“Where are we?” I asked.
The drugs were beginning to wear off. While the room still tilted to the side when I moved too fast, I could at least sit up.
She ran her eyes over my body without blinking. “Who knows? I’ve been here for a week and no one tells me anything.” Her eyes stopped at my boots. “You don’t have anything to eat, do you?”
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. With a disappointed sigh, she laid down on a mattress and crossed her arms under her head.
Most of the girls were huddled together on the other side of the room. They spoke in whispers and frantic hisses. The fear was almost palatable. Ten dirty mattresses covered the cement floor, with a few blankets thrown on top. Stained and crumbling drywall covered the four walls of the room, leaving us without a window to even peek through. I could see a single metal door across from me. From the dents on the door, I imagined a few of the girls had tried to beat their way through. Obviously, they didn’t have much success.
“My name’s Aya,” I told the girl. “I’m a harpy.”
“Tala,” she replied, rolling on her side to face me. “Werewolf. Or at least I used to be. This collar neutered me.”
“Me too.” I plucked at the metal, letting it drop against my skin. “What happens now? Does someone eventually come to get us?”
There was no way I’d find my mother locked up in a tiny room. I had to get out any way I could.
“If we’re lucky, they’ll do another sweep tonight,” she said with a grimace. “That’s the only time they bring food and the waste buckets. If they don’t come tonight, I might have to eat one of the new girls.”
She bared her teeth and eyed the two girls sitting in the dark corner of the room. But without her powers, the threat didn’t hold much weight. Still, I imagined Tala was a fierce creature to behold when she had access to all her powers.
“What happens at a sweep?” I tucked my ankles under me and hugged my knees. It was comforting, somehow, wrapping myself up in a tight little ball.
“They choose the girls they want to pitch to the buyers,” Tala replied. She closed her eyes and ran a red tongue over her lips. “After that, who knows? None of the girls I saw leave ever came back. They could be dead, for all I know.”
There was a collective gasp from the girls sitting in the corner. They stared at Tala with wide and tearful eyes, pulling at their arms for comfort. I shook my head and smiled at them, trying to provide some hope. But all I managed to do was make them both burst into tears.
“Great. The sobbing twins are at it again,” Tala muttered. “Might as well kill me now. It’ll save them the effort.”
“How can you be so cruel?” A tiny blonde girl from the group of women huddling on the other side of the room spoke up. “Can’t you see they’re scared? Have some compassion.”
Tala sat up straight and glared at the blonde. “Shove it, Becca. You’ve been in this room longer than I have. You know we’re not getting out unless they drag us out.”
Becca huffed and sucked in her cheeks. “Well then, maybe we should fight.”
“With what?” Tala held both her hands in the air. “In case you haven’t noticed, my werewolf powers are gone. And even your Arachne spider-powers are gone. We can’t fight.”
I stared at Becca, imagining what she’d look like without the collar around her neck. Arachne women were about as common as harpies. I’d seen one or two on the club scene. They were usually harsh women with spider-like abilities to hone in on their mate. Never one to settle down, they flitted from partner to partner, weaving a web of lovers a mile long. Sometimes, I thought Angel should’ve been an Arachne, but she was too kind to fit that mold.
“They’re only humans.” Even with the angelic little pout of her lower lip, there was a vicious spark in her dark eyes. “A dozen girls should be able to get past them.”
“And then what?” Tala stood up and dusted off the front of her sequined mini dress. “There are more of them out there. Probably with guns, waiting to sink some lead in our stomachs and ditch us for some new girls. We won’t stand a chance. They’ll kill us without thinking.”
The young girls gasped again. Several of them leaned on each other for support, sobbing. I looked around the room at the nameless faces, each more frightened than the last.
A spark of rage lit inside my chest. This was Robert Caro’s fault. He took innocent girls from the streets like they were fruit hanging from a tree. And then he used them and discarded them. Our lives meant more than that. Monsters like him always thought they can do whatever they want. It wasn’t right.
