The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

“Enough to offset the costs of travel and of buying you, but selling you to horny diplomats who cannot get a girl without buying her first…that is pocket change.”

“For who?”

“For all of us,” he said.

She lay back down on the bed, aware now that she was naked. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she already knew that though. The room seemed to fade in and out of her vision, her brain trying to take her from this dark, terrifying place. She felt another part of herself wanting to emerge, but that could only happen if she were able to sleep. Then she thought, What has happened to my head? What did he do to me? Did he drug me? Oh my God, have I been drugged?

“When the men are done with you, we kill you on film, and then we will sell copies of that film over and over again for years to come.”

“Snuff,” she said, so drowsy she could hardly keep her eyes open.

“The west believes so deeply in profit. Well, we believe in profiting from the west as well, and you are the tool by which we will do that.”

“My father will come after you with a vengeance,” she said.

The man laughed, and laughed, and laughed, each chortle more offensive and demeaning than the last. “My dear, who do you think gave you to us?”

This one statement staved off the mental slide just long enough for her to say, “He wouldn’t do that.”

“He is in politics, is he not?” Mohammad asked.

“Yashshr,” she said, her voice now sounding so syrupy and lost.

“You know how slimy American politicians are these days. They can be bought for a dollar, broken by a leaked story, or compromised for an idea.”

“What idea?” she asked, the words slurring even worse, the question nearly impossible to ask.

“The idea that you can get in bed with vampires and resist their bite,” he said in that same jovial voice. He sounded a thousand miles away, but somehow she could still hear him. “At first, the rewards for being in the right crowd are tantalizing, but then, after you’ve been compromised, you are the thing they will suck dry. Everyone knows how this works. You take too many bites of the forbidden fruit while each taste is filmed, witnessed, recorded.”

She mumbled something, but even she didn’t know what she was saying. It was something about her being drugged.

“Your father took a bribe, and in return, you were given to us. Soon, we will have you on tape, dying. And your screams? Oh! They will be the last sounds your father hears. We will send him a tape. It will be you crying out for him, looped over and over again in ninety-minute segments.”

“Why Prague?” she managed to ask.

“You know who shits in their backyards? Dogs. We are not dogs, so we shit in other people’s backyards. Besides, Prague is lovely this time of year, and I have friends there, friends with deep pockets and rather unusual obsessions.”

She could no longer talk. The boisterous man now leaned forward and pulled open her eyes then he smiled and said, “Soon you won’t even know your own name. Not until it is time. Do you know what Vampire’s Kiss is?”

She grunted something, unable to feel her arms and hands, or her legs and feet. Even the feeling of her face was starting to escape her.

“This is the adrenalized blood of children. Drinking it is supposed to bring you youth and vitality. You are too old to provide the purest sample of such a drug, but we’re going to drain you and sell you anyway. Any good feelings our buyers get will be additives, not that we’ll tell them that. Let those vermin think what they will, so long as they pay me my money.”

And with that, she fell down that very dark well, a well so deep and suffocating she couldn’t scream, let alone form a single word. She just fell, and fell, and fell, too weak to slow her descent, too far gone to escape the inevitable.

Chapter Thirty-Three

SYDNEY FOX

Santiago called Sydney in to show her the computer screen. There she saw the faces of her two younger daughters. She wavered on unsteady legs before Jose put her in a chair.

“We received bids for Zoey from a prince in Qatar and a sultan in Iran, and a bid for Maisie in…D.C.” He looked at her and said, “Shocker.”

More bids had come in for Zoey from Saudi Arabia but then there was a bid for both sisters. The only caveat was that Santiago would have to pay to transport them out there.

“Well, we’re not doing that shit,” Santiago said.

He messaged back: NO WAY.

Other bids came in, one from a couple from Columbia who agreed to arrange transportation for the girls.

“We will charter a private aircraft to meet you in Juárez,” the message read.

Both parties quickly agreed on the price and the girls were officially sold. Sydney watched all of this in abject horror. She started to cry when she realized this was actually happening.

She turned to Santiago with nothing but homicidal rage in her heart, but then Jose put his big blade to her throat and said, “You remember the knife, no?”

Ignoring Jose, she turned and spoke to Santiago. “Why are you doing this to me and my family?”

“To some degree, it is personal,” he said, finally being truthful.

Sydney looked at him, waiting.

“Your husband worked very closely with ICE in the former administration, did he not?” She nodded, dreading the answer about to come, and how she would feel about it. “He supported a raid on a group of migrants who were settling into Fayetteville. My cousin was working to help