What The Cat Dragged In Ch. 30

Almost like she was reading from a fucking script. The pretty boys from the trendy clubs, she brought home. When she went slumming, she fucked them in bathrooms or back alleys. Daddy had let her security lapse of late, so she was all alone on her little excursions to the wrong side of the tracks too. That put her squarely in the category of easy prey.

Occasionally, an overheated moan would drift out to him. Creed glanced at his watch. Fourteen minutes into the encounter, Giada let out a forced-sounding squeal. He smirked. She goes out looking for a dirty fuck and ends up having to fake it. Almost made him feel sorry for her.

The guy came out a few minutes later, adjusting himself as he walked away. Giada emerged a few minutes after that, tossed her hair and started walking in the same direction. From her gait it was clear that she wasn't trying to catch up to her companion.

Creed watched for a few minutes, then he followed. The scent coming off her said whoever the guy was; he'd been stupid enough not to use a condom. He grinned and closed the distance between them. With one hand clamped over her mouth, he pushed her into a small vacant lot and around the back of an empty building. She struggled until she saw his face. Her heart was still racing, but she stopped struggling. She pressed her legs together and shifted her hips against the wall. Even if he hadn't been able to smell her, he caught the recognition.

He leaned down next to her ear. "Gonna scream?" His voice was a low, seductive purr.

She shook her head.

Creed took his hand away.

She gave a practiced flirty smile. "Could've just said hi in the bar."

He shrugged. "Had to do something first. Figured I'd find you again." He grinned.

A blonde eyebrow arched. "What if I didn't want you to?" She'd moved off the wall to press herself against him.

"You wanna talk," He pushed her back against the wall just hard enough to draw a moan from her. "Or you want me to scratch that itch that skinny bastard left you with?"

Her hands wandered over his chest, then to the front of his jeans. "What if I had screamed?"

Creed grinned and shrugged. "Then I'd've had to kill you."

Giada laughed and tried to pull him down into a kiss. Creed pushed her away. He pulled two filled syringes out of his pocket and showed them to her. "What's that?" Her voice was curious and eager.

"Little somethin' to make the cum better." Creed rolled up his sleeve and punctured a vein, emptying the contents of one into his bloodstream. The drug brought a momentary tension to his chest, but that dissipated in a few seconds. He offered the other needle to Giada.

She shook her head. "I suck at finding a good spot."

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation and took her arm. "Lemme do it." He put a soft slur in his words. His movements were slower, more deliberate.

Giada didn't resist as he slid the needle into the crook of her arm. She grinned. "What is it? In case I want some more."

Creed pushed the plunger and watched the drug start to take effect. Giada's eyes widened and she reached out to claw at him. She was struggling to breathe. His grin was laced with murder. "Succinylcholine. Trust me, that's the only dose you'll ever need."

The struggles to breathe stopped. Her eyes were wide, the drug paralyzing her muscles. Her own body suffocating her without robbing her of consciousness. She slid down the wall and he took the needle out of her arm. He let her sit with her legs spread wide, the skirt up over her hips. Deft claws sliced the buttons off the dress.

He took out another syringe, this one filled with heroin. "You really were a dumb cunt." He was careful to push the needle into the same place in the crook of her arm. He wiped the barrel of the syringe and the plunger, then used her hand to inject the drug. Despite the fact that she couldn't breathe, her heart would still beat for another couple of minutes, sending the drug through her body and giving the coroner a nice, neat cause of death.

Creed stood back and waited until the smell of death started to saturate the tiny space. He grabbed her purse with tips of his claws, walked into the empty lot and vaulted easily over the chainlink fence. He dropped the purse next to a sleeping homeless man before he emerged on the other side of the block.

His pace was unhurried. Just a guy out for a late night stroll. He'd just about reached the place where the van was parked when the phone on his hip vibrated. He looked at the number and saw it was the frail. The thought of talking to her with the stink of the slut's death on him disgusted Creed. He let the call go to voicemail. He'd call her back when he'd had a shower.

