She opened a rectangular case on the floor, pulled out some gear, and checked my eyes, my forehead and my scalp, and to get me to do some things like follow her fingers, grip her hand, and generally tell her what hurt where.
While she was packing away her stethoscope, I curled over and leaned on my knees for a few seconds. It wasn’t a ruse. I felt like shit.
“Concussion, though mild.” She rummaged among the drawers she had concertinaed up from the depths of the long box.
Medicine and pills were shuffled around, picked up, rearranged, until she found what she was looking for. “I can’t give you much. That cut is shallow, and antiseptic is enough for it. He really needs monitoring at a hospital.”
“No,” Ted said gruffly.
“Okay. Just painkillers then.” She began rattling off details about what to take when that I barely listened to, and writing on a sticky label – then seemed annoyed when I wouldn’t give her a name to write on it.
As if I wanted a label with my name on it. Even Ted grinned at her protests.
By then though… by then they had dragged in Red by the hair with her hands bound behind her. By then I had seen the sample sheet of Keppra pills.
At the sight of Red, the doc had paused, mouth gaping, still clutching that bottle of analgesics while she watched them manhandle Red onto her knees.
Red looked a mess – not that I’d left her looking pretty and perfect. They had actually pulled the top of her dress into place, so in a way she was improved upon. The come had been cleaned from her legs too, I thought. I wasn’t sure… things were going blurry.
Keppra. I flicked my gaze back to the case, zeroed in on them.
This was the drug Wolfe had given me. The one that made mesmers less powerful and less dangerous. The one I’d left alone for years as proof of my willpower. The drug I avoided like Superman does kryptonite.
Tonight, today, I could die, so could Red. I frowned.
What did it matter? What did I really want? That itch to seek something more scratched at me again. Was this my kryptonite or was it a necessary correction, as Wolfe had insisted?
“Get her out. Leave the bottle,” Ted said.
She nodded and leaned in to pack the box, then tossed in the excess pill packets.
“I need the Keppra!” I spat the words before I could think more on this.
Why?
Because.
Flustered, the doc pulled a slim packet, with one sheet of pills inside, from her supplies. She offered it sans label, sans verbal instructions. Her face was flushed, and she bit her lip as I took the packet from her.
“Hey! Why?” Ted echoed my own thoughts. “What for? What’s Keppra?”
“It’s an anti-seizure drug.” She folded down the case. “If he knows he needs it, I’m assuming he knows what he should take and why.” Eyes down, she clicked the last latch, showing every sign of a woman who wanted to run from a situation that frightened her.
“Yes. I do.”
Lies, of course.
Ted looked skeptical but let her leave, with Mac at her elbow. Only when some distant door banged shut did he nod at the pills in my hand. “You get the painkillers, but now you tell me why this other stuff.”
I stared at the half-open packet. What did I want to tell him? The less truth he had the better.
“Do her. Fuck her silly.” Ted smiled as he snapped his fingers and instructed his men. “You promised you’d talk. Lying gets me cross.”
“Cross?”
“Cross. Angry? Yeah. This girl is yours? I have the info Andy had. You let other guys screw her when you felt like it. So she’s not a big deal but she is yours? Wrong. She’s mine now. Least she is until you talk.”
Fuck. No. I glared through the red streaks flashing across my field of vision, though reacting like a monkey with a banana waved before it would be enormously wrong. Ted would get more ideas.
I braced myself, even as I seethed. She was mine. If I dirtied her up that was my choice.
My stupefied brain ran through all sorts of possibilities. None of them would succeed. A. Because my feet wouldn’t work, let alone my fists. B? Because I had no females to tell to rip the heads off these men. C. Because they had guns.
I could quieten her though. Leave Red in Lalaland while they did this.
She’d barely notice them inside her.
Yes.
I frowned as they bent her over a sofa and yanked down her panties. I shut my eyes yet still registered her discomfit when one of them held her head and neck to the cushions while the other one shoved his cock into her.
