This is a chapter from a book I just finished writing.  I still have to edit, and with school, that may be awhile, but wanted to post something in the writing area of JU.  (JUWC forgive the repeat.)

The first sensation upon waking was a terrible pulsing in my face. The second, and no less painful, was the persistent burning in both wrists and ankles. The pain ended the stupor, but memory escorted in alertness.

I didn’t open my eyes, ignored the blistering wrist and ankle pain, and focused on listening. Familiar thick wooden arms and a wide warm seat cradled my form; Gran’s kitchen chair, the oldest and most sturdy piece of furniture in the old farm house.

My gun was gone.

Damn.

Not that it mattered much with my hands tied to the arms and each ankle anchored with rope to a chair leg.

“Are you going to pretend all night? Or do I need to persuade you to wake up?” A deep male voice resonated, invaded, the large kitchen.

I lifted my head slowly and opened my eyes. Three things occurred to me. First, the sun was just washing the window with its very last rays of cherry light, which meant I wasn’t out long. Second, my gun was lying on the island about five feet away. Third, the man sitting in the chair across from me with knees barely touching mine, didn’t look like a thief. He looked like a soldier or, I swallowed hard, an undercover cop.

He was tall, even sitting, maybe six foot one. I took a quick inventory; black hair shaved into a high and tight, matte black shoulder holster with 9 millimeter, black fatigue bottoms, black t-shirt stretched over large muscled pecs, but it was the thick bladed hunting knife with a well worn handle strapped to a long right thigh that worried the majority of my attention. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then I was looking at a man who didn’t have one. His flat brown eyes were as empty as a cardboard box.

I swallowed metallic and probed a small laceration on the inside of my cheek with a slightly shaking tongue. “Who are you?”

He smirked and leaned back in the chair, crossing thick arms across his chest biceps bulging. “Well, well, well. First thing you do is a visual perimeter check then size up your enemy. Very good. No, what do you want? You can have all my money. I’ll do anything but please, please don’t hurt me nonsense. I like that in a civilian.”

I tried the ankle restraints, then each wrist. Solid. Not even an inch of movement.

“Don’t bother,” my captor smirked. “They’re secure.”

Stall. The word popped into my head. Robert said he was going to stop by later. I glanced at the cat clock on the wall, the usually swinging tail motionless. The paws pointed 9:03. How much later was later?

Stall.

“What’s your name?”

“My name?” He shook his head and laughed, an empty hollow sound. His brown eyes took a slow, predatory rake down my body. “I’m not here to date you sweetheart. I’m here for information. Information you can give freely or with some incentive. Once the business end of our transaction is done, I am going to fuck you, then kill you, though I may alternate the order to spice things up.”

Yuk. I flinched and the sweat glands on my body wept. I never considered myself a coward, especially when someone threatens me. But, I wasn’t exactly in a position to bluff bravado. I swallowed hard. “Why are you going to kill me?”

“Because sweetheart, you will beg me too.” A large calloused palm ran down my mussed blond hair coming to rest on a collar bone. His fat thumb lightly stroked the hollow of my throat. “You asked my name.” He leaned forward and licked a bead of sweat from my forehead. “Call me Death.”

I jerked back, trepidation, slow and hot, slicked down my spine. It took every ounce of will power I possessed not to scream, will power and the knowledge that when I started, I might never stop. My mouth went dry and bare thighs vibrated with terror against the hard wooden seat.

“I won’t beg,” my voice shook.

Death cocked a dark brow, hot breath flowed across my face.

“And I won’t call you death.” Sweat dripped between my breasts in a steady flow pooling in the waist band of my denim shorts. I forced my voice to stop wavering. “Bully, I’ll call you bully.”

I expected retaliation.

Death smiled, his face transforming into a handsome ruggedness. The dimples, which appeared on each side of the wide smiling mouth, seemed blasphemous on the face of a man who took obvious pleasure in murder.

He leaned forward until our noses touched, flat brown eyes to blue. He smelled like mints. “I am really going to enjoy this. Thank you.”

I took a deep breath and tried to will my pulse under control. “For what?”

“For giving the dance, rhyme, nuance, flow.”

“Dance?” Stall. Stall. Stall.

He didn’t even blink. “Come lovely and soothing death, undulate around the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.”

My eyes widened. I knew the poem, knew it well. My mouth moved without permission. “Praise be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for object and knowledge curious.”

Death jerked away from my face to meet my eyes. “You are familiar with my carol?”

“I know The Carol of Death.” Relief and cool air rushed into the distance between us. “Walt Whitman was my father’s favorite poet.”

