Another day in paradise. Wasn’t that a song? She started humming, trying desperately to concentrate on something, anything else: Hallelujah . . . Leonard Cohen understood her tonight. Her own thoughts had already started to submerge under the emotions of the rest of the city. Someone was beating a child tonight . . . someone wanted steak for dinner and got meat loaf . . . someone was faking it . . . someone had “Angel of the Morning” stuck in his head . . . someone hated her mother . . . someone was going to pay . . . someone liked to be tied up . . . someone forgot to set the DVR to tape Ghost Whisperer . . . someone—
—someone was following her.
Darkness. She could feel darkness. The same as in the club? Probably. A sane woman would have run, but she was so tired . . . so tired. Her legs suddenly felt like lead. It was as if she could see herself from a distance, and see what was going to happen, and there was nothing she could do but get out of the way of her fate.
Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .
There were four of them. One followed her from the club, the others emerged from an alley. Their minds were like oily black snakes, slithering toward her with the dull glow of lust and repressed rage. One of them liked her hair; another one was thinking about her breasts. A third figured she had money in her purse.
The hand that clamped on her shoulder was thick and meaty, and it yanked her backward off her feet. She cried out, but the noise was muffled as a second hand clapped over her mouth, and she was hauled back against a sweaty T-shirt with a pounding heartbeat beneath. None of them spoke until they had dragged her off the street, into the alley.
She watched the darkness of the alleyway close around her and heard the sound of her guitar case scraping along the ground. One of the men already had her purse and was rifling through it while the one dragging her threw her to the ground.
She wasn’t afraid. Fear was for the unknown. She knew exactly what was going to happen.
Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .
It disconcerted them that she didn’t fight, but they beat her anyway, a sharp kick to her stomach causing her body to involuntarily curl around itself to protect her abdomen. Another kick to her kidneys, and she cried out from the pain. One of the men dropped to his knees and hit her in the face, hissing at her to keep quiet or she was dead. She saw the flash of a knife, felt the blade held to her throat. Don’t scream, don’t move. Do as we say and you get to live.
She knew better.
They pushed her onto her back, and she stared up at the storm clouds she could barely see between the buildings. It was raining hard, but neither she nor her attackers noticed the downpour.
The night was hot and humid, but she felt cold when her clothes were ripped aside—cold, always cold.
This is the way the world ends . . . not with a bang but a whimper.
Zippers. Laughter. Hands shoving her legs apart.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled over, but she was still, just staring blankly with dead eyes up past the shoulder of the first man who forced himself into her body. The pain was a thousand miles away, as were their voices. All she could feel was cold, and all she heard was music, endless lines of melody filling her head until the world went dark at last.
First was the smell. Garbage, engine exhaust. The sickening musty smell of sex and an undertone of blood.
Then came sensations, one by one: pain first in her hands, then in her rib cage, then sharp and hot between her legs. Her face felt huge, her tongue swollen in her mouth.
Sounds. Men speaking. The voices were familiar and sent a knife of fear through her belly.
Someone nudged her back with a foot, but she didn’t move, didn’t betray her consciousness. She knew that if they saw she was awake, they would kill her. Why they hadn’t already, she didn’t know.
She heard a grunt and felt something hot and wet hit the side of her face. Oh. That was why. Another zipper, this one going upward, and a chuckle. He was done.
It wasn’t over. She was still alive and they weren’t leaving. Oh God. Oh God.
The numbness that had overtaken her before no longer shielded her from the horror of what was happening—fear crawled over her body and she fought the panicked need to run away. She wouldn’t make it two steps, assuming she could even get to her feet. The pain told her quite well that she might be able to crawl, but that was it.
Movement, and someone seized her by her hair and pulled her upward, exposing her throat. She couldn’t stop the scream from erupting.
“Well, look at that,” the man with the knife against her jugular said, his breath fetid against her face. “Pretty little thing’s awake.”
He stroked the blade along her jawline. “You know, baby, you’ve got just about the sweetest little * I’ve ever fucked. Doesn’t she, boys?”