We didn’t have any more time to talk through an exit strategy. At that moment, the metal door slammed open and a huge man walked through. Immediately, I recognized the giant who picked me up in the alley outside the Scarab Lounge. He had black stringy hair and a thick beard that spanned the length of his massive jaw and neck. With hands the size of plates, he stood to the side of the door and clenched them into tight fists.
“That’s Timur the Giant,” Tala whispered to me. “Not as tough as he looks. One of the girls I came with fought back and took a chunk out of his nose. I haven’t seen her since.”
The girls scattered as a second man came through the door. He was almost as tall as the giant, but rail-thin and bony. Dressed all in black, he would’ve been nothing special if it wasn’t for the impressive array of knives hanging from his belt. An eerie grin played on his pale lips, which told me he wasn’t afraid to use those weapons on any of us. His translucent skin colored with blotches of red and pink while he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, clicking his tongue in an upbeat tempo.
Tala glued her eyes to the ground and nudged my shoulder. “That’s Jack. Don’t mess with him. I’m serious. It’ll be the last thing you do. He’s a big fan of testing out his new knives on anyone that misbehaves.”
I shuddered and watched a third and final man enter the room. Compared to the previous two men, he was tiny. No taller than me and just as trim, he wore an unassuming gray suit and a black tie. The way he walked, with his shoulders back and his chin up, told me this guy had a Napoleon complex. I’d met men like him before. They were always compensating for something. Their low self-esteem made them the most dangerous of all.
“And who’s the last?” I asked when Tala went silent.
She mumbled something and took two steps back, pressing herself into the dusty wall behind us. The other girls did the same, lining up and gluing their eyes to the floor. I followed suit, but kept my eyes up. If my mother was here, I didn’t want to miss her.
“We picked up four new recruits, Bobby,” Timur said with a wave of his giant hand. “Good ones. I think you’ll like ‘em.”
The man in the gray suit stepped forward, a toothpick hanging out of the side of his mouth like he was some thirties mobster. I realized with a start that this was Robert Caro, or Bobby as Timur called him. This was the man himself – the one that had imprisoned my mother and made her so fearful she didn’t even try to escape for over fourteen years. The rage that burned inside of me threatened to explode into an uncontrollable fire.
“Good… good,” Bobby said. His voice was soft and smooth, like the hum of a baritone sax. “We only need two tonight. And Reggie’s going to like what he gets. No picking and choosing. That right belongs to the top paying clients.”
I clenched my teeth and dug my nails into my palms. The way he was talking, we were nothing but heads of cattle. Someone needed to teach him a lesson.
Bobby started at the opposite end of the line and walked slowly past each girl, inspecting her with a quick wave of his eyes. Occasionally, he would pause and tilt a chin, pull on a strand of hair, or ask a girl to show him her teeth. Halfway down the line, he paused and nodded to Jack. A curvy girl with a blonde pixie cut and square-framed glasses squealed as Jack grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. He yanked her toward the door and disappeared through the dark exit, her sobs growing quieter as the moments passed
by.
I shifted back and forth on my feet and waited for Bobby to get to me. It didn’t matter if he chose me for his dirty client. There was no way I’d find my mother in here. I had to get out of this room and into the organization, if I wanted to do any good. Maybe he’d sell me to someone to clean houses or do sweat labor. I hadn’t really gone through all the possibilities in my head.
The terrible thought that he’d make me do other things had played at the edge of my mind since Ruth first told me about the mission. But I couldn’t consider those ideas. If I did, I’d freak out and lose all my nerve. It was best to worry about the here and now – not what could happen.
“And what’s this?” Bobby stopped in front of me and leveled his eyes with mine. “A new one? She’s very pretty.”
I sneered, but didn’t say anything. There was a fine line between being confident and suddenly finding myself with a dagger in the chest.
