Page 37 of His Favorite Color is Blood
Grim took in a deep breath and played with a strand of hair, one of many that escaped Misha’s bun during the fight. “It won’t be pleasant to look at, birdie.”
Misha raised his eyes at Grim and squeezed his dirty fingers. “If they work for the people who held me, trust me, they deserve whatever you serve them. I wantto see it.” There was a depth of darkness in the brown eyes with shadows Grim couldn’t fully understand. Nothing left of the happy boy who had been sucking on a popsicle half an hour ago.
Grim nodded and looked at Bob, who still seemed unconscious in the open back of the van. Grim might be done with the hunting, but he still had feeding time to anticipate.
Chapter 13
Misha
The skinning knife waslike an insect crawling underneath Black’s skin. The man choked, twisted, and screamed so loudly Misha’s ears started aching, but hanging head down off a meat hook in the shed, with his hands tied to a large stone that kept him less mobile, he had no way of escaping the torture as Grim slowly separated his hide from flesh. The scent of fresh blood was overwhelming Misha’s senses as Grim worked, repeating his questions again and again. Black had fainted several times already, but he wouldn’t be spared the torture. A bit of icy water was enough to bring him back to Grim’s strong, bloodied hands and the hunting knives the owner of the cabin kept here.
Bob was hanging close by, untouched yet, but there was an angry bruise spreading across his forehead, and the gunshot wound he’d received during the shootout with Grim was like a gaping hole in his flesh. It twitched as he sobbed, spilling tears that rolled down his temples and onto the floor.
Watching the torture was … a strange experience. Nothing like the many horrors Misha had seen in the compound where he was kept. Thinking back to the many innocent prisoners mutilated, killed, and raped, he couldn’t help but think that the man’s suffering was just. That Grim was a hand of justice itself, bringing the torment back to the people who wanted to cause it. After all, what would have Misha’s fate have been if they’d abducted him? If Zero got him back, would he cut off Misha’s fingers? Arms? Would he skin him as well? Blind him? Keep him in a cell until he starved or went mad?
Misha had no compassion in his heart for men who worked for a monster like Zero. He imagined the many faces of his rapists instead of Black’s, and thatmade watching him squirm and cry all the better. Misha bit down on his lip and squeezed his fists, cooped up in a dark corner of the hunting shed, safe behind Grim’s broad back.
“You won’t cooperate, will you?” asked Grim, slapping Black’s face with his bloodied hand.
The wood beneath their feet absorbed all the excess blood quickly, soaking it all in, as it did all the times when hunters had skinned and gutted their catch here. Misha felt safe in his spot with a rolled-up blanket underneath him, and he couldn’t help but stare at the red sheen on Grim’s back. He had been wiping off the blood on his own body, smearing it onto his skin and leaving abstract traces every time he touched himself. He was steady and calm, as if separating a man’s skin from his muscle was nothing to him, as if the cries for help didn’t bother him one bit. And yet, knowing Grim was doing this for Misha tickled Misha’s pride.
Black coughed and shook his head violently. Misha knew why. Black would be dead if he told them anything. He would die in the gruesomest way imaginable or worse yet, become goods, have his family kidnapped and tortured. If the man had balls, he would not speak.
Grim relaxed and then grabbed Black’s shriveled dick and pulled on it while his hand tightened around the handle of a serrated blade.
“Kill me …” Black rasped with some bloody spittle dripping down his lips.
Bob started sobbing violently. “I didn’t know anything, I swear!”
Misha looked to Bob’s bruised, naked body, thinking back to when he’d been this vulnerable, available to be violated by anyone who had the money and connections to come and see him. “You accepted the job to kidnap an amputee,” he whispered.
Grim looked back with a small smile, and then, with a few precise pulls, separated Black’s genitals from the rest of his body and tossed them into the small metal tub, which he soon pulled closer to sit underneath the bleeding man.
Bob tried to pull away, but he had to know there was no way he could do that, and he swayed a bit in the air. “Oh no, God, no,” he uttered hysterically, screaming loud enough to drown out Black’s whimpers. “What kind of monster are you? This is insane!”
Grim touched the streaks of blood running down Black’s twitching chest from the raw flesh where his cock and balls had been. “I’m this boy’s guardian. Youcame here thinking the three of you were predators out for prey. That’s what you get for not knowing your place in the food chain.”
Misha’s insides felt a little warmer when he heard Grim being so protective of him. He’d never had a real guardian. Always on his own. As a little boy, with alcoholics for parents, he had never known safety. But now he was getting to taste it for the first time.
Grim turning the knife to Bob was enough to have him start talking again, though the man was barely intelligible through his violent sobs. “I will talk, I will! Ask, and I will answer!”
“How did you find us?” asked Grim calmly and pushed Black’s body into a gentle sway over the tub.
“A chip. There’s a chip in his stump. We could only catch the signal every now and then, so it took a while.” He spoke so fast it took Misha a few seconds to comprehend what he was saying.
Misha screamed out and looked down to his stumps in terror. “Where? Where? He’s tracking me! He’s been tracking me all along! No, no, no.” His fingertips roamed over the many scars as his breath became erratic, and soon it was his fingernails scratching at the stump. “Take it out! Take it out!”
Grim moved closer, and he quickly grabbed Misha with bloodied hands. “Don’t. Please, stop.”
“He could be tracking me now! Like I’m some fucking lost lamb.” Misha tried to pull his hands back to the stumps, but Grim’s steady grip wouldn’t let him.
“Calm down. He thinks those fuckups are dealing with it. We have several hours to spare. It will be fine,” said Grim, leaning down so he could look into Misha’s eyes. It was awfully quiet all of a sudden, and when Misha briefly looked back toward the meat hooks, he saw blood dripping from gashes across Black and Bob’s throats.
“Please, I need it out. He left something in me. I’m going to puke. It’s like Satan’s seed, and it’s in me, so he knows where I am.”
Grim squeezed his hands tighter, staining them with the blood of their attackers. “We will take it out. There’s no chapter here, but in Charleston, they have a doctor on call.”
“No, no! I can’t have it in me—” Misha’s windpipe clenched so tightly he couldn’t breathe anymore. He felt as if there was a tumor growing into his bone, ready to choke the life out of him when it was least expected.