Grunts of agreement all around. She wanted desperately to struggle, to bring her knee up into his crotch, to do anything; but it was too late. She was too hurt, too weak. The time to fight was long past. She’d let it pass. She had given up her life instead of trying to survive, and this was the end of it.
The end. Please, let this be the end. Let them just kill me . . . at least then it’ll be quiet . . . please . . .
He was laughing, and withdrew the knife. She could feel his hips against hers, and to her disgust, he had an erection again. “Maybe we’re not finished yet,” he said. “I think I’ve got one left in me.”
“Gordon, let’s do her and get out of here,” another of the men said anxiously. “Somebody’s gonna come by.”
“Keep watch,” Gordon snapped. His free hand groped her breasts beneath her torn shirt, then dropped down to undo his pants.
He wasn’t coordinated enough for the operation, though, and had to loosen his hold around her neck to force her back to the ground. For just a second, he lowered the knife.
Some instinct she had never felt before surged up through her battered body. Rage, red-hot and fanged, boiled her from the inside and seized the opportunity that chance had granted it. A sound she’d never known she could make tore from her throat—half scream, half snarl.
She threw herself backward into the man and knocked him off balance, then twisted her body toward him, clawing at his face. She felt something mushy beneath her thumb and shoved her nail into it, eliciting a scream from Gordon as he fought her off. She fell sideways, reaching out to grab the knife foolishly by the blade; it sliced into her palm, but she won it free, rolling up onto her knees in time to see Gordon scream again, his hands covering his eye, blood gushing from beneath his fingers.
She had his eyeball under her nails.
The other men, panicked, started toward her, but the sight of her covered in blood, half naked, brandishing the knife at them while their leader scrabbled at his punctured eye, gave them pause.
“Kill the fucking bitch!” Gordon shrieked. “Kill her!”
Other weapons came out. More knives, but no guns. Small-time thugs used to lording their power over vulnerable women. They’d found a perfect victim in her—small, frail, alone, and weak. She hadn’t even fought. They had assaulted women as a team for years, leaving bodies here and there in Dumpsters and trash cans. No one had ever reported them to the police—because they chose women no one would ever miss, who could be used up, killed, and thrown away. Like her.
She could feel what they were feeling—Fear. Anger. Hatred. But mostly fear. They didn’t know what to do, but there was no way she could fight them all, even if she weren’t injured and cornered. They were going to kill her.
But she wasn’t going to make it easy for them. Not again.
When they came toward her, all attacking at once, she stepped back, and her entire being screamed, “NO!”
The sheer force of her emotions flew outward, hitting them all like sledgehammers, and as one they were knocked backward by it, knives skittering across the concrete. She lashed out again and again, beating them with her agony the way they had with their fists, violating them with her violation. They were screaming, writhing. She didn’t stop.
She stood over them in the now-pouring rain, blood oozing down her thighs, her hands fisted at her sides, and ground her emotions into them like putting out a cigarette in someone’s arm. She made them feel the fear and pain of every woman they’d raped and killed, imagining their last thoughts. The women had mothers, daughters, boyfriends waiting at home who would never see them again. They had hopes and fears and possibilities that Miranda had never had. These pathetic little men had taken all of that away. Their hatred for women had made them bold.
One of them was begging for his life. She stared down at him, and he flinched from her eyes, eyes no one had seen in months. He had a wife, kids. Please. He offered her anything she wanted if she’d just let him go.
She stared, feeling nothing. “No.”
She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew what to do. The mind was tethered to the body, and she imagined reaching in and snapping the cord as if she were snapping his neck.
He stopped begging.
Now the others started. Even Gordon, who lay in a pool of his own blood not far from the pool of hers, where he had thrust his thick, blunt penis into her body over and over again, then watched and jerked off while the others did the same, begged for mercy.
Had the other women begged? Yes, most of them had. They hadn’t fought, but they had appealed to hearts that were little more than lumps of rotten wood. Women always went for the emotions. Men went for fists. That was how the world worked.
Snap. Snap. Glassy eyes fixed on the walls. Struggling limbs put to rest. Those rotten hearts that felt nothing but contempt for those they destroyed shuddered into stillness.
She turned on Gordon.