by Holly Hart
"Boss's orders." He stroked my hair and I closed my eyes. I pretended to enjoy it but secretly hated it. I despised every moment. "But it's not long now, petal. Can I call you petal?"
He continued without waiting for an answer.
"Things are in motion that I can't tell you about. Soon all this nastiness will be over. Soon, petal, you'll be with me forever."
He left and the light bulb flickered off, but his words reverberated in my skull.
It didn't take a genius to figure out what they meant. Anatoly was confident that Val would be dead soon. I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. My breath picked up, sounding loud and ragged in the musty, cold, dark air. I mastered the panic, but only just.
The longer this went on, the longer I thought that I might crack entirely.
I needed Val. Not just to save me, but to save my sanity.
I remembered: the glass.
"It's not happening," I whispered. "He's not getting his hands on me. I'd sooner die."
I yanked my left foot free from the divot of mulch I'd wedged it in. At least the bugs hadn't made it that deep down in the soft, decayed wood. They were on the surface: Creeping, crawling, climbing, and falling.
I stretched out the leg and searched the ground for the shards of glass that might spell my freedom, or my release. I pulled a face as my foot swept gingerly across the floor, scraping aside bugs and filth and who the hell knew what else.
Crunch.
Survive, or die.
23
Cara
Drip.
I remembered reading an article about Chinese water torture once. It's funny the things your mind remembers in the dark.
Drip.
It's a bit like resting your head on a pillow at night. You can be as tired as you like, but the second you feel the cotton kiss your ear, every damn thought and worry that crossed your mind that day returns like a foghorn.
Drip.
Turns out the Chinese got a bad rap. The Spanish invented it. Still, it doesn't matter. There was a picture, all fuzzy and pixelated and gray. It looked like a stretcher in the center of a thicket of scaffolding, and right up at the top – a wooden bucket.
Drip.
You strapped the victim to the stretcher and turned the bucket. And water started dripping on his forehead.
Drip. Drip.
The thing is this; it's not supposed to hurt. That's not why they did it. It's much worse than that. It drives the victim insane.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
To keep my mind off it, I started thinking about my makeshift knife.
The shard of glass was about 3 inches long, and barely an inch and a half wide at its broadest point. It tapered to a wicked tip. I'd tested it against the delicate skin on my forearm, and it ripped through like a hot knife through butter. I pictured Anatoly's smug, ugly face changing as I thrust the shiv into his squat neck. In my daydream the foul basement smelled of roses as he died; of fucking petals.
You'll get one shot, I thought. As long as you're tied to this wall, you might kill one of them. But they'll wrestle that blade from you. And then…
And then this train I was tied to would start plunging ever faster into the abyss. I shuddered as my brain dreamed up pictures of the futures that lay before me. Of a broken body with matted, bloody hair hanging by her wrists from a wall; of a stolen girl brutalized and beaten within an inch of her life; of a mother torn away from her greatest gift in the world.
Or there's option two…
My wrist still smarted from where I'd cut into it. Had I really needed to? I’m thinking probably not. It was obvious, just by stroking it that the weapon could kill. But the pain distracted me, just for a second, from thinking about my impending fate: from fearing the darkness; from dreaming of a rescue that wasn't coming.
It was a shitty choice.
It was a really shitty choice.
The scream built up and became frenzy in my throat; by the time I realized what I was doing, I was too far gone to care. I beat the wall; rattled my chains; and kicked out my legs with a heady mix of anger, frustration and impotent fear. Tension built, twisted and cracked in my knotted, exhausted muscles like a tidal wave breaking on a rocky shore.
"You asshole! Come down here and untie me! Come on, I fucking dare you! You asshole! You fucking asshole!"
I screamed again into the murky blackness, scaring the rats, and the bugs, and myself.
And then …
Nothing.
No one came; no one cared; no one listened.
I slumped against the wall and listened to the drips. I closed my eyes, though I needn't have bothered. It didn't make a damn bit of difference either way. I dreamed of Val, and Kitty, and the life I'd left behind.
