by Black, Paula
Was he baiting me? Chipping me down? Or invigorating me?
I was strong, but prone and naked, and being skin-raped by a crazy man with a mechanical needle held to my ass had knocked my pain threshold to nil.
Everything was worse when you were bared to the world. Literally, if the camera was broadcasting to more than just Dante and his hell crew.
The pain tripped over my skin, and Konstantyn huffed when I shifted, trying to settle into it. I jumped, and the needle skidded. Wincing, I caught my lip in my teeth to stifle a whimper. Konstantyn’s muttered curses quelled any further movement.
The camera blinked at me and I glared back. No moving. No screaming. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
With my hands bound to the backs of my thighs, I had nothing to brace onto, nothing to anchor myself, except the fabric of Konstantyn’s combats, rough on my bare skin. I grabbed at them, fisting tight, and held on for dear life as he moved the buzzing gun down over the curve of my ass.
If I was feeling things correctly, he was drawing a... who was I kidding? I had no idea what he was doing. He could be writing his name there for all I knew.
Soon, all that occupied my thoughts was the rhythmic pain, the humming in my bones and the soft Ukrainian murmurs that were so far from his earlier cutting words they were almost a lull. The entire situation became hypnotic. Konstantyn’s weight anchored me to the bed and the camera blinked at me. I couldn’t move anymore, numb from the waist down, and crushed by the pressure of what was going to happen to me.
“Nearly done, Neva,” he said, with that altered softness that confused me. Between topping up the ink, and setting it to my skin, his hands were gentle. When he handled me like that, I could almost forget he was branding me as a sacrifice for some sick ritual.
I could only imagine how this all looked to the voyeurs devouring my humiliation like rats on a corpse. It would look brutal, no doubt, with me tied down and Konstantyn’s large body overpowering my slight frame.
My body shook, the camera blinked, and a tear spilled over from where I’d been fighting it back, a shaky sound in my throat the only show of how close I was to breaking. If I wasn’t already broken. My mind and body were so fractured with pain and fear that I could be in pieces, with only the tethers of hope stringing me together.
“Neva?” Konstantyn’s voice stirred me.
The buzzing pain had stopped and I groaned, feeling the burn down my thigh. His palm struck the freshly tattooed area of skin and I twisted as much as I could to glare at him as fresh tears stung my eyes with the bolt of pain.
“Get it together,” he said, releasing my hands from the backs of my legs, only to cuff me to the bed. “You belong to Dante now.” He unzipped the bag and began packing up his implements.
Tentatively, I stretched my aching legs. Any relief was short-lived as a flush of pins and needles stabbed and prickled over my limbs. I lay there on my stomach, cheek to the bare, stained mattress, waiting for the pain to pass.
“Mariya,” I whispered hoarsely. In spite of everything, I wanted to warn him. Though it changed nothing, I needed him to know that he’d sold me out for a lie.
“Shut up,” he barked, and I had to bite down on my lip to keep from screaming at him. “Don’t get too comfortable,” he said. “The Seven are assembling as we speak. I’m coming back for you, and when I do, you best be prepared. Do you understand?”
No. I didn’t understand. How in hell did he expect me to ‘prepare’ for my own torture? Biting back my frustration, I just glared at him.
“Be ready for anything,” he said, and as he backed out the door, the bastard had the gall to wink at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He was coming back for me, he’d said, but the minutes and hours ticked by, measured in cramps and dread thoughts. Mariya had come back at some point, with a plate of food and a cup of water. Like I could eat. I hardly dared believe Konstantyn was on my side. He’d tattooed me with Dante’s mark. I’d heard him shoot Gracie. The good guy didn’t kill the victims.
Where he’d branded me, my ass was raw and tingling, like I’d scratched at a vicious sunburn, and the solitude was making me insane. I just wanted it over with, I wanted the waiting to stop. They needed to get on with whatever they were going to do with me and then leave me the hell alone. I’d thought I was strong, that I wasn’t crumbling, but Konstantyn’s presence had widened the fractures in my resolve, and left me wondering whether I was going to lose my mind before I lost my life.
