Cain whistled while he worked. He kept harmony with every wince of agony from John, exhaled loudly in time with every grunt of pain, laughed when John ground his body against the rock wall in an effort to pull away from his slicing administrations. "The pain will go away soon," Cain reassured John. "Once I'm through the dermis, as far down as the bone, I'll be beyond the nerve endings." John howled. Cain stepped in closer, eyes like lasers, guiding the scaling knife with a surgeon's precision. In such deep concentration, the tip of his tongue poked from beneath the slash of his lips, writhing like a fat worm as he plied his tool. Beyond?esh was bone, and that would require effort. His whistling stopped, and now he moaned more often than John did. John was beyond agony now, beyond the point of human endurance. Cain sighed. His work wasn't the same, didn't hold the same satisfaction, if his subject wasn't around to appreciate it. Shaking his head, he stepped away. Then, hands on hips, he surveyed his work of art.
Not bad, I suppose, he told himself. Though it still lacked a certain?amboyant statement to?nish it off. If this was to be the magnum opus of both Jubal and Tubal Cain, he required a truly magni?cent centerpiece to?nalize it.
He slipped the scaling knife into his waistband, retrieved the empty gun from where he'd laid it on the?oor, and headed out into the night.