Surely the guards had to come in at some point and put a stop to it.
Flynn flinched to watch the aggressive man kick the one on the ground. The deep slap of foot against flesh snapped through the place and the cowering man curled into a ball.
It should have been enough, but the large man kicked him again. “I know your game. I know what you had planned. I can’t share this space with a scheming rat like you.” He kicked him again and a lot of the people in the dungeon looked away. No one wanted any part of it.
A third kick, driven straight to the skinny man’s kidneys, and the skinny man barked and wheezed while he fought for breath.
The large guy remained over the weak form of the other man and kicked him again and again. Each boot sent a deep boom through the dungeon. Each kick turned the weak man progressively weaker.
The guards still did nothing. One of them even leaned against the wall as if casually watching a sport play out in front of him.
When the aggressive man grabbed the other one’s ankle and dragged him back into the middle of the room, Flynn moved to stand up. But a hand gripped his right forearm to stop him. He looked across at a blonde girl, who kept her hand on him and shook her head. She looked to be in her early twenties, and she looked like she understood the way of this place better than him. The bags beneath her eyes suggested she’d been there a while.
As Flynn looked into her wide stare, he felt her grip tighten on his arm. The pleading look on her face suggested she feared for his safety rather than her own.
Flynn let go of his desire to stand up, his face still throbbing from the blow he’d taken to it when they’d kidnapped him outside.
The first stamp cracked through the enclosed space. The aggressive man wound up for a second one, lifted his foot above the weaker man, and stamped down on his face again.
Any fight the weak man had at that moment left him. Not that his aggressor stopped.
Another stamp on him and the weak man fell even more limp. Then another stamp, the heavy blow slipping off what must have been a face slick with blood. Another stamp, and another stamp, and another stamp.
One by one, the people in the prison all turned away until just Flynn watched the aggressive man. It might have been poorly lit, but the flaming torches showed him enough to see the tight grimace on the large man’s face as he stamped the other guy’s head to mush.
Maybe the other guy did have the intention of killing the larger man; maybe he didn’t. Whatever the catalyst for the larger man’s attack, it certainly sent a message: Don’t fuck with him. He’s the fucking daddy now.
When he’d finished, the dead man on the floor having turned limp quite some time ago, the large man panted, his shoulders hunched as he looked around the room. He stopped when he came to Flynn. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
Before Flynn could even think about standing up, the girl next to him grabbed him again. She stared at the ground as she spoke to him, clearly trying to avoid engaging with the aggressive man. “Don’t, it’s not worth it. Save your strength, you’ll need it.”
Although it felt hard to turn away from the open aggression in front of him, Flynn dropped his eyes and said nothing in response to the large man.
“Exactly,” the man said. “And don’t you lot forget what you’ve just witnessed. You fuck with me and I’ll do this to you in a fucking heartbeat.”
The large man seemed to have more to say, but just then, a female guard called into the cage, “He’s awake! Number sixteen’s awake.”
At first, Flynn looked around the space to try to locate number sixteen. The girl next to him put a gentle hand on his back and said, “That’s you, honey.” Her soft touch wished him well.
Flynn tensed to watch five guards open the barred door at the front of the prison. Everyone in the cage—even the alpha male—moved out of the way.
As much as Flynn wanted to move too, he couldn’t escape his fate. The guards were heading straight for him.
Three men and two women, they all carried long and rusty machetes. Hard to tell in the flickering light, but the weapons looked to be stained with blood. A slight glint ran along the edge of each one from where they’d been recently sharpened. Any shit from Flynn and they’d use them in a heartbeat.
As they got closer, Flynn backed away a little. “What the fuck’s going on?” he said, looking first to the guards for answers and then at the blonde girl. “What’s happening?”
But the guards didn’t respond and neither did the girl. Instead, the one at the front kept his stride as he walked up to Flynn and kicked him square in the face.
A deep sting stretched away from Flynn’s nose and he fell backwards. He tasted and smelled his own blood as it flooded his mouth, and for the second time that day, his world faded to black.
Chapter Seventeen
A different room to the dungeon, but equally as dingy, Flynn blinked against the darkness and breathed in the muggy, sweaty heat. The place smelled of mould, the humidity in the air stagnating in every crevice.
When Flynn tried to move, he met resistance almost immediately. Still groggy from being knocked out a second time, he tried to move again. His hands were trapped and level with his face. A look left and right, his movement restricted, and he saw he’d been put in a stock.
Before Flynn could speak, a woman appeared in front of him. Easily over six feet tall, she had wider shoulders than him and wore a long black apron. It looked to be made of leather, but he couldn’t tell in the poor light. Much like the prison he’d only just been in, this one had torches on the walls and the flicker of them made the shadows shimmer.
After he’d looked around the room as much as the stock would allow, Flynn returned his attention to the woman. She smiled and said, “Welcome, number sixteen.”
It might have been the first whack outside in the night that gave him the headache, it might have been the second in the dungeon, whichever one had been responsible for Flynn’s pain, he now had to squint to ease it a little, even in the poor light. “Number sixteen?” he said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Number fifteen came in before you and number seventeen will come in after.”
