Chapter 20
Bargain
Part One
It can't be. It's not possible. He's dead. Dead! Worm food. Maggot meat. Chris...He gave me his promise...I...
For the first time in her life she was speechless. Unable to find the right combination of words to describe the unexpected, six foot one, smack her upside the head with a steel beam, surprise seated in front of her. So, she invented a few new phrases all her own, shit-a-skittle-fuck-a-duckle-doo and sha-damn-idly-sucky-fucky-dang, to name a quick few.
The trusty Redfield parachute sucked behind enemy lines, drifting a slow motion decent into familiar, hostile territory.
Her stomach squirmed in her gut like tiny, wriggling tadpoles in a muddy pond. The air thick with dust motes swirled in the flood lamp haze and the overpowering reek of his cologne.
Wesker simmered on content. Legs straddled across a chair, chin rested on arms folded over the top of its pine-knotted frame. Straight-faced, with a hint of his patent- able, malicious grin tucked into the corner of his tightly drawn lips.
"You're dead!" She shook an accusing finger. "Dead! My brother-"
"Your brother did what he does best. Fail."
"No! He...h-he killed you. He watched you die. He promised. He made sure."
"He lied, Claire. Told you exactly what he believed you needed to hear." Wesker clasped his hands over his heart. "Tell me is there no greater devotion than the love of a brother with intent to deceive when he has brotherly promises to keep and sisterly fears to relieve?"
"My brother doesn't lie!"
"Dear Brother is many things. Murderer. Information Extortionist. Plastic Explosive Guru. Wheelman. Womanizer. I see no reason to exclude Fibber Extraordinaire from such an extensive list. Contrary to your naïve belief, Christopher is quite the little liar, liar. I dare say his pants are constantly on fire. Flame retardant must be in high demand and short supply when in the presence of your company."
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. This isn't happening. It's some horrible nightmare. Chris promised. He made sure. He told me. He told me! Her feet slowly backpedaled.
"I would advise against doing what you are, predictably I might add, considering."
An outstretched arm groped for the empty air of the doorway.
"If you should decide upon hostile negotiations, given a childish instinct to run, I am afraid there will be consequences." His grin broadened. "Enjoyable for myself, distasteful to you, and downright dire for Prince Charming."
"Where is he, Wesker?"
"Become uncooperative and I guarantee you will spend the next several unpleasant hours playing fifty-two card pickup with Kennedy's bones. I would suggest you change into your big girl panties and do exactly as you are told. A challenge I know, given your gene pool, but it is rather difficult to come to an agreement at a bartering table when a vital participant is missing. You have been given a part to play, Claire. You get to concede."
Concede? Bargaining with Wesker was akin to a patient debating with a sadistic doctor over whether to keep an arm or a leg in an unnecessary amputation operation. Neither option acceptable nor appealing for the future amputee. A gimp was a crip and one sorry handicapped 'tard. Give this bastard a toe and he'd swoop around and hack off the remaining nineteen digits in spite. "Just let him go. He served his purpose. I'm here."
"Not likely. You are a poor negotiator, and we have much to discuss. Do you expect to receive something for nothing? You will have to do better than a half-assed demand."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "How do I know you're not jerking my chain? That this cheap stunt isn't some fresh, slick, steaming pile of your same tired old bullshit."
He rose, pushed the chair aside. His shadow doubled his height and width, and she felt her knees cave inward and her heart hop an extra beat.
"Because, unlike Christopher, I have never told you a lie."
"Stop it! Your saying it doesn't make it true."
"Correct. My standing before you makes my statement true."
"It means nothing. You survived. My brother didn't know. End of story."
"Afraid not. Christopher has been well aware of my continued existence for quite some time. I can only conjecture as to why he did not share his knowledge with you."
"Because he didn't know."
"He did. He does. You may feel free to question his unfathomable logic when he has recovered from our recent altercation, but given his propensity for falsehood I would take the words he spews with a fifty gallon drum of salt."
Claire's jaw flopped open. 'Chris got into some hand to hand combat with an unknown assailant at Spencer's estate.'
"It was you!"
"Getting warm." He darted left.
"You were at Spencer's mansion."
He spun right and whipped around to face her. Magician movement, a dash of slight of hand stride, almost impossible for her eyes to track. "Warmer."
Compressed into a corner. His twin eye gleam beamed back at her from the depths of the ebony wall shadows smoothed onto his black clothes. Metallic blue shirt threads shimmered like twinkling stars.
"You fought with Chris...You...You...Oh, my God. You were the one who killed Spencer."
There was a stir of dust and a feather light finger stroke across her cheek. "Warmer still."
Claire rotated in a circle, tracked his movement by the swish of his coat. Randomly swatted the air, a split second too late. "You killed Spencer. You tried to kill Chris. And..." Her stomach plummeted to the floor. "You killed Jill."
"Close, no cigar," he whispered in her ear.
"Which part? Answer me. Jill? Is it Jill? Is she alive?"
Standing by the table, combat stance, his fickle grin played now you see me and now you don't with the frown etched on his face. "Yet again you ask for an ocean, and offer a stream trickle in return."