“You think you’re hot stuff?” he asked.
Watching his dark blue eyes, I saw the flicker of evil behind the intelligence. It was the same thing I’d seen in Theo the Gorgon’s eyes. An insatiable desire to commit harm and violence. It was as if their brains had been hardwired wrong at birth. I never saw that flicker in my brother, Nicky. Maybe that’s why I didn’t saw his breakdown coming.
I pressed my lips together. Bobby Caro could think whatever he wanted. I wasn’t bowing down to him.
The muscle in his jaw tensed. It was my only warning before he struck me with his open hand, nearly unhinging my jaw in the process. I fell back against the broken drywall, adding another dent in the crumbling stuff. A poof of drywall dust floated to the ground and left a thin white layer on my black boots and Bobby’s shiny loafers.
“You may have been hot stuff out there, but in here, you’re nothing,” Bobby spat. A drop of spit landed on my cheek. “Get that through your head. You’re nothing and no one is ever coming to rescue you.”
I closed my eyes and pressed a hand to my swelling jaw. The sudden desire for the next five days to pass by plagued me. Ruth and her team would come busting in, saving me and the other girls. No one would get hurt. But I couldn’t do that – not until I knew where Bobby was keeping my mother. If I got scared and ran, I might never find her. She could be buried so deep in this organization that she’d never get out.
“Take her. That’s all we need for tonight,” Bobby said.
Tensing my body, I waited for the giant to pick me up and throw me over his shoulder. Instead, I heard a shriek next to me. Opening my eyes, I saw Timur dragging one of the sobbing girls by the wrist. She sunk her heels into the floor, reaching out to her friend and begging for help.
Not a single one of us moved. We watched her disappear through the metal doorway, along with the giant and Bobby Caro. It wasn’t until the metal door slammed behind them and the lights above us ceased to sway, did the sobbing begin.
Chapter Eleven
Early the next morning, while we were all spread out on the dirty mattresses trying to catch a few minutes of sleep, the metal door slid open. Tala and I were the first to notice the dark woman with brilliant white teeth poking her head through the door. She took a look at the girls on the floor, picked up a bucket on the floor beside her, and entered the room.
The bucket she was carrying sloshed back and forth, dripping a few suds onto the cement floor. Depositing the bucket in the middle of the room, she clicked her tongue and waited for the rest of the girls to wake.
I stood with a start. This might be it, the moment they took us out of this room and I would see my mother for the first time in fourteen years. She had to be nearby. The very thought gave me goosebumps.
“Come on now… clean yourselves up.” The woman spoke with an affected accent, like from the southern portion of Africa. “Got to clean them faces, make them pretty. Hurry up, now.”
We scrambled toward the bucket filled with soapy rags. It felt amazing to run the rag over my grimy face, and on the bruise Bobby Caro had left along my jawline yesterday. The rag was smeared with remnants of mascara and eyeshadow by the time I returned it to the bucket now filled with dirty water.
As I swept the last droplets of moisture off my arm, I caught a look at Tala. Dark bags had formed under her eyes. It didn’t surprise me – we’d shared a mattress last night and Tala had spent most of it tossing and turning. The stubborn and solemn girl I’d met last night was fraying at the edges. Crazy had begun to enter her eyes.
“What are they going to do to us?” Tala cornered the woman, backing her into a corner. “What do you know?”
“I know nothing.” The woman cowered, nearly dropping to her knees. “Please, don’t. I is not supposed to say nothing.”
The fierceness only grew on Tala’s face. Several of the other girls joined her in surrounding the woman.
“Please, you’ve got to help us. You don’t know what it’s like in here.”
At that, the woman lifted her chin with a stubborn grimace. “I know what is like. I was here, just like you. This is what happened to me and I is lucky. You may be lucky, too.”
The girls exchanged glances. Tala swore and kicked over the bucket of dirty water, sending the rags tumbling in a tangled mess.
