The Fall of V

by Jessica Gadziala

  "No," she'd agreed. "I don't think you ever will. But let her have her crush. She'll have a thousand of them. And this one is the most harmless."

  "How do you figure?"

  "Because he's too old for her. Because he clearly knows and respects that. Because if you shut this down, and she crushed on a boy her own age, she wouldn't be sitting in the front seat in the driveway right now; she'd be in the back, parked in some lot somewhere, doing things that you never want your little girl to do in the back of a car."

  "Or fuckin' anywhere," I'd added.

  "Yes, yes, of course. She will never do any of that... ever ... anywhere," she'd placated me, patting my stomach.

  "Damn straight."

  So I knew this guy from countless stops in my driveway, each time, his gaze not even drifting to my daughter, no matter how much she was clearly trying to get it.

  I also knew that look on his face.

  Eyes huge.

  Muscle ticking in his jaw.

  Fucking frantic.

  His eye was blackened, too. And his lip split and still bleeding down his chin onto his shirt.

  "They got Ferryn," his voice rose up out of him, roaring across the field between us. And since I'd had a talk with the kid once, and knew his voice for low and raspy, I knew his voice was matching his face. Fucking freaked.

  "The fuck'd he just say?" I heard myself asking Virgin, sure I misheard him.

  "Someone got Ferryn," he repeated, taking off across the field even as Lo's guys worked to open the gates to let him in.

  It was then that my feet carried me over to him. How? I don't know. Because everything felt numb right then.

  "What?" I hissed as I came up almost nose-to-nose with him.

  "Two men. Black Cadillac. Old. No plates," he rambled off as one of Lo's guys picked up his phone to call it in. "Outside the pizza place in Farehold," he added. "Both white. Tall. Wide. I tried," he added, voice begging me to believe him. "I tried to get her back," he added.

  That was why his eye was black, why his lip was bleeding. Trying to save my daughter.

  Save my daughter.

  "From the fucking beginning," I growled, trying to keep the panic from welling up, knowing it would do me no good.

  "They snuck out of school. Convinced me to bring them to my show tonight. But I dropped them off to go to the bookstore and eat. I had just come to pick them up. She was getting up to walk to my car, but someone behind her grabbed her purse. I was getting out, thinking some asshole was just trying to mug her. But then he was dragging her. He was grabbing her and pulling her to a car. And shoving her into the trunk. I tried," he repeated, sounding frustratingly helpless.

  "I see you did," I agreed, giving the kid a bit of comfort I didn't even have for myself as my mind raced.

  Words crossed my mind that I never wanted to think.

  Kidnapping.

  Rape.

  Trafficking.

  Or V.

  "Tell them everything," I demanded, motioning to Lo's guys as I flew across the yard toward the compound, screaming out the news as soon as I was inside the door, making everyone's face match the kid outside - and likely my own - frantic.

  "Oh, my God," Peyton hissed as she jumped off of Sugar's lap, knowing I needed him.

  I needed everyone.

  I needed fucking everyone, but even that was no guarantee of anything.

  "I'm calling the Mallicks," Sugar announced.

  "I got the Grassis," Duke added.

  "Breaker and Alex," Edison added, going for his phone.

  "Sawyer and Barrett," Reeve jumped in.

  "Anyone else?" I asked, not seeming able to think straight, not ready to break this news to poor fucking Summer.

  "Luce," Wolf growled, pointing to the phone at his ear.

  "I'll call Baird too," Cyrus added. "Longshot, but anything is better than nothing."

  "Yo," Cash said at my side, voice calmer than it should have been, but that fuck always had a knack for staying calm in the worst of situations. "Abruzzo."

  "That motherfucker," I agreed, storming out of the compound toward my bike, finding Lo's guys had forced the T-bird out of the way, and had Vance, Iggy, and Heather out, getting stories from the frantic guy and hysterical girls.

  "Call Lloyd," I demanded of Roderick who had followed at my heels, stopping beside me while I got on my bike. If there was ever a time to get the law involved in my business, it was when my little girl was in the fucking trunk of a car, waiting for me to save her.

  I had to fucking save her.

  I couldn't let them hurt her.

  I couldn't let them put marks on her like Summer had, like Janie had, and Lo, and countless other women who knew the angry touch of men using their power in a way the world never intended.

  Not my daughter, damnit, not my fucking daughter too.

  She knows how to fight, I reminded myself.

  Unlike Summer, unlike Janie, when they got caught by people meaning to hurt them. She knew how to fight, to defend herself, to give it all she got.

  I don't want my daughter to ever feel as helpless as I was made to.

  That was what Summer had told me one night when Ferryn had gotten a pretty bad shiner, prompting me to suggest that maybe we should dial it back a bit with the training.

  Thank fucking God that my woman was stubborn about somethings.

  Ferryn had eleven years of martial arts under her belt, even at times besting Lo, Janie, and even some of the men - Cy, Edison, Pagan, and Laz - who she'd trained with to learn different fighting styles and how to work against them.

  Though, if this was V, there would be an army. She'd had one once upon a time. She'd had men in her pockets to kidnap and torture Reeve a bit back.

