Dark Days (Written Pictures #2) (24 page)

CHAPTER LIV – Right Place, Wrong Time

It was no use. No matter what she tried, nothing worked. Even her usual staple of counting the bricks on the front of the doll’s house couldn’t help her sleep. Natalia threw her covers off in frustration.

Too much had gone on and her mind insisted on trying to find order and a sense of proper place. It had been exhilarating to be so spontaneous, stepping for once outside her well-structured comfort zone and to hell with the consequences. Now though, the consequences had crept up to concern her, churning endlessly in her head.

What if she had pissed off Alexei so much that he threw her out? No, he was blood, he would never do that. What if word of what was essentially murder leaked out? She had been careful to filter the web-feed, vetting subscribers individually before pocketing the substantial sums each had paid. She would keep that money to herself for now though. Those in the arena had witnessed it first-hand but not one had stepped forward to stop it, and anyway the cameras had recorded all of them. It was controlled. Even so, what if? What if?

With a grunt she snatched the male figure from the miniature house and threw it against the wall. Men! They were all the same. In the early twentieth century a well turned ankle had driven them wild. By the forties, things had moved on to the bikini. The sixties brought the miniskirt to reveal an expanse of leg to the streets that only a decade before would have caused women to die with shame. And by the turn of the millennium women thought nothing of prostituting their bodies just to sell an extra CD or two. It was all
men
. What more was left to show? What more was left for women to give?

‘What more’ was what that American bitch had shown to lure her beloved brother into such stupidity. Natalia could feel her anger build – she had always been the driving force behind him, pushing him on, providing for him, sweeping up behind him, never letting him waiver.

Power. She needed the security of it even more than he did, though she had never let on. Power insulated, power preserved. Power meant that what had happened to her mother couldn’t happen to her. But in a male-led society, she had no way to just snatch it and feel safe, not without Alexei, at least not yet.

So she had pushed him and pushed him hard. She couldn’t be a victim like her mother had been but now the bitch, long of leg and Alexei’s growing lust, threatened that. Alexei’s priorities had changed and that loss of focus worried Natalia. She needed to feel safe again, just as she had before the witch had woven her spell.

Alexei’s powerbase wasn’t yet solidified, the election was still to come and in a brutal world any wavering could be seen as an opportunity for others to rise in challenge. Natalia had already had to stand up in public and remembering how the crowd had roared when she raised the stakes sent a thrill through her. She was born to be before a crowd, to dance for them and have them in awe.

Maybe she had misjudged things. Perhaps she could do more, take charge, shape events. She had long been in the shadows, coaxing and cajoling, clearing up the mess but was it time for the next step? She was the real driving force, making Alexei look good, rounding off his edges to make him seem coldly clinical to the outside world. Was it time for her now to step into the sun?

She loved detail and in her heart Natalia knew that without her, Alexei wouldn’t have got as far as he had. He would probably be just yet another brutal thug in a brutal country. She had lifted him above that, sorting, securing and when necessary, using Tomas and Yuri to sweep aside any threats. But now even that had been changed and all by
her
.

Alexei was wavering again. Subtle nudging wouldn’t work this time, she needed to slap the sense back into him, make him wake up and realise what a whore he was falling for.

That was what she would do, yes yes. Snatching up a dressing gown, Natalia knotted the belt tightly and set off down the corridor intent on venting the full fury of an anger that prevented her sleep.

Moving swiftly into the annex where the American woman was kept, Natalia rehearsed her condemnation, muttering to herself, gesticulating to emphasise her disdain. Reaching the door, Natalia flung it wide open only to be cut cold at the sight that greeted her.

Two heads snapped round as one in shock, two lovers lay entwined before the storm of Natalia’s tirade crashed over them.

Words spewed from Natalia in her native tongue, spiced by English profanities picked up from American cinema. Alexei stammered his objections, defending himself clumsily, caught totally off guard. The first slap to his cheek was a shock but the second he simply took with a flinