Beneath the Skin

  Ready for business.

  Dante’s heart kicks against his ribs. Ready for business? What the fuck? Where the hell did that come from?

  He jumps to his feet and prowls the room in his battered and duct-taped Converse sneakers. He searches for a way out. Blind white walls surround them, no windows except for a small viewing window set high in the big, thick door.

  A red light glows beside the door. LOCKEDLOCKEDLOCKEDLOCKED scrolls past on the LED screen.

  Dante walks into the heart of the room, stopping beneath the hook. It stinks of old blood and musky adrenaline. A cold finger trails the length of his spine.

  “What happened after I went down, princess?” Dante repeats, his gaze on the hook. “Do you know where we are?”

  “After you fell into the grass, a man came up and joined the lady. He handcuffed you, then picked you up and carried you.”

  “What’d the man look like? Ever seen him before?”

  “Nuh-uh. Never seen him before. He was tall and had short hair … and, um … he was wearing a trenchcoat. He kinda looked like one of the social services people Papa talks to. He wasn’t mean-looking, but he didn’t look nice either, especially when he picked you up.”

  “Yeah?” Dante questions softly. “So how’d he look when he picked me up?”

  Fire flashes in Chloe’s eyes. “Like he was picking up smelly garbage.”

  A smile tugs up one corner of Dante’s mouth. “C’est bon, yeah? I’m glad I inconvenienced the fucker.”

  Chloe giggles, hand to her mouth. “Dante-angel!”

  “So, what happened after that?”

  “The lady grabbed my hand and we followed the man to the parking lot. Jasper came with us,” Chloe said. “We got into a van and the lady put a hood over my head.”

  “You know how long we were in the van?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe an hour? We went through a bunch of stop-and-gos, then we drove faster and without any stops for a long time.”

  “Did they say anything during the drive?”

  “No, not really. Just …” Her words trail away.

  Dante looks at her. Fresh tears spill over Chloe’s ginger-brown lashes. She wipes at them with the heels of her hands.

  Dante’s chest tightens. Spotting Orem abandoned on the floor, he scoops up the plushie orca. He kneels in front of Chloe and hands her the plushie. “Look who’s pining for you, chère. Did they hafta knock Orem out too?”

  Chloe hugs the plushie against her chest. “Nope. He isn’t real, Dante-angel.”

  “Don’t tell Orem that.”

  Dante wraps his arms around Chloe, pulls her close and holds her tight. He wishes he could tell her everything is going to be okay, but that’d be a lie since he has no idea what will happen next.

  “When they dumped you on the floor in here,” Chloe says, voice breaking, “I thought you were dead. I thought maybe they’d killed you without even knowing it since that man really, really wished you were garbage he could just throw away.”

  “Shhh, ma ’tite-doux.” Dante sits down on the concrete floor, crossing his legs under him, and settling Chloe in his lap. She leans her head against his shoulder and slips her arm around his neck. She snuggles close, sniffing and wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. He loops his arms around her.

  “Is Papa punishing us for running away?” she asks, her voice muffled against his fading-to-gray Muse T-shirt.

  “Nah, ain’t Papa.” Dante finger-combs the tangles from her hair, the clean scent of baby shampoo rising into the air with each pass of his fingers through her strawberry-red locks. “I think Papa’d chase us down himself and whip us with his belt until we were bloody, but I don’t think he’d go to all the trouble of hiring someone else to do it for him. Besides, we were grabbed too soon for Papa to’ve called anyone even if he’d wanted to.”

  “Is this stranger danger, then? Like they taught about in school?”

  “I ain’t sure. What’s stranger danger?”

  Chloe tips up her face to look at him, her blue eyes solemn. “I forgot to tell you about it, huh? About the bad grownups who wanna steal kids or do bad things to them?”

  “Someone stole us, so maybe it is stranger danger,” Dante says.

  “I’m scared, Dante-angel.” Chloe’s arm tightens around his neck. “But I’m glad I’m with you.”

  “Same here, Chloe-princess,” he murmurs. “No one’s gonna do bad things to you. I won’t let ’em.”

  “Promise?” Chloe whispers.

  “Promise. Cross my heart.”

  “’Kay.”

