Midnight Squad: The Grim (16 page)

           
“Sure he’s hot, but there’s a lot more to him than that.”
Janine said. “Well if anyone would know I guess it would be you.” Alhambra
sniped. The room gasped. What can I say? Birds have to fly, fish have to swim,
and Alhambra has to be a mean spirited bitch. Janine growled, “Oh don‘t be
jealous. I‘d be angry too if
Grimmy
did everything
but chew his arm off to get away from me! What’s the expression…coyote ugly?”
Alhambra started laughing, “Oh please! I’ve had him in every way imaginable.”
They all gasped while I could only cringe in embarrassment. I felt the heat
rise to my cheeks. “What? Three months is a long time. I got bored, and he just
wouldn’t die. I don’t know if he’s just too stupid or what, but no matter what
we did he just kept on going.” The room exploded in anger, Janine and Alhambra
screaming at one another. The other women tried to break up the argument. I
froze in my seat my hands trembling as I tried to fight off the memories of the
time we spent together. Tears were already running down my cheeks.

           
“Break it up you two. He’s going to be down here in a few
minutes, and we can at least act as if we get along. He was just shot, and the
man could use a quiet night.” Penny’s tone was calm, but demanding. The women
stopped immediately. Clearly, Penny was the unofficial leader. If I was going
to have any chance, I’d need her on my side. As expected, Alhambra was the
first to break the peace, “It’s kind of funny that you’d be so concerned about
that meat sack now. You didn’t even check on him in the clinic.” I’d wondered
about that myself.

           
“I’m a vampire. We don‘t really do places like that,
vampires just really aren‘t the get well soon type.” Penny made everything
sound so matter of fact. It was like my health and well-being was beneath her.
I was more than a little irritated, and I had to remind myself that if I was
going to eavesdrop, I couldn’t really complain about not liking what I heard.
DD wasn‘t satisfied, “I don’t know that he’ll see it that way. I mean, he
nearly died, and you didn’t even check on him. That’s got to hurt his feelings
.“
Count on DD to get right to the point. How she knew me so
well so quickly was just astonishing. I suddenly felt guilty about snooping,
and wanted to turn off the screen, but I just couldn’t bring myself to stop
watching. I was learning so much, and around here the learning curve was steep.

           
Penny bit her lip nervously, and was clearly
uncomfortable. After a few moments of what looked like indecisiveness, her
voice sounded confident, although it was a little sad, “Well what’s done is
done. Either he accepts it, or he doesn’t. I’m not going to waste time begging
forgiveness for every slight.” Every slight; I was shot! My teeth were grinding
while I stewed over it all.

           
“Ladies!
Ladies! We’re getting
off topic. It’s not about our resident bloodsucker’s bedside manner. It’s about
what that man was like naked. Come on it’s just us girls. Give the dish on
Hunkzilla
.” Katy said, she was practically begging Janine
to give all the details. Janine just shook her head, “Nope, that’s just between
me and him. I will say that he left me with no complaints.” Katy and DD both
screamed, hopping up and down like two teenage girls. Elizabeth and doctor
Nowitski
just looked bored. I watched Penny. The muscles in
her jaw kept flexing like she was forcing herself to stay quiet, and
Danika
seemed entertained by watching everyone else’s
reaction.

           
Alhambra noticed Penny too, “What, is someone jealous?
Janine might not tell, but I have nothing to hide. He was marvelous. At first,
it was fun to make him climax against his will. I loved watching his hatred
turn into shock as his own body betrayed him. It was just so much fun to have
him cursing me with one breath, and begging me for release in the next. That
lasted the first month. Normally my toys don’t make it past a month, so we
started getting creative during month two. I made him fulfill every fantasy his
depraved little mind could muster. Of course, I added my own special twists to
them. By the third month we’d run out of ideas. I even brought in other pets to
help make our time more interesting, of course by then he was a good little lap
dog. It’s a shame I didn’t have more time with him. He was such a fast learner.
Is that enough for you? If you want, I recorded a few instances of our
playtime. I even have a few clips with him and a few of my other pets. Unfortunately,
my other pets weren‘t anywhere near as durable as Joseph, and that naughty boy
kept breaking all my playthings.”

