Angel Faces Demon Minds Read online

  ‘Yes, Miss Parrish, that’s fine. We will send someone round shortly; please make sure you put the package somewhere safe till we get there.’ The phone cut off and Miss Parrish sat listening to the hum of the dead line for several minutes.

  Last Stop New Jersey

  Shalyn lowered the exhausted princess onto the bed, and then carefully packed her away. She wrote a brief note, instructing her Philippine maid to shower the slave, then make sure she was fed and watered, and made to run the treadmill for at least an hour before being placed back in her drawer. The Shadow Stalker had memorized the contents of the email, and ran the details through her mind one more time as she headed for Newark airport. A thoughtful touch. Shalyn doubted the man would have argued much about not going to JFK, just like he was happy to sit economy, but Newark gave her the necessary degree of freedom to stop things getting overly complicated.

  Miguel strolled off the plane smiling broadly. He’d always intended to dump the white bitch when he got to San Diego; she looked the type that could make a lot of unwanted fuss. But this, a lottery win, a green card and a free flight to New York, and the bitches gave it to him in return for a slut he was probably going to waste anyhow sooner or later. Miguel joined a line for a routine security check, and a black security guard moved down the line and stopped at him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but the computer says you’ve connected from an overseas flight?’ Miguel didn’t detect anything particularly worrying in the security man’s attitude, so he nodded. He’d no idea what they’d put on the computer. ‘Could I ask you to step into the side office, sir? We have some concerns about a new Asian virus and you’ll have to have an inoculation before you can go any further.’

  ‘But I didn’t come from Asia, man,’ Miguel argued. ‘Never been there.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ the man said curtly, but without much interest, ‘it’s procedure. Over there to your left, second door.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Miguel muttered under his breath.

  The office was bare apart from a small table, a couple of chairs and some medical equipment. The doctor told him to sit down and relax, and to roll up his sleeve. Miguel did as he was told, and watched the doctor preparing the vaccine. She was attractive and blonde, and he liked that. A bit old for his tastes, but in good shape. She returned to the table and tied a rubber band around his upper arm.

  Miguel winced. ‘What you doing that for?’ he asked. ‘It’s a vaccine, woman, not fucking heroin.’

  The woman smiled pleasantly. ‘We don’t have time to allow the vaccine to work its way through your body, sir,’ she told him. ‘But I can administer it subcutaneous if you don’t mind staying the night with security.’

  Miguel stared at her for a minute. ‘Nah, just fuckin’ do it, I got things to do.’

  She stuck the syringe into his vein and he felt the cold liquid mingle with his blood. ‘Can I go now, woman?’ he asked disrespectfully as she removed the band. She was smiling at him strangely, and packing her things into a black bag.

  ‘Oh, I doubt you’d be able to stay even if you wanted to.’ She held the hypodermic up for him to look at. ‘Sodium pentothal and potassium chloride. It’s what they give the bad boys on death row since they started taking the chairs out.’

  ‘What?’ Miguel blinked, unsure what he’d just heard. Then he felt his arm go cold… really cold. The icy chill spread across his chest and he sank slowly back into the chair. ‘You fucking…’ A dark, inky blackness smeared the edges of his vision, creeping in toward the center. It was like someone was drawing a heavy black curtain across his eyes. He thought about screaming, but couldn’t remember how.

  The city coroner unzipped the heavy vinyl bag and gave the body a cursory once over. ‘Male, early twenties, Hispanic, heart attack, most likely drug misuse.’ He scribbled hastily onto a yellow form.

  ‘Autopsy?’ his bored assistant enquired.

  ‘Nope. No time. Can’t go around cutting up every illegal immigrant that gets dragged in here. You seen my backlog? People with families first, Dave. How many times do I have to tell you? No family, no complaints. Simple.’ He closed the bag.

  The Protégée

  Amber spread out on the smooth leather seats in the back of the limo. She was still wearing her denim skirt and the black leather felt cool against her legs. Miss Parrish had left Amber in her office, and then locked it. Then this woman came and told Amber to come with her, probably one of the Las Flores governors. If this was about Jenny then they could all go fuck themselves; the bitch had it coming.