  Dante rubs Chloe’s back. Her eyes close. Tears still glimmer in her brown lashes and her breathing’s fast. Not asleep, but wishing for it.

  He wants—needs—to protect Chloe from whatever’s coming and he knows it’s something bad, knows it heart-deep. The weird sense of déjà vu curls through him again. His thoughts whirl.

  Have I been here before? His pulse races, and a part of him whispers, Oh, yeah.

  Dante spots a camera tucked into the corner of the wall across from them, tiny green telltale lights glowing amongst all the white. He lifts a hand and flips off whoever’s watching.

  But the thing that scares him to the bone, scares him spit-dry, is the goddamned metal hook hanging in the center of the ceiling.

  His gaze keeps returning to it like a fly to a sunlit window. And a sense of dread seeps in through his skin, soaking in down to his core, steeping in his mind like black and bitter tea.

  Why is it here?

  His arms lock even tighter around Chloe. His heart pounds hard, his body quivering with each sternum-kicking beat.

  A tiny chirp draws his attention to the door. A green light reading OPEN scrolls across the little LED screen beside the door. A lock ka-chunks open. Dante moves, jumping to his feet and shoving Chloe behind him in one blurring moment.

  “Stay back there,” he whispers.

  “ ’Kay.”

  The door pushes open and a woman walks into the room. A warm smile curves her lips and lights her almond-shaped blue eyes. Short blonde hair frames her pretty, pale face. Gold glints at her earlobes. Her scent curls through the room—cinnamon and cloves and freezer-frosted ice.

  But she smells of something else too, something Dante can’t name, something he’s only smelled on his own skin— earthy and cool, like night-frosted ground.

  This scent whispers: I’m like you.

  The door slams shut behind her. The lock chirps, then red letters reading LOCKED scroll across the LED screen once more.

  Pain snakes through Dante’s mind and he lifts a hand to shade his eyes, the lights suddenly way too fucking bright. Déjà vu spirals through him again.

  “Hello … Dante,” the woman says, pausing as if she wants to call him by another name. She saunters to a stop beneath the hook. She wears a doctor’s white coat over her deep blue skirt and pale rose blouse. “Do you remember me?”

  Dante shakes his head. “Should I?”

  Light sparkles in the woman’s eyes like moonlight on restless water. And he has a feeling that even in the dark, her eyes would gleam like a cat’s caught in a flashlight beam. Like his own. Uneasiness and curiosity twist through him.

  “Probably best for you that you don’t,” she says. “Well, then. I’m Johanna.”

  At the back of Dante’s mind, memory tickles. An image feather-floats behind his eyes: Johanna—her doctor’s coat smeared and spattered with dark droplets of blood—bends over him, brushing his hair back from his face. Her eyes, bright and blue and hungry, hold his gaze. Her nostrils flare as though she smells something delicious.

  My beautiful boy. It won’t hurt as much if you’d just stop fighting.

  Dante stares at Johanna, his heart thundering beneath his ribs.

  “Ah,” she says. “You do remember.”

  But the memory—more like a fleeting glimpse into a bad dream instead of something that actually happened, something he’d never forget if real—vanishes.
Dante blinks. His head aches, pain a brass-knuckled fist pounding behind his left eye. He tries to think back to what was just going through his mind and finds nothing.

  Something the woman—Johanna—said? Uneasiness prickles along his spine.

  Johanna tilts her head to one side, trying to look behind Dante. “Hello, Chloe.”

  Chloe’s breath catches, but she stays quiet, stays close to Dante, her fingers looped through his belt. Dante shifts so Johanna can’t look at Chloe.

  “Don’t talk to her,” he says. “Leave her outta this. What-taya want?”

  “Nothing. I’m here to help you,” Johanna replies. “Papa Prejean thinks it’s time Chloe starts earning her keep on a mattress down in the basement. Just like you do.”

  Dante moves.

  Behind him, he hears Chloe’s surprised gasp as he tears away from her tight-fingered grip on his belt, leaving her behind. He catches a glimpse of shocked blue eyes as he slams into Johanna, bulldozing her into the wall. Her head bounces against the padded wall. Fire rages in his veins, blazes in his heart.

  “Tais-toi,” he snarls. “Shut the fuck up! She doesn’t need to hear that shit! She’s just a kid!”