“Well, that makes more sense, thanks for clearing it up.”
“We already have number seventeen waiting,” the woman said.
“No, we don’t.” The voice came from behind Flynn.
“Oh no.” She smiled. “Thank you for reminding me. We don’t have a number seventeen anymore. Our guards hit them a bit too hard. Or their skull was a bit too weak. I’m not sure which one.” She looked back at Flynn. “You can call me Mistress, by the way.”
“You can fuck off,” Flynn said.
Mistress threw her head back and shoved her pelvis forward as she laughed. Genuine mirth—driven from her clearly large diaphragm—boomed through the small room. “Looks like we’ve caught a live one here.”
The same voice that had spoken behind Flynn laughed with Mistress. Deeper than hers, it went off like an explosion. It sounded like a man. Like a monster of a man.
“Okay, sweetie,” Mistress said as she put her hands on her knees and leaned close enough for Flynn to see half of her teeth at the back were missing. “Let’s try to make this as painless as possible, yeah?”
“What the fuck are you on about?”
But Mistress didn’t reply. Instead, she stood up, tucked her long black hair behind her right ear, and looked from Flynn to whoever stood behind him and back to Flynn again.
As Flynn directed his senses behind him, he noticed the heat from what must have been a fire. It warmed his back right thigh and smelled of burning coals. In a different situation it might have offered comfort. But in a dark and sweaty dungeon, it sent anxiety buzzing through his stomach.
When a hand grabbed the bottom of Flynn’s shirt, he twisted to try to escape it. The wooden frame of the stock rattled at the hinges. He couldn’t move.
The hand lifted his shirt and the heat from the fire p
ressed against Flynn’s bare skin over his right kidney. It felt like the hand wore a thick rubber glove.
A look at Mistress and Flynn saw the concentration on her face as she watched the person behind him. Her tongue protruded slightly from her mouth as if it took focus to simply observe the man. As if she lived every step of it with him.
“What the fuck is he doing back there?” Flynn said.
A glance down at him, but Mistress quickly looked away as if fearful of missing something.
When Mistress flinched, Flynn nearly shouted at her again. But before he could speak, a searing pain lit up his right kidney. “Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Whatever they burned him with, the man behind kept the pressure on. No matter how Flynn moved, he couldn’t escape the scorching press of it. It sent the pain of a thousand hard pinches into him.
The hiss of his burning flesh called through the room. A second later, Flynn smelled the fatty charring of his own skin.
Still watching events behind him, Mistress’ expression shifted from pain to pleasure and back again.
Flynn couldn’t take anymore, but the hot pain kept on. His stomach bucked and he vomited bile all over the floor in front of him. Woozy as he fought to remain conscious, his legs wobbled and they threatened to give out beneath him.
The man behind him finally pulled the hot metal away and Flynn fell limp. Were it not for the stock, he would have collapsed on the ground.
The world in front of Flynn blurred through his tear-glazed eyes, and his wrists and neck hurt from where the stock took his body weight.
After he’d spat the acidic taste of bile away from him, Flynn’s sight cleared a little and he looked at Mistress. “I’m going to cut your fucking throat.”
She shook her head at him and replied in a calm and even tone, “No, you’re not, sweetie. Besides, at the moment, you couldn’t even tie your own shoelaces. You’d do well to remember who’s in control here.”
Even with the metal pulled away, Flynn’s back remained on fire. It turned his entire body electric like every nerve ending had been exposed.
As Flynn started to lose consciousness again, Mistress grabbed his face in a hard pinch and pulled it up so he had to look at her. She gripped so tightly his teeth cut into the insides of his cheeks.
Just a few centimetres separated them when she said, “We’re going to fill the wound with ash now so you don’t bleed everywhere. Then we’ll take you back to the prison.”
Mistress pulled away, letting Flynn’s head fall limp. She leaned over the stock, shoving her crotch in his face. When she pulled back, she had two iron brands. She showed them to Flynn, holding them so close he could smell his own seared flesh on the end of them.
“Sixteen,” she said. “A one and a six. It’s so people know who you are. We have to wait for eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. Then we can get on with it.”
In too much pain to reply, Flynn stared at the bitch in front of him. She’d get hers; he’d fucking make sure of it.
Chapter Eighteen
The hood over Flynn’s head blinded him as a hard and impatient hand shoved him forward. Each forceful push into the centre of his back made him stumble, his stomach lurching in anticipation of a trip. And with his hands bound, he’d be powerless to cushion the fall.
Yet somehow he managed to remain upright. He’d teetered on the brink of falling a few times, but he hadn’t toppled over. Not yet at least.
One of the guards put a pincer grip on the back of Flynn’s neck and it took all he had not to fold beneath the sharp sting of it.
When Flynn stopped still, the guard let go.
The crack of a bolt snapped free and Flynn jumped where he stood. Suddenly a rough hand grabbed his bound wrists, slipped a knife under the cable tie holding them together, and ripped the blade up, freeing his hands.
The guard behind him then pushed where he’d been branded, igniting the fire in his back again as he shoved him into the prison.
