“You filthy bitch.”
Hartmann.
Her stomach sank, and she lowered her head and tried to protect it with her free arm. Normally, she wouldn’t have acted so weak and submissive. If she wanted to, she could break free of his grasp and have him on his knees with his face pressed to thestone floor in a second. But he wasn’t alone, and Weber had the club. All three of them were most definitely armed.
“I should kill you for what you did to me,” he said.
“Come now, Hartmann,” Bauer said from behind him. “You wanted to see her, fine. But you’re not allowed to touch the prisoner.”
“I’m not touching her.” He gripped her jaw as he said it, squeezing so hard that Seraphina thought he might crush her mandible. “Am I touching her?”
“Hey!” That was Rune. “Hey, let her go!”
Seraphina heard him bang on his cell door. His deep, guttural voice sounded downright menacing when he raised it. So far, he’d only whispered to her through the wall, hummed when she sang. Now he sounded angry, feral almost, and his voice reverberated down the stone corridor, its echo sending tremors through anyone within earshot.
“Stand down,” Weber banged the club against Rune’s door. “Hartmann, I have a better idea. This one here is a whore killer, did you know? He’s been with us for three weeks, while the murders are being investigated.”
Murders? Seraphina went limp in Hartmann’s punishing grip, suddenly paying more attention to Weber than to the castrated man before her, who thought he could intimidate her just because she was trapped and he had some power due to his position. She didn’t give a damn about him and his wounded pride, or half cock. Because... did Weber just say “murders”, as in more than one?
“Why don’t you throw her in with him? We might need her cell anyway. The prison’s crowded, and she’s a tiny thing, doesn’t need a whole cell to herself.”
“Weber,” Bauer warned.
“Brilliant idea,” Hartmann said. “Weber, you are too smart for this job. You deserve a promotion.” He released her jaw, turnedher around, and locked her arms behind her back so he could easily push her toward the door. “How about I put in a word for you at the academy?”
“Nah,” Weber said. “Bones give me a turn.” He unlocked Rune’s cell. “He likes eviscerating them,” he redirected the discussion back to things he was familiar with, though Seraphina marveled at how someone could find evisceration untroublesome while being creeped out by relics. “I don’t know if he rapes them, too. All the bodies that were found were in pieces, and no barber-surgeon could tell if he’d had his way with them.”
“Let’s hope he did, then.”
Hartmann laughed as he pushed Seraphina into Rune’s cell.
“Hey, creature,” he yelled at Rune as he quickly slammed the door shut and locked it before Seraphina could spring past him. “Take care of her for me.”
“This is...” Bauer said, trying to find his words, words that the two brutes he was dealing with would understand. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“Shut up,” said Hartmann, giving him a hard pat on the shoulder. “You’re not going to go running to the sergeant, are you?”
“The turnkey...”
“I’ll take care of the fellow.”
They walked away, laughing and pushing each other down the corridor, though Seraphina could hear clearly that Hartmann was doing most of the laughing and pushing.
There were other things that Seraphina could hear clearly.
Rune breathing heavily behind her, having pressed himself flat against the far wall.
Her own heart thundering in her chest, blood rushing to her head, her lungs wheezing as she struggled to breathe. She held onto the metal bars tightly, pressing her whole body against thedoor, willing her bones to turn to jelly so she could squeeze through and flee.
She was trapped with a serial killer. He liked eviscerating women. Maybe he even raped them.
Seraphina fought very hard to keep from fainting.
Chapter Four
From gaping graves, the hungry dead break fast.
The prison was silent, or as silent as a prison could be. Seraphina could hear men whispering in their cells, breathing hard, or grunting in pain. Night was falling, and they were all on edge, feeling the nightmares creep in, the ghosts of their pasts closing in to choke them. She tuned them out and focused on the man she was trapped with. He shuffled behind her, and she tensed.
