by Ana Calin
I winced and ducked by the car. Dead silence set in the chilly darkness. I held my breath for seconds, fearing the pounding of my heart would betray my position. My eyes searched for Damian, squinting to adjust. Sight began to clear, my irises constricting and widening again like the lenses of high-tech cameras. My sight grew as sharp as the spyglass of a sniper.
There it was, the scene in HD – Damian standing over an Upgrade in black turtleneck, black trousers, and shiny shoes, hair dark and slicked back, his face paper white. The man stood on one knee as if he were – and I found no amusement at the thought – proposing. The right arm clutched his own waist, trying to recover from Damian’s blow that I hadn’t seen, but heard.
A second man-in-black sprang from the side. Damian pivoted and blocked the incoming hit with his forearm. A blow to the attacker’s torso sent the man flying back, his ribs cracking. He hit the ground hard and growled, crouching and bracing himself, teeth bared in pain.
The first one used the diversion to scramble up from his proposal position and throw himself at Damian with the expression of a kamikaze. Damian spun round again and disabled him mid-air, the white sweater tightening on his arm as his fist rammed into the man’s face. A loud crack, and I was certain the guy’s cheekbone shattered.
But, to my awe and dread, both Upgrades coordinated and jumped to their feet much like characters from a video game. They launched at Damian in perfect choreography from two different angles, daggers shooting out from under their sleeves. I screamed and jumped to help Damian, but they moved so fast I barely had the chance to put one foot in front of the other before they finished their next move.
They grabbed Damian by each arm, thrusting him against the wall and pointing their copper-colored blades at his throat. The sound of Damian colliding with the concrete thundered in my ears, making me flinch. A moment later, bits of naked concrete dribbled to the ground as Damian pushed his attackers off him, the shape of his back remaining testimony in the wall. He slammed both men into the pillar across the empty parking spot where the fight took place. His hands curled around their dagger-holding wrists, twisting and snapping, forcing the men to drop on their knees and wail in pain.
I watched Damian subdue two genetically engineered killers as if they were Vasile and Chanel, the stray dogs I’d been feeding for years. All it took was a swift move to disarm them for good. He flipped the daggers around, closing a tight grip on the hilts, his arms bolting down toward the men’s bodies.
Of their own accord, my irises adjusted back to human senses, and most of the scene was again shadow. Consciously and unconsciously, I didn’t want to see the blood spluttering out of their throats, though I could make out Damian’s rapid strikes and hear the slush of liquid, but not the faintest groan. Damian’s attack had been too swift and too ruthless.
My breath caught as a hand covered my mouth and nose. In panic, I struggled and writhed until a voice spoke in my ear.
“Easy now, pumpkin.”
Hector Varlam. I recognized him immediately. I acted on impulse and bit the callous flesh hills under his fingers. He growled, but didn’t loosen his grip. On the contrary. He pressed on my mouth so hard my teeth threatened to spring out of their gums. His other hand put a blade to my throat – cold, raking my skin. I felt his chest push into my back as he inhaled, surely ready to call Damian to attention. No need.
Damian appeared a few feet from us in a blink, devilish eyes gleaming, his teeth bared in a hiss. Ice shot down my spine at the sight of him – unnatural, scary, his body flexed through the bloodstained sweater.
I felt Hector’s body tighten behind me, his knuckles protruding white around the blade hilt, the metal’s ridge deepening into my skin.
I gave out a muffled cry. Damian flipped the blades in his hands and started toward us, but men-in-black poured his way from all sides like an army of spiders. The thought that I hadn’t perceived their presence, that I’d been oblivious to them lurking in the darkness, was as frightening as the sight itself.
They plunged in as if spat out from the shade. The sight was a nightmare. As Hector dragged me backwards, and Upgrades flowed toward Damian, I watched him mutate into the killing machine I’d been warned against, though no warnings could’ve prepared me for this. Not Tony’s pictures, not Hector’s lies, not even Gino Bogza’s words. It all happened so fast, it flashed in snapshots.