  “So are you, Dante,” Johanna whispers. “Just a kid.” She cups a warm palm against his face. “My little night-bred beauty.”

  “Ain’t a kid.” Dante jerks away from her touch, her words echoing through his mind—my little night-bred beauty—but in another voice, a deeper male voice. A name memory-flickers—Dr. Wells—then vanishes. Dante holds her gaze, pain a jackhammer in his skull.

  “Why ain’t that fi’ de garce Papa Prejean talking to me instead of you?”

  Johanna straightens against the wall. She casually combs her fingers through her blonde hair and smoothes her white doctor’s coat as though she gets slammed into walls every day.

  “If you want to keep this between us, you need to come closer so I can whisper into your ear.” She glances meaningfully behind Dante to Chloe.

  Not wanting to look away from Johanna in case she has a pocketful of drugged little wheels too, Dante backs up to Chloe, a step at a time. “Hey, princess,” he says, pausing beside her. Grasping her shoulders, he moves her in front of him so he can keep an eye on Johanna over Chloe’s shoulder.

  Chloe looks at him, her freckled face solemn. She clutches Orem tight against her chest. “Papa is punishing us.”

  Dante shakes his head. “I think she’s fulla shit, chère. Forget everything she said, d’accord? And don’t listen to nothing else she says either. I need you to keep Orem calm for me. He counts on you, y’know.”

  A smile whispers across Chloe’s lips. “Orem’s an orca, Dante-angel, he could eat anyone who comes into this room if he could just find the magic words.”

  “Maybe you can help him, princess,” Dante says, voice husky. “We could really use a people-eating orca right about now.”

  “ ’Kay.” Her blue-eyed gaze searches his face. “I’m not just a kid, y’know.”

  Dante’s chest constricts beneath her steady gaze. “I know. But this is stuff you shouldn’t hafta know about yet, d’accord?” With a quick squeeze of her shoulders, he releases her and returns to Johanna’s side of the room.

  The woman’s cinnamon and cloves and freezer ice scent intensifies and, like a shattered bottle of perfume, saturates the air. Each breath Dante takes draws a little more of her into his lungs, leaving him light-headed.

  Dante stops beside her. “Talk.”

  Johanna sidesteps closer, bending to bring her lips close to his ear. “I’m offering you a chance to save Chloe from Papa’s plans,” Johanna whispers, her breath warm, her voice so low it’s nearly inaudible. “Soon, you’ll be drugged, bound, and hung from that hook so you can watch as men teach Chloe the ropes. Teach her all the things you’ve learned in Papa’s basement.”

  Dante feels like his insides have just been scooped out. He feels hollow and cold. His hands knot into fists. “Who are you?” he whispers. “Why ain’t you putting a stop to that fi’ de garce if you know what he’s doing?”

  “Because this is a test.”

  Dante shoots her a sideways glance. “What kinda test?”

  “A test for the sake of curiosity. A test just to see what you’ll do. No one in this world cares about you, Dante. No one is looking for you or missing you. No one is going to save you. Ever. You can only save yourself.”

  “Bullshit. I’m gonna save Chloe even if it costs me everything.”

  “And if you don’t?” Johanna smiles and Dante stares at the fangs her smile reveals. Fangs like his own.

  “What are you?” he whispers again and, unspoken: What am I?

  Johanna sidles closer and Dante gets another whiff of the earthy, cool undertone in her scent, the undertone he shares. “I’ll keep the drugs, straitjacket, and chains away,” she whispers. “All you have to do is defend Chloe from the men who will come for her. You do that, and you and Chloe can walk away.”

  “Yeah? Why should I believe you?”

  “Because if you can do that, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you from walking away with Chloe.”

  “Again, why should I believe you? People always lie. Most of ’em, anyway.” Dante glances over his shoulder at Chloe. She sits against the wall, her knees up, Orem cradled in her arms, her attention on the plushie.

  Johanna laughs, the sound low and throaty and pleased. “That’s my boy.” Her fingers curl around Dante’s biceps. He feels the heat from her palm even through his T-shirt. He looks at her.

  “The medicine that Mama Prejean gives you every day isn’t enough anymore.”