Anger rose, unbidden, climbing swiftly to hairy-backed, knuckle-dragging, neanderthal heights.
I wanted to rip him into tiny fucking shreds. I was on the verge of doing what I should not do. I clawed back some sense, and sat there stewing, head burning with the pounding aches. Something was going to snap, and I barely comprehended why this made me so angry.
I watched them screw her one after the other, then leave her there, half undressed.
She hadn’t sobbed. She certainly couldn’t come without me. The men seemed confused when she merely stared past Ted and me, at the wall.
With my face resting on my hands and my fingers cradled over my nose, with my eyes watering, I waited and waited. That child squealed gleefully outside, and a small detail that I had missed popped to the surface. It was a girl child.
I’d never touched anyone that young or that distant before. Tentatively, powered by ire, annoyance, blood lust, or maybe just a need for revenge, I reached. I locked on.
I fucking-well locked on and knew in an instant whose girl child I had. But what could a twelve-year-old do against many armed men? There was this one thing.
“Get him some water for those painkillers.” The man looked disappointed at my lack of hysterics. He clicked his fingers for that water and swallowed more beer.
Once I’d downed a couple of the analgesics and handed back the plastic tumbler, Ted pursed his lips.
“Talk.”
“Or what?” I murmured, pressing my finger and thumb over my eyes. My anger had dulled to crackling embers. “They’ll do me like they did her?”
“Maybe. Though I’d have to pay them extra. Don’t make me do that. I hate wasting money. You can control women?”
“Most.”
“For how long?”
“While they’re with me. They forget things, too, if I say to forget. They won’t reveal what happened to them.” I would vomit a bit of detail, and maybe then he’d let me rest. Then I could sort out an escape plan. “I can get any of the susceptible ones to fuck you, if I want.”
“Jesus.” He sat back, pulled on his beer. “Andy was right. And the Keppra?”
Ah, the Keppra. I revolved the packet. “It enables me. It’s a weird side effect. I need it to hypnotize them.”
“So it is hypnosis! I knew it. Had to be. Fuck.”
Well. I had him swearing and looking triumphant, though the floor had decided to spin, which leeched away some of my amusement.
I swore unintelligible curses under my breath, and I wasn’t faking it. “Look. Your cunts thumped my head. Like the doc said, I have concussion, a merry-go-round in my head. Let me rest. Tomorrow, I will give you a demo.”
The silence thickened. I looked up and felt certainty when I saw his face. The man was imagining dollars. Lots and lots of dollars.
Me? I was imagining sticking a knife in his ear. Red blinked at me. “But I want her wherever you put me.”
Ted rose. “Take that Keppra stuff off of him and lock them in the basement. Two men on the door, all night, armed. Put a bed in there. Check him hourly. Be careful. Midday, I will see you. I’m off home to see my wife.” He cocked a pretend gun at me and fired. “Bang. I will keep your offer in mind. Demo tomorrow. Don’t disappoint me.”
So this wasn’t his home. Or it was one of many. Maybe one he kept for illegal stuff, killings, kidnappings, the annual general meeting of thugs.
&nbs
p; He left the room while his men were cleaning up and hauling Red to her feet. The front door opened. I heard a yell then both felt and heard the run of girl-child feet in a hallway, heard her shouting to her dad that she needed to go pee. She drew closer, with the adult steps trailing after her.
More startled yells sounded from the man escorting her into the house, as she ran toward my room. There was a dulled whisper outside, and I could have recited, verbatim, the words she said to the guy on the door. After a series of curses and a thump, the door was opened as if kicked. It banged to the stopper, bounced out a few inches, and there was Stephany, the boss’s daughter, with a Glock pistol held to her throat… Behind her, a man looked stunned, his face frozen and morphing into fear.
Of course. How could he have guessed she would lean into him and whisper a strange rude story then snatch his holstered gun?
