by Tilly Delane
Rowan jumps up and starts pacing.
“I’m not. I know I’m not. I can feel it in my bones. Wait till you hear them speak, Diego. I saw way more of this at the time. I’ve heard their captors talk before. You never saw them, but I swear, they sound like Brightonians, like O’Briens. I mean, not that I thought that then but knowing what I know now...” He looks at me almost pleadingly. “They’re keeping those boys up there. I just know it. We need to do something about this.”
And suddenly I get it.
If there is even a remote chance he’s right, then he was up there while those boys were already captive. And he was fighting for the right of some dogs not to kill each other, while these kids were kept like animals, fearing for their lives, right fucking under his nose. I exchange a glance with Silas, and he nods.
“Sit down,” he says evenly to his brother, and then he focuses on me. “I hear you, George, but maybe they didn’t need Cecil to set this up. Maybe there is more to Callum than we know. Or maybe Cecil did send the camera crew up there to set it up for the dog fights. I mean, makes sense. People who remote view people fight to the death probably also remote view dogs mauling each other. So what’s to stop Callum going, ‘Lookie here, crew, do me this solid on the side, get me in with your distributor, don’t tell my dad and I’ll pay you a bonus?’”
“What?” Rowan asks as he stops prowling and throws himself back onto his original chair. But then he holds a hand up as his gaze falls onto the screen that only he can see right now. “Shit, where’d the big guy go? This is never good.”
He leans forward to turn up the volume button.
Guppi
I can still taste the salt of Zet’s semen in my mouth when I shuffle back up and stroke his face. His eyes are shut, and I know he hates himself right now. He always does, and my heart bleeds for him.
None of this is his fault.
I’m glad he finds me attractive. I’m glad he can get an erection and I can get him to climax. I’m glad my mouth can still override any self-loathing he feels about making me do this.
Because otherwise we’d be long dead.
I stroke his tears away and he cups my hand in his when we hear the hatch open. I stiffen at the sound of Ròka coming down the ladder.
“Nice performance, boys,” he says when his feet hit the concrete floor. He leans with his back against the ladder and smiles.
A shudder runs down my spine.
I’ve seen him look at me since he’s come back.
The way he used to look at Zet.
I guess his tastes have changed.
“Come here, little one,” he says, crooking his finger.
“No!” Zet jumps up and runs towards him, the chain yanking him back and making him fall to his knees, just a couple of metres shy off reaching Ròka. As always.
Ròka grabs a whip out of the stand he keeps by the ladder and cracks it hard across Zet’s back, once, twice, three times. And then he loses it completely.
“Get.” Crack. “Back.” Crack. “To.” Crack. “The.” Crack. “Bed.”
With each impact, I see his erection growing in the jogging bottoms he wears below his exposed, pale torso. He used to wear suits when he’d come around, but since he’s moved in above, we’ve come to know the slob side of him.
His penis is fully tenting the cotton fabric now.
I know what it looks like. I’ve watched him fuck Zet with it more times than I care to remember. I was never allowed to shut my eyes. If I shut my eyes, he would whip Zet harder or tell Óriás to hurt Zet another way. He was too afraid to fuck Zet without Óriás holding him down. He’s clearly not afraid to take me without Óriás’ help.
“Zet!” I howl. “Please!”
He hears me and retreats, shuffling back on his hands and knees, blood dripping down the side of his back, leaving a metallic smell in the air and a red trail on the floor.
I advance towards Ròka, keeping steady eye contact with him all the way. I run my hand gently over Zet’s wild hair as I pass him.
“Stay,” I whisper.
Ròka grins wider with each step I come closer.
“Good boy,” he says, when I come to stand in front of him.
We’re the same height. I’ve grown much taller in the last two years, which makes it easy for him to pull me in for a kiss without having to move. He curls his fingers around my collar and pulls me in, hard and fast enough for the joint in the metal to make a clacking sound. My heart stands still as I wait for my world to turn black, but nothing happens, other than Ròka’s thin, hard lips crashing onto mine. He parts my lips with his tongue, and I want to vomit. One hand still on my collar, his tongue relentlessly, skill-lessly thrashes around my mouth as he runs his other hand down my naked torso and cups my limp penis. He draws back.
“Still not into men, eh?” he asks as he gives my ball a gentle squeeze. “So, how come, I’ve seen him wank you off, huh?”
I swallow.
“Always with my back to him,” I whisper.
“What? You dream of girls while he’s fucking you?”
I don’t know what the right answer is here. I don’t want to die. I don’t want Zet to die. I feel a tear coming loose and running down my cheek.
Ròka laughs as he runs his hand around my backside, probing my anus with his fingers.
“You hear that, big guy?” he shouts at Zet. “You still haven’t fucked the hetero out of him.” He licks the tear from my cheek. “Well, maybe I can help,” he says, and spins me around, so I’m facing the ladder.
“Hands on the rung,” he demands.
I do as he says, and I can feel his eyes crawling over my butt. I hear him take something out of the jogging bottom’s pocket and then the unmistakable sound of lube being squirted out of a tube into a hand. He touches me again, spreading the jelly all around my hole, penetrating inside with his thumb. Bile rises in my throat. But I won’t give him the satisfaction.
