Dean coughed. “You say so, Jak. Krysty reckons you can sort of take yourself out of the pain, where they can’t touch you with it. You heard her say that?”
“Yeah. Believe her. Don’t know could do it. Not when triple evil comes calling.”
While the sun shone down and the cooling breeze blew across the New Mexico wilderness, Jak Lauren told the boy about a time of betrayal.
IT HAD BEEN when Jak was only eight years old and a member of his father’s gang, fighting against the dreadful oppression of Baron Tourment in the swamps of Louisiana.
It had been high summer and one of the baron’s sec patrols had caught a senior lieutenant of the gang, a man in his middle thirties, with intimate knowledge of all the secret routes through the treacherous bayou country, as well as knowledge of numbers, camps, weapons and plans.
“Name was Al Brooks. Lost two fingers to gator and two more to gaudy slut in Tallahassee. Tough son of bitch. His son, Ike, was good friend.”
Tourment had Brooks held prisoner in a cell on a small island, close to his base. The man was naked, and chained hand, foot and neck. He had no way of moving at all.
Jak’s father had sent him in at night, the pale-skinned child smeared with stinking mud and gator shit. He slid through the dark waters like a moccasin snake, waiting for an hour, as still as a log, watching for his moment. He scampered to the hut and used his preternatural agility to worm his way onto the roof. Then he burrowed patiently through the overlapped leaves until he was perched on a supporting beam, able to see and hear everything without being seen or heard.
“Guard all time. Got Armalite. Like they say Trader carries. Couldn’t do anything help Al.”
All the ghostly little boy could do was sit and observe while Brooks was tortured by Tourment’s henchmen. The baron himself had told his prisoner that he would only bother to come and see him when he’d been softened up, ready to spill his guts and betray the others.
“Took turns. Torture’s fuck-tiring to do. Hour and need rest from it.”
Dean asked him how long he’d stayed hidden.
“Dark to day. Day to dark. Lose sense time.”
Jak explained how the best torture was subtle. Anyone could break arms or knock out teeth. But that was crude and clumsy and often resulted in the accidental and premature chilling of your victim.
“Break spirit and you break body. Bit at time. Repeat it again and again, so he knows won’t ever stop. Until talks.”
Al Brooks had reached the point.
Each of his remaining fingers and toes had been slowly and delicately broken; each knuckle had been crushed. Most of the major joints had been dislocated, including elbows, shoulders, knees and hips.
The litany of horror had gone on and on.
“And women had worked on cock and balls and”
At that point Dean, his own face almost as pale as the whispering narrator of the horror story, had held up a hand.
“I get the picture. Yeah, I see.”
Jak had nodded, unsmiling. “Al was ready talk to Baron Tourment.”
“So? What did you do?”
“We should be finishing door.”
“Come on, Jak. Please?”
“Waited until guard went out to take leak. Dropped down. Al saw me. Think recognized me. Tried to speak.”
“What did he say?”
The albino sniffed and shook his head. “Can’t tell. Never listened. Cut throat quick and hard. Guard heard death rattle. Came back. Saw little eight-year-old kid. Slowed reactions. Cut his throat too.”
Dean clapped his hands together, whooping delightedly. “Hot pipe! That showed the bastards!”
Jak was on his feet with a startling speed, his hand lifted as though he were about to slap the boy. Dean shrank, his right hand going for the turquoise hilt of his knife. But Jak let his arm drop down.
“Dean, you got good sense for young boy,” he said very quietly. “But you gotta learn lesson that chilling and torture aren’t fun.”
The boy stood, looking around, eager to change the subject and ease his own embarrassment. “Can’t you just show me your throwing knives, Jak? Please?”