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Down at the end the boy pushed open a fire door.

A staircase jogged up to the right. The steps had been worn down to the particleboard, and there was the sound of dripping water from somewhere a couple of flights up.

John put his hand on a banister that was screwed loosely into the wall, and he went up slowly until he got to the landing between the second and third floors. Up above, the fluorescent light that was sunk into the ceiling was in its death-rattle stage, the tubes flickering as if desperately trying to keep up a useful life.

John stared at the cracked linoleum on the floor, then looked up at the window. Starburst patterns covered the thing as if it had been pummeled with bottles. The only reason the grimy glass hadn’t broken was because it was embedded with chicken wire.

From the floor above there was a splatter of curses, a kind of verbal shotgun that was undoubtedly the beginning of a fight. Butch was about to suggest that they get out of Dodge when John turned away of his own accord and started jogging down the stairs.

They were back in the Escalade and heading out of the bad part of town less than a minute and a half later.

Butch came to a stop at a traffic light. “Where to?”

John wrote and then flashed the pad.

“Home it is,” Butch murmured, still having no idea why the kid had wanted to visit that stairwell.

John said a passing hello to Wellsie when he came into the house and then took off for his room. He was grateful that she seemed to understand he needed some space. After he shut his door he dropped his notebook on the bed, shrugged out of his coat, and immediately headed for the shower. While the water was heating up, he stripped out of his clothes. Once he was under the spray, he stopped shaking.

When he came back out, he put on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, then eyed his laptop on the desk. He sat down in front of it, thinking that maybe he should write something. The therapist had suggested it.

God… Talking to her about what had happened to him had been almost as bad as living through the experience the first time. And he hadn’t meant to be as candid as he’d been. It was just…about twenty minutes into the session, he’d cracked and his hand had started scribbling and he hadn’t been able to stop once the story had begun.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the man who’d cornered him had looked like. Only a vague picture came to mind, but he remembered the knife clearly. It had been a five-inch, double-sided switchblade with a point on it sharp as a scream.

He ran his forefinger over the mouse square on the laptop and the Windows XP screen saver blinked off. His e-mail account had a fresh message in it. From Sarelle. He read the thing three times before trying to reply.

In the end, he sent her back: Hey, Sarelle, tomorrow night’s not going to work for me. I’m really sorry. I’ll get back with you sometime. TTYL, John.

He really…didn’t want to see her again. Not for a while, at any rate. He didn’t want to see any females except for Wellsie and Mary and Beth and Bella. There was going to be nothing even remotely sexual in his life until he came to terms with what had been done to him almost a year ago.

He moved out of Hotmail and opened a fresh document in Microsoft Word.

He rested his fingers on the keyboard for only a moment. And then they started to fly.

Chapter Thirty-four

Zsadist dragged his head over to the side and looked at the clock. Ten in the morning. Ten…ten o’clock. How many hours? Sixteen…

He closed his eyes, so exhausted he could barely breathe. He was flat on his back, legs splayed out, arms lying wherever. He’d been in that position since he’d rolled off Bella maybe an hour ago.

He felt like it had been a year since he’d come back into the room the night before. His neck and wrists burned from the number of times she’d fed from him, and the thing between his legs was sore. The air around them was saturated with the bonding scent, and the sheets were wet