Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4)

by Christopher Coleman

  Anika closed her eye again, this time keeping it shut. “Are you afraid of me, Petr?” she asked.

  Petr wasn’t. Even in her former life, when she was in the throes of addiction and madness, Petr had never feared Anika, and in fact had never even considered the idea of it until the very moment of her question. It was probably naiveté on his part that he hadn’t, especially now that he was captive in this ship-locked container for days. They would have a day-long layover on the island of Cupchin, a respite to get fresh air and to replenish their food and, more importantly, their water. But that wouldn’t come until day three. If Anika decided to spring on him, if the instinct to feed became too strong, there was little Petr would be able to do to fight her off.

  “No. Should I be?”

  The trickle of a smile appeared on Anika’s face. “I don’t think so. But I am afraid. Afraid that you should be.”

  Petr let the gravity of Anika’s words land and settle, and then he decided to redirect the conversation back to the purpose of their voyage. “What will you do when you find her? How will you even know?”

  “I’ll know. I don’t know how, but I will. She’s connected to me now. Somehow, through Marlene, or maybe the potion. Ever since the voice uttered her name in the warehouse—Tanja—I’ve felt the connection grow within me.”

  “And what about the answer to my first question? What will you do?”

  Anika sat up now and rested on her elbows, staring at Petr. “I’m going to kill her, Petr. If I get the chance. And I won’t hesitate. Nor will I worry about the preservation of my own life in the process.”

  The hate in Anika’s eyes was instant and real, and Petr was thankful not to be the source of it.

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into this with me. It was never fair of me to do that. But if your only role was to get me on this ship, something I could never have done by myself, then it was worth involving you. Worth it to me. And if you want to leave when we get to Cupchin, I’ll also understand.

  “I’ll see this to the Eastern Lands, Anika, and help you as much as I can when we arrive. But I obviously can’t stay indefinitely. I’ll have to go back. Within the month. I have to clean up the mess we left behind. The authorities will be looking for us, and Mrs. Klahr will be frantic.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I have a feeling there may be more for me to do yet.”

  Anika smiled. “I have no doubt.”

  Petr stood from the bench and walked to the beds against the wall and reclined on the one directly under the window. The container space was bright and warm, and there were several hours of daylight still remaining, but sleep was coming hard.

  “Good night, Anika. Hopefully we’ll get the blessing of sleeping through until morning.” He held up the flashlight he’d brought from his home on campus. “I’ll put it here,” he said, and then reached over and placed it in the center of the floor between them.

  “Good night, Petr. And thank you.”

  Petr nodded and opened his mouth to reply, but he had already drifted to sleep.

  Chapter 20

  TANJA SLID THE LABORATORY door open quickly now, and was simultaneously relieved and horrified by the girl in the corner, hunched over and caked in blood, her eyes wide and threatening. With her hands behind her, Tanja slid the door closed again and stood still, waiting for the next move.

  It was her source, Prisha, and the blood masking her face and hands was her own. Tanja studied the evidence of the scene for a few beats, and within moments had put together the details of the puzzle.

  The skin on the top of Prisha’s right hand and wrist was shredded, her tendons and bone exposed to the lab air, and it appeared by their disfigured form that two or three of the fingers on that same hand had broken.

  But the damage had paid off.

  The source had freed her right wrist from the leather restraint, crippling herself in the process through an unimaginable method of skeletal crushing and surface trauma. She had then used that free hand, and the two working fingers on it, to untie her other. After that, she easily untied the straps on her ankles and removed the Branks from her head. The effort was certainly difficult and painful, given the condition of her right hand, but she had managed it, and was now free of the gurney and standing on her feet.

  The one thing Tanja couldn’t understand was why the source hadn’t fled, choosing instead to stay for the battle. In her hand was the Pear of Anguish, held out in front of her like a pistol, the claws of the torture device open like the jaws of a spider.

  “Stay away from me! Unless you want me to choose which orifice to put it in!”

  Tanja smirked, twitching her head fractionally. “So it seems you’re not the willing participant you suggested you were. I should say, that was quite the performance you put on. In fact, you had me feeling quite proud of myself. Like I was some kind of celebrity.”

  Prisha shrugged her eyebrows.

  “Tell me though, you did tell the truth about your brother. About where he works and when his shifts were, his ability to get the bungaru venom. Why would you do that?”

  “He’s disgusting,” the source answered quickly. “If you had returned to tell me he was dead, that you had killed him, I would have celebrated you. Just as they’ll celebrate me after I kill you.” The girl’s dictum was calm, her whole demeanor contrasting the chaos of her appearance. “And I knew it would keep you away for a while, long enough to give me this chance.”

  Tanja cocked her head, struck by how badly she’d underestimated this woman, and wildly curious about the girl’s resourcefulness. But she kept her expression flat and emotionless. “I assume you suffered some type of childhood ordeal at the hands of your brother? Am I far off? I know of these things, Prisha. All too well, I’m afraid.”

  The source kept her eyes fixed on Tanja, but the witch saw the lump descend in her throat, a suggestion that she had touched a nerve, though it was possible again that it was just an act.