The lock clunked open and I lifted my head wearily to see who they’d sent for me this time. It was just Mariya, her face set in cold beauty that chilled me when she looked my way.
“You must dress. They will come for you soon.”
She unlocked my cuffs enough to bundle me into a luxurious scarlet silk robe. Her delicate hands smoothed the fabric over my shoulders, and I felt the stitches of embroidery against my spine.
“What’s on the back?” I asked, trying to twist the robe around to see. All I could make out were some black lines.
With a tut of irritation, Mariya straightened it out again and cuffed my hands back together. “It is the ouroboros, symbol of life and rebirth, the same as you wear on your skin. You won’t be wearing it for long.”
Like that was some consolation.
She gathered up my untouched plates and left in a swish of blonde hair. I wasn’t sorry to see her go, but her exit only meant the bad stuff would be coming soon.
Swamped in thoughts, I rubbed a trembling hand down my polished skin. That Mariya was here, willingly, was a revelation, and I wondered just how much of it Konstantyn knew. If he knew at all. He had to.
Curling into my robe, I fought to get a grip on my nerves, twitching every time someone poked their head around the door of my cell, but none of them stopped longer than it took to leer at me with crude suggestions and drunken promises.
I knew their faces. Alexei and the Friar from the club, with his scarred cheek, came as no surprise, but there were others too, including a high-ranking politician I recognised from his election posters, and a doctor I’d met at the morgue when I went to identify Daniel’s body. Was he the ‘Butcher’ Gracie mentioned?
Knowing that they’d been there, watching me, manipulating me, all this time, did nothing to calm the paranoia wired into my brain. Dante said there were seven. He’d also said Konstantyn would replace Raider. Counting Dante himself, and the four I’d identified still left one more.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but when Oliver Dalton’s leering face had appeared at my door it hit me like a sucker-punch.
I ignored him, turning my face to the wall in an attempt to look unaffected and aloof. No doubt I just looked terrified. That none of them even bothered to mask their faces spoke volumes about my chances of ever leaving the place alive.
“Get up.”
I bolted to my feet at the sudden snap, my head whipping around to find Konstantyn standing at the cell door, keys in hand as he unlocked the door. I shrank back.
This was it.
Too lost in thought and fake bravado, I hadn’t heard him coming, and now I wasn’t ready. You couldn’t prepare for something like this, but I’d been trying, and he’d shot it all to hell by being the one to take me down.
The door creaked when he pulled it wider for me, and I stepped forward with my robe gathered around me, refusing to look at him. If I looked shaken, I wasn’t about to let him mock me for it.
“It’s time.”
“You know, everyone keeps saying that, and it’s never actually time.” I exhaled, following him out into the tunnel, shivering at the change in temperature. I hadn’t realised how warm the cell was until I stepped into the chill of the hallway. Or maybe that was just the ice of terror creeping up my spine. Even my kneecaps were trembling.
We got three cells down the hall before he turned on me.
I leapt back, but he caught my chain before I could stumble too far, and suddenly I was looking up into
Konstantyn’s serious, keyed-up gaze. The green in his dark eyes glittered with something I recognised. It was fight, and determination, and it was the same look he’d given me before he’d stepped out to face the police.
“We must hurry. They’re drunk, but they’re not stupid. We have only minutes before I’m missed and someone discovers I cut the video feed.”
I knew I was blinking dumbly at him, even when he removed the cuffs and I rubbed the chafe of metal from my raw skin. My wrists were bleeding, but I was still staring at Konstantyn like he was the devil in a halo.
He glanced over at me once, in concern, then pulled a big bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the cell we’d stopped in front of. I managed to shuffle through my nervous shock to peer inside.
The cell was empty but for the two bodies rolled in plastic sheeting and the bullet holes in the wall. My gorge rose. Everyone knows that shape. We see it on films, in TV shows, but in life, knowing someone was dead in there, that someone I knew was dead in there... Fuck, I was going to be sick.