I memorized the Carol of Death and recited it at dad’s wake. He kept a calligraphy copy in a black frame upstairs on the bedroom wall ever since mom died eighteen years ago. Listening to a murderer quote it, claim it as his own, turned my belly to ice, violating and terrifying me. He made a mockery of my father’s inner grief, which coaxed a buzzing rage in my head.

I stopped thinking about the horrible things he might do to me. I started thinking about all the generations of my family he was disrespecting by being in their house.

And because my thoughts turned to family I pictured dad. Hal Thomas was a man of few words and even fewer friends. But he was loyal, moral, and brave. He taught me to live again in hard work and silent but affable Sundays after mom died. He took on extra work, despite a bad back, so I could attend college out of state. I imagined his reaction if he saw me sitting in gran’s chair frightened by a bully in our own house.

The humming rage in my mind leaked toward my limbs. Rage at dad’s death, rage at being a woman who didn’t know the first thing about self defense, rage at life in general for not working out the way I hoped and ending in such a shaking, feeble, utterly weak and defeated fashion.

Death studied my face for several long moments. He stood and nodded as if pleased. “Where is the Lycan?”

He read the denial on my face and tapped a thick finger tip between my eyes. “I know he left the police station with you. I know he didn’t come back here. You took him somewhere. There’s only one little rule to our dance Alex. Don’t lie to me. Don’t ruin the dance by trying to lead with half steps or missteps.”

I frowned. There was no reason to keep Kip’s general status a secret. Maybe the truth early on would make him more apt to believe the lies later. Because if he thought I wasn’t going to lie to him, then he should change his name to sucker. “He’s in a safe house.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” it was an instinctive answer, out before I considered the possible consequences of a blatant lie.

I never saw him move. A large meaty fist smashed into my left cheek. The chair rocked and fell backward. The right side of my face broke the fall, blood flooded my mouth. I spit and tried to ignore the throbbing in my left temple and focused on the dirty baseboard on the opposite wall to keep from blacking out. For a moment I imagined gran’s chagrin at my poor housekeeping. When the threat of blackness receded, I almost laughed at the mental picture of gran shaking her head at the absurdity of me contemplating her baseboards while a murderer loomed above me. There was going to be more than dust on the baseboards by the end of the night if Robert didn’t make an appearance soon.

In a deft movement, Death lifted the chair and set it back on all four legs. My teeth jarred with the impact. Blood, thick and warm, dribbled down my chin.

“Lets try this again,” he spoke as if teaching a daft pupil. “Where is the safe house?”

I thought about lying again, but the tangy taste of blood and pounding inside my skull must of raised my iq. He considered the interrogation a dance? Time to change from the tango to a waltz; slow things down. “Can I ask you something first?”

Death smirked and sat back down in the opposite chair. “Not sure why you’re stalling. I searched the house while you slept. I know you’re the only person living here. I won’t be confronting the Lycan tonight for obvious reasons.” He motioned toward the kitchen window with his chin. The full moon peeped through the red and white checkered curtains. “The same reason I know you have him locked up somewhere nice and tight. He won’t be coming to save your sweet ass. So we have all night to dance darlin. What’s the question?”

I thought of a million questions, but only one would determine the course of others in the next few moments. “Why?”

Death laughed, a short harsh gasp. “That’s the best you got? You disappoint me. You really are a civilian aren’t you?” He pulled the large black handled knife from its thigh sheath and looked at the pristine black blade in contemplation. “The people I work for want him dead.” He looked from the knife into my eyes. “Him, and everyone helping him.”

My heart stopped. Robert wasn’t coming.

Survive.

I followed my instincts. “How do you know I helped him?”

Death took a deep breath. “I tracked him to this quaint little town. Was only a few hours behind him when the local pd picked him up. I know what you do, who pays you to do it.”

Shock registered on my face before I could check it.

Death brought the blade’s razor edge to the whiteness of my left thigh. “Civilians are sheep among predators in the agency. I’ll never understand why they use you.” He ran the flat blade along the inside of my thigh, caught the tip of it in the seam of my cut off shorts, a hair’s breadth from my skin, and made a quick slashing motion. The seam ripped all the way to the middle of the crotch area exposing part of my clean shaved labia.

Death hissed, brown eyes narrowed. “No panties? No hair?” He smiled. “Nice.”

I tried to control my breathing. I didn’t like how close the tip of the black lethal blade was to my feminine opening.

Death pulled back a little and I breathed easier.

“Your job requires a safe house somewhere. Most jailors have it in their basement or in a separate building near their house. I can’t seem to find yours.”

