Elias (GRIT Sector 1)

by Rebecca Sherwin

  A sudden niggling thought struck me and I lunged for Elias, gripping his shirt to stop my legs from failing me.

  "Is Seb here?"

  His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed at me.

  "Why would your boss be here?"

  I shrugged. "He went missing the night you cleared the loft."

  Sighing, he grabbed the top of my arm and turned me around, leading me back out. I stopped in the corridor, leaning over to rest my hands on my knees before I slid to the wall and cried into folded arms. I heard Elias crouch next to me and he rested his hand on my shoulder but I shrugged him off. I didn't want his hands on me. I'd hoped we were evading tax, or running some sort of embezzlement scheme. I'd never in a million years have imagined...this.

  Elias slid to the wall next to me, the side of his body brushing mine. I didn't have the strength to push him away. I wanted to run. I'd asked for this. I'd asked for the truth and now I couldn't handle it.

  "Sebastian is under surveillance, yes. He isn't here, no, but I can't promise that he won't be apprehended and taken to another Sector."

  "How many fucking Sectors are there?" I cried. "How many prisoners to you keep and torture?"

  "Don't ask questions you can't handle the answers to, Trixie. There are four Sectors. I have Sector 1, Trace has Sector 2; Beckett Sector 3 and Lawson Sector 4."

  "Where will Seb be taken?"

  "Your boss is a snake, Trixie, and Richard should never have allowed you to be in his presence."

  "What did he do?"

  "Ask your brother."

  I rolled my eyes, knowing he couldn't see me. I was tired of the secrets, of being passed around to get information from various people. I didn't want to know anymore, but I needed to know everything. I needed to see, hear and touch everything.

  "What is your Sector for?"

  "I control the empire. It's an institution for what would be the criminally insane, I guess. I deal with the most heinous crimes, the sickest criminals and the most doomed psychopaths. I take charge of the ones with no way back."

  The ones with no way back...why did I feel like he was talking about me?

  I hadn't meant to take her to Sam; that was never in the plan. I had intended to take her into the jewel room, to show her that there was some beauty and nobility to what we did, and then she'd gotten too curious. No sooner did she believe that Elizabeth was the hero, she'd begun to doubt us again—comparing us in today's world where she thought we had other options.

  So I took her to our prisoner; a man with no remorse for what he'd done, no regret for wiping his family from the earth, if only for the continuation of his name. There was no honour here in today's world and that's why we did what we did. Times had slipped, life had changed and people had become complacent, accepting the fate that they lived in a world of evil and nothing could be done to cure it. We'd given up. We'd given in and we'd lost our instinct to survive. We had evolved—into weak human beings with no determination to live.

  "Are there any more lessons?" Trixie asked, her head still buried in her arms, her legs curled up tightly in an attempt to comfort herself.

  "Yes, but not today. I'll take you back to the house and then I have to return."

  "What for? Are you going to draw more blood?"

  Yes, I was, but it would be my blood shed. I had to confess to making her bleed, making her cry, and making her come...multiple times.

  "No, not in the way you think. You need to have something to eat and I've asked William to come and keep you company."

  "I don't want William."

  A spark of hope flickered deep down, but she still hadn't looked at me. She wasn't going to beg me to stay with her, although a part of me—a very large part of me—wanted her to.

  "What do you want?"

  "I want to be on my own."

  "William is your friend. You should use him."

  "Like you do?" She looked at me then, and I wished she hadn't. She was crying; tears ran down her cheeks and her eyes were red raw. "What does William do for you?"

  I shrugged. Truthfully, I didn't really know. He was just around. "He works in the bank so I can work in the Sector."

  "Do you have help? Surely you can't supervise them all at once."

  She was giving me whiplash. Her confusion was darting her in all directions and she didn't know what she wanted to find out first. Her questions came in quick successions in a sporadic pattern and I had to be careful I didn't divulge too much information.

  "I have help. I have a second in command and he supervises where I can't."

