Dark Days (Written Pictures #2)

by H. A. Kotys

  == ~ ==

  The two women fought on the floor of the arena, rolling this way and that, squeals and cries coming from both their efforts to kill and not be killed, and contrasting almost comically, the rubbing of latex on latex.

  Red had always been athletic and strong and grappling her for the knife, Raven couldn’t believe the power that lingered in the woman. She had lost muscle, that was obvious, but that lack was more than offset by the wildness in her eyes and the fury with which she fought.

  Raven was being overpowered, her grip already starting to tremble. It wouldn’t be long before her shuddering muscles gave out and the knife was plunged toward her. She couldn’t let that happen but she wasn’t strong enough and her shoulder hurt like fuck. There was only one thing to do and exploding from the floor, she let go of Red’s knife hand and sprung back and away from her, panting hard, conceding the initial battle in the hope to still win the war.

  In a flash, Red was on her feet, nostrils flaring as she drew in air and threw aside the knife’s brown leather sheath to reveal the sharpened blade. For a moment, the two women sized up their opponent and the potential threat she offered.

  The stand-off didn’t last long. To a feral scream the woman with the knife lunged forward, only to thrust at air as Raven dived to her side.

  “It’s me! Raven!” The dark-haired woman wearing black screamed as she scrambled to her feet. The answer was another desperate lunge which she did well to avoid. “Red! Please!” pleaded Raven, reluctant to fight the woman who until Alexei and his sister had spoken, had been her hope.

  Another wild lunge had Raven diving backwards and to one side. As she landed, the air driven from her was less of a concern than the agony from her already damaged shoulder. The wail she unleashed pierced the clamour of the crowd and to a smile of malicious intent, the taller woman plunged forward again only to be stopped in her tracks by a hard kick to her arm.

  It was a surprise and enough of one for Red to release her grip on the knife as the stiletto heel slashed across her skin. Raven didn’t follow up though, she couldn’t. Even seeing the knife on the floor, it was beyond her to react, struggling as she still was to understand quite what was happening. The Raven in her lusted for the fight but the recently revived rest of her wanted to reason with the woman, to make hope see sense.

  “Red!” yelled Raven. “Kellie!” she beseeched, using the former redhead’s real name for the first time in an age, a desperate attempt to reach deeper into her to pluck out anything that was left of the woman she once knew. But the woman swooped down unchallenged to scoop up the knife again.

  == ~ ==

  Natalia watched with increasing amusement. The woman she had pumped full of stimulants, hallucinogens and narcotics was driven wild by vengeance and obviously far too much for the smaller Raven to deal with. It would only be a matter of time before she won, before she killed. Alexei would be free of the poison of the American and together, they could focus again on fulfilling their destiny.

  == ~ ==

  The name didn’t even register. Red stood there, assessing the woman in the black catsuit in front of her as the crowd seemed to chant “Murderer,” a word only she could hear. Tarnished now by their scuffle on the floor, she was still the black Queen of her demons and there was no choice but for her to die.

  With a feral shriek, Red swept forward again, a wild slash with the sharp knife, keeping her confused foe back at a respectful distance while the two circled, breathing heavily, each waiting for the next move of the other.

  Appreciative whistles blended with shouts of encouragement from the massed crowd who seemed to press closer and closer in their eagerness to gain a better view. Flexing her shoulder, Raven stepped to the left, turning slightly to solidify her stance in readiness for the next attack. There was no reaching her, no reaching the hope she thought had laid there. She had to fully become Raven again, there was simply no choice and in that moment she saw her chance and attacked.

  == ~ ==

  The potency of the hallucinogens were undimmed by the decent meal and even in the midst of a fight to the death, Red flicked out an occasional arm to fend off the shadows that surged around her, crowing a clamour of noise, diving and cackling accusations around her head. Feeling the tightness from the stiletto slash to her favoured arm, she thrust up the other hand, stabbing at the imagined birds with the knife.

  A second later, the air was driven from her lungs as the woman in black hammered into her with a force that drove both to the floor. Kicking and clawing, the two women fought desperately, both clutching the handle of the knife, biting, kicking, butting and kneeing the other in a deadly barrel roll on the ground.

  The crowd howled its appreciation. The black and white melee wheeled and wailed. Round and round they rolled, locked together, spiralling like the flotsam of Raven’s hope caught in a whirlpool of despair. A dust cloud rose again, partially obscuring their struggles as the two latex-clad women fought for their lives in the pit of the arena for the entertainment of whooping crowd.

  == ~ ==

  Alexei ducked his head side to side, craning his neck to try to follow the action. Grunts were coming thick and fast now. A scream capped a crescendo of effort and Alexei flinched - was it from his woman? The whirling mass of limbs continued though, the knife occasionally catching rays from the sun breaking through the clouds and glinting. It breeched the dust, held up by two contrasting arms that strained as one and a stiletto heel punctured into clear air before driven hard back down.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Natalia just sitting there, watching what she had made happen. While the rest of the crowd bobbed from side to side trying to secure a better view as they were absorbed into the action, she just sat there, an oasis of calm in a boiling frenzy of excitement.

