by Stella Hart
It wasn’t because of him, of course. It had to be because I’d been picturing another man standing here touching me, caressing me, stroking me. But then I realized with a harsh shock that the man I’d pictured as my boyfriend in my mind’s eye was Elias all along.
I was broken. Something inside me was sick, wrong, bad.
I didn’t have enough time to worry about it, though. Two bulky men entered the bathroom a moment later and hauled me away. Terrified, I looked back over my shoulder at Elias, wishing and praying against all reason that he would stop them from taking me. He didn’t. He simply stood there and watched, cruel amusement radiating from his handsome face.
The men took me into another room somewhere down the hall. High ceiling, molding along the edges, wide varnished floorboards and understated furniture in muted colors. Expensive. Through the paned windows, I could see the forest I caught a glimpse of earlier, stretching out for miles.
I was led over to a vanity table and forced to sit in front of it on a little stool covered in a rose-pink cushion with thin gold stripes. “Stay,” one of the men commanded, like I was a pet dog.
A woman entered the room a moment later. She blow-dried my hair, styled it, and applied some makeup to my tired, haggard features. When she was done, I looked like a totally different person. I looked beautiful.
Despite that, I still hated what I saw in the mirror. I didn’t want to look beautiful for these people.
The men stepped forward again, ripped my robe off, and put me in heavy chains. I didn’t bother struggling against them. They were far too strong for me, and I had no idea what they might do. They could slap me, kick me, beat the living shit out of me. Kill me.
When my hands were limp and useless behind my back, they put a black leather collar around my neck. One of them slapped me on the ass, making me yelp. “She’s ready to go,” he said to the other.
Raw, angry red crept over my cheeks at the violation. At least if Elias had slapped me on the ass, it would make sense. I knew him, sort of, and I’d been told I belonged to him. His toy. Even though he’d barely shown any sign of wanting to play with me yet, I was still his, and I doubted he would tolerate these men touching me like that.
Wait. What the hell?
Stark shock hit me a second later as I fully processed the idea. I couldn’t believe the thoughts swimming around my mind. I didn’t belong to Elias! I wasn’t his toy. He didn’t own me, and he didn’t have any more right to my body than these horrible men next to me.
God, my mind was melting. I was genuinely losing it.
The men led me back through the hallway. It was late now, and everything was lit by a soft yellow glow from sconces and chandeliers.
When we reached a wide set of doors, they pushed me outside into the night air and began to lead me up a path. It was freezing out here. No surprise there, given that it had to be late October by now, if not even later. I bit back tears as stones, twigs and fallen pine needles dug into my bare feet.
I looked around as much as I could in the darkness, trying to figure out where we were. On my left, all I could see was a thick canopy of trees. It was the same forest I noticed earlier. The branches spiked high in the sky, and it was so dark I couldn’t see more than a few feet into the woods. There were small sounds of rustling bushes and the howl of the wind coming from within, making me shiver even more.
I could see a wide swathe of inky water to my right, glittering in the moonlight. Foamy crests of crashing waves were the only sound from that direction, and there was no sign of a beach. Only tall cliffs stretching in an inhospitable expanse into the creeping darkness.
I was right earlier. We were somewhere by the coast. That didn’t really narrow things down for me much, though. We could be anywhere. I assumed we were still on the east coast, but it could be the west for all I knew. Hell, we might not even be in the States anymore. We could be in Italy, South Africa, anywhere in the world with a coastline.
The men led me deep into the woods, following a narrow path down a soft incline. Up ahead, the path was lit by tall burning torches along the edges, and in the distance, I could hear the rhythmic pounding of drums.
Glowing orange light shone through the branches, shadowy arms stretching across my vision until the trees tapered off and we reached a clearing. I stared ahead in wonder and fear at the astonishing place kept secret by the dense forest. Within the wide clearing was an ancient-looking amphitheater.
Built with granite and black marble with perfect arches between each column, it rose imposingly into the night sky, lit by myriad burning torches around its perimeter. Tiers of wide stone seats rose up around the open space, filled with men in dark robes with the hoods pulled up. Within the circular arena was a large throne on a platform. On the back of the throne there was an ornately-carved double-headed eagle topped by a crown. A stone rendering of a dagger cut through the middle of the carved crown, sinking into it.
The general atmosphere reminded me of the second-level ceremony I sneaked into, but it was definitely a different place. It was darker, windier, and I only counted about fifty or so men; much less than the ceremony.
Cloaked in black, Tobias sat on the throne, looking as arrogant and contemptuous as ever. The asshole genuinely thought of himself as some sort of king, just because of his surname.
The men who had been tasked with bringing me here pulled me over to a group of women huddled on the edge of the amphitheater. They were naked and wearing collars and chains, just like me, and every one of them looked drained and terrified. A petite girl with black hair, light brown skin and wide green eyes looked uncannily familiar to me, and with a shock I realized it was Pri Rahman—the girl who went missing from Roden several weeks ago. The same girl who was supposedly safe and back home in New Zealand.
Of course. The statement saying she was fine had been issued by the Roden Dean, a high-up member of Crown and Dagger. Mellie’s father. He was probably right here tonight.