  "It's Trace, isn't it?"

  I nodded. "Yes."

  I wondered how she knew, before I remembered Trace was her brother. He'd been there when she was brought home to live with the Ashford’s. He'd adopted her as much as Richard and Mae had, and I would never understand their relationship.

  "He isn't happy," she said, talking to herself more than me. "He doesn't like this life."

  "He likes it just fine. It's a stressful and pressurised life to lead, but don't doubt his commitment."

  "Does he have the right to leave? If he wants to?"

  "He doesn't want to."

  "But what if he did?"

  "He can't."

  Trixie nodded, finally realising that she too had no way out. She couldn't walk away if she wanted—none of us could.

  "Are you done?" I asked when I caught Trixie yawning.

  It was an effort not to yawn with her and I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle it. I would have given anything to crawl into bed with her and sleep the rest of the day away. But with each new day came a new lesson and brought us closer to whatever Ruby had planned.

  "I'm done." She nodded and scrambled to her feet.

  I snaked my arm around her waist and pulled her close, leading her along the corridor back to the entrance. Trixie's gaze lingered on Sam's cell as we passed it, but she said nothing else.

  “Father,” I said, stopping in front of Ambrose as he waited for me outside the cell.

  “Son.”

  I stood before him with my hands behind my back, prepared to confess and ask for forgiveness; prepared to take on his pride and claim a reward.

  It was so screwed up, I knew that, but what else could we do? Life had been this way for us for hundreds of years…and it was personal for my father.

  “What did you do?” he asked, letting us into the cell with his key.

  I hated that he still had one.

  “I did what I was supposed to do.”

  Ambrose closed the door behind us once I’d followed him in and I waited for his next instruction. I’d been warned of the punishments; once I took over they’d no longer involve being locked in a box barely big enough to provide breathing space. No, the punishments would get worse—they’d evolve as I did. Every time I failed, I’d be forced to suffer in a way criminals had centuries ago.

  “Which was…?”

  “I cut her, Father. I made her cry…” I bowed my head, prepared to confess the final sin. The worst sin, if there were such a thing. “I made her come.”

  “Ah.” With a smile and sigh of amusement, Ambrose circled the room while I stayed rooted to the spot.

  I’d been here before; I knew what went on here. It wasn’t a holding cell. It was an activity chamber. Prisoners weren’t often punished in the six-by-six stone boxes they lived in…it was part of the psychology of punishment to remove them, walk them towards a different room while their minds wandered with the possibilities of what waited for them, and give them another realm of hell while their final home waited for them to return. The room wasn’t filled with an array of devices—we brought those in with us, but Ambrose had been here to prepare. He’d come here early, when I’d asked him to join me in the Sector after Trixie had gone to bed, and he’d readied the cell for my absolution.

  “How did you cut her?” he asked.

  I shook my head, but I had to be careful. I could watch my father and infer every little action he too
k, but I couldn’t let him know. The second he realised I was into his mind, he’d shut me out and I’d have no hope.

  “Lingchi,” I said on a whisper, almost ashamed that I had taken things that far…deathly ashamed because I knew my father wouldn’t feel the same way.

  Even in the dark, his eyes lit up like sadistic beacons that called for mine to crawl in. He smiled, his crooked mouth, frozen on one side after a fight with the underground hadn’t gone so well, turned up and he stopped still, thrusting his hands behind his back.

  “Interesting.” I hated it when he said that. I’d hated it since I was kid; he’d say it when he didn’t want to divulge information or show a reaction. “Why?”

  I took a deep breath and kept my shoulders squared. “Because I could.”

  My father laughed with sick pride. I hoped it would spare me excruciating pain, but it made my stomach roll. My father got off on the punishment. His transition had been the most interesting story of our lineage.

  “Good answer, son. Did she cry?” He took a step closer, eagerly awaiting confirmation. I nodded. “Did she scream? Did she bleed gold?”

