Page 126 of Blood Moon

“Your liberator.”

She didn’t know what that was supposed to mean exactly, only that it sounded scary. “Get your hand off me.” Her voice warbled. She wished for more strength behind it. “My father will kill you.”

“I’m sure he’d want to. The volatility of his personality is obvious.”

She didn’t know the definition of thatvword, but, if he knew her dad at all, he never would have done this to her. “If you value your life,” she whispered, “you’ll take me home.”

“You’ll be going home, Molly. To Luna.”

That sounded freaking crazy. She became even more frightened and decided to say nothing more. She got the impression that he wanted to engage with her. She would deny him that. She was expert at shutting people out. She did it to her mother all the time. She closed her eyes.

She sensed him standing up. His footsteps squeaked on the floor, which made no sense to her, so she reopened her eyes to slits. Plastic. The floor was lined with thick black plastic like heavy-duty trash bags were made of.

He was going to kill her, wasn’t he?

Turning her head slightly, she saw him standing at a crude workbench, his back to her. He’d pulled on latex gloves. It took her a while to figure out that he was using tongs to pick up stainless steel instruments and dipping them one by one into a shallow basin and swishing them around in some sort of solution.

Sterilizing. That’s what he was doing; he was sterilizing those utensils, which looked like they belonged in an operating room. After their dunking, each was lined up with its fellows on a white towel.

Unable to hold it back, she screamed in terror.

Startled, he turned around and said sharply, “Stop that, Molly. It won’t do you any good. Nobody can hear you.”

“Go to hell,” she sobbed, sagging weakly.

Her outburst had launched rockets of pain inside her head. Her stomach heaved. Bile surged into her throat, but, by an act of will, she kept from spewing it. She knew she must have a serious concussion, and struggling could jostle her brain and make it worse. So she lay still, in misery and fear.

He finished with the instruments, making small adjustments to their alignment on the towel, then peeled off the gloves and dropped them into an oil drum, also lined with plastic. He rolled down his shirtsleeves and buttoned both buttons on each cuff.

“Now. The final step.” He walked over to a hook, which had been screwed into the wall, and reached into a plastic shopping bag hanging there along with a sport coat.

He took a box from the bag, walked it over to the workbench, and opened it. He studied the contents as thoughtaking inventory, then turned to her and smiled. “Want to see?”

He carried the open box over to her. She gasped when she saw what was inside: stoppered bottles of red ink, a bottle labeled as an antiseptic, a tube of salve, and needles of various sizes in sterilized sleeves.

She found it difficult to breathe, and it hurt her chest to try. This freak was going to tattoo her!

“I ordered several stencils,” he said in a conversational tone that mocked her horror. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and held it out to her. It was the outline of a crescent moon. “I hope you like it.”

His smile made her want to gag.

He returned to the workbench, removed the sealed lid from a rectangular storage container, and took out several cotton balls. He pulled on another pair of latex gloves before soaking several of the cotton balls with the antiseptic solution from the tattoo kit. He returned to her with them.

“Now, let’s see.” With his free hand, he took hold of her arm. She tried to pull it from his grasp but was helpless to do so. “Molly, Molly, this part won’t hurt. I’m only going to begin the cleansing process.”

He stroked the inside of her arm. “This looks like a good spot, don’t you think?” With his index finger, he drew a circle midway up her forearm.

“Go to hell, you creep,” she shouted, and again struggled to free herself.

He looked up and winked at her. “I don’t mind a little feistiness.”

“You’re psycho. Sick.Sick!And you’re going to die, youknow. My dad is going to kill you.” She managed to raise her knees and bump them against his arm. One of the cotton balls fell from his hand onto the floor.

As he stared down at it with something akin to disgust, his demeanor changed. Speaking softly and with an undertone of menace, he said, “Now you’re really testing my patience, Molly. I’m your liberator. You should mind your manners with me.”

He made the warning emphatic by gripping her arm tighter. He then swabbed her forearm from her wrist to the crook of her elbow with one of the wet cotton balls.

She despised his touch but couldn’t physically overcome him, and she was fearful that if she persisted in insulting him he would suspend his cleansing process and go to work on her with the surgical instruments. Until she could think more clearly and devise a means of escape, she determined that her best defense would be to keep her expression impassive and her reactions to a minimum.