Motherfucker knows I didn’t turn rat.
Folding my arms across my chest, I slip into a slow doze as I think of the things that could be waiting for me once I get out of this car. I highly doubt it’s going to be a balloons-and-cake kind of event.
I can feel my eyelids growing heavier as I shift enough to feel the comfortable presence of the forty-caliber pistol snuggled into my hip holster. It’s been a long time since I’ve had my little mistress at my side, and I ain’t going to lie, it’s giving me a sense of peace that helps me feel better about falling asleep.
Violence gives me purpose, something beyond sitting in a cell block waiting for death to come. Violence gives me the power to take control of the world.
* * *
My dreams are fucked up. In my mind’s eye, I can see everything floating around me in a crimson lake of fire. There are bodies bloated from the gases built-up after death. Charred planks of wood surround them, encased in frames.
Snapping awake, I go from frozen, unable to move, to instantly putting my hand on the gun nestled at my hip.
Old habits die hard.
Even back in prison, I’d go reaching for my gun when the guards would start in on me. Not having it is the only reason they’re still breathing.
I just need to get the fuck out of this SUV. I’ve been confined for too long, and sitting in this car for hours is starting to get to me.
Too much surrounds me. Seats, heat, windows, and another human are just too fucking much to deal with right now.
Just before I start putting fucking holes in everything around me, Simon pulls up to our destination.
Lucifer’s favorite little hidey-hole of torture.
Getting quickly out of the car, I slam the door behind me and take in my old killing grounds.
The old sheet metal warehouse looks exactly the same as it always has—like it’s about to fall down around its concrete footers. I have no doubt Lucifer has spent money to keep it this way. When I look closer at the ‘rusted’ beams keeping things in place, I can tell he’s had them painted to look that way.
I guess this place will stay up and looking this way as long as he has a use for it. A use for violence and answers.
“What’s the situation we’re heading into?” I ask as I walk beside Simon.
His gimpy ass tries to take the lead and walk in front of me, but he doesn’t have the sack to take the pain his cracked ribs will cause him. That’s his problem, he’s never had to endure pain long enough that you come to crave it just a little. Crave how it keeps you sharp.
Crave how it feeds the anger and violence pent up inside you.
“Same as always. We have someone who annoys us, and we need to get all the information we can from him,” Simon says as we open the heavy steel door of the building.
Inside, the cold isn’t as bracing. The spring winds that rip through Garden City are shut out.
A high-pitched wailing scream suddenly pierces the air, and the sound causes a bit of that old, familiar excitement to pump through my heart.
I missed being on the outside of the cage. Missed bring able to hurt people when I needed to, and when I just felt like it.
I’ll be the first to admit that there’s nothing healthy about my brain. I like to cause people pain, and I don’t mind watching the light dim from someone’s eyes.
“Sounds like they started without me,” I say as I walk past Simon. “No need to show me the way, gimpy. I know it.”
“You miserable, suffering cunt,” Simon hisses as I leave him behind.
“Yeah, so was your mother,” I say over my shoulder.
Walking through the rows of unused machinery, I wonder how much of this shit was used before Lucifer bought the building. Used for different, more legitimate purposes, no doubt.
“Just hold the asshole still, James. Jesus fucks a mule, hold him down!” I hear a loud, gruff voice shouting over what sounds like a gagged-asshole trying to yell his head off.
For the first time in what feels like an eternity, I feel the blood starting to course through my veins.
It’s like getting fucking high, but so much better.
Walking into the room, I stop short as I take in the scene unfolding before my eyes. A man strapped into an old metal chair bucks and thrashes as he rages behind a taped-up mouth. He’s got that Eastern European look to him, and from the tats on his chest, I can tell he’s been inside a Gulag. Long years in a Gulag, if I’m reading those tats right. He’s one tough fucker, and I’m betting he’s got stars on his knees.