Chapter 25

ZACHARY FELT himself being dragged. His back burned along a broad stripe where it met the hardwood floor. His head pounded, especially on his left temple, and his mouth was dry. He couldn’t focus or understand what was happening.

His arms and legs felt like lead. His arms…. Were they tied? He tried to move his wrists and realized he couldn’t. Then he tried to force his eyes open. Everything seemed blurry, and he was so tired. So tired….

He felt himself heaved up onto a different surface. It squeaked under him, and someone positioned him and moved his body around so he lay on padded leather. The stripe across his back burned more as he was shifted around, and he tried to protest.

He felt a hand bend his left leg, and something soft was wrapped around his ankle. The same thing happened to his right leg, and he realized he couldn’t move either one. When he tried to sit up, his head immediately began to swim, and he muttered, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

He heard a chuckle above him and tried again to focus his eyes. It dawned on him that he was naked and cold. Something was happening across his chest. He felt more leather and a metal buckle pressed against his skin. A strap was tightened and locked into place. He couldn’t move his upper body.

A pad was placed around his left wrist, and then he heard a click. The rope that had bound his wrists together was removed, and he tried to flail with his freed right hand, only to have it grabbed and forced down. Again something soft wrapped around his wrist, there was another click, and then he was unable to move his arms.

“There we are,” a satisfied voice said. “Almost ready.”

“S-Sam?” he asked, and he heard another chuckle.

“Sam doesn’t live here anymore.”

Zachary tried again to get his eyes to focus. He saw Sam leaning over him, and a wide grin split his mouth as he stared down. Something dark and terrible burned in his brown eyes.

“Sam, what’s happening?” He pulled at his legs and his arms and only then understood he was completely immobilized.

“We haven’t been properly introduced. Call me Charles,” Sam said. Or Charles did? Zachary’s head hurt so badly he couldn’t think.

“Why can’t I move?” he tried again.

“You can’t move because I have a present for you, and I need you to be in just the right position to enjoy it,” Charles said in a tone one might use for a small child. He adjusted the strap across Zachary’s chest and pulled it tighter, pinching his skin and making him groan.

“I’m naked.”

“Yes, you are, you little whore. I need Jason to see you for what you are before I give you my present.”

Charles? Jason? Zachary understood nothing that was happening, and he moaned. “Please let me go, Sam.”

Charles slapped his cheek hard. “Not Sam. Charles. I won’t tell you again.”

The sharp sting helped Zachary focus for a moment, and then he wished it hadn’t. Charles, Sam, whoever—he had to be the one who killed those two men. And he had Zachary trapped.

He trembled in cold and fear. He pulled on his arms and legs with all of his might and rocked as he tried to make the surface he was strapped to fall over. It barely budged, and Charles smiled with deep satisfaction. He sat back on his heels and ran his eyes over Zachary’s bound body with malice and glee.

“Perfect,” he muttered. “Jason will finally know what a piece of trash you really are.”

Zachary thought he needed to try to be calm. Get Sam, or Charles, talking. “Who… who is Jason?” he asked.

“Jason, Thomas…. It doesn’t matter what he calls himself. I found him again.”

“Thomas is coming here?” Zachary asked as a surge of hope rushed through him.

“Eventually. I need him to see what a disgusting display you’ll make. How you’ll beg for it. That’s important before we’re done with you and able to move on.” Charles’s voice trembled slightly, and his eyes were lit with a manic glow.

“You don’t have to hurt me, Charles. I’ll go away and leave Thomas, uh, Jason alone,” Zachary said, and he made his eyes wide as he tried to convince Charles of his sincerity.

Charles just sighed and projected insincere regret. “Ah, Zachary. If only that would work. But Jason thinks he loves you, don’t you see?”

Zachary shook his head frantically. “No. He never told me he loves me. We only got together a few times.”

“Well, you don’t know him like I do.” His mouth grew hard. “Nobody knows him like I do. With the others I knew he was just testing me. He’d fuck them and send them away. But I knew. He was marking them out for me as a way to test whether I really loved him. To see if I would do what needed to be done. And I finally understood, but I was careless. The first one led too easily back to Jason.”

“Gallagher? The one Thomas, uh, Jason slept with?”

Charles shook his head ruefully. “I was too eager, having finally found Jason again after so long. I saw that creature leave with him one night, and the next week he was back, panting again after Jason like a bitch in heat. I think Jason knew I was there, though, even in my disguise. He turned the creature away—dismissed him like I knew he would. Then that boy had the audacity to challenge him. He threw a drink at Jason before he left. That could not stand, so I showed him the error of his ways. I showed him why Jason could never be his.”

Got to keep him talking. The longer he talks, maybe Thomas will come and help me. “What about the other one? Owen or something? Thom—Jason said he never met him. What was his error?”

Charles sighed. “That was my own devising, rather than a challenge that Jason set for me. When the police showed up at Mata Hari, I realized my mistake. I needed to draw their attention away from Jason. I did feel bad, though. The boy really had done nothing wrong. But he was a convenient age and build—a bit like the cretin who had accosted Jason—and he left that bar alone.” His face hardened as he met Zachary’s eyes again. “I regret it, but there is nothing I would not do for Jason. Nothing.”

