Shadowed Flame

by RJ Blain

  I needed to escape, so I retreated into the crowd of people gawking at the accident. My first few steps faltered, my breath wheezing as my heart thundered in my chest. Each step came faster, until I broke into a run, leaving the ruins behind me.

  The stench of Eau de Skunk woke me. There was no mistaking the wretched excuse for a cologne, and my entire body jerked with my desire to distance myself from the source of the smell.

  A hand seized my jaw, clutching so tightly my teeth dug into my cheeks. I struggled, and pain stabbed from my wrists and up my arms to my aching shoulders.

  “Wake up, you stupid slut,” Harthel hissed, and his breath was even more putrid than his cologne.

  I gagged, and a rattling cough tore through me. When he released me as though I would contaminate him, I fell to a cold tiled floor. The tip of his dress shoe plunged into my stomach and drove the air out of me.

  My mouth opened and closed. My lungs burned, but my body remained paralyzed between breaths while the edges of my vision darkened.

  Harthel kicked me again, and dead air wheezed out of me without flowing back in. The darkness in my vision spread until all I could make out were the tips of the man’s polished shoes. One foot moved out of sight.

  Moments later, he hit me again, catching me between my breasts. Pain blossomed through my chest, and a single breath wheezed into me. After the first, my lungs remembered what they were supposed to do, but it took all my strength to force air in around my constricted throat.

  Harthel shifted his foot to my chin, working his toe beneath my jaw to force me to turn my head. “You and your father are going to regret firing me. I’ve already sent him one video so he could listen to how terribly difficult it must be for you to breathe right now. Too bad that’s the last thing he’ll ever hear from you. It’s a race against time, and it’s one he can’t win. Taunting him is only half the fun. The other half will be making sure he sees every last bruise I beat into you before I get tired of playing with you.”

  I couldn’t answer him even though I wanted to spit curses at him.

  Crouching beside me, Harthel pressed his fingers to my throat to check my pulse. The black aura surrounding the man intensified, and his touch chilled me to the bone. “I don’t want you to die quite yet. Where would be the fun in that? I considered raping you, but I don’t think I want your special brand of filth touching me like that. Instead, I’ll just give your pathetic father the fear I may have raped you. Fear is so much more potent than the reality, isn’t it?”

  “Bastard,” I choked out.

  Harthel rose, stepped over me, and smashed his foot down on my bound hands. “I guess I’ll begin with your hands, then. How long does it take for bruises to form? Let’s find out, shall we?”

  Chapter Ten

  Harthel left me in the bathroom to rot. It took a little over a day for Harthel’s blows to mottle my skin in a way that satisfied him. He enjoyed talking about their colors and how the black, blue, red, purple, green, and yellow marring me pleased him. The man’s laughter accompanied the snap of his cell’s camera. On the hour, every hour, he came back to worsen a bruise or add a new one.

  Then he’d read me the taunts he sent to my father. Sometimes, he mentioned how much I wheezed. Once, he had implied a few kicks to the chest was almost as good as CPR.

  My entire body throbbed to the erratic beat of my heart, and while I struggled for every breath, the wheeze and burn in my lungs didn’t worsen. If it did, I’d probably die. The realization settled over me, resignation numbed me, and I fought in the only way I knew how.

  Harthel cherished reactions, be it a twitch, a gasp, or tears of pain. Denying him what he wanted hurt almost as much as the force behind his blows. My tears burned, but keeping my eyes closed helped stop them from falling. Holding still made what he did worse, especially when he refused to ease the pressure of his foot. If Harthel hadn’t broken one or more of my ribs, they were so bruised even the faintest touch sent fire scorching through my body.

  One moment blurred into the next, and I finally found relief when I fainted.

  The respite didn’t last long; Harthel dumped me into the shower and turned the cold water on so my muscles stiffened and the ache penetrated deep to my bones.