  == ~ ==

  The calm of Natalia was polar opposite to the struggle in the dust. Two woman remained locked in the bitterest of fights for survival. One, fuelled by chemicals, fought to release herself from the hell she was forced to exist in. The other was forced to fight for her life with the stark choice of sacrificing herself or killing her hope. And so they fought like the feral hellcats they both had to be. They fought with anything they could, in any way they could. They fought to survive, just to live.

  == ~ ==

  Another scream seized Alexei with its intensity but then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped. The moment froze along with his breath and the crowd mirrored the silence that now befell the ring.

  Both still now, slowly the dust began to dissipate and settle, revealing the two women. Neither moved but now the monochrome pair were coloured with splashes of red. The red was spreading, caking the two as it pulsed out and then, as the bodies peeled apart and the woman in white rocked back onto her knees, Alexei saw the knife buried deep in her chest.

  == ~ ==

  The birds had finally flown from her and in the calm of that moment, Red saw the sun for what seemed like the first time. It was all so peaceful now and she was thankful she had been shown a way to free herself from her personal hell.

  Stretching, she reached for the sun, mouthing her thanks. In return it shone brighter, bathing her in its brilliance. She was warm now. Comfortable. Finally content. The sun shone for her and only for her, growing ever larger until it finally consumed her in its radiant tranquillity.

  Raven slumped down on the arena floor, catsuit torn, sucking in air as she watched the other woman reach up, tense and arch away. Blood trickled into one eye but she could still see enough. She saw the woman’s head roll back and mouth open in a scream that had no sound. Reaching a point of no return, the white-clad woman tipped over, landing heavily on her back, her eyes wide and her skewered chest still. It was in that moment she knew she had killed her last hope. And with the first of her sobs, Jacqueline returned and Raven was gone.

  CHAPTER LII – Night Moves

  He lay there, wide awake, unable to shake off the drama of the day. The event had driven t
he assembled crowd wild and Alexei was sure it would bear fruit in his drive to the top. He had already been able to negotiate an additional transport deal with the Prince that would give him the capital to take out the remaining factions who cluttered the path of power. Alexei was confident there would be more deals to come too, with the pipeline deal the most important of the lot.

  Hell, if they wouldn’t do the deals he wanted there was always blackmail - each and every one of them had witnessed the killing in the ring and his police chief was only a phone call away. He even had credibility with Interpol still and his hidden cameras had been carefully placed to pick out exactly who had been watching. Everyone except him.

  The hint of blackmail had, after all, worked on the Prince to clinch the transport deal Alexei wanted, despite initial protestations. If it worked with him, it would work with others too.

  Yes, the Games were delivering what they were supposed to, just perhaps not in the way he had expected. And yet on another level entirely, they were creating havoc in what had been a fastidiously well-ordered world.

  They had been planned so meticulously, that was Natalia’s forte after all. Were they still his games though? With Natalia having set up the fight to the death, were events still his to control? Natalia didn’t deal in the unexpected. The significance of that apparent spontaneity wasn’t lost on Alexei and caused his brow to furrow in thought.

  Even before he’d had her, his woman could have been lost, victim to that feral female that he had passed over and thrown to the guards. Natalia had bought her as his next, dealing with a man known as the Algerian.

  Alexei’s plan had been to give the woman to the Arab as his part of the bargain, fulfilling part of the deal. Her death had driven him to hint at the use of blackmail instead as he wasn’t ready to let the black-haired woman go. It had been a risk but one he had needed to take, a tool he was reluctant to use on a person with the reach and influence of the Prince. He had got away with it though, just, and in doing so had kept his woman.

  Barely a man Alexei told himself, thinking back to the Algerian. He had no backbone nor any sense of anything but money. There was a man even Alexei was wary to touch again after finding nothing about his background, preferring to leave such matters to his little sister’s sharp mind.

  His thoughts circled back to Raven. He could have lost her and the threat of that worried Alexei more than he cared to admit. In his mind he pictured her body skimmed by the tight latex and her straight hair shimmering in the occasional sun. He replayed the image of her fight, long limbs magnificent in their movement and imagined she was fighting for his favour.

  A stirring of his cock marked its approval and reaching down, it took only the slightest encouragement to fully engorge to the thought of her battling to be by his side. Vibrant and vivid, the image risked consuming him until, flinging the sheets aside with a grunt, Alexei rose from his bed.

  == ~ ==

  Unable to shake what had happened from her thoughts, she lay awake. She had killed. Self-defence, but still, she had killed.

