She hit the play button on the DVD player.
As images jerked to life on the screen, words Fairchild had spoken earlier went through my head again: Family. The ones who know you best…
* * *
Jonnie was barefoot, nude, standing slump-shouldered and wary at one end of the room we were now in. He held a sword awkwardly in one hand—a deadly looking number with an ornate, cuplike guard at the hilt. He was untied, free to move about. He was staring at something in front of him but off camera, eyes wide, hunted.
The camera zoomed back, sliding Winter into frame. She was topless, wearing the black thong she’d been wearing the first day I’d seen her. She was barefoot, a slender waif of a girl holding the twin of Jonnie’s sword in one hand, facing him at a forty-five degree angle, nothing the least bit awkward about her stance.
Jonnie coughed once, nervously, facing his murderous daughter-granddaughter. The sound was hollow, echoey, but the picture was clear enough.
Victoria paused the action. “In some countries their swords might be called rapiers, a most appropriate term under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say? These were imported from Italy. Unlike a classic foil or epee, the rapier has both a point and a single razor edge. Forty-five hundred dollars apiece. Beautiful weapons, perfectly balanced.”
She hit the play button. The action moved forward again.
Winter held her rapier at an angle in front of her face, said, “En garde,” then lowered the tip until it was pointed at Jonnie’s heart. She took a step forward. The camera was behind her, off to one side. In that thong and nothing else, she looked entirely naked. All I could see was the slender black strap of the thong around her waist.
Jonnie lifted the point of his sword uncertainly. Winter flicked his tip aside with the middle portion of her blade, spun his blade away with a deft circular motion, and stabbed him in the torso, inches from his belly button. The whole thing took less than two seconds. She stepped back as Jonnie stumbled backward and slammed into the wall behind him. He lowered his sword in shock, staring at his stomach, at blood running down into his pubic hair. Winter lunged forward and stuck the tip of her sword half an inch deep into his left biceps.
Jonnie yelled, spun away, almost fell down. Winter gave him a moment to recover, then came at him again, batting the tip of his rapier around, scoring points. In seconds, Jonnie was bleeding from the right thigh, right forearm, left foot, and had a cut beneath his left eye. His wild hair and the blood gave him a ghoulish appearance. Winter danced back, giving him time to think about what had just happened. The camera circled as Victoria sought a better angle.
Winter began to toy with him in earnest, lunging in, batting the tip of his sword aside, sticking him here and there, inflicting pain but no significant injury. Turning Jonnie into a human pincushion.
“The opportunity to practice on a live subject with full contact like this is exceedingly rare,” Victoria interjected. “She could have killed him in the first second.”
“Yeah, but can she arm wrestle?” I said, figuring I didn’t have much to lose at that point.
Jeri lifted an eyebrow at me.
“Hard to arm wrestle with your dick in your mouth, cowboy,” Winter said coolly, standing no more than three feet from me.
Okay, so I was wrong about having nothing to lose. I shut up.
On screen, Winter continued to toy with Jonnie. This went on for a while. He’d long since given up any attempt to hide his nakedness, and had begun to try to parry her thrusts and even to attack, thrusting, slashing wildly, but nothing worked. His chest heaved and blood coursed down the front of his body from dozens of puncture wounds. His breathing grew labored, coming hollow and heavy out of the speakers. He slipped and fell a few times. The floor was red, slick with blood. As I’d thought, the drain was a real plus in this place.
Finally Winter paused, then darted forward and stuck the point of her blade an inch deep into Jonnie’s left eye. He screamed and dropped his sword. He stumbled against the wall then sank to the floor, writhing, holding his ruined eye, shrieking.
After watching this for a minute or so, Winter stuck the tip of her sword into his rib cage, aimed at his heart. He stared at her through his one good eye. “Just do it,” he whispered. His words were slurred. He’d bitten his tongue. Blood was spilling from his mouth.
Winter stared at him. “Say please, Daddy.” “Do it.”
She looked down at him, pitiless, silent, as if he were a bug, a roach, a gnat.
“Please,” Jonnie whispered. “Please.”
Winter backed away and changed swords, trading the rapier for one of the slender foils that had been on the wall above her bed, a quarter inch thick at the hilt, tapering to a needle point. She rested the tip in Jonnie’s belly button for a moment, then lowered her center of gravity a few inches for leverage and shoved the foil entirely through his body. The tip exited out his back.
It took several minutes for him to die, writhing with the sword in his guts, keening, then at last he went quiet. His lips worked silently as he gazed up into the camera. Finally he bled out internally and it was over.
* * *
Victoria turned off the DVD player.
I felt sick, down deep. Had Jonnie deserved to die that way? I’d never witnessed anything so deliberate, so terrible and one-sided. He hadn’t had a chance. Truth was, I’d never seen anyone die before, other than metaphorically with the IRS. I’ve
