He turned away from the door and gasped at the sight of a girl emerging from the bathroom. She saw him a second later and opened her mouth wide. Eddie braced for the scream that would bring death running, but a low, susurring sound emanated from that open cavity. Eddie stared at her for a moment, his face a study in perplexity. Then it dawned on him-she was mute. She was also young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with long black hair and porcelain skin. She was wearing a long dress made of velvet that exposed small, ghostly shoulders, and there was a scarlet choker around her thin throat. A tiny black kitten purred in her embrace even as it glared at Eddie.
She was the most beautiful thing Eddie had ever seen.
But he wasn’t so startled by her beauty that his self-preservation instincts were swept away. She was clearly one of The Master’s kept women. A Mistress (in the dispenser-of-pain-and-discipline sense of the word). She was beginning to edge back toward the open bathroom door. Eddie closed the gap between them before she could slip away, clamped a fistful of glistening black hair with one hand, and used the other to lay the blade of the knife against her throat. The kitten dropped to the floor.
His mouth pressed against her ear. “Listen to me, girl,” he whispered. “I don’t want to hurt you. I know I probably look like a maniac, but that’s only because I’ve had a really bad day.” More like a really bad six months, but who was counting? “Help me hide and we won’t have any problems.”
She struggled in his grip, and he wound his hand tighter in her hair, eliciting a small cry of pain. He felt bad about it, but he didn’t really have a choice. “Christ, what’s wrong with you?” His voice was a more insistent whisper. “I’m the one with the knife, little missy, so knock it off.”
He felt something rubbing against his ankle and looked down to see the kitten staring up at them. “Piss off, furball.”
The girl went rigid in his grip and hissed at him again. Eddie’s gaze went back to the kitten, which was still watching him with those creepy yellow eyes. A plan began to formulate in his head. He saw instantly it was his only hope, albeit a thin one. He released the girl and picked up the kitten, placing the knife at its puny neck. The girl whirled around and gaped at him in horror.
Eddie tensed for a moment as he heard voices in the hallway, getting closer by the moment, and he briefly believed his desperate run to freedom had reached the endgame stage. The voices grew louder. They were right outside the door. Then they were moving away down the hallway, growing dimmer.
Eddie released the breath he’d been holding.
“Okay,” he said, still keeping his voice low. “Here’s the deal. I don’t mean you or the kitty harm. I only want out of here. Help me hide out awhile, maybe even find a way to get me out of this place, and you won’t have to call PETA on me.” But now a measure of menace entered his voice. “Then again, fuck me over and furball gets skewered.” He turned the kitten’s face toward her. “Got it?”
Her eyes narrowed, became thin slits of rage, but she nodded.
“Good.”
Eddie looked around the room. It was dominated by a large four-poster bed with a heavy canopy of lavender velvet. In a corner next to it was a full-length oval mirror on a swivel stand. There was a chest of drawers and a vanity. He supposed he could hide under the bed, but the thought made him feel claustrophobic. He peeked inside the bathroom. He saw a Jacuzzi, a shower stall, and a lot of ornate fixtures.
He stepped all the way into the bathroom, peeked around the door, and saw a closet large enough to house an immigrant family. Eddie returned to the bedroom, glanced around one more time, and this time glimpsed the coiled cat-o’-nine-tails on the bedspread. The girl followed his gaze, smiled when she saw what he was looking at, and raised a lascivious eyebrow at him.
Eddie shuddered. “Think again. I got drawn in that way last time, didn’t I? One minute you’re playing a kinky game, the next you’re trussed up on a rack with clamps on your privates.”
The girl shrugged.
“Look, I know you’re one of them, but my gut tells me there’s a tiny uncorrupted corner of your soul. I think maybe your heart’s not as black and twisted as the other sick fuckers here. You know why I think that?”
The girl shook her head, a hint of a smirk appearing at one corner of her mouth.
But Eddie was undaunted. “Because you care whether this thing lives or dies. Hey, I still only trust you about as far as I can bowl you, but I think there’s a chance I’ll be okay as long as I’ve got your little friend.” He sighed. “And, fuck it, I’m about out of other options. I’ll hide in your closet for a bit. I guess they’ll be looking for me soon, but I’m willing to bet you could convince them I’m not here. Am I right?”
The girl appeared to think about it a moment, then nodded.
“Great.” Eddie edged toward the bathroom. “Now you think about what I told you. Come up with a way to get me out of here. We can talk about it-” Eddie frowned. “Shit. Do you have paper and something to write with?”
She nodded again.
“Good.” He stepped into the bathroom. “Say good night to kitty? He gazed again into her cold, calculating eyes. “And keep thinking about what might happen if you double-cross me. Think about kitty guts spilling on the floor.”
The kitten meowed softly.
The girl stared a plea at him.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie said, strangely compelled to offer reassurance. “He’ll be fine. Good night, now.”
He walked into the closet and pulled the door shut. A row of long dresses hung from a rail. He slipped behind them, feeling their silky smoothness brush his bare torso. Then he arranged himself in a dark corner of the floor, held the kitten close, and cooed at it.
It watched him with its strangely luminescent eyes.
Shane Wallace liked to think of himself as a guy’s guy. The kind of hearty slab of macho attitude lesser men aspired to be like. An object of envy. A stud whose mere presence in a room got the ladies purring with desire. His days as a star running back at his high school were a decade in the past, but his body still looked cut from granite. Female heads turned wherever he went, a phenomenon that might have been an ego-booster had his ego ever been in need of boosting.
Such was not the case.
Shane Wallace wasn’t just about surface shit, though. Sure, he liked his chicks hot, but he wasn’t a shallow bastard. He was really a deep kind of guy. Sensitive but stoic, the way a real man should be-like Mel Gibson in the movies. A guy you could count on. He was a strong shoulder to cry on for the girls, a dependable drinking buddy to his male friends. He was the kind of guy you wanted on your side when life was fucking you in the ass. He often thought he would make a good movie hero. Hell, he had the looks, was quick with the one-liners, popular with the ladies, and he was-in his not even remotely humble opinion-definitely heroic.
So he was having a great deal of difficulty reconciling this deeply held self-image with his current predicament-hiding behind a tree and squatting bare-assed with his pants down around his ankles while people around him screamed and called out his name. Well, there was only one person calling his name, and he was pretty sure that voice belonged to Karen. It had that familiar grating quality about it.
That lying slut.