           
Penny stepped up to the Jinn. She leaned in and whispered
something. It was too faint for the
mic
to pick up
the sound, but whatever it was, Alhambra quickstepped out of the room. Katy
yelled, “I wouldn’t mind seeing those recordings.” She was laughing until Penny
turned to face her. The vampire’s back was to me, but clearly she wasn’t happy
because Katy said apologetically, “Hey, what can I say. I still think he’s
probably going to turn out to be an ass, but he has those shoulders, and that
butt. If he had a foreign accent he’d be a walking orgasm.” Penny’s body was
rigid. I still couldn’t see her face but Katy did. She gave a scared little
squeak and went back to the relative safety of making the popcorn.

           
DD finally broke the silence, “So
Grimmy’s
file said he was tortured by her, but that didn’t really sound like torture.
That sounded more like every teenage boy’s wet dream.” I felt ashamed. It was
so hard to explain the whole situation to anyone. Surprisingly it was the
doctor that stepped in. “A Jinn can’t intentionally injure, or damage a person
directly. Therefore, they can’t torture someone like you’d normally think. What
they can do is give pleasure. They can give so much pleasure that just stopping
is torture. In fact, that’s how they break you. She tortured him with sex, and
pleasure beyond your wildest imaginations. I know that sounds strange, but it
was apparently very effective. She couldn’t kill them directly. However, she
was able to drive them to suicide within the first two weeks. Grim was the only
one that survived. He lasted three months. Do you have any idea how unusual
that is? Every file we have on her kind says that once they have you, you will
die, and soon. It’s unfathomable that he was able to survive.”

           
Penny flopped down on the couch, “There was a vampire
that was captured
by a Jinn
. He was a blood cousin of
mine. The Jinn kept him for just over three weeks. When we got him back, he was
completely shattered. We tried to fix him, but some things you can’t repair. We
finally had to destroy him. He was just too…broken. What they did to him became
the stuff of ghost stories. Even vampires have things they fear, and all
vampires fear being a prisoner of a Jinn.” She was lost in her thoughts. Her
soft red hair covered her face from the camera. Katy questioned, “But Alhambra
is afraid of you…isn’t she
?“
Penny swept the hair from
her beautiful face and leaned back, “In a fight I’d tear her apart, but if she
got me alone, and trapped. I’ve never heard of any person surviving more than a
month as a Jinn’s captive. I’d like to say that I’m overestimating the man, but
I don’t know. What I do know is we’re sharing a roof with a man that survived
being a plaything
for a Jinn
for three months. How he
survived is beyond me, but Alhambra couldn’t break that man. He survived
a Jinn
, and that scares the crap out of me. If you were
smart it would scare you too. It’s my experience that anything that outlasts
its
tormentor,
is probably something much worse.”

           
“And don’t forget, he beat our best time in battle like
it was a joke. It was embarrassing.”
Danika
said
nervously.

           
Elizabeth interrupted, “Ladies, I was a little leery of
bringing in another member to this team. General
Terwillicker
assured me that our Sergeant was the very best. That man has been living from
war zone to war zone for almost ten years.
Eisen
…General
Terwillicker
said that the experience, and battle
readiness would be invaluable to us. If he can get us up to speed then he has
my support.” The witch questioned, “I’m just not sure I like the idea of the
big manly man coming in and saving all of us little girls. I mean how 1950’s
can you get. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind climbing all over him like a
jungle gym, but I don’t know if I like having to answer to a man. I don’t care
to be submissive to someone just because they have dangly bits.”

           
Penny shook her head, “Please, you’re acting like he’s some
caveman. You’d never make it as a vampire. There 1950’s are nothing. There are
still vampires that think fondly of the 1750’s.”
Danika
laughed, “At least your people have an excuse. In werewolf packs, the alpha
male and female are supposed to make all the decisions. The alpha male has
complete authority, and in theory, the alpha female acts as the chief advisor.
With most packs, the female has no power at all. She just gets to boss the
other women when the men aren’t around.”