By her own hand, the muzzle of the Glock pressed at her throat skin, denting it. Her eyes met mine and stayed on me, and I slowly levered myself from the chair as their voices erupted.
“Fuck.”
“What the hell is she—”
“Get it off her!”
“How?”
The initial gabbled exclamations from the men around her stilled as she backed into the wall beside the door. They weren’t courageous enough to snatch it from her, or stupid enough.
When her father, Fake Ted, entered the room, I waded into the silence.
“She’s obeying my commands.”
His expression lurched from confusion and worry to anger as he deciphered my statement.
“Touch me or Red or her, and she will blow her own head off.”
His teeth bared in a snarl. “How f— You cunt! Let her go.”
I smiled. “When I’ve been gone for an hour, she will return the gun, place it on the floor. She won’t remember what she did, so go easy on her. I want your car keys and a gun. Red and I are leaving. Interfere and bang-bang. Or more likely, one bang only, because her head will be gone. Come into the room and wait over there. All of you.” I pointed.
The girl was slim, fair-haired, and completely unafraid.
I gathered up a pistol and then Red, with a hand under her elbow, and we walked out of there, alone and untouched apart from the damage we had already suffered. I picked up our shoes in the hallway and was struck by the strangeness of sneaking along this hallway, barefoot. I might have been Peter Pan off to a fairytale world.
Peter was a helluva lot more innocent. So was Wendy.
Outside, nighttime was leaving us, and the stars had given way to a paling sky. The street was a quiet cul-de-sac.
We drove away in Ted’s glossy black Jeep. Red did the driving since she was in better physical condition than me. On side roads, I switched vehicles a few times, grabbed lone women who gave me their car keys without blinking. I kept doing that, every hour, until dawn fell… or rose. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure of up or down.
I kept the car when it was one taken from a woman who could logically think she had sold it, and her friends and relatives would not miss the vehicle. By then, I had gathered several thousand in cash. I’d get more.
That part was easy.
The rest…
The throb of pain had dulled but not enough.
“We drive north.” I’d find a place we could stay for a while.
Finally, I stopped the churn of my thinking and rested my gaze on Red. Her taut arm muscles and thigh as she shifted in the driver’s seat or turned the wheel caught at me. New scratches marked her neck. Those were from the enemy. Even recently violated and barely washed, she looked more angelic than anything had a right to be next to me. The red curls of her hair slipped over her shoulder. Her eyelashes glimmered for an instant in the dawn light. Cars washed by, going the other way in a distant roar and hum.
Her dress was ripped.
She was, I realized, definitely an essential part of my world. Didn’t know why. Currently, I did not care. The anger still swirled and possessed me. How dare he touch her, let alone have his men do it.
The headache fed more swirly mess into my brain. That repetitive litany sprang up.
Sometimes… sometimes it got me in a loop.
How dare I… How dare I…
I shut my eyes again and leaned into the seat upholstery. More painkillers?
I pulled the packet from my pocket, and it blurred in and out of existence.
Not those. Not those.
The sheet of ten Keppra pills taunted me.
I’d almost had a kid blow her head off. That was when it hit me. The monster was me. And he always had been me. Mesmer deformed and infected, yes, but still me. For some reason, right now, I was less monster.
The headache?
My hand shook. Was it that? Or was it the anger? The concussion? Or was it something I had missed? Either way, I would return. I, the monster would come back once everything had settled again.
When had I regretted doing anything for the last… was it a year? Two?
I had almost had a kid blow her head off.
What did the world hold? More than fucking? More than control over females? More what?
What else was there?
I could no longer understand what else there was that meant anything at all, but before I could change my mind, I punched out a pill and swallowed it down, choked it past my dry throat.
There, it was done.
There must be more than this.
Must be.
Now to see, what it would do.
To me.
I shut my eyes and fell asleep to the hum of the car.
