“All I can tell you is it was fuckin’ weird. Anyway, I met her that fuckin’ weird night and we got along real nice. Gave her a ride home.”
“Sounds like you were in great shape to drive.”
“Oh yeah. I went between not knowin’ where I was headed and not knowin’ where I came from. Could’ve been worse, though. I’ve driven when I didn’t know either. Anyhoo, I made it to her place and she repaid me with the best head I ever got.”
“That’s not something I’d expect to hear from a guy in maximum security prison,” Cole mused as he inched closer to the bars so he could get a better look at Lambert’s tattoo. The lettering was done to look like it had been written in ribbon held up by the ladybugs. After what he’d just heard, he had a pretty good idea why the lip marks were there.
Suddenly, Lambert pulled his jumpsuit back up. “Why wouldn’t you expect to hear that from me?” he asked indignantly. “You think just because I’m locked up, I want some dude to suck my dick instead of a woman?”
“No. I meant I didn’t think I’d ever hear a maximum security prisoner say the word ‘anyhoo.’ ”
When Lambert laughed, he followed it up with a dry, hacking cough that rocked his entire upper body. He let his hands fall away from his jumpsuit as he headed back to his bunk and sat on the edge of the mattress. “That bitch went down on me right there in my car in front of her apartment building. Hot damn, she was good.”
Cole gave him a moment to reflect while pressing his cheek against his bars. Keeping Lambert inside his peripheral vision, he surveyed as much as he could of the area beyond his cell. There wasn’t much to see. Directly in front of him was the walkway that led all the way down the row to the elevator. From what he could see, the other cells had the same look as his and Lambert’s. Something might have been moving in one of the other nearby cages, but the one next to Lambert was definitely empty. Guards were posted at the end of the hall with the elevator, and the opposite end led straight into a solid concrete wall.
“Damn, she could work some magic with that tongue of hers,” Lambert continued. “I knew she’d be able to make my dick sing. I could read it on her face, hear it in her head, that she loved givin’ head. At least I could tell she was good at it anyway.”
“What? Oh yeah. Sweet Sarah.” Cole looked between his feet. There was something on the concrete that looked as if a shadow had dripped from the ceiling to stain the floor. When he wasn’t able to rub away the dusty grime caked onto the floor, he licked his thumb and tried again. This time he managed to confirm that the stain was another marking taken from the same runic alphabet as the ones etched into the bars. “Sounds like that wasn’t such a bad night.”
“Hell no. The bad night came later. I was still buzzin’ after that bj in the car when I took her out for a night on the town.” Lambert’s sunken features brightened as he said, “Big thick burger with all the toppings. Ice cream shakes at a drive-in. Snuck into a movie.”
Cole felt a warm rumble in his stomach, and his fingers scraped against the floor a little harder. “Sounds classic.”
“It was, man. It really was. We topped it off with her blowin’ me again in the alley next to a tattoo shop.”
So much for classic.
“Does your cell have markings on the floor?” Cole asked.
“Uh-huh. Walls and ceiling too. Ain’t very good reading, though.”
“Do you know what they mean?”
“Probably left by someone that was here before.” Lambert craned his neck to look above him and all around. “I think maybe this prison’s been here a long time. At least the building has. Dunno if it was a prison the whole time. Think these marks are some kind of writing. Could just be graffiti for all I know. Some of these gangs tag with dragons and others use Chinese letters. I bet that guard with the stick put some of them there. Or maybe Waylon. They mean something to him. Touches them every time he opens or closes the door.”
Cole had revealed half of the symbol on the floor by now. He hadn’t learned enough to decipher it completely, but it was definitely similar to the ones carved into the wall on the main floor of Lancroft’s house. He ran his fingers along the rune but didn’t get his hopes up. As suspected, nothing happened. Most of the runes were put down like a circuit designed for protection or defense, and only a few were activators. If he had time, he might be able to remember enough to figure something out. He winced at the notion that he might have all the time he could ever want. Anxious to distract himself, he asked, “Who’s Waylon?”
“Dude who runs G7.”
Cole nodded, pulled himself up from where he’d been squatting, and grunted at the pain of his insides shifting within the constricting tendrils wrapped around them. His stitched incision wasn’t exactly tickling either. “Serious looking guy who dresses like a high school principal?”
“That’s the one. Usually carries a clipboard. Anyway, this gal with the sweet mouth I was tellin’ you about was wearin’ a tight little skirt,” Lambert mused. “Know what I did after I blew my load?”
“Nope.”
“I set her up on some boxes, stepped up and …What are you doin’ over there?”
Cole had stood up and walked over to the wall on the left side of his cell. The solid sheet of rock was smooth and covered with runes that were so faded they could barely be seen. Scratches marred the wall’s surface, but the runes were either too deeply imprinted to be broken or simply unable to be interrupted by something as ordinary as a set of claws or sharpened piece of metal. He thought about the symbols he’d seen in Henry’s room at the Lancroft Reformatory, which had remained intact even after a werewolf scratched at them. Plus, there was no reason to think any activators would be inside the cell with a prisoner. More than likely, the runes were meant to seal the cell, strengthen it, or whatever the hell else a witch doctor might do to keep his subjects in line.
Since Lambert had drifted away from Memory Lane for a moment, Cole tried to steer him back on course by asking, “Did you tell Sweet Lips you loved her?”
“Nah. I hiked up that skirt, pulled them hot little panties aside and ate her out right then and there.”
Nodding while forcing half a smile onto his face, Cole said, “Nice one.”
“It sure was. She didn’t even need to ask me to go downtown or nothin’. That’s how I knew it was love. You got anyone like that on the outside?”
Even if he’d known the guy well enough, he truly didn’t want to talk about Paige. Just thinking of the last time he’d seen her caused him to twitch. She insisted he hand himself over to the authorities so they could help him. Apparently, the plan had been for those men to try and remove the Nymar tendrils, but that went real bad real quick, and Paige was nowhere to be found. Perhaps she truly didn’t know what had happened, but that didn’t make him feel much better.
Anxious to divert his attention, if only for a moment, Cole leaned against a wall, crossed his arms over his chest and asked, “So you and Sweet Lips had some breath mints and lived happily ever after?”
“Even better, man. I took her by the hand and led her into that tattoo shop. She said somethin’ somewhere along the line about likin’ ladybugs, so I got them inked on me. And since I already kissed her in all the right spots, I thought I’d commemorate that too.”
Cole realized that his guess about the lip marks hadn’t been exactly right, but it was close enough.
“That’s some good work on your neck,” Lambert said.
Cole took another look down at the markings. They were the same as last time and still hadn’t moved. That was a little bit of good news.
“You got any ink on yer ribs?”
“No,” Cole replied. “At least, not since the last time I checked.”
“Ha! Gettin’ inked there ain’t easy, I can tell you that much. The buzz I was on lasted for about the first five minutes or so and then it was just me and that prick with the electric needle in his hand. I got it done, blazed through a chunk of credit I had on my Visa, and then went out to show my new lady with the magic mouth. Know what she said?”
A slight young man in hospital scrubs approached the pair of guards at the far end of the hall without a word of acknowledgment and then stepped into the elevator. “What did she say?” Cole asked.
“She told me that Sarah ain’t spelled with an H. You ever hear of that? All that hell I went through, all that ink I got drilled into me, all that lickin’ I did outside the shop, and she tells me I spelled Sarah the wrong way. I demanded that bitch show me her driver’s license just to make sure she wasn’t giving me a hard time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” Tracing his hands along the ribbon lettering, Lambert finally slapped his ribs and winced as though the
