My face flushed with heat before I could stop it, and she laughed with delight.
“Strip.” She dropped her chin slightly, her eyes locked with mine.
My mouth opened and then closed. I sputtered. “What!?”
She motioned slightly with the barrel of the gun, the black void at the tip never wavering below the neck. “I want to get a proper look at you. Strip. Make it slow.”
The flush spread down my neck, and I bared my teeth, like a cornered animal. I was sick of being violated. “No.”
I had no time to react before Jana fired. The bang caused my vision to white out and my mouth to sear with sensory overload. The air bowed with pressure. I was sure I’d been hit, but my heart continued to rush slickly in my chest while the bullet graze on my cheek began to bleed.
“I said strip.” Jana’s voice was cold.
“Where did… you learn to shoot like that?” I had to distract her while I searched for the out. I wasn’t certain I could bring my hands up to start on my shirt collar buttons, but I was certain that I wanted to live. With shaking, fumbling fingers, I started on my clothes.
“I used to go hunting with my pa,” Jana said languidly. “A real long time ago.”
“You’re… from the South?” I loosened one button and then the next, unable to stop my trembling. No one, nobody, had seen me like this. She was watching me hungrily, like food that hadn’t died. Her nipples were hard. They stood out against the fabric of her dress.
“Tennessee.”
I reached the last button on my shirt and let it drop behind me. My skin prickled with gooseflesh. “Why—”
“Shut up.” She snapped, and her finger tensed. “No talking. Only time I want your mouth open is when there’s something going in and out of it.”
A tremor passed through my spine. I uncomfortably, unhappily stripped my undershirt up over my head. It brought an approving sound from Jana.
“That’s it.” Her voice had dropped, low and heated. “You’re so shy. I never thought I’d see a shy Vor v Zakone.”
I wasn’t a Vor v Zakone, but she didn’t look like she was receptive to being corrected. Haltingly, I forced my hands towards my belt, and when they reached it, they shook uncontrollably.
“You ain’t ever shown anyone your little man before?” Jana’s mouth spread in a crooked, lewd smile.
“No.” I tried to pull the buckle out, but my hands were wooden. Jana twitched the gun warningly, and I somehow managed to undo it. My teeth chattered until I wired my jaws tight. “And I never want to.”
“Oh, I know. I know, honey. And that’s exactly why I need to see.” She licked her lip and let her tongue linger, dark red on orange. “You’re perfect. So pale.”
I glared at her in hot defiance as I toed my shoes off. My cheek bled freely, and I licked at the corner of my mouth. The blood was a sweet iron tang. It felt effervescent on my tongue, crackling with some kind of subtle force.
Of course. Blood.
“I always wanted to see something like this.” Jana gestured to my forgotten fly. “An honest Wise Virgin. You’re the real deal. You can’t imagine how I had to contort my magic to stop Rob from killing you on the boardwalk. That DOG wanted you so badly.”
My legs felt like blocks as I stiffly stepped out of my trousers, moving slightly to the side and awkwardly bumping my knee into the corner of the bed.
Jana laughed, but I said nothing, jaw working. My skin crawled. The air felt wet and tacky.
“Socks first. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a naked man in socks.”
The only barrier between my body and her eyes after that were my trunks and my gloves. I had to face it: I had faced worse than this. As my focus grew, the mind-chatter went from turbulent terror to still apprehension, and I pulled off one sock, and then the other, standing in her room on bare, soft white feet. My throat was tight, aching sharply. The bullet graze on my cheek burned cold, but Jana’s intensity was daring me to try something. I knew through the pain in my gut and chest that I wouldn’t be able to get the word of power out before she pulled the trigger in my face.
“And the gloves.” Under other circumstances, her tone would have been teasing, flirtatious. It wasn’t. She was soaking me up with her eyes, consuming my fear and loathing. But I couldn’t do it.
“Please,” I said. “No.”
Jana lifted the gun and raised her eyebrows. “Gloves or your ear.”
I would not fail this. My eyes and face burned red as I shakily pulled the gloves off, one at a time, and threw them angrily on the covers. It brought a soft sound from Jana. I growled back at her, mouth and nose full of the taste of blood. I felt like how I had in the bathtub, helpless and furious, and I stared at the tip of the pistol as I stripped the last off, ticcing, wincing as the waistband rasped over my soft fingertips. Without the protective second skin, my tongue rippled with the texture and the accompanying color.
“Uncircumcised? Look at you, all covered up,” Jana exclaimed, chest expanding as she breathed deeply. Was she smelling me? She adjusted the gun, and it trembled slightly. Not enough.
I said nothing, clenching my trunks in one white-knuckled fist.
“Perfect,” she said. With my gloves off, my body was a live antenna: I could hear every movement of fabric, every shift of her thighs, every small, wet sound made behind her teeth. My vision contracted. If she touched me, I was either going to break her arm or throw up on her before I died. Or both.
Jana didn’t touch me. Instead, she reached into her collar and pulled free a long chain, like the one she had worn in her office. This one wasn’t silver: it was copper, with a drop pendant emblazoned with another Goetic seal, the seal of Ashtaroth. “Just perfect. And now comes the best part, Alexi—the part where you don’t have to think anymore.”
And now, now came whatever magic she had planned. I sighted down at her, pupils drawn to points, and lifted my chin as I sucked in a breath through narrowed nostrils. Chet.
“I’ll brand you tonight, train you up. We’ll find the Fruit, and then we’ll go to Chicago together.” She sucked her lip under her teeth and bit it until red welled up around her tooth. “I know people there that will take the time to break you in just right. Not like Frank—he couldn’t even get it up.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Yuri again, black tears streaming down his cheeks as he split from the inside. There was nothing worse than what Jana and her people, whoever they were, were going to do to me. My arm snapped out: I hurled the wad of cloth in my hand as I threw myself to the side. As I tumbled, I saw Jana track me with the experience of a hunter.
The certainty of death bore down like a mantle.
“CHET!” I roared as I hit the ground, drowned out by gunshot.
Hot pain seared through my knee: I shouted wordlessly as something cracked above my head. Jana screamed in agony.
Deafened, disoriented, I scrambled up to see Jana’s eyes huge with shock. The front of her dress bloomed scarlet past her clutching hand, but she was already aiming again. I dove down beside the bed and ripped the sheets off, flinging them at her as she fired again and again. A bullet clipped my arm: I heard another tear through the material of her mattress as she spun around after me, tripped, and toppled over my naked chest with a harsh, bestial sound.
“Whore,” Jana rasped, her gaze wandering over my face. “You’re… just a… whore. Like all of them. Amma… Vmm Mmm… emet…gis…”
I fought out from under her dead weight in a panic and scrambled back in a crab crawl that landed me on my ass when I hit the dresser and bounced. I dragged up the sheets, covered myself, and scrubbed her blood from my chest. It clung stickily to my bare skin, and I ticced, spasming through face and fingers. Shaking, I staggered to my feet.