I listen to him push his joggers down. His erection bounces against my now slimy crack.
“You got a nice arse, kid,” he tells me while he spreads my cheeks and lines his tip up against my anus. “It’s what the viewers like most about you. Your arse. So I can’t mark you. Which pisses me off. I’d like to whip you until you scream. But let’s see how much I can hurt you on the inside.”
He chuckles at his own joke and there is a suicidal part of me that wants to laugh at him. Zet is big by any standards and he’s never once hurt me in two years. Chances of Ròka’s pathetic little penis doing any damage are slim.
I regret that thought as soon as he rams himself inside me.
And fucks me till I bleed.
Kalina
We can’t see where Piotr has gone, he’s off shot somewhere.
We just hear his screams as he’s clearly being raped by the man whose voice we’ve heard taunt the boys but who we haven’t seen.
The only person the cameras can pick up is Zoltan, sitting on the bed, bleeding from a number of slashes across his back and watching what’s going on off camera with horror in his eyes, tears streaming unfettered down his face.
We’re all cramped behind Rowan’s chair, because he wouldn’t turn the screen back around, even when we shouted at him. I think he was too frozen to move. So we all moved instead.
Grace at some point turned away, but didn’t go to find a bucket, so kudos to her. Raven beside me feels like she’s bursting with anger, as if she is about to climb through the laptop and catapult herself into the scene and take out whoever the fucker violating Piotr is with her own bare hands.
The exchange she had with Grace earlier makes me believe that this is all a lot closer to the bone for her than for any of us.
Even me. And I’ve lived and breathed these boys for seven months.
This is my case.
But I haven’t caught up yet.
I still just feel kind of numb at the revelation that I have two live ones. And I realise I don’t know what to do with that.
&
nbsp; I also know this is bigger than anything I’ve ever been involved with.
And I’m scared.
The shit I’m seeing and hearing scares the fuck out of me.
But then I hear Piotr scream once more and Zoltan howl in anguish, and suddenly my protective chip kicks in.
I pry my eyes from the screen and look at Diego and Silas next to me, enraptured by the scene in front of them, before my eyes fall onto Rowan, still in the chair, still oblivious to us all having crowded around him.
They all stare until the sounds subside.
The faceless, bodiless voice off screen laughs again.
“Thank you, boys. I’ll see you tomorrow,” it says, and a second later we see Piotr limp back into the picture, bent over, holding his stomach. He makes it to the bed, sinks down on his knees in front of Zoltan and lies his head into Zoltan’s lap.
We watch Zoltan, murmuring words in Hungarian as he strokes his hair and they both cry.
Rowan slams the laptop shut.
“Fuck!” he screams.
Silas and Diego hold him down in the chair with one hand each. They look across to one another then down at Rowan.
“Well, at least now we know you’re right,” Silas says evenly.
I tap Diego’s other arm to get his attention and frown at him inquisitively. He nods.
“That was definitely Callum’s voice,” he explains.
“Or someone who sounds exactly like him,” Silas muses. “And that would be rather a coincidence. I think we can safely say, Rowan was right. They’re not cooking meths up there, they’re abusing teenagers for the entertainment of the depraved. And the victims happen to be your clients’ kids,” he adds looking at me. “Well, welcome to Brighton. It’s a small town, even if it pretends to be a city.”
“You finished being funny yet?” Rowan growls. “We’ve gotta get up there, right fucking now.”
I see Diego’s hand push down harder.
“No, we don’t,” he says coolly. “We need a plan. A solid one, because if they’ve been doing that shit up there for two years, all the way through, even while Callum went to prison, then they’ve made a ton of money somewhere and they feel safe. As in, safe from the police. They took the smaller boy─“
“Piotr,” I interrupt.
“They took Piotr,” Diego carries on. “A month after Callum had already been charged for running down Daniel Mantas and was out on bail. I bet you Callum let the coppers bust him at his father’s place deliberately, because someone on the inside tipped him off that there was CCTV, and he knew he wasn’t gonna get out of that one. But by handing himself in, he gave the police no recourse to search anything anywhere. Especially not a property that is owned by his brother. He’s a lot cleverer than we gave him credit for. And fucking well protected. Which means we’re on our own. No authorities.”
Grace peels away from the group first to go back to her seat on the sofa. She sinks down with a groan, grabs a Danish from the table and looks at it.
“I shouldn’t want this,” she says. “But I really need some sugar right now.”
She bites into it and watches us all disperse back to our seats. She chews and when Silas sits down, she boxes him in the arm.
“I never signed up for this shit,” she says good-naturedly but with tears shining in her eyes. “It was supposed to be last ever fight, and then riding off into the sunset together, remember?”
He looks at her seriously.
“I don’t have to do this. I will not do this, if that’s what you want.”
She looks from him to me, to him, to Diego, to him, to Rowan, to him, to Raven, to him, back to me.
“Like hell, you will,” she says through a grin, takes another bite, and searches out Diego. “We need to get those boys outta there. Go on then, George, what’s the plan?”
