I’d seen it though, hadn’t I? He’d said it to me, just not in words.
Somehow I was seeing parts of what he thought. We were connecting, perhaps in the same way I’d seen who Peta had once been.
I put my hand between my legs and squeezed in with my thighs. The excitement kindled kept that memory of him, at the table, alive. Taking me how he wanted to. It was perversely arousing.
He’d loved me but this didn’t seem like love anymore. By becoming a mesmer, he was shoveling dirt over that love, stomping on its grave.
Love and mesmers were mutually exclusive concepts, surely?
I squeezed on my hand again, feeling an awakening ache in my clit. If I kept doing this, I’d get myself off, regardless of my sore ass and pussy...maybe because of them. The hurts added a new layer to the sexual ache.
“God.” I rolled over onto my back, placed my palm over my mons then slipped my fingers beneath the crotch of my panties.
Getting off now would be like betraying myself. Resistance was the key. Fuck them.
I shouldn’t do this.
But I shut my eyes, worked two fingers into my entrance, and began to slowly fuck myself.
Maybe their training was working. Or maybe it was just me, needing to control my own sexuality.
Whatever.
I lifted myself higher off the bed, my breathing roughening as my fingers worked harder, pumping in, with my thumb rubbing at my clit. I climbed toward that O.
I would stay, one more day. I could last that long. I could.
So wet, my fingers were swimming, my thumb almost too slippery to get enough friction. Just keeping rubbing. I giggled, feeling a bit unhinged, thinking of Nemo, and of Dory swimming.
How could I get off when so many men had recently held me down and screwed me?
Did it matter?
I pressed into the bed with my feet, mouth open, air puffing in and out, with little moans escaping now and then. I arched even higher into my hand, muscles bowing me upward.
I was going to...come.
I shuddered, jerking while I kept going, rubbing, eking out the very last gasp of pleasure.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered and I curled up on my side again, hearing my breathing and heart calm while keeping my fingers in the mess surrounding my cunt.
Cunt. Mavros’s favorite teasing word. He’d acclimatized me to it, made me like it, I guess. I almost wanted him here. If he was my captor...
Dreams, just dreams. I fell into sleep.
*****
I should be exploring. One more day, I’d decided. I stayed in my room at night, daytime too, unless they came for me. It wasn’t true that I...we could leave, unless Grimm was free.
Somehow the day became days.
Fucking and training, training and fucking, in many different combinations.
Just keep swimming, just keep fucking, keep being an it, a sex toy, a thing. I kept swimming with the world a blur. When I glimpsed Grimm’s face, when I remembered what I’d seen, he seemed as mind-numbed as I was.
I was having fun though, wasn’t I? Orgasms, sexual pleasure, who wouldn’t want more?
Thinking was overrated.
Whereas coming...
Coming was orchestrated by Einar and Kaage. I felt their touch, though they slowly stepped farther away while Grimm fucked me. Always Grimm.
Whatever had happened at the breakfast table, he couldn’t, quite, make me come.
Close though, so close. The stretch down there, as he entered me, that first moment of possession, always magnificent.
His hands on my neck, staring into my eyes while his cock plowed in and out.
Tied to the ceiling, tied down, tied into a ball with my arms wrapped about me, my legs bent and fastened up to my stomach, I suffered and I sang my ecstasies, over and over.
The training went on.
Some women seemed absent, though I couldn’t remember who was different.
The walls of my room were there, whenever I focused, or my hands, clasped in my lap, thumbs toying with each other. I ate my meals as I was supposed to.
I was drowning. I remembered to push against the flow. By pushing, I emerged a little, and I knew something was wrong.
More than days had passed, and Grimm had said nothing. He wanted to make me come, all by himself. I wanted him to also. If he did, I would be his. They’d promised.
Why had they promised?
That question awoke me.
What day was this?
It wasn’t something in the water. It was them.
I was in my room.
Fumbling, I found the hairpin in a drawer then it lay on my hand, innocuous and sharp. Something to hold up one’s hair. A pretty thing.