CHAPTER 3
RED
Days and days may have passed as we traveled through this foreign, pale gray-green land. I should not be driving, my whispers told me. This was how my life had been for ages. Sounds were muted and barely there unless He indicated I should listen. I obeyed as I always had.
I drove until we entered a forested area where trees, greener than before, towered to either side. The trees fluttered as we passed under them, and I imagined them peering down at our passing vehicle, curious and mute. A strange feeling filtered through the grayness in my mind, and it said we were mere minions. Nature was playing with us. One day it would blot us out.
I wasn’t sure I would care if it did.
The red, low-slung Porsche slotted into a parking bay beneath a little house on stilts. It was a house that might walk, I decided, staring up through the circle of rustling, splayed tree limbs and falling leaves. Feathers fluttered. Tropical birds swooped – bizarre daubs of bright paint against a blue sky or darkened forest.
More days passed. Rain poured in and cleared, left the decking puddled, the window glass speckled.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I became aware of my existence, of being a real person, of being… me.
Aware of my hands.
I turned them over, examining a line of bone and tendon, and the crease at my finger joint when my finger bent then extended. The smell of lush rainforest moistened the air.
I lifted my head and breathed. I consciously breathed, for what seemed the first time in years.
I was still with him, with Isak.
With fucking Isak.
Scenes of putrid yet orgasmic debauchery poured in, swamping me. He could make me come whether I wished to or not, make me want him, whether I wished it or not – this was the loathsome power of a mesmer. I remembered. Those memories were not perfect, yet I could viscerally sense the immensity of how much and how often he had used me, and that he had let others do the same. He had made me into a thing.
“Fuck.” My croaky voice shocked me. How long had it been since I had been allowed to speak? Beneath me was a cushion of exotic, bright cloth on a cane chair. Soft. I squeezed the upholstery, suddenly afraid.
How much had I lost?
What to do? What was I to do? My heart squeezed in tight, then beat a rapid, irregular tattoo which became so loud in my head it made me worry my heart might explode and stop.
No.
I curled over and wrapped my hands over my head, slid them over my scalp and pulled myself down into a ball. For several crucial moments I stayed that way. Get a grip. It wasn’t in my nature to give in, I reminded myself.
True.
Though he was here, somewhere. The verandah where I sat extended beyond the entry to the garage. There were no doors on that garage, and through the slats of the floor, I glimpsed the red of the Porsche. It would make a great getaway car. If I could get myself to leave.
I hadn’t dreamed of freedom since forever…
Yet even if I left him, he would not be gone. It was the curse of being owned by a mesmer.
Go, or stay and be abused until I was dead? One would think that a simple choice, and one would be dead fucking wrong. I sighed and unwound myself a little, straightened, pulled my hands from my hair.
Tensioned wire supported the decking and allowed it to cantilever beyond normal limits so that the surrounding forest could be best appreciated. I sat in the middle of an amazing place of natural beauty, of birds, other wildlife, and that sweet chaos of swaying branches. So peaceful. There was irony in this.
To my right a winding, elevated timber trail led deeper into the forest.
Below it was a sandy track and a sign: To the Beach.
A lazy lizard clung to the top of the sign, tongue flicking.
Butterflies wafted by in search of pollen, and yet here I sat, still doomed.
How to escape him?
I massaged my neck and squinted at the treetops where they framed a flare of sunlight and blue sky. The muscles felt strong under my hand. The wriggly hem of a soft material lay on my thighs. I wore a flirtatious, blue-and-white dress with string straps.
I am me. I told myself this.
And he was behind me in the living room, lying down. I felt him there – as if I’d acquired mesmer radar.
My heart freaked out, again. Shush. Calmness needed.
I bit my lip, to let the sharp pain center me and recalled the layout. An open kitchen and living room, sofas, bright-painted walls, the bronze vases with steel-stemmed enamel flowers. And there were seaside portraits on the walls.
ISAK & Red: An enemies-to-lovers Dark Romance Page 2