           
DD gasped, “That sounds horrible.”

           
“Yeah, I was just lucky that my parents were the alphas.
They caught all kinds of hell when they let me leave the pack. Several angry
males were furious when a fertile female without a bond mate walked away. There
would probably have been a serious challenge to my father’s authority, but he
had enough respect that the pack tolerated it, but only grudgingly. Katy,
you‘re complaining because in theory he might be a caveman. In the pack, all
fertile females have children. Nobody is special, and no one can just live his
or her own life. The health and strength of the pack is the only thing that
matters.”

           
“But you’re a lesbian? Didn’t the guys understand?” Katy
questioned.

           
“It isn’t about love. It’s about the pack. A male would
have taken me in order to rise up in the pack. Many of the packs have mates
within the pack, and wives or husbands outside of the pack. Someday I’ll
probably have to go back and rejoin to help keep up the pack. They will demand
either I return and come get me, or another pack might try to force me to join
them instead. Either way my options are pretty limited. I try not to think
about it much, and just enjoy the free time I have right now.”

           
Katy was genuinely upset, and looked to Janine for
comfort. “Hey don’t look at me. My daddy sent me to a convent, and they burned
me at the stake because another man couldn’t keep it in his pants. I think a
young woman like you is lucky to be living in a time like this. A time where
women are actually starting to count, and while it isn’t perfect, at least it’s
headed in the right direction. Women matter in this time. That’s something that
still amazes me.”

           
Penny then added, “As much as I hate to admit it, as
things go, we’ve all got it better than the jinn. The female has, in theory,
all the real power, but the male Jinn's have the ability to control the female,
even against her will. Jinn males create their mate from a human. They offer
them all the power in the universe and all they have to do is serve the male
completely. Even Alhambra can’t refuse the will of her maker. The male can only
take one female at a time. He can make another female, but only if the first
one is killed. All that power sounds great at first, but at some point you have
to realize that you’re nothing more than a very powerful slave.”

           
I sat there in silence. She was a slave? I thought of her
face twisted in hatred and anger. My mind wandered through all the suffering
she caused me. It seemed impossible to me that she could be anyone’s slave. A
cell phone went off and Elizabeth stood up. She looked at the phone and said,
“Don’t start the movies without me. I’ll be back in a few. I need to take this
call
.“
She walked out of the room and stood just
outside the recreation room door. She was having some type of argument. I hit a
couple of buttons and the large monitor flashed to another camera…didn’t want
anyone to think I was some sort of snoop. Besides, I could watch Elizabeth on
one of the smaller monitors.

           
The main monitor switched to Alhambra’s room. She moved
seductively in front of the camera.
Her tiny caramel body
undulating slowly in an almost boneless motion in front of the camera.
I
cursed under my breath when I felt my erection swell. “Joseph…Joseph…can you
hear me? Do I have your attention yet? Joseph?” I watched her slowly unbutton
her shirt. My eyes couldn’t turn from that body. I’d seen her nude before. I’d
felt that body many times, and as much as it turned my stomach I just couldn’t
stop responding to her. Tiny, but perfect breasts exposed themselves to my greedy
eyes.
“Joseph…if you can hear me move the camera.”
I
watched as the camera panned left and right. I hadn’t touched anything, but
clearly, someone had. I looked to the monitors, and I accounted for everyone.
DD, the doctor, and my squad were in the recreation room. They were still
chatting. Elizabeth was outside the door, and looked pissed. She was squeezed
that same horrible necklace I’d seen her wear before. God that thing was just
tacky, and I could care less about fashion. Ms. Mann was crushing the necklace
as if she was trying to strangle the life out of whoever was on the other side
of the phone. I wasn’t too concerned about her though. Clearly, there had to be
someone else watching the cameras beside me. Someone was keeping a secret, and
my stomach knotted up nervously.