  Sure, she'd went into hiding after.

  But while V was an elusive creature, evil to a degree that it made it hard to even understand what her motivators were anymore, there wasn't a single doubt in my mind that she was rebuilding her army. From what Marco Abruzzo said, she still had contacts, she had plans to utilize them, rebuild her inhuman trafficking operation, building stacks of money made on the foundations of slavery and rape.

  The word made a pit shoot out of my stomach and lodge in my throat.

  Rape.

  There had been rules when she'd had Summer - orders for her men not to step over that line.

  But, well, when you employed the lowest human specimens the world had to offer, they often got twisted little ideas in their heads. The kind of ideas that had Summer on her knees contemplating suicide to avoid the seemingly inevitable since she knew there was no way out even if she took down one attacker; there were dozens more. Who knew what fate could have been worse than suicide inside the walls of V's compound?

  And with Summer's escape, then years inside a cell to mull things over, she had likely found ways to ensure a repeat could never happen again.

  Which didn't fare well for Ferryn.

  She was a smart girl, though.

  It was something you knew about her even as a toddler - those eyes of hers were always watching, taking things in. Her mouth always asking questions, demanding answers.

  If there was any possible way to escape, she would find it.

  If there wasn't, well, I would just have to find her. Whatever it took. However many people needed to be tortured, no matter how much blood had to stain my hands, no matter how many doors I had to knock down, deals I had to make.

  Whatever it took, I would see my daughter again. Sitting at the dinner table, animatedly telling us about some school drama, on the couch, nose buried in a book about ancient torture, the Salem Witch Trials, the Vikings, Romans, Greeks, philosophy, poetry, in the doorway of her room as she folded her arms and unleashed her own version of hell on me or Summer for some thing or another, at Christmas, beaming when she realized we had paid attention, had gotten her what she wanted, hell, even in the goddamn front seat of that kid's car in the driveway.

  I'd see her again.

  C
ome hell or motherfucking high water.

  THREE

  Ferryn

  The trunk opened into darkness. The kind that implied the pitch black of night and the deliberate lack of inside lighting.

  Deliberate.

  Because they didn't want me to see where I was. Because they didn't want me to be able to look for an escape. Or remember paths for a later attempt at freedom.

  But there was more than one sense.

  Uncle Cyrus had been the one to focus on that in my training - taking something away from me, teaching me to compensate with other senses. He would blindfold me, then move around me, attacking silently from different angles until I learned the sensation of air displacing itself for a human inhabitant, until I learned that the little baby hairs weren't moving because of some breeze from an open window, but from someone moving in beside me, until I could learn to hear an arm raising in the air to strike me, and stop it. He would shove earplugs in my ears so I couldn't rely on them to hear him coming from behind to attack me.

  If you can learn to concentrate without one or more of your senses, you can teach yourself never to be disoriented by the loss of one.

  Suddenly, I wished I had taken him up on his offer for more of those classes instead of ditching him to hit up poetry slams or open mic nights.

  Hands moved out, closing around my arm just above my elbow, the unyielding pressure making my bones feel small and brittle beneath - a malnourished skeleton in the grip of a vengeful giant.

  Fingers curled into delicate flesh, pressing marks into the skin, ones I knew would be there to see hours later, ones that I could run a finger over and still feel an aching memory.

  The tree limb known as an arm pulled me from my prison - vomit-filled and putrid, but somehow much more preferable to the outside unknown.

  My head wobbled on my neck, weak as a rag doll between two feuding children, making the migraine already screaming through all hemispheres of my injured brain take on a new intensity, white sparks floating across my vision, bile sloshing around ominously in my stomach empty of all other contents.

  My shoulder screamed, wrenched unnaturally backward toward the body directing the hand still pressing bruises into my forearm.

  My breath hissed out of me, the only show of pain, the only sound I seemed capable of making with my poor, confused body so overtaken by differing pains to be able to express it.

  All for the best, I decided when my lower back crashed into the bottom of the trunk as my body was pulled fully outward, my traitorous legs refusing to hold my weight, the muscles turning to dust as my feet touched the ground. Because men like these, evil men, ugly-souled men, they got off on the pain, on your power being given over to them.

  As far as it was under my control to do so, I wouldn't give them that satisfaction.

  Not even as a disembodied voice chuckled - low and wicked - at my weakness.

  "Might have to carry her," the voice commented, making a chill break out over my skin. "Could get a real feel for her that way, know what I mean?"

  As if he was being subtle.

  And all my brain could really focus on, aside from revulsion that was like a poison eating away at my stomach lining, was I couldn't let him carry me. If he carried me, it would be too easy to get disoriented.

  If I could walk, I could count steps, maybe touch things on my way, try to see what was around me even in this inky blackness.

  I choked back the sick in my throat, fought the spinning in my head, forced my legs to extend, the muscles to stiffen, to do their job, and hold my weight like they had been doing since I was hardly even a year old.

  Work, darnit, work.

  The arm around my middle allowed just enough slack for me to test out my legs, clumsy as a newborn foal - or that giraffe baby the internet waited weeks for.

  But my knees locked.

