by Black, Paula
Despair rang through my bones as I realised this couldn’t be it. We were trapped, and any hope I had left – was illuminated by a dim light! Built into the wall, metal rungs scaled the brick, leading up a short way into darkness.
Konstantyn caught my eyes and grinned. So damn close now, all we had to do was climb.
“The ladder leads up under the bridge, where I brought Danny.” Gracie beamed, brimming with her anxious pride at having got it right. Finally.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Konstantyn gruffed. He lowered his unconscious burden to the floor and scaled the ladder in a few lithe moves, heaving up the manhole cover at the top. A circle of yellow light flooded in from the streetlights above, and our fellow captives murmured amongst themselves, an anticipatory shuffle of movement pressing them forward as they became invigorated by the proximity of the outside world. We could smell it now, taste the fresh cool air coming in. So damn close.
“Neva, you go first.” Konstantyn stepped down beside me and I shot him a look.
“What about you?”
“I go last.” His accent roughened and I could hear him gearing up to brook no argument.
“Then I’ll wait, and go with you.”
“Neva.” There it was, the guttural rumble of my name in his chest when he got all commanding. I shook my head and stood my ground.
“We go together, or I don’t go at all.” I wasn’t leaving him now. I couldn’t live with myself if I got out and he didn’t. I had to be sure.
Gracie’s voice interrupted his next protest, and I was grateful. “You know I hate to break up a romantic moment, but this is bad timing, don’t you think? I say ladies first.” She rolled her eyes and climbed up the ladder, her nails clicking as she gripped the rungs. “Come on, let’s go.”
To her credit though, she waited at the top to help the others. We got the walking wounded out as quickly as they could drag themselves up the ladder. Most struggled with the climb, but soon the line of captives had disappeared, leaving only us, and the unconscious woman who couldn’t be roused.
Konstantyn hauled her gently over his shoulder and his strong hand curled around my wrist, urging me to the ladder. This time, I went with a smile.
“You just want to look up my robe, don’t you.”
“Yes, I’m a dirty pervert who wants to check out your ass climbing a ladder. Now get up there!” As my feet took to the cool rungs, he swatted my ass, and I narrowed my eyes playfully, ignoring the heat his touch inspired. Gracie was above me, beckoning to me to hurry. I was so on-board with that, her smile something to step towards, knowing Konstantyn was right at my back.
“That’s far enough.” The voice came from below, and in the split second before I looked down, I saw Gracie’s eyes peel wide, her smile dropping away like a cloud covering the sun. I dropped my gaze, and as I twisted, saw a small red dot aimed right between my breasts. Mariya’s perfect face smiled coldly up at me as she trained her laser-sighted weapon over my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For tense seconds, I couldn’t breathe, not with that dot shimmering like a spot of blood on my skin. Below me on the ladder, Konstantyn, with the comatose woman slung over his shoulder, had turned to stone. Finally, my brain kicked into gear, and my head whipped up to where Gracie was still frozen at the exit. “Close the manhole Gracie,” I whispered. “Run. Send help, please!”
Gracie looked unsure at first, but then her hands moved and the metal circle slid back into place with a clunk, throwing us back into the relative gloom of the underground. That dot was clear as day though, and my heart pounded beneath it.
“Down, now. Or I shoot the girl.”
Mariya’s voice made my skin crawl, and my feet felt glued to the rungs as Konstantyn’s surprise rumbled back down to her.
“Mariya –”
“I said climb down.” There wasn’t a hint of emotion in that command, and as Konstantyn descended, I followed.
“Mariya, it’s me, Kon, your brother. It’s not too late.”
The pain in his voice broke my heart.
“Wrong. You’re ten years too late. I remember no brother.” Hard as nails, she stood waiting for us when our feet touched the floor and armed guards appeared from the shadows, circling us.
Mariya pressed the muzzle of the gun into the back of my skull, and apparently that was all it took for Konstantyn to follow her commands.
“Put the woman down,” Mariya said to him.
He handed the unconscious girl into the waiting arms of one of the guards.