The life I’d lost.
The key turned in the lock. This time, it was the slowest attempt yet. Anatoly was toying with me, taunting me. I could feel it in my bones.
I looked up with dull eyes, searching for the rectangular crack of light at the top of the wooden stairs that told me the door was about to open. It was the eerie outline of the passageway to hell on earth.
Click.
The key turned quietly, the door opened a couple of inches, then a couple more, and closed. A shadow passed through the gap like a phantom on the breeze, or an angel. I shook my head to clear it. This was no angel. It was the opposite, the devil incarnate – Anatoly. He moved quietly, his boots barely spending enough time on the stairs to make a sound. If I hadn't been down here so long, my ears attuned to every sound, I might not have noticed.
But I had.
They did.
He was moving quietly. I knew in my heart that this was another one of his secret visits: the kind that ended with his hands on my body, and his fevered, ragged breath polluting my nose.
I took a deep breath. My heart thudded.
Not this time.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
My fingers gripped the shard of glass, hard enough to draw a thin red line of blood on my palm. I barely noticed. I slowed my breathing, held it, and waited.
If he wants to play in the dark, I thought. Let's play.
If he died by my feet without the cameras watching, maybe he'd leave me a present. Like the keys to my cuffs. Maybe this grim visit in the night was everything I needed to get my freedom. I gritted my teeth. Anatoly was going to die because I was going to kill him.
A pair of boots brushed against the soft decayed wooden floor. I heard a sharp intake of breath. Close, so close. I heard dry lips peeling back as if to speak.
"My God…"
I anchored my chained left hand to the wall as close as I could to give myself room with the right, and swung wildly with my makeshift blade. I stabbed towards the sound, hoping with every fiber in my body that my weapon would land in Anatoly's neck and splinter there, and that shards of glass would speed through his veins in the last painful moments before he drew his last breath, slashing and stabbing his insides like an assassin's whirling knives.
"Cara!" A voice hissed firmly.
I swung again, my body moving on autopilot. I reoriented to the sound of the voice, dreaming a vision of Anatoly's blood dripping down my hands. I was alive with adrenaline, my body reacting like a trained warrior. I stabbed, and this time the glass made contact. It stuck fast in something and came to a juddering halt, leaving shards embedded in my palm. I yowled with pain.
"Cara, stop, it's me!" The voice barked.
I was too far gone to understand.
You failed. You failed and he's going to hurt you, to rape you…
The voice grabbed at my hands and pinned them to the wall. I realized that I was beaten, and a wave of shame overcame me – a stinging, overpowering wall of guilt and regret. But I wasn't going to give up. Not even if it cost me everything. I'd never stop fighting.
"Get your filthy hands off me, you monster. What the fuck's wrong with you?"
Crack!
My cheek stung as a palm collided with it, and a whip crac
k rang out around the basement. My hands jumped to my face as tears welled in my eye. The chains that bound them rattled against the metal ringlet that held me to the wall.
"Just kill me," I sobbed. "Put a bullet in my head and be done with it."
The voice pushed his face so close to mine but I felt his stubble graze my still-stinging skin.
Stubble.
"If I'd wanted you dead," it laughed. "I'd have let Rat finish you off the day that tight little ass of yours wandered back into my life."
It took my stressed, exhausted brain what seemed like hours before the gears began to turn.
Anatoly's clean-shaven. But …
Val isn't.
I collapsed against the wall, and my chained wrists ached until a pair of huge, powerful hands grabbed my waist to pick me up. "Is it really you?" I wept.
Hot, salty tears fell down my face and into my open mouth. There was no makeup left to smear, but I must still have looked awful. Blood coated my torn toes, wrist and hand. The basement's filth covered me, and my clothes were torn and ripped from Anatoly's depraved predations. I still didn't fully believe that any of this was real. A part of my mind, a big part, still worried that this was just some crazed hallucination. Maybe Anatoly had already had his way with me. Maybe this was just my brain's way of coping with the trauma.
