Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

“We weren’t the only children that were ripped from their parents over the years. It became a very common practice of Sorbacov’s. He established four schools. All were brutal. Three were legitimate schools training the children of the parents he had murdered to be assets for the country. The fourth school he set up for himself and his friends to use to play in. Although Sorbacov was married with children of his own and well-respected, although feared, he was a very sick man. He was a pedophile. He liked very young boys. More, he liked to torture the boys as he raped them. He especially enjoyed watching the torture and rape of young girls while he raped the boys. The fourth school he put in place was on the outskirts of the city, hidden away, and run by the criminally insane.”

Scarlet heard the difference in his tone immediately. There was absolutely no question that he was telling the truth. He had gone from casual to disconnected. He could have been telling her about the weather. There was no expression in his voice at all. Her lungs began to burn for air, telling her she had to breathe, she needed to take a breath. He was holding on to her hand and she was afraid he might crush her fingers, but instead, he held her with infinite gentleness. She didn’t understand how that was possible.

“I was taken to that school along with Demyan, when I was four and he just turning seven. We were taken there, more, I think, because Sorbacov liked our looks than because he understood our parents’ psychic talents.”

She wondered what those talents were, but she didn’t want to interrupt him to ask. She glanced again around the patio at the other members of Torpedo Ink sitting there, talking low to one another as if they didn’t have a care in the world. She couldn’t imagine what had been done to all of them, only that it was so terrible, Absinthe couldn’t speak with any inflection when his voice was always so expressive.

“There were two hundred and eighty-seven children taken to that school over the years and only eighteen survived. Those eighteen survivors are the charter members of Torpedo Ink.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the fact that he had used the term charter members multiple times, but the number of children dying in that vile place that had not been a school was horrific.

“We were raped, beaten and tortured. We were taught to use sex as a weapon and multiple ways to assassinate for our country, although we weren’t really expected to survive. We were thrown together in a freezing-cold environment without clothes or much in the way of food. Most of us continually had open wounds from whips and burns, the beatings and rapes. It never stopped. We were starving and hopeless. Often, if any of us fought back, they would chain a child up in front of all of us and beat them to near death and then leave them to die slow so we’d see what would happen to us if we resisted.”

Scarlet had to turn away, her stomach threatening to heave. She pulled her hand away from his, vivid images finding their way into her mind. “Absinthe. How did any of you survive under those brutal conditions? My God.”

She looked around her again at the various members of the Torpedo Ink club. Could any of them be sane? She wasn’t entirely sane after what she’d been through. She knew Absinthe was telling her his history fast, whitewashing it to some degree, maybe to a huge degree. She heard the “assassinate for their country” part. They were every bit as lethal as she thought them.

“It took us years to get out. We were there until some of us were well into our twenties. One of us had to take an assignment to assassinate the international president of a motorcycle club. We discovered he was the brother of a billionaire and ran one of the biggest human trafficking rings worldwide. One by one, when we could, we joined the club he rode with in order to protect his back.”

Absinthe handed Scarlet her water. “Drink something, baby. You’re so pale. I want you to hear this, but if you need a break, just say so. We can go next door to the Botanical Gardens and walk around for a little bit.”

He was so thoughtful, worried about her when he was the one having to relive his childhood for her. She shook her head. “Keep going. Get it over with so you don’t have to think about it.”

“Sorbacov tried to put out hits on all the students in the various schools he thought might reflect badly on him or his son, Uri, who wanted to be president. Eventually Sorbacov and his son, Uri, were killed and we were free to live the way we wanted to live. Czar, the one sent on the original assignment, rather than abandon it, after putting so much time in and working his way close, even putting his marriage on the line, decided to stay. He told us to go, but each of us made the decision to stay and take down the ring. Someone had to do it.”