by Black, Paula
“Ah, sorry about that. The bed. Sit.” It was both an explanation and a command, and I eased myself down warily, feeling for the edge of the mattress with the backs of my legs and my bound hands.
I perched blindly, fighting the tremble in my bones. That’s when the stench hit me. It hadn’t been overpowering on entry, but with my eyes covered, my other senses were upping their game to give me an idea of where I was. From the nose-crinkling, gagging scent of waste and blood, I would have said Hell.
Fingertips ran down the curve of my jaw and a male sigh tripped a warm breeze against my cheek. A second pair of hands gripped my cuffed wrists and I gasped around my gag, terror notching into my throat as more hands covered my body.
Oh God, what were they… my shirt ripped with a forceful tug and I jerked backwards into a laughing male chest, thrashing like a tied pig when rough hands dragged at my pants. They stripped me, easily as you’d undress an unruly child, and when I kicked my legs out, they simply spread them wide until I froze.
I was naked, and they had me in the best possible position to do anything they wanted to me. For a pregnant moment the only sounds in the room were my gagged, panicked breaths. Then masculine laughter broke chills across my skin, and my legs were released, the hands leaving my skin as I twisted my body away from them in a lurch that landed me face-down on the cold stone floor. I barely registered the pain that throbbed through my limbs with the collision, and wormed awkwardly until my shoulder hit a wall and I curled into the corner, drawing my knees up to cover my nakedness. The laughter quieted and light footsteps crossed over the stone. I trembled as he came closer and I hated myself for the reaction, for being a victim. I was stronger than this.
“I will see you later, Neva Raines.” Dante’s accented purr screwed my gut into a roll of nausea, and I didn’t even fight the flinch. Showing my disgust wasn’t going to worsen my situation.
There was a shuffle of movement and the door closed with a clunk of metal and the turnover of the lock.
I tried to orient myself in the fabric-enforced darkness. The asshole could have taken my blindfold off at least, or untied my hands, but clearly that would make me comfortable, and we couldn’t have that.
Taking a deep, reluctant breath through my nose, I listened to the sounds around me. The screams faded to background noise as I hunted out any clue to my location. There was a slow dripping sound coming from the other side of the room. The soft whirring of a surveillance camera came from an upper corner, above where I assumed the door was, and it resolved me against shedding a single tear. I thought of my brother. Of all the tears he’d cried, of all the pain he’d suffered, and would never suffer again. He’d died in this place and I would too, unless I found a way out.
Something rumbled through the wall pressed against my flank. I cocked my head. A train? Either that or a truck, but the stifling feel of underground led me to think it must be the former. We were near the tracks then, which narrowed down the location to all of London.
Another wave of hopelessness washed over me. I was strong, but inner strength wasn’t getting me out of this prison. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe with the gag stuffed in my mouth so deep it tickled the back of my throat and choked me. I was drowning in my own saliva, my wrists chafed by the sharp edges of cuffs I bet weren’t standard police issue. So, yeah, pretty hopeless.
First thing, though. I had to get the blindfold off. The darkness would make me insane before anything else. I rubbed my face against the wall, my shoulder, my bent knees, anything to shove the fabric up and off my eyes. It took some work, but eventually the material slipped up to my forehead, and I managed to shift it until it hung off my ponytail.
What I faced was what I had imagined: a stone cell; a bare iron bed, its mattress stained with blood and God knew what else; a solid door with the camera above; a sink and toilet in the far corner.
It was a situation I’d had nightmares about, only in those it had been my brother, tortured, abused, and alone. Now, this was my reality, and the only thing keeping me from screaming around my gag was knowing Daniel was free of all this. He was somewhere peaceful, I hoped. They said death gave you freedom. I clung to that, letting the strange numbness of oncoming shock and emotional overload settle in my bones, until I no longer felt the chill on my naked skin, and could no longer smell the stench of ammonia and other bodily fluids. I huddled on the concrete in a corner and ignored the evidence of torture around me. I refused to give them the satisfaction of making me sick with the evidence of what they did. Lying in my own vomit for however long it took for them to come and deal with me would be the icing on the shit cake.
