by Zoey Parker
It was excruciating and humiliating, and by the time he was done, my shrieks had devolved into cries. My face was streaming with tears. I was having trouble breathing.
Finally, after I had lost count and was drifting somewhere in a mindless haze of pain and disembodied horror, he must have realized that I was no longer really with the program.
He threw the whip to the side and, flipping the switches to lock the cage and kill the lights, left the room.
Very shortly thereafter, I heard the cries of another voice, that lovely high soprano, but this was no ethereal song. This time, her sounds were in agonized rhythmic grunts and keening. I could only imagine what he was doing to her. It was a torture just to listen.
It could not have been good.
Chapter Twelve
Dom
When I got home after that awesome Storm church meeting—we finally had church back!—I had been so excited to grab hold of Sienna and hug her for minutes. I was so pumped. The meeting had gone great. After too many months without it, we were all back on the same page again.
Pres had had some hard moments in there. He’d been keeping mum about his daughter Zoe’s absence from the scene and his ties to Joey Ronn, the whole real reason our MC had been stuck working security for Ronn and Hardcore.
Without church, we’d all been hard-pressed, and I don’t think anyone knew what was really going on. But now, he’d come clean about all of it. And we were all of one mind now: find Zoe through Ronn and Fielding somehow, and nail those two bastards to the wall.
We had our brotherhood back. I felt like the very air had been purified. And I needed to share this feeling with my woman. She was intrinsic to this revolution, and I was feeling happy and grateful.
The problem was, when I got home, Sienna wasn’t there.
I saw her note almost immediately, and I groaned. Damnit, she was not supposed to go back to her place without me.
Okay, so I hadn’t said so to her in so many words, but I didn’t figure I’d have needed to.
I tried calling her, just to hear her voice, make sure she was all right. She never picked up.
I didn’t have the number for her landline—hell, I didn’t even know if she had a landline. I figured I’d best get my butt on the road and head over to her complex. I knew she’d only been gone a few hours at the most, but I did not have a good feeling about this, especially since she wasn’t answering her phone.
I grabbed my helmet, checked my gun in its holster, and headed back out. I powered up the bike and was on the road in seconds flat.
When I got to Sienna’s, I saw her car still in the lot. That didn’t signify much. I needed to see her, to know she was okay. I headed to her door—and noticed it was ajar when I got there.
That was not a good sign.
I went in with my gun in my hand. I didn’t call out for her, just in case Fielding was in there with her; I didn’t want to give him a heads-up. It didn’t take long to learn that no one was in the apartment. That’s what I had already begun to fear. My breathing started to come fast, and I realized the worst had probably come to pass. He had taken her. I fucking knew it.
Of course, I had no proof of it; it was just a gut feeling. But it was the only thing that made sense of her car being in the lot and her door open and her not answering her phone. Goddamnit.
I was back on the bike and on the road without thinking. I headed to the only place I could think he might have taken her, although it was a Hail Mary shot in the dark as to whether it would pan out. I’d only ever seen Fielding at Hardcore and at his gargantuan fugly McMansion of a home. I figured the house was my best shot. If he hadn’t taken her there, then maybe I’d find a clue as to where else he might have her; or maybe I’d find him, and get it out of him somehow.
I had to think this through, but I barely had enough time to do so. If they weren’t at the house, would it be best to not let him know I was there, and then follow him back to her? Presuming, of course, that he had her in some other undisclosed location. Or would it be best to overpower him and force him to tell me where she was? He was a cagey motherfucker, lowest of the low, a slick bottom-feeder.
I figured I’d just go with my gut and see where the moments took me. I couldn’t think to plan it well.
Damn, the woman had me near panic level.
Once I arrived at the gate to the suburban monstrosity, I left my bike parked behind a large berm that hid the property from street view but wasn’t too far from the wall. The dude had a freaking brick wall around the property; it probably rose about ten feet up off ground level, so it wouldn’t be an easy jump. I followed it around a corner, off street side, and finally found a section where a tree on the outside reached over some branches to his side. I figured this was going to be my best shot at bridging over, so I took it.
Success—god bless my regular workouts. Once over, I assessed the house and decided to just walk in direct. At this point, I was beyond covert ops. I wanted and needed action and result.
I approached the front door and tried the handle. It opened. No beeping of an alarm, no laser lights. I didn’t even see any cameras pointing at me. For being a rich freak sick-as-fuck depraved-porn killer, this guy was seriously lax about security. I guessed the fuckwit thought his big gate and pretty wall were enough to deter any unauthorized entrance. Well, let today be his unlucky day to realize otherwise.
The house was silent when I went in, and there were no immediately obvious signs nor sounds of movement on the first floor. With my gun in my hands, I began to search the house, approaching each room like it was booby-trapped and/or had military- or guerrilla-type guard. My careful approach ended up being unnecessary; I didn’t encounter anyone, friend or foe, in my search. I had gone through from the foyer to the living room through the dining room to a kind of service hall to the kitchen and looped back around through a hallway to a kind of den/TV room, and finally found myself in the library/study where the computer and books were, the scene of my hard-drive heist from less than twenty-four hours ago. Nada. No sign of life, no clues as to Fielding or Sienna.
