CHAPTER 25

Warning: This chapter contains a very graphic description of Starsky's abuse at the hands of the cult. It is not pleasant reading and some readers will definitely be offended. Be advised and read at your own risk.

Also, Fan fiction would not let me upload any chapters Saturday and the library is not open on Sunday, so as a special treat, am posting 3 chapters today. Enjoy and send in those reviews!

Just as Steve had suspected when Hutch awoke the next morning, Richard was occupying Starsky's body. He was already awake and sitting at the table, sipping a cup of coffee and eating some cereal. He smiled faintly as Hutch scrambled out of bed and hurried towards the bathroom to relieve himself.

"Late night last night?" he called after Hutch's rapidly retreating figure. "Next time try getting to bed before dawn."

After taking care of business and brushing his teeth, Hutch splashed some cold water on his face before going back into the other room. He avoided looked at the soggy bowl of fruit loops sitting in front of Starsky who was obviously enjoying his breakfast. Once he started eating, he had rapidly graduated from soft, easy to digest food to solids and was quickly regaining the weight he'd lost during his captivity, but he still had a ways to go before he would be back to his normal weight and physique. Hutch had always been amazed at how much junk food his trim partner could put away without gaining weight while Hutch had to fight to keep off the pounds. But then Starsky had an boundless amount of energy and a higher metabolism compared to Hutch.

When Richard stood up to make his own journey to the bathroom, Hutch quickly poured two glasses of juice and then grabbed the bottle Steve had given him from the cupboard. Following his directions, Hutch mixed the sedative into Richard's drink and then sat both glasses on the table. He was sitting down, sipping at his own untainted glass of juice when Richard returned.

"Thanks." Richard said, taking a long drink of his own juice before finishing his cereal. Hutch pretended not to be watching as Richard finished his juice. The brunet didn't make any comment about the juice tasting any differently that usual which eased Hutch's mind. Even though Steve had assured him that the drug was tasteless, he was worried that Richard still might notice a difference.

Within the next forty-five minutes Hutch noticed a subtle change in Richard's behavior. He seemed to relax and become more animated, not quite so stiff and aloof. The sedative was obviously working its way through his system. When he reminded him that they had an appointment to talk to Steve that morning, Richard nodded and the two men left, walking down the hallway to the room where they had all met the day before with near disastrous results.

"Good morning, gentlemen." Steve said as they entered his office and took seats on the comfortable couch in the corner. "How are you two this morning?"

"I have a feeling I'm doing better than you two." Richard said with a grin "At least I got some sleep last night."

"What can I say?" Steve answered back with a matching grin. "Hutch and I needed to let off some steam."

"Don't you mean you both wanted to gloat because Hutch talked to David for a few seconds?" Richard said with a thin smile on his face.

"You know about that, huh?"

"Of course I do. Who do you think let him come out for a minute?"

"But, I thought you told us that he was too weak to that, too depleted." Steve

Questioned, interested in hearing Richard's response.

"He was…until the two of you started butting in and got things all stirred up."

"And how did we do that?" Steve countered

"By bringing up the idea of some of the others merging with David."

"Did they? Did one of the weaker ones merge with David? Is that what made him strong enough to come out for a minute and talk to Hutch?"

"One of them hell…they all three decided to move closer to David but the only ones who merged with him were Nicholas and D.J."

"What about Gordo? Where is he?"

"Standing beside David but not joined with him yet." Richard answered. "That's why Michael came out and attacked you yesterday…it wasn't because you made me mad. It was because he could feel the others listening to you and moving closer to David."

"And that threatens the rest of you, doesn't it? It scares you because if David gets better, he won't need you anymore."

"You don't know what you're doing." Richard insisted. "You don't know what all those monsters did to him. Remembering it would be too painful for him. He couldn't live with the shame and the guilt." he gave Hutch a sideways glance that seemed to carry a veiled warning. "Or the anger he feels towards you, Blondie, for not being there…for not rescuing him in time."

"We thought he was dead!" Hutch said defensively. "I never gave up on him."

"Yes, you did…when you believed that he was dead you did!" Richard shot back.

Hutch looked stricken by those words but he couldn't deny the truth behind them. He had given up when he thought Starsky was dead and Starsky had paid dearly for Hutch's betrayal. He had paid not only with blood, sweat and tears, but with his very soul and a shattered mind. Hutch silently added that laundry list of sins to the guilt that he carried around inside of him.

"Richard, you said that we didn't know what all those monsters did to David. Can you tell us? It would help us to understand."

"Are you sure you're ready to hear it? I promise you…it ain't pretty and I won't sugar coat it for Blondie over there."

"I think Hutch needs to hear it for himself. He needs to know what happened to his friend…no matter how ugly it was."

"Okay, but remember…you asked for it." Richard settled back in his chair and began his story. "They knew who was David was from the very beginning. Ginger was handpicked to approach him and to find a way to get him into the van. They worshiped the devil, called him their Messiah, and his name was Simon Marcus."

"How did Marcus get them to do what he wanted? How did they know to go after Starsky?" Hutch adding a question of his own.