Mariya barked orders for her to be locked back in her cell, and organised a group of the others to go above-ground and round-up the escapees. She was fearsome to behold, and they set off without argument. Mariya accepted some heavy-duty cuffs from another guard who appeared by her side.
I flinched back, but she didn’t come for me. Her delicate hands manacled Konstantyn’s thick wrists, and with the remaining guard’s guns all trained on us, he had no way of fighting the restraint without getting pumped full of whatever they were loaded with.
“You don’t need your hands free to complete the ritual,” she said with a shrug, the muzzle of her gun nudging at his shoulder to get him moving down the corridor. “Come. Dante hates it when people are late for his parties.”
I could almost feel the red pulses of the laser sights trained on my body, and I followed as meekly as I could. Not hard to do, considering I was naked and trembling beneath a flimsy robe.
“After it’s done, you’ll be expendable, magical vagina girl. Nobody runs from Dante and lives. I thought you’d have learned that lesson by now. Not such a clever slut, after all, are you?”
I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my hope alive, when every step was making my despair rush back. We’d been so close, and now what? The only consolation I could find was that we’d managed to get Gracie and the others out. If they’d had the sense to run, then maybe no one else would have to die this night. My fate, it seemed, was inevitable.
I took the small second of darkness that accompanied our entrance into a candle-lit room to slip the capsule Konstantyn had given me between my cheek and gum.
If I had to die, let it me on my own terms. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. Whatever Dante believed, I’d be dead long before he got what he wanted from me. My one regret, and the only thing stopping me from biting down on the capsule then and there, was fear for Konstantyn, and what they were going to do to him.
As my eyes adjusted to darkness and candles, I made out the apparatus I’d seen many times in those hastily thumbed-through photos. Barron’s altar, Mariya had called it. The metal, seven-pointed star was raised off the ground, to waist height. This was what they tied their victims to when they…
I took a deep breath as multiple hands led me towards the altar. The music reverberating around the candlelit room was horribly familiar. It was that same Beastrider arrangement Konstantyn and I had danced to at the auditions, and the candles seemed to flicker eerily to the beat.
The muzzle of the gun bruised my shoulder, shoving me roughly forward, and I trembled before the dark metal star with its chains and restraints. Huge and heavy, the device wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Medieval torture chamber. For all I knew, that’s exactly where it came from.
Konstantyn’s roaring curses were white noise in my head as the robe was stripped from me, and Mariya’s hands urged me up onto the raised contraption.
I shivered uncontrollably while multiple hands bound my wrists and ankles to four of the star’s points, the metal so cold against my goose-fleshed skin it burned.
I didn’t fight them, couldn’t even summon the will to punch Mariya in her pretty face as she locked my wrists down. I was too far gone. Through the blur of my tears, the whole scene had become a surreal haze, while across the room Konstantyn was fighting so hard, it took six of them to chain him to the wall and gag his mouth.
Only when he was restrained did the real menace arrive. Five naked,
aroused men, their upper faces obscured by elaborately painted masks, filed silently into the room and circled the star. Sinister shadows and light cut angles across their horned animal heads, but no masks could have been more terrifying than the evil of the men hiding behind them. There were supposed to be seven, which meant one was missing. Dante himself, I decided, identifying the others by build and body hair.
Hands brushed along my flank, my stomach, the curve of my breasts, every touch eliciting another whimper I had to swallow down, another glare I had to muster, when terror had me aching to close my eyes and block it all out. If only I could. If only I could pretend it was a nightmare and wake up back in my apartment.
I tongued the capsule wedged against my gum. I had my way out, thanks to Konstantyn, but once I took it, there would be no waking up, no going back.
Not yet, Neva, not yet.
Bravery or cowardice? I wasn’t sure. This was the final solution, a dark and lonely path I didn’t want to walk alone, and how was I supposed to leave him behind, suffering, when he’d risked everything for me and the others?
Over by the wall, he rattled his cuffs, cursing and screaming around the gag. He was strength, when I was falling apart. He was fighting, when I couldn’t even scratch my nose.