Konstantyn moved with fast purpose, and I watched him with morbid fascination. There was no blood. Very clean, like he’d promised Alexei. He released the knots binding the plastic on one of the bundles, and it rolled away with a sickening thud.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Gracie, it’s time. Are you ready?”
My eyes popped back open at Konstantyn’s words and only got wider at the sound of Gracie’s voice.
“God am I ever ready,” she said.
Gracie was alive, if a bit roughed up. She struggled to her feet, dabbing a finger against her swollen, bloodied lip, then winced, making a show of breathing that thrust her enhanced chest out. “I thought you’d never come back. I couldn’t breathe in there, not knowing I was lying next to a goddamned corpse.” She aimed a kick at the other roll. Raider didn’t move or grunt. He was dead for real. Gracie cast me a bright smile and fluffed her hair, and I smiled shakily back.
Konstantyn cut off the nice wow-you’re-really-not-dead reunion with his gruff voice. “You remember the way out?”
Gracie turned towards him with a frown that looked like she was struggling with everything. I couldn’t blame her. He was scary, even when he was on your side.
“I think so,” she said.
He growled and moved around me, scouting the hallway. “That’s not good enough.”
“I’ll find it.” Gracie said resolutely, meeting his eyes.
After a moment he nodded, and began splitting up the keys, dividing them between us. I clutched my bundle rigidly, frozen to the spot, awaiting his command. I wasn’t about to do anything to hinder our escape.
“Open the cells, get them out, now.” Konstantyn’s demand rushed us into fumbling action, trying different keys in the locks until they clicked open and those victims who were strong enough shambled out, like corporeal ghosts, into the hallway.
I unlocked another cell, peered in, and was about to pull out again when I noticed the small figure huddled in the corner closest to the door. I knew her. Not well, but it was the skinny girl from my first audition. She was in a bad way, pressed up against the wall like she could disappear into it. I knew from experience that didn’t work.
“Can you walk?” I asked softly, crouching down by the door and trying to find her eyes. She finally looked up at me, warily ascertaining my trustworthiness. She must have seen something in my gaze that told her everything she needed to know, because she shoved shakily to her feet.
I reached to lend her my strength.
“Walk? I’ll fucking dance my way out of this cesspit if I have to,” she said.
I chuckled weakly and wrapped an arm around her bony waist to lead her out to where the walking wounded were gathering in the tunnel. They all looked dazed, some blinking in the light after being left so long in relative darkness.
Konstantyn emerged from a cell with an unconscious woman in his arms. At least I hoped she was unconscious. With the way she was lolling I wasn’t even sure she was alive.
“She’ll only slow us down,” Gracie snarked, breaking into my own fears over carrying a corpse out with us.
Konstantyn cut her a glare and shifted the woman gently. “We’re not leaving anyone behind. Now, we go. Show us the way.” He was rigid, a wall of dominating tension, and I didn’t blame Gracie for the nervous look she shot him as she led us around a dark corner and through a maze of tunnels.
I could hear the rumble of the trains through the damp walls. We were so close to civilisation, and yet we were still in Hell, the path to salvation painfully slow-going between the injured and the drugged and the dazed. Eventually we passed some bright yellow high-voltage signs and metal vents that warmed the air over our heads, and Gracie slowed our conga-line of fear.
“I don’t remember this place.” Her voice trembled and the uncertainty in it shot a warning shiver down my spine.
“What do you mean you don’t remember?” Konstantyn’s voice was a lash, and Gracie cowered, trying to recover her tongue when he was glowering at her.
“I think we should have taken the left back there, instead of the right. Or maybe this was the way. Shit, I can’t think. Not enough oxygen in that goddamn plastic burrito you wrapped me in.”
She scrubbed her scalp, scratched at the insides of her elbows and curled in on herself. Panic showed in the whites of her eyes, while the other victims merely leaned against the walls looking defeated.