  “The stuff that looks and tastes like blood, yeah?”

  Johanna nods. “You’ve been restless at night. Hungry in ways you don’t understand, drawn to the sounds of hearts and the blood pulsing just beneath the skin. You want, you need, to bite. To feed.”

  Dante’s muscles tense and knot. He holds her knowing gaze. Refuses to acknowledge that she’s right. Questions pile up in his mind. Questions he yearns to ask.

  “S … Dante … I’ve seen what you’ve been doing with Jeanette at night, and with Mark, while everyone else is busy. Before you get handcuffed to your bed. I’ve seen how much you’ve enjoyed their blood, their hands and mouths.”

  Johanna reaches for his hair like she plans to curl her finger around a lock or maybe tuck it behind his ear, but Dante jerks his head out of reach.

  A rueful expression flickers across her face. Her hand drops to her side. “I’ve seen how they’ve enjoyed you, too.”

  “How’d you see?”

  Johanna touches a finger to her lips, then says, “My secret.” She walks to the door, stopping in front of its little window and nods at someone on the other side. She returns her attention to Dante. “You’re entering adolescence and I don’t know what the process is like for someone like you. Should be fascinating to observe.”

  For someone like you.

  Dante holds her gaze, but keeps his sky-high pile of questions close to his heart and unasked. “Yeah? Then observe this.” He lifts a hand and flips her off. “Oh look, even more fascinating stuff to observe,” he adds, extending the middle finger of his other hand.

  An amused smile twitches across Johanna’s peach-glossed lips. She pauses, her hand on the door’s latch, a thoughtful expression on her pale face. “You won’t save her, you know.” She glances over her shoulder at Chloe. “You’ll fail.”

  Her words, so casual and certain, ice Dante’s heart. She might as well be saying, It’s a full moon tonight. You won’t save her, you know. The sky is clear. You’ll fail.

  He expects his breath to plume the air when he says, “I won’t fail,” but it doesn’t. The room temperature hasn’t changed. The cold and ice are inside of him. He meets her gaze. “I. Won’t. Fail,” he repeats.

  Another amused smile curves Johanna’s lips. Then the door clicks open and she slips through without another word. The door ka-chunks shut again. LOCKED scrolls in
red across the LED screen.

  Dante joins Chloe against the wall, sits down beside her, and wraps an arm around her shoulder. Hugs her close. He listens to the fast flutter of her heart, smells strawberries and soap and baby shampoo.

  The need to protect her stokes the fire burning at his core. Inside, the ice melts, but one sliver pierces Dante to the heart. In trying to save Chloe from Papa’s belt, he’s managed to fuck things up instead and land her into even hotter water. He doesn’t care what it takes, he’ll do everything he can—fight, kill, die—to get her out again, and free.

  “You and me, princess,” Dante says. “Forever and ever.”

  “You okay, Dante-angel?”

  “Oui, sorta. Orem found that magic word yet?”

  “No, but we’re trying.”

  “C’est bon, princess. Keep trying. I’ll try too.”

  You’ll fail.

  Johanna’s promise locks up Dante’s heart in chains even colder and harder than Rain Bonnet’s diamond-bright links: No escape for you, sweetie. He doesn’t care if Rain Bonnet’s words prove true as long as Johanna’s prove false.

  “Let’s work on multiplication tables,” Dante says. “You got any new ones to teach me?”

  “Yup. The eights. We learned that one today,” Chloe says, her fingers stroking Orem’s plushie head over and over. “But first you need to practice what you’ve already learned, Dante-angel. Orem too.”

  “Sounds good to me and Orem both.”

  “What’s six times two?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Six times three?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Just as Chloe reaches eight times eight, an electronic chirp sounds from the door. A green light reading OPEN scrolls across the little LED screen.

  Dante’s heart skips a beat. So soon? He stands, pulling Chloe up with him. He backs her into a corner. “Get down,” he whispers. “I won’t let them have you.”

  “ ’Kay.” Fear peppers her scent.

  As Chloe crouches, Orem clutched to her chest, Dante stands in front of her. The door swings open and Dante hisses. Three men in black suits—bad fucking men like Wells, like Papa Prejean, like all the groping assholes who walk down the basement steps—spread out in the white padded room.