Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(101)
Good mama.
Reaching inside his jacket pocket, Eduardo removed a flat plastic pouch, pulling out a sheet with precut strips of duct tape, each pressed up against a special 3M film. It was a kit of his own design; the plastic film had a coating, which let the duct tape stick only slightly, allowing it to be soundlessly peeled free, adhesive preserved. In addition to the duct tape packets, the kit contained a number of the plastic cuff strips that had become a favorite among both the law enforcement and drug trafficking communities.
In movements so quick and efficient that he was done before the child had struggled back to wakefulness, Eduardo stuffed a roll of gauze into the boy’s mouth and slapped a strip of duct tape across it, cuffing hands and feet together behind the child’s back. Hoisting the squirming form over one shoulder, Eduardo stepped back out into the hallway, closed the door, and walked back to the mother’s room.
Without a pause, he set the boy on the bed, his back pressed against the headboard. A quick twist with another of the plastic cuffs secured the child’s throat to the bedpost tightly enough to produce tiny gagging sounds whenever the boy moved but not tight enough to choke him unconscious. The boy whimpered, tried to scream, but the sound was so muffled that Eduardo barely heard it himself, a small snuffling like a rat in a garbage can.
Removing his jacket, Eduardo moved to the closet, selected an empty hanger, and hung the jacket beside a knee-length black skirt. He placed his shoulder holster and stiletto atop the dresser, continuing to disrobe until he stood entirely naked, the remainder of his suit hanging neatly beside the jacket. Then, picking up the knife, he stepped into the darkened corner behind the open doorway, the handle of the Beretta clearly visible in the holster atop the dresser, six feet away from the wide-eyed boy bound to the headboard.
Eduardo felt his anticipation rise. Humans were the most interesting of animals. They lived for change, the bad moments making the good ones better by contrast. Even intensity could not be sustained, every high followed by a downer of equal intensity. But it was the moments of transition that formed the ultimate in human experience, and Eduardo had determined the three most exciting transitions in human experience.
The moment of sexual climax peaked at the transition from extreme sexual excitement to satisfaction. Next came fear which, when pushed to the limit, formed the starting point of the next transition, that moment when the last shred of hope was ripped away, sending the victim over the peak of terror into the depths of despair. It was a moment of change so intense that only one other surpassed it. The passage across the life-death threshold.
Many people who had survived the near-death experience reported experiencing a great white light and a sense of ecstasy at the moment of passage. While Eduardo did not know about that, he had closely observed the death of enough people that he knew one thing; it was the most thrilling of all transitions.
He had also discovered that the ultimate life experience could be attained through a combination of all three transitions in one climactic event. Perhaps, at some point, he would be lucky enough to experience his own death in just such a way. In the meantime, he had found the next best thing, an act that produced his sexual climax at the terror-despair, life-death transition of his victim.
But as easy as it was to induce the life-death crossover, the difficulty lay in reaching into another person’s soul to extract the thing that bent her mind with terror. It was also the only thing that brought Eduardo to sexual fulfillment. It was his special skill, the reason he had acquired his nickname.
Footsteps on the stairs brought his reverie to a halt, tensing his naked body in anticipation. The stiletto pirouetted between his fingers in a ritual as unconscious as his breathing. The good mother was coming.
The woman stepped into the room, her slender arm flipping on the light switch as she passed through the doorway. For just a second, shock froze her in place, and in that second Eduardo moved behind her, the razor edge of the knife pressed against the curve of her throat, his other hand locked in a handful of hair.
“Fight me and I’ll cut your boy’s eyes out while you watch.”
The tone of his voice hit her as hard as the words, melting any resistance before it had a chance to form.
“Bitch, you’d better make me believe you’re loving it or I’m going to reach over and start cutting on your kid.”
Without releasing his hold on her hair, Eduardo worked the blade, severing her clothes in cuts that touched but did not damage the perfect skin beneath them. Forcing her down on the bed, face up beside her son, Eduardo mounted her, thrusting inside her tight body with a fierceness that shone like ice in his black eyes.
Beneath him, the woman’s body moved with a passion born of fury, hatred, and a panic he increased by periodically moving his blade hand closer to the terrified child. Feeling her fear intensity peak, Eduardo swept his knife arm up and sideways, sending a fountain of blood spraying out across the bed from the new mouth that opened in the boy’s throat.
The mother’s eyes widened as despair filled her soul.
Transition.
The blade swept down, sending a new jet of blood pulsing upward, mother’s blood combining with that of her child.
Transition.
Eduardo shuddered as he climaxed, spending himself inside the dying woman’s beautiful black body.
Transition.
The intensity of the moment left him collapsed atop the corpse, so drained he was unable to move, the better part of two minutes passing before he found the energy to rise and make his way to the bathroom. Stepping into the shower, he scrubbed himself and his stiletto clean, pausing to dry his body and slick down his hair before moving back to the closet to don his suit.