A sure sign of weakness in front of the other prisoners, Flynn yelped, stumbled from the shove, and crashed down, smashing his knees against the hard ground.
As he removed his hood, the gate slammed shut behind him. The bolt cracked home and they were locked in again.
Not that he recognised the prisoners in the room from his brief time in the dingy space earlier, but it looked like the same people still in there. They all stared at Flynn. He looked where number fifteen had lain dead. He’d gone now. Unfortunately, the brute who’d killed him hadn’t.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” the large bully demanded as he loomed over Flynn.
Where Flynn had previously thought the dungeon smelled of body odour, he now recognised the tang of seared flesh. They all stank of it.
In no state to fight because of the pain of his brand, Flynn dropped his eyes to the dark ground, the flickering light from the torches in the walls doing little to illuminate the place.
Flynn shuffled out of the man’s way and only looked up at him when he’d reached the wall at the other side of the space. He’d obviously done enough to placate him because he no longer seemed interested.
Now Flynn had returned to the prison, he saw something in the faces of the other prisoners. It took for him to be branded to identify the smell of the place, and now he looked at the sad faces around him, he connected to them because of the pain in his lower back. All of them had been marked like animals. He didn’t need to see the burns to know that. They wore their scars in their stares.
The atmosphere in the prison seemed to boil just below the surface. Regardless of how long they’d all been there, a pecking order existed with the brute firmly at the top.
So when a skinny man walked over to Flynn, his ratty eyes narrowed to slits, he knew he couldn’t back down again. Too much subservience and he’d go the way of fifteen.
“You’re in my space, boy,” the man said as he looked down at Flynn.
Aware of everyone else looking at him too, including the brute, Flynn got to his feet. Because of the pain in his back, he had to push off the wall to stand up.
Several breaths when he’d gotten upright to ride out the sharp pain over his kidneys, and Flynn found a little more resolve.
One last check to be sure everyone, including the brute, were watching, and Flynn said, “Now, I’m going to give you one chance.”
The skinny man laughed. “One chance for what? You’re in my space.”
Flynn flashed his fist across the man’s chin, putting a right cross square on him. The wet clop of it rang through the space before the man’s legs folded and he crumpled to the ground.
Adrenaline sent heavy breaths through Flynn and he looked at the others as he rode it out. His hand ached from where he’d just dropped the skinny man, but he kept his fist balled anyway. The staring eyes of only a few seconds ago had vanished. Each person minded their own business again. Even the brute looked away.
Chapter Nineteen
Fuck knew how long had passed. Every time Flynn tried to get comfortable, either the cold and hard prevented it, or the fierce pain in his back screamed in agony. As electric as ever, his wound ran a constant angry buzz through him.
“Nicely handled.”
Flynn looked to his right to see the blonde girl had snuck up close to him. A glance at the other prisoners and no one else seemed to be watching. He might not have had much experience beyond his community, but he knew one of the best ways to disarm a man often came in the form of a beautiful lady. At first he didn’t reply, staring into the girl’s eyes as he looked for deceit.
“I think you showed them you wouldn’t be fucked with.” She spoke in a whisper so only Flynn heard her. “More importantly, you showed him you wouldn’t be fucked with.” While looking at the large man in the middle of the prison, she added, “After his alpha-male display, he needed to see that.”
At a guess, Flynn would have put the woman in her early twenties. The figure of someone still in her physical prime, she looked tired in her f
ace, dark bags swollen beneath her eyes. “Thanks,” he finally said. “I would have rather not done it though.”
The man he’d knocked out had woken up about ten minutes ago and scurried over to the other side of the prison. If any of the other prisoners were looking for a weak link, they weren’t looking at Flynn anymore.
After she’d glanced around the place as if checking to make sure they didn’t have an audience, the girl said, “No, but you had to do it.”
Despite years of living with naked flames for illumination, Flynn still hadn’t gotten used to how the flickering light animated the inanimate. One second the people around seemed to be closing in in his peripheral vision; the next they were farther away than ever.
“I’m One,” the girl said as he held her hand out to Flynn.
“Sixteen,” Flynn said back, wincing at another sharp kick from his wound when he stretched over to her.
“I know you are. And it fucking hurts, doesn’t it?”
Flynn nodded at the second comment. “Although, I think I would have rather just had a one branded into me.”
A raised eyebrow and One nodded. “Sure, but it also means I’ve been here longer than anyone else.”
“How long?”
One shrugged in the low light. “A fortnight,” she said, “maybe a month.”
“A month?”
“Maybe.”
Before Flynn could ask her anything else, the lock on the dungeon’s door snapped free. The guards shoved two people in and announced them to the room. “Eighteen and nineteen. One more and it’s party time, fuckers.”
The two newest arrivals—two women who couldn’t have weighed any more than about nine stone between them—stumbled into the room. They withdrew from the collective attention as if the stares caused them physical discomfort.
After a look at the glowering brute, they moved to the other side of the space. The poor fuckers had no idea of the pain that would come to them soon. What Flynn had seen as hostility in everyone’s stares when he’d first arrived, he now saw as pity. They all knew what those two would have to face.
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