Kin

why did you bring her here?”

Jack stared dumbly. He had no ready answer, only unspoken apologies for an act he knew had endangered them all.

Pale-faced and trembling, Wellman hurried down the hall.

A moment later, Jack quickly and quietly stood and headed for the front door.

* * *

The face vanished from the window. It didn’t matter. Whether or not she could see them, Claire knew they were close. She could smell their suffocating stink—a mixture of unwashed bodies, blood and engine oil. She screamed, and would not stop screaming, because despite what they had told her, despite what they had whispered lovingly into her ear, their noxious breath warm against her skin, someone would come. Someone would hear.

Casting a fearful glance at the window, empty now but for the rain, she felt a dazzling burst of panic and pain as she remembered being tied to the stake, remembered the feel of them taking turns as they violated her, tore her asunder, tried to reach the part of her she was keeping from them, the only part of her they still, after all their torturing, hadn’t yet destroyed.

Her soul.

As if on cue, her ribs seemed to tighten, her lungs cutting off the breath required to carry the scream, and it died, became an airless croak that drained her. Searing pain chewed on her extremities, as if despite the warmth that lay upon her like an invisible lover, she was suffering from frostbite. Her body jerked of its own volition; her teeth clacked together hard enough to send a bolt of fresh, clear glassy pain to her temples. In her right eye, through which she could see nothing, a smoldering ember ignited anew, and she tried to scream again, as her hands—wounded hands bandaged bleeding hands—flew to the burning epicenter of her suffering and found no blood, no damage, only a soft, slightly damp gauze. She began to weep, and felt consciousness reel away from her, then back again, as if she were on a swing. Slowly, like fires lighting in the dark, other sites of pain registered across the terrain of her body, reaching toward the surface of her skin with flaming arms. Her back arched and she opened her mouth, but the scream she could hear in her ears stayed trapped in her throat. Her skin felt scalded.

Madness danced through her, offering itself up as an alternative to the unbearable suffering, and she grunted, pummeled by invisible fists of pain, and tried to listen.

Any minute now, that soothing velvet voice told her. Any minute now they’ll be back with their knives and their ropes and their filthy things, ready to do to you what they did to…to…

She closed her eyes, opened them again. Darkness in one; light in the other. The room seemed to jump and jitter every time she tried to focus. The rataplan of the rain at the window was designed to distract her, to make her believe it was the dirty finger of one of them, eager to draw her attention, but she didn’t look, didn’t care. The pain was too much now, and even that didn’t matter because pain meant she was alive, and alive meant they hadn’t done to her what she’d seen them do to the others, to her friends, and she couldn’t understand why they hadn’t done the same to her, couldn’t—

And then she did.

She hadn’t let them.

She had escaped, survival instinct taking control of her, muddying her mind, narrowing her thoughts into one single inner cry of primal self-preservation.

Loosening rope burning her wrists. The dimwitted single-minded smile of her captor, as he tugged down his pants with trembling hands. Claire, arching her back away from the stake, spreading her legs, exposing herself more fully, watching his eyes drop to the raw wounded lips there. Come on, come take it you dirty fuck. Her fingers fumbling, tips jabbed by the sharp point of a sliver of wood from the haphazardly stacked pile behind her and to the left. Reaching, weeping, gripping…Come closer. Swaying her hips despite the pain, the degradation, watching his fascination as he approached, his stubby cock springing free from his shorts, the tip glistening. Come closer…The memory of her friends, of what had been done to them, the black fire seizing her, the pain, the anguish, the horror…the rage. Come on! Then he was there, leering at her, hands outstretched to paw her breasts and her own hands were suddenly mercifully free, the rope falling to the floor. His mouth opening, eyes reluctantly leaving her body, frowning as he realized what that severed snake of rope on the floor meant, then a moan, low in his throat as she snatched the wood, swung it around and…

She had fled them in a dream, and woken now to find that was all it had been, for wherever she was, it was no place she knew, no place she wanted to be. It was a bed, and had it been an earthen one she might have understood. But the sheets were clean where she hadn’t bled on them. The room was tidy where there were no instruments and knives.

Knives.

Squinting, hissing through her teeth at the pain, she raised herself up on one elbow, and like a barrel full of rocks falling on its side, the pain seemed to tumble through her, settling in one half of her body, adding weight to the arm she was using to hold herself up. She took a series of short painful breaths as the light grew hazy and spun away from her, then she slowly, slowly opened her eye fully, willing it to focus on the small metal tray by the bed.

Knives. Lots of them, some still wet with her blood. The tools they’d used to fix her, sew her up so they could tear her stuffing out again.

She tried to smile but her lips felt like taut rubber, so she settled for a huffed laugh and the momentary surge of warmth that almost dulled the pain in her chest at the thought of what she was going to do with that knife—a scalpel, she noted.

Any minute now…

Yes, any minute now, they would barge into the room, those dirty seething bastards, but no matter how fast or how strong they were, they would not get her again.

They would not get a second chance to kill her.

Because she was going to do it for them.

-6-

As he approached the girl’s room, Wellman heard the front door slam shut. Jack was gone, and that was good. His account had shaken Wellman, threatened to drain him of his resolve, imbuing in him the temptation to just drive the girl ten miles up the road and dump her somewhere, to avoid whatever her presence might call down upon him. But he was not going to do that, felt guilty for even thinking it. Once the girl was fit to be moved, he would put her in his car and drive her into Mason City, to one of the hospitals there, and once she was checked in, his next call would be to the police. The girl would have to be identified, her family told where to find her, so they could begin the long heartbreaking and arduous process of rebuilding their lives. He knew what that was like. He had been there himself. Hell, still was there, and he didn’t envy them the journey.

What he didn’t know was what would happen when he returned home after doing what he knew in his heart was the right thing. Would the Merrill clan be waiting for him? Would they simply demand to know what he’d done with the girl, or would they already know, having forced the information out of Jack? Surely, if they were indeed responsible for what had happened to the girl, wouldn’t they now be too busy uprooting themselves and moving elsewhere in anticipation of a major manhunt once she was found?

He couldn’t think about that now. He was old, and he was scared, and given too much consideration, the fear might consume him. All he knew was that he had watched a woman he had loved, still loved with all his heart, die in that room once and had never recovered from it, despite doing all he could to ease her suffering. He had prayed for Alice Niles’s forgiveness the night he refused her request for help, and she had died too. He would not idly stand by and watch another human being perish if it was within his power to prevent it.