Big Bad Wolf (A Miss Hyde Novella Book 3)

by Kindra Sowder

  My head was swimming, and fatigue started to bite at the edges of my consciousness, taking large pieces of it every time it snapped its jaws shut. I forced my eyelids to stay open, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to for much longer.

  “What did you give me?” I moaned, my words slurring as my tongue rolled around lazily in my mouth with the formation of the words. He walked back into the light, but his bulky form blurred as I watched.

  “Oh, nothing. Just a little Liquid X to keep you and that nasty bitch compliant.” He walked over to me and smoothed the hair back from my sweaty forehead. “It’ll keep her quiet. Nice and quiet.”

  A pitiful whimper of defeat left me as he grazed his lips over mine, making my body shiver with disgust at his touch. I didn’t want him anywhere near me. I didn’t want him touching me. I wanted him gone.

  Chapter 6

  I was awake again, the world a spinning menagerie of fuzzy images that no amount of blinking could get rid of. I was alone as far as I could tell. For now. The darkness surrounding the tiny bit of light the source above me offered was barely enough to drown it out or make anything out that was beyond its reach. Dizziness caused my head to swim, the ceiling moving to and fro as I lie there trying to steady it with deep, even breaths. Nausea pulled at my stomach, and I fought the urge to retch, choking it down with what little saliva my mouth was producing. I had been sleeping for I didn’t know how long, and hadn’t had something to drink for even longer. Even if I wanted to scream, I couldn’t. My throat was too dry, and I didn’t have the strength. The drugs and dehydration were a damning combination, causing my body to feel like a lead weight at the bottom of a dark pool.

  I shifted on the bed as best as I could, trying to find a more comfortable position, but every time I moved the sharp springs only stuck me in a new place. Deciding having one poking the center of my back wasn’t the worst, I lay there and stared at the light hanging above me, not feeling Hyde inside of me at all. There was an aura around the light like a halo as I listened to the sounds around me. There wasn’t anything else I could do. The familiar bite of the handcuffs into my skin was a reminder of that fact. I was at someone else’s mercy and not even Hyde would save me this time. Wouldn’t or couldn’t? I wasn’t sure of the answer entirely, but I had a feeling I would find out soon enough.

  There was the sound of water dripping steadily from pipes and the faint whispers of danger along with the droning words of the men who had kidnapped me. The bartender whose name I still didn’t know and Johan. The sound of a heavy door screeching open pulled me from my dark and hazy thoughts, drawing my eye to the small sliver of light offered by the outside world. Or what I could only assume was the outside world. I lifted my head from the pillow just enough so I could see the wide shoulders of a man’s silhouette enter the room, the door squealing shut behind him. As the footsteps drew closer, my heart began to race, and my head started to swim again. I let it fall to the pillow as a silent tear of dread spilled down my temple, soaking into my hair. The man’s face finally became visible in the light. The bartender was back, a sinister gleam in his eye that I knew all too well. I had seen it so many times in my own when they were the color of emeralds. His eyes roamed over me, and he smirked.

  “Johan, get your ass in here. We have work to do,” he called out to his accomplice. He walked towards the end of the bed and then disappeared into the darkness just beyond, the sound of metal on metal rippling through the air. “I took the liberty of borrowing some of your tools.”

  The door opened and closed again, heavy footfalls coming towards me.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” the bartender said from the black, Johan moving closer to me. My heart pounded against my chest and fear scorched through my veins. His hand reached out to caress my hair, and I lurched away from him, trying to put some distance between him and me, but failing. The adrenaline had woken up my senses just enough.

  “Get away from me you son of a bitch,” I screamed as he leaned down over me, putting his face only mere inches from my own.

  “Oh, Mitch, this kitty has claws,” he snarled as he watched me, his eyes never leaving mine for a second. His hand moved to my bare calf, inching its way up towards my thigh in slight, practiced movements. He had done this before. Terror seized my heart, causing it to skip beneath my rib cage.

  “Take your hand off of me or I’ll rip off your dick once I get free and watch you bleed to death,” I hissed.

