nine
Sazahn
In the time since I died and was reborn, I have come to learn about the three men responsible for the destruction and trauma I went through.
Gaderel supplied me with more information through his otherworldly sight. The first time he showed me, it was a rush of pictures and sound, and it was all so horrifying I couldn’t absorb it. Since then, I have watched again, slower, in detail. The images I see, the noises I hear, no longer devastate me and render me unable to move. A wall exists now between my conscious mind and my emotions. I can keep them separate until I need to tap into them, and doing so during my research would have prevented me from learning everything I could about them.
Unsurprisingly, they’re part of a larger criminal network. Shades and Bowtie, Cue’s and Jammy’s murderers, respectively, are actually brothers. Scarface leads them. He’s a trusted, high-ranking member of the organization he belongs to, which carries out hits on the elite by other elites for extortion or blackmail purposes. Marcel and Shakers were unfortunate pawns in a larger game. Shakers had a silent owner, and that owner owed money to someone. That someone hired Scarface’s organization for the job. They weren’t supposed to leave behind any witnesses, and I suppose technically, they didn’t.
But they didn’t count on the last victim coming back to life.
Just like they won’t count on that victim coming to take their lives.
Bowtie and Shades are enjoying a rare night off from their pressing duties as hired muscle, hitmen, rapists, torturers, and traffickers at a private party in the swanky penthouse of a FinSec highrise, not that far from where Gaderel and I live. It’s quite the party, I note as I walk in. There are mountains of coke on various marble surfaces; female entertainment provides lap dances and blow jobs for well below what they should cost; a poker game takes place in a back corner, a small biotech chip reader on the table to place bets and collect winnings.
Getting entry was as easy as Gaderel walking up to the security guards planted at the entrance to the elevator on the ground floor and using a neat psychic trick to get them to let us on the elevator and send us up to the penthouse floor. I can’t help being envious, but he promises to help me harness my own psychic abilities.
No one in the party notices us as we come to stand in the foyer. The floorplan is an open concept with separate bedrooms. I don’t immediately spot Bowtie or Shades.
“Think they might have left early?” I ask.
Gaderel tilts his head as though listening, then shakes his head. A grim smile crosses his ips. “No. They’re here. Shades is in the bedroom. Bowtie’s at the poker table.”
I follow the direction of his pointing finger toward a room with a closed door in the far corner of the room, then I glance in the opposite direction. There he is, seated at the crowded poker table, surrounded by men—Bowtie. Tonight, he’s wearing a white bowtie instead of the red one he wore the night he murdered my sweet Jammy.
My heart pounds with every step, but I’m not nervous. I’m ready.
I finally tap into the well of emotion I’ve kept a lid on all these weeks. I think of Cue, who Shades murdered personally. I replay her death and the horrible discovery of her body. But I push beyond just Cue; I think of the children he’s harmed, that he’s trafficked to monsters far worse than he is on the other side of the world. I think of the way he laughs when they beg him not to hurt them.
I hear that laugh now. Under the music, the laughter, the shouts from the poker players, I hear it. I shouldn’t be able to, but it’s a side effect of Gaderel’s blood. My senses aren’t just sharp.
They’re becoming superhuman.
“Shades first,” I murmur to Gaderel, and step backward toward the door, making sure we’re not spotted.
Then I turn toward the door, clench my fists, and prepare to kick the door open. But a gentle hand on my shoulder stops me. I whip my head to the side and peer up at Gaderel.
“Subtle,” he says. “Don’t get interrupted before you begin. Remember—you are in control.”
I draw a breath through my nose. He’s right. It’s taken eight long weeks to get to this point. Eight weeks full of training, of mourning, of second- and triple-guessing myself. Eight weeks of exposing myself to these men’s brutal ways over and over. Eight weeks to finally reach the conclusion that I’m not only ready to do this, but that I want to do this.
The door, unsurprisingly, is locked. But Gaderel merely touches the door, then smiles at me. “Try again.”
This time, it turns.
I ease the door open a tiny bit, listening. Shades’s laughter has turned into heavy breathing and the occasional muffled moan. I peek around the edge of the door.
The lamp on the nightstand is on, allowing for enough low light to make out the sight of a slender, young-looking man with his hands cuffed behind him and a ball-gag in his mouth, face-down, ass-up on the bed. Shades—minus his shades—kneels behind him, pounding away despite the tears leaking from the young man’s eyes and the noises of distress, not pleasure, he makes.
My upper lip curls. It doesn’t matter if the young man agreed to the encounter; if he doesn’t want this, didn’t consent to this, then it’s rape.
All the more reason to rid this world of the shitstain that is Shades.
I slip inside the room, and Gaderel moves to stand in front of the door. My very own silent sentinel, and I know in my core that no one will ever get the drop on him again.
I stand at the foot of the bed as I pat the pair of daggers tucked in the waistband of my blank pants, hidden by my black leather jacket, double checking that I can still easily reach them. I stare at Shades’s hairy, pimply ass as he roughly penetrates the poor young man, who has now started sobbing.
“Shut up, you little bitch,” Shades pants. “You’re getting paid for this, so you’re gonna take every inch of this dick however I feel like serving it up.”