He got in the van and pulled away from the curb. At the first red light, he dialed a number. The phone was answered by silence. "Done my half. Get on with yours and don't fuck it up." He ended the call confident that the team waiting outside Cavallo's house was on their way in.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Kelly sat in one of the wide window sills. Her head rested against the glass. The cup of coffee in her hand was still too hot to drink, but the warmth felt good in her hands. Victor had been gone just over forty-eight hours, but it felt more like four months. She'd called him once, but he didn't answer. He called her back a few hours later, but hearing him had only made her ache to have him close.

"What's happening today?"

"Hm?" Kelly glanced up at Conlon.

"Over there." He indicated the building across the way with a nod of his head. "Anything interesting?"

"Mr. Left's wife found out he's been sneaking around with Mrs. Right."

"How do you know?"

She knew he was just trying to draw her out. She let him. "Come and look." In the left-hand apartment, a woman stood in the living room with a pile of clothing and a pair of scissors. The mascara streaking her cheeks made it clear that she had been crying. Her vision was clear enough to cut the crotch out of the pair of pants in her hand. She bent over and picked up another pair from the pile.

Conlon nodded. "Yep, looks like she found out alright. Mrs. Right's husband find out?"

"I don't think he believes it. They looked like they were having a fight awhile ago."

"They always fight."

"I know. I can't imagine having that much to fight about on a daily basis though." She smiled a little. "Sometimes I wish I had sound."

He laughed. "You could just watch the soaps."

She shrugged. The smiled twitched a little wider. "That's all made up." She pointed to the window. "This is real life. Much more interesting."

A silence hung in the air for a few long moments.

"He'll be back soon." Conlon's voice was quiet.

A deep sigh. "I know." Kelly looked over at him for the first time. "It's just strange being apart from him." She looked at Conlon. "Not that I don't appreciate-"

"It's okay. It's not the same thing."

*~*~*~*~*~*

Victor Creed didn't believe in taking risks with where he slept. That was one of the reasons he bought the second building all those years ago. It shared a common wall with the warehouse. Besides, living close to a place where he could work had its appeal. It took him awhile longer to see the true potential of the place.

Back then, he hadn't known shit about the psychology of what he did. He knew all about how to make someone hurt, how to make them beg for death to escape it, how to make them afraid. All the basics. How the mind connected and intensified all of those things wasn't even on his radar until a client hired him to deal with a certain member of his organization who had turned snitch.

Creed had thought it was a stupid idea at first, but he wasn't being paid for his critique. To his surprise, a little window dressing went a goddamn long way to intensifying the whole thing. It left him with a desire to know more and a police-style interrogation room straight out of the movies, complete with harsh lighting, one way glass observation window, yellowish walls and linoleum, and a metal chair bolted into the floor. Through the years he'd made improvements; an intercom system, better locks, little shit like that, but it was essentially the same place it was all those years ago.

Stan's sorry ass was currently occupying the chair. His hands were cuffed behind him and secured to the back of the chair. His ankles were shackled to rungs. He was still unconscious from the cocktail of drugs that had drained into his veins for the long drive from New York State.

Much as Creed had wanted to pick him up personally, he hadn't trusted himself to simply sedate the son of a bitch. He was going to tear Stanley Wilton apart. He was going to make it last, redress every wound the frail ever suffered because of him. Savor every scream ripped from his fucking throat. Make an eternity in Hell look like a vacation. His claws itched for the chance.

Then he thought about the frail's request. The only thing she'd asked him for. Letting her walk into a room with the reality of what he did to people sitting right in front of her covered in blood and bruises would have been another trauma. That idea was the only thing that was holding the animal in check.

The balding head jerked. Creed stood up a little straighter and turned on the intercom. It seemed like forever before the twitch happened again. This time it was accompanied by a moan. The captive man tried to bring his hands forward, tried to shift in the chair, and found himself held fast. That realization pushed back the fog of the drug. His head came up and he opened his eyes. For a long moment, he looked dazed, then recognition dawned on the jowly face.

"Hello?" His voice was gravely and laced with terror. "Who's there? Let me out of here!"

Creed stayed silent and turned off the intercom. He took the phone off his belt and dialed.

"Conlon."