“This is lucky?” she shrieked. “I don’t want to be a slave for the rest of my life. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to help us.”
The woman ignored Tala and shook her head at the empty bucket. With a flick of her wrist, the puddle of water on the floor began to pool together into a stream of water that lifted into the air and dropped back into the bucket. When all the water was collected, she grabbed the rags and threw them back into the bucket and headed for the door.
Those were basic powers for a water spirit. I’d seen elementals like her before. It was no wonder she didn’t have to wear a collar like the rest of us – her powers wouldn’t be much help to get her out of here.
Tala ran for the door and pounded on the metal surface, nearly breaking her fists in the process. Her dark eyes had become frantic, like the look of an animal caught in a cage. She screamed and struggled while the rest of us watched hopelessly.
Abandoning the door, Tala stumbled to the middle of the room and raked her fingernails over her face. They stopped at the metal collar clasped around her neck. With a grunt, she worked her fingers under the metal and began to pull at it, her face turning red with the effort.
“Don’t do that, Tala,” Becca called. She dropped the hands of the girl sitting next to her and stood up. “You don’t want to do that.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care anymore,” Tala cried. She yanked at the metal, leaving dark red rings on the skin around her neck.
“Stop her!” Becca turned to me and pointed at Tala. “Stop her from taking that off.”
I raised my eyebrows and leaned against the crumbling drywall. “Why? If she gets it off, it might help us to have a fully functioning werewolf.”
She sprang to my side and dug her fingernails into my upper arm until they stung. “Because, if she breaks the magic, it’ll kill her. It killed one of the girls I came in with the first day. It’s a safety mechanism.”
I stared in horror at Tala for a full five seconds before springing into action. My shoulder rammed into her stomach, sending her flying onto one of the abandoned mattresses. While she struggled to catch her breath, I climbed on top of her chest and pinned down her arms with my knees. She struggled and screeched, cursing me and my future children. But after a long moment, she began to sob.
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I can’t be here.” The tears rolled down the sides of her face and over her sharp cheekbones. “I was just getting my life back together. Why won’t she let us out?”
“She wouldn’t have been able to do much for us,” I said, patting Tala’s knee. “Heck, she’s probably more frightened than we are.”
She collapsed in a heap of disappointment, pulling at her long dark hair without thought. I watched the spark of
madness in her eyes snuff out, until she wore the same expression she had last night when we met.
“You’re right.” She shifted and crossed her arms across her chest. “No point in fighting. It’s hopeless.”
Again, my fingers itched to grab Athena’s Jewel hidden under my blouse. If only this worked as a communication device, I could end her suffering now. It probably wouldn’t take long for the harpies to swoop in. But that wasn’t how the jewel worked and that wasn’t what I was here for. The most I could pray for is that when I found my mother, the HQ would shut down Bobby’s operation and save the rest of the girls.
“How do these collars work?” I asked.
Tala gave me a weary look. “The first night I was here, some chick tried taking her collar off. Her name was Lindsey. She had a nail file in her boot and was able to break it apart.”
She sat up and pulled her hair behind her head, knotting it into a low bun. The silver collar shined in the low glow of the lights, its thin metal still perfectly curved even after Tala’s fit. It ran all the way around her neck, attached by a silver locking mechanism that secured both ends.
“At first, we thought she’d be able to get out and save us,” Tala continued. “She was a vampire, and as soon as the collar popped off, her fangs and strength came back. They were working on Becca’s collar when it happened…”
Tala’s face turned green and she laid back down. Suddenly, I realized that the rest of the room had gone silent. The rest of the girls were watching us, listening to Tala’s story. Becca was standing in a corner, leaning against the drywall with her arms crossed.
“It killed her?” I asked Becca.
She nodded. “Scrambled her brains only a minute later. One minute she was telling me about her boyfriend and how he was looking for her, the next, she was lying on the floor with blood dripping out of her eyes. Killed her instantly.”
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