Page 63 of SIN Bone Deep

He did not want to give it to me, his expression concerned. “You’d better stay away,” he told me sternly. “He’s not in a good mood, especially with you Vossens.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I knew better than anyone how angry at us Vossens Warren was. “But I need his address.”

He sighed heavily and wrote it on the back of a paper coaster. “I didn’t give it to you. And if you turn up dead, it’s not my problem,” he told me as he slid it over the bar to me.

“Thank you,” I was already turning for the door. One of the barflies slipped off his stool as I passed him and followed me to the door.

“Hey,” he said as I crossed to the Porsche.

“I’m not interested,” I got into the driver’s side and started the engine.

“Fucking bitch!” He threw his beer bottle after me as I reversed out of the park onto the street, and it bounced across the bonnet of Mal’s car, leaving dents on its surface. Fuck. Well, if the damage upset Mal, he was a demon – he’d find the culprit and make him pay in blood.

The address was in the poor area of the town, where gardens were overgrown, paint flaked, and windows were boarded up. Warren’s house was at the end of the street, the garden merging with the tree line of scrubland. A dog, chained to the side, watched me with interest as I pulled up on the street in front of the house, and barked a warning to the man inside as I approached the door.

I did not need to knock. Warren was there, leaning into the doorframe, sneering down at me. He was not surprised to see me, and I had a moment’s hesitation. If he had run me down and stood over me watching me bleed, surely, he would have some reaction to me appearing on the doorstep unharmed. Unless he had mistaken me for my sister or thought that he had run her over and not me. We were similar enough in appearance, with our dark hair and pale skin, that it was possible.

“What do you want?” He demanded, dragging me out of my thoughts.

“I want to talk,” I told him trying to summon the appeal of a succubus, but fear had stripped me of hunger and desire. I had no idea what to say or do. But I knew I had to do something. I would not be bold enough to come again, and if I left now, it would be showing weakness. A man like Warren Jackson would seize on that and take pleasure in terrorizing me whenever he saw me around the town. “About your wife and daughter and about what you are doing to my family.”

There was smugness in his gaze. “I’m doing nothing to your family, girl. If you could prove it, you wouldn’t be knocking on my door, the police would. Run along with you now, I’m busy.” He started to move back and close the door.

“I’m not leaving,” I told him, catching at the door. “Not until you promise to leave my family alone.”

He paused and his eyes roamed over me. His lip curled, and he stepped back. “If you insist,” he said, gesturing for me to enter the house. Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly, I thought immediately. I knew that look on his face. A man who used his fists on his wife probably wasn’t a stranger to rape. If I went inside, I knew that as far as the town and the police would be concerned, I would be all but consenting to be raped.

I hadn’t thought this through, I realized. I hadn’t been smart about this.

His eyes flicked to the side, and I followed his gaze. His overgrown garden hid the door from his nearest neighbors and the house across the street’s front windows were boarded up – vacant. Even as the danger I was in sank in, he reached out, grabbed me by the hair, and dragged me inside.

He slammed me into the wall so hard that the air was knocked from my lungs, and I bit my tongue tasting blood. He closed and twisted the lock without releasing his grip on my hair grinding my cheekbone into the wall with the heel of his hand. I could hear the strands breaking and feel the cruel bite of my scalp as he used it to drag my face up, rasping the skin of my cheek painfully. His body pressed me into the wall, and I could feel that his cock was hard against my arse, and I thought my ribcage would crack from the pressure of his body weight against the bones.

“Stupid girl,” he sneered and then pulled away abruptly, and threw me to the floor. His foot rammed into my side, the pain shooting through me sharply so that I screamed and gagged at the same time, instinct curling me into a ball. He did not kick me again, but grabbed my hair, and used it to drag me out of the hallway and into the living room.

I kicked and clawed at the floor, fighting to free myself, and tasted bile and blood as my struggles and his violence caused me to collide with furniture. One of my shoes went flying. He released my hair only to grip the front of my dress, pulling me up into a sitting position and slamming his fist into my face. I felt bone break, and the wet rush of blood down the back of my throat. Grey pulled at the edges of my mind, the pain seeking to carry me into unconsciousness.

“Not so pretty now,” he let me fall to the floor as he felt the fight leave me and knelt over me. “Good thing I’m not interested in looking at you,” he pushed my dress up. I fought to open my eyes and struck out at him weakly, trying to push him off me, to stop him.

He tore through my pretty underwear.

“Don’t!” I managed to protest through swollen lips and a mouth filled with blood. “Stop.”

He laughed and continued to laugh as he raped me.

TWENTY-TWO

When the Wind blows from the East, expect the new and set the feast

– The Wiccan Rede

How many times in a space of twenty-four hours, could a person die? Twice, it seemed, for I was sure that I was dying, or about to, as he finished himself within me, and then rose to his feet. I could do nothing but watch through my eyelashes as he zipped his disgusting cock back into his jeans and nudged me with his booted foot.

“Fucking hell,” he grumbled under his breath and grabbed me by my ankle. I thought that he meant to force my legs open and rape me again and managed to summon enough fight to groan a protest and struggle to press my knees together. I felt as if he had torn my cunt apart in raping me and could not tell if it were cum or blood that was wet on my skin.

He used his hold on my ankle to pull me back through the living room and into the hallway. The burn of carpet gave way to the cold slick of tiles, and he dumped me beside a bathtub with the shower curtain pulled around it. “The fucking wasn’t worth the effort of burying you,” he told me. “But you had to be a stupid cunt.”

He stomped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. For a long time, I lay staring up at the water-marked ceiling, drifting in and out of consciousness, but gradually the pain receded, and my mind clarified. I wasn’t going to die, after all, it seemed. I sat up, moaning. There was blood between my thighs, but there was blood everywhere. My new outfit, bought just that afternoon, was torn and stained beyond saving. My body was torn and bruised and beaten.

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