I took it in my right hand, in my fist, and I drove it through the webbing of my left hand, where thumb met finger.
Blood welled.
Slam. The world swept in like a vengeful tide.
“Shit!”
I had a hairpin through my hand. Swiftly, before I could think about what I was about to do, I extracted it. My skin tugged up around the metal as it withdrew, as if it was reluctant to let the metal leave.
When it was out, I grasped my skin, pinching shut the small wound, while I rocked on my feet.
“Well, that worked.” I coughed and shook my head. The pain ebbed. Afraid I might fall into a trance again, I stood and paced the room, thinking.
I’d been lost in dream for too long. If I wasn’t careful, I’d never wake.
Without a watch or some other device, I had no idea how many days had passed. What I did know was that Grimm was either happy to let me stay here and had thrown away our escape plan, or he was as in thrall to the mesmer effect as I was. Or maybe there was a third possibility – he wanted to escape but I’d been too zombified for him to reach me. After all, I’d been the one to visit him.
I stopped dead, beside the bed. Boltcutters. Dare I?
I had to.
The bleeding had stopped. With luck I’d not get tetanus, or a staph infection, or any number of other problems. I covered my mouth with my other hand. Think. What should I do?
I had no new clues about Cherie, was sure I hadn’t seen her. Even in my foggy state, I’d have remembered her, surely?
Time to go.
But I needed to stay to find her.
That thought seemed so strange. Yes, I loved her, but it was dangerous here. I’d succumbed once...
“Fuck-it.” Lightbulb moment.
I rocked my head back and looked at the ceiling. It was probably brighter than me. I had an excuse though. Them.
“You fuckers.”
My ardent need to stay for Cherie, it had become wrapped up in my innate fascination with mesmers. Intentional or not, Einar and Kaage, maybe even Grimm, were warping my thoughts.
Logically, there was no way I should still be brave enough to want to stay here. I had almost drowned myself in what they were doing to me. Resisting them was more than one woman could achieve. I needed to get out, now. Not tomorrow, not in two days, now.
Mustn’t panic. Must not panic. I clasped my hurt fist over my heart. The meal that’d just been taken away, a few hours ago...it had been dinner, the evening meal.
“Good.”
I still needed Grimm.
I would go find those boltcutters. I would free him, cut him loose, and he would lead me out of here, bloodied knight or not. If he didn’t, I cut off his prick with the damn boltcutters.
Then I went out my unlocked door. The house seemed to inhale as I let the door shut behind me – the walls expanding then shrinking in.
I bowed my head, pressed my knuckles to my eyes, took them away. The house, the corridor, had stopped breathing. I was wearing another of those calf-length, white dresses. Ever-so well dressed for exploring.
My room, when I turned around, was yards back along the tunnel of the corridor. I was not going back there. Not tonight.
Which way was Grimm? I’d forgotten. Not toward the main stairs. T
he room with the victim in that video was far past where he was, and either up or down some stairs.
I started out, bare-footed, making a whisper of sound, with shadows following me as the lights came and went, came and went. I went up and down stairs, down corridors.
But at last I had to concede that I was lost and I stopped walking. This corridor seemed endless.
If my eyes were deceiving me, I needed to remove them from the equation.
I shuddered at the memory of the knives poking at my eyes after Reuben had told me to suicide.
I swallowed bile, and I shut my eyes. My fingers trailing along the stone wall, I went onward. I went by smell, convinced I could tell where he was by some super-special olfactory sense. I could track the man by his scent.
Or by his mind.
Softness under my feet surprised me.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a greenhouse, at night, with little dots of stars peeking through the swaying fronds of a fern above my head.
Swaying... A breeze. I was outside the house and somewhere a door was open. “Ohmigod,” I whispered.
I could break the glass and leave.
I smiled and took the deepest, most pleasurable breath I’d taken for many days. The air was fresh and scented with blossoms.
