Beauty, The Invisible, Episode 1

by Janean Worth

  Chapter Nine

  When Bella awoke, her head ached, her mouth tasted like she’d been eating ashes, and her eyelids felt as if they were lined with sandpaper instead of flesh.

  When she tried to move, she discovered that she couldn’t. She was bound to an uncomfortable metal chair with duct tape. Her ankles were taped to the blocky chair legs and her torso was taped to the sturdy back of the chair, several layers of the tape wrapped around her ribcage just below her breasts. Her hands were taped together, and oddly positioned to lie demurely in her lap.

  Her neck ached, and she struggled to raise her chin from her chest and right her slumped‑over position. While unconscious, her body had flopped forward and only the layers of tape around her chest had kept her in the chair. Her ribs ached from the unaccustomed pressure.

  Her body felt sluggish and slow to respond. The room was dim, but she still had to blink several times to bring everything into focus once she attained an upright position. When she was able to see clearly, she was surprised to see Lucien sitting across from her in another metal chair, only a long, metal table separating them.

  “Hello, Bella,” he said. “Glad to see that you’re awake.”

  “Where am I? Why have you done this?” Bella whispered, her throat scratchy from the burning chemical that the other man had forced upon her.

  “Oh, I haven’t done anything except protect you, Bella. I told them that you were mine, and that if they harmed you, I would not join them.”

  “What? Join who, Lucien? What are you talking about?”

  Bella kept her other questions to herself. Why did he think that she was his? Why would he want to join people who kidnapped innocent women? Why hadn’t he taken her from this place, if he were actually protecting her like he said? She didn’t think that she could ask him any of these questions without making her situation worse, so she kept them behind her teeth.

  “The Quislings. They want you and me to join them. They’ve been talking to me, and since I’ve expressed my interest in their undertakings, I’ve been allowed time to make my choice. But you, Bella, you were seen talking to an Invisible while under their surveillance, and they don’t want you joining that camp, so they’ve brought you here to convince you to join them.”

  Quislings? Invisibles? After the many shocks that she’d had earlier in the day, Lucien suddenly talking like he’d fallen down the rabbit hole probably shouldn’t bother her, but it did. If there were truly others around—and she saw no sign of them—then Lucien really could be the only reason she was still breathing. And if he was, she needed him sane, not talking crazy.

  “Their usual methods are . . .” Lucien paused, as if searching for a polite word, “ . . . rather violent, but I have persuaded them than they cannot use physical pain to turn you to their side. I even insisted that I be the one to bind you to the chair. The tape isn’t too tight, is it? I didn’t want to bruise your lovely skin.”

  For a moment, Bella could only stare at him, a myriad of conflicting thoughts jumbling through her mind, one thought returning over and over again. Someone wanted to commit acts of violence against her, and she was bound to a chair and helpless. Panic skittered at the edges of her mind and she closed her eyes before she could scream at Lucien that his question was absurd under these circumstances. He didn’t want to bruise her? But he’d let them keep her here, bound like an animal?

  “Thank you,” she finally choked out, gritting her teeth against the bile that rose in her throat at having to placate him. “They’re not too tight. The tape isn’t hurting me.”

  “Good, good. Then, I’ll tell them that they can begin.”

  Lucien rose from his chair and turned toward the door.

  “Wait! Wait, Lucien. Please don’t go. What are they going to do to me?”

  Ice‑cold fear chased down her spine. Lucien seemed to be insane, but at least she knew him. If he went to get others, her situation would only get worse, she was sure of it.

  “You’d like for me to stay? But, Bella, it is sure to be a humiliating and shameful process, with them digging around in your most private thoughts and feelings. Why would you want your future husband to witness that?”

  Bella gulped. They were going to dig around in her mind? Then she gulped again, realizing the rest of what he’d said. Future husband?

  That’s just what the other man had said to her earlier. The stalker must have been telling the truth. She immediately wondered if the rest of what the man had said had been truthful as well.

  She knew that she shouldn’t ask, but the question burned for an answer, “More humiliating than losing my fiancé because I wasn’t affectionate enough, Lucien? More shameful than losing my job because Mr. Bouthar thought that I was doing drugs?”

