by Cole McCade
Fucking hell.
That man had a fucking annoying habit of tying her up and leaving her alone.
She didn’t know why she was surprised he’d left. He came and went like the shadow of a cloud over the sun, passing by swiftly only to dissolve. Yet when she could still feel him inside her, when her body throbbed with a swollen soreness and every inch of her was tattooed with the echo of him, waking like this made her feel dirty. Used. Abandoned.
And she was stupid for expecting otherwise.
Finding herself alone was a splash of cold water, dashing her from the dreamlike post-orgasmic daze that had followed her into sleep and let her pretend, for a little longer, this wasn’t quite real. God, what the hell had come over her? Was she some kind of fucked up, getting turned on by the idea of dying at Priest’s hands, enough to lie writhing and willing under a murderer she’d known for less than a day? She’d heard of people like that, thrill-seekers who got a rush off chasing death, but she sure as fuck wasn’t one of them.
She thought of Leigh, all of sudden. Leigh with her tattered stockings and her heavy boots and that wild look in her eyes, the look of a caged thing who’d broken her bars and lived as mad and free as someone who didn’t care if she flew or if she fell. Willow’s mother had had that look, growing restless and dissatisfied and ever more desperate right before she’d taken flight and disappeared.
Was she her mother’s daughter after all? A firefly in a jar, beating desperately against the lid to get out before her light burned out forever?
How do you even know who you are? the nastiness inside her asked. When did you ever have a chance to find out?
This isn’t a chance to find out, she shot back. Arguing with herself. Ha. God, she was already starting to crack. If I let myself get stupid again, I’ll never have that chance again.
She buried her face in her hands. Okay. Okay. No. This wasn’t happening again. She was getting the fuck out of here. Her hands and legs were free; that was an improvement. She twisted onto her knees, wincing as a sore twinge speared up inside her and made her thighs hot. Ignore it. She faced the headboard, bracing her knees on the pillows, and gripped the metal crossbars before jerking. Just to get an idea for the weight of the bed, its mobility. It didn’t budge, the headboard itself barely rattling; the bed was heavier than a ten-ton slab, and might as well have been made of solid stone and bolted to the floor. No dragging it or smashing it, then. Fuck.
With a frustrated sound, she gave another futile yank, then froze. The headboard had rattled. She’d heard it, and she didn’t think it had been the chain. She yanked again, then grabbed the crossbar the chain was bolted to and shook it. It gave a little, jittering in its fixtures. She tumbled to the corner of the bed, then flattened herself on her back, twisting to peer behind the corner post. She couldn’t quite see, the main crossbars of the headboard too large and too low to angle behind. Cursing under her breath, she felt along the metal until she could snake her hand past it. Her fingertips slipped over round, smooth metal like a bead, with a hexagonal base. She knew that shape. It was an acorn nut; she touched over two of them, bolting the crossbar to the corner post.
And she didn’t have a fucking wrench.
Willow closed her eyes and breathed out deep, steeling herself. Something that small couldn’t stop her. It couldn’t. She had strong hands, tough fingers. A woman’s hands, a worker’s hands, and fuck her if she wouldn’t do this with her bare hands. She angled her hand just right, caught one of the acorn nuts between her thumb and forefinger, and gave it a twist. Her fingers slipped off the slick metal, but she grabbed on again and curved and locked her fingers until her knuckles hurt and she could dig her nails under the very edge—then wiggled, jerking it back and forth. It didn’t budge, not even loosening a bit, but she kept going. And going, catching her tongue between her teeth and setting her jaw. Her fingers protested, but she kept wiggling and wiggling and wiggling that fucking acorn nut until it gave the tiniest bit, creeping with deeply resistant friction a micron to the left.
Yes.
