The High Priestess - The Darkest Desires Series

XVIII

E

cho felt nothing. She was bored out of her mind to the point she couldn't even muster the strength to be angry anymore. She couldn't even be bothered to taunt the Officer who gave her a cup of water to drink. No, she was very much done with this place.

Hale had been in and out of her interrogation room like a jackrabbit all morning to check every little detail she had given. No doubt her colleges had been called a number of times to verify she'd been there and graduated. She wouldn't have been at all surprised if even her private boarding school in the Alps had been called. Run by Nuns, it had been some of her more exhilarating years. By the time she was nine, she enjoyed keeping tally of the number of Nuns she could make faint. Now, there was a place that could tell a few tales which would not help her on the witness stand. If these moron Detectives could ever get this case to a court room, of course.

After hours of waiting, Hale had finally been called away by another suspect threatening to call his lawyer which cops never liked. Hale was a straight as an iron pipe with the temper to match. Storming out, he'd told Echo she would be escorted to a cell promptly. That had been about twenty minutes ago, so she was presently surprised when the door creaked open. Still chained to the desk, she'd had little movement which did little to help her lounge about. She was also starving. She didn't want five-star catering or anything, just something stale so she could spit crumbs at Hale. Whoever said Gluttony was all about eating the food? Wasting it was so much more fun. Yet as the figure slipped in the door, Echo smiled to see McQueen baring down on her.

His fists were clamped in rage and he was looking at her like she'd killed his grandma. Angry suited him. "Well hello their Queenie. Is that a granola bar I see in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" She smiled, leaning back on her chair. She was almost tempted to push a bit further, but like the saint McQueen was, it really was a granola bar in his pocket and right now, she wanted that more than anything.

He didn't speak as he sat opposite her, tossing her the bar. While she scoffed it down, it seemed to take him some forethought before his hands relaxed and he could place them passively on the table. He still sat upright in his chair however, his body vibrating with tension. The poor lamb couldn't hide much. "What did you do?" he asked.

"Do? Me?" Echo feigned ignorance, pointing at herself while checking the rest of the room. "I've done a lot of things Queenie. You're going to have to be a little more specific." She took another bite of her granola bar as she raised an eyebrow at him.

"Did you really drug the victims?" He hissed quickly through his teeth like the words left a bad taste in his mouth. "Salvia Divinorum? Arum Maculatum? Opium for holy heavens- sake? You feed this to people, to the victims?" McQueen elevated his voice with each breath and Echo watched as the disbelief and disgust grew in his eyes. She guessed they'd found the trace amount they wanted in the victim's blood streams. Not that she ever denied giving them anything.

"Did I place specially dried and processed herbs into drinks ordered by members of the club? Members of the club who signed a contract on entering their membership, signing away any and all liability? Did I give them what they asked for?" Wide eyed, Echo shrugged at McQueen, pouting her lips. "What can I say? They did ask for it."

"You're sick." He spat, eyes cold and tremors running up his arms. "That's as close to rape as you can get. Those people didn't ask you to make them vulnerable. They didn't ask you to hinder their defences. You served them up on a silver platter. They are dead because of you."Echo felt the fire race through her veins, but she dampened it quickly. She wouldn't be rattled. Couldn't be, not by a knee bender.

"Rape?" She questioned in a flat, chilling voice. "You think I rape these people." Echo leaned forward mirroring his hands flat on the table, only the handcuffs rattling through the silent room. "You don't understand rape then McQueen because it is nothing close to what I do. Rape is malice intent. Rape is shredding dignity away and impaling yourself into someone's mind for the rest of their life. Rape is taking what does not belong to you. I do not rape anyone. I give them what they ask for, what they need."

"That's a coward's defence." McQueen snarled getting up in her face too. "You think they asked for it, deserved to have their choice stripped away from them. You made them incapable of fighting back. I've seen what those drugs- sorry, those 'herbs' did to their bodies. It made them easy targets. It made them pray. It made them victims."

Echo laughed. "Everyone's prey sweetie. You just have to wait for the bigger predator to come along."

"And what are you? What are you in all this? The predator? The pray? What the hell are you?" McQueen had just about lost it. He was slamming his fists on the top of table, almost nose to nose with her.

"Oh darling." Echo bared her teeth. "I'm only human. I'm as vial and as wicked as every other ape that walks this earth. I'm just more honest about it." Echo felt a cool, calm front drape over her skin like a blanket. He was just another stupid man in a stupid world, turning and looking for the shadows to blame when they really clung to his back. " They are in control of their messed up, twisted lives. Not. Me."

McQueen didn't speak, just watched her. He looked at her like she was dead. Then let her be dead to him, she thought, feeling the last sharp barb slip from her tongue. "And you know what Queenie? They thank me. And they don't complain or hate me for it. If I remember rightly, neither did you."

McQueen went very pale, very fast. "You drugged me?" He whispered.

Echo looked directly into his cold grey eyes and shrugged with one shoulder. It was such a passive, uncaring shrug she knew it would make his mind only spin more. "Maybe I did. Maybe I'm the evil bitch you want me to be. Maybe I'm the monstrous excuse you need me to be. But maybe Queenie," Echo lowered her voice and leaned closer. "Just maybe I didn't. Maybe I just gave you alcohol, allowing the sweet nectar to rush around your veins and produce its own high. Maybe everything you did, was because you wanted to do it. Every... little ... action..."

A silence hung in the air for a heartbeat. Both of them looked at each other and Echo could have laughed. A demon and an angel, growling across a table that might as well have been an abyss.

As the last words rang true in the empty room, the door, long forgotten by the two of them was flung open and a towering Hale seethed in the doorway. McQueen didn't look up to Hale, nor did he stir from his laps in reality. He simply stood and walked out, his heavy aura of fear and anger floating behind him. Following his partner out, Hale slammed the door closed and Echo was left alone. Well, alone enough; the video camera had been going the whole time, the little red eye blinking; judging, but Echo didn't care. The world needed a hard dose of reality.