Cold as Ice (Willis/Carter #2)(112)

‘Not till I’m ready.’ He turned to Ebony. ‘Do you wish your mother were dead, Ebony?’

‘No.’

‘Yes you do.’ He snatched up the slack from the scarf.

Danielle twisted in the air and her feet beat against the floor as she tried to get oxygen and failed.

‘Yes. Yes . . . you’re right. I hate her. Please . . . please . . . Danielle doesn’t deserve it, kill me not her. Yes my mother doesn’t love me . . . is that what you want me to say? My mother doesn’t love me. Never did and never will.’

Danielle’s legs stopped twitching and her body slumped. He pulled the scarf away and she stayed the way she was. Ebony watched helplessly. She was here to save Danielle and she had failed.

Yan was angry with himself. ‘You did this – you made me lose concentration. You made me rush.’

He reached down and pulled Ebony to her feet and threw her over his shoulder again. Ebony started to retch. She was sick over the floor as he walked. She looked up as they were leaving the room; Danielle was stirring, coming round. Ebony felt the hope in her return. It wasn’t too late. Yan carried on walking, almost jogging along the corridor. Ebony felt the cold air rush as she stared at the floor beneath her. Her stomach heaved. She counted the doors, she knew the direction. She was back where she started. He opened a door and the mustiness, the heat in the room hit her. He laid her back in the box and left her for what could have been days. She had no idea how long.

She closed her eyes inside the coffin and tried to rest. She was thinking of Micky when she heard Yan return. She heard the three locks on the coffin being undone. As her eyes adjusted she saw him standing over her, something moving in his hands. Her eyes focused and she saw he was holding a rat; it was trying to bite him through his gloves. He held the rat one-handed as he reached into the box and pulled her up to a sitting position by her wrists. Then he dropped the rat in the box with her.

Ebony struggled to breathe through the panic as she felt its warm body and its sharp claws scratch her as it scuttled nervously around the box. He reached in and lifted it out by the tail. He dangled it in front of her face. It squealed as Yan pulled and twisted – dislocated its back legs. Then he dropped it back in. She watched it drag its mutilated body around the box.

Yan left her and walked to the corner of the room; she couldn’t see what he was doing but she heard the slide of a heavy glass lid being opened and the musty smell in the room intensified. He moved slowly back towards her carrying a huge snake coiled around his arms. Its girth was as thick as a man’s leg. He carried it looped over his shoulders and across his arms, walking slowly with the weight of it. Its head rose in the air as it smelt the room with its tongue.

‘Now this is my interpretation of a well-known classic: three blind mice. But this is one crippled rat and it isn’t the farmer’s wife coming after him, it’s my lovely Miranda.’

Ebony breathed hard as the snake’s head appeared over the side of the box. It was watching both her and the rat.

‘Stay still – I would – because she gets very jumpy when she’s hungry. She’ll strike at anything, even me. She has scores of sharp-as-needles teeth. The wound on my hand that you thought was made by a staple gun was actually Miranda’s teeth.’

Ebony stayed still, slowed her breathing and watched. She felt the snake’s body against her own as it dropped into the coffin with her and she sensed its tongue against her legs as it slithered its way slowly along. The rat didn’t seem to know what was about to happen to it. It edged closer to the snake as if curious. Miranda moved across Ebony’s legs, slowly inching its way towards the rat until their faces were almost touching and then she made her strike. She bit into the neck of the squealing rat and wrapped her coils around it as it fought to escape. Yan didn’t move – he was watching Ebony. She could feel it – she had to play his game now if she had any chance of surviving this and helping Danielle. She turned her head away, disgusted, and refused to look at the rat whose feet paddled in the air at the crack of its spine.

‘Please let me go, Yan. I can help you. I’ll tell them you were kind to me – please don’t kill me this way.’ Yan smiled. He was pleased to see Ebony so upset.

‘Take a good look, Ebony. Every time the rat exhales she constricts tighter; imagine her squeezing the life out of you.’ Ebony shuddered.

‘Please, Yan. Please stop this.’

She watched as Miranda opened her mouth wide and began taking the rat inside.

‘My game. My rules. I say when it’s over for you and Danielle. Stay here. Don’t move. You move and Miranda will strike.’

‘Please don’t leave me with it. Yan, please . . .’

Ebony heard his footsteps as he left. She listened to them outside the door and counted his steps. She knew he’d gone into the room where Danielle was. After a few minutes she heard the door open again and his footsteps climbing stairs.

Ebony didn’t dare breathe as she lay listening to the cracking of the rat’s bones and the sound of a door opening to the upper floor. He was planning to kill Danielle on the next floor of the house. If he’d left the door unlocked then Ebony could make it.

She looked back at Miranda. The rat’s body was slowly disappearing and now half of it was already jammed into Miranda’s throat. It was time to make her move. Ebony began biting the binds on her wrist.