"He's awake." He ended the call. Conlon would know what to do from there.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Kelly stood in front of the mirror and assessed how she looked. In the last hour, she had changed her clothes five times, thrown up twice and showered once. Victor had told her that he'd call Conlon when everything was set, but then it was just an idea. An abstraction that might happen, but probably wouldn't. Now it was real and Kelly wasn't sure she could face Stan.

She took a deep breath and looked at herself again. It shouldn't have mattered so much what she was wearing. Being there, alive and breathing would make enough of an impression. Still, jeans weren't right and nothing else seemed right either. Finally, she'd selected a full black skirt and dark green silk blouse. Her hair was twisted into a neat bun. A bit of make-up hid her nervous pallor. Black boots with three inch heels made her feel taller. Less vulnerable.

Finally she went downstairs.

Conlon stood up. "Ready?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice. He helped her on with her coat and then went down to the garage. Conlon opened the door to the dark SUV and Kelly got in the front seat. She didn't pay any attention to where they were going, but it seemed to take ages to get there. Finally, they pulled up to another brick building with a garage mechanism similar to the one at the apartment. Conlon pulled in to a much smaller, much dimmer parking area. She got out and followed him to a door mostly concealed in the shadows. Conlon entered a code and the door opened into a short, dim, brick-lined hallway terminating in a set of stairs leading down.

Kelly paused at the threshold.

Conlon looked back at her. "If you don't want to, I'll tell-"

"No." She closed the door behind her and walked down the hall. "I just wasn't expecting..." She shook her head.

Kelly followed Conlon through what seemed like a rabbit warren of tunnels. There were cameras everywhere. Each time they approached a door, Conlon looked up into the camera and the lock clicked open. After the fourth door, and another set of stairs leading down, she saw Victor standing at a wide spot in the hall, waiting. His arms were crossed over his chest.

She could see that he was almost as tense as she was scared.

Conlon let her walk the rest of the way alone.

As soon as she was close enough, Victor pulled her against his chest. For a long moment, he just held her. Kelly felt some of the more painful fear start to subside.

"Smell scared." His voice was a soft rumble.

Kelly tightened her arms around him. "I don't know if I can do this." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

He lifted her chin. "I ain't gonna force you. I'd rather you forgot about the sorry motherfucker altogether. Think that'll happen if you don't say what you gotta say?"

"No." A man without Victor's acute hearing would have missed it.

He kissed her forehead and led her toward a large window. On the other side, Stan was shackled to a chair. Kelly jumped back, but Victor caught her. "One way glass, he can't see you."

Kelly looked at Victor and stepped forward again, studying the man that had made her life and the lives of those she loved a living hell. He was fatter than she remembered. Softer. Smaller. His arrogant expression had melted and shifted into a look of pure desperation. He was shouting something, but she couldn't hear what it was.

Seeing him like that, shackled and terrified, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He was the one who was responsible for her knowing what it was like to be captive and terrified. She barely noticed when Victor took her coat off. He put his hand on her stomach and leaned close to her ear.

"Wanna hear him?" His voice was soft.

Kelly didn't trust her own voice yet, so she nodded.

"We can hear him. He can't hear us." He pushed a button.

"-out there! I demand to be let out of here! Do you know who I am?" It was bluster. The desperation was even more clear in his voice than it had been in his face. "I have powerful friends. Friends you wouldn't want to cross. Friends who can put you in a hole so deep no one'll ever find any trace of you!"

"That's what he wanted Cavallo to do to me," she whispered.

"Not a very original son of a bitch is he?"

Kelly could feel her anger starting to overtake her fear.

"Seeing you again is better than he deserves." His voice was still soft, soothing. "Think he'd have had the balls to go to see you in Cavallo's bunker?"

She shook her head a little. The diatribe coming through the intercom had turned into a discordant melange of swearing and begging. She ignored it.

"Fucking right he wouldn't." His hand stroked her stomach softly. "He was always beneath you. You know it, now he's gonna know it."

Kelly nodded and forced herself to step away from Victor.

He stepped in front of her. "You walk in there and you have all the power. You say what you want, do what you want."

She nodded again.