  It made no difference in the end. They would both die.

  “We’re to meet tomorrow morning. Garal and I. You should come with me. Confront him about the mistreatment he gave to you, whatever that may have involved.”

  With this last sentence, Prisha dropped her gaze.

  “I will get the venom, and then we can bring him here. As your...replacement.”

  Prisha’s eyes softened and a beam of hopefulness sprung. “How could there be...? How is that possible? I thought it was only my fluids that could make it work. It’s what you’ve told me.”

  Tanja shrugged. “Perhaps there is another way. I don’t know it for sure, but it is possible. Since he is your brother, perhaps that genetic link is enough.”

  Tanja was out of her element here, negotiating with one of her sources about possible modifications to the ancient potion. But as she spoke, the ideas formed quickly behind the words, and notions that were intended only as stalling methods began sounding plausible.

  “It is from the liver where the last of the extractions come, and the mixtures have always been of the same source. But I’ve been experimenting with it. With the bungaru venom. Perhaps that additive will be enough.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The final surgery is quick but gruesome, and I would rather the suffering be inflicted on someone who has made others suffer. If it be viable, of course that is my preference.”

  Prisha’s face looked defeated now, and the spiked tips of the pear of anguish began to dip. At this point, Tanja was confident she still had the speed to overtake the girl, to apprehend her and avoid any damage from the makeshift weapon. But she was intrigued by her own suggestions, and wanted to hear herself out about the prospects of using sibling bile as a replacement.

  “I can live? Is that it? And you will use Garal to complete the mixture?”

  Tanja would never let her live, and she had no intentions of chancing the potion at this late stage for this particular source; there simply wasn’t time. As it was, she would b
e lucky to flee the village before a warrant was obtained and the police returned.

  “Perhaps,” Tanja answered. “But you must trust me now. We’ll clean you up. Get you a proper meal and send you to rest. Tomorrow we’ll make things right. Right with everyone.”

  Prisha assented with two blinks and a nod, and then lowered the pear of anguish to her side. “Okay.”

  Tanja would kill her here and take her chances with the infected bile. If she performed the extraction immediately, while the cells were still fresh, she should avoid any infection. But first she had to know the answer to one question.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” she asked, smiling bemusedly at the girl who had retreated to the corner instead of simply fleeing.

  “It was locked. I tried to leave but I couldn’t open the wall.”

  Tanja turned to see the blood prints on the side of the door.

  “It wasn’t locked,” she said, “you just needed to line up the track and slide.” Tanja demonstrated by turning and facing the door, and then pressing her toe against the base and sliding it open once again. She started to laugh uproariously. “It’s quite simple actu—”

  A sting of electricity flashed through her lower back and Tanja’s breath seized, leaving her face frozen in horror. The pain felt like she’d been stung by a swarm of metal wasps. She bellowed in pain, reaching her hands around to her back, groping for the source of the attack and an assessment of the subsequent wounds. But as her fingers touched on one of the four lacerations that were now open between her kidneys and ribcage, another four-point stab landed, piercing her to the bone, this time in the area between her head and neck.

  One of the jabs had smashed her cheekbone, while another of the metal points drilled down into her eardrum.

  It was the Pear of Anguish, and the blows to her back and face had rendered Tanja stunned and nauseous.

  She listened absently to the weapon hit the floor of the laboratory, and as she held the side of her head, squeezing her eyes tightly as she tried to keep her blood and brains from seeping out, she collapsed to the floor beside the ancient torture device.

  As she writhed in pain with her back against the legs of the gurney, she saw her source step over her legs and then jog toward the front door.

  Tanja closed her eyes in defeat. It was over.

  Chapter 21

  ANIKA OPENED HER EYES in time to see the slice of light form beneath the container door. She held her body still, but listened with interest to the rusty creak of the metal door swinging upwards, opening like the jaws of some giant reptile. It was day two of the voyage, which meant the layover at Cupchin was still a day away. No one should have been letting them out of the container yet.

  She knew from their breathing that two men stood outside the box, and as they clicked on their miniature flashlights and entered the space, that number was confirmed.

  Anika’s instinct was to speak, to confront them about their purpose for being there, but instead she waited, curious. Maybe there was a problem with the ship and they had come to alert them, to prepare them for a catastrophe, or possibly a sea rescue.

  But it was only seconds until she heard the laughter. It was a laughter devoid of merriment, one she had heard many times throughout her life, almost always from men, objectification in their minds and abasement in their hearts.

  They spoke in whispers now as they moved toward Anika, approaching the mattress slowly and quietly. The language they spoke was foreign to her ears, but the words they voiced had a cadence of conspiracy and plotting.

  She closed her eyes and waited for the first touch to land, at which point she would murder these men with the ferocity of a jaguar.

  But the touch never came, and she heard the men move past her and over to the beds against the wall.

  Petr.

  Anika rose to a sitting position and saw the men standing at Petr’s bed, their backs to Anika now, the moonlight from the makeshift window illuminating them like criminals in a courtyard.