  “You won’t get the chance, bitch. Not once we’re done with you. You might be hot shit now, but you won’t be when we’re finished here,” Johan said. He backed away from me just enough for his knees to rest on the edge of the bed beside me and Mitch came back into the light at the bottom of the bed, a scalpel in his hand glinting in the light.

  “Our boss told us about you. What you are and what you do. I didn’t believe him at first, but then Kyle ran off with you. Next thing we knew he was dead, delivered to us by you.” He pointed at me with the scalpel. “But it wasn’t you. Not really.”

  “And what exactly am I?” I asked. It was a question that had always burned inside of me for as long as I could remember. Hyde had said I was damned, but that was the only answer she offered at the time. I wanted more. Needed more. And they had it.

  “You’re a monster, that’s what,” Johan laughed. He leaned down towards me again, hand grasping my chin and making me look into his penetrating eyes that were the color of dark amber. It hurt, and I tried to pull away, but he held me there. “You’re a succubus.”

  “You two are sick. There’s no such thing,” I spat. I felt around for Hyde. She was still absent. Shit.

  “Oh, yeah?” Johan said through gritted teeth, “What do you think that thing is living inside of you? Your fairy godmother?” He chuckled, releasing his grip on my chin in one hard move.

  “How do you think you’re awake right now with how much Liquid X I gave you?” Mitch questioned from by my feet. “That thing makes you harder to take down, but I think you’ve heard enough. It’s time to get down to business.”

  He walked towards me with the scalpel in hand. Once he made it to my calf, he ran the sharp edge of the blade along my skin but didn’t press hard enough to draw blood. It was just sufficient enough to leave a long scratch mark down the entirety of my leg. A shiver ran down my spine, causing my chin to tremble and another tear to fall as absolute terror gripped me. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I could barely make a noise.

  “Do you have any idea how many of you we’ve killed?’ Johan asked.

  It hit me then like a punch to the gut. Those poor girls that had gone missing and then found dead not even days later. It had to have been the two men before me. Those women had been raped, tortured, and murdered with their hearts ripped out of their chests. I now knew what my fate was, and it was then that I felt weak, powerless, and defenseless.

  “They fought hard just like you are now, but they were no match thanks to the Liquid X we doped them with. That we doped you with,” Mitch explained. “It’s why this is going to be so, so easy.”

  My heart rate picked up, and my breathing became ragged and forced. Mitch stopped the scalpel right at my panty line, exposing more thigh than I cared for. Putting a slight amount of pressure on the blade, he nicked me right below the seam. I cried out, and Jonah reached forward, gripping my face in one large hand and forced me to lie back down. I was crying now, pathetic and weak. Not something I was used to feeling.

  “Please, people will start looking for me. Please, let me go,” I begged. It wasn’t in me to beg, but I found the pathetic cries leaving me on instinct. I didn’t want to be boiled down to what I had seen on television and in movies. I was stronger than this. Right?

  “Starting to realize you’re not hot shit while that other part of you is gone, huh?” Johan teased with a sneer.

  “With your other half taking a nap all you are is a weak, powerless, sniveling woman. Just like the rest of them,” Mitch continued.

  I was beginning to
see a pattern with these two men. Johan was the instigator and Mitch was the thinker. Mitch thought everything through, choosing his words wisely, so they cut deep. Johan was very off the cuff and said whatever he damn well pleased. I could possibly use that to my advantage at some point to leverage an escape. All it took was one screw up, and I could be home free.

  Johan still had my face in his hand and brought his lips to mine, kissing me hungrily like a man that had just gotten out of prison. For all I knew he had. I acted on pure instinct to inflict pain and bit down on his bottom lip as hard as I could until I tasted the salty, metallic taste of his blood. He reared back and let me go, crying out in pain and looked at me with such great evil I had never seen before in a man. I leaned over the side of the bed as far as I could and spit out blood as he yelled.

  “God dammit,” he shouted as he turned to look at me, wiping the blood from his chin. “You fucking bitch.” He punched me, causing me to see stars as I lay there underneath the light and the men’s dark gazes.

  “I told you not to get too close to that mouth of hers,” Mitch chided as he walked away and back into the darkness beyond.

