Gino walked in plain sight to the next cell and stood next to the man with the red armband, just back two steps. The man actually glanced at him and then looked away. Gino waited for recognition to happen, but none did, not face recognition. It was more the fact that he was a man to look out for. A predator, just like Zhu. Zhu’s soldier swung toward him, but Gino wrapped an arm around his neck, and wrenched hard. The crack might have been audible if the music wasn’t so loud. Keeping his arm around the man’s neck he dragged him to the middle of the room to the rows of chairs placed back to back to view the scenes in the cells.
That’s ten. Fifteen to go. Anyone spot those outside? Gino walked back to see Zhu raping one of the women, his hands around her throat, squeezing the life out of her while he took his pleasure. He wanted to kill the man more than he wanted to breathe. He might have used a gun at that moment, but there was no guarantee he could shoot through the glass.
At your six, Gino. And again, another coming out of a room and heading toward the one at your six. He’s covered in blood. The girl he left barely alive looks to be about fifteen if that. That was Diego. His voice was steady, but there was something there that had Gino wanting to order the brothers from the room.
Two just came out of cell at the end of the hall, right side. They’re laughing and looking back into the cell. Both men have blood on them. Looks like arterial spray, Rubin reported. Moving closer.
Don’t. Gino couldn’t help himself. He was beginning to feel a little desperate. This club was one of the sickest places he’d ever been in. He needed to kill Zhu, but he didn’t like exposing Diego and Rubin to the kinds of things happening. He had a feeling he knew what went on in that cell. There’s no need to see what they did.
I’ve got them, Draden said. Hang back, kid. You’re our eyes. We have to know the minute someone spots one of our kills.
Gino walked casually with a man and a woman, the woman dressed in a luxurious fur, her ears dripping with diamonds. Her eyes were bright, and she was clearly as high as her man as they wandered over to the cell where the two men with red armbands talked just outside the lit room. The woman giggled when she saw the young girl, naked and barely moving, her body covered in blood.
“We’re too late,” she whispered, excitement in her voice. “I wanted to see this one. So many ideas to bring home with us to our own little darling.”
Fur coat, black suit. They come out, kill them, he ordered Ezekiel and his brother. He wanted to burn the club down with everyone in it.
You can’t kill them all, Ezekiel’s voice steadied him. We’re here to take out Zhu. Keep your heads in the game, all of you.
Maybe not, but these people don’t deserve to live.
20
T
he woman in the fur coat turned to the man who had just emerged. “I saw you were here and they’d brought in a young girl for you on the program. I was hoping to see your performance.”
The guard looked her up and down and then back at the girl trying to push up to her hands and knees. “She was delicious.”
Gino took his friend, right there while the other man was basking in the glow of being some kind of star for hurting young girls. He slammed his knife into the base of the skull of the ex-soldier and dragged him back a few feet. Others crowded in to see the teen fall back on the floor. Applause broke out. Gino hauled the dead man to the row of chairs. Eleven down.
He felt grim, drained of all humanity, but he had to have something left because the club and its inhabitants twisted his stomach. More, the thought of Zara in Zhu’s hands made that sick feeling inside him worse. He crept up behind the man responsible for the young girl lying in a pool of her own blood and waited until the man got his fill of laughing at his handiwork. Abruptly Zhu’s soldier spun on his heel and pushed his way through the crowd, spotting his friend sprawled out in a chair.
Gino let him walk almost right up to him, shadowing his every step. When the soldier halted right in front of his friend, he halted as well.
“What are you doing? We have to relieve the others,” the man demanded. He stepped closer when there was no movement.
Gino heard his swift intake of breath, the recognition that his friend was dead, and then Gino killed the man. There were no guns to catch. These men were relaxing in their favorite way. The ex-soldier liked hurting others. Zhu had gathered an army, personal bodyguards, whatever he wanted of them, but the men were sadistic just like their boss.
That’s twelve.There was satisfaction in killing this one.
Thirteen and fourteen down,Draden reported. Sick fucks. I would like to be able to kill them again. Maybe three times.
Gino watched the woman in fur come across the room to the chairs. There was purpose and determination in her step. “We’d like a private demonstration. We can get you another virgin, one even younger if you prefer,” she started and then narrowed her eyes, stepping closer.
Gino slipped up behind her. He didn’t like killing women, but she was every bit as sick as Zhu. She screamed. Loudly. Loud enough to be heard above the pounding music. The club members were used to the sounds of screams, but hers were persistent and without the notes of agony included. She was also screaming from the common area, not the cells. Heads began to turn.
Security came out of the shadows as Gino melted into them. He went up the side of the wall, just as Draden did. They all clung there, high, nearly to the ceiling, blending in like lizards. Gino kept his gaze fixed on the hexagonal cell where Zhu indulged his sadistic nature. The scene in the common areas was chaos as people began discovering the dead bodies positioned throughout the club.
Zhu glanced up, looking impassive as a man wearing a red armband rushed into the brightly lit cell. His gaze never left the window as his man informed him of what was happening. He never once changed expression. He said something, turned back to the man hanging in such agony and shoved a knife into his belly, twisted as the man shrieked, cut up to spill the intestines onto the floor, his expression never changing.
His men, what was left of his army, gathered around the cell waiting for him to come out. He didn’t seem to mind keeping them waiting.
Zhu walked to the first woman, who shook her head and pleaded. He stabbed her repeatedly, making certain that none of the knife wounds were fatal. She would suffer, bleed and be disfigured if she didn’t bleed out. The second woman had stared in horror, and when he turned to her, she begged. Cried. He pulled the ropes to him, licked the tears from her face, and took her mouth in a savage kiss. At the same time, he shoved his knife deep into her body.
The ex-soldier who had come to warn him laughed and shook his head as Zhu calmly went to a basin and washed the blood off. He didn’t look back at the wrecks of human beings he left hanging in ropes. He simply dressed and walked out to join his men. He waited while one helped him into a long coat, listening as they tried to raise the outside guards. Again, it didn’t seem to faze him that not one of the men outside answered their radios. He had to know those men were dead and that left him with eleven out of his twenty-five guards.
Gino didn’t look at the remains of those hanging or lying in the cells. He couldn’t, not and stay in position. For the first time since Ciro Spagnola had taught him, he couldn’t find that cold place inside that allowed him to disassociate. There was no way to see such suffering, the aftermath of sadistic torture on innocents and not want to embrace a berserker’s rage, so he kept his gaze fixed on Bolan Zhu.
They’re coming out.
All vehicles surrounding the club have been rendered useless.There was satisfaction in Malichai’s voice. He might not have been in the club, but the things Draden and Gino revealed with just their snippets of conversation were enough to tip him that it was ugly inside.