Page 10 of Nasty
Wait.
What wasthat?
There was something underneath the desk. I crouched down, squinting, shining the phone’s flashlight under the desk, and saw what looked like a small black bag sitting there on the concrete. There was no chair at the desk, which was strange. Why bother having a desk but no way of sitting at it? I stooped down and retrieved the bag—small, canvas, with looped handles—and then I surveyed the room to see if I’d missed anything else. There was nothing obvious, so I climbed up the ladder and got the fuck out of there.
Sera had stopped shivering, but her face was pale as I sat down next to her on the curb. She looked askance, her lips drawn into a tight smile. “Figure out who did it, Sherlock?”
I held up the bag for her to see. “There’s very little to go on down there. I found this, though.”
Sera eyed it as if it were about to blow up any second. It was too light to contain anything too sinister, though. “What’s inside?” she asked.
“Let’s open it up and find out.”
She paled even further, her skin turning a sickly shade of green. “That’s what you said about the bunker, Fix, and the surprise waiting for us down there was pretty crappy. You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to stick my hand inside that thing and pull out a mangled human heart or something.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “For someone who wants to get their hands dirty, you’re very unwilling toactuallyget your hands dirty.”
“Youopen it and see what’s inside,” she said. “Establish that it’s not a biohazard or toxic in any way, then show me.”
“Suit yourself.” I unzipped the bag, opening it wide, and I took a look inside.
No human heart. No vials of deadly pathogens. No weird voodoo bones, or dead babies in jars. Just a stack of papers. Papers were great. Papers were fucking amazing when it came to gathering information. I tipped the bag upside down, shaking it so the contents slid out and landed on the ground between my feet.
The first page I toed with my boot revealed a drawing. Hand sketched, rough and messy, but it actually captured the likeness of its subject with surprising accuracy. It was Sera. Just her face. Beautiful, the rendition of her eyes almost perfect, staring out of the paper. I hissed between my teeth, picking the piece of paper up, holding it gingerly between my thumb and index finger. Sera glanced at it and started shaking all over again.
The second piece of paper was another drawing. Another image of Sera. As was the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. The sixth drawing was of her naked, her full breasts and the smooth slope of her stomach drawn with far more care than the other images.
“Oh my god,” Sera whispered, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “What the fuckisthis?” Her eyes flitted from one picture to the next, as she slowly shook her head. I leafed through the remaining pieces of paper, my blood turning cold as each drawing grew more and more pornographic in nature.
Sera, touching herself, her fingers dipping between her legs.
Sera’s mouth wrapped around a cock.
Sera, on her back, legs spread, her pussy on display.
Sera on her hands and knees, looking up, lips parted, an expression of ecstasy on her face.
A sob slipped out of Sera’s mouth. “That’s not me. That isnotme. I never posed for any of these. I would never…”
A dark, poisonous, toxic anger spread its way through my body. “I know. I know you didn’t do any of this.” The author of these works had nailed her face, but I’d seen Sera naked. I knew her body, her breasts, her legs, her ass… Whoever had drawn these pictures hadn’t known her the way I knew her. He’d made an educated guess as to what she would look like if she submitted herself to him, and the details were frightening in nature.
These were dreams.
Fantasies.
I closed my hand around the drawing I was holding, grinding my teeth together so hard I felt my jaw crack. “Whoever that guy was,” I snarled, hurling the balled-up paper into the street, “I swear to god, if he drew these, it’s a good job he’s already fucking dead.”
******
The fire crackled and spat cheerfully as I fed it the drawings one by one. We’d driven twenty minutes down the road to the town of Lavelle, where I’d found and booked us into a decent hotel and told Sera to wait in our room while I disposed of the black bag and its contents. Once the last drawing was gone, eaten by the flames, I doused the fire I’d set in a ditch off the highway and I made my way back to the hotel.
When I entered the room, Sera was sitting in the exact same position she’d been in when I left her, perched on the edge of the bed with her arms wrapped around her body. She gave me a sidelong glance, every part of her screaming with panic. “You were gone so long,” she said softly. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”
“You think I’d just leave you here?” I sat down beside her, then fell back so I was lying on the bed.
Touch her.
Hold her.
