With a start, she realized she hadn’t imagined the grabbing hands or the torn clothing. Gone was the outfit she’d worn into the woods – not just pieces or swatches ripped away, but all of it. She was clad in nothing but a filthy, oversized t-shirt. It was ripped and threadbare in places, barely providing even minimal coverage.
All at once it hit her, the grogginess finally fading away and leaving behind the stark terror of her situation. They’d been in control, the creature was surrounded, their guns covering him. Then, in a heartbeat, it had all changed.
Now all pretense of that control was gone. She’d been knocked out and kidnapped, but deep down she knew that was likely the least of her worries. They’d groped her with wild abandon, responding with violence when she made even the slightest protest. What else had they done to her?
Danni didn’t want to even consider it. She’d never been victimized in such a way before, could barely even imagine it. The closest she’d ever come had been her high school prom date – he’d gotten a little grabby in the backseat of the limo afterwards. But that had been nothing, easy to set straight. This...
Tears, unwanted yet seemingly unstoppable, began to well up in her eyes as she considered what might have happened to her.
Slowly, fearfully, she reached a hand beneath her meager clothing, trying at the same time to take in her surroundings – anything to distract her from the awfulness of what she was doing.
She was in a crude cell – small, barely six by eight. The walls were wooden planks. The bars of the cage were rusted and aged, but they also had the appearance of something that had stood the test of time. A small circular pit in one corner was the only amenity in sight.
Danni closed her eyes as she probed herself, sickened to her stomach to think that other hands, or worse, had touched her there.
No pain, soreness, or blood. She breathed a sigh of relief, although she knew that didn’t necessarily mean much. There was little doubt she had enough adrenaline running through her system to stave off nearly anything. The fact that her jaw only dully ached as opposed to throbbing told her as much. Time would tell.
But, even if nothing had been done to her, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be. Why bother to strip her otherwise, leave her with barely nothing on? If they were simply making sure she wasn’t armed, they could have easily done so while she was unconscious. No. She had to assume the worst.
The others, the ones who’d surrounded them, they’d all been male – some of them more human-looking than others. What the hell were they? What was this place? When would they come for her again? And, perhaps most importantly, where were her friends?
Danni forced herself to stand, her legs still shaky beneath her. She approached the bars and took a look outside her cell. There wasn’t much of a view to either side, but across from her were other cells of a similar crude nature. The dim light made it difficult to tell if they were occupied, but she thought she spied a figure curled up in the corner of the one opposite her.
She opened her mouth to speak, but for a moment, no words came out. Reminding herself of the murderous monsters she’d faced in the past, she took a deep breath and tried again. “Derek? Frank? Are you there?”
The words sounded louder than they were in the awful silence of the prison, the only other disturbance the drip of water somewhere close by. After a minute of waiting, she tried again.
Though her friends didn’t respond, someone else did.
“Shhh. They’ll hear you,” came a low female voice from somewhere off to Danni’s left. She couldn’t see anyone, leading her to believe that maybe they were in a cell on her side of the hallway.
Detecting no threat in this newcomer’s tone and not wishing to scare her off, Danni likewise lowered her voice. “Who’s there?”
“My name is Sar...” Her voice trailed off into heavy, hitched breathing, as if terrified of saying more.
That alone told Danni far too much. The woman’s tone spoke of hopelessness and despair, both feelings that threatened to overwhelm her, too. A part of her wanted to give in, to curl up into a ball and let the horror of her situation take over, but she refused. She fought back against it, remembering her training and the creatures she’d overcome.
Though she didn’t feel particularly brave herself in that moment, she forced her voice to be strong for the other woman. “I want you to listen to me. It’s going to be okay. I have friends. They’re looking for me. They’ll find us.”
“Y-you don’t know that,” the woman replied after several seconds, her voice shaky but under control.
“And you don’t know my friends. They’re not the type who give up or get frightened easily.”
“I-I can’t...”
“I can,” Danni replied, realizing the more she spoke, the more she believed her own words. Even if she was mostly talking to herself, she didn’t want to stop and let the fear take hold again. “We’re going to find a way out of this. I promise you that.”
“W-who are you?”
“My name’s Danni.”
“I’m ... S...” Again the woman hesitated, as if fearful of speaking her name, but finally, after several seconds, she said, “I’m ... S-Sophie.”
Sophie?! “Sophie Guiterrez?”