“How did you find out about me?” I wondered if there was a trail of bodies leading to my door. Who the everyone was he thought was helping Kip.

Death leaned forward again, his knife mimicking the same motions on my right thigh. Cool air caressed my mound as he cut away the last of the denim covering my opening. I was spread open and vulnerable to his eyes.

Heat, red and humiliating, climbed my face.

He stared at my core, licked his lips, and continued speaking. “That’s the problem with little places like this. Everyone knows your business. It didn’t take long to learn about your unique relationship with the local pd. And Robert,” he snorted. “I can see why he wants this tight little pussy.”

A piece of shuttered and screamed for Robert. Was he dead already?

No. I wouldn’t think like that. Robert was more than capable of protecting himself.

The dark intensity of his gaze on my most vulnerable part, with a lethal blade only inches away from it, started to break through my anger and tip the scales back toward fear.

“Who do you work for?” The question was immaterial. I wanted to raise his eyes, to bring his attention back to the subject at hand.

It didn’t work. Death waved the blade in the air like a teacher’s finger when correcting a naughty child without looking up. “Uh, uh, uh. I answered your questions, now you answer mine. Where is the safe house?”

“I can’t tell you,” I tensed waiting for another punch or worse to feel the blade on my feminine core.

Death crooked his dark head, finally taking his eyes from my flesh and looked me in the face. “You sure?”

I nodded.

Without changing expression, he leaned forward, placed the razor sharp blade in the middle of the nail on my left pinky finger. “The human finger tip is the most sensitive place on the hand, did you know that?” He pressed down slowly, never taking his eyes from my face.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. I tried to make it a mantra in my head but the pain was excruciating. The intense pressure drove liquid fire screaming up my hand, into my arm, where it settled behind my eyelids. My heart beat so hard I heard drums. I struggled against the restraints and screamed long and loud. Sweat streamed again between my breasts, down my back and forehead turning blond hair to greasy stripes.

Terror waited until I saw the tip of my pinky finger on the floor, nail still attached before screaming into my presence. Blood pooled on the arm of the chair before running red rivulets down the sides to the wooden planked floor and slowly drowning the fingertip.

The small bone in the tip seemed too white against the red. The drums were so loud I couldn’t hear anything else. Tears of pain streamed down my cheeks, mixing with streams of snot from my nose, and blood from my mouth. The trio made macabre fluid strands from chin to breast.

Death wiped the black blade on the shoulder of my t-shirt and stood. He sheathed the weapon and took something from a Velcro side pocket of his fatigues. Ignoring my struggle he held up a small round rubber band for inspection like a man with an engagement ring.

He reached for the injured hand. I made a fist, trying to keep him from the rest of my fingers, and winced at the searing pain. Death wrapped my hand in his much larger one and squeezed. Lightening hot razors shot up my arm and into my chest. My stomach rolled. My eyes and nose were faucets. And all I could hear was the beating of those damn drums in my head.

When I was sure the bones in my hand would snap from the pressure I opened my fist.

Death sat down, took my shaking left hand, and wound the rubber band tight three times around the first joint on the injured pinky.

I saw his lips move but the drumming in my head was almost hypnotic. As long as I concentrated on the sound I could block some of the pain in my finger.

He slapped me hard wrenching my neck muscles. Snot, tears, and blood splattered on the floor and up the wall on the right side of the kitchen.

I mentally turned down the volume to the drumming in my ears, and lifted my eyes.

“Where is the safe house Alex?” His tone of voice said he didn’t want me to tell. Not yet. An answer now might shorten the fun.

I wasn’t self-deluded about my pain threshold. A big piece of me, the throbbing hurting piece, the exposed piece, wanted to tell him everything just to end the pain and humiliation. But the parts of me Death couldn’t touch? The parts forged and beaten with the death of my mom, my gran, my dad? The pieces honed by betrayal, and pain? They rallied.

They reminded those aching bleeding weak parts that pain doesn’t negate truth. If it did, my mother wouldn’t be dead. My father wouldn’t be dead. The last five years of my life would not be wasted in an endless lie.

No, pain doesn’t negate truth, but often comes hand in hand with it. And in this case, truth encompassed Kip, young and alone in the world. Despite his tough demeanor, he came to me for protection, for help. Giving someone I was supposed to help over to Death, well it wasn’t really an option I could live with, or die doing.

“I can’t help you,” I tried to ignore the sharp jolts of pain searing up my left arm.

Death’s eyes glowed as if pleased. “The mut you’re protecting isn’t an innocent.”