  When my blouse soaked through, Harthel ripped it open, popping off the buttons and leaving my chest and stomach exposed. He left my bra on, not that it helped hide the evidence of his beatings. Every inch of bare skin was mottled black and other dark tones, which I assumed were blue and purple. The man voiced his satisfaction with a huff.

  I closed my eyes while he took his photographs with his cell phone. I wasn’t even sure when—or how—I had burst a vessel in my right eye, but the other bruises were bad enough. There was no doubt in my mind Harthel was sending images to my father.

  When my eyes were open, the tendrils of the man’s dark aura stretched throughout the bathroom and tiled sitting room. It brushed my skin, numbing me in its wake.

  “Son of a bitch,” Harthel snarled.

  The bathroom door was open, allowing me a clear view of the man while he worked at an armchair and small table. Instead of working on his computer, he had his cell out.

  “Are you behind this?” Rising to his feet, he stomped to the bathroom, holding his phone display in my direction. I stared at him, marveling at his idiocy. How could I do anything?

  My hands were bound together and were tied to the faucet to make certain I couldn’t go far even if I wanted to. There was enough slack in the line for him to move me as he desired but ensure I couldn’t get out of the shower. He’d done the same to my ankles. Both were unnecessary precautions.

  It took all my strength to keep breathing. Earlier, I had been able to lift my head, but I leaned against the frigid tiles. I shivered, although I was grateful for the cold water’s numbing embrace.

  I hurt, but the pain was remote and distant.

  “Did you do this?” Harthel’s voice turned shrill, and he waved the phone in my face. Water splashed on the screen.

  When I didn’t respond, he pointed at one of the icons.

  The phone’s GPS tracking had been enabled, and a weak laugh worked its way out of my throat. “How could I?” I rasped.

  The coughing fit my words triggered ripped through me, and the incessant pressure in my chest intensified.

  Harthel’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t get smart with me. I could just kill you now instead of giving your pathetic father a chance to find you. He won’t, not when I take my phone and get moving, of course. But he’ll try. Then he’ll live with knowing he failed to find you while you were dying a slow and painful death.”

  “Bastard.”

  Slapping his hand over the shower faucet, Harthel turned the water off before stepping into the shower and onto my bound hands. The shriek made its way out my throat but emerged as a croaked groan. “Keep your mouth shut. I could just kill you now.”

  Harthel’s phone rang, and after wiping the display on his slacks, he stepped back several steps and answered, “Harthel.”

  While I understood the GPS tracking on the phone could isolate someone’s location, without any idea where we were, I didn’t know if it would help—or if Harthel would ditch his phone and leave, taking me with him. Or, as I both hoped for and feared, leave me behind.

  If he left me, I could try to find some way to break free, although I doubted I’d succeed. The water had seeped into the ropes binding me, making them swell and dig into my wrists. Keeping still kept them from tearing into my skin, although I had, from time to time, seen discoloration in the water streaming around me towards the drain.

  Whoever had called Harthel had a lot to say, and the man’s expression changed from smug satisfaction to suspicion. “How did you get this number?”

  In a way, I missed the cold water; it numbed me, and without it, the pain of Harthel’s assault on my hands shot up my arms into my stiffened shoulders. The worst was my chest and ribs, which had been targeted the most. The fact my lungs ha
dn’t ceased functioning altogether amazed me.

  I wheezed, but I could—did—keep fighting for every breath.

  “You have no proof of that.” Harthel’s body tensed, and he twisted to level a glare at me, his expression accusatory. “Let’s assume, for a moment, I am—”

  Whatever the person on the other end said, it made Harthel’s face pale to white, and the black miasma surrounding him retreat, coiling around his body to add to his rotund bulk. “Fine. Here’s my one and only offer. I’ll leave the little slut, but it’s not my problem if she dies before you can find her. Since you think you’re so smart, I think you can find her on your own.”

  Smiling, Harthel crouched beside me, his gaze sweeping over me. “You don’t even know if I have her with me or if I’ve left her somewhere else. You know nothing.”

