"What the h.e.l.l is bothering you?" With an exasperated sigh she turned back to the woods and walked into the shadows.

The dog barked once before he fell silent, a matted twisted jumble of fur and flesh.

Sade sated his s.e.xual hunger. This time he felt the complete release of thirst quenched and desire punctuated by o.r.g.a.s.m.

"But no one opens his arms to the guilty person.... People blush to be in his presence, are embarra.s.sed to offer him their tears, as though terrified of contagion; he is banished from every heart: pride impels us to heap abuse upon him whom we ought to succor out of a feeling of humanity."

Ernestine.

by the Marquis de Sade.

Chapter 39.

Marie wrapped the collar around her neck and tightened the buckle. Each day she would perform this ritual until he came. He would inevitably, driven either by the suspicion that she had something to do with his father's condition or simply to direct his wrath at someone. And she would be here waiting, hungry, and willing.

Before noon Wil did show, his hair greasy and disheveled. His dark eyes had no glow. Shadows darkened the puffy bags under his eyes. His stale breath soured the air around him, and his body's stench revealed all the fear, pain, and anger that he had so recently experienced.

"I knew it had to be you the instant I found him."

"Wil, it sounds more like a crazed dog than any human. From what you're telling me, it sounds like your father was mauled. Perhaps some beast. A wild cat. A wolf."

"They don't exist around here."

"The gory details you've told me certainly indicate to me that it had to be something from the wild that did this to your father."

Wil let his body drop onto the settee.

"He can never get better. He's permanently a... vegetable."

"Do they know how much he understands?"

"He's still unconscious, but h.e.l.l, his brain was dripping out of his head onto the ground when I found him." Wil steadied his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands.

Marie fingered her collar.

"I didn't come home to hurt him," Wil sobbed.

"Yes, you did."

Wil looked up at Marie, tears sliding down his cheeks, eyes a lackless dark ebony.

"You always tried to hurt your father, Wil. You wanted retribution for having been abandoned as a baby. Oh, he took care of the child in mundane ways, but he deserted his son as soon as his wife died. You were never part of their family. Not for your father. His family consisted of two people, and you killed one of them."

Marie watched Wil's chest pump from the heaving roiling his insides. Suddenly Wil sprang to his feet and ran for the bathroom.

At least he still remembers his manners, she thought.

She didn't really like this aspect of Wil. The sniveling. The self-pity. She would have preferred a raging bull.

When he returned to the room, he carried one of her best hand towels, the one with the st.i.tched poppies bordering each end. He had soaked one corner of the towel with water, and he kept rubbing it across his face.

"Want a drink, Wil?"

He shook his head and sat on the settee.

Marie fingered the collar. He didn't seem to notice.

"I could give you a little a.r.s.enic in a bit of champagne."

"I can't go back."

"To your father's house?" A smile rounded the corners of her lips.

"Back to the city."

"Do you want to?"

"I can't go back."

"Be cryptic. I don't have time to give you therapy, Wil."

"I owe a lot of money."

"The pimping business is that bad?"

"I don't do that s.h.i.t anymore."

"Drugs? Gambling?"

"I borrowed money for a business I was starting."

"What kind?"

"An escort service."

"And you say your not pimping anymore."

"It was going to be legit. There's a lot of people who need to show up at functions with a companion. Some are closet gays who need to rent a date just for the evening. Business people who don't have the energy for a real relationship, but don't want the boss to know."

"How much did you borrow?"

"Two hundred thousand."

"What fool lent you that kind of money?"

"A guy who would like to step over my dead body."

"Ex-lover?"

He nodded.

Marie unbuckled the collar and removed it from her neck. She studied the collar, trying to decide whether it would fit Wil.

"You want your father dead."

"No! d.a.m.n it! I thought I could stay with Dad for a while until..."

"Until he dropped dead."

Wil flung the towel across the room.

"You need a shower, Wil. You stink. There's an open shower in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Use it."

"I'm not good enough for the upstairs bathroom?"

Marie sat next to him. She measured the collar around his neck.

"You need something to relieve the tension. I can help you."

Wil undid the b.u.t.tons on his denim shirt.

"I can make you forget for a time."

"I don't want to forget. I want to be made to pay for what happened to my father. And you, b.i.t.c.h, know how to do it."

Marie chuckled. If she had only known sooner.

"Take the collar with you and put it on after you shower. Wait for me downstairs." She dropped the collar into his lap. "Now!"