She pushed herself up harder against the headboard, angling herself to get better leverage, and kept twisting at it. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, even when her fingers cried out in protest as she put all her strength into it. She wedged her nails under the edge again, working deeper, prying at it. Pain ripped along the tip of her index finger, and she hissed between her teeth, jerking her hand back. The mangled ruin of her fingernail dangled by a single scrap, blood welling in a crescent where it had ripped down to the pink. With an irritated growl, she ripped the broken nail off, then wiped the blood on the pillowcase so it wouldn’t slip her grip, before weaving her arm back through the bars and snagging the nut again.
Pain wouldn’t stop her from getting out.
And pain didn’t stop her as she dug in as hard as she could and wrenched until the tendons in her wrists screamed, until the hard edges of the acorn nut dug into her fingers and left creases and bruises. She bit back a whimper and pushed harder, twisting and nudging and working that goddamned nut—until the skin of her fingertips tore and she wiped blood on her thigh and tried again and again and again, until she was biting back screams of raw impotent frustration. But it moved. It moved it moved it fucking moved, and then it snapped past that point of tension where it came loose and screwed off the bolt as fluidly as water and just fell into her hand.
She stared down at the little silver nut in her palm, streaked in her blood, her fingers spiraled in trails of crimson, her fingertips burning and fuck if she got tetanus but she’d done it. A laugh split her lips open, cracked and hysterical, and with tears burning in her eyes and throat she dropped the nut onto the pillow and leaned in and attacked the second one. Clumsy, desperate, she scrabbled at it, fought it wildly, fingers slipping and grabbing but still she kept twisting even when flesh tore and the pain was like acid pouring over her fingers. How long had Priest been gone? How long had she been asleep? Any moment now that door might grind up and he’d be back and this would be for nothing. She couldn’t waste a moment—so she bought time in blood and pain and desperation, in the searing scorch of tears down her cheeks and the taste of terrified hope in the back of her throat.
A metallic scrape. A twist. The second nut slipped through her fingers, fell away. The crossbar dropped with a clang, the loose end spilling down to the floor. Willow scrambled forward onto her hands and knees and dragged the loop in the chain along the bar, until it slipped over the loose end and clanked into her palm, a useless coil of metal and a lock that didn’t lock anything at all.
She stared. Her heart rose up her throat.
She was free.
As long as she could get the fuck out of this room, she was free.
She spilled off the bed, tripping and tangling in the sheets and her legs. Windmilling, she dragged herself upright. Barely a moment to drag the drawer in the base of the bed open, dig inside, drag out a t-shirt, and pull it on, and then she was off—the shirt billowing around her like sails and she was a ship in flight, catching the wind.
The door. She pelted across the warehouse floor, feet slapping cold on the concrete, and collapsed to her knees at the base of the door. She hooked her fingers under the edge of the steel and yanked up, but it wouldn’t move. Gasping, she looked around quickly, then lunged for the release switch against the wall. She slammed it and the light lit up red; that grinding sound came, the door started to lift—then caught. Hung. Jerked. Ground. Tried again, caught again, jerking up and down with only a thin space offering a glimpse outside where she so desperately wanted to be. He’d tied the door down. Locked it from the outside.
Willow screwed her hands up into fists, threw her head back, and screamed.
“Fuck!”
No. No. No no fucking no, she wasn’t quitting now, she was getting the fuck out of here if she had to climb out the goddamned windows. She scanned the walls. Too high. Too damned high; even if she stood on her toes and reached her highest the windows
were a good ten feet above her fingertips. There had to be a way. A search of the corners didn’t unearth anything she could use as a ladder—or another door, exit, anything. But maybe…maybe…
She eyed the headboard of the bed. The light fixtures. The lamps had steel goosenecks, and were bolted solidly onto the wall. She was small, light, and if she was careful and quick…from the headboard to the light and maybe if she held her balance…
Willow climbed back onto the bed, standing on the mattress and gripping the corner post to brace herself as she curled the sole of her foot against the top edge of the headboard. Spreading herself like that brought deep, burning pain as her battered, abused insides pulled, but she grit her teeth against it and hoisted herself up until she was standing on the headboard and bent over almost touching her toes, clutching onto the post. Then the wall—flattening her hands against it, walking herself up to stand straight, before edging one inch at a time, foot over foot, toward the very end.
