Gone Black (9 page)

Black thought about the detailed psychological profiles that he'd done on the Soquet family, after he realized they were the ones out to get him. He had researched them in every possible way, from every possible angle and every possible diagnosis, and that knowledge was going to help him survive. Their own three-prong approach to breaking down a man. Or a woman. Even little children, that usually done in front of the parents. The three of them working together, tormenting and torturing, mentally and physically. Marcel had trained his children well, now that they were adults and so eager to earn his respect. He had chosen Jaxy to perform the psychological torment. The first act in their triumvirate of horror. She was hard at it right now. Trying to break down his mind and all rational thought processes, very slowly and thoroughly, with all sorts of horrendous techniques, meant to terrify and degrade. Sometimes to lessen her monotony, she would get to come in and use her sap and the sexual pleasure that brought to her.

Then came Phase Two. Marcel's son, Max. Black had found out that he was brighter than Jaxy, but even more cruel and unfeeling than his sister. He was always in control of all emotions, never slipping into rage, unable to be pushed into making stupid mistakes. He would pull on his specially designed leather gloves and inflict horrible physical punishment on his prisoner. Each blow was crafted and perfected to hurt and maim and demoralize and engender debilitating despair. But he would never lose control and kill Black or any other of his victims.

That pleasure came in Phase Three, where Marcel himself took the reins. But he rarely dirtied his hands too much. He would simply bring in a victim's loved one and make the victim watch the suffering he perpetrated on them. And that would be Claire, in Black's case. But she wouldn't come, and that was what kept Black going. As long as they were here, tormenting him, they weren't after her.

Then at the very end, Soquet presented his grand finale. That's when it was time for the victim to tell them everything they wanted to know or die. But they always died, anyway. Usually, from a pipe bomb or specially constructed grenade vest, perfected by Marcel and detonated from another room. One that was powerful enough to blow the human being strapped to the bomb into a million tiny pieces and destroy the room in which he was held. All three phases of abominable behavior were filmed for acolytes of torture methods and sold to the highest bidder. The Soquets, all three, were a scourge against humanity and decency.

Black was just glad he was still in Phase One. He remembered how Jaxy had taken such pleasure in telling him how he would suffer at their hands, which was the only the reason he wasn't dead yet. That he needed to just wait and see the fun they had in store for him. The woman was so sick in the head now that he knew he could never reach out to her or talk her out of her dark proclivities for violence, much less elicit any kind of guilt or sympathy or remorse. So he wasn't even going to try. If he was correct in his diagnosis, she had no capacity for any kind of empathy, and probably hadn't since she was ten years old. So he had to steel his own mentality and force of will. Dig even deeper inside himself when she was there working on him. Booker and Holliday would show up. Once they knew he was alive, they would search him out and free him. Still, that was little comfort at the moment, because he was still freezing, his body trembling so hard that he couldn't stop it. When the music stopped abruptly in the middle of the song, the light slowly dimmed again until he sat alone in darkness. Then he waited to be attacked.

Nothing happened right off, so he endeavored to dredge up more mental strength, force himself to think about other things, other times when cold and wet meant pleasure for him, not pain. So he shut his eyes and pulled out the day he'd given Claire the engagement ring. They'd been in the snow, at her house on the lake, not long after she had barely escaped one of her horrific ordeals with serial killers. But that day, the snow, the cold had felt good to him, refreshing and clean. He had pulled out the ring and surprised her, and he tried to forget where he was now, how cold he was now, how hard his limbs were quivering, and think only of that one day when cold meant good things, when cold meant Claire was underneath him and he was kissing her cold lips.

That dream worked for a little while, but it didn't last nearly long enough. He felt as if he was already partially frozen. As if his skin had grown hard to the touch, red and frostbitten and covered with a thin sheet of ice. Soon he would stop feeling the cold or the pain of being cold. Freezing to death had always been purported as the easy way to go, he knew that much, probably easier than anything else they had done to him so far. But this time, they might have overdone it. Because he knew he would lose consciousness soon and eventually stop breathing. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that's the way he was meant to go.