“Just get it over with!” Vinnie shouted, suddenly looking extremely nervous.

“Ooh, it talks.”

“That’s handy,” said Sam, “because we have some questions for him.”

He snickered. “You can’t seriously think I’ll talk. It will gain me nothing.”

“Wrong,” interrupted Jared, “it will gain you a swift execution. Trust me when I say that if you turn down that offer, you’ll wish you hadn’t. But it will be too late by then. It’s kind of hard to stop my mate when she’s fully at work. And I’d rather not watch Ava sulk if she has to back off.”

“I won’t give up the others!”

“We don’t need you to. We already found two of them. They were both dead by the time we got to them, though – demon casualties, apparently.” Jared shrugged when Vinnie gawked. “Yeah, kidnapping a demon wasn’t the brightest idea. The fourth of your little group will soon be found by either us or the demons, depending on who gets there first.”

“I do hope it’s us.” Sam puffed. “The demons are spoiling my fun.”

I bounced on the spot. “Back to this round of fun…he looks a little uneasy now. Is that enough?”

“It’ll do. So, you say breaking bones is your preferred method of torture?”

“Yeah. I’m not bad with a knife. I just find slicing and dicing a little slow and messy. And I don’t want my new dress to get stained. It wasn’t cheap, but I got a good deal on it.”

“For Christ’s sake, will you just be done with it!” bellowed Vinnie.

Sam stared at him, confused. “Well, no. I would have done if you’d agreed to truthfully answer our questions, but you didn’t. So I figure we’ll play with you for a little while and then tomorrow night I’ll have one of my vampires scan your mind.” She turned back to me and waved a hand toward Vinnie. “Take the floor.”

“Yay!” I cocked my head at Vinnie, giving him a winning smile. “This is really going to hurt. Hope for your sake you have a masochistic streak.”

“You’re just a Sventé. You can’t hurt me. You won’t.” But he didn’t sound so confident of that.

“The last person who said that to me sobbed like a baby when I rammed his broken index finger up his rectum. Your finger is a similar size. But I’m guessing that if you touch me with any of your fingers, your gift will immobilise me. So I’ll skip that.”

“You going straight for the femur?” asked Sam.

“No, I like to start with something simple. Something that doesn’t cause too much pain. I always find when it comes to breaking bones that it’s best to take it easy at first and let the pain escalate.” I grabbed his balled-up hand and abruptly wrenched it backwards. The sharp crack mingled with a throaty sound of pain that slipped between his grinding teeth.

Sam took a good look at the break. “That was quick and clean.”

I smiled impishly. “It’s not my first time.”

“What next? The other wrist?”

“Nah. I like to mix it up a little or it gets tedious.” Squatting, I gripped his ankle. “Shame we don’t have a hammer or we could have done a Kathy Bates on him. No matter. I’ll just hit the joint hard with my fist – it’ll have the same effect.” I did just that, and again he did his best to muffle his cry of agony as his foot snapped to the side at an unnatural angle.

Inwardly, I winced. Causing pain wasn’t truly something I enjoyed doing. But while the images of what I’d found in the attic of that brothel – of the awful state the female demon had been in – was flashing in my mind, I found that I couldn’t be sorry for what I was doing. He deserved so much worse.

“Sounds like the bones in his wrist are reknitting.”

I just shrugged, turning my attention to his other ankle.

“You’re not going to do anything about it?”

“No. I find that it’s best, and more entertaining, to let their injuries fully heal and then start all over again after I’ve –”

“What do you want to know?”

Sam tilted her head at Vinnie. “You’re reconsidering our offer?”

“Just keep her away from me!” He jerked his chin at me.

I gasped, but inside I was smiling in satisfaction. “How rude.”

(Salem)

I never thought I’d say this, but my little Ava could be seriously scary. She wasn’t fierce and threatening in her approach like Jared. Nor was she direct and insulting in her approach like Sam. In fact, Ava barely addressed the prisoner at all. She didn’t look at him like he was a person. There was no hate, no rage, and no desperation for vengeance in her eyes. She was indifferent to and dismissive of Vinnie and his pain – breaking his bones while smiling merrily and chatting with Sam.

Instead of being sharp, offensive, and confrontational, she came across as empty-headed, dippy, and flip; completely uninterested in the prisoner as anything other than a form of entertainment. That made her confusing, unpredictable, and seemingly insane. There was no way of bracing yourself for what came next with someone like that, because there was no way of knowing what they would do next.

Prisoners tended to reason that all they had to do was block out the pain and hold onto their resolve because their interrogators would eventually get bored. Especially if they didn’t satisfy them with cries of pain or answers to their questions. But Ava wasn’t presenting herself as someone who had any interest in whether or not he screamed or in anything at all that he had to say. She also didn’t look like there was any chance of her getting bored sometime soon. She was perfectly happy to go at her own pace…as if she had no goal other than to make him suffer.

Of course, I knew that wasn’t the real Ava. Not at all. My Ava was capable of harming another, but she wasn’t someone who did it for shits and giggles. A part of her would be balking at what she was doing, and another part of her would be silencing that judgmental voice by reminding it just what this bastard had done; how many lives he’d ruined.

This here and now was mostly psychological warfare – and it was fucking good. If I hadn’t known her so well, I’d be thinking the exact same thing that Vinnie was currently shouting: “Get Homicidal Barbie away from me! The bitch is fucking crazy!”