I guess I wasn’t so special after all. This society probably ‘bought’ or kidnapped young women from all over the place, and only a few cases ever made it to the public eye. Take me, for example. No one thought I was missing. They all thought I was backpacking in Europe, and when they didn’t hear from me ever again, they’d probably just think I was a shitty friend who couldn’t be bothered staying in contact.
The drums pounded louder, and we were led to the platform in front of the throne. Someone pushed on my shoulders, forcing me to kneel, and I saw that all the other women were kneeling as well.
A gong sounded from somewhere to the right. I heard Tobias rise to his feet behind us. “Welcome, brothers!” he said in a booming voice. “As you were made aware of last night, the last girl in our new collection has finally arrived!”
Collection. We weren’t even human to these men. Just objects to be acquired, like stamps or pretty gems.
A cheer went up, and Tobias continued.
“These fine young specimens have all had their contracts signed, and they are now official property of Crown and Dagger. As soon as they are healed from tonight, they will begin their training here at the Finishing School.”
Healed? That sounded incredibly ominous. And what was this about training?
My stomach lurched. Fear crackled like electricity in the air around the platform. The other women were just as uninformed and terrified as me.
A man in a bronze beaked mask stepped over to the platform and leaned down in front of me, the first in line. “Drink,” he said. His voice sounded strange and distorted through the mask.
I glanced down at what he was holding out to me. A human skull, fashioned into a drinking bowl. Please be fake, I silently begged, but something told me it was all too real. I felt queasy.
“Drink,” the man repeated, proffering the skull bowl again.
I haltingly moved my head forward and let him tip the edge of the skull to my lips. It was filled with a dark red liquid. I prayed it wasn’t blood. It smelled sweet, and as t
he first drops hit my tongue, I realized gratefully that it was pomegranate juice.
Small mercies, I guess.
When I’d taken a few mouthfuls, he moved on to the girl next to me, then the next, until we’d all had our fill. Almost right away, I began to feel dizzy, disoriented. It was like I was in a dream. The sound of the men chanting suddenly filled my ears, and yet it felt like they were miles away, their voices drifting over the wind. The world was spinning and I just wanted to sit down, even though I was already kneeling on the ground.
The glowing light from the fiery torches planted in the ground seemed to shimmer and swirl before shooting into the air like fireworks. Whatever that juice was spiked with, it was hitting me hard, making me see things that weren’t there. It actually felt nice, this sensation of floating around, all warm and fuzzy and free.
Free.
I would never be free again…
Somehow, the terrible thought no longer seemed so bad, because I was floating away, too high to care about anything down in the real world.
“Deliciae dolor, deliciae dolor….” The chant rose, louder still, echoing through the amphitheater. What did those words mean again? Greer told me once, but I was too dazed to remember.
Colors and images and voices were whirling in front of me, twisting and twirling together until they cleaved into one stark image. Someone had dragged a brazier into the arena, and something was sitting in the flames. Some sort of tool.
I blinked hard, trying to stop my mind from drifting as I tried to figure out what it was. It was so difficult to think straight right now. I was practically hallucinating.
Reality finally struck me when a man carefully picked the tool out of the flames. It was a branding iron. The end glowed orange-red, and my belly tightened at the sight of it. I wanted to get up and run, scream, vanish into the forest, but my limbs were like jelly. I couldn’t move an inch.
Someone held my arms as a pair of unseen hands forced me to lean forward and down, exposing my back to the sky. I closed my eyes and moaned as the man with the iron moved behind me. “Please….” I muttered. It somehow came out sounding like gibberish.
A second later, a searing heat was in my skin, yanking the breath from my lungs. The drugs must’ve helped, though, because it was nowhere near as bad as I’d imagined it to be. It hurt, but it was tolerable. Then it was over, and the man stepped back over to the brazier to reheat the iron for the next girl.
I felt someone pressing an adhesive surgical dressing over my lower back a moment later. My eyes wandered over to the next girl. She’d just been marked, and I could see the little symbol on the small of her back: a crown with a dagger through it.
Official property of Crown and Dagger. I heard Tobias’s earlier words echoing in my head. At the same time, the men watching us continued to chant the words ‘deliciae dolor’.
The delights of pain. That’s what Greer told me it meant…
An indeterminate amount of time later, I felt a pair of strong arms dragging me to my feet. “Can you walk?” said a familiar voice.
I suddenly giggled. The drugs were hitting me really hard now. “It’s you. We both go to Roden.”
Elias sighed impatiently. “Yes. Answer the question.”
“I think I can walk,” I murmured, blinking rapidly. Everything seemed to be swimming in front of me. I blinked again. His sinfully-handsome face finally came into view. “I feel drunk. Or high. I can’t tell.”
“I know. You’ll thank us for that when you wake up tomorrow.”
I stared at him lazily, my head lolling to the side. “What do you mean?”
He supported me steadfastly in one arm and held the other out, letting the sleeve of his dark red robe fall away. The same mark that had just been burned onto my back had been burned onto his right wrist. It looked like an old wound, a pale pink area of slightly raised flesh.
