Never: an erotic retelling of Peter Pan (53 page)

The hands ceased their rubbing and clenched together in a battle fist as the black fury boiled up inside.  Pietre struggled, but each time the emotion gripped him it was harder to control. 

The night he'd returned to find Wendee gone, he'd wanted to punish everyone who'd touched her as he'd not been able to, even Long Shadow who'd rescued her from Belle's treachery.  It had been a wild moment where he'd almost killed the messenger.  Long Shadow must have seen his death in Pietre's eyes but the 'Brave' had been fearless in the face of it, and in that control, Pietre had found his own.  

His enmity, then, had focused on its true target.  Belle - killer of Xavion, accomplice in the abduction of Wendee.  Traitor.

He should have left her in the backwater Louisiana whorehouse he'd bought her from - left her to a life of performing 'freak-shows'.  But instead he'd trusted her and...

Pietre's teeth gritted together painfully. 

The anger was strong, but with it came a poignant grief at Belle's loss.  She'd been more than a business partner - she'd been his companion, and importantly, his only source of physical release. 

So he hated her all over again for taking that comfort away from him.

She'd left him with nothing.  No Xavion.  No Belle.  No Wendee.  Nothing. 

Long Shadow stopped outside the cell door and Pietre turned to him.  "Can you kill her?   She's a witch.  She broke Xavion."

The Indian raised his security card to the lock, turned to face Pietre.  "She is the enemy.  I will cut out her heart and put it in your hands if you ask it."

Pietre nodded, seeing the fanaticism in his eyes.  "Only if you have to.  She may yet be valuable to me."  Pietre trembled as he thought of what Belle could do for him.  But he couldn't allow that now - couldn't trust her anymore.

"As you command."  Long Shadow inserted the card then lowered his hand to rest it over his gun.  The door slid silently open.

Pietre composed his face, ignoring the stench that billowed out with the door's opening.  The Indian entered the cell and Pietre stepped in behind him, brushing a hand over the light activator, flooding the small room with stark white light.  The door slid shut behind them.

"Belle, my dear, you've looked better," he remarked. 

Her clothing, or what remained of it, was encrusted with food and excrement, her face filthy.  Dark roots grew through hair as stiff and yellowed as the urine-soaked straw on which she sprawled. 

"I hope the accommodation is to your liking," he added.  "You always admired the medieval flavour of these cells," and he let his gaze wander around the bare rock walls, then back to Belle who sat propped in the corner, wrists manacled. 

Belle remained silent, prompting Pietre to turn to Long Shadow who was watching her intently, "You've been observing Belle’s confinement, Long Shadow.  Do you think she appreciates the tables being turned?"

The Indian shrugged. 

"There you are, Belle.  An unbiased opinion.  Long Shadow couldn't care less.  All he's interested in is finding the slowest method of killing you if you don't tell me where Armande has taken Wendee."  Pietre waited patiently but as the seconds ticked over his bland expression resettled into a frown. 

Belle’s stared, her lips were slack and a vacant expression dulling her eyes.  She was slipping out of his reach.

"Tell me where she is, Belle," he said, his voice gentling as he watched the madness descend on her.  "Or would death be a kindness - " 

She startled him with a short staccato burst of wheezing exhalations, then fell silent, huddled on her mound of straw like some demoniacal hen. 

Pietre looked away.  He'd put off his visit too long.  In his fear of Belle's power over him, he'd lost any chance he might have had of extracting information from her.  Still, he resisted the urge to end it.

Turning back, he asked again, "Where is she, Belle?  Tell me where Wendee is."

They waited in silence.  Then faintly he heard, "Pietre?  Is that you?"  Her lips barely moved.

"Yes, Belle.  It's me."

"Is that really you?" 

He watched as she straightened and pushed the matted hair out of her eyes - eyes that had suddenly grown cunning.

"My baby.  My little boy," she croaked in a hollow parody of the voice she used only with him.  Her 'proof' voice.  "Has my little boy come to visit me?"

