Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(67)

More footsteps, but a glance behind him showed that it was only Sierra, following his orders. She hadn’t changed her clothes or put on her winter coat. She was still in her waitress uniform, displaying an attractive nipple hard-on in the frigid wind.

Which meant he would have to dress her himself. Fucking great. Details. Multiply them by twelve hundred, and his head was going to explode.

“Mommy? Is that a mean guy?” the kid quavered.

The pink-haired girl edged away. “Let’s just go, baby.” Her voice was high and thin.

The girl took off running, dragging the kid behind her. In a moment, she picked him up and continued onward through the empty parking lot in a heavy, awkward lope.

Mark turned to Sierra. He couldn’t have devised a more perfect maiden voyage for her if he’d planned it to the last detail. “Kill them,” he ordered.

Sierra’s eyes were bleak as she looked at the pink-haired girl with the kid on her hip, who lurched onward, casting panicked looks back over her shoulder. She was calling for help, screeching like a bird, but there was no one in earshot to hear her.

Mark pointed the freq wand at her. “I said to kill them, you dumb bitch.”

Sierra gasped at the pain. She let out a sharp, desperate sound and took off.

The pink-haired girl had gotten a good lead by now, but Sierra ran faster than any professional sprinter. She soon overtook the girl’s clumsy trot.

But just before she made contact, she veered off to the left. She ran incredibly fast, her feet in the white waitressing kicks a blur of movement. Right past the pink haired girl . . . and onward . . . and then she curved back around the way she came.

She couldn’t run away. She was resisting her programming to the absolute limit, but it was dragging her back to him in a big parabolic loop.

But she’d let the pink-haired girl and her kid go free. They were now scrambling into a battered pickup which peeled away, tires shrieking. Off to tell her crazy story to whatever meth-head pal of hers would listen, the trashy slut. His secrets were safe. But still.

He’d been disobeyed.

Sierra was almost back, but her pace was faltering. She staggered, stumbled.

About thirty feet away, she fell to her knees. She tried to get up. Fell again.

She began to crawl toward him.

Mark walked out to meet her. She was bleeding from her nose and ears. The auto-destruct was punishing her. Cheating him of the pleasure. She gasped for each gurgling breath. Blood flecked her lips. Her lungs were probably full of blood by now.

He turned to Raquel. “Bring one of those big sheets of plastic from the truck,” he ordered her. “And duct tape. She’s leaking. I don’t want a mess out here.”

Raquel did as he asked, and stood there, looking down at Sierra. Tears streamed down Raquel’s face.

The tears irritated him. Raquel had no business feeling emotions. She was just a tool, a doll, a f*cktoy. “Wrap her up in plastic,” he snarled.

Raquel knelt, spread out the plastic and did as he’d directed, but the manner in which she did it annoyed him. So careful. Wrapping Sierra like she was swaddling a goddamn baby. Just another subordinate cunt getting in his face. Enough of this shit.

He shoved her roughly to the side and finished wrapping Sierra himself, jerking the flap down over her face. Duct taping her until she looked like some sort of strange, oversized larva. The less bodily fluids that stained the asphalt, the better.

When she was fully contained and sealed into the plastic, he started kicking her.

Sierra was tough. It took a long time, which suited him fine. He kept at it, viciously, until every last sign of her sig was snuffed out. Then for some time beyond that, just for good measure.

When he stopped, the plastic-wrapped form looked like a bag of blood.

The other slave soldiers had ranged themselves around him. Fists clenched. Eerily silent. Raquel’s face was still wet. She sniffled loudly with each breath.

He slapped her so hard, she hit the ground rolling.

“Load that garbage into the truck,” he told them. “We have to find a place to dump it. Defective piece of shit.” He wrenched open the back of the truck. There was just enough space among the crates of weapons for the five of them to huddle. “Get in!”

They all hesitated. He lifted the wand, and gave Brenner a long, rattling buzz of agony. That shocked them all into obedience.

They hoisted in Sierra’s limp body and clambered over it, huddling down into the truckbed among the towering stacks of boxes.

Five pairs of burning eyes stared back at him over the plastic-swathed corpse.

Mark slammed the door on them, closing them into pitch darkness.





Chapter 20


The drive back was excruciating. Noah had no one to blame but himself.

What the f*ck was he thinking, calling Zade right in front of her? As if she were one of his group. As if she knew their secret history.

Noah was used to having people angry at him. He was a leader and it came with the territory. But with Caro, it made him feel like shit. And now she was going to watch them all watch the footage. Which was a brand new clusterf*ck in the making.

He concentrated on the road, trying to ignore the furious silence and the angry colors that filled the dark car. She was pissed off, confused, scared. With good reason.

She spoke up as they got off the highway and sped through a strip mall business district. “You can let me out right now,” she said. “Anywhere around here is fine.”