mia was still his wife, which meant she ought to be his to do with as he pleased.

“She ought to be punished,” he snarled, curling his hands into fists. “If I could get my hands on her, she’d be sorry for leaving me in this mess, trying to turn her own husband into a damn fool! She’s probably laughing at me up there right now! Saying how I’m the Sheriff of Crate’s Corners but I couldn’t even keep hold of my own wife!”

And speaking of that, what was the town going to say when they heard Mia had left him? Thank God that fucking Kaylee and her Blood Kindred had come in the middle of the day, when everyone was at work. But there were still people asking about Mia. Hank had put them off so far, saying that her “fibromyalgia” was keeping her in bed, but he couldn’t pretend forever. Eventually it was going to come out that she was up on the Mother Ship having fun with the aliens, while he was stuck down here without anyone to clean up after him or see to his needs.

The thought of her laughing at him, making jokes at his expense while she banged some fucking Kindred, made Hank so mad that for a minute he could barely see straight. He couldn’t let her get away with this, damnit! There had to be some way to make her pay! There had to be a way to get to her. To—

Suddenly he straightened up and went rapidly back into the den. Digging through the trash on the floor—grimacing as he did so because it hurt his wounded arm—he found the two pieces of the orange postcard he had ripped up. Putting them together, he read them again.

“Come for a Halloween tour,” he muttered under his breath. But then it also said something about there being limited space—probably all the tickets or whatever they were had already been sold a long time ago. People were crazy to go up to that fucking Mother Ship for some reason.

Also, they’d had some problems in the past and now the Kindred were careful about who they let up on their ship, doing background checks on everyone before they let them on board. And no doubt Hank’s own name was on some kind of no-fly list—or in this case, no-board list—because Mia had probably been telling lies about him. Telling everyone he beat and abused her when all he did was keep her in line with a little punishment from time to time.

Hank glared at the postcard. They were keeping his wife from him and they didn’t want him on their fucking ship. That shouldn’t stop him, though. He knew how to get past regulations when he needed to. After all, he knew how the law worked…and how to get around it.

As he stared at the ripped orange paper, a plan began to form. Who said he had to go as himself, after all. It was Halloween—wasn’t the idea to come as someone else? Say, someone who had already bought a ticket and been vetted by the Kindred’s background checks?

A slow, cruel smile curved the corners of Hank Rogan’s thin lips. He was going to get to Mia, all right. And when he did, that little bitch was going to be so damn sorry…

17

“I don’t know about this outfit, Kaylee! What kind of Mistresses did you say we’re dressed as?” Mia looked doubtfully down at the Halloween costume Kaylee had gotten for her.

It was a long green gown with a V-neck—well, that was putting it mildly, Mia thought. The V-neck was so wide it showed the whole front of her chest, down to her waist.

Luckily, she had on a black leather bustier to cover the exposed parts, but the foundation garment pushed her breasts up and out, making her feel like she was wearing jiggling, flesh-colored Jell-O cups on her front. Also, her nipples were perilously close to popping out of the top of the bustier. If she so much as breathed the wrong way, she was going to be flashing everyone!