What were they were going to do to me? They were already making me bleed. I could feel the warm trickles running from the raw skin on my wrists down onto my hands. Occasionally a drop spilled onto the ground, adding to the drip-drip rhythm that seemed to permeate the stone. I drew my knees in tighter. Like that would protect me. Like that would help me retain what little dignity they hadn’t stripped from me on entry. They had me naked and bound. What the hell was I going to be able to do?
I stewed in my helplessness, while my gaze kept dragging back to the blinking red surveillance camera I’d heard. The device was a small, round thing roosting up high and looking down over the whole room. It was the only piece of technology I could see. The rest of the room could have been part of the London Dungeons tour.
I gagged myself trying to use my tongue to push out the fabric stuffed in my mouth, and I was mid-heave when there was action outside the door. Fixing my gaze on it, I was prepared for anything.
Except what happened next.
Something heavy slammed against the door, rattling the lock.
My heart kicked up a gear. If there was fighting, there was the chance it was a rescue party. Could Gracie have gone to the police after we left her? Might somebody have seen the pizza boy’s murder and alerted them? It was too much to hope for.
Voices carried into my cell from the corridor outside.
“Please. I swear to you. I never told nobody nothing.” Even edged with terror, Gracie’s accent was unmistakable.
There was another hard impact, the sound of a body hitting the wall, or maybe the floor. Gracie cried out, and then there was a dragging sound, like she was being forcefully pulled along the tunnel, and fighting every step of the way.
“I did everything you asked. I told you, I just gave him the drugs,” she whined. “My hair! Owww! Please, he was asleep when I left him. I never moved him. I swear –”
Slap!
“Shut up, bitch!”
Alexei, I thought. It was getting easier to distinguish their voices, and his had an especially sadistic quality.
“Son of a bitch!” he roared.
“What’s wrong with you?” That was Konstantyn. Level, controlled, cold.
“Goddamn shemale clawed my face.” Alexei sounded really pissed off. “Filthy talons. I’ll rip then out with pliers then we’ll see how you fight. It’s rabid, needs to get taught a hard lesson.”
Slap!
Thump!
And then a click that sounded distinctly like a trigger being cocked.
Gracie whimpered.
I bit down on my gag.
God. This was all my fault.
I hunched over, trying to cover my ears with my bound hands. But the gunshot I expected didn’t come.
“Not here,” I heard Konstantyn say.
“The bitch is mine,” Alexei spat.
“Wrong. Dante promised me the kill.”
“What difference who puts the bullet in her head?”
Gracie’s pleas had completely dried up, and I could only guess at the depth of her fear.
“You want to spend the night scrubbing her brains off the walls? Be my guest. All the more for the rest of us,” I heard Konstantyn say.
All the more of me. That was what he meant, and it turned my stomach.
For tense moments, Alexei didn’t respond,
and I waited, still anticipating the shot that would end Gracie’s life.
“Give me the gun,” Konstantyn said eventually. “I’ll take care of her. You’re gonna need your strength tonight.”
I could almost hear Alexei’s sneer. “You like scrubbing brains, comrade?”
“I like to be prepared. I have a cell ready, lined with plastic.”
“The one where you did Raider?”
“Yeah.”
“He screamed like a girl. A man should die with some dignity.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. Gracie’s or mine, I couldn’t say. I thought back to the screams I’d heard when Dante first brought me to my cell. Had those been Raider’s death-cries, at Konstantyn’s hands? I couldn’t muster even a shred of sympathy for the choreographer, not after what Dante said he’d done to Daniel, but I was rocked by the realisation that Konstantyn really was the cold-blooded killer I’d feared he was.
