Page 40 of The Wickedness of Man

“How’d that come about?” Harry asked.

“Shirts get ripped all the time,” I said, carefully avoiding any potential missteps. “Plus, there was the whole fight we had?—”

Harry came around the table without a word and unhooked me from the manacles, pulled my gun from the holster, and tossed it across the room. “Jacket off—shirt too.”

I looked to Jax; he nodded sorrowfully.

“I don’t?—”

“Now,” snapped Harry. The smile was gone; in its place was tentative excitement. “Make me wait any longer and I’ll make them strip searchandcavity search you in the cells.”

I removed my jacket, then the ruined shirt. This, I pulled over my head and tossed casually on top of the jacket on the table.

Harry stared over my body like he was trying to decide where to begin a dissection, then tapped a forefinger to his mouth. “Turn.”

Again, I looked to Jax, but he didn’t move. It became clear to me, then, that Jax wasn’t the one running this particular show—hence the forced display of courtesy with his ring. Had he been doing that all forHarry’ssake?

I did as I was told. Stood and spun to face the two-way glass. In it, I could see it clearly reflected as Harry grinned, a snakelike, twisted affair that looked more like a grimace than a smile. Jax crossed himself and swore.

“Knight,” said Harry, barely managing to regain his composure. “Where did you get those marks on your back?”

“Marks? What are you talking about?” I twisted around to catch sight of my back in the mirrored glass. “Probably when those assholes ran me over?—”

I paused, mid-sentence. In my reflection, I could clearly see that my face was cut in several different spots—nose broken, lip bleeding—and there was a huge purple bruise on the right side of my ribs where the van had struck me, but he hadn’t been talking about that. He’d been talking about my shoulder blades, where I spied what appeared to be ten perfect, nail-shaped scratch marks. They started near my neck and went several inches down my back. I looked over to Jax.

“I literally don’t know when this happened, Jax. I don’t knowhowthis happened!”

The image of Magda’s arms around my neck when I’d pulled her into my lap flashed in my mind like a distant dream. I recalled the sharp pinch of her nails now; thankfully, the image cameaftermy declaration of ignorance, which meant I’d told them the truth… as I’d known it.

This is going worse than I’d even imagined.

“Mercy, get to it,” said Harry. “Might want to look away if it gets you bothered, bishop.”

Jax wouldn’t look up as the nun approached me like a predator, fingers scrabbling at the empty air as if she was going to pounce on me at any given moment. I took a step back.

“Stand still,” Harry ordered as the veiled woman continued forward. “Whatever happens, do not move a single muscle until she’s done.”

The sister stopped by Harry and he lifted her veil. I had to physically restraint myself from recoiling. Beneath the fabric, coupled with standard nun’s clothing, her face was a torturous white island in a sea of black. Her eyelids and lips had been sewn shut with heavy black thread—recently, it seemed, from the dried blood crusted around each needle hole. Dried bloody tears stained either side of her pale cheeks. Only her nose, all the more grotesque for its perfect, upturned, unblemished state, remained uncovered in gore or sewing thread.

“Jax…? Harry? What in the actual fu?—”

The nun reached for me, and as those wretched, shriveled hands came closer, I took a step back out of instinct. She moved like lightning, grabbing my arm with a strength I would never have imagined from someone her size, keeping me still. She ran those horrible hands over my shoulders and the marks on my back, and then pressed her nose close to me. First to my back, but then… The nun knelt in front of me, pressing her face against my cock, snuffling against my slacks like some kind of goddamned truffle pig.

“What is she doing?” I shouted, desperately trying to pull away.

She latched onto my leg with that surprising strength, pressing her face ever closer to my groin, breathing with deep, rhythmic inhales through her nostrils and making horrible moaning sounds low in her throat.

“Stay. Still.” Harry glared at me with crossed arms. “She’s broken bones in the past when people squirmed too much, so I’d advise against sudden movement.”

The woman’s head suddenly tilted back and she shook like she was going into a seizure. I took the chance to slip from her grasp, backing myself into the corner as she went rigid on her knees and blood foamed at her lips.

“Jax!” I screamed. “What the fuck is going on?”

Harry came forward and, with a tiny pair of scissors, held the nun’s head still and carefully cut the lines of thread along her mouth. He stepped back as she leaned forward on all fours like a dog, her mouth yawning open—it was wide, far too wide—as she spewed bloody pink vomit onto the floor. The seizing reached its conclusion, and she breathed heavily, panting and arching her back up and down, hissing through her teeth. I couldn’t tell if she was in pain or doing some kind of weird yoga motion. Harry knelt beside her, looking up at me with accusation in his eyes.

“Speak,” he commanded, never once looking away from me.

“Succubussssssss…” she hissed, the words oddly sibilant. “Oh yessss…” She reached for me, but Harry restrained her. “Joined in unholy congressssss…” Without warning, she tilted her head up to me, as if she could see me, even with her eyes sewn shut. “Markeddd, he isssss… Claimed… No! Give him to me… Ssssshe doesssssn’t dessssserve ssssuch a… ssssspecimen…”

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