Free Final Sins by Michael Prescott Page B

like that.”
    “Perhaps you are interested in making such an acquisition for yourself?”
    “No, I’m not really into pain, self-inflicted or otherwise. So where’d you get it?”
    “An antiquities shop in Berlin. I do not think the proprietor even recognized the symbol. It has been prohibited in Germany, you know, along with the swastika and other insignias of the National Socialists.”
    “You just found it lying around?”
    “Indeed. It was most—what is the term?—serendipitous. I took it as an omen. A harbinger of my destiny.”
    “You’re a superstitious guy.”
    “I am a believer in fate. In what the Greeks called Moira , necessity. We are all players in a game, the outcome of which is predetermined. We can do no more than act out our parts.”
    “And Emily Wallace’s part was to be branded by you?”
    “Yes.”
    “And to die at your hands?”
    “Yes. Are there further questions?”
    “Did you brand her before or after she was dead?”
    “Before. It was the penultimate act. I seared my totem onto the back of her hand, and then I brought out the strap and with it I encircled her slender neck. Your neck, also, is most slender and well shaped.”
    “That’s not what I’d call a compliment. More like grounds for a restraining order.”
    “You, of all people, must know how useless a restraining order can be.”
    “Are you trying to scare me, Mr. Faust? Because you need to know, I don’t scare that easily.”
    “I am merely indulging in some harmless conversational byplay. Why should I threaten you? We are on the same side.”
    Abby didn’t like that thought. “Yeah. I guess we are. So do your part and make the call. Remember, eight p.m.”
    “There is never a need to tell me anything twice.”
    She believed him. She heard the click as the call ended.
    On the same side. She really wished he hadn’t put it that way. Still, it was true. She was working for a man who had branded a young woman before killing her, a man called the Werewolf.
    And tonight—also according to the LA. Times —was the first night of a full moon.

9
     
    Raven wasn’t scared.
    She was past all that. Fear had been a constant presence in the room with her for so many days. Yet now it was gone, just gone, and she felt nothing.
    She had seen an old-fashioned device in her parents’ attic once. Her grandmother had used it. You put wet clothes between two wooden dowels and turned a crank, and the dowels squeezed the water out of the clothing as it rolled through. A wringer, it was called. That’s where the expression came from— put through the wringer .
    And now she knew how it felt to be put through the wringer . Because she had been wrung out, wrung dry, every living feeling squeezed from her body until she was limp and numb.
    Not all of her was numb, though. Her teeth ached from biting down on the linen gag knotted around her head, the gag that had made her want to retch when it was first tied on. God, he had tied it tight, with the knot at the back of her head, digging into the base of her skull.
    And her wrists—they weren’t numb, either. They stung like crazy. The steel manacles had chafed her skin raw and left bleeding sores that were starting to ulcerate. The sores stood out against her pale skin, as did the large purple bruise on her thigh where he had punched her after she tried to kick him. The bruise was high up on her leg and normally would have been concealed by her shorts, but she wasn’t wearing anything. She had no idea what he had done with her clothes.
    The bruise had hurt at first, but she no longer felt it. Her wrists were the focal point of her pain now. Of course, she wouldn’t have abraded them so badly if she hadn’t spent hour after hour tugging on the manacles, trying pointlessly to free herself. Even as she’d done it, she had known it was no use. She lacked the strength to pull free, and even if she did somehow get loose, she would still be trapped in the room.
    The room was windowless