  Bella had thought that he’d get angry at her veiled accusations, but instead, Lucien smiled down at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners in genuine amusement.

  “Ah, so you’re more clever than even I had thought. Figured out that I had a little something to do with your bad luck lately, have you?”

  Astounded at this open admission, Bella felt righteous anger boil up within her. It searing away the hard edges of her fear.

  “How? How did you do it?”

  “With my gifts. You have them too, and that’s what they want to talk to you about,” he turned to go, stopping only when he reached the door. “And don’t worry, Bella. They will not hurt you . . . physically. Just cooperate, and this won’t take long at all.”

  He left without another glance at her, closing the door behind him.

  She didn’t want anyone digging around in her mind, and after all that she’d witnessed that day, what she would have once scoffed at as impossible suddenly seemed entirely too real to her.

  She glanced around the room. Unpainted concrete walls, bare concrete floor, no windows and only one door, sparsely furnished with only the two metal chairs and the metal table. A single bare bulb hung from an unfinished fixture in the ceiling, its weak yellow light not strong enough to chase away the shadows in the corners. The place looked like an unfinished basement that could have existed anywhere in any city. It gave her no clues as to where she was, and she saw no avenue of escape.

  She shuddered, trying not to think of what that meant for her.

  What did these people want from her? Quislings? Was Lucien involved with some sort of cult?

  Bella tested her bonds, trying to tear her upper torso loose from the chair, but they were too strong. She tried to push with her foot and tear the tape away from the chair leg, but the tensile strength of the duct tape was just too great.

  Panic rose within her and tears of pain stung her eyes as she rocked desperately against her bonds, nearly tipping over the chair, the tape cutting deeply into the tender skin beneath her breasts. After several moments, she stilled, realizing that she was accomplishing nothing but hurting herself, and that wouldn’t gain her anything.

  There was only one thing that she could do. In a situation this hopeless, only the Lord would be able to save her. She closed her eyes and began to pray.

  She prayed for several minutes before she recalled a video that she’d seen once online. It had been a brief snippet created by a self‑defense instructor, designed to entice women to join his self‑defense classes, and it had shown exactly how to break duct tape bindings on the wrists. With a brief whispered prayer of thanks, Bella brought her hands up and twisted them in a fast snapping motion, just as the video had shown. To her amazement, the technique worked. The tape tore down the side of one wrist and with another couple of forceful twists, she was able to free both hands.

  Her eyes went to the door as she frantically ripped the loosened tape from her hands and bent to tear away the tape at her ankles, expecting Lucien to return with the Quislings at any moment.

  Trembling, nearly whimpering with panic, she tore at the tape frantically.

  Before she could finish tearing off the tape around her ribcage, she heard the snick of the
lock at the door. Her panic returned and she clawed at the tape as she simultaneously attempted to stand.

  The door swung open and the burly man who had kidnapped her stepped inside. He was no longer wearing the long black trench coat, but he still wore his mean, half‑amused expression.

  Bella shuddered at the look he gave her. He had nothing good planned for her, she was sure.

  Three other men followed him into the stark room, and they could have been his clones. They were all big, muscular, and mean-looking. As they entered the room, the atmosphere seemed to change, as if they’d brought evil with them.

  The hair on Bella’s nape rose to attention, and gooseflesh puckered the skin on her arms as a feeling of heavy, permeating evil reached across the room and seemed to caress her.

  Seeing her tugging at the last of her bonds, all four of the men smiled an identical smile—predatory expressions of delight that their prey still remained caught and at their mercy.

  Bella shivered, her fingers still plucking at the tape frenetically, nearly hysterical in her need to free herself.

  As they drew closer to her, a single thought seemed to explode inside her mind with such force that it blocked out everything else—even her fear.

  Sing, Bella! Sing a song of praise! Sing now, and be prepared to run!

  She knew immediately that the thought was not hers, but it galvanized her into action nevertheless. She didn’t know where it came from, or how, or why, but she knew that she had to do as it instructed.

  She reached down to rip the last of the tape from her chest, freeing herself from the chair at the same time that she began to sing “Amazing Grace” at the top of her lungs. She didn’t know who had sent the thought. Didn’t even question that someone had been able to send a thought to her. She just sang.