Chapter Fifty-Eight

The Dragon Factory

Sunday, August 29, 5:03 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 57 minutes E.S.T.

Pinter sat on a hard wooden chair, his hands cuffed behind him, the chain fed through the oak slats of the backrest. He was naked and they had doused him with bucket after bucket of icy water. The air-conditioning was turned to full, and the temperature of the room was a skin-biting forty degrees. Pinter shivered uncontrollably, but he kept his jaws clamped shut to stifle the screams that clawed at the inside of his throat.

There were four people in the room with him. Three of them were alive. The fourth was a red ruin of twisted limbs and torn flesh that no longer resembled anything human. It was meat and bone. Two hours ago the meat had been Pinter’s partner. But then the Jakoby Twins and their assistant had gone to work on him. They never even asked Homler any questions. They just began a program of systematic beatings that reduced the man to red inhumanity. Before they began, Hecate switched on video and audio recorders, and now that the actual screams had ceased and the body was inert the whole thing played out again on four big LCD screens mounted on each wall.

Pinter scrunched his eyes shut, but he could do nothing to block out those high, piercing screams.

It went on and on until Pinter felt cracks forming in his mind.

Then Hecate walked slowly across the room and pressed a button that dropped the entire room into a well of silence. She turned like a dancer and walked back, passing in front of her brother and trailing her fingernails across his stomach. Paris looked away. He had not participated in the torture, preferring to linger by the door, arms folded across his chest, his body deliberately out of the path of flying blood. His eyes followed his sister; his mouth was small and unsmiling.

Pinter licked his lips. His throat felt hot and full of nails.

Hecate leaned back against a wall and crossed her ankles. She wore a pair of capri pants and a bikini top. She was covered in blood from her polished tonails to her full underlip. Her eyes were bright with a predatory fever, and her chest heaved with exertion and passion.

“You know who I am?” she purred. It was the first thing anyone had said.

Pinter said nothing.

“And you know my brother. . . .”

Pinter cut a look at Paris, who studied his nails.

“And our large friend here is Tonton.”

Tonton grinned. His teeth were bloody. He was a biter.

“Your weapons and equipment are American. You want us to believe that you and this” she reached out and jabbed a toe into what was left of Homler. “You and your friend want us to think that you’re special ops. Delta Force, SEALs, something like that.”

Pinter said nothing.

“Which would be fine if I’d woken up stupid this morning.” She smiled and Pinter thought that her teeth looked unnaturally sharp. The witch’s eyes were a strange mix of dark blue and hot gold. “Now . . . we both know how this is going to end.”

Pinter looked left and right as if there was some chance of escape. Hecate watched him and smiled. She pushed off the wall and came toward him with a slinky sway of hips that made Pinter see a big hunting cat rather than a woman. He thought he could feel the heat from her eyes. Then she raised a leg and straddled him, sitting astride him so that his face was inches from her chest.

“We all know that you’ll tell us everything. Everything. The only question is whether you’ll be smart and earn a quick release or play it stupid and make us work for this. The end will be the same. Tonton is very good at a quick kill when I want him to, but he doesn’t like it. He has a bit of animal in him. Truth is . . . so do I.”

Hecate reached behind her back and undid the strings of her bikini top. She pulled it off and let the straps slide through her bloody fingers. Her nipples were erect, her breasts flushed pink. She leaned forward to brush her nipples back and forth across his chest.

“I’d prefer that you make this slow and difficult. We have the time.” She bent forth and whispered huskily into his ear, “I like the slow burn. But I’m fair. Play it straight with us and this will be over before you know it.”

He held out for a long minute, grinding his teeth together to keep his mouth shut, but when Hecate opened her smiling mouth and licked the blood from his chin he broke.

Pinter threw his head back and screamed. Not in pain but with an atavistic dread that was so deep that it was beyond his ability to comprehend. It was primitive and unthinking, filled with need and desperation and a total hopelessness.

The echo of the scream bounced off of the walls and swirled around him like a poison vapor. He collapsed forward, his head against her breasts, his chest heaving with as much passion as Hecate’s, but of a totally different flavor.

“You can die pretty,” she said. “Or you can die ugly.”

Hecate bent and hooked a finger under his chin, leaned toward him, and kissed him on the mouth. Pinter could taste the salty blood on her lips. He gagged.

“Tell me . . . ,” she whispered.

He told her everything.