“They do this during Tap Week when we’re first recruited, and we aren’t offered any drugs to alleviate the pain. Not that I’d want any drugs anyway,” he said with a superior smirk, as if refusing painkillers made him some sort of alpha god. “It’s one of the final tests before we officially make it into the first level, to prove that we’re dedicated. We’re given a Rolex to cover it, so people don’t notice the scar.”
“Huh. So it’s not all sex and partying at the first level. That’s what I thought when I first saw it,” I said, my voice coming out breathy and unfamiliar. Was I even here? Was this just a dream?
“Oh, that’s right. You sneaked into the Tomb party. I almost forgot about that,” Elias said in a nasty voice. He began to drag me along beside him, up the path leading through the forest.
I nodded dreamily. “You saw me there....”
“I did.”
“Well, I saw you at another weird sex party,” I said, my mind wandering back to last December. “I didn’t know what it was back then, but I guess I get it now.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Elias said. “You get what?”
Before I could answer, I stumbled on a tree root and yelped. He let out a short, angry breath, then picked me up as easily as if I were a baby.
While I was high on whatever drug they put in the pomegranate juice, I could pretend he was my boyfriend, just like I did earlier. Pretend we were at a dance where I got too drunk on the punch, and now he was chivalrously carrying me home.
We weren’t far from the main building now. The Finishing School, as I’d learned it was called. It was an enormous three-story Georgian mansion, sitting on top of a hill. That meant I was right about my cell being underground, seeing as I’d seen four levels in the elevator earlier.
Every light was on inside the mansion, making it glow like a warm, friendly beacon in the darkness. I knew better, though. The place was black and sinister as a snake pit.
“What were you talking about before? Something about a sex party?” Elias asked, his voice stiff. We were rapidly approaching the mansion, his feet flying over the rough terrain in long strides. He was obviously familiar with the area.
I blinked a few times. “Oh. That….” I hadn’t thought about this in a while, although it’d made me very curious at the time.
I went to a party at Willa’s Greenwich mansion almost a year ago, and after taking a wrong turn somewhere upstairs, I’d walked in on a very strange sight: a room lit by fire and filled with a group of men in robes and masks.
There was a topless woman on her knees with her hands bound behind her back, blowing one of the guys. Two other fully nude women were on the bed, tied up and blindfolded as two men fucked them hard and fast. The rest of the guys in the room simply stood around watching. One of them was Elias. He was masked but I still recognized him anyway, because I’d seen him downstairs earlier, staring at me.
As well as all the orgiastic stuff happening in the room, strange symbols were daubed everywhere in red paint, and some sort of ritual music was playing. At the time, the whole thing freaked me out, but now I realized it was probably just more of Crown and Dagger’s traditional ritualistic abuse of women. As much as the girls seemed into it, they could’ve been drugged.
I told Elias about it, and he chuckled. “I remember that,” he said. “I saw you walk in, remember? It’s not what you think, though.”
“What was it, then?” I asked.
“Just something the younger members do sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Girls see our rings and hear all the dumb rumors about the society, so they know the kind of power and influence we have. That turns them on. They want to get fucked by us. But not just by us. They want the whole experience. So we give it to them. The music, the stupid made-up symbols, the candles. It’s everything they think we do, and in return for us giving them that, we get laid. Good deal for everyone. But it has nothing to do with the real society.”
“What about that girl who came in and screamed about someone taking her sister? Kylie Burns. You told her you knew where she was.”
; He snorted. “I only said that to shut her up. She was obviously drunk or crazy. I’ve never heard of her sister.”
“Oh.” I was surprised at how talkative he was being after all the unbridled maliciousness from earlier times. “Why are you suddenly being nice to me?”
“I’m not being nice. I just don’t mind talking to you when you’re like this, because you’re so high you can’t be anything but honest, and honesty is pretty fucking rare for you, isn’t it?”
The full force of his loathing hit me again like a brick, and I sagged in his arms. “I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so much,” I mumbled.
He scoffed. “Really? You’ve never done anything that might make someone dislike you? Nothing springs to mind at all?”
We were in the mansion now. He was carrying me down a softly-lit hallway, toward the elevator.
“I’ve done bad things before,” I murmured. “Really bad things. But that doesn’t mean I deserve… this. Whatever this even is.” The last word came out more like ‘ish’ due to my slurring.
His eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? What bad things have you done, doll?” he said icily. As if he already knew….
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered. Guilt roiled in my guts.
“Of course you don’t. But I will make you talk about it one day, Tatum.” He pressed the elevator button for the lowest level, then put me back down on the floor.
It was cold beneath my feet, but I barely noticed, too distracted by a hot rush of anger toward Elias. Who the hell did he think he was, saying that he would make me do stuff? I was so sick of his attitude, so sick of this horrible place.
“You can’t make me do anything,” I said in an acid tone as the elevator sank downward. “I know what you’re trying to do here. You want me to be like an MK-Ultra sex slave, with all your mind control and drugs. But I won’t fall for it. I won’t!”
He chuckled again. “MK-Ultra? Wow. You’re really into your conspiracy theories, aren’t you?”