From the curve of the glass roof overhead and the cleared space stretching ahead, I was in the central aisle of a half-cylinder-shaped greenhouse. If I simply kept walking straight ahead, what would I find? I felt sure I could see a door outline at the other end.
This could be a trick.
Walk. One foot in front of the other.
My feet still worked. The relief at learning that seemed to clean away much of the dirt clogging my brain. There was fear but it was manageable.
Go. Keep walking.
My feet slowed at the shadow of some monstrous tree, which grew ever larger. I slowed some more, a molasses force flowing about my ankles.
An artificial force. It was a mind game, as always.
The door ahead was definitely there and so close. The breeze must be seeping around the frame. I could hear the rattle as metal and glass gave before the wind. With the door handle in my hand, nothing could stop me. Turn it, push, step outside, and I would be free.
Nothing could stop me, except myself. I slowed. Disbelieving, I tried to speed up, only to find my pace slowing more.
Were plants wrapping tendrils about my ankles? Had I been glued in place? When I looked, my feet were normal. Stepping onto the leaf-strewn pavers were my moonlight-washed bare toes.
I...stopped. Puzzled. Puzzled at my puzzlement even. Frowning, I wondered whose feet were those? When had I painted my toenails black?
A blank space of time was followed by an urge to raise my head. Dread clutched my heart with ugly claws. I lifted my head, and found nothing before me, except corridor.
There was supposed to be a door.
Behind me? I whipped around, stepping backward to the wall, to lay my hands flat on the stone so it couldn’t run away. Behind me was no greenhouse, no door, only a right-hand dogleg.
The chill of dislocation, of the unknown, heaved in, swelling me with nausea.
How had I gotten here? This had happened before. The fucking house was a surreal creepyland.
I recognized this spot. This was the reverse of the corner I’d seen but hadn’t ventured down, that other night. I’d lost a greenhouse, but had I found the room with the boltcutters? Or to be precise, the room with the window that might lead to another room that might hold boltcutters.
The thump of my heartbeat said some bits of me wanted to run away home, to my room.
I drew in a few breaths, willed myself calm. Running away was a luxury. I had only me to rely on.
But...think this through...I wanted the boltcutters to free Grimm, so he would free me, and I no longer knew if Grimm was with me, or them.
My escape plan had more holes than a Swiss cheese.
I had to chance this. I had to trust him. I’d just proven walking out by myself was hopeless, or it had been tonight.
Surely no one would be here this late? Einar and Kaage were mesmers not vampires.
I sneaked up to the corner, with one hand still touching the wall because I needed some reassurance that my surroundings wouldn’t vamoose again, and I saw that other prized door – the steel one.
If this was unlocked, I should go inside. Whatever I found in there might help me. This was my Grail, my tree of knowledge. I put my ear to the steel and heard no sounds from within. The door handle lay dormant and chill beneath my palm. It turned with a soft series of clicks.
It crept into her room one night...
And ate her fucking soul.
Chapter 19
Grimm
Reading was one of the few things I could do that I could own. Once upon a time, in everyday, humdrum life, I’d read. Here, it was the same, only a hundred times more significant. I couldn’t turn over all the shit we were doing here, endlessly. I couldn’t escape. And so I read.
The old poetry book had lost a few pages to the ravages of time and the book louse. The pages were dog-eared, damp-stained, and foxed. The cover was bowed up by years of poor storage. But Shakespeare was Shakespeare and Shelley was Shelley.
I found a pen on the floor. I suppose I could’ve thought of stabbing someone, but I used it as it was meant to be used. I could always stab someone later.
I performed sacrilegious rites and I drew in the margins and in the blank pages at the front of the poetry book and the back. I drew Zorie as I remembered her – the minutiae of her body. Her ears, her toes, because I wasn’t good at faces. I even drew the little raven Mavros had had tattooed on the back of her elegant neck. I remembered her in the way of a devoted lover, because that was what I would like to be, one day, when we had peace.
