Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

She didn’t make a sound, just watched him with that same intensity she got sometimes, never blinking, never taking her eyes from his face. She looked as if she could see right into his soul. Maybe she could, and if it was possible, she’d see only darkness. There was nothing left in him.

He shook his head again and pressed his fingertips hard into his pounding temples. “We were just trying to get each other through the next minute. The next hour. We had no idea we had any real talents or gifts. We just tried to encourage one another. We continued doing it day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.”

Scarlet nodded and shifted a little closer to him. That settled his churning stomach just a little. Her presence always seemed to help.

“From the time we were little, Czar began training us. At first, most of us didn’t realize what we were doing. He had us throwing pebbles through holes. Acorns, tiny objects through very small holes. We did push-ups and he wanted us to become stronger and stronger. He was a little kid too, but he started us working on how to hold various weapons even when we didn’t have them. Master, Maestro, Player and Keys were so good with wood and they could make these incredible darts. He taught us to use them like blow darts. It wasn’t a game anymore, but we couldn’t be careless and ever leave them where anyone could find them.”

Absinthe knew he was putting off the inevitable. He had to circle back to his sins and get it over with. “We were all growing and with our age and bulk and training as assassins, the instructors in the schools were far more brutal. Sorbacov had really given them a buffet and they embraced it, becoming more and more depraved and vile in what they chose to do to kids. So many had died, and they got away with it. The more that happened, the more children became disposable to them, the more brutal they became toward us. Czar insisted we work on developing our psychic skills and we all did, whether we thought it would work or not.”

He pressed his fingers into his temples, wishing he was lying on the bed with her and she was massaging his neck and shoulders. His Scarlet. He couldn’t lose her now that he’d found her. He could hear the blood roaring in his ears as loud as the pounding waves outside breaking against the rocks.

“Savage was forced to be with sadists all the time. The ones who loved to flay the skin off the boys or girls or carve their names into them. Some liked to brand them. Or pierce them. He was a favorite because he was so strong and he never made a sound. No one could break him. He caught the whip one day, pulled it out of the wielder’s hand and he took over. No one stopped him. He became the whip master and the top trainer.”

Again Absinthe paused. He forced himself to meet those green eyes, needing to see how deep the condemnation would go. “I had been talking to him for months, years really. Repeating the same things to him. You’re a better trainer. You like what you do. You like seeing the red lines on their bodies. It makes you so hard. You want them. You can make them enjoy it. You have to be the best, better than any of them, better than all of them so they admire you and want you to train theirs for them.”

He saw the comprehension dawning on her face. His voice. That velvet tone, the one that persuaded others, influenced them. Years and years of influence, from a child to an adult. He had created that sadist, that insatiable need for pain in others. That craving and addiction that would never go away.

“It wasn’t just Savage. I persuaded all of them to like what they did. To need it. I didn’t realize what I was doing at first. I don’t think I really ever did until it was too late. We were all such a mess, bloody and broken all the time. Hating ourselves and what was happening to us. Feeling out of control. Czar set rules for us to remain human. He was our moral compass in a way. I mean, we were learning to kill and having sex in every way possible from the time we were little kids, but he made it clear that what they were doing to us was wrong, even if they made us feel good, and we were never to do that to children. Never. That was abhorrent to us and we had to repeat that daily, hundreds of times a day. We should always have one another’s backs and watch over one another to make certain we never became the predators they were. We also had to grow strong enough to strike back at them and to watch out for one another and protect one another.”