“There’s vintage champagne and sushi in Dante’s study,” I heard Konstantyn say, “to welcome the rest of the seven. Go, relax. I’ve got this,”
“Fine, fine,” Alexei conceded. “Only put one between its legs, for me.”
“Da,” Konstantyn replied.
Footsteps carried Alexei’s laughter down the tunnel, and then there was the sound of a cell, adjacent to mine, being unlocked.
Gracie had to have given up, because she didn’t speak another word.
Was she praying, I wondered? Would I be silent, when my time came?
The metal door clanged shut.
I waited long, stomach-clenching moments, and when the two muffled gunshots finally rang off the stone walls, shooting down any residual hopes I’d had than Konstantyn was on my side, I felt nothing, only numb.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Time passed painfully slowly, counted in wet drip-drips. An hour later, maybe two, the door lock rattled, and I huddled against the wall, anticipating the worst. A woman entered carrying a basin of steaming water and a small bag. She relocked the door behind her. Super-model stunning and elegant, with sunflower blonde hair and chocolate eyes, she saw me and smiled. Her face seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place why.
“Oh, well look at you. Aren’t you a pretty slut? And clever too.” Her accent was like Konstantyn’s. She set the bag and basin on the floor and unfolded a towel before kneeling at my side.
I eased away from her.
“He forgot to take your gag out. He’s always doing that.” She clicked her tongue and it was affectionate irritation. “Here.”
She ripped the fabric gag from my throat and I swallowed convulsively, sucking in air like I’d forgotten how to breathe through my mouth.
Her eyes rolled and she yanked me up by my chin from where I was drinking in air.
I met her eyes and she grinned. “Better, no? You already got your blindfold off, clever slut. I won’t tell him about that. Don’t worry.”
“Help me,” I murmured, my eyes skipping to the camera as I tried not to move my lips too much with the request. I needn’t have worried.
The woman laughed.
“But I am helping you. I am here to prepare you. You must be cleansed.” She unclipped the small bag she’d brought with her and it unrolled to reveal an assortment of vials and razors, all lined up in their separate compartments.
She said cleansed, but no one needed sharp implements for cleansing, and I scooted further into my corner, trying not to look like I was retreating. The woman was odd. Far too calm. Far too happy. Far too unharmed.
“Did they rape you?”
I blinked. Had I misheard? “What?”
“Did they have sexual intercourse with you when they brought you in?” she said, annunciating each word like I was an idiot. “I need to know if you’re going to require stitches.”
“No. I,” Dumbfounded at her casual manner, I answered her as slowly as she’d asked me, sounding out my words. “No, they didn't.”
“No.” She nodded and her perfect ponytail bobbed like it all made sense. “Dante will have told them to leave you alone, for now.”
“Well, gee, thanks.” I must have said it aloud, because she cut me a daggered look.
Dunking a black washcloth into the basin of steaming water, she finally shrugged. “He thinks you’re special. He always thinks they’re special, at first.”
Yeah, he’d made me feel really special.
“He believes your magical vagina is going to cure cancer.” She laughed, but I failed to see what was amusing.
“The man’s dying from a brain tumour. He’s criminally insane. You must know that.” How could she not? The woman was brainwashed, and that promoted her from odd, to crazy.
She shrugged again and smiled. “What I believe does not matter, as long as he gives me what he promised.”
“Help me.” It was worth a shot. If she was so easily influenced by a lunatic, maybe I could sway her.
Or maybe not.
“You are beyond help now.”
Her words knifed through me.
“What’s going to happen to me?” I asked quietly, watching her hum over her bag of tricks.
Her lashes flicked up and her gaze met mine head-on. “It is better, I think, not to know.”
“Tell me, please.”
She sighed like it was the biggest request and gestured to the bag she’d laid out.
“I am to bathe and anoint you in preparation for the ritual.”
“Ritual?” That did not sound good.
“They call it alchemy, sex magic. Consider yourself a glorified blood donor and semen receptacle.”