  One of the men grumbled and sniffled, and then began to remove his belt. The second, seeming to take his cue from his friend, followed suit. As if planned, they both let their pants fall to their ankles, and then slipped their feet out so that they were both standing at the intersection of the L in their underwear.

  “What are—” Petr started, but he was immediately muzzled to silence by the man standing closest to his head. Anika could see that the man was bent over Petr now, his hand pressing down on Petr’s face.

  The second man removed the lone blanket covering Petr’s body, and then climbed on the bed and began to pull off his underwear.

  “You’re going to die today.”

  The men turned toward Anika’s voice in unison, as if they had practiced the routine for days, the looks on their faces identically fearful and shamed. Anika’s first thoughts were about how old these men were, and it added to her disgust. They were fifty if they were a year, attempting to gang rape a child, which Anika still considered Petr to be.

  She thought of Randall, and of how pleasurable his death had felt in her hands. And of Bibi, and of how many times that poor, young girl must have experienced a scene similar to the one currently playing out in front of Anika.

  Anika rose from the mattress in a single motion, like a beagle at the sound of a doorbell, and stood with her legs slightly splayed. “Get off the bed.”

  The man on the bed looked to his friend and then back to Anika, smiling now as he scanned the length of Anika’s body. “Is part of the price to sail, see? You will be tomorrow night, yes?”

  Anika felt as if every ounce of serum and hemoglobin and adrenaline flooded her inner body at once, and the energy that the deluge produced was no less than supernatural. Her chest expanded, and the muscles in her legs warmed and tightened, as if they’d been turned to rubber and wound for explosion.

  She took another deep breath, letting the oxygen flow across the breadth of her lungs before dispersing to her cells at large, and then, without a sound, Anika pounced.

  In two steps, she grabbed the flashlight from the floor and was inches from both men before they could blink. The man on the bed still had his arms by his sides when Anika smashed the tailcap across the side of his neck, cutting off the blood flow to his brain and sending him unconscious to the floor.

  The first man, who must have watched the attack as if it were happening on a movie screen, suddenly made a move for the door, but Anika whipped out her left foot and caught him at the shin, sending him sprawling to the floor next to his accomplice. Almost in the same motion, she unscrewed the tailcap and removed the large cylindrical battery from the tube, and then flung it down, landing it squarely on the back of the rapist’s head. He was immediately motionless from the strike, and Anika was sure she had killed him.

  She walked to the second attacker, whose filthy underwear was still halfway down his buttocks, and placed her foot on the back of his neck, measuring the strike. She lifted her heel high and slammed it down.

  Her boot landed flush, and the satisfying sound of snapping vertebrae and cartilage was surpassed only by the gagging noises of the rapist choking on his own blood, a result of his now obliterated carotid artery.

  Anika stepped to the other predator, straddling him at the waist. She kneeled now, and after further inspection, as she was wrapping her hands around his throat to ensure the kill, she felt a pulse. He was only unconscious.

  She slid the fingers of one hand across the man’s Adam’s apple, drumming the lump lightly with the tips, and as she wedged the blades of her dagger-like nails into the loose skin beneath his chin and tensed the muscles of her hand, poised to pull the life from the man, Petr shouted, “Anika, no!”

  Anika twisted back to Petr in a motion of fear and fury, like a hyena disturbed at a feeding. She felt outside of her body, but she regained her composure quickly, and took care to keep her lips wrapped around her teeth, which were unsheathed and braced to bite.

  “Don’t kill him, Anika. He d
idn’t do anything.”

  “They were going to—” Anika’s breathing was heavy, her tone pleading.

  “I know.” Petr looked away, the fear on his face morphing into something close to shame. “I know, Anika. And you prevented it. But you can’t kill him. Not both of them. I just...” Petr tented a hand above his brow, rubbing his forehead in astonishment at what almost happened to him.

  The fury in Anika dissipated, but the strength and energy in her body remained. Her urges were unbearable, and spanned the gamut of human emotion and instinct. She was hungry, aroused, though in a way indescribable, one that seemed to transcend sex. She felt the need to run and fight, to climb a tree and swim a river. The container room suddenly felt like a fishbowl, and she a marlin.

  “Fine,” she said, “but that means we have to abandon this space for the rest of the trip. We’ll lock him in here and find ourselves other arrangements until we arrive.”

  “He’ll die in here.”

  “Did we die?”

  “We had food and water.”

  “Then we’ll leave him our food and water, but it means we’ll have to be scavengers for the next few days.”

  “And people knew we were in here. How will anyone know about him?”

  “When we reach port he’ll have the window to call from. If he’s lucky, someone will hear him. Otherwise, I don’t care.”

  “So allow him to starve in here?”

  “And what do you think they were going to do with us, Petr? Do you think they were going to come find us the second the ship arrived and greet us with leis and roses and kisses on our cheeks? Or, based on the two men in charge of our accommodations,” Anika waved a hand through the air over the felled sailors, “do you think they had no intention of unjailing us at Cupchin? And that our raped and ravaged corpses would only be discovered when the container was finally unpacked a week later, somewhere in the Eastern Lands?”

  Petr looked away in defeat.