Freeboot pulled Hammerhead close.
The room they looked into shimmered with haze from the thermal water flowing through. It was rich with plants and flowers, antique furniture, statues and tapestries. Bottles of wine and liquor on a burnished copper bar seemed to glow with their own light.
But the centerpiece was Marguerite, rising from the big stone bath when the panel opened, as Freeboot had instructed her to. She was full-bodied, firmly muscled, with generous breast and hips. Her long black hair streamed wet down her back. Her taut olive skin was beaded with moisture.
She acted unaware of the watching men. Moving without hurry, she sat on the bathtub’s rim and sensuously started rubbing a fine sheen of oil onto her breasts.
Hammerhead’s staring eyes looked like golf balls-Freeboot could feel his mind, sense his astonishment at what he was seeing. The precious goal, so long the object of desire, was almost within reach.
“She’s going to be yours any time you want her,” Freeboot whispered to him. “She’ll do whatever you tell her, she’s got to. And not just her. Any bride you want, anything you want. You see? That’s the way of heaven.”
Freeboot reached over to a shelf and took down another prepared goblet. Hammerhead drained it, not leaving the window. He was still staring at Marguerite when his knees buckled. He landed on them heavily, then crashed to the floor.
This time, the red wine was spiked with GHB. It would knock him out for twenty or thirty minutes. Then he would regain a dreamlike consciousness, but not be able to move.
Next stop on the journey was a way that heaven was not.
Half an hour later, Freeboot sat in the underground command bunker, drinking mescal and watching a monitor from a hidden infrared camera that was focused on Hammerhead’s face. Hammerhead was in another of the camp’s old mine shafts, stripped naked and sprawled back against a rocky wall seeping with cold damp. The blackness in there was absolute.
His eyelids started to flicker. After a couple of minutes, they stayed open. He would be aware of his surroundings now-conscious of the cold, the dark, the sharp rocks biting into his flesh-but too leaden to do anything more than twitch.
Freeboot helped himself to another sharp hit of speed. He wanted to give Hammerhead’s discomfort time to solidify into fear-the nightmare of being paralyzed in a dungeon-while the luscious vision of Marguerite, impossibly far away now, tortured his memory.
When Freeboot was good and ready, he started into the dark tunnel, moving as silently as a creature of the night. The meth surged in his brain, adding its power to the LSD and mescal. He carried an arm-long brand of pitchy pine, its knotty end soaked in gasoline. He advanced until he could hear Hammerhead’s rough breathing. Then he clicked his cigarette lighter. The torch burst into flame, lighting the cavern’s walls with a sinister flickering glow.
Hammerhead’s wide eyes stared helplessly at the advancing fire.
“I can give you heaven,” Freeboot called out in a harsh, echoing voice. “But I can destroy you, too. Have a taste of hell, brother! You can’t move, but you can feel, ohhh, yes.”
He crouched and thrust the flaming torch close to Hammerhead’s bare chest. Hammerhead’s eyes bulged and his body jerked. A thin choked cry forced its way out from his slobbering lips.
Freeboot pulled the torch back.
“Except it’s not just a little taste like that,” he roared. “It’s a fire that’s a million times hotter, burning from inside your bones. And it lasts forever.”
He leaned forward, staring into Hammerhead’s eyes from twelve inches away. The young man’s rioting emotions lay bare before him-terror, pain, rage, confusion.
But more powerful than all the rest put together was the urge to please his master. It was always like this. Freeboot wanted to laugh, but he kept his face stony.
“You belong to me, body and soul,” he said, murmuring now, working his way further into Hammerhead’s mind. “I am in you. If you ever disobey me, if you ever turn rat, there ain’t no place you can ever hide. I will find you, and I will bring you to this.”
He held the torch to Hammerhead’s chest again, closer and longer. This burn would blister his skin, not enough to impair him, but painful as hell. He wanted Hammerhead to know that this had not been just a dream.
“Now I will give you release,” Freeboot said, and stood. Hammerhead had managed to roll his face to the side, panting in agony.
Freeboot took a third goblet of wine from its place. This time it was laced with chloral hydrate-an old-fashioned Mickey Finn-and Valium. It would knock Hammerhead out within seconds, and keep him down for a few hours.
When he woke up, he would be on his way to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Emlinger.
Freeboot gripped Hammerhead’s chin, tipped back his head, and sloshed the wine into his mouth, holding it open while he choked it down.
“Sleep,” Freeboot said. “When you wake up, you’re going to find out the reason you were born.”
12
A sharp pop brought Monks out of the half-sleep that he had drifted into, hunched in the chair in Mandrake’s bedroom. He sat up, startled and confused. He was sure that the sound had come from somewhere in the lodge. But he hadn’t heard anyone come inside.
Then he smelled the harsh reek of something burning. He quickly identified it as chemical, a fuel, and he realized what must have happened: the glass chimney of a kerosene lamp had burst, as they sometimes did from their own heat. If the kerosene leaked, the log building could go up in flames fast.
He heaved himself out of the chair and strode through the hanging blanket. The fire in the hearth had gotten low and the main room was almost dark. His gaze searched for the burning lamp, not finding it. It might be in the kitchen. He started that way.
A hissing, blinding spray exploded into his face, cutting across his eyeballs like broken glass, searing his nostrils and thoat. He stumbled, clawing at his eyes.
Something smashed into the back of his right knee. He collapsed, hands flailing for the floor to break his fall. The spray blasted his eyes again. He rolled, face buried in his arms, clogged lungs choking as he tried to suck in air.
A boot pressed down hard on the back of his neck. A hand gripped a fistful of his hair, twisting it painfully. Cold metal brushed his ear.
Monks realized dimly, in disbelief, that his hair was being sawn off.
His muscles tensed instinctively to thrash his arms and legs, and shake off this horror that crouched on top of him. But a voice spoke in his mind, with eerie clarity-If you get Maced, don’t fight back, ’cause knives can slip.
He forced himself to lie still.
The hands left his head, then the boot released his neck. His burning eyes were still squeezed shut, but his throat was starting to open with agonizing slowness, allowing in a tiny trickle of rancid chemical-infused air. He remained motionless, concentrating on breathing, terrified that another burst of the spray would shut it off for good.
Instead, the attacker kicked him in the gut. His precious bit of breath exploded out of him in a wrenching wheeze. He doubled up fetally, knees tight against his chest and head hidden in his arms, braced for the stomping that would kill him.
But the boot only touched him one more time, tapping him contemptuously on the ear-a mocking suggestion of what it could do if it wanted to.
Then the room was still.
Monks lay as he was for another minute, until his lungs were taking in enough to function without being forced. Then he tugged his shirt loose and pressed the cloth against his eyes, clenching his teeth in pain as he fluttered them open. Mace and pepper sprays were designed not to do permanent damage, but he wanted to rinse without delay. He got up to his knees, swaying, trying to orient himself.