“Lazarus,” a voice said from the shadows, “give up your struggle. Embrace your fate.”
I recognised Dante’s voice as he stepped from the darkness into the flickering candlelight, and the creature that emerged did bear a striking resemblance to Dante, albeit with gross physical alterations. His eyes glowed red, the pupils deformed into reptilian slits, and a pair of twisted horns poked through the curly blond thatch of his hair. His skin was mottled grey and green, and the massive erection protruding from his hips would have done a stallion proud.
Contact lenses, prosthetics, body paint, I thought. Had to be. Very clever. My heart pounded between my ears. Very fucking creepy. The things you could do these days with special effects makeup. The lengths this crazy man would go to, just to uphold his psychotic charade. It seemed to be working, though. The cluster of men around me ceased their petting and branched out to stand at the points of the star like tongue-lolling betas, hanging on their alpha’s command. The crazy man had the cream of London’s police, politicians and doctors naked, sweaty and eating from his palm.
Chest out, chin up, Dante strutted up to Konstantyn, his muscles much more defined than I’d imagined when he’d been wearing the suit.
Konstantyn growled around the gag and thrashed in his chains.
“So much anger,” Dante said, his voice deceptively soft, “so much life beating in this chest.” He laid a palm on Konstantyn’s sternum and Konstantyn let out a muffled scream. When he pulled away, a smoking, blistered handprint remained.
Jesus. What had he used to burn him? Acid? Dante looked unaffected, but I could see the whites of Konstantyn’s eyes as he roared in agony.
“Don’t fight it, Lazarus. You were chosen for this, hand-picked when you were just a boy. It is a great privilege. This glorious body will live on, long after you are dead.” He leaned forward and flicked a forked, serpentine tongue over Konstantyn’s cheek.
I squirmed, helpless, horrified, as Konstantyn recoiled from the monster Dante had become.
“You are destined to become a link in my chain of never-ending life. Have I not loved you, nurtured you as my son? Groomed you for this very purpose? Without my intervention, you would have died on your first mission. You’ve been on borrowed time ever since. Embrace the end, and the beginning.”
Only then did I see the blade Dante had concealed in his other hand: a bone-hilted dagger mounted with the seven-pointed star. He thrust and I screamed at the flash of silver that buried hilt-deep beneath Konstantyn’s ribs. Blood poured and Dante hummed happily as he accepted a chalice from one of his followers and held it under the gush of blood spilling from the wound. “The final sacrifice. Even in death you serve me, Lazarus. Faithful unto death.”
He stood eye-to-eye with Konstantyn, and with every laboured breath Konstantyn took, blood pumped into the engraved cup. “It is an intimate thing, possessing another man’s body,” Dante said. “More intimate even than the sexual rites necessary to complete the exchange.” Dante ripped off the gag, grasped Konstantyn by the nape of his neck, and pressed their lips firmly together.
As soon as he pulled back from the kiss, Konstantyn spoke. “Neva,” he cried, and it broke my heart to hear the words rattle in his throat, “you know what to do.”
Yes, I knew. But was I brave enough to go through with it alone? A hot tear slid from the outer corner of my eye and into my hairline.
“Your little bitch knows what to do alright. She’ll scream on command. She’ll take the seed of the seven in her belly and bear me a child conceived through pain. Just like the mother, and the mother’s mother before her, the creation of new life will be the catalyst for my rebirth.”
That was his plan? To impregnate me? I stifled the hysterical laugh that bubbled up my throat. “Hey, Psycho,” I called, “I think you’ve got a problem here. Haven’t you heard of birth control? Guess that wasn’t an issue for you demon types back in the Middle Ages.”
Dante spun on a laugh. “That was taken care of at your first audition.”
I flashed back to a moment in the changing room, when my pills had fallen out of my bag into the floor. I’d been so sure they’d been zipped inside my makeup purse. Jeez. They’d manipulated even that? I shuddered. No matter, I thought, probing the capsule with my tongue. This whole psychotic charade was never going to get that far. “You’ve thought of everything,” I said sarcastically. Everything except this one small thing.