  With the man so close, I could hear the person on the other end of the line. “Your last photograph came with a time stamp from twenty minutes ago, taken by your cellular phone, which has not changed position since the picture was taken. She’s with you. Put her on the line. If she’s dead—or dead by the time I reach her—they will need tweezers to pick the shredded remains of your carcass out of the tree tops.”

  “I’m afraid she’s beyond talking,” was Harthel’s smug reply. “I could put her on the phone. Would you like to listen to her wheeze? That’s the best she can do right now. I’m sorry, but she doesn’t have an inhaler with her. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You won’t be able to find me—or her. You talk big, but it means absolutely nothing.”

  “You’re located near Whiteface Mountain, skirting the primary ski resorts.”

  Harthel stiffened. “You’ve been tracking this phone for less than five minutes.”

  “That’s all the time I needed to find you. No matter where you go, I can—and will—find you. You better hope the girl can talk, because if she can’t, you’ll find out just how serious I am. You can try to run, Mr. Harthel, but there’s exactly one road out of where you’re at, and there’s still snow up in those mountains. Go ahead, go off the beaten path. I’m sure you’ll freeze to death before someone finds you. I could have sworn the weather mentioned something about a late-season blizzard. Stop posturing and put the girl on the phone.”

  “You’re seriously trying to tell me you’re going to let me go if I put the girl on the phone and leave after you’ve confirmed she’s still alive?”

  “You’re going to untie her, and when you’re done, you will not touch her again if you value your life. You will put her on the phone, I will speak to her, and when I am finished, you will run like the little coward you are. If you run fast enough, you might not meet me on the road. That’s your only chance. Am I understood?”

  Harthel swallowed, and the lump in his throat bobbed several times. “Fine. I’m putting the phone to her ear now.”

  The phone scalded my chilled skin, and a shudder ran through me. It took several deep breaths and a few raspy coughs before I could whisper, “Hello?”

  “Here’s what’s going to happen, little lady. You’re going to sit tight until that fat fuck leaves. Once he’s gone, survive, no matter what it takes. It won’t take too long to get to you, okay?”

  I cleared my throat several times before choking out, “Okay.”

  Harthel took the phone back. “You’ve talked to her.”

  “Untie her and get your pathetic fat ass away from her. So help me, if you’re within a twenty mile radius when I arrive, you’re a dead man. Don’t you ever think of going near her again. Got it?”

  “Fuck you,” Harthel snapped before hanging up.

  While he cut my hands and feet free, it didn’t stop him from stepping on me in the process. When something in my wrist broke, I slid into painless darkness.

  I woke in the tub, and I had avoided drowning to death by a mere inch. Water lapped at my chin, and the splash of it overflowing accompanied a crackle I knew all too well. The hint of smoke in the air sent terror icing through my veins. I jerked, and my body thrashed in the water.

  My vision blurred. Blinking away the sting of smoke-induced tears, I struggled to sit up. Pain flared through my chest and ribs, and I submerged, the water closing over my head.

  The water seemed far too deep. Had there been a jacuzzi or a hot tub in the room? Ski lodge, if the man on the phone had been correct. I didn’t remember one. I didn’t remember much beyond the pain-filled blur between Harthel’s kicks.

  I lurched out of the water, groping for something to hold onto so I could keep my head above water.

  My feet found purchase on an uneven, roughed surface at the bottom of the tub. A blast of cold air in my nose drew my attention to the snow falling on me and melting in the cold water overflowing the tub.

  My hands and fingers didn’t work like I expected, and I couldn’t secure a grip on the water-slicked porcelain. A flash of light and wave of heat woke my fears; a scream burst out of me.

  The sound that emerged from my throat, however, wasn’t a scream. It was a high-pitched, squeaky yip.

  I never yipped. I never squeaked, yipped, or whined like a dog, yet the noises I made matched a puppy’s terrified cries. The water dragged at me, and I groped for the side of the tub again.

  It should have been easy to find a grip with my fingers, except I didn’t have fingers. I had paws and claws, and the water soaked fur I shouldn’t have had.