  “She was gagged, but she tried to. She bled gold. Like an Egyptian treasury.”

  Was my father asking if Trixie was alien, bleeding a different colour to the rest of us?

  No. Not literally, at least.

  He wanted to know if her blood was rich, if she shed it like a queen and gushed like a velvet river. He wanted to know if she bled like an Ashford…and like the family she had no idea had existed. Trixie’s blood was gold because it was rare. It was pure. It deserved worshipping.

  He laughed, shoving his hands into his pockets to stroke his reaction. I kept my eyes on his, refusing to entertain the idea that he was thinking about my Ashford. I knew his mind had slipped off elsewhere and, for now, Trixie was safe, even in thought.

  “You made her come?” he asked, returning from the past and taking a step closer. “Take your shirt off.”

  “Yes, I made her come…multiple times.”

  “How?”

  “The how doesn’t matter.” I refused to feed his fantasy.

  “When?”

  “Since she’s been on the estate.” I refused to let him compare our secret to whatever he’d been doing at the time. I refused to let him imagine her in the office, the library…the Sector.

  “What was it like?” I sighed. “I need to know, son.”

  I hated that he was telling the truth. I hated that, no matter how much power I took from him and held over him, my absolution would always be his. Even the mightiest of all kings had needed someone to crack the whip when they sinned.

  “It was like heaven, Father. For one second, it was like the world didn’t exist. Evolution, history, present and future began with her. Riches encompassed her and she became priceless.”

  It pained me to put a value to Trixie’s orgasm, but I knew how to appease my father. I knew exactly what he wanted to hear and gave it to him, giving him as little as possible while he believed he had it all. To Ambrose Blackwood, wealth was everything.

  “I’m proud of you, son,” he said, reminding me of the personal vendetta he had against my GRIT student. “But you know what must be done.”

  “I understand what the elders would want.”

  The ghosts. Those beings that didn’t exist, but we pretended we believed they did so we could continue to change and evolve at our own pace while having excuses for everything we did wrong.

  We had to honour them, which meant my father would put aside his own arousal, his own pain, his own fantasy, to put on a display to people who no longer existed.

  He nodded to remind me of his earlier instruction. I hadn’t removed my shirt, because I had held onto hope that he would hear enough to just let me go. I shouldn’t have thought like that. I was the leader of this empire and if I didn’t respect the rules, how could I expect anyone else to? I stripped out of my clothes and dropped them to the ground by the door. I stood in front of my father in nothing but the boxer briefs I’d pulled on after dirtying the last pair thinking about Trixie, and he took another step, forcing me back to the wall without laying a finger on me.

  He was terrifying. I was one of a handful of people in the city who would brave the world at night, and yet I didn’t want to brave my father. His shocking white hair and abominable blue eyes, pale skin and icy interior were enough to freeze hell over just so he could burn the very inferno that commanded it.

  He reached behind me and grabbed a chain. It clinked against the wall as the heavy links licked my arm into cold sweats before he snapped the collar around my neck and the lock clicked shut.

  “I will not make you bleed, son,” he said, stepping back to the wall. “I don’t care that you shed Ashford blood…if she’s still breathing you didn’t shed enough.” I winced at his words, but kept it contained inside. I wouldn’t let him see a weakness. I kept my face blank and dipped my chin up to show him I agreed. “I don’t care how many tears she cried. If she hasn’t lost the will to live and offered her soul to you now it’s useless, you didn’t upset her the way I expect of you. Until she is compliant and submissive, totally reliant on you for both physical and mental survival, she hasn’t cried enough.” The reminder of tears cascading over her cheeks made me want to vomit. I never wanted to inflict the kind of pain Ambrose expected me to. “But I will punish you for making her come, and I will punish you for bringing me from my chambers to hear any words other than those I long to hear.” I knew exactly what those words were. “You will spend the night in this cell. You will be freed before dawn to resume your schedule, but tonight, you belong to the underground.”