"There's no handle on the inside of the door. I'll be listening, so say 'I think we're done here' and I'll let you out."

Kelly looked at the colorless room. The idea of being locked in there brought an onslaught of memories of her own captivity. She looked at the little toad of man in the chair. His face was red, his anger and indignation were back. So were hers. She nodded at Victor. He put his hand on a scanner and a lock clicked. Stan must have heard the sound too because he fell silent. She squared her shoulders and walked into the room.

"Well it's about damn time! Unlock me right now and I'll try to get my friend to go easy on you." The sound of angry indignation mixed with the smell of stale air and urine.

Kelly willed herself not to flinch when the door closed behind her.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" Stan demanded. Fear and anger fought for dominance in his piggy little eyes. His shoulders tried to muster dominance. His mouth was drawn into a resolved line. "Look, I don't know who you're working for or what they told you, but the fact that you're a woman isn't going to intimidate me."

The one thing that was missing from his features was recognition. Any fear that Kelly had fell away, leaving only a fierce kind of clarity she hadn't known existed. She would say what she came to say, but she would be damned if she would tell him who she was first.

Kelly glanced around the room and spotted a folding chair by the door. She set it up across from Stan and sat down. Her legs were crossed, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on his.

She'd wait until he figured it out.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Creed motioned for Conlon to come over to the observation window. A small smile was on his lips. The frail sat motionless in a chair while the fat little bastard sputtered and pleaded and swore.

"What's she doing?" Conlon asked.

Creed glanced at the smaller mutant. "Waiting."

"For what?"

"You can't tell?" Creed studied the smaller man.

Conlon shrugged. "Not really. As nervous as she was before we left, I would have thought that she would just say what she wanted to say and get it over with."

"You might be able to assess a threat on the fly, but you're fucking useless when it comes to anything else, aren't you?"

Conlon looked at him for a long moment. "Not what I was hired for."

"Damn good thing." Creed looked at the frail's back again. "He's got no fucking idea who she is. He's been demanding to know, as if he was in a position to demand anything. 'F she tells him, she gives control of the conversation to him. Deep down, she knew that." He was silent for a long moment. "She's a fucking natural at this shit." The words brought a physical ache to his chest. He knew how she had come by those unique skills.

Stan stopped talking so much and started looking at the frail more intently in the ensuing silences. Creed could see tension in her back, but she managed to keep her body still.

"You're going to make him last." There was a certainty in Conlon's words.

Creed shrugged. "All the shit he did to her, I don't think even I can wring enough suffering out of a human body to make up for it."

The room in front of them had gone silent. The frail still sat motionless. Stan was leaning forward as far as the chair would allow, studying her face. Creed and Conlon watched Stan. A moment later the fat bastard sat as far back in the chair as he could. The color drained from his face. "Oh my God." He started to try and push the chair back with his shackled feet.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Kelly watched the change sweep over Stan's features. When he started to try and backpedal, she smiled.

"Something wrong Stan?" She kept her tone conversational. "Well, aside from the obvious captivity thing."

He was shaking now, all the bluster replaced by fear. "I...you...you were-"

"Supposed to be dead?" She finished. "Yeah, that didn't quite work out."

"Y-no! Dead? No! I mean..." His mind was racing, trying to put together something that sounded reasonable. Kelly could almost see the gears spinning. "I mean, I thought you were happily married to Roland."

She shook her head. "After everything that's happened, you still want to lie?"

"Kelly-"

"And not even a very plausible lie." She got up and started to walk around him in a slow circle, her arms still crossed over her stomach. The sound of her heels on the tile filling the small room.

"It was your mother." The words came out quickly.

She stopped in front of him. "My mother?" Sweat had made dark rings under his arms.

He tried for a casual shrug and ended up with more of a nervous twitch. "You know how she is. Flighty. Sh-She got the idea that you'd be happier out of the house and, as usual, she made me the bad guy. You really don't know what I've had to put up with all these years."

He was grasping at straws, they both knew it. "She made you the bad guy."

"All the time." There was a hopeful excitement in his eyes. "She couldn't stand the thought of you kids hating her." He leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. "She's not a very stable woman."