Page 76 of Surface Scratch
Henderson picked up the pliers again and waved them at Caleb. “We can take another tooth if he won’t talk,” he suggested. He ran his tongue along his top teeth. “Technically, he owes me two more.”
“I said you could have one,” Nick snapped at him. He loosened his grip, just a bit. “Caleb, tell Andrew what happened to V.”
Caleb watched the blood drip from his chin onto his boxers. The sting of the cold and the pain in his jaw was somehow amplified by Nick’s presence. Knowing he was just standing there, letting all of this happen…
With Andrew, he was angry, but with Nick, his anger had twisted into raw pain that seeped into his chilled bones.
It had hurt less when he thought Nick was dead.
“I don’t know where they put his body,” Caleb said softly.
A small gasp escaped Andrew’s lips. Nick stepped out from behind Caleb and grabbed Andrew’s collar, pulling him to his feet. “Go help Raquel,” he rasped, shoving Andrew back toward the door. “Make sure there’s only one way in and one way out.”
Andrew’s face was red, veins bulging out of his neck as his hand shook at his side. “We’re not done discussing this,” he said to Caleb, his eyes watery even in the pale lamplight.
“Who pulled the trigger?” Henderson asked as soon as the flimsy door shut behind him. “You, or that little mongrel it’s been raising?”
Caleb clenched his jaw, ignoring the pain as it throbbed up the front of his skull.They were calling Marcusitand Ophelia a mongrel. Surely there was some racist connotation behind that. He didn’t want to paint a target on her back as well.
He’d kept silent for their initial round of questioning. “How many monsters live here?”“What are their names?”“These are frequent patrons of the club. Point to the ones you know are monsters.”“What are they planning to do here?”
He’d been tempted to tell the truth, to say he didn’t know the answers to most of their questions, but after Raquel had laid into him for staying silent—and probably because he had knocked her out back in the alley—he lost all desire to cooperate, even to buy time. He recalled Tariq’s words to him: “They think saving humans at any cost is the best way to go about their mission, even if it means killing them.”
“I did it,” he said, refusing to look up. If they saw his eyes, they would know he was lying. “I killed him.”
“Let’s keep that little fact away from Andrew for now,” Henderson said to Nick. “He’s too emotional right now, he’ll fuck up the whole plan if we push him too far.”
Nick nodded, his expressionless face a little more drawn, like some emotion was trying to break free. He squatted down in front of Caleb and turned his cell phone to face him. “Look at this and tell me where he is.”
Caleb almost didn’t recognize the man in the picture, but after a few moments he realized it was Adam. He looked healthy and surprisingly happy, his face unmarred by bruises and bandages. “I don’t know,” Caleb admitted.
His brother smiled at him, and for a second he saw a bit of life behind his eyes, like hope had flashed in them.
“Finally, honesty. Let’s keep going. How long did Graves keep you locked away before it started playing house with you?” Nick asked. He poked at the healed bite on Caleb’s neck, the skin still rough and jagged from where it had been torn open. “Must have a lot of restraint for there to be so few marks on your body.”
Caleb tried to jerk his body away from the rough touch but only strained his shoulders further, drawing a pained grunt from himself. “I don’t know what that means,” he said through his teeth. He closed his eyes, wanting to stop the tears that were already welling up in his eyes.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, young man. Your brother here had been kept in a box for two years by the time we found him,” Henderson said flatly. “I suppose you should consider yourself lucky. Most masters don’t give their trials such a long leash.”
He couldn’t hold back the tears, even though he knew they would just make his face even colder. “Nick, is that true?” he whispered.
Nick nodded grimly and held up his mangled hand. “I went to Chicago after I left home. I was only there a week before he took me. I used to think nothing hurt worse than opiate withdrawal,” he said, staring at the nub that was all that remained of his middle finger. “He took off a piece of me every time I tried to escape. A knuckle at a time. So believe me, Caleb, I understand what that monster has put you through.”
Caleb jerked his leg, trying to stomp his foot on the ground but unable to against the zip ties that locked his bare feet against the freezing concrete. “Don’t you get it? That’s not what’s happening here!” he shouted. “He didn’t lock me in a box or fuck with my head. He loves me.”
Nick stared through him for a moment, seemingly undisturbed by the sound of Henderson’s snickering behind him. “So he’s that kind of master,” Nick said to himself. He shoved the leg of Caleb’s boxers up to his hip, digging his fingers into Caleb’s thigh to stop his jerky attempts at wiggling. He traced the bite mark with the tip of his finger, his upper lip twitching in disgust. “There it is. He took his time training you, I see. This is fresh.”
“Get your fucking hands off of me!” Caleb snapped. He yanked himself backward, the front legs of the chair leaving the ground for a moment. “I’m sorry about what happened to you. I really am. But that has nothing to do with me and Marcus. Nothing. He didn’t trial me or train me or coerce me or anything. I love him.”
Nick’s hand hovered over his mouth, his stoic appearance cracking as his face took on a greenish hue. He began gagging, barely able to rise to his feet as he stumbled toward the corner of the room. Caleb looked away as Nick began vomiting, to Henderson, who watched with either a sympathetic look scrawled across his face or a look of pure intrigue. It was hard to tell.
“Nick still has bad memories to work through,” Henderson explained when he noticed Caleb watching him. “The older the monster, the more difficult they are to satisfy. Do you know what kind of fucked-up things a five-hundred-year-old monster will do to keep itself entertained? To make a victim love it? It’s not a pretty sight. Poor Nick here has doesn’t have an inch of his body that doesn’t look like a roadmap of pain.”
“We’re running out of time,” Nick gasped from the corner.
Henderson took another contemplative puff of his cigarette. “Mm, I suppose you’re right,” he agreed. He approached Caleb, lit cigarette in hand. “Let’s make this quick. You’re going to give us the names of every monster running amok in this shitty little city, or we’re going to put a bullet between your eyes before you get a chance to see us kill your master.”
Caleb looked up at Henderson, a little surprised to see that his face gave nothing away. No emotion, no opinion, just indifference as he puffed on his cigarette and stared back at him. Like he was a retail worker who had long ago lost his soul and was going through the motions. Was that what this was to him? Terrorizing Caleb and Marcus, doing whatever the fuck it was to his brother that had made him like that, was it all just a boring job he was doing?