  Debris fell from the crumbling, burning ceiling, splashing into the tub and sizzling. Wood cracked against my back, and another pained yip burst out of my throat. I clawed at the rubble in the tub in my effort to keep my nose above water.

  Not a human’s nose, but the elongated muzzle of a dog.

  I panted to catch my breath. While my chest burned and I wheezed, I could fill my starved lungs with air.

  I had to be in a nightmare, one where the world burned around me while I was trapped in a dog’s body, unable to escape. I’d burn and drown, and fear gripped my throat and tightened until I suffocated. Another whine burst out of me, and I scrambled over the submerged debris until I cowered beneath the running faucet. The water cascaded over my head, streaming over my eyes and running along both sides of my nose.

  The water would keep me from burning to death. If I died from the smoke and flames in my nightmares, would I die in the real world, too? My entire body ached, as though I had been pounded to dust before I had been stitched back together as a small dog of some sort.

  I wanted to scream, but all I managed was a pitiful whine.

  The creak and crack of burning wood drowned out my cries, and I recoiled as another section of the ceiling collapsed into the bathroom. The snow fell harder, and somewhere nearby, another crash shuddered through the entire building.

  The flow of water cut off. I whimpered as the stench of smoke clogged my nose and filled my lungs. I tried to tell myself it was a nightmare, but how could a nightmare hurt so much and feel so real? The water clung to me and numbed most of my pain, but the throb in my ribs and chest mirrored my human body.

  How could a nightmare hurt so much?

  I dredged up the strength to claw at the debris and the side of the tub in my effort to escape, but the water dragged me back and held me hostage. Bone-deep lethargy sank into me, and with the last of my will, I flopped as close to the surface of the water as I could before collapsing. The tip of my nose and muzzle rested on fire-scorched wood. The rest of me submerged in the water, chilled from the persistent cold and snow blowing in through the ruins of the burning lodge.

  The nightmare refused to end. The flames burned hot and furious, and it didn’t take long until only the blackened, charred skeleton of the building remained. Flashes of light penetrated through the rising smoke in the dying daylight. Ice formed over the surface of the tub and frosted over me.

  It hadn’t been much, but I had managed to claw my way up so my entire head was free of the water, not that it did me any good. If I stayed submerged much longer, I’d freeze into a furry ice cube.

 
As a human, I could have crawled out of the tub and at least taken shelter where the ruins smoldered, coaxing warmth back into me. Then again, as a human, the falling debris likely would have killed or drowned me. For better or for worse, my smaller size let me avoid being crushed.

  It wouldn’t save me from hypothermia, and I was aware of the shivers coursing through me.

  If I wanted to survive, I needed to move, but my limbs refused to obey my demands. I managed to make a front paw twitch—the one Harthel hadn’t broken with his heel while cutting me free and leaving me to die.

  The logical side of me believed he had placed me in the tub of running water and set the fire to finish me off. By doing so, he would have kept his word to the man on the phone.

  The caller had wanted me to survive. The cold air stung my lungs, and I made one last attempt to climb up the ice-slicked debris to freedom. My claws dug in and jammed in the grain of the wood. My hind legs twitched before acknowledging subservience to my demands. Focusing my strength and effort on my hind paws, I thrust myself up, the frozen water and frost crackling in my fur.

  I tumbled over the edge, fell onto the smoldering wreckage scattered on the bathroom floor, and collapsed in a panting heap.

  Without the numbing of the cold water, my body reported so many sources of pain I couldn’t move, let alone stand. I shuddered on the bathroom floor while snow fell though the ruined building, covering me in a blanket of white.

  When night fell, ribbons of light marked where the building still smoldered. The heat of the dying fire failed to reach me. I’d been told to survive, but hopelessness chilled me as much as the mountain’s snow and freezing wind.

  Fur, at least, provided some measure of protection against the cold and the snow. If I had been dressed in my opened blouse, flimsy bra, and jeans, I would’ve long since frozen to death. Tremors twitched through my body, and I stared at my paws, the only part of me I could see without moving my head.