“I have, and this time, there will be no running,” Dante said, turning back to Konstantyn. “As your friend here is discovering, the price of disloyalty is an eternity of pain.” Dante laughed, and Konstantyn sprayed his face with bloody spittle.
“You dare spit in my face!” He snarled up close to Konstantyn, toe to toe with him and trembling with rage. “Again and again, you disappoint me, and again and again, I give you chances.” He yanked the gag back into place. “Don’t worry,” he breathed, “you’ll live long enough to watch us bleed her, to see us fuck her, to hear her screams of terror turn to pleasure. You wanted in on this. Welcome to your ringside seat. I am a man of my word, am I not?” He scrubbed a hand down his mottled face and paced away from Konstantyn, squaring up to each of the other assembled men, poking them each in turn in the centre of their chests, daring them to contradict him. “You won your election. You got promoted to detective. Your daughter’s leukaemia is cured. Wealth, fame, success beyond your imaginings. Whom do you worship?”
“Barron,” they chanted through their grotesque masks. “Barron. Barron.”
Dante Barron dipped a finger into the cup, and in Konstantyn’s warm blood traced a seven-pointed star on my quivering stomach. When he was done, that forked tongue flicked out, gleaning the remnants of blood from his hand. The bass music dropped in time with their intonations, and my heart stopped.
It was a signal. It was the start. The beginning of the end.
Konstantyn dangled weakly in his chains, slumped in pain and breathing so shallowly, I could barely see the rise and fall of his powerful chest.
I had no hope left. It trickled away with the ribbons of blood seeping from the man who’d fought so hard to save me.
I couldn’t look away from him, even when the first lash broke like a streak of fire across my stomach. Another lash, then another, painted my skin in red lines that beaded crimson, and once they broke that first cry from my lungs, I couldn’t drag the sounds back. The cuts got deeper with every flick of Alexei’s wrist. The masked Friar wielded a lit candle, splashing wax like molten lava to my whip-raw flesh. The pain of it struck like lightning, bowing my body up until I was straining at my bonds, and making the Friar spill more of that searing agony over my breasts.
I didn’t understand how I was still conscious.
With tears rolling down my cheeks, I found Konstantyn’s devastated expression. There would be no tender goodbyes for us, only a violent, ugly exit.
My torturers circled me, replacing their sadistic tools into the holders attached to the star, and I used the brief reprieve to ease the capsule from inside my cheek, carefully manipulating it between my molars.
Not yet, Neva. Be brave a little longer. Make it count. Let them believe they’ve won.
I didn’t feel brave. Every instinct I had clung to the prospect of living, in spite of what lay ahead.
The chanting slowed, my tormentors coming to stand at the points of the star, their horned masks looming over me in the flickering light.
Dante held forth the chalice containing Konstantyn’s blood in one hand, and the bone-handled dagger in the other.
I hardly felt the slice of the blade as he cut across my wrist, but as my blood dripped into the cup, the wound began to sting.
The chanting started up again, mounting to a crescendo of rhythmic, guttural prayer. I chanced one last look at Konstantyn, and instantly regretted it. He looked a step away from death and as his breaths stuttered, my heart skipped.
This was it.
I repositioned the capsule between my teeth. Like an almond in a nutcracker, I thought, all it needed was the right amount of pressure.
Dante loomed over me, holding the cup, his naked form spattered with my blood. “Drink,” he bellowed, “that through the alchemy of creation, Barron shall be reborn.”
He pressed the cool metal rim to my lips and I tasted blood, metallic and salty.
A look of maniacal excitement lit up Dante’s distorted face.
He thought he’d won.
“Yes. More,” he demanded, tipping the cup until the blood was running down my chin.
He thought he had it all, but I was the one smiling, tears streaming down my face as I bit down on the capsule and lifted my head to bring the rim closer to my lips.
“Enough,” Konstantyn announced. “We all must drink to complete the circle.”