  The car paused at a set of huge wrought-iron gates, and a tall black woman in a dark suit walked slowly towards them from the other side. Amber watched her with mild interest. She looked tough – really tough, like she could even take her dad. Well, when he was drunk, anyhow. The black woman nodded at the car, then took something from her pocket, pressed it, and the gates swung slowly open. The car crunched up the long driveway to the huge white house, and Amber stared out of the tinted glass and let her mask of bored indifference slip.

  ‘Fuck. You live here?’

  The woman driving the car laughed. ‘Yes, I live here, honey, but it’s not my place. I live here because I work for the woman who owns it.’

  ‘Shit. I guess I’m in real big trouble this time, huh? I thought Miss Parrish was fucking with me. Y’know, she usually does, she’s a total loser.’ Amber pressed a button and wound down the window, and leaned out. The teenager whistled as the full scope of the house, its outbuildings, ornate gardens and fountains came fully into view. The car pulled to a halt in front of white stone steps and Amber felt like she’d been driven straight into a movie, one of the good ones where people had money and got to do cool stuff.

  The driver looked round at the teenager. ‘Don’t worry, kid, you’re not in trouble,’ she said. ‘Miss Rebecca just wants to talk to you, that’s all.’

  ‘About Jenny?’

  The woman laughed again. ‘Maybe. But not for the reasons you’re thinking. Just relax and enjoy your visit, okay?’

  Amber nodded.

  The inside of the house was as mind-blowing as the outside. The driver lady led the teenager to a grand room and sat her in a sumptuous, high-backed chair, picked up a phone on a table and ordered a coke. The woman then smiled pleasantly and left.

  Amber sat for a few minutes, feeling like a turd in swimming pool. Any moment now someone was going to notice the mistake and throw her out that big gate.

  A pretty oriental woman hurried into the room and handed the girl a coke on a silver tray. Amber took it silently and the woman left. Then she heard a door at the far end of the room open and a tall, dark-haired woman glided in. She was impossibly elegant, and she looked at the girl with a burning strength Amber had never seen before. Her dark eyes held the girl’s gaze, and she smiled.

  ‘Amber, isn’t it?’ she purred. ‘I’m so glad you could come.’ Amber stood up and the woman held out a slender, manicured hand. The teenager moved to shake it, but the woman took her hand and held it, squeezing gently but firmly. Their gaze locked and Amber felt overwhelmed. She had no idea what was going on. She had no idea what to do or say. Even the fight had left her. Amber had faced down her father’s full two hundred and sixty pounds of drunken fury. She never backed down. Never. And here she was like a deer in a headlight. Frozen and waiting… for anything.

  ‘Sit down,’ the woman said, releasing the girl’s hand, and Amber dropped back into the chair. ‘My name is Miss Rebecca, and I have a few very simple questions for you, Amber. That’s okay with you, I presume?’ The woman sat in a chair opposite the stunned teenager, who nodded weakly. ‘Good. Well, Amber, I need a simple yes or no at this stage. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.’ Amber nodded again. The woman smiled. ‘Verbally, my dear… yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Amber muttered weakly.

  ‘Good, then I will begin.’ The oriental woman appeared again
with a tall glass containing lots of ice and a dark-red liquid – which Amber thought looked like blood – and handed it to Miss Rebecca. ‘Would you like to return to live with your father in the trailer?’ Rebecca asked, sipping the margarita.

  ‘No,’ Amber said, remembering the rules of the game.

  Rebecca smiled; the girl caught on quickly. ‘Would you like to return to the Las Flores Shelter?’ The woman took another sip of the blood-red drink.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like to live here?’

  Amber paused. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ Amber took a sip of the coke to wet her dry throat; she was smart enough to understand that this was becoming a very, very serious situation.

  ‘If you were given the chance to live here, would you be able to leave everything you have ever known before behind? To have absolutely no contact with your previous life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your father?’

  For the first time Amber smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Amber, I make the rules that govern this house. My word is law here. Could you agree to obey those rules, even without knowing them yet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you accept my rule absolutely?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you be loyal to me, Amber?’ There was a subtle shift in the woman’s tone.

