by Heather West
That being said, I wasn’t giving them any more time alone with Lucy than absolutely necessary. Any time was too much time and, now that I’d learned what they’d done to Mary, I was out for blood.
We were nearing the abandoned house. It was a real piece of work. The building was dilapidated, the paint on it fading and coming off in sharp, ugly chips. It had probably been white at one point, but it had faded and molded into some sort of greenish grey that looked to be on the verge of making people sick simply by looking at it. The windows were cracked or shot out entirely, framed in splintering pieces of wood, some broken into large chunks. It wasn’t a huge place, but it was sizable enough. Bigger than the house I shared with Lucy.
I knew she was in the basement, so that was my ultimate goal. The goal of everyone, as things were. I’d finally caved and explained the full extent of the situation. Whether anything had happened at this point or not, they needed to know what was at stake. This was Lucy. And, to their credit, my boys responded in spades. They were up in arms about it, ready to storm the castle immediately. If we got there too late, well, I’d kill any man that gave Lucy grief about it.
Any man.
With my men behind me, I finally gave them the signal to rush the place. We had some backup in the form of Blackbird, Billy, and several of the Vultures, but it was hard to say whether we were outnumbered. Most likely, we still were. Even with the added assistance, it was difficult to say how many Slayers there were and I knew for a fact we didn’t have the full Vulture force. Only the ones most loyal to Billy and who had a soft spot for the Preacher’s only daughter had come.
It was enough, though. I’d have gone in with less if I had had to, so I was grateful for any numbers I could get.
We dove into the house like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. There were bullets flying before I even saw targets, their bodies hitting the floor as my men and those of the Vultures spotted the Slayers and took them down. I was too focused to care about small peanuts anyway. I wanted them dead—all of them—but I had one specific monster in mind that I had to hunt. Blackbird was nearby, just to the left of me. I caught him just out of the corner of my eye, ducking down behind the back of a chair, gun in hand. When a bullet went whizzing by him, he straightened up just slightly so he could reach over the chair, and fired. A man went down. Blackbird—despite his age or maybe because of it—was a damn fine shot.
Nearby, I could hear Billy cry out in a mixture of excitement and anger. He was younger than Blackbird by several years, closer to my age, and it seemed like the thrill of the fight itself was more than enough for him.
Thunder raced into the room and just bowled people over. He wasn’t the greatest shot, but his size worked in his favor. Despite making him a much bigger target, it seemed like no one had hit him yet, but he’d caught a few of them. He slammed into them like a pro wrestler, completely knocking the wind out of them, causing the men to drop hard to the ground, breathless. Others he just beat on, cracking skulls and breaking bones.
I moved forward through the house, counting seconds as I went, knowing that each one I wasted was one that could hurt Lucy. The drive to protect her was so intense that I barely noticed the bullets flying about my head. I didn’t notice as I caught one—just a scratch—across the arm, the searing pain of it just another wake up call. It fueled me, gave me focus, and I kept my eyes open for a door or a set of stairs, anything that might lead me to the basement and Lucy.
Bullets were flying, cries of pain and anger alike mixed into the air like a spark to hydrogen, the whole place exploding with them. I fired again and again, not even seeing the faces of men as they went down, not caring who they were or whether they were deeply involved. They were Slayers; they knew what sort of monsters they were.
I spotted Blade. His mottled face was pulled taut with fear as his eyes frantically searched through the army I had brought with me. He must have realized something quickly, because he caught my gaze for just a moment, before turning and making a run for it. I saw the stairs to the left and the room Blade dove into on my right. I had to make a choice.
It was made before I even bothered to consider it, my feelings on the matter consistent and all-consuming. I was halfway to the stairs leading to what I hoped was the basement and Lucy inside, when another man—one of mine—came back up them, stopping me before I could even step down. He shook his head, and I blanched. Were we too late? Was it more than just rape they were doing here?
Had I lost Lucy forever?
Before my thoughts could drown me in depression, the man spoke. “She’s not there!” he yelled amidst the noisy battle. “The cage down there, it was open! She’s gotta be somewhere else!”
I clenched my jaw together tightly and turned back towards the room where Blade had hidden himself. It was reassuring to know he hadn’t found her dead, but it did nothing to ease my other thoughts and worries. I’d have to get more information, and I knew the best place to get it was from the horse’s mouth.
The door was locked, so I pounded on it, yelling at him to let me in. “Open the fucking door, Blade, you coward!”
At first, he wouldn’t respond. He must have known how things were stacked against him and how angry I was, how ready to kill him I was. Then, a muffled, terrified voice filtered through the door. “I’m not coming out! You assholes clear out, because I’ve got a bomb and I’ll set it off if I catch even a single fucking Reaper left in this shithole!”
