He showed his grayed, pointy teeth. The twenty disappeared, then so did he.
"You meet such interesting people down here," Peabody said shakily.
"Stay close," Eve ordered. "Anybody moves in, bang 'em."
"You don't have to tell me twice." With her hand gripped tight on her bat, Peabody followed Eve into Hell.
The noise was awesome: screams, sirens, grunts, and groans from dozens of clashing machines and patrons. The lighting was an ugly red that shimmered and swayed. It flashed her back to a freezing room in Dallas, made her stomach pitch before she controlled it.
She heard the ragged breathing, the hissed words of violent sex. She'd heard those in that room, too, before the end. Heard them in too many rooms to count where the walls were thin as tissue and brutality was only a whisper away.
The sound of flesh striking flesh. Gleeful punishment.
Stop it! Goddamn you, Rick, stop! You're hurting me!
Whose voice was that? Eve wondered as she stared around blindly. Her mother's? One of the whores he'd used when he wasn't using his daughter?
"Dallas? Lieutenant?"
The uneasy tremble in Peabody's voice snapped her back. This wasn't the time to lose her focus. It wasn't the time to remember.
"Stay close," Eve repeated, and began to thread through the machines.
Most were too intent on the game, on the world they'd created to notice her. But others still had instincts sharp enough to make a cop. Though plenty of those people were arme
d, nothing was aimed in their direction, for the moment.
She passed a tube titled Whips and Chains where a woman, thin as a stick, wearing VR goggles, screamed in ecstasy. Sweat poured down her body like oil, over the tight leather loincloth, beaded on the restraints that locked her arms and legs to the console of her machine.
"Looks like we're in the right section. There's Mook."
He, too, was locked in a tube. Stripped down to a black leather cock sheath and studded dog collar, his impressively muscled body jerked, his throat worked with gasps. His hair was candlelight gold, shoulder-blade length, and damp with sweat.
His back was crisscrossed with lash marks, proving that he didn't always settle for virtual punishment.
Though it wasn't quite proper procedure, Eve used her master to unlock the tube. His body was arched, his lips peeled back in a grimace of erotic pain. Eve hit the main switch and left him trembling on the brink.
"What the fuck." His body sagged, muscles quivering. "Mistress, please. I beg you."
"That's Lieutenant Mistress to you, creep." Eve whipped off his goggles. "Hi, Mook. Remember me?"
"This is a privacy booth."
"No kidding? And here I was looking forward to a fun group session. Well, next time. Now, let's you and me go somewhere quiet and talk."
"I don't have to talk to you. I got rights. Damn it, I was about to get off here."
With someone else, she might have given him a quick little jab. But Mook, well, he'd just enjoy it. "I take you in, nobody's going to hurt you for the next thirty-six hours. You don't want to go that long without pain, do you, Mook? Let's talk, then you can get back to Madam Electra and her—what is it?—six million tortures."
He leaned in, straining against the restraints. "Make me."
"Want me to rough you up, Mook?" She kept her voice low, in a purr. "Force you?" And when excitement filled his face, she shrugged. "Nope, not in the mood. But I will give your dominatrix here a quick blast. I don't guess they're real quick on repair and replacement of equipment in this joint."
"Don't!" His voice squeaked in protest. Moving fast now, he nudged the toe release so that the restraints popped open. "Why do you want to mess me up this way?"
"Just part of my daily entertainment. Let's get us another privacy booth, Mook, one without the toys."
She stepped back, and when he followed she saw his gaze land on Peabody's bat. He made a lunge. Peabody flipped it out of her belt, zapped him dead center of the chest. His body jerked, danced, then shivered.