The Executioner’s face was hard-edged and cold as he knocked the dagger from the first attacker’s hand. He twisted the man’s arm, spun him around, and brought him to his knees, then kicked his lower leg out of its joints. The man howled, his face screwing tight as a bloody, chipped piece of bone pierced through his flesh and the fabric of his pants. I stared over Hector’s tightening palm on my face, rinsed with my saliva, trying in vain to scream.
Damian advanced toward us with murderous eyes, taking on each Upgrade one at a time. It happened so fast, that the others as well as the retreating Hector dragging me along seemed to be moving in slow motion.
He was already close when he smashed an attacker’s head into a pillar to the side. He didn’t hold back anymore, applying his real strength to the blows. The man’s body trickled lifeless down the concrete, leaving behind a clumpy trail of blood. Before I got to see his face, another one dropped like a sack of flesh over him, face up. My stomach turned violently and sent a spout up my throat that stopped in Hector’s hand.
Half the man’s face was an amalgam of flesh and bone, shattered by one too strong blow. Hector retreated faster and faster, dragging me along while Damian killed his way toward us. The last thing I had the stomach to watch was him smashing an attacker’s head with such force that I literally saw his knuckles drill into the man’s facial bones. The attacker had made the mistake of lunging full force toward Damian, and ended up crashing into his hammer-like fist.
I couldn’t take anymore, and scrunched my lids shut, but sounds still hit my eardrums – cracking and snapping, metal wheezing through air, the slicking of blood, barely a groan or two.
Damian was a genetically engineered Hercules. I wondered if bullets could reach him faster than “upgraded” killing machines wielding their daggers as fast as cobras. Would bullets pierce his flesh, or had BioDhrome engineered it into armor? I remembered the feel of his body on mine, hard as metal.
“Halt!” Hector spat in my ear. I opened my eyes.
Damian approached us slower now, his once white sweater drenched in blood, the blades dripping in his hands. I stared at him like at an incoming tank, as Hector’s knife pushed through my skin into my throat bones.
“One more step and I slit her, Novac,” he warned.
Damian halted. His eyes darted from Hector to me, flashing with human emotion for an instant. Hector didn’t miss it either, no doubt.
“Drop your weapons,” his voice bounced off the walls. The remaining attackers slithered in a semicircle around Damian.
I could feel Hector’s heart pounding in my back. In the end, no matter how long and how thoroughly he’d been preparing for this, he now faced the most dangerous killer BioDhrome had ever engineered.
“Let her go,” Damian said as he slowly squatted, eyes fixed on the metal at my throat, his jeans stretching over his flexing legs. He placed the blades on the floor. “And I’ll let you walk.”
“Will you now?”
“You have my word.”
The moment Damian began rising to his feet, two Upgrades from the semicircle rushed to restrain his arms. Damian didn’t resist, but his mouth curled in the mocking grin of someone who could take them down like ragdolls. Hector let out a forced snicker, surely trying to sheath his anxiety.
“Say you’d let me walk. For how long? A year, two?”
“Let her go, and I’ll let you walk for good.”
“Good offer. I’m almost tempted. Too bad that decision’s not mine to make, Executioner.”
“Too bad you’ll pay for it with your life nonetheless,” Damian hissed.
“One wron
g move, Executioner, and she’s out.”
Damian held Hector’s gaze. “Name your terms.”
I just stared at him from over Hector’s thumb, scared stiff.
“Not my terms, but the Regent’s.”
“Placing blames to save yourself in case I yet emerge victor?” Damian jeered.
“If you win this one, Novac, she’s dead. You know this. You’ve known for a while now, haven’t you?”
Something flickered in Damian’s eyes. Vulnerability. He did indeed know. Panic took me, and I jerked forward, screaming a muffled, “No!” Hector yanked me back, my body knocking into his.
I felt Hector’s cheek bundle against mine as a sick grin stretched on his face, his stubble stinging my skin. “You’re coming with us, Executioner. Calmly. Consensually. You’ll follow us to him in your own car.”