I sincerely doubted he had a bomb. Blade had already proved himself a coward. He didn’t have the balls to set the whole place up, not with himself still in the building.
I was about to bang on the door again, when one of the Vultures came up to me. I saw that Thunder was in tow and he had something cradled gently in his arms. A person. A woman.
Lucy.
Her hair hung down across one of Thunder’s beefy arms and her legs were long and bare, slung over the other. She was dressed in—well, I guessed I should have just been grateful she was dressed at all, but I knew damn good and well that she hadn’t left the house in that. She’d been put into it and it made my blood boil.
They’d pay. I was beginning to think they knew it, too.
I was a little concerned that Lucy was unconscious. She made little sounds now and again, so I knew she was alive at the very least, but that was all I could tell. She didn’t look like she was bruised or beat up, but I also knew there were places that might be bruised that I couldn’t see just then.
The thought made my stomach roil and it took everything I had not to retch right there in the middle of the house. I kept it together. This wasn’t over yet. Not until I had Blade.
“We got her, boss,” the Vultures man told me with a nod of his head. “What you want us to do with the rest?”
He indicated a group of men who were being herded together. Some looked like they were wounded. Some just looked scared. They were all Slayers. I let my gaze slip across each one of them, cold and calculating. Then I spoke to the room as a whole, “At your discretion boys. Just remember who they are and what they’ve done.” My eyes drifted to Lucy and I hoped we had somehow gotten here in time.
Thunder looked just short of terrified, his eyes wide, his lingering bruises making him look like some kind of caricature. “I think…I think she’s okay,” he managed to get out, looking to Lucy then to me and back again, over and over.
I nodded tersely, unable to say much. When I finally got the words out, they were short and to the point. “Get her out of here. She’s your responsibility, Thunder.”
He swelled up to his full height—much taller than he seemed with all his extra blubber—and gave me a stern, serious nod. He wouldn’t let me down. He left just as the last of the Slayers were being hauled out. They were lined up against the wall and I could guess what my men were going to do. I wouldn’t stop them any more than I would give them the go-ahead. I wouldn’t make murderers of them; that was a personal choice for each man to make.
Focusing my a
ttention on the door in front of me, I knocked again, motioning behind me for everyone to give me just one moment of silence.
“Open up, Blade,” I told him in a tone that was calmer than I felt. “I just want to talk.”
“Yeah fucking right!” he answered.
I sighed. Kneeling, I put my guns down on the floor where he could see them beneath the crack under the door. “I’m unarmed. My guns are here on the floor; check for yourself.”
There was a moment, shuffling, then finally I thought I heard a sigh of defeat. The door unlocked. I stepped inside and closed the door mostly behind me. Blade looked increasingly nervous, but I could see defeat written across his features. He already knew he’d lost. I took a seat on one side of the desk that took up half the room and he sat on the other side.
After a moment, the house filled with the sounds of a dozen gunshots at once. It echoed for a moment. Blade flinched. Then it was over and I didn’t have to tell him all his men were dead.
He knew.
Chapter 25
Lucy
My head hurt. The inside of my eyelids felt like sandpaper, scratching and burning against my eyeballs. I fought between blinking them open to clear out some of the lingering sand and clenching them tighter so the peeking sun I could feel against the skin of my eyelids would be kept at bay. I sensed that it would make my already throbbing headache worse. It was beating like a heart, pounding like I’d just had a pint of whiskey to myself the previous night. At first, I wasn’t sure why. I was lying down and the bed beneath me was soft, forgiving and—
The man grinned at me, not as malicious as Blade, but just as eager. His expression was a mask of lust, but not that delightful, edible lust that I saw shine in Max’s eyes before he took me until I screamed. No, this was different. This lust was as much for the violence as it was for my body.
I couldn’t let this happen.
I watched as the man began to undo his belt buckle. I realized that beneath his jeans there was already a bulge, telling me he wouldn’t need any time to get ready for me.
My eyes shot open and I shivered as memories began to wash over me, terrible, awful things that I would carry the rest of my life. Panic swept me, terrible and uncontrollable. I needed out of this bed. I needed away from these blankets. I needed out!
I tried to sit up, tugging the thick blankets off me, tearing at them as though they were restraints holding me down. I felt nauseous, sick to my stomach. My body was cold and sweating at the same time and I just wanted to throw up, like that might get rid of the awful things that had to have been done for me. That I hadn’t even been awake for.
Tears pricked at my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but they spilled down over my cheeks as images and memories, fuzzy from whatever Blade had given me, flashed vividly through my mind. I couldn’t shake them.
I was in the midst of a panicked, desperate search for a way out when I felt a pinch in my arm. I whirled around to see Blade had come up behind me. He was grinning and held an empty syringe in his hand.