Stumped for the moment, I tried to think my way through what I knew about Fielding, about this place, and about where Sienna might be. Little Joey Ronn had kept referring to this house as the house of mirrors. I wasn’t sure what was behind the phrase. I mean, yeah, there were lots of mirrors in the house: in the foyer, in the hallways, in the bedrooms and bathrooms. I just figured Fielding was a narcissist. It was not a great leap of the imagination.
Looking around the library, I noticed yet another framed mirror tucked into one of the gaps on a bookshelf. It was leaning against the wall, not attached to it. I picked it up and found a fucking light switch behind it, in the middle of the wall, not near the door. I flipped the switch, and one of the bookcase sections immediately opened hydraulically, pulling back to a large recessed alcove. This guy was a piece of work. So was his house, apparently.
Lifting my handgun from its holster, I stepped into the unlit cavern, and my eyes were drawn to the only point of light: the LED of an elevator call button. An elevator. In a hidden alcove. Behind a trick bookcase. It figured. What next with this fucking guy?
Not sure whether this was a smart move that might lead to helping me find Sienna, or if it would lead me in an opposite—but surely not an uninteresting—direction, I did the only thing a red-blooded American would do. I hit the call button, ready to investigate the dark side in this house of mirrors. That seemed to be what the moment called for.
By the time the elevator doors slid open, my eyes had adjusted to the darkened cavern, and I had thought enough to move one of the leather armchairs from in front of the desk to block the closing of the bookcase, just in case I had any trouble getting back out from the dark. If Fielding or someone came in in the meantime and removed the chair, I might be locked in and fucked, but I’d worry about that when I got there.
Once in the elevator, I had the option to go up or down. I chose up at random. When the d
oors opened on the second floor, I was a little surprised to find myself in a man’s closet, a huge walk-in with a shitload of suits and shirts, ties, and mirrors all over the place. But still, a closet just the same. A hidden elevator into a closet. That’s some weird shit.
Looking at the plethora of expensive men’s attire, I figured this had to be Fielding’s personal space. I peeked into the adjacent bedroom to see the huge master space, also devoid of other humanity for the time being, no different than the first floor.
After a fairly quick walk-through to make sure Sienna wasn’t tied up somewhere in here or in the en suite bathroom, I made my way to the hallway and scanned every room on the floor as fast as I could. I was being less careful about making noise now—I really didn’t sense anyone else in the house, I hadn’t seen any cars outside in the drive, and I figured this was not going to be the most revealing of searches, in these rooms. Nevertheless, I had to be thorough, or I might end up wanting to kick my own ass if I passed over the opportunity and there was something important to be found up here. So I made like a professional, and I looked.
Every door opened into crystal-clean space—I figured he’d had some maid service come through it in the morning hours, cleaning up after last night’s debauchery. Bedrooms, bathrooms, a couple of closets. There were a lot of mirrors.
But there was nothing showing me where Sienna might be and nothing cluing me in as far as Fielding’s other holdings.
Done with this floor, I sped back to the master bedroom and its fancy closet to recall the elevator. It was time to explore the basement in this house of fucking mirrors.
Chapter Thirteen
Sienna
“Agh!…Ugh!…Ehn!…Ogh!…Nuh!…Ehn!…Ahn!—” So went the keening.
“—Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…” And his guttural ejections.
… And on and on and on…
They painted a clear enough picture, even for my loose hold on consciousness. Maybe they were what were tying me to this world, keeping me from a peaceful blackness. They were my latest torture.
I thought—hoped—I was losing my hold on reality. The eerie, tortured pitches of that voice I knew to be so beautiful but that now sounded so awful, so ugly, so inescapable and incessant, and the rhythmic counterpart of his vicious grunts—both together were blocking my thoughts from forming coherently and blocking my mind from releasing into a void.
I was so very, very cold. My wet hair continued to drip down my neck in a painful release of internal heat that I could feel seeping out of me, moment after moment. My body was uncontrollably shivering with each breath.
After all of the day’s Taserings, I ached throughout. My muscles had no understanding of how they ought to respond to the overstimulation of nerves. My head was pounding as well; it felt like a vice had hold of my brain and was squeezing relentlessly. It was beginning to make me nauseated. I began moaning in time with the girl, to give voice to my pain, as if that would ease it. It almost did, but not really.
Not to mention how I burned. Even in the midst of freezing to death, every part of me that had been lashed was on fire in the cold air of the cell. My breasts, my belly, my arms at my sides, my thighs, my sex. He’d gotten me everywhere except for my face and neck and back.
