Page 37 of Nasty
“I wouldn’t know,” I rumbled. “The church I served in didn’t have one.”
“Pity. Fiddling with the choir boys must have been much more difficult above ground.”
Rabbit always pushed boundaries and my buttons right alongside them. Insinuating that I used to corrupt little boys was a sure-fire way of getting my heckles up and the bastard knew it. I grinned tightly, squeezing Sera’s hand. “Again. Wouldn’t know. Choir boys were never my thing.”
Rabbit laughed, loud and obnoxious, like a goddamn hyena. “I thought all priests dipped their proverbial wicks. You weren’t allowed to fuck the nuns, right? How old were you when you lost your virginity anyway? Thirty-three? Thirty-four?”
The cheeky fucker was about two seconds away from getting his neck snapped. He deserved it. But at the moment, Rabbit was the only hacker in New York I knew capable of lifting the data that I needed from the laptop. At least, he was the only hacker I trusted not to tell anyone what I’d come to him for. He was an arrogant little shit, and he loved to incite war, but he knew how to keep a secret. “Your balls must have been blue by the time you found somewhere to sink your dick, Marcosa,” he added.
“I’m touched over your concern about my balls, Rabbit. But you can rest assured they were taken care of.”
He snickered as he led the way down the abandoned aisle, rapping his knuckles against the backs of the pews as he passed them. “Yeah. I’m sure you worked your dick five times a day to compensate for the lack of pussy.Veryboring.”
“Very,” I agreed.
Rabbit grumbled something under his breath, presumably annoyed that I wasn’t taking the bait he was casting. We reached the back of the church, and he slid a key card into a small, silver panel on the wall. The door—it looked like any other, regular wooden door—released a hushed hissing sound as it slid to one side, allowing us access into what had once been the crypts. Sera tucked herself into my side. Was she holding her breath as she peered down into the long, narrow stairway that descended into darkness on the other side? It seemed as though she might have been. Loud music with a demented, heavy, growling bassline floated up to us, along with the sound of many people talking and laughing. Rabbit had soundproofed this place to perfection. Before he’d opened the security door, I hadn’t been able to hear a damn thing.
“We need Jell-O shots,” Rabbit announced, as he headed down the stairs into the loud, thumping chaos below.
Jell-O shots? Fucking child. I rolled my eyes at the red neon sign hanging on the wall as we descended:Welcome to Hell.Rabbit was a fan of irony. He presumably thought it was ironic to name the place Hell, when the church was meant to be a direct link to heaven. So fucking tacky.
I watched the top of Sera’s head as she walked in front of me. Her body really was fucking perfection in that dress. The slit up to her hip was so sexy, but it was the back that was making my dick harder than reinforced concrete. Her shoulder blades and the fine muscles in her back shifted beautifully as she moved. And the way the material barely covered the very top of her ass…Shit. She was fucking stunning. I wanted to run my hands and my mouth all over her. It had taken a fucking feat of strength to stop myself from claiming her in the car over here. The scent of her skin… dizzying. The dark eyeshadow she was wearing made her look exotic, as if she were from a foreign land. She was rare and fine, a thing of true beauty. And god help the first guy to look sideways at her, because I was feeling about as territorial and protective as any man could. I’d draw blood and plenty of it before I allowed anyone else to appreciate her the way I was right now.
The church crypt was bigger than most. It was comprised of many small, vaulted rooms, carved from stone, and even older than the building above ground. Thick velvet curtains hung at the entryways to a number of the vaulted nooks, and some of those curtains were already closed. The lighting was dim and had a suggestive red hue to it, illuminating people’s faces. The low ceilings were barely half a foot overhead, and made the space feel incredibly tight—a sensation that was emphasized by the multitude of bodies tightly packed from wall to wall. They undulated and swayed, dancing together, making out, hands fumbling all over each other, their eyes glazed and distant. Some of Rabbit’s revelers weren’t as high as kites, but these guys, grinding and licking at each other’s bodies, were definitely gripped in a drugged frenzy. Seemed like they were having a great fucking time.
Rabbit guided us down a walkway to the right, and a guy standing in front of a red velvet rope unfastened it and allowed us by. Beyond: a much darker, quieter room with a separate bar. The female bartender standing behind the bar was wearing a black button-down shirt with the top three buttons undone, her considerable cleavage straining against the material. She smiled and waved as Rabbit gestured to a booth at the very back of the room.
Sera’s face blanched when she looked up and saw that the rear wall of the booth was constructed out of human skulls. Rabbit noted her wide-eyed expression and smirked like some sort of fucked up magician who’d just unveiled his magnum opus. “Yeah. Catacombs aren’t very common in this country. There are a few, though. I was so stoked when I came down here and found these guys.” He made it sound like the fifteen or so dead people that he was currently using as a back rest were his long-lost friends.
Sera eyed the wall of the dead with obvious distaste. “Weird, don’t you think? These people were put down here to rest.”
Rabbit pulled a scathing face. “I’m sorry. Fix hasn’t been polite enough to introduce us.” He held out his hand. “Your name?”
“Sera. Sera Lafferty.”
“Sera. With an E? Unusual. I like it.” He beamed at the bartender, his eyes locked on her tits as she bent down extra low in front of him to place his beer in front of him. She gave both Sera and I the same treatment as she placed flutes of champagne in front of us. She stalked off wearing a pout when neither of us paid her chest the same attention Rabbit had.
“These guys behind me are dead. You think a single one of them gives a shit that I’m sitting here with you in front of their stripped skulls, enjoying a drink?” Rabbit said.
“No. I don’t think they do. But still. Feels a little disrespectful all the same.”
“I’ll tell you something about disrespect,” Rabbit said slowly. “Your friend Felix here is the most disrespectful person I know. He invited me for coffee two months ago, and then he never showed up.”
Fuck’s sake. I invited him for coffee? What the fuck was he—
Oh.
He had to be fucking joking. Three months ago, before I even knew Sera existed, I’d come to Rabbit to ask him for a favor. I’d needed some information on the mark I was about to take care of, and I’d needed it quickly. Rabbit had hacked into a server and downloaded some emails for me while I’d waited. I’d thanked him, told him I owed him one, even though I’d paid him a ridiculous amount of money for the work, and the kid had said, “Buy me a coffee next week and we’ll call it even.”
It had been a throwaway remark. I’d laughed and said sure, and then I’d promptly forgotten all about it. I squinted at him, now, biting the tip of my tongue. Rabbit was a little unhinged. Too many drugs. Too much money. Too many fingers in too many counterfeit pies. He’d started coming apart at the seams six months back, but I hadn’t realized he would take something so stupid as a personal slight.
“That’swhy you’re mad at me?”
Rabbit flicked the edge of his fingernail against the lip of his beer can. The guy could have been drinking vats of Moet every night, and yet he insisted on drinking cheap beer out of cans. Said he preferred the taste, but I knew the truth. His paranoia had reached such a degree that he didn’t trust anyone to open and pour drinks for him. Not even Tits McGee behind the bar. A sealed can of beer couldn’t be tampered with if he opened it himself. “You think because I’m young that I’m beneath you,” he said, his voice flat, echoing around the booth. “I waited all week for you to call, and you didn’t. You came and got what you needed from me, and then you put me out of your mind. Youusedme, Fix.”
Sera tilted her champagne glass to her lips, her throat working gently as she took one, two, three mouthfuls from the flute. Glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, I could see what she was thinking:is this guy fucking crazy?
The answer was yes.