“I changed my mind,” he said easily. “I figured I’d do you this small mercy. Besides, I can’t have you trying to run away, now can I?” He pointed to the camera then. “Don’t forget to give me the money shot.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to fight. I wanted to run. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
But I couldn’t do anything.
I began to sob in earnest. Heavy, thick sobs escaped my throat, building up in my chest until they crawled out like tiny beasts desperate to reach the surface. I tried not to think of that small room…
The lights had been dimmed except for the large spotlights that illuminated my half-naked body to all those terrible, degrading bastards. I clutched at my chest as I struggled to breathe. It only got worse as I remembered the man. That awful, awful man...
I let out another sob that was more like a cry, a plaintive wail that was less a call for help and more a pathetic admission of guilt. I’d been violated and I couldn’t even remember all of it. I’d been forced into…I’d been made to…And they had it on film. Those bastards had it on film!
What would I do when Max found out?
I stopped, frozen by a fresh bout of terror. What if Max found out? How would I explain all of this to him? How I hadn’t even fought it? Oh, sure, I’d been drugged there at the end, but what about the time leading up to it? Blade had thrown that lacy negligee and I’d just put it on for him! For them. Three of them. I’d stood there in that cage, knowing full well they were watching me, and taken off my clothes for them. That made me a willing participant, didn’t it?
And even if it didn’t, what did it matter? I was ruined. I was a piece of shit. There wasn’t anything worthwhile left of me, and as soon as Max saw that tape, he’d know it was the truth.
I tugged at the shirt that was pulled over me—who had put me in a shirt?—and used it to cover my mouth as I sobbed into it.
My vision was blurry and I was sobbing so hard that I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t the only one crying. When I took in a shuddering breath, I finally noticed it. It made me stop—was someone else here?
Now that I wasn’t crying anymore, I started noticing a lot of things. Like how I was in my room, back home. And the shirt I was wearing? It was mine, given to me in high school by Max. It was my absolute favorite, worn so often that it was incredibly thin and soft. The bed I was sitting on was my own, the one I shared with Max.
The door to the bedroom was half closed, open just enough that a stream of light shone in through the hall. That was where the crying was coming from and now that I was listening to it I realized it sounded familiar. It took me only a second to place why: the crying was my mother.
Sliding out of bed, my head still pounded but everything else seemed fine, I made my way over to the door. I carefully pushed it open and was rewarded with a strange sight. My mother sat on the top steps of the staircase, head in her hands, sobbing to the point of hysteria. Next to her sat Thunder, who was awkwardly patting at her back and murmuring unimportant things in a soft, sweet voice.
I stared at them for a long time, trying to figure out what was going on, but then Thunder stiffened. He seemed to have noticed the silence coming from my room, a strong contrast to the noise that must have been coming from it only moments before. He looked over his shoulder and when he saw me, there was a mixture of emotions plastered on his squishy face. He looked sad, sympathetic maybe, and a little embarrassed.
I had a thought I wasn’t very comfortable with: had Thunder put me in this shirt?
After a moment, Thunder tapped my mother on her shoulder and whispered something to her. She stopped crying almost instantly, only sniffling a few times to get it under control, then she stood and turned to face me.
“Oh, Lucy, baby,” she muttered, her hand going to cover her mouth. Her eyes were red, bloodshot, and her hair was a mess. She’d been crying for a while now.
I bit my lip. For a moment, the feelings of worthlessness and despair flooded me again, making me want to turn away from her, but then she came to me. She wrapped her arms around me and I held her tightly.
Thunder, who seemed very uncomfortable, cleared his throat quickly and said, “I’ll go make some coffee.” He disappeared down the stairs. After a moment, I could hear some clanking around in the kitchen.
Returning my attention to my mother, I opened my mouth to try to explain. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, but I felt like she needed to know. But before I got a word out, she smiled at me softly.
“Let’s sit down. I think…I think we have a lot to talk about.”
I nodded and let her lead me back into the bedroom. We didn’t sit on the bed, because I wasn’t good with that just then. Instead, we both took seats on the floor, our backs pressed against the edge of the bed. I leaned my head against her shoulder and let my eyes slide closed. But that was quickly a mistake. Images of what happened with the Slayers flooded my mind, and I immediately opened my eyes again. I fixed my g
aze on the window instead. Light had been trickling in for a while now, the heat from the pooling sunshine better than anything else had been today.
After a long pause of silence between us, my mother spoke again. “I know,” she whispered, sounding softer than I’d heard her for a while. “I know what you’re going through and I know it seems impossible to deal with right now, but I want you to know how strong you are. You…you’ll be okay.”
I frowned deeply. “What do you mean, Mom? What were you told? Who…who else knows?” I asked the last part in a barely audible whisper, certain that I didn’t want to know the answer to it, but sure also it was something I needed to hear.