A flash sparked his eyes, and by the time it disappeared Wil had taken the collar in his hand. They both stood. Marie slipped the denim off his shoulders and down his arms. His muscles sagged a bit, the confidence and power gone from his body. She unbuckled his belt and undid the trousers. He was erect beneath his trousers; a horizontal bar with a metal ball at each end pierced his c.o.c.khead.

When she finished undressing him, she held his clothing at arms length.

"Bet you've had these on for several days. This what you were wearing when you found your father?"

"Yeah." His voice sounded defeated and tired.

"I'll burn them." She started for the doorway then stopped. "You're dismissed."

Wil looked down at the collar he still held in his hands.

"After the shower you can put it on. I don't want the leather getting ruined."

He moved past her. As he walked, she took in the colors covering his legs. The Grim Reaper flexed on the back of his right leg, wielding his scythe over his head and just under the curve of Wil's right b.u.t.tock. Tombstones covered the back of the other leg. Skeletal limbs were scattered among the tombstones.

She didn't have to show him the way to the bas.e.m.e.nt. He homed in on the dungeon, or perhaps she had said something previously about where the dungeon was located. She couldn't remember, and it didn't matter.

"Remorse is no index of criminality; it merely denotes an easily subjugated spirit; let some absurd command be given you, which forbids you to leave this room, and you'll not depart without guilty feelings however certain it is your departure will cause no one any harm."

Justine.

Marquis de Sade.

Chapter 40.

Wil touched his father's hand. Milky white, he thought. The ragged nails had been trimmed by a nurse. The misshapen knuckles no longer gave his father pain. The age spots appeared to be more prominent against the flaccid flesh. Wil slid his own palm under his father's. Slowly Wil's fingers closed around his father's hand, but as when he was a child, there was no response. He felt the weight of the hand and tried to lift it, but it seemed to be made of a heavy material that looked like flesh, only looked like flesh.

"Dad, I'm going to be taking you home soon. The doctor said he could do no more for you. h.e.l.l, I don't know what I can even do. Nothing, I guess, but bathe and feed you. And maybe pray, if I can remember any prayers. What should I be praying for, Dad? Your recovery? Or for you to die a peaceful death?"

He waited for tears to shine his eyes, but nothing blurred the vision of his father lying against white sheets, tubes keeping the old man alive. The hospital bed seemed too narrow for his father's bulk. Too confining. Too unreal.

"Hey, when I get you home I'll slip an old T-shirt and boxers on you. Get rid of this piece of cloth that pa.s.ses as a nightgown. Besides, you're too macho for a gown."

The nurse's call b.u.t.ton dangled uselessly from the headboard.

"The nurses don't know how lucky they are that you can't use that b.u.t.ton. You'd really be living it up bullying around the staff."

Wil smiled, but didn't feel any emotion. He used his thumb to rub the back of his father's hand, attempting to bring back life.

He knelt down beside his father's bed and kissed the old man's hand. The smell of antiseptics overpowered Wil's breath. His stomach roiled, and his own hands began to shake.

"Don't know if I'll be able to duplicate all this clean stuff. Home might smell more like... a sewer. I think I finally fixed that toilet. I've been flushing and the water hasn't spilled over. Still think you could use a new septic tank, except that you're so d.a.m.ned cheap you'd rather live with the stink rather than part with a cent."

An empty bed lay stripped down next to his father's bed. A boy had been bunking there, or at least he had looked like a boy. Yet Wil and the boy had been the same age. Born two months apart, they had been able to communicate and share jokes. The kid had kept talking about going home, had kept apologizing for Keith's condition, even though he had had nothing to do with the accident. The kid had never been farther than fifty miles outside his town until he had the stroke. They had rushed him to the nearest hospital, one hundred and five and a half miles from home. He had to learn to walk all over again. Had to work on the slight slur that had marred his speech. His intent to overcome the remnants of his stroke had camouflaged the boy's fear. However, when the boy had died, fear and surprise distorted the expression on his face. Briefly Wil had caught a glance of the chiseled dead face. A second stroke had taken away the boy's second chance.

Wil wanted to start all over. His father wouldn't let him. Marie wouldn't let him. He couldn't allow himself to forgive his own indiscretions. His own warped and depraved pleasures eased the pain. Made him forget. Made him purge himself of the guilt.

"I'm so sorry, Wil."

He turned to the door and saw Marie standing with the door open, the k.n.o.b still in her hand. Gently she closed the door and slowly walked to the bed.

"Can he hear anything?"