Though I’d not say it to anyone, I dreamed of snuggling up to her on the banks of a river while the water flowed by, and rowboats, and the fish plopped as they jumped to the surface. Everyone should have that, once in their lifetime. Surely we would get that one day?
I damn well prayed so.
I marked poems that spoke to me, and I wrote her name on some of them. It seemed apt. Neither of us really knew if we would make it out of here intact.
I had time to dwell on what might be.
Then they came for me, and took me away from my serene thoughts, marching me down corridors.
This room with the computers and screens was deep beneath the surface rooms. The British had had so many wars during their long history that I didn’t doubt most old manors possessed secret bolt holes of some sort. This room and all the rest, it was on par with some Parisian sewer empire. Elaborate if slimy. They had catacombs under Paris, didn’t they?
“Grimm?”
I swung my attention back to Einar. Kaage, as always, lurked behind me, a sentinel, cracking his knuckles now and then, as if to remind me he was there.
A light flickered on and the dark, glass window cleared as if by magic. The room on the other side had been utterly black. Now that the ceiling lights in there were on, it was well illuminated.
“Yes?” They had my wrists chained, but I reached up to scratch my nose, and to conceal my shock.
White wall tiles, pale sealed floor and a ceiling that seemed only a bit above standard height. Even so, there were anchor points up there, and chains and hooks dangling. One of the hooks looked remarkably like a classic butcher’s hook from a horror movie.
“You must be quiet during what happens next. It’s important.”
“Sure.”
Then I cruised my gaze leftward.
Was this a film set? The far left third of the room was beautifully decorated like a woman’s bedroom, with a bed, fake windows, and other furnishings. The part next to that had stainless steel tables and a dentist chair, as well as various medical-looking equipment. The last third was rough and dungeon-like. That was the section with the chains and hooks. Along the wall on the left were two wheele
d trolleys of about the size that could take a person lying down. The lack of padding meant the things would be cold to lie on.
As I watched, a man walked out and set up a camera tripod, before attaching a small video camera to the top.
“You’re making films?”
“Yes. Fun ones. No sound, remember. It will carry.”
I nodded as a man I recognized as a guard led a woman into the room. A door that must be out of sight to the left of this long window, thudded shut. Unlike most of the women, well, all except Zorie, this one seemed aware. Her face quivered in fear, shifting convulsively from one where she seemed ready to cry, to a blank expression, and back again.
The poor girl was worried. Why?
“What’s going to happen,” I asked softly.
“Shhh. You will see. Be good, Mister Grimm.”
Einar knew how to make a man feel like a schoolboy being reprimanded. How I longed for the day I could stuff his severed genitals in his mouth and make him chew.
The cameraman was filming, aiming his device; the girl had been set to dangle from one of the hooks, by her bound wrists. She was being undressed, in pieces, with a knife cutting away her short, red dress and her tights. A dozen more cuts and the dress was gone, tumbling to the floor in tattered strips of red like sprays of clotted blood.
The girl was openly sobbing. Were the mesmers...collectors, not calming her, controlling her? They must want her distraught, for once. I clenched my fists, my jaw. This wasn’t Cherie, that much I knew. This one had short blond hair while Cherie was dark, almost raven.
Unless she’d dyed her hair? I’d seen photographs but nothing recently.
It might be her?
He’d left on her pink bra, though he’d tugged down the cups to show her tits. A pretty woman, someone would surely want to buy her. They’d said they trained women for sale. Maybe they filmed them too, on request.
The guard cut away the front of her tights, leaving the triangle of her sex exposed, then he treated the back the same. It was a porno then. I relaxed. Just a nastier sort of act, where she knew what happened to her.
I tuned out as the guard pulled out his cock and walked up to fuck her from behind, pussy then asshole, then back again. Damn, that was unhygienic. Even I knew she’d likely get an infection that way. Though muffled, I could hear her begging and the grunts of the guard.
Wicked Weapon (Dark Hearts Book 2) Page 12