“Why me? Charles, I learned my error, didn’t I? I stayed away from Jason?”

“Oh no, silly man. You went back and interfered with his pleasure with the handsome young black man, and that was error enough.”

Marcus. He means the night Thomas was going to leave with that man, Marcus, but changed his mind.

“I was so close to getting you that night,” Charles said as he shook his head. “You were alone in the parking lot, drunk like a whore, staggering toward the street. I got out of my car and then”—his voice trembled in rage—“Jason followed you.”

Zachary remembered it so clearly, even through the haze of the alcohol he had consumed that night. He remembered the nearly deserted parking lot, the bottle rolling on its side. He heard again the sound of a car door opening. Oh God.

“Of course I could do nothing in front of Jason. I simply wasn’t ready yet. But I followed your cab. I saw you both go up to his apartment.” Charles’s voice became steadily more strident as he recited Zachary’s crimes. “I listened to your violation of Jason’s body. I heard you throw him around and use him. Every breath, every move. And then, after all of that, when you finally had the decency to leave, I heard him give you words he denied everyone else.”

Charles pressed a button on his cell phone, and a recording of Thomas’s baritone played over the sound system. “If I could let anyone in, Zach, it would be you.” Zachary’s vision blurred with tears.

Ah, Thomas. You really did feel something for me.

He deeply wanted to apologize to Thomas for the terrible things he had said in their last conversation. Was it only yesterday? But despair sapped his strength, and he sagged against the leather bench. Once he would have done anything to hear those words. Now strapped and helpless, he recognized them for a death sentence.

Charles nodded at Zachary’s tears. “You’re a clever one. I saw that early on. You understand what this means. But I also knew I had to handle this more carefully than I had the other one, that Gallagher.”

“Were you… were you trying to make me love you?” Zachary choked out. “To love Sam?”

“It seemed so simple, with your febrile tastes. I went through your books and your movie collection, found what you liked, and then I pretended to like those same things.”

“You were in my apartment?” Zachary asked, trying to make sense of what he was hearing.

“Of course. Simplest thing in the world. Identify a construction or a maintenance team going in, slip some money to join the crew, break away once inside the building. Piece of cake,” Charles gloated. “Once I was in, I planted a few cameras, added some software to your computer, that sort of thing. That’s how I knew about your work trip to New Orleans, of course. I simply showed up as Sam and took things from there.”

“But why go to so much trouble?”

“I needed Jason to see how faithless you really were,” Charles said with a grimace. “I wanted him to see how easily you’d abandon him for another man. Otherwise he’d simply pine for you, and I couldn’t have that. No. When Jason comes to me, I want all of him, every bit of his attention.”

“Did you delete that picture from my phone from when we went to the Captain America movie?” Zachary asked, desperate to keep Charles talking.

“Of course. When you went to the bathroom and left your phone in your jacket. I couldn’t have you show that around, just on the off chance Jason would see it before I was ready.”

A piece shifted into place for Zachary. “You knew Jason went to the shelter sometimes. That’s why you didn’t want to come there.”

Charles scoffed. “Obviously. Besides, I had no sympathy for those children—weeping and wailing because their families didn’t want them. I survived that on my own.” Anger glinted in his eye. “Family is a trap. Only love can save you, and that never comes from family. All family gives you, ultimately, is disappointment and punishment and disapproval.”

Zachary tried a different tack. “Couldn’t you have loved me? I really believed in you, as Sam. We had so much fun together.” He tried to put longing into his tone.

Contempt dripped from Charles. “Don’t be ridiculous. Jason is the only man for me, and he’ll understand soon that I’m the only man for him.” He smiled cruelly then and asked, “Now would you like to get a look at my present?”

Charles moved out of Zachary’s line of sight and wheeled over a device. A silver-colored arm protruded from a Lucite box, and the gears and mechanism inside the box reflected the lights in the room along hard edges and sharp corners. Charles pressed a button on a remote and the gears began to turn powerfully. They thrust the rod forward and back and picked up speed until it punched the air.

Charles shut down the mechanism, stepped away, and returned with a long box. He reached inside and, with his eyes on Zachary’s face, removed a dildo longer and thicker than Zachary had even imagined existed. It had to be more than a foot long and bigger around than a beer can. And covering the head of the dildo were….

“Nails,” Charles said in satisfaction as he bent to bring the monstrous thing closer to Zachary’s face. The nails were driven in all around the rubber head, each protruding about a quarter of an inch.

Charles returned to his machine and fitted the end of the dildo over the steel rod. He looked Zachary in the eye again as he pressed the On button. The gears started to churn once more and thrust the phallus with its evilly glinting glans forward and back through a smooth piston motion, faster and faster.

Zachary gasped as he understood. Soon it would be ramming into his body—Charles’s ultimate punishment for daring to have had Thomas. The nail heads would rip and shred him from the inside. He would die horribly.

His bladder voided suddenly, and Charles chuckled in appreciation. “See. I knew you were clever,” he said. Then he picked up a ball gag and leaned over Zachary’s head.