Damian’s eyes rested on me. They were soft and filled with longing. “All right. But I’ll take Alice to safety first. She stays out of it.”
Hector burst into laughter.
“Yeah, that’s right. I’ll just throw my bargaining material over board. How stupid do you think I am, Novac?”
Damian’s jaw crunched and rippled as Hector pushed the blade’s tip into my throat. I felt the push, but not the sting, terrified as I was. He took a step toward us, but the two Upgrades clutching his arms held him back. He pressed his lips together, his tone low and dangerous. “I don’t know. How stupid are you?”
“Not enough to kill her while you act docile. But this pretty little thing is riding with me today.”
The arm that had been draped across my shoulders until now lowered, and Hector’s hand gripped my breast roughly through my blouse. The blade left my skin but stayed in Hector’s other hand, two of his fingers on my jaw. He forced my head to the side, his tongue pushing into my mouth through my sewn lips.
Coarse and long, it reached into my throat, making my stomach revolt. I choked on the need to throw up, blocked by his writhing tongue in my mouth. I gave a muffled groan of protest just before Hector grabbed my hair and tugged back, then licked my left cheek from chin to temple like a dog.
His face took distance from mine just enough to enjoy my disgusted expression. He grinned satisfied, his small dark eyes glinting from under bushy eyebrows. His olive skin was thick and marred by the hardship of a soldier’s life, his jaw shadowed by stubble, the aquiline nose fitting his expression. As the ring in my ears began to die down, Damian’s cusses reached me.
“I’ll have your head for this Varlam,” he thundered.
I looked at him, standing tense like an arrow ready to bolt. His glare was luscious, like the scales of a viper. The Upgrades clutched his arms, wide-eyed with dreadful expectation. “I’ll rip your fucking heart out!”
“While the Regent slits you open,” Hector provoked, “I might go all the way with her.”
Those words sealed the moment. Damian was impossibly fast to knock back his restrainers, and Hector didn’t have the time to put the blade back at my throat. The tip of his knife pierced through my blouse and into the small of my back, where it had slid during his kiss. I jolted forward from the middle and shrieked, held back by Hector’s hand on my throat. Damian stopped instantly.
“One more move, and I stick her,” Hector called viciously.
Damian’s lips tightened, his expression both furious and frustrated.
“If anything happens to her, Varlam, the deal drops,” Damian spat. “I’ll rip out all your organs with my bare hands, and I’ll keep you alive all through it.”
Hector grinned, and I sensed his pleasure at Damian’s pain. “Relax, lover boy. I was just being funny.”
Hector began retreating again, dragging me along, my feet scrambling their way with him to avoid being schlepped on my butt and maybe even by my hair. I didn’t dare put up a fight. Fear made me docile, my jaw clenched.
Damian watched us with mad eyes as Hector shoved me in the back of a black car and followed in. The engine purred to life, and I turned to look at Damian one last time through the rear window.
A pitchy female voice drew my attention and my head snapped in its direction – the driver’s seat. My jaw dropped as I recognized Svetlana, her platinum blond hair falling down her shoulders. Her long, bony hands with cherry-colored nails were on the wheel. Hazel eyes under fake lashes glowered at me from the rear view mirror. There were dark rings under it, her complexion as pale as a corpse’s. Something was very wrong with her.
“Do it, Hector. Give the bitch what she deserves,” she instigated.
“But Novac?” Hector said with genuine wariness that he’d managed to mask before Damian. It was staggering, the difference between the Hector from a few minutes ago and this Hector who was present now.
“He won’t live through this, idiot. We’ll finish him tonight,” she spewed with what sounded like the voice of evil itself.
Her words spurred Hector on. He threw himself at me and grabbed my waist. I threw myself backwards, bringing my knees up to keep him away while I screamed. My heart pumped indignation and rage through my veins. The sick grin on his face as he pinned my legs aside with his elbows said it all.
The deeper my eyes delved into his, the stronger I sensed it, as if his drives were my own. The sensation bit into my heart, making me panic.