A flashlight clicked on, bathing the basement in a halo of brilliant white light. It blinded me, and I shut my eyes until they readjusted to its sudden harshness.
"You slapped me," I sobbed. Val held me to his body. My aching body protested as he clutched me to his chest, which was studded with enough kit to start a war – a radio, an assortment of spare magazines, guns, grenades, you name it – he had it. I didn't care. He was here, and it was real.
"In my defense," Val said. "You stabbed me …" His voice was soft, and unthreatening. The warmth of his breath caressed my hair. I closed my eyes and savored the feeling of a man speaking to me, holding me and knowing he didn't plan to hurt me.
Or do something worse.
"What have they done to you?" He groaned, studying my broken body with a flashlight. "Did they…?"
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak without birthing a renewed flood of tears.
"They'll pay," he said in a ferocious growl. "I'll make them pay for every last bruise." His fingers traced my skin, as if he was counting every bruise, every cut, every scrape and every mark that decorated my flesh like camouflage. "Who was it?"
I closed my eyes, biting back the memory of the fear that sprung into my mind just thinking about him. "Anatoly," I whispered, so quietly Val had to lean forward and strain to hear it. "It was all him."
Val's hand crashed against the wall, but he said nothing. In the dancing glow cast by the flashlight, I saw his jaw set into a grimace. He nodded.
When he finally spoke, his voice dripped with soft tenderness. "Let's get you down from there."
He retrieved a K bar knife from his hip. The handle was wrapped in duct tape, darkened and weathered by long use. He put the flashlight into his mouth and trained it on the locks that held my cuffs shut.
"Should have brought keys," he mumbled. He closed one eye, held the knife with his left hand on the keyhole of my left cuff, and drove his right hand forward in a fist. He repeated the process with the right cuff, and pulled my hands loose. After so long restrained, my shoulders screamed in pain with the slightest movement. Val rubbed my wrists, his hands smooth and gentle, and so much softer than his calloused palms suggested was possible.
"Thank you," I whispered. That little effort took everything I had.
A door slammed upstairs. We both froze. I held my breath and grabbed the strapping on Val's arm and chest. We waited, and waited…
… for nothing.
"False alarm," I smiled wanly.
Except, it wasn't.
"Baby!"
The flimsy, decrepit crack shack shook with a pained roar. Boots thundered against the thin wooden floorboards, and I heard the sound of a rifle being cocked. I never would have known that sound a month ago, yet now I couldn't escape it. "Who's down there with you, baby?" Anatoly called. "Is it him? I'm coming!"
"Well,” Val said in a half-grimace, half-grin, "So much for stealth." He cocked his head to one side and stroked the black rifle that hung from a strap on his chest. "Baby?"
I shuddered and shut my eyes. "It doesn't matter. Just kill him for me, will you?"
Val smacked his lips together. "I thought you'd never ask."
The door to the basement swung open, and Val whipped his rifle up quick as a flash. He fired a short burst of three rounds, and the basement exploded with a fury of sound. I shielded my ears as best I could, and crouched on exhausted feet.
"Well shit," Val remarked. At least, that's what it sounded like he said. I couldn't be entirely sure, since my head was ringing like I'd stuck it inside a church bell. "I guess we've got ourselves a little bit of a Mexican standoff."
He grabbed me by my aching shoulders and pulled me in for a rough kiss. His thick beard grazed my chin, and I didn't mind a bit. I clutched at his body, and never wanted to let go. I felt him fumble for something strapped to his thigh.
"What's that phrase," he whispered in my ear. "Don't get mad, get even?"
He pressed something into my hands – something cold, and metallic – a knife blade.
"If we are going to die," I whispered back, "and if it has to be here," I sighed sadly, "then I'm glad it's with you."
Val pulled back and raised his eyebrow. In the flashlight's scattered glow, it cast a long hairy shadow. I suppressed a rogue urge to giggle. Maybe it was the adrenaline flooding through my body. Maybe my brain figured it wasn't worth fighting anymore.