“What? H-how did you...?”
“We, my team that is, were looking for you.” That wasn’t entirely true. There hadn’t been much faith that she was still living, but there was no need to share that information. She was alive. That was what mattered.
“John, too?”
Danni opened her mouth to reply but couldn’t form the words.
“It’s okay,” Sophie said after a moment. “I know. I knew it when I ran away.” Her voice began to waver. “I t-tried to fool myself that I was going for h-help, but the truth is I left him. I left my husband to die.” She broke down into heavy sobs, loud in the claustrophobic confines of their prison.
Danni listened, tears forming in her eyes as she wanted nothing more than to join Sophie in her misery. But she realized that wouldn’t solve anything. As much as she wanted to offer comfort, she waited until the other woman had gotten herself under control again before continuing.
“Sophie, I need you to listen carefully. We’re going to get you out of this. That’s what I want you to focus on. You and everyone else here.” Danni glanced across the hall again, noting that the figure in the opposite cell had shifted a bit but still hadn’t turned to face her. “First, I need you to tell me who else is in here with us. Can you do that?”
Sophie took several deep breaths before replying. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger, as if the crying had helped wash away some of her sorrow. “T-there were two other women here. Both Sarah. I mean, I’m not sure what their real names were.”
“Were? Where are they?”
“One of them... Maybe a week ago. She didn’t...”
“It’s okay,” Danni quickly replied, fighting against the horror of what she was hearing. “You don’t have to say it. What about the other?”
“I don’t know. They took her away a few hours ago. She’s close.”
“Close?”
“The one across from you is ... Abby. She’s...”
“Don’t call me that.”
Danni turned to look across the hall. It had been the first sound the other prisoner had made. “What did you say?”
The occupant turned halfway and Danni saw she was a young woman close to her own age, off by no more than a few years. “I s-said, don’t call me that. It’s not my name.”
“Abby...”
“Don’t call me that! My name is Sarah. So is yours.” She turned and pointed at Danni. “You, too.”
“No. My name is...”
“IT IS!” the woman screamed. “Just shut up! I’m Sarah! I’m Sarah! I’m Sarah!” She beat her fists against the wall as she repeated herself, loud at first, but then growing softer until wracking sobs made the words nearly unintelligible. Yet still she repeated her mantra.
Danni’s heart broke for the poor girl. She’d seen people, friends, whose minds had been pushed past their capacity to cope. Abby sounded that way now – broken – as she keened in her cage, rocking back and forth in an attempt to find some small measure of comfort where there was none to be had.
Both of these women, so terrified, so utterly hopeless. As scared as Danni was, the sight and sound of their anguish began to kindle a different emotion within her: anger. She latched onto it and used it to steel her resolve, pushing her own dread away and locking it up in a corner of her mind. She wouldn’t be a victim and she wouldn’t let these women down, not if she could help it.
Danni opened her mouth to say as much, but there came the screech of metal grating against metal, followed by a hollow boom. It sounded like a door being thrown open somewhere close by.
A few moments later, heavy footsteps approached and, despite her best efforts to keep the fear at bay, it returned nevertheless.
CHAPTER 23
The approaching footsteps were accompanied by something Danni hoped to never hear again – the chuffing, labored breathing that told her the devil was near.
There came the clink of something being tapped against the bars of a cage, followed by a cruel chuckle that sounded far more human than the thing they’d cornered out in the bog. The devil wasn’t alone.
Backing away from the bars, Danni was tempted to follow Abby’s lead and curl up into as small of a ball as she could, but she also knew full well it was likely to only encourage her captors.
Holding on to the memories of all she’d done in the past year, she crossed her arms in front of her and did her best to look defiant.
A large, misshapen body stepped in front of her cage, looming over her. The dim light of her prison did nothing to make it ... him ... whatever this thing was any less repulsive than it had looked out in the woods. Not helping was the lopsided leer it wore upon its face or the fact that it was naked, aside from a few bandages covering the wounds it had sustained battling them.
It grasped hold of the bars with its clawed hand and she realized that was what had made the sound she’d heard. Leaning down, it peered in at her, giving her a chance to note that even its eyes didn’t match. One was milky white, as if riddled with cataracts. The other was a clear blue, almost normal except for the vertical iris.
“H...ullo, Sssarah,” it wheezed.