I started to protest but he cut me off. “He’s an animal, an animal that will rip your throat out without the slightest hesitation. He needs to be put down. They all do.”

I swallowed and tried to mentally stop the flow of tears, but my eyes weren’t listening.

“If you ever saw a Werewolf kill, you’d be on my side of this war.”

I wiped my chin on the right shoulder of my t-shirt. Strategy, of a sort, ran through my mind. “You’re no better. Actually, you’re worse because you’re human.”

Again fist met flesh. This time I welcomed it. I blacked out when the chair hit the floor and didn’t fully come round until Death, once again, picked up the chair and slammed it back into place. Pain shot from neck to head. I reached for the darkness on the peripheral of my vision. I could stop fighting, stop feeling if unconsciousness would claim and keep me.

The darkness fled when cold water splashed in my face. I moaned at the frustration. Nausea floated in my stomach until I turned my head and dry heaved. My wrists tugged against the restraints with every spasm until I felt the liquid warmth of blood coat the front and back of my hands.

Death loomed above me, knife in hand. I felt the slightest wobble in the sturdy chair. A couple more trips to the floor and the chair might shatter. Not that I could realistically live through a couple more trips to the floor. There was no way in my current condition to escape or even outrun Death. But, I might be able to get to the gun on the counter. I might be able to die fighting.

“Do you know how to tell if someone is a Werewolf?” Death placed the blade’s tip in the hollow between my collar bones and drew it lightly down the front of the t-shirt. I felt fabric and skin separate beneath the razor sharp blade. I refused to cry out, instead using the energy into struggling against the restraints. I wasn’t sure but maybe, just maybe, they loosened a little bit more.

Warm red blood oozed down between my exposed breasts and pooled in my belly button before soaking the top of the cut off denims.

“A wound like this on a Lycan,” Death sat back down, flat brown eyes never leaving the wound, “heals almost instantly.” He wiped the bloody blade on the t-shirt remnants. “Unless of course it’s made with silver. Then it takes a change to heal. If you catch a young one, like the one I’m hunting, you can wound them after the full moon, and they must suffer with it until the next full moon. Near death, suffering, but not quite dying.”

His eyes met mine. “And they make the most exquisite music when they dance.”

“You look good in blood Alex,” Death’s eyes followed the blood from the chest wound as it streamed down between my legs onto the chair wetting both buttocks and labia.

“Fuck you,” I panted hoping one more trip to the floor would free my bonds or kill me.

“Oh we’ll get to that,” Death said. “When you’re slick with red heat and begging me to kill you.” He leaned forward and ran a thick finger through the blood on the chair. I closed my eyes when I saw where it was headed.

“Where is the safe house?”

I felt his fat finger at my opening.

I shook my head.

Rugged penetration in a brutally efficient manner.

And just as fast as he violated, he was gone. Death waited until I opened my eyes, smiled at me, brought the bloody digit to his mouth, and sucked.

The smile was the catalyst. Rage flew from me in the only manner it could. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Kill me now! I’ll never tell you! Never!”

Pain, sharp and burning turned the suicidal tirade into piercing jagged screams. Death slowly carved a capital D into my bare right thigh. The blade wasn’t cutting to the bone, just deep enough to shred muscle. Large black specs floated across my vision. I prayed for unconsciousness, reached for it, but it would not come. Blood slicked from the wound and pooled on the chair before dripping to the floor.

My right thigh vibrated with tidal waves of agony. My head lolled on a rubber neck. The bonds were looser, but still not enough. Never enough.

Death slapped me across both cheeks. “Wake up Alex. We aren’t done.” He grabbed a kitchen towel, and calmly wiped his hands. “You can take a lot of play for a civilian.” He took a deep satisfied breath, walked away, and started searching the kitchen drawers.

The sound of silverware jingling and drawers opening and shutting barely registered in my pain befuddled mind. I was weak from blood loss, most likely a concussion, and terror. My face stung and was already starting to swell, causing my left eye lid to droop. I didn’t think there was one place on my body that wasn’t throbbing with pain.

The rattle of a garbage bag brought my attention back to the present. Death smirked. “Not very green of you dear.” He rattled the large plastic bag again. “Do you know how long a plastic bag remains in a landfill? One thousand years. That’s one thousand years longer than you will live.”

He clucked. “So selfish.”

I heard him, but his words no longer carried much weight. I couldn’t remember exactly why it was so important to listen to him. Part of my brain still clicked, part of it knew blood loss was blunting reality. And I was grateful.