"They all knew about Polaris. Judas was part of Marcus' original cult. When Marcus and most of the others were put away, Judas carried on in his holy name. All he had to do was wait until the time was right. He knew that the right type of victims, all found in the right part of town, would get you and your partner assigned to the case. After all, the two of you had brought down Marcus and his cult. Starsky deciding to go undercover to try and infiltrate the group just make things easier."

"So Starsky was set up and targeted from the beginning." Steve said

"Of course he was and once they had him, they never had any intention of letting him go. The day they picked him up, they took him to an old warehouse near the docks where some of the others were waiting. They drugged him and then moved him under the cover of darkness to the compound in the mountains. David never had any idea where he was."

"And once they had him at the compound, he was all theirs, they could do what they wanted to him and take their time doing it." Hutch said, his mouth settling into a hard line.

"Exactly. The night they revealed their true plans for him was the first night that Judas sucked his cock in front of the entire congregation. David was severely punished for biting Judas when he kissed him. He turned over to the congregation and they were allowed to touch him, fondle him and hurt him…just not kill him or violate him. Then a virgin was scarified in his honor and he was anointed with her blood in the name of the Messiah. From that moment on, David truly was in the pits of hell."

"We know that they beat him, that they raped him, that they humiliated him. We've both seen the tapes that were sent to police headquarters for Hutch." Steve said

"The tapes were mild compared to most of the things they did to David. He was made to drink human blood, even his own. They taunted him and scarified him in a mock crucifixion. You haven't noticed the nail scars in the palms of his hands, have you?" Richard smiled thinly and took a sip of water from the glass sitting on the desk. "They stopped feeding him unless it was some of the garbage that they intended to throw away. Spoiled meat, rotten vegetables, curdled milk. If he gagged and didn't keep it down, then he was forced to eat it all over again."

"Dear God…" Hutch whispered under his breath

"No, God had nothing to do with it." Richard said "Your God and his had forsaken David and left him without his faith. He was tied outside in the boiling sun for hours at a time without any water to drink. When he passed out from the heat, they threw water in his face and brought him around. And he was always kept naked so anyone in the cult could touch him whenever they chose, wherever they wanted to touch him. There was only one place they were forbidden to touch. That spot was sacred and was not to be violated until Marcus dreamed it so."

Hutch clutched his hands into fists to keep from bolting from the room as the foul description of Starsky's torture and degradation spilled out of that mouth. And he had a feeling that the worst was yet to come.

"David defied them in the beginning. He spit on them and called them names. But they just laughed at him and hurt him some more. They found ingenious ways to cause him pain. One girl was particularly fond of biting his cock after she finished sucking him off and another one liked to stick things in it…needles, pieces of straw, nails… and leave them there until his cock became infected. And he was just as attractive to the men as he was the women. They did their share of sucking his cock too and making him suck theirs. They would come on him and then scoop it up with their fingers and force him to swallow it. If he tried to resist, the punishment was swift and cruel."

"What about drugs?" Steve asked, listening intently to the story and taking notes.

"He was drugged all the time but then so were they. Hallucinogenics, LSD, Peyote, Cocaine…you name it. They also had their own special cocktails that they used during their ceremonies where the drugs were mixed with either blood or semen." Richard glanced at Hutch, sneering at the sickened look in the big blond's eyes. "He used to scream your name sometimes when they were hurting him the most…he'd beg for you to save him…but you never did. Eventually, he stopped hoping that you would and just started praying to die and he did…just not quite the way he expected to."

"Were there any other things they did to him that we should know about?" Steve asked.

"They loved to play head games. There was one girl that they forced him to make love to…when she became pregnant, they told him that it was his baby and that it was forbidden to live. They forced him to watch while they tied her down and cut open her belly and took out the baby, then they slit it's throat and made him drink the blood. Then they threw her body down into the pit where they kept him chained up until her body rotted away. Then they made him bury what was left of her. He had to dig her grave with his bare hands and the entire time he was digging, they kept telling him that it was all his fault."

"Anything else?" Steve asked, the sickening details of Starsky's ordeal starting to wear him down.

"After he killed one of the cult members, they beat him and beat him and beat him until he was more dead than alive. Then they just threw him in the pit and forgot about him. To them, he was dead. He no longer existed. To survive, he learned to catch the rats that crept over his body in the darkness and eat them. He did the same thing with the bugs and maggots that he found in the dirt of his prison. Did you know that if you get thirsty enough you can drink your own urine and not even notice the taste?" At those words, Hutch did bounce to his feet and bolted from the room where he darted into the men's room and promptly lost the contents of his stomach. Sometimes knowing was worse than not knowing. No wonder Starsky's mind had been damaged badly enough for him to create other personas to bear the things he could no longer bear himself without being driven insane.

Richard was sitting placidly in the chair when Hutch finally composed himself to return to the office and even Steve looked unnerved and a little green. As Hutch sank down on the sofa, Steve looked at him somatically and said, "Are you okay, Hutch?"

"No, but I didn't have to go through the things that Starsky did either. My god…how could anyone be that depraved?" he muttered. It was a valid question and one that Steve had no answer for.