Danni forced herself to meet its gaze. “Where are my friends?” she asked in a voice that was as calm as it had been the prior day while she had walked the campus with Arthur. She’d almost felt like a normal girl in that moment, a stark contrast to the waking nightmare she now found herself in.
If the creature understood her, it didn’t give any indication. “You wanna be mine, Sssarah?” The brute pressed himself up against the bars and Danni was horrified to see its erect manhood pushing through, pointing her way. “I think, you’d l-like t-that.”
The way it was talking, you’d have thought it was asking her out on a date. If she hadn’t been nearly terrified out of her mind, she’d have thought it almost surreal.
“Put that thing away, Noah,” another voice cackled. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”
Noah? That man in the swamp had called it that, too, spoke of it like it was a person. And that’s when it clicked. It was, or he was. But what could do this to a man? She knew about birth defects, but what stood before her was a far cry from even the case of Joseph Merrick, the so-called Elephant Man.
Someone else stepped into view besides Noah. He was smaller, but not by much. Both of his eyes were nearly black, like a dog’s, and one side of his face was turned down in what appeared to be a perpetual frown. A large growth lay on his right shoulder, poking out through the overalls he wore. Though far more normal in appearance than Noah, he would have had a hard time walking down the street unnoticed.
He looked at her, avarice freely showing on his face as his dark eyes drank in her barely covered body. Danni suddenly found herself feeling far more naked than she was. She wondered if he was the one who’d undressed her while she lay semi-conscious. “This one’s gonna be my wife.” Wife?! “Don’t that sound grand, Sarah?”
Danni realized she was right to be scared when she’d woken up. The way these things were looking at her was as if she was little more than a piece of meat.
“M ... my name is not Sarah,” she replied, trying to keep herself together.
She expected to be screamed at. Perhaps the door to her cage opened and these things to launch themselves at her for her impudence.
Instead, the calm, almost jovial way the second man answered her was somehow far worse. “Of course it is. It’s always been and it always will be. It’s a good name. A good, God-fearing name.”
The devil, Noah, turned and gave the smaller one a shove. “Nuh uh, N-nathanial. She’s mine. P-papa said so.”
Nathanial laughed and pushed him back, albeit not moving him much. “You sure are stupid, you know that? He was having fun with you, that’s all. You ain’t never getting a Sarah of your own.”
Noah hissed at the smaller man, then raised one of his hands as if to strike him.
“That will be more than enough!”
Danni turned in the direction of the voice. A third man stepped into view. She recognized him as Ezekiel, from Francis’s video – the bastard who ran the museum and had been in charge of the ambush that brought her here.
Both Noah and Nathanial backed up several steps and lowered their heads as if they were little more than chastised children. Ezekiel spared one glance at her, then turned to address them. “You boys know the rules. Adam gets first go at them all. Nothing has changed. After that, he’ll decide who Sarah will wed. Until then, you both keep your mitts off her.”
Danni wasn’t stupid. His declaration brought her little comfort. It was a small reprieve, nothing more, that bespoke of future horrors.
Though she knew it would be futile, she decided to confront her captors nevertheless. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why?” Ezekiel replied, smiling as if pleased she had asked. “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Proverbs 18:22. It’s simply what we’re meant to do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t.” He stepped close to the bars. For a moment, she was tempted to launch herself at him. She would have liked nothing better than to break his jaw. But where would that get her? She’d still be locked in, and she doubted the others would react kindly to any aggression on her end. “A woman is a simple creature, but she is good for one thing, and it is that which we need badly.”
“What?”
“Children, of course.”
Disgusted and horrified, Danni’s mouth opened seemingly on its own. “But...”
“Female births have always been rare in our family and they’re even rarer whenever a special child, like our dear Noah, is sent from Heaven to grace us. So we do what we must to continue the line. You should be honored. My family has lived in these parts since the American Revolution, and we’ll continue to live here for so long as God wills it. You’ll be a part of our clan, and your children will grow up to carry on the tradition.”
“You can’t ... I don’t want...”
“It matters not, Sarah, what you want or what you don’t want. We need you. My family needs you.”
At that moment, realization hit. These things had a purpose for her, a terrible purpose she’d rather die than see come to fruition. But that same need they claimed to have for her wouldn’t have been extended to... “Where are my friends?”
Devil Hunters (Tales of the Crypto-Hunter Book 2) Page 18