The distance to the light fixture over the bed looked impossible. She could reach up and grip it, curling her fingers against the base, but the idea of getting her entire body up there? Her heart jumping and tumbling faster and faster, she looked up, then reached up with both arms and wrapped her hands around the long, snaking steel neck. With a careful tug, she tested it, pulling down first slowly, then with all her weight. The bolts dug into the concrete wall didn’t budge. Okay. Okay. This might work.
“Here goes,” she breathed and, her stomach drawing up tight, pulled herself up.
It took every muscle in her body—like a gymnast on the bars, using her arms to deadlift herself. She trembled with the strain, pain and a tight bunching sensation shooting through her, her teeth grinding. One inch at a time, she curled her arms in, levering herself up bit by bit until she could brace the soles of her feet on the wall and walk herself up like she was rock-climbing. Higher, higher, and then she was almost horizontal and leaning out over the bed; she fumbled her toes against the base of the fixture and twisted herself, shaking with vertigo, shivering with the fear of the drop below when her conscious mind knew it wasn’t far to a soft mattress but her lizard brain was screaming she was too high, too high, going to fall and break her neck.
Holding her breath, she twisted until she managed a wobbling crouch: her feet pressed together and balancing on the balls of her feet at the base, her fingers gripping the neck, her balance so precarious vertigo made her fall a thousand feet without moving a single inch. Her pulse flittered and tumbled. Her palms sweated. Her skin pricked, goosebumps rising. Almost there. Almost there. Exhaling shakily, she pressed as much of her back and butt against the wall as she could and slowly unbent her legs, pushing herself up until she was once more bent over touching her toes. It took all her courage to let go of the gooseneck, and for one tense moment she was sure she was falling, the weight of the chain around her neck pulling her off-kilter, but she snapped her arms out for balance and straightened in one quick rush before she lost her nerve, and flattened herself against the wall.
Bracing her hands on the wall to either side, she tilted her head back, looking up at the ceiling. The window was close. So close. The bottom ledge was just in her reach. Last step.
“Come on, Armitage,” she whispered, swallowing against her dry throat. “Big girl panties.”
She lifted her arms away from the wall, twisted, prayed she had her mother’s agility and grace, prayed genetics would fucking keep her alive for the half second it took her to spin about to face the wall. THE AMAZING WILLOW, BROKEN FUCKED-UP MESS, but Willow thought it was pretty goddamned amazing when she twisted in a pirouette and her toes danced along the steel gooseneck. Suddenly she was face-first against the wall without breaking her neck, breasts crushing against the concrete with the chain biting between and her arms stretched over her head. Her fingertips touched empty air, when she reached over the ledge below the windowsill.
With a broken, near-insane laugh, she gripped and scrabbled as hard as she could, pressed one sole against the wall, and started to walk herself up, levering herself carefully and dragging her ragged, ruined nails to keep a grip. One step at a time, foot over foot, and then she was kneeling on the fucking six-inch-wide window ledge and gasping out her sobs and ripping at the sliding latch on the frame.
She kicked the window pane so hard it boomed and rattled, then creaked out on its hinges. A rush of hot twilight air burst in, fresh and tasting of water and the violet color of evening, and she sucked it in deeply, weeping with everything in her. Out there. Out there, one last jump, and she was free and home and that fucking monster could never touch her again.
She squirmed through the opening feet-first, the shirt dragging up around her hips and waist, her ass scraping on concrete and metal. Her grip slipped; she cried out, clutching the edge of the window frame, as she dangled out over the drop. Her heart ping-ponged around her rib cage as she twisted to look down. The distance reeled crazily; all the way down the side of the building, nothing to break her fall but earth and grass gone to seed in thick tufts all along the cement wall.
If that was how it had to be, that was how it had to be.
You tuck when you fall, honey. Her mother on the swingset, spreading her legs wide and showing her blooming autumn leaves. That’s how we did it in the circus. Watch! Watch! Watch your Mama now, honey!