  “Give me a gag and the scalpel, Mitch. I’ll teach her a lesson,” Johan demanded as he watched me intently.

  “Forget the gag. No one can hear her out here.” Mitch’s voice.

  “I do like to hear them scream. Never mind, the scalpel will be just fine.” I could hear the laughter in Johan’s voice as he said the words.

  I was still dazed and wasn’t watching, and didn’t have to, to know that Mitch had indulged in Johan’s demands. Johan would get what he wanted because they were trying to punish me for something that something living inside me had done. Granted, it was all done with my hands and my body, but I wasn’t the one in the driver’s seat. That didn’t matter to them. They had a face to put with their comrade’s death so they would punish the person wearing it no matter what it took, even if it meant they could die as a result of their actions. I felt warm hands grip the shirt’s front and then I felt it tear open, sending the buttons flying in all directions, scattering across the floor like roaches reacting to light. I flinched when I felt cold metal on my skin right below my breast bone, and I knew exactly what was coming. Pain. Agony. Would I be able to stop myself from screaming?

  Johan applied a small amount of pressure with the blade. Not enough to cause me to need stitches when cut. Just enough so I’d feel pain and last to endure more of their torture. I may have killed, but torture had never really been a part of it. These men were sadistic. That was the difference between Hyde and them. She killed for a purpose, and she didn’t play games.

  Johan began to drag the blade across my skin, and the pain was searing and hot. I tried to hold back my cries, but the pain needed an outlet. I needed an outlet. I screamed in agony as he drug the blade from the point directly below my sternum all the way down to my navel. My blood flowed, warm and inviting as it soaked into the shirt and the bed beneath me. Once he had reached an inch above my navel, he stopped, removing the blade from my skin. Hot tears rolled down my temples and were soaking my hair and the bed beneath, turning cold within seconds as they met cool air. The damage he had inflicted stung and I couldn’t stop the cries that now turned into sobs, letting all of the pain go in the salty remnants.

  “Not too deep or she’ll bleed out or go into shock,” Mitch said.

  Then I heard the creaky door open and shut. He left me alone with this madman, and I didn’t have to look to know that, but I did anyways. The room beyond my halo of light was dark, leaving everything to the imagination. A terrifying thought since I was not left alone in a room with a man who I knew didn’t mind doing the dirty work. Mitch was the observer, the one who told Johan what was okay and what wasn’t, but I knew he wanted a part of the action too. And he wouldn’t take his part until he felt it was time.

  “Now it looks like it’s just you and me,” Johan said with a sly and lazy grin like he was intoxicated by my pain and my screams. “Alone at last.”

  He reached down and smeared my blood across my belly, making sure to touch the open wound, causing me to hiss and cry out with pain as he did so. Torture. This was torture. He drew his hand away from me and stood next to the bed, sliding his bloodied finger into his mouth and practically moaning with the pleasure of it. I nearly choked on the pain that was still racking my body. The gash was long, not too deep, but just enough to where I still felt like he was lightly running the blade through my flesh.

  “Now the real fun begins.” He smiled at me again, and I shivered with a mixture of disgust, terror, and agony.

  I let my head fall back on the bed. I knew the torture would continue, and I had a feeling I knew exactly what fun he was talking about. Sobs racked my body as I lie there, just wanting it to be over. I wanted to kill him for doing this to me. I was the innocent trapped in this Hell that I had never asked for. The one stuck in the middle of the one they actually wanted, and where was she? She was drowned out by the drugs, pushed back into the darkness that she came from.

  “Where are you?” I whispered so low I didn’t believe Johan could hear me.

  “You talking to your little friend?” He laughed at the thought. “Oh, she’s been put on a time-out. That Liquid X does wonders on people like you. Well, monsters like you.”

  He reached out and slid the bloodied scalpel along the top of my panties, only leaving a small red scrape where the blade met flesh. My body shook uncontrollably with fear that I couldn’t swallow down, nausea rolling in my belly and my heart beat coming in quick pitter patters. The adrenaline coursing through me was already beginning to wear off, causing me to shiver with cold and blood loss. And the darkness around me was already encroaching on the small orb of light left in the room. I wanted to focus on it, but I couldn’t as Johan traced the small blade over my skin, the sick and twisted grin never once leaving his face as he did so.