  My muscles stretched and solidified.

  My feet planted.

  And this time, my legs didn't buckle, they held firm in a way I had never thought to question their ability to do so before.

  Funny, the basic things you can take for granted.

  A head not screaming in pain.

  A stomach that didn't roll and slosh with each unstoppable thought.

  Legs that knew their job.

  And freedom.

  God, freedom.

  Sure, it came with limitations.

  It always did.

  Rules. Laws. Enforcers of them.

  But freedom to break them, to deal with the consequences.

  This.

  This was a new world.

  And I was a clueless babe in it.

  If there were rules to follow, I didn't know them.

  If there were consequences for breaking them, I was ignorant of what those might be.

  I had no choice but to follow as the hand on my arm dragged me forward.

  Count, I remembered five feet into my walk/drag.

  I had to count my steps.

  I had to listen.

  I had to try to force my swollen, painful eyes to adjust to the darkness, to be able to see through it.

  Fifteen steps.

  A curve to my left.

  Six steps, a shaded window, slivers of moonlight peeking through the sides.

  Eight steps, a doorway, closed. Or so it seemed, because there were sounds coming from within in, a creaking, a hissing, a banging.

  Don't think about it, I commanded my brain even as the realization of what was happening there crossed my mind.

  My parents never blocked the late night TV shows. I knew sex when I heard it.

  And I needed not to think about it, not to wonder if the participants were happy lovers, or girls like me... and men like the ones flanking my sides.

  A turn to my right.

  Twenty steps.

  No windows.

  No doors.

  No sounds save for the scrape of my shoes, the clomp of the man to my right, and the step, drag sound of the man to my left, the one who suggested the other carry me. He was lame in some way. A limp, maybe. A prosthetic. Something. One of his feet or legs didn't work as it should.

  I was yanked to a stop, the hand loosening enough that the blood flooded back to it - a pulsing sort of pain that momentarily eased the jackhammering in my skull.

  A click.

  A slide.

  Another click.

  Locks.

  Those were locks.

  I had a feeling I knew what was next, threw an arm out as I was pulled to help keep my balance as I was pulled forward, as my foot met the end of the floor, dropped, found a narrow stair that bent in the center from years of people who walked up and down there instead of the sides.

  My hand met the wall, smooth Sheetrock for five steps before it gave way to something more rough and cold.

  Cinderblocks.

  A basement.

  Seven more steps.

  A stumble as my foot sought another step only to find solid floor.

  There were sounds here, dull, but there.

  Breathing.

  The steady in and out of air in bodies.

  Bodies, well, they had scents too.

  Sweat and unwashed hair.

  Blood.

  Blood.

  No.

  I couldn't think about the blood, about how it got there, about who inflicted it.

  I had to focus instead on what else bodies had.

  Minds.

  Mouths.

  Things that could tell me more about where I was, why I was there, what the rest of the building maybe looked like.

  The hand closed tighter again, this time - thanks to the reprieve - the pain was sharp and insistent, demanding attention, as my body was pulled forward across the floor.

  Twelve steps.

  Then a pause as I tried to slow-blink, as I tried to force my eyes to see.

  There was a clang I couldn't make out as I started to finally see him.

  My captor.

  The outline of his
massive frame, so massive that it reminded me of my Uncle Wolf, of his stubbornly unmovable body when I had tried to best him. Even just standing still, taking my abuse, I could never overtake him.

  My gut told me that I could never overtake this one either, this silent, looming giant, but my will to survive told me to try.

  There was another noise, something metallic and heavy, dragging across the floor.

  The hand loosened.

  Then released entirely.

  There was hardly even a heartbeat of a hesitation as my body swiveled, muscles remembering the moves even before my brain could grasp with them with clumsy hands.

  My feet planted, evenly holding my weight as my right side cocked back, as my fist curled, as every ounce of weight in my admittedly slight body surged forward.

  Adrenaline made the movements feel slow as I could hear the swish of the air as my arm sliced through it, as my fist sought its target.

  The crack and crunch was something I felt and heard simultaneously as my fist made contact, something soft and curved along with something firm and unyielding.

  An ear and jaw.

  Crack.

  And crunch.

  Then grunt, hiss, the man registering the pain even as I curled back again, now knowing the ear, knowing the nose was just a few inches inward.

  It landed there, warm breath meeting my knuckles before they landed with an upward strike.

  Had it been more true, were I able to see, was my position skilled enough, I could have done it. It was easy, really. Pushed his nose into his skull.

  Nearly instant death.

  But nothing lined up for me, my weakened hands from the whack from the metal bar, my too-sideways strike, making my own chest get in the way of my full force, my blind eyes unable to catch him perfectly under the nostrils.

  It hurt, sure.

  He reared back, growling, likely tasting his own blood as it leaked from his nose to his mouth.

  I went back a step, raising my arms, using my raised fists to shield my face.

  But when the pain did come, it was much lower, giant fingers curled and surging from a massive body into my exposed, weak midsection.

  My air knocked out with a whoosh, with the pain of impact as my body folded forward, one of my hands dropping to hold my belly even as the other tried to strike out.