Caught off-guard, Pietre felt the instinctive tightening in his belly.  He flicked a glance at Long Shadow.  The Indian must not fail as Xavion had.

He addressed the creature on the straw.  "Tell me where Armande has Wendee and I might forgive you."  It was a bad lie and Pietre knew she would hear it in his voice, yet he continued with it.  "You want to come back to me, don't you, Belle?"

Her tiny fingers unbuttoned what was left of her shirt.  "I never left you, boy," she drawled as her manacled hands parted the edges of her shirt.  Pietre watched in dread fascination as she revealed a pair of surprisingly clean and perfectly shaped breasts.  "Remember these?"  She cupped one, offering it to him, her filthy hand a sordid contrast to the creamy ripe flesh.  "Have a good look at them boy.  I might let you touch them this time if you're bad."

Pietre closed his eyes, swallowing down the sickness.  "Where is she, Belle?  If you tell me where she - "

"I know what you need, you naughty boy."

Pietre opened his eyes, saw Long Shadow crouched just out of Belle's reach, the barrel of his gun pointed unwaveringly at her head.

"I'll give you to Mr Black if you don't tell me, Belle," Pietre said, his voice faint.  The compulsion to close his eyes and go to that source, to take that succour again, was overpowering.  "You know what he’s capable of," Pietre reminded her.  "You don't want to die that way."

There was a pause where Pietre should have realised he'd frightened Belle - should have pursued the threat, enlarging it, speculating as to which orifice Mr Black would chose to penetrate with his elephantine organ.  But his mind was working against him, regurgitating the past, pushing it into the present. 

There were no memory-pictures from his childhood, no movie reel that ran behind his eyes - his sanity couldn't have born it.  But the sounds, the smells and the physical sensations were locked into his psyche like a blind man's nightmare.  They were inside him now and they tugged at his gut.  He knew what he needed and he knew the thing in the corner could give it to him.

"Come to me, boy," she wheedled, "You know it's worse if you don't come.  If I have to catch you."   The voice was so precise he simply had to close his eyes...

"I can't keep on," he said softly, in the same admonishing tone he recalled so painfully.  "Just this once and no more."

"Just this once," the voice from his past agreed, but he knew it would be more.  It was always more.  "I have to be cruel to be kind," she said, "You know that, boy."

"I know," Pietre whispered as he took a faltering step away from the door, his muscles clenching as he prepared for the pain.  He hated the pain.  Hated it every time.  But that was what it took and he couldn't stop.  His need was too great - the compulsion too strong.  "Just this once," he whispered.

"Come to me, boy," she husked and he blindly followed the voice.

In front of him the chains clanked in preparation but he kept his eyes tightly closed.  The part of him that was inside a filthy cell with an animal and a killer was draining away.  He was the 'boy' again, talking faltering steps towards the release he could no longer live without.

Then he jerked to a stop. 

The sound had been nothing more than a puff of air, but it had stilled the clanking.  Pietre's hands balled into fists.

Beside him, a voice said, "Wendee.  Remember Wendee.  We have to find her."  But Pietre was thinking of a weapon, something he could kill this intruder with.  He had nothing but his bare hands and he couldn't use them.  Couldn't touch...

"We have to find Wendee," the voice said persuasively, and he remembered then that he could touch someone - would touch.  But he had to find her first.

Opening his hands, Pietre flexed the fingers, then turned to face the door.  Seconds ticked over as his mind, adept at blocking horror, swept what lay behind him into the past. 

"The game is over and my brother has won," he said at last, pleased by the normality of his tone.  "Tell Christophe to send the acknowledgment - Armande will reply.  Whatever his demands, I must accede to them.  I must have Wendee back."

Beside him the Indian sighed deeply.  A strange sigh, as though there were more to his relief than the mere fact that his master had regained his sanity.

Pietre glanced at him surreptitiously as he holstered his gun and keyed the security number in the doorpad.   Could Long Shadow have a vested interested in seeing the Wendee returned?