  “When I get out of these handcuffs you won’t be walking out of here,” I said.

  “Oh, on the contrary. When we’re finished with you, you won’t be walking out of here. You can be damn sure of that. Now,” Johan paused as he walked into the darkness towards where Mitch had earlier and emerged with the scalpel, “which tool is your absolute favorite? Which gets the most use?” He emerged from the darkness again, nothing in his hands. Not even the stainless steel scalpel they had stolen from my apartment. “Oh, I know which it is, and there was no way you just happened to keep on in your special room.”

  He removed his shirt and draped it over the rail at the bottom of the bed, his hands moving to his belt. Sobs left me even harder than they had before; I knew what was coming. I couldn’t say I didn’t expect it, but I had. Considering I normally slept with men before Hyde came out to play in her own way, I did expect for this to be a part of my punishment for killing Kyle. I hadn’t slept with Kyle. That much I knew, but I had with the ones before him. So the fact that these two men would violate me in such a way that I couldn’t do anything to stop it petrified me to the core. Not even Hyde could do anything to save me from my fate this time. The biggest question was, how the Hell had I managed to avoid becoming the victim at some point before now?

  “You don’t have to do this. Please,” I swallowed the bile that was rising in my throat at the sight of his belt hitting the floor, “don’t do this.” My voice was cracking with terror, and I cringed on the inside at the sound.

  “Don’t I? I mean, this is how you trap men, isn’t it?”

  He walked towards my position on the bed and unbuttoned, unzipped, and removed his jeans in one move. I turned away from his body, not wanting to see him at all. Not even his face. I pulled against my restraints as best as I could again, knowing there was no way I could get free without Hyde. A searing pain ripped through my abdomen causing me to hiss and cry out as I pathetically attempted to release myself from my bonds. I was begging. I could hear it through the sobs of terror and pain, and I couldn’t make them stop. Even a waterfall of te
ars was falling, soaking into my hair, so it stuck to my neck along with the sweat from the drugs. The pain it caused didn’t stop me from trying to escape what anyone with eyes knew was coming. Adrenaline was pumping through me again, but still no Hyde. The drugs had pushed her down even farther than I had thought.

  “No! Get away from me. Help! Help me, please,” I cried.

  “No one can hear you,” he mocked as he grazed my thigh with his fingertips. “No one. Not even that thing inside of you. You’re all alone.”

  I jumped at his touch but still refused to look at him. Once I looked this was real. I had to be dreaming. A nightmare that I couldn’t wake myself up from. Right? Yes, that was it. A bad dream. That’s what this was. The thought didn’t stop me from attempting to get away from him at all costs, even if it meant tearing even more flesh from my already raw wrists and ankles. Johan moved to position himself between my legs that had been forced apart by the handcuffs holding them securely to the bed rails. Then I heard the very audible ripping sound of my underwear being torn away, which made me fight even harder against what was holding me in place. I was in pain, I was cold, and I was shivering from the fear that was flooding my veins and my mind. He was right. I was truly alone. Johan leaned over and placed his lips next to my ear, causing me to freeze in place. But I couldn’t stop the tremors. His body pressed against the wound on my belly made a hiss escape from between my lips.

  “Now you’re the victim, Ms. Hyde,” he whispered.

  I turned my head to the side and squeezed my eyes shut, a few runaway tears escaping down my face. A burning pain tore through me as he forced his way in, the barrage of torture coming from a place inside of me I never knew existed too much to bear. I cried out as he moved. This wasn’t about sex. This was about power. Pure and simple. I had taken that power away from them when I had murdered Kyle when he had planned to do the same thing, and this was how they’d repay me for what Hyde had done to save my last bit of dignity. Now it was being torn from within a dark part of me where I had kept it in an attempt to protect it from events like this, pain ripping through me over and over again until my cries no longer fazed him. I screamed until my throat was raw, barely feeling Hyde move inside of me. She wanted to retaliate, but could barely muster the strength to shriek with me.