I was becoming him, slipping into his mind as if immersed in a muddy pond. My body stopped fighting, and Hector’s weight on me grew heavier by the second.
Hector’s feelings now inhabited my chest and my mind like my own. A hot sensation in my heart told me that his feelings were the key to his undoing. I dropped all barriers and plunged in to the bottom. I let my head fall back, my arms and legs mellow, allowing Hector to grope me.
He burned to reduce me to a bundle of living meat. To watch me fall apart and my eyeballs redden at the pain and fear while he’d take me. Oh, the fear, how it turned him on to imagine it on my face. His hand clenched around my neck and began to squeeze as he undid his fly. Terror threatened to cloud my mind, but I pushed through its dark, heavy veil.
Only his feeling something tender, something warm, would save me, I knew that in a very strange, instinctual way. I wiggled, and Hector’s hand tightened, making the blood flood my face and my tongue push out as I choked.
A feeling sprouted inside me, more like a vision as my real sight hazed. Hector looking at me with caring eyes, the russet in them melting. An almost dumb smile crept on his face, as he stared into mine on the shore of a greenish lake. He sat in the mud, the sleeves of a dirty grey shirt rolled up, his hair tousled. He wore a three-day beard and he was definitely in love.
The revelation kicked me out of the vision and back into my body, reality unfolding before my eyes. With one hand, Hector still strangled me, while the other one groped for my breasts under the blouse.
My brain spun so fast, that the scene before me warped into a spiral of mingling colors. Empathy, I needed Hector to empathize, to be human, I needed him to feel what he felt in my vision. But there was no chance he’d feel that way for me or any normal woman, it just wasn’t in him. It took someone he could feel akin to. Someone special.
My senses tunneled deeper into Hector and went down what felt like the only solid dike in a sludgy, gelatinous mountain of mud. There was one woman he viewed differently than all others, but for reasons that wouldn’t qualify as anything close to affection. Her intelligence had been a tool to him. When he thought of her, he thought of her sharp brains, and how he could use her to his advantage. He’d tried to seduce her only to better achieve his purposes, but she’d resisted. He admired her for it. The woman was Leona Ignat.
My mind stumbled forward, one side hooking into the mesh of Hector’s feelings, while the other clawed into the image that stood for Leona. I pulled and caked them together in one bundle that gained roundness as my mind swirled around it. A jet of emotion that I’d absorbed and stored from the vision with Hector shot from my chest into the muddy ball, piercing it and firing it to life,
then sent it rolling downwards, lighting up the dark well of Hector’s soul.
I felt Hector’s claws and body fall limp off me, but the alarm kept ringing shrill in my ears: He wasn’t the only danger. With him out, I knew for a fact Svetlana would take over. I tunneled to her.
I latched onto her hatred for me. It was so strong it lashed at my senses. I pushed through, reaching her desires and reasons. She craved to watch me suffer for the way Damian Novac wanted me, for the passion with which she imagined he kissed me and made love to me, for the way she imagined he came for me. I felt the knives that laced her heart every time she saw us in the cafeteria but, to my awe, her perception of me differed starkly from my own.
Svetlana Slavic didn’t see the freckled Lolita. The girl whose face caused her nightly sobs was petite, with porcelain skin and bouncy caramel locks. Her neck was slim like a swan’s, her lips rosy and juicy. Her eyes glowed like blue stars as she opened her mouth and screeched at me, “You need me.”
Her voice raked my eardrums.
“What the hell!” Svetlana’s scream tore through and sucked me out from that place inside her mind.
I opened my eyes to look death in the face. A tree trunk rushed toward us. In an instant, the hood crumpled, and the windshield shattered.
Chapter Thirteen
A bucket of cold water hit my skin, awakening my senses. I drew a painful breath that burned my lungs, and my eyes snapped open to a stone floor that bruised my naked knees. My thighs glistened under beams of moonlight from windows high above. I still had my panties and my blouse on, but my hair clung damp and icy to my forehead, neck and down my back. I didn’t remember how I’d gotten here. I didn’t understand what had happened, and I didn’t have the strength to try to.