"I'm not giving you one damn thing. Nothing. Nada."
"I beg to differ. Kennedy's predicament ensures I currently have your undivided attention, and later-"
"I don't believe you."
"I am far more credible than Dear Brother."
"Says you. An honest psychopath, that'll be the day. Leon isn't here, and there isn't going to be any later. I want out. You let me out. I want out! Let me out!"
"I want out. Let me out," he mimicked. "To where? Back to the positively palatial roach motel you call home. Crawling on your hands and knees to the pretty please, save the world for our children earth lovers who tossed you out on your backside without so much as a thank you. The only thing TerraSave wants from you is to be rid of you."
"How would you know? How?"
"Not all of my friends reside in squalid, bilge water burgs. Some are influential. Some are handy. Some make their fortunes from the wallets of the very men your brother has made a living, albeit not a very good living, trying to destroy. I know more than you can imagine. Therefore, I shall ask again, where would you like to go? Outside? To my associates? I would think twice before I requested such idiocy."
Not one toe. "I'm not asking. I'm telling. I'll take my chances with Big Boy and String Bean."
"And sign Kennedy's death warrant? Your own? Mr. Krauser and Prince Charming have a rather tumultuous history. They parted company on unfriendly terms. My comrade is aware of your relationship with Kennedy, and would be only too happy to extract vengeance in the form of torture, yours to be exact. The very least he will do is break your neck, and anything else will be icing on a broken leg cake. Lunacy, thy last name is Redfield."
"So, let me see...My choices are a quick, painful death, or...I get to stay and suffer whatever mental cancer and degradation you care to inflict. Gosh. Lucky me. Hmmm...Mr. Trebek, I'm afraid I've decided not to play Wesker's Jeopardy, and I'll have to take neither for one thousand dollars."
"I did not offer you a choice. I merely stated the obvious. We have business to conduct. Kindly plant your ever so delightful to look at derriere onto that chair, and remove your boots, or I will plant it there for you."
"I've got a better idea." She flipped a middle finger. "Why don't you fuck off and go straight back to whatever Bermuda Triangle black hole spawned you."
He was as quick as Big Boy was big, a black-streaked, blur whirlwind.
It's-
Faster than a finger flinch. A raised hand sliced through the air.
Incre-Claire's head flew backward and her legs dropped out from under her. The sting of his open palm whiplash crack and five-finger imprint stamped on her cheek.
Son-of-a-bitch! She moaned, curled her legs to her chest, and instinctively buried her head beneath her arms.
"Hostile it is. How disappointing." He grabbed her mud-stained boot.
Claire pitched onto her stomach. "Let me go!" Kicking. Clawing the floorboards. "I want out! Leave me alone!" Her fingernails scraped wood and splinters were shoved up and under her fingernail tips. The hallway darkness, the only path to freedom, shrank into a dark speck, slowly extinguished in the flood light glare. "I'm worth nothing to you! Nothing, Wesker!"
"That remains to be discovered."
Her head butted against the chair. It teetered on its wobbly legs and clattered to the floor.
Wesker wrenched her leg sideways and she flopped onto her back.
"Leave me alone. Get your hands off!"
"And whom is going to stop me? You? Prince Charming? Dear Brother?"
His grin parted the stone-carved curve of his lips, mocking and cruel. The laughter that followed swift and piercing, laced with contempt. It stung worse than the burn on her cheek.
Her hands brushed the chair. Better than nothing and worth more than a prayer. She wrapped her fingers around its legs. You don't get to touch me. Not now. Not ever!
Claire hauled the chair airborne and smashed it against his thigh. The wood crunched bone and leather and snapped into bits and pieces.
And there was instant silence. He wasn't laughing now. The whites of his eyes flared tiger orange.
In her shaking hands remained two splintered stubs, and she would have gladly driven them into her own eye sockets to erase the instant pinch of demonic hellfire fury and surprise she watched maul and scald the smooth features of Albert Wesker's face into contorted rage.
He growled and his chest collided with hers, knocking her flat on her back. The wind sucked from her lungs. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Pinned beneath a slab of tensioned muscle.
His legs straddled her hips. Fingers tore at her jacket and shirt. She heard the pop of buttons, and a series of metal pings as the buttons bounced onto the floor and rolled into darkness. The push of his palm against her breast. The elastic snap of her bra strap, and a cold rush of air on her exposed flesh.
She slapped the supple leather of his coat. Feeble and wild, her blows like raindrops splattered on concrete. His face buried in the hollow of her neck.
"Behave," he breathed, gathering her slaphappy hands into his grip and pinning them above her head.
"Get off me! Stop touching me! Leave me be!"
"It does not have to be this way. Submit, or I will humiliate you."
Wesker nudged her body with his hips. "Do you understand? Persist, and I will leave you in a pool of shame, traces of me running down between your thighs, while I settle up with Kennedy on my own accord. You will watch him expire. I will take you again before he closes his eyes and breathes his last. He will die with the sound of your screams in his ears, the vision of you beneath me, and the knowledge he did nothing to save you. Is this what you desire? Yes? No? Decide, Claire. Or, I will decide for you."