"Die?" He growled. "Girl, we're just getting started. Dimitri's a great guy and all, but I don't want him raising Kitty. Not if I've got any say in it."
Kitty.
I clenched my jaw. He's right. "Then I hope you've got a plan, because I'm fresh out. If you haven't noticed, there's a madman upstairs with a rifle."
The madman himself chose that precise moment to interfere. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," he called, like a villain in a B-movie. "Send my girl up and I'll spare your life, Antonov."
Val bristled beside me.
That was the wrong thing to say, asshole.
"Anatoly," he called back with biting sarcasm. "You could win the Powerball and there's still not a girl in this city who'd climb into bed with you, you creep. How about this – you toss that peashooter of yours down the stairs, and I'll think about sparing your life."
The wind carried scattered snippets of road noise down into the basement: the slamming of car doors; the thundering of boots on gravel. Anatoly laughed. A black dread overcame me.
"You hear that, Antonov? That's your carriage turning into a fucking pumpkin. The clock is striking twelve. Daddy's here, and boy is he pissed."
24
Val
Two years and more had passed since I was last anywhere near Arkady Antonov: my father. They were two of the hardest, most trying, best years of my life. Best because I was nowhere near him, even if that meant I was in the bowels of hell. And now he was here, so close that if I could see him, I'd be able to put a bullet through his heart.
Every muscle in my body trembled with anger. My jaw clenched and unclenched, and my teeth ground against each other like tectonic plates doing battle under the sea. Just hearing Anatoly's mocking tone was enough to put me on edge, and he didn't stop.
He carried on in a low, mocking, conversational tone. The rational part of me guessed it was because he didn't want the rapidly approaching Arkady to hear: but the rational part of me was barely functional. A younger version of me was in charge now; a version that was still terrified of the man who'd beat me for reasons known only to himself; who'd drag me out of my bed at night and dangle me over a balcony by my ankle; who'd put an empty gun to my temple and force me to pull the trigger.
Was it to bui
ld character, or to break my soul? I didn't know. It was one or the other, but I still haven't figured out which.
"He's coming, puppy," Anatoly moment. "You can hear his footsteps, can't you? He's coming and there's nothing you can do about it. Give up, puppy. You tried and you lost. Just give up."
A part of me listened to him. I'll always be ashamed of it; but I'll always admit it to anyone who asks.
Cara rested her hand on my neck.
It was a lifeline in the darkness.
I felt her warmth. I fed upon it.
And I told Anatoly to fuck off; because Cara's touch reminded me there was something more to life than me, my insecurities, and my fears. There was Kitty and Cara and the life they represented: a life without guns; without gangs; without Alexandria itself. It reminded me that I never came back to steal what Arkady Antonov had. I never wanted his power, not really. I never wanted to be feared.
I never wanted anything from him, because Arkady Antonov was not my father.
His name was not mine.
And neither was his city.
"We're getting out of here," I muttered under my breath, and then said it again. I gripped Cara by her shoulders and growled it right in her face. It was as much for my benefit as hers. I needed to hear it to believe it. The second I did, I knew it was true.
"We're getting out of here!"
Arkady's voice cut across the gloom. I fell silent, and the last of my excited shout echoed around the basement.
"My boy," he chuckled coldly, "Ever the optimist. You haven't changed, I see. Not a bit. It's a shame. I had wondered whether, perhaps, just perhaps, you'd grown up a little. I see that's not the case."
He paused. I waited. He continued. I'd known he would. Dad always did love the sound of his own voice.
"I've an offer for you; one time only. You give yourself up now, without a fight, and I'll let the bitch go."
The. Bitch.
My blood boiled. I was ready to stand up, start walking and kill anyone who got in my way, but someone jumped in first. A five foot nothing ball of pure goddamn guts. The bravest girl I'd ever met. A girl who would go toe to toe with anyone, and who didn't give a crap about their reputation.