  She had been given no choice. Never someone who could be said to be a friend, Raven had thought her connection to Red had meant something. It certainly had to her and only now was she realising that was more than just the hope of escape. It was a connection to her past, a thread to join her to a time when she had been more than just a plaything, a time when she had been so sure.

  Something had possessed the woman though, driving her wildly beyond reach, much as Raven had tried to call her back. It had been a trauma beyond words. She had killed and killed more than a person. In her subconscious mind, she had looked to Red as a sanctuary in which fragments of hope had coalesced.

  It had been a steady process of erosion of will and self before the gathering for the Games. She had only just about held herself together. It had been enough though to weaken her to the thrusts which now bit so deeply.

  She couldn’t go on like this. Jacqueline needed Raven but Raven wasn’t strong enough to fight any more. Red had died and hope had died with her. Laying there sobbing, there was one choice left. Alexei’s face appeared again in her mind as he did of late when she needed strength. But he had been part of her humiliation, perhaps even the architect of it, though she had a suspicion it was probably his bitch of a little sister.

  Natalia would never let him go. Even if she somehow managed to work her way into Alexei’s bed, Natalia would always be there in the background, working out ways to have her gone, or worse, dead. Natalia’s eyes had already given her away, and her declaration at the last event had set her intent in bold – she would stop at nothing to protect what she had with her brother.

  Could Alexei protect her from his sister? Perhaps, but again the thought that he had been part of the humiliation and that he had just stood by and watched it happen. He was always in her mind though, filling her thoughts, when what she really wanted him filling was her cunt.

  Shit. She couldn’t exist like this. She was going slowly mad and losing what little of her remained. She had to escape while there was still something left to save. The only question in her mind was how.

  == ~ ==

  A third person also lay unable to sleep, mind racing then looping to repeat, adding fragments of detail each time. She had challenged her brother and it felt, well, good. Every last component had been planned to the nth degree but that burst of spontaneity, spurred by seeing that woman, that American, had just taken over and driven Natalia to raise the stakes.

  So this was what power felt like. She had simply stood up and decreed that a woman should die. She had been right to do it too. Having no option but to take a life had visibly shattered the American woman and a shattered woman wouldn’t hold the interest of Alexei for long.

  Nestling deeper into the embrace of her pillow, Natalia’s eyes rested on the exquisitely tended doll’s house. There was doll-Alexei, dancing with his miniature sister in the ballroom. There was no American bitch there and there never would be. Contented, Natalia allowed her eyes to close.

  == ~ ==

  Alexei hesitated outside the room where she was kept. There would be no going back if he went through the door and his hand tightened on the handle, knuckles whitening.

  In his mind he had been here many times. This was reality though – no rewinding if things got fucked up. In his imagination he had thrown open the door before throwing her face down on the bed with an undeniable force that showed her the full fury of his vengeance. Vengeance? No, it wasn’t that any more. The force within him that obsessed on her was stronger than that.

  In this reality, he knew he was no longer capable of doing that, not with her, not after what he had seen inflicted on her. She had been through two ordeals, surely the closest approximation to hell. She had been forced to endure what no one should and forced to do what no one should be compelled to.

  Yes, she was American but this was beyond that now, far beyond. Alexei had to go to her. He had been a fool. He had judged love to be a delicate emotion, cluttering up life, no more than a distraction but he had been wrong. Love wasn’t some a la carte choice to be passed up in favour of an unsatisfactory takeaway fuck. It existed by itself but in itself was fundamental.

  He thought he had known love before but saw now that it was a shallow love of things – history, status, revenge. There was something deeper and more rewarding beyond that, something he had denied himself. Or perhaps that had been his sister too, feeding him fast fucks to deflect him from seeking what ready filled an appetite. Had he been used by her? He didn’t like to think so but now the blinkers were off and he at least saw that there should be more. The American woman had shown him, and he had to be with her. Pressing down on the handle, he pushed the door open.

  A contrast to the crumpled white sheet, she lay on her side, eyes open but distant, lost. Though her body bore the scars of his hospitality, she was beauty incarnate.

  A small light recessed into the far wall, sealed from prying fingers behind a Perspex cover,
silhouetted the perfect sweep of her hip. His eyes trailed up the nip of her waist, tracing the curve his hand would.

  Unable to stop himself, Alexei moved, his final decision made. He closed the short distance quickly and raising a knee to place it beside her onto her bed, he bent down to frame her head in his strong hands. Her dark eyes looked into his and when his lips pushed hard onto hers, those eyes came alive and she responded with a fierce kiss of her own.

  CHAPTER LIII – Predators & Play

  The kiss seemed to last forever. Passions passed through the lock that was that kiss and energised the troubled souls of two who had yearned to meet. She would swear later that the light flickered as the electricity of their kiss crackled between them and couldn’t help but moan to the purest of sensations, vibrating her lips in waves, encouraging his to press harder still in response.