“One,” she gasped out, and made herself loosen her grip. Her stomach turned to ice. “Two. Tuck and fall. Tuck and fall.” She blew out, lips trembling. “…tuck and fall. Three.”
She let go, tucked her body in, and fell.
Forever passed in a second, and she tried not to scream. Her eyes squeezed shut and she couldn’t see the ground coming but it was there and jumping up toward her like it wanted her, and when it caught her it would hurt and break her into a thousand pieces—
She thudded down hard. Her body hit like a cannonball and the ground hit back, jarring up through her as if she were a fist and she’d crashed into an iron jaw. Pain broke the ball of her apart into fragments of limbs and body parts everywhere, a woman barely stitched together by the skin that held her in one piece, and she sprawled against the grass and dirt, gulping in huge gasps of air and breathing them out on ragged sobs. Pain was a womb and she incubated inside it, waiting to be born on the other side so she could live again.
Water. She heard running water. No, lapping water, a familiar sound, the Corvus River against its banks. Gasping, she forced herself onto her side. Her limbs were jelly, her bones pulverized, the pain concentrated in a red-hot glow around her left ankle, but she dragged herself over, facing the sound, and opened her eyes. She lay in a deserted lot of beaten earth; each side was walled in by other warehouses and factory buildings cousin to the one she’d escaped, but in the narrow alleys between she glimpsed cracked, run-down streets, the gleam of moonrise on water, the flutter of tent nylon.
Tents. She was in the Lower Nests, in one of the industrial warehouses bordering the river and surrounded by the tent city of Crow City’s homeless. So close to home she could almost smell it, a few blocks over and up to the Upper Nests and a short run to her house, her father, the safety of life in the light where strange men didn’t touch her and take control of her body and turn her into hungry fire.
She struggled up onto her hands and knees. Her ankle howled at her, but it only had to hold her long enough to get away, get help. If she could get to even the tent city, she’d be around enough people that Priest wouldn’t dare follow her. Swallowing painful gulps of air that made knots in her throat and unraveled in her chest, she pushed herself up on her good leg, wobbling, reeling, the chain dangling from her neck and tangling in her legs. When she tried to catch her balance on the bad ankle, a strangled cry tore up her throat, nearly a shriek, and she dropped to her knees, clutching her calf. She didn’t think her ankle was broken, but it was at least sprained to hell and back.
“Oh fuck,” she gasped, curling forward, trying to marshal her courage to try again. “Oh fuck, oh fuc
k…”
“That,” Priest said at her back, “is likely an apt sentiment.”
Terror spiked hard through her gut—terror, and defeat. She didn’t even look back; she only lunged away from the sound of that voice that had come up on her like a shadow, but her broken, bruised, twisted body gave out beneath her and spilled her into the grass. She buried her face in the cool green blades and wept, clutching at the grass spears and wondering…wondering if she would ever smell the earthy, strange, pale-soft scent of grass ever again.
She’d failed. She’d almost made it, almost found freedom, but she’d failed.
All she could see of Priest was the toe of his boot, from the corner of her eye. But she could feel him—bending over her, taking up space all around her, making her air his air, and when the fall of his hair spilled over her back she curled in on herself and took whatever inches of space she could claim away from him.
“I should have known.” He sighed. “You have fight in you, firefly. You fight everything else as much as you fight yourself. Admirable. But troublesome.”
His hands curled against her waist, and she found it in her to fight a little more—kicking out with her good leg, shoving at him, trying to squirm away. “No—no, don’t touch me, don’t you fucking touch me…”
But it was useless. His inexorable strength took her, lifted her, gathered her against his chest. He handled her as if she were fragile and small, and she trembled as delicately as spun glass in an earthquake, seismic shocks rocking all the way down to her broken heart. And still, as he cradled her, as he stood, she fought: her hands against his chest, her face turned away, her every breath struggling to swallow back the tears she refused to give him.