Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(106)

“What?” On a moan, she turned her head. “I don’t feel good. What . . .” Hints of fear lit those eyes as she tried to move, found herself bound. The fear exploded as she focused.

On the six men, Eve thought. On the one standing over her.

“No, don’t. Please? What is this?”

“This is the Brotherhood.”

As he straddled her, she wept, begged.

“Let me give her the stuff, Edward. She’ll want it when it kicks in.”

“I don’t care if she wants it or not. I take what I want.”

“Please. Please.”

She wept as Betz fumbled with a syringe, managed to push the needle into her biceps. “Give it a couple minutes.”

Ignoring Betz, he rammed himself into the girl.

She screamed.

When he was done, she turned her face away and said, “Please.” Only, “Please.” Again and again.

“Freddy’s up.”

“I’ll say.” Betz stroked himself. “I got a hell of a boner. Let’s see how the magic juice works.”

He took his turn straddling her, gave her nipple a teasing pinch. “Hey, baby.”

“What? What? It’s hot. It’s so hot.”

“Yeah, magic juice. Gonna get hotter.”

She strained against the bindings, tried to rear up. But instead of fear and shock, now her eyes were glazed and wild.

“Some form, some early form of Whore or Rabbit. Chem major—family business,” Eve stated.

Roarke said nothing, but his hand slipped into his pocket, and his fingers closed over the small gray button he carried there, always.

While Betz raped her Eve heard voices, laughter, the clink of glasses. Getting drunker, she thought, getting higher. Getting off on it, and waiting their turn at her.

When Betz came with a triumphant roar, they actually cheered.

“Holy shit! Best I ever had.”

“Move your ass, Fred.” Wymann shoved him aside. “My turn.”

“It’s enough,” Roarke said and turned to the machine.

“No, it’s not. All of it.”

It made her sick, it made her sweat, but she watched it all. Watched as they went back for more, one by one, and again, even after the girl had passed out.

“She’s done, man.” Easterday sprawled beside her. She lay facedown now, limp. “No fun when she just lies there like a corpse.”

“Let’s clean her up and out. Douche the douche.” Betz cackled at his sick joke.

“She won’t remember anything?” Edward Mira demanded.

“Who’re you talking to?” Betz snorted. “She’ll remember the party—vaguely, but nothing after the first roofie we got in her. We clean her good—no DNA in her when we’re done. We get her dressed, and we dump her back on the campus. Just like we planned. Maybe she cries rape, because that bitch is going to be sore every fucking where, but they can’t put it on us. We’re our own alibis.”

“The Brotherhood,” Wymann said.

“Bet your ass, bro.”

He turned back to the camera, grinned. “And that concludes the First Annual Brotherhood Fuckfest. Thank you and good night!”

The screen went back to blue.

After a long silence, Roarke ejected the disc, put it back in its case.

“These are the men you’d work yourself to exhaustion for? These sick, spoiled, vicious animals are who you’re standing for?”

“I don’t get to choose.” Her voice shook. She fought to steady it. “I don’t get to choose,” she repeated. “I have to do— God, I’m sick.”

She ran out, dropped to the floor in the nearest powder room. Her stomach pitched out the vile and bitter until all that remained was the raw.

“Here now.” Gently, Roarke laid a cool cloth on the back of her neck, stroked her pale, burning face with another. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry, darling.”

She only shook her head. “No. They are animals, and the ones who live, I’ll work myself to exhaustion to put in cages. I’d bury those cages so deep if I could, they’d never, never see light again. It hurts you, to see someone treated that way, and it hurts more because it makes you think of me. What happened to me.”

He said nothing, only reached up to get the glass he’d set on the counter when he’d come in. “Sip this.”

“I can’t.”

“Trust me now. Just a sip or two. It’ll help settle you.”

“Beating them all into bloody pulps. That would settle me.”

Gently, as Dennis Mira had been gentle, Roarke cupped her cheek. “There’s my Eve. Just a sip now.”

She took one. “And you know I can’t. I can’t do that.”

“And there’s my cop. I’m madly in love with both of them. One more sip now.”

Like Dennis Mira’s brandy in her tea, whatever he’d put in the glass soothed, settled. Maybe it was love that held the magic.

“It hurts you,” she said again.

He sighed, pressed his lips to her brow. Cooler now, he thought, though not a whiff of color had come back to her cheeks. “It does, yes. And yes, it makes me think of you.”

“It hurts you,” she said for a third time, “but you’ll still help me.”