  Amber blushed. ‘Yes.’ The confirmation came out muted, but she wanted to shout it, scream it, and Miss Rebecca knew. The woman stared at the teenager with her unwavering gaze. Amber never learnt much at school, but she wasn’t stupid. Her life had just switched lanes, suddenly and from nowhere, like a fast car on the freeway. Nothing would be the same again. This wasn’t a game, it wasn’t bullshit. People like this didn’t bullshit. That’s what people like her father and Miss Parrish did. ‘Yes,’ Amber said again, a little louder, and Rebecca smiled.

  Amber stayed in the house. She didn’t bother to collect any of her things and her personal assistant – which Amber thought a totally cool and wild idea – would get her anything she asked for, without question. And best of all, everyone treated her with respect. Amber looked around her large, beautifully decorated room, with its en-suite bathroom and huge tub, with disbelief. Something was going to turn up to ruin this dream, it always did. Then she’d wake up back in the stinking trailer, or the fucking care home, watching her back for the next scumbag to come at her. But it seemed real enough right now, so she dressed herself in the new jeans and tight baby-blue top she’d asked for, and slipped her new tennis shoes over her white socks and followed her personal assistant, Megan, downstairs.

  Rebecca sat on the patio eating breakfast with her protégée. ‘Did you ever see the film Caligula?’ she asked the girl, who was steadily working her way through a large bowl of cereal. Amber shook her head. ‘Perhaps you should sometime,’ the Inquisitor continued. ‘Then maybe you’ll see some of the irony in my situation.’ The Inquisitor peeled a piece of fresh passion fruit with a small silver knife. ‘You see, I have my own Caligula. Or should I say, Caligulette? Lauren is the only heir to my empire, and at twenty-five she should already hold a senior position, but that’s not the way it will ever be. Lauren has her own path and while she’ll always be here with us, running the family business doesn’t feature in her plans.’ Rebecca smiled. ‘Once it wouldn’t have been allowed, but times change. Luckily for Lauren we have the resources to indulge her little hobbies, and it is also not outside my power to fill the vacant chair she left. So you, my dear, are my back up. A princess regent, if you like. If you make it, all the real power will rest with you one day; a more frightening responsibility than you realize.’

  Amber said nothing as she sipped her orange juice, but she got the message. If she did okay, she could be as powerful as Rebecca. If she fucked up? Maybe someone would find her in a kitchen dumpster. But Amber had no intention of fucking up.

  The Preparation of Stephanie

  The curators managed the Cruza’s property, and it was a rather archaic tradition that they did most of their work below ground. The idea that they skulked demon-like in basements amused most of them, though in truth their workplaces were usually well lit and rather sanitized. The decor was generally white, very practical for the job in hand, and in many ways the curator’s workspace resembled a modern psychiatric hospital rather than a medieval dungeon.

  Dakota and McKenna dragged Stephanie down a flight of steps into the subterranean levels of the house. They threw the bound blonde at a smiling black woman.

  ‘Nice,’ she said, drawing in a lungful of smoke from a cigarette she was holding. ‘Makes a change from all the fucking Latinas.’ The black woman threw the blonde roughly onto a black, padded table. The two Cruza officers left, chatting as they climbed the stairs, and the black woman produced a pair of large, pink-handled scissors. Stephanie began to sob and plead, but the black woman ignored her. There were no threats, no attempts to silence the frightened young woman, not even a gag. The curator hummed to herself in a workaday fashion while she snipped away the latest acquisition’s clothing. Cutting along the seams of the girl’s jeans, the curator tore them off and threw them aside, the same with her white cotton T-shirt. Stephanie stayed perfectly still and compliant during the process; the last thing to do when someone had a sharp metal object brushing the surface of your skin was struggle.

  The black woman snipped the waistband on either side of the girl’s panties and pulled them off, dropping them onto the pile of clothing on the floor. Stephanie hadn’t been wearing a bra under the T-shirt.