“No,” I throw in resolutely. “My case. My boys. My plan. Just give me a minute to think. And some more practical info. And my trunk.”
Diego
“Shit! I’ll never be able to unsee that, Kalina! What the fuck?”
I’m staring at my semi-naked girlfriend who’s currently standing in front of the mirror in our bathroom, wearing a black, super tight long tube vest that comes to her navel and completely flattens out her tiny chest to nothing. I’ve been informed it’s called a binder and is a thing in the female to male transgender market.
But that isn’t what is sure to give me nightmares in the foreseeable future. I’m used to the upper half of Kalina looking like a boy.
What I’m not used to is seeing a dick hanging between her legs.
And by dick, I don’t just mean some strap on sex toy. No, we’re talking about a super realistic, appropriately small for her size, flaccid penis, foreskin and all, plus an equally convincing set of balls that are so artfully stuck to my woman’s pubic mound, I have to do a double take to distinguish between her actual skin and the silicone flap that comes up her tummy. It’s weird as hell, but she just laughs, as she bends down to put on the special briefs that apparently go with the set. She shimmies them up.
“Do we have a van?” she asks, though I’ve already told her it was covered.
“Better,” I answer and hear her take a deep breath but get in there before she does. “Not just a van, an ex-police riot van. Blacked-out, bulletproof windows, cloned plates.”
She grins to herself.
“You know, I could get used to working with you,” she says, and my heart does a weird little flip. “I never knew anyone who could magic so much stuff in that short a time. Is it traceable?”
“Everything is traceable,” I answer soberly. “But the guy I got it from is solid. And he has no love for the O’Briens. So in the unlikely event that he ever puts two and two together, he’ll probably give us a slap on the back. He’ll make it disappear after, all included in the price.”
I realise how cocky I sound as soon as she goes toe to toe with me, looking up into my eyes.
“Will he keep his mouth shut even when the bodies start piling up?”
And there it is. The truth.
There are only two ways today can go. Either with all of us dead or with Callum and Cormac dead, and the kids free. There is no in between.
We can’t trust the cops, we can’t trust anybody.
And we can’t let Callum and Cormac go without putting all our lives in danger. Forever.
Kalina, Silas, Rowan, Raven and I all know the deal. Raven was scarily involved in drawing up the plan. Something about the rigor with which she got her teeth stuck in tells me this is somehow part of her own redemption. Whatever drives her, her medical knowledge and love for forensics has come in extremely handy. I’m a little bit jealous, because I’m basically just the resources guy.
We decided to leave Grace mostly in the dark. She still thinks we’re just going to knock Callum and Cormac out for a while, grab the kids, and go home. So she is on aftercare detail only.
The boys will need an innocent to hold them when the truth sinks in.
Kalina is still waiting for my answer, and I nod almost imperceptibly.
“Good,” she states and steps away. “I can’t decide what eye colour.”
She indicates her makeup trunk.
A trunk that I am fast learning has a second tray full of serious transformation shit.
There are hair pieces, prescription contact lenses in all eye colours imaginable, fake lashes, fake brows, facial prosthetics and, apparently, a set of silicon crown jewels fit for a teenage boy.
I’m going out with a female version of Ethan Hunt, minus the bullshit masks.
I look at her brand-new regular boy’s haircut that’s brought out her naturally dark colour on the short back and sides, leaving the slightly longer top with a growing out bleach blonde look.
“Green,” I say.
“Okay, we’ll go for green,” she acknowledges, as she begins to get into the rest of the clothes she’s laid out.
She’s chosen a distressed pair of children
’s camouflage combat trousers, tight enough around her crotch so that they subtly show off her ‘packer’ and just a little too short. She secures the waist with a cheap studded belt, to make it extra difficult for anyone to stick their hands down her front prematurely. Up top, she’s gone for a slightly oversized, long sleeve baseball shirt with black arms that come to her fingers. She tucks the shirt into the combats and secures the belt.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“Like a wannabe baby punk, who’s wearing last year’s trousers and whose uncle still cuts his hair,” I answer.
“Perfect,” she mutters as she bends down to select a pair of contact lenses from her box of tricks.
She turns to the sink and I watch her put them in.
I’m still not happy with her plan. It’s a good plan, and watching her come up with it ─ once I’d furnished her with the site plan we had in the office, courtesy of Julian, and once we had an extended look around the satellite view on Google Maps, so she could get a feeling for the lay of the land up there ─ was watching a genius at her creative best. What she’s dreamed up is so utterly bonkers, it’s probably gonna work, but there are elements of it I still don’t like.
Like that she is going in alone to start off with.
Like that she’s still black and blue in the face from what my dad did to her and that my instincts are screaming to protect her, put her in bubble wrap and never let any other harm come to her ever again.
Like that she’s about to turn into a killer. If she isn’t one already. I didn’t ask. But I wouldn’t be surprised any longer.
Like that I might lose her.
But I don’t get to say any of it. When I tentatively mentioned earlier that she’s still healing and shouldn’t be putting herself in harm’s way so soon, she just shrugged and said the bruising made her look all the more authentic for the role.