“Since you are such a good dancer Alex,” he stalked behind me crinkling the bag. “I’m going to share a favorite reel with you. Unless you are willing to give me the location of the safe house, then we can proceed to the belly to belly waltz.”

I didn’t speak.

The room went dark. I gasped and instantly sucked in a mouthful of plastic. Not being able to breathe suddenly over rode the pain, the dizziness, the loss of blood. I struggled. I fought. Silent screams tore from my burning throat. Still, breath did not come. The chair bounced with my efforts. I shook my head in a frenzy, lungs burned and darkness edged closer. With the last push of air from my lungs I welcomed the darkness.

The bag was gone. Air, sweet humid summer air filled my lungs. I gulped it in. I looked up at the kitchen light fixture, head hanging backward over the chair. Tears streaked down into sweat matted hair at my temples.

“Very good,” Death whispered like a lover in my ear from behind and softly stroked my hair. “Over the treetops I float thee a song; Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and prairies wide, Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O Death.”

He yanked my hair backwards, neck straining. “Beg.”

“P-Please,” I begged him with that one word to end my suffering.

“Thank you but no, not yet” Death whispered. He stepped to the front of the chair and pressed a knee into the bleeding wound on my thigh. “Convince me.” He leaned down and caught the moan of pain with his mouth.

His tongue lapped at the blood in the dark recesses of my mouth. My body was heavy with pain and blood loss. Even if he removed the restraints I could do nothing. But this, this was the first and most likely the last chance I would ever have for some sort of retribution. I used the last of my ebbing strength and bit down hard on his thrusting tongue.

Death jerked out of my mouth and slammed a fist into my left temple. I was unconscious before the back of the chair cracked against the floor.

I awoke in a haze of pain and blood, tied to the chair lying on the floor. Death rummaged in the hall closet. I was too weak to pull at the restraints though my right hand was almost free.

Death returned carrying a wire coat hanger. I pretended unconsciousness and watched him turn on one of the gas stove’s burners from my place on the floor. He bent the hanger several times until it formed a large capital D with a small handle. Using the handle he set the hanger in the flame. I closed my eyes. Knowing, but willing it all to go away.

He returned to my position whistling, and lifted the chair back in place. My feet were finally free, part from the chair legs loosening and part from being slick with blood. But, I was too weak to even lift them. Bringing my knees together was the best I could do. The chair legs slid in the pool of blood until he steadied it.

I heard him retreat to the stove and come back. I waited to feel the hot sting of metal on my face, or eyes, but jumped and managed another hoarse scream when the hanger branded my wounded bleeding thigh.

I lost control of my bladder. The smell of burning flesh, blood, sweat, and piss, filled the air. The pain was horrendous.

“Can’t have you bleed out before we’re done with the first dance.” Death lifted the brand, walked back to the stove, and gently placed it again in the fire.

He approached me slowly, my head bobbling. “Where is the safe house Alex?”

I thought for a long time before I could understand what he asked. I smirked. I couldn’t tell him even if I wanted too. My voice was no longer working. The realization gave me great comfort.

My head dropped forward and I saw with my right blurry eye, the left swollen shut, Death’s black boots standing in a pool of my blood on grandma’s precious wooden floors. Many times as a child, up until she died when I was twelve, I stormed into the house with her on hands and knees, a bucket and brush warring with the dirt and grit of farm life. She loved the old house passed down in her family for generations. She wanted it to be me mine. And look what was happening to it under my watch.

I vaguely wondered what would happen to the old house when I was gone. The last of my line, I didn’t know if a distant unheard of relative might claim it, or perhaps the state.

I thought about dad. His strong arthritis twisted hands. The way he pushed me to make a better life, get out of Ohio, do something that didn’t require buckets and scrubbing or bleeding fingers at the end of the day.

The mother I knew for ten short years of life, sparkling brown eyes and soft hands. The ever present dull stitch her absence nurtured.

And Robert, my heart ached when I thought of Robert. We were best friends, family of our own sort, and leaving him felt like abandoning him to the monsters.

A loud crack reverberated in the kitchen but my mind was beyond caring. I waited for the next round of torture. When the pain didn’t come, I slowly opened my eye.

The boots were gone. I didn’t have the strength to lift my head so I lifted my blurry right eye instead. The vision before me ripped the last shred of consciousness from my mind.

Death laid on the floor in an ever increasing pool of blood, brown eyes wide, arm at an unnatural angle, knife still gripped in his hand, throat shredded. Above him, a tall man with long black hair, savage silver eyes, and a blood stained chin.

A new dance partner?

He held my eye, gave a slight bow.

I welcomed oblivion.