I stilled, before letting a curious, cautious look sweep over my face. I exaggerated it since he couldn’t make out most of my features beneath my mask, then started gagging and choking, alternating back and forth…just for good effect. Joaquin did lean forward then, hungrily taking in every spastic twitch of my body, the saliva pooling at one side of my mouth, and the way my eyes rolled back into my head, showing only white as I let my head loll forward. I heard a choked sound coming from him, though not one of regret or sympathy, but one of climax, like he just came and was reveling in the aftershocks…or was just about to.
I straightened. And smiled. “I’m such a tease.”
Every feature on his face sharpened into angles and points, his nostrils flared, and the ripe scent of anger and embarrassment flooded me. His recovery wasn’t as quick this time. His glyph was smoking again, and I saw his right hand shaking as he backed up, trying for nonchalance as he reordered his thoughts to take in this unanticipated development. Regan might’ve told him I was coming for him, but she’d forgotten to mention my immunity to the virus.
“See the obits lately?” he asked conversationally, leaning back again. Picking up an antique letter opener, he began to clean beneath his nails. My eyes darted to my conduit lying next to him, my own fingers twitching behind my back with the need to curl about it. I jerked my eyes away too late, and Joaquin’s full smile returned, though he pretended not to notice. “Fascinating reading, really,” he went on. “Couples, young and old. Lovers, gay and straight, black and white. We’ve created the great equalizer in this virus. The greatest, even, as mortals and superhumans alike are susceptible to this strain.”
“But not you.”
“No, not me. Nor you, it seems.” He raised a brow, inviting me to expound on that. Why not, I figured. Talking might keep him from other activities. Torture, rape, and murder came immediately to mind.
“Regan kissed me,” I said, without emotion.
“That whore.” Joaquin shook his head, almost sadly. “You know, Regan won’t tell me who you are behind that mask. She wanted to keep that little nugget of information to herself.” His eyes lingered on my face, though he didn’t try to remove it right now. He was going to save that for later, I knew, when it counted. When it would best serve to make my humiliation complete. And, of course, he had all the time in the world for that.
I swallowed hard, but managed to keep my voice even. “Yes, she seems to keep all her bases covered.”
“She’s a devious bitch. Manipulative. Conniving. A perfect Shadow-in-training.” He pursed his lips, like a proud father bemused by his offspring’s latest antics. “Yet you have something extremely interesting in common with her.”
If he expected me to prompt him as to what that was, I was happy to disappoint. I’d been taken in by Regan’s act hook, line, and sinker, and didn’t particularly want to hear about our similarities. Which Joaquin also knew.
“You’re both puppets,” he went on, tapping the letter opener against his thigh as he approached me again, slowly this time. “And neither of you know it. Of course, that just makes it more fascinating to watch. A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Or is it a comedy?”
He straddled my legs and sat, nestling in close, not bothering to lessen his weight on my behalf. Shit. He was going to start.
I can survive this. I did before and could again. Even if he got inside me physically-which seemed probable at the moment-he wouldn’t get inside my mind. Not this time. So I clenched my teeth, and even though my stomach knotted at the thought of his scent and rot invading my body, I kept my chin lifted high.
“Miss me?” he whispered, giving me the once-over, eyes lingering on my chest. My heart skipped a beat. My glyph pulsed painfully.
“Like a urinary tract infection,” I said, through gritted teeth.
He drove the letter opener into my wounded arm. When my screaming stopped he said, “Of course you didn’t miss me. How could you? After all, I’m always there, aren’t I? In your mind, behind the lens of your eye when you look in the mirror. Your first thought when you wake in the morning…the last when you go to sleep at night.”
Oh God, how had I gotten here? After all my training, my preparation-my metamorphosis into something super, for God’s sake!-I’d still ended up back where I’d been a decade earlier. Pinned beneath all this evil. Helpless. Again.
So why did I suddenly wish I was dead?
A whimper escaped me at the thought.
Joaquin heard it and bent to me, pausing for a long moment before licking my face, starting below my jaw and ending on my cheek just below my mask. His tongue toyed with the edges of it briefly, as if seeking entrance.
It was all I could do not to scream.
He pulled back, but there was no reprieve as he pushed his groin against mine. I’d already known he’d be hard. “Tell me,” he said, almost lovingly, “in those deepest, darkest hours, when nobody’s watching, and there’s only you and the singular, compelling thought of me…” He paused until I looked at him. “Do you touch yourself?”
I jerked away, giving him the reaction he was looking for, and his laughter washed over me like a violent summer storm, beating against my skin, and me with nowhere to take cover. Oh God, I thought. I should have listened to Warren. I shouldn’t have left the sanctuary. I should never have tried this on my own. I’d wanted vengeance at any cost…but now that it was too late, I realized the price was too dear.
“I do love it when you’re predictable, Joanna,” Joaquin said, still chuckling as he caressed my arms with his fingertips. They felt like worms and snakes, and all the crawling things that lived in this underground grotto. Despite myself, I started to shake. “The predictable ones are so much fun. Less challenging, true, but then I was never one to do something simply for the challenge.”
No, he’d done it for the joy he derived in seeing his victim beg and scream and cry, and especially for the humiliation. If I hadn’t known that before, I knew it now by the way he worded his thoughts, singling me out, then lumping me in with the rest of his victims, like I was nothing special to him. Just another body, another tooth in the jar.
One thing he was right about, though. I was predictable. And that’s what Warren and the others had been saying, what Regan had capitalized on, and the hubris that, even for a heroine, could only lead to one place. Capture.
So I concentrated on not crying or screaming or begging…and ignored the question: why couldn’t I have realized all this five minutes earlier?
“The Tulpa will kill you,” I whispered, mouth as dry and parched as the desert ceiling above as I played the only card I had left. I closed my eyes when I said it because I’d never thought I’d have to use it. I didn’t want to admit it now. But it was true, and Joaquin knew it.
There was no response. Unnerved by the silence, I opened my eyes again, and found Joaquin staring at me ruefully. “My life,” he finally said, “is about finding out exactly what hurts people most. And when I find it, that one thing that’ll break the human soul, I use it to make those people beg me to hurt them. It’s like a giant chessboard, really. You position yourself just so, bide your time, wait until your opponent has committed, and then watch the surprise bloom on their face when they realize they’ve ended up in exactly the place they
He ground against me in demonstration, a slow and sensuous dry hump, taking something meant to be beautiful and turning it inside out. But it was his words that had my breath quickening.
“Your Tulpa is no different,” he said, continuing. “He knows who I am, what I am, and what I’d do if I got my hands, my cock, on you.” He ran his fingers over my hair, pausing at my mask, caressing my face. “His precious Kairos.”
He paused here, stilling to hold up a finger. “Let me clarify. He doesn’t just know this, he expects it. That’s why he’s kept me in his organization all these years. That’s why he didn’t kill me as soon as he discovered the girl I’d attacked all those years ago was his daughter. In a way, he wants me to finish what I started. That way he’s absolved, you see?”
A tear slipped from the corner of my eye.
“And then there’s you. That beaten and broken little girl who grew up to be a woman with a chip on her shoulder that spans the Strip. You may not have known it before now, but you sought this out. You want me to hurt you. You expect it. And you’d be disappointed if I didn’t.”
