Blood Sins by Kay Hooper Page B

answer. Because she wanted someone to endure a more tormented existence than she did herself.
    And she made sure he did.
    He doubted most of the johns had even noticed, much less cared, that a usually filthy and often hungry boy had crouched in the corner of some seedy motel room and watched, eyes wide and fixed, the fornication that was always hurried and furtive, and often abusive.
    She'd taught him to smoke, both cigarettes and pot, by the time he was four, burning his body with the glowing embers until he could inhale without coughing. Taught him how to steal by the time he was six and how to defend himself with a knife before he was seven--though she could always take the weapon away from him on those rare occasions when he found the guts to try to defend himself from her.
    "Stupid little bastard. I could have let them scrape you out of my belly when I knew his seed had taken root. But that don't mean I can't scrape you out of my life now. Understand, Sammy? Or do I have to show you just what I can do to you?"
    It never made any difference if he answered, because she always "showed" him. Sometimes he was locked in a closet for a day or longer. Sometimes she beat him. Other times she . . .played with him. Like a cat with a mouse, mangling and torturing its prey until the pathetic little creature just stopped trying to escape and waited dumbly for the end to come.
    He'd believed he was numb to all of it, enduring his lot in stoic silence, until she began bringing in johns with . . . special tastes.
    It amused her to watch them use him. And then there was the money. She was able to charge a premium for his virginity. After that . . . well, he was still small. Young. As good as a virgin, she told them. She developed a skill for finding those men who enjoyed using him no matter how many had used him before.
    Samuel gripped the arms of his chair and forced himself to breathe deeply and evenly.
    Memories.
    Just memories.
    They couldn't hurt him anymore.
    Except, of course, that they did. Always. But less and less as time had passed. As if holding a burning coal in his mind, in his soul, and blowing on it from time to time, like this, he could feel layers of himself being seared away. Cauterized.
    It was a good thing.
    He hadn't been able to do that then. Not in the beginning. Hadn't been able to stop the pain in any way at all. Hadn't been able to stop the mother who abused him or the johns who did even more unspeakable things to him.
    Looking back now, in the light of God's pure certainty, he understood what had finally happened to him. He understood that God had tested him. And tested him. He understood that those early years had begun to shape the steel of God's holy sword.
    He hadn't seen those miserable, dark, dank motel rooms as a series of crucibles, or those faceless men, brutish and cruel, as anointed by God to destroy the base metal he had been in order to make of it something great.
    But he saw now. He understood.
    The first destruction of who and what he had been took place in one of those desolate rooms, late one night when it was cold and stormy outside. Maybe it had been winter. Or maybe it had just been one of those perpetually cold cities along his mother's long, wandering life. He couldn't remember.
    He remembered only that he'd been vaguely surprised that she had found a john at all on such a night, far less one looking for a boy. But his stoic resignation had turned to quivering terror when a hulk of a man filled the doorway, almost forced to turn sideways in order to come into the room.
    Samuel remembered few details of the next few hours, but he remembered a broad, coarse-featured face in which small eyes burned cruelly. And he remembered his mother's glee, her laughing encouragement, as the john held him in one giant paw and literally ripped the worn, too-small clothing from his body.
    He could hear her laughter even now, echoing in his mind. Hear the john's hoarse grunts of sadistic pleasure. And he could