  The curator then put on a plastic apron, pulled down a hose from above the table and began to wash the acquisition, soaping her with a yellow sponge and then rinsing the suds away. Stephanie was in the human equivalent of a carwash, and the curator treated the experience as if she were hosing down trucks for five bucks an hour. The only part of the girl the curator bothered to dry were her wrists and ankles, rubbing them briskly with a white towel, then she turned the blonde onto her front. Practiced hands worked their magic, and Stephanie felt the cuffs being placed around her wrists and ankles, and the little click as they were locked into place. The same pair of pink-handled scissors sliced through the cable ties. Stephanie’s hands pulled apart in reflex, but each cuff was clipped securely to its twin, then the same procedure was applied to her ankles. Stephanie’s situation was unchanged, if perhaps a little more comfortable.

  The curator reached up and pulled another hose from above the table. This one had a long plastic nozzle attached to its end, which the black woman inserted roughly into the girl’s vagina, twisting to work it inside the girl’s body. Stephanie jerked in surprise then started moaning pitifully, rising to full blown sobbing as the curator turned on the jet of soapy water and flushed the girl out like some cheap rubber sex doll.

  After a few minutes the procedure was repeated in the girl’s anus. Then she was rolled over onto her front again. The curator grabbed a silver container sitting on a heating plate on a side table, swirled the thick liquid wax around the pitcher, then emptied the contents onto the young blonde’s sparse pubic hair.

  ‘You lucky, bitch,’ the curator said to the object of her attention. ‘Them Latina girls is hairy as fuck, have to do right round to their asses, and legs an arms, too. This little muff ain’t nothing.’ The woman waited for a few minutes, leaning back against the table and smoking another cigarette, then she glanced at her watch and hummed to herself while she ripped off the cooled wax leaving the girl’s pussy as bald as a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Stephanie yelped, but held back any further tears. The bitches just wanted to humiliate her before handing her over to the police, and she could put up with a bikini wax and enema. They’d pay when she got her hands on a lawyer, though.

  But what happened next was a surprise, subtly
undermining her theories about the women’s intentions. The curator clipped nylon straps to one side of the table, then lay them across the girl’s naked body, securing them to the other edge, and with a strong tug on each strap buckle she was held tight, unable to move at all. The black woman then slid a cold, metallic dental brace into the her mouth, then turned the knob at the side like she was winding an old wristwatch, and Stephanie felt her jaws being forced apart. She began to make gurgling sounds, feeling the saliva build at the back of her throat and had to swallow frequently to clear it.

  The black woman pulled over a wheeled trolley packed with frightening metal implements, and Stephanie could feel the panic begin to rise in her stomach. The curator picked up a long thin implement with a curved spike at the end, leaned over the girl, and began to work on her teeth. Stephanie lay supine and helpless on the bench for nearly an hour while the curator performed an expert dental hygiene workout on her already neat white teeth. She lay there, swallowing her saliva while her mind hopelessly searched for meaning, and all she came up with were more questions.

  The Birthday Girl

  Amber hadn’t been given any chores or other stuff to do, so she lay in bed longer than usual. Megan, her personal assistant, came in to wake her at about nine o’clock. The woman was of medium height and build, attractive but not pretty. She always wore her dark hair tied back, and had a neat, fastidious appearance.

  Amber also suspected her duties included acting as her bodyguard. She had noticed the woman carried a gun, neatly tucked into a shoulder holster on her left side, and she rarely took her attention off her teenage charge, even if she was very clever at hiding it. But mostly Megan seemed interested that Amber learn some of the more basic Cruza ways, so it seemed she also doubled as a sort of teacher.

  Deportment was a word the girl heard often. Basically it meant acting totally cool, and like she didn’t give a shit. Everyone did it around here, and it was going to be really crucial when Amber met important people, and it was another reason why Lauren would never make the grade. In a way Lauren didn’t give a shit, she did her little girl thing all the time, and Amber could see what Rebecca meant. Lauren wasn’t going to change that for anyone. But that was cool. Amber had met Lauren at dinner yesterday, and she liked her. Sort of a big little sister, and one who had live dolls to play with instead of the plastic kind. Funny if you thought about it; a grown woman playing with live dolls. But Amber was a teenager, and weird was always cool as long as it wasn’t geeky-weird.