I was entirely raw. And that lovely now-ugly voice kept up its rhythmic keen of pain and horror. And I moaned and groaned in empathetic counterpoint, letting her know my share of pain, too. Solidarity in torture. Not that that eased the pain in any way; it didn’t, for either of us, I’m sure.
I had no way of knowing if she heard me. And really, what did it matter? I had never been raped, though I could see now that that particular experience was just beyond my horizon. Perhaps minutes, surely not more than hours away. I now knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to brace for that horror, too.
Because of the ties binding my wrists and ankles together, and the other straps holding my legs apart on either side of this table from hell, my shoulders and hips were aching as well, stuck too long in unnatural positions with no ease for movement.
My breath came in shallowly, and I struggled to control it to avoid hyperventilation. Gah, my entire being was so overly stimulated with ache, pain, cold, discomfort, contraction, shivers, nausea… I had never before been so physically and mentally overwhelmed.
I began just wishing for death. It would have been a welcome end to this horror.
As my mind drifted toward that thought, and my keening softened in a dreamlike state of wishfulness, I saw my sister in my mind’s eye: angry, fierce, and vibrant. She yelled at me silently, berated my weakness, and challenged my capitulation.
She was right. I had to fight. I had to wake up. I had to get out of here. I had to get the girl out of here. I could not give in. Fielding could not win. I had to take him down, or die trying.
This—tied up like a fucking pig on a spit—was not the way I would go down. Fucking Tania. Thank the fucking gods for my fucking little sister, Tania. I had to fight, for Tania. For me, too. But primarily, I’d say my main motivation at that point was for Tania.
I gathered my spite for the sick bastard who had done this—this, to me. This, to the other girl with the beautiful voice. And worse, to my sister, who died at his hands, before she even got to experience real life.
So no, I was not going to give in. I was not going to die. I was going to nail that fucking bastard to the wall.
I began to move my fingers and arms and wrists and feet and ankles and legs, trying to open some millimeters of space in which to maneuver or jostle the rope ties. I did this not without new pains accompanying the movement; the ropes burned and scratched my skin, sometimes pinching where it caught against tiny hairs or where it was just too tight.
Still, I didn’t give up. I kept twisting and stretching, even though nothing seemed to move, I put all I could into my muscles, willing something to shift.
After many moments, I began to feel some space. I think perhaps my wet skin had dampened the rope when he had first bound me up, which could only have helped. Praise god for wet skin and drippy hair!
I was starting to feel actual space now, between my wrists and ankles. I could turn my hands around partway, could feel my fingers run along the lowest-positioned parts of the ropes.
The one on my left side was not positioned well for my purposes; the knot was laid at the top of my wrist, and I still didn’t have enough room in there to completely turn my arm over to grasp it or work at it with my fingers.
But the one on my right was perfect. The knot lay just inside the small hollow I had opened between my inside wrist and the drop below my anklebone. It was just enough space to maneuver my first few fingers and thumb into.
I praised all that was holy for my months of working in difficult stilettos with tiny buckles and knots; my fingers were strong and they knew what to do.
After several moments of pulling and tugging and twisting and shifting and huffing and squirming and breathing and believing, I felt the knot finally slip its grip, and I was able to pull the end free from its grasp on the other part of the rope. I was moments away from right arm and right leg freedom…
And suddenly I had it. I almost cried. I wasn’t sure what would make the best next move, but quickly realized that I could not very well help out my left side before releasing my torso from its belting to the table, so that had to come first.
I think the strap that bound me around the waist was an actual man’s leather belt. The buckle was located under the table, but conveniently for my purposes, it was just under the edge on my right side. When I discovered this, I almost laughed with relief. It took me several moments to get the strap out of the buckle—it was awkward, working it behind me and several inches below with the table edge in the way, but ultimately I managed it.
At this point I was able to sit up and shift myself into a better position in which I could maneuver the last major hurdle: untying my left wrist from ankle. It took the work of several moments, but f
inally I had free space, motion, arms, legs, body.
I was so flooded with adrenaline that it overpowered my awareness of the cold, of my shivers, aches, and pains—well, for the most part. I still ached and I needed to stretch; I felt pinpricks all over. But I could move again. I was no longer tied down and presented like a turkey on Thanksgiving.
I was still locked up behind a heavy hydraulic cage door in a cell in the basement from hell, but I had a fighting chance now.
And no way was I going to waste it.
Chapter Fourteen
Dom
Nothing happened on the way to the basement.
But as soon as the doors opened there, I had to take a deep breath. I’d never been to Versailles, but this hall of mirrors certainly earned the descriptive title just as much, though in a much shadier perspective. The carpeting was a deep red, like blood. The ceiling was black, and the doors were painted cream. It could have been used as part of the set in The Shining. There were mirrors everywhere along the walls where there weren’t doors, with dimly lighted sconces interspersed, so it was impossible to tell how long the hallway was, nor how many doors and lights there were. It looked like it went on and on forever. It was like being in the madhouse at a fucking freak show.