I refused to slump with them. I could hear the outside, and I wanted to get to it so badly, I could practically taste the River Thames.
“You told me you knew the way,” Konstantyn growled.
“Excuse me, but I was higher than the Empire State at the time, and carrying a two hundred pound weight on my shoulders. I was afraid for my life. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the landmarks.” Gracie hissed at him, her teeth bared in the fever of her fear, and my heart clenched.
Konstantyn loomed over her, with the girl still limp and unconscious in his arms.
“You don’t find us that manhole, and we’re all dead.”
Frowning at him, I left my charge leaning against the wall and went to stand by Gracie. It was a show of solidarity, when he was being an ass to the one person who could get us out. When his brows lowered in my direction, I resisted the urge to huddle in my robe, and stood my ground.
“You’re not helping, Konstantyn. Knock it off.” I rubbed a hand down Gracie’s arm, stopping her scratching tic and making her look at me. “Gracie, just take it down a notch. You’ve done this before.” I believed in her. I had to, or I was going to lie down with the others and give up.
Either she saw that, or Konstantyn’s backing-off gave her some courage, because her spine straightened and her jaw thrust forwards, and she primped her roughed up body like she was going out on stage.
“Right. I can do this.” She nodded, looking around to orient herself.
I didn’t have time to praise her. Konstantyn had settled the unconscious woman beside another on the floor. He snatched my elbow and dragged me off to the side of the group.
“We might not be getting out of here,” he said roughly.
I huffed at him, eyes narrowed. I did not need his pessimism when I was already riding my emotional limits way beyond capacity. “We absolutely are getting out of here. You’re Lazarus, remember? You never stay down.”
He smiled, the green in his eyes sparkling tenderly, and my heart absolutely did not turn over. “Da. But just in case, I want you to have this.”
I watched as he reached to the back of his neck and unclipped the chain holding the bullet. Then he hooked his hands behind my neck and fixed the skin-warmed links around my throat.
I toyed with the bullet dangling between my breasts. “Your grandpa’s last bullet? I can’t take that. I –”
“It’s not just a bullet,” he said. Konstantyn twisted the casing. It unscrewed, and he tapped the contents into his palm.
Inside the hollow casing w
as a long thin capsule that he folded into my palm.
“What is it?” I jiggled it, and peered up at him curiously.
“Potassium Cyanide.”
My brows shot up. Definitely not aspirin for the tattoo pain then. “Oh shit.”
A suicide pill.
Konstantyn inclined his head. “So you have a choice. If it comes down to it, crack the capsule between your teeth. It contains fifty times the lethal dose. Guaranteed death in minutes. It’s old though, and fragile. Just be very, very sure.” His eyes wouldn’t let me look away, and in that moment, I truly knew he’d been on my side all along. No one could fake the emotion in his gaze, or the fact that he was giving me an escape he could have used himself.
“Thank you.” I laughed at the terrible tragedy of it all, and his fingers twitched on mine.
“It’s either the least, or the most romantic thing anyone’s ever given me. But I’m not going to need it.” Getting up on my toes, I used his hand to drag him down and crushed my lips to his in a hard kiss that was everything I couldn’t say in the time we had. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
He pulled back to rest his forehead to mine, and his fingers played in my hair. “I’m sorry about the tattoo. I had no choice.”
My ass stung at the mention of it, but I smiled crookedly and shrugged. Nothing we could do about it now. “I know. It’s okay. Better it was you.”
We separated when Gracie called us off in another direction. I took the weight of the girl I’d rescued and helped her carry on through the tunnels. Konstantyn lingered behind, scooping up the comatose girl, and hastening the others on. With no telling what they’d endured, they were tragedies waiting to happen, and I kept an eye on every wobble from our bedraggled gang.
As Gracie reached the next junction, her excitement mounted, ringing down the corridor. “Here! I know this place! This is it!”
She led us into a dead-end, blocked off by wire and danger signs.