  With that, Ambrose turned around and grabbed the industrial hose and ice cold water shot from the nozzle at an impossible speed before I could take a breath. The water froze me to the bone and the pressure forced me back to the wall, until I was pressed to the stones and choking as I tried desperately to inhale. There was nowhere else for the water to go. It hit me hard and rough, spraying back off the wall but not off of me. My skin absorbed as much as it could, but eventually it began to give way and I felt the first layer of flesh begin to burn with the urge to break away. I prayed he wouldn’t tear me open, that the searing heat against the freezing cold was just my body trying to adjust. I threw my arms up to cover my face, creating a pocket where I could suck in strangled breaths and spit the water back out. Jesus, I thought he was going to kill me with the most powerful natural force on this earth, showing me just how powerful he was to be able to control it. When my legs shook with the urge to break against the force, my arms smarted as the water grazed my skin, and everything inside me burned with fear and lack of oxygen, the hose shut off and silence descended with the fading drips.

  “Remember not to try and sit down, son.”

  My father walked across the cell and I heard the door open as I fought to breathe and forced my head to regain some support to watch him walk out and close the door behind him. When he’d locked the door and immersed me in almost complete darkness, I looked at the chain around my neck for the first time since he’d locked me in it.

  I cried out, knowing no one could hear me when I realised there was a foot of chain leading from the collar to the wall…if I was lucky.

  If I didn’t stay standing; if I lost consciousness for one second, if I found sleep for a fleeting moment; if I escaped this cell to return to Italy or Spain or France, for a fraction of a second, I’d hang myself. Taking a deep breath, I folded my arms over my numb, shivering body and leaned against the wall, preparing to stay up all night on guard.

  I’d be guarding my own life from suicide I didn’t want to commit.

  It was warm and sunny in the outside world, and I wanted to stay here forever. The sun kissed my bare stomach and a gentle tropical breeze whispered over my naked legs. The water lapped musically in the distance and I sat up to watch the ebb and flow of the ocean, as birds flew overhead and tinkling steel drums played behind me. I became
conscious of the fantasy; I knew I was sleeping, but I didn’t care. I allowed my imagination to take control and it rewarded me with Elias bathing in the ocean. His hair was wet, falling to his forehead like a dark cap to shield his eyes from the sun. His chest was bare, sculpted and lean, large and strong yet soft. He made his way out of the water, running his hands through his hair and I took the time to look at strong biceps, lean forearms with protruding veins that made me lick my lips and squirm in my place on the sun lounger. He was watching me, with a hungry, lustful look that promised euphoria when he finally reached me. The water lapped at his waist and moved lower, bobbing up the boardshorts that clung to his powerful legs. Step by step, the shallowing water revealed toned thighs, lean calves and bare feet covered in sand as he exited the water and strode purposefully towards me, drinking me in with those dark eyes that made me weak.

  He was smiling.

  He was smiling at me and I felt the corners of my mouth raise in return.

  There was no danger; there were no threats or barricades. Only us, and we were happy.

  Elias crawled onto the end of the lounger and crawled towards me, settling between my legs and gripping my hips as he pulled me towards him to rest on his thighs. I sighed with anticipation and waited for him to make his move…

  “What the fuck?”

  Ice-cold water hit my stomach, sprayed on my face and soaked the bed sheets beneath me. When I opened my eyes and rolled from my bed onto the floor, I saw Elias standing on the other side, dressed entirely in black…and it was still dark.

  “What are you doing?” I shrieked, scrambling back to the wall and pulling my soaked t-shirt over my knees. “You weren’t taught to knock before entering someone’s bedroom?”

  “New day, new lesson.” He dropped the bucket, shoved his hands in his pockets, and it gave me a second to notice something wasn’t right. He wasn’t holding himself the same way. He looked…nervous. Uncomfortable. “Come on. Get up, get dry and get your workout clothes on.”

  “I don’t have workout clothes. I’m not allowed out in the dark, remember?”