I shouldn’t have asked.
“Is it going to hurt?”
I knew the answer.
“Pain is an essential element,” she said, all matter of fact.
Of course it was.
I drew my knees in tighter, reminded that Daniel hadn’t survived this. But I had to. I would survive this.
Then she continued, and I wasn’t so sure.
“You will be bound on the altar of Barron.”
She had to mean that seven-pointed star I’d seen the others tied to, in the photographs. “Barron? Do you mean the demon from that Gilles de Rais story?”
The woman smiled. “Not a story, a history, stretching all the way back to the first sacrifices in the Middle Ages, when Gilles and his priest, Francesco Prelati, summoned Barron from the darkness.”
“Dante calls himself Barron too,” I said, pushing for more.
“Dante is Barron. He possessed the body of the mortal who summoned him, and has lived in this world ever since, taking a new physical form whenever the old one wears out.”
The woman was an utter fruitcake. How could this Dante guy have brainwashed so many seemingly intelligent people, I wondered.
“Gilles de Rais was executed for his crimes,” I countered.
“True, but his alchemist priest, Prelati survived. He disappeared, after the trial, never to be heard from again.”
“You don’t actually believe any of this supernatural mumbo-jumbo demon-summoning bullshit, do you?”
Her smile was Mona Lisa enigmatic. “You asked what they will do. I’m telling you. They will mark you, they will draw blood and mingle your blood with theirs. Then they will make you drink from the cup. After that, the Seven will drink, and fuck you every way imaginable.”
“That’s all?” I said, but in spite of the sarcasm, my voice shook.
She seemed to take pity.
“I’d like to say it gets easier after the first time, but... I can give you something. To take the edge off.”
“No drugs.” I was adamant. Old habits died hard. I’d second guessed taking even simple painkillers all my life. Besides, waking up and not knowing what had been done to me would be worse than what they actually did. “No drugs.”
“You say that now,” the woman murmured ominously.
I ignored her.
She ran the washcloth over my face.
The water was too hot and
I twitched away from her, glaring when her hand cupped my jaw and held me still for her cleansing. My forehead stung where I’d face-planted onto the stone earlier, and her cloth came away bloody.
“How can you help him do this to other people?” I asked quietly.
“He got me out of hell,” she said.
“And he puts us in it. That’s fair?”
Her nostrils flared and her lips twisted. “Is being left behind, just because you are a woman, fair? Is it fair that my brother flourishes under the hands of a man he can never truly appreciate, while I stay locked in my room, dreading the next time my drunken swineherd father will break in and force his cock down my throat. How is that fair?” Her voice shook and the washcloth shivered in her hand.
“You’re Mariya.” That was the familiarity I’d seen in her features. “You’re Konstantyn’s sister.”
I watched her face close down, but there was no denial.
“Da,” she said eventually, with a shrug.
Mariya was here, and she was no hostage, no victim. She was alive and well, and helping Dante commit his terrible atrocities.
Had Konstantyn known? Surely he must know now.
“He said he’d come back for me,” Mariya hissed. “The day he left, Konstantyn promised to get me out of there. Well, he never fucking did.” She flung the washcloth against the wall and it fell to the dirty concrete with a sodden splat. “Years I waited, and nothing. Years of that stinking, fat pig beating our mother and forcing his way into my bed.”
“I don’t think Konstantyn knew.”
I frowned, and she snatched up the fallen cloth, swiping it over my lips like the sight irritated her.
“You know nothing. I wrote hundreds of letters. Begging, for me, and for mamma. He knew.”
I shook my head. “No. He told me you never wrote, after he left to join the military. He tried to write to you, and Dante tortured him for it. He thought you’d turned your back on him.”
“No. He turned. He abandoned us to that pig. But Dante got me out. He gave me a job, money, a new life.” She straightened her shoulders and got back to business, scrubbing at my skin so hard it stung. “A good life.”
