They left the town behind and Kate settled back in her seat. She felt sick with hunger, thirst, and a level of fear she had never imagined.
A few mules out of town, Ion set his thick fingers on her leg again. He said something to the young strigoi to her right and this time the laughter in the smokefilled car was strained with a new tone.
“My friend,” said Ion, leaning so close that Kate could see bits of food caught between his teeth, “says he has never fucked an American woman.”
Kate said nothing. She imagined her body made of razors. Ion said something else and rubbed his hand up her leg again. When she tried to stop him, he slapped away her wrists. Ion said something to the garlicsmelling man; a moment later this one set his left hand on her right thigh.
Kate closed her eyes and tried to remember the selfdefense classes she had taken at the Boulder Rec Center years before. All she could remember was the laconic comment Tom had made when she returned home from the exercises, feeling bruised but powerfuclass="underline" “Kat,” he had said, “the bad news is what my daddy taught menamely, a good big guy can always beat the shit out of a good little guy. I'm afraid that even when you get good at all this kicking and gouging stuff, you'll always be a little guy. So carry Mace. Learn to use the gun I keep in the closet.” He had hugged her then. “Or just stick close to me, kid.”
Kate opened her eyes. The driver was glancing back over his shoulder. His face was flushed.
Ion pointed to a gravel road leading away from the highway to a small copse of white trees. The driver nodded and turned off the highway. A single Dacia passed them and then the road was empty. The Mercedes' suspension absorbed the ruts and bumps as they crawled their way ahundred yards to the grove of trees and an old house or barn that had once stood there. Nothing remained now but stones and the collapsed roof.
Ion's fingers slid up her thighs to her crotch. He poked at her through the thin cotton of her underpants.
When I count to three, I wall claw has eyes. I wall sank my nails in and pull his eyes from their sockets. Let it end here if it has to. She curled her fingers, feeling her unkempt nails and wishing they were longer. One . . . two . . .
As if reading her mind, Ion slapped her in the face. It had seemed a casual movement, almost languorous, but the force of the big man's hand knocked her back into the seat cushions and made her almost lose consciousness. She tasted blood in her mouth and nose. When she was fully aware of where she was and what was happening, she was stretched half across the seat, the garlicsmelling,, pockmarked man had gotten out and gone around to stand behind Ion in the open door, and Ion was shoving up her skirt and pulling off her pants. Ion was half standing, half leaning in the car. His weight was on her lower legs. She had no leverage to kick; no chance to squirm away. The driver was turned fully in his seat now, his arms hanging over the leather seatback and his fingers flexing the way she had seen men's hands do at prizefights and football games.
Ion snapped something at the other two and then smirked at her. “I tell them, we take the turns. Three times for the each of us. One time for each of your holes . . . yes?” He reached into his coat pocket, removed a pair of shears, cut through the plastic that bound her wrists and handed the shears to the driver. He said something and garlicbreath laughed eagerly.
“I tell him,” translated Ion, “if you struggle, to cut your nose off.” His wet lips curled up. “But I say, he hold you down while he is to do it so that I am not interrupted.” Ion unbuttoned his pants and lowered them with a violent tug. He spit on one hand and rubbed his halferect and uncircumcised penis vigorously while his other hand spread her thighs apart.
I am not here. This is rot me.
The strigoi called Ion leaned over and breathed in her face. “I remember . . . you try to kill me, bitch . . . now I fuck you to death.” His mouth opened wide and descended on hers. His tongue was like moist sandpaper against her closed lips. She could feel his wet member thrusting against her thighs and groin.
Kate was concentrating so hard on not being there, on feeling and sensing nothing, that the sharp sound at first seemed remote, unrelated to anything. It came again, like the crack of a branch being snapped, and Kate opened her eyes. Ion pulled his mouth away. He was not quite inside her, but his face was sagging in the slack, alarmed vacuity that some men show at the second of orgasm. There was another crack and the garlicsmelling strigoi behind Ion seemed to throw himself away from the open car door.
The driver shouted something, the branch cracked again, glass shattered and sprayed, and the shears fell to the carpet near Kate's right shoulder.
She reacted in less than a second, twisting, swinging her right arm over Ion's forearm, seizing the open shears and slashing up and to the left in a single movement that could not be blocked. She felt the blade slice through cheek muscle and rattle along teeth. Ion screamed and spit blood onto the black leather upholstery. All the while, his hips continued to move against her, his penis batting against her crotch.
Kate shoved backward, lifted her knees, got her feet on Ion's shoulders, and shoved him out the door. She clambered backward but the other door was locked.
Ion was bellowing, staggering for balance as his lowered pants fell below his knees. The strigoi clamped his hand to his cheek, squeezed shut the flap of sliced skin and muscle that ran from his ear to his mouth, spat blood, and said, “I kill you now.”
“No,” said a voice behind him.
Ion whirled. Lucian stepped into Kate's line of vision, raised a black pistol with a very long barrel, and shot Ion in the face from three feet away.
Chapter Thirty-six
Lucian walked to the open door of the Mercedes and Kate set her back against the locked door and held the shears in front of her, her thumb tight on the top of the blades. She was gasping, trying not to hyperventilate even while her lungs demanded more air.
“Kate,” said Lucian, lowering the longbarreled pistol and holding his hand out.
Kate clenched her teeth and lifted the shears like a knife. “Stay away. Don't touch me.”
Lucian nodded and stepped back. He reached into the grass below the car, came up with her underpants, and set them carefully on the rear seat. “I'll be out here,” he said softly.
Kate sat watching, the shears still raised, while Lucian dragged the body of the driver out, then returned for the other two. She pulled on her pants, her body still rippling with disgust and shock, and then peered out the car door before getting out.
Lucian had moved the bodies to the far side of the car, near the collapsed barn. The pistol was tucked in his belt but there was an ax in his hands. “Kate, come look at this.”
She leaned against the car a moment. She was shivering and her mind refused to focus. Colors seemed to shift and part of her still wanted to scream or weep, or both.
“Kate, please come look.” Lucian was kneeling by the body of the driver.
She approached slowly, the shears by her side. The sight of the driver lying there still twitching triggered some medical part of her mind and she knelt next to the man, her fingers probing the neck for a pulse. There was none. The driver's hands and legs still twitched.
“I shot him in the throat and the forehead,” Lucian said emotionlessly. “Wouldn't you agree that he should be dead?”
Kate stared at the young medical student as if seeing him for the first time.
Lucian touched the twitching fingers. “It's the virus that refuses to die, Kate: Even now it's sealing off the wounds, coagulation working at an impossible rate. The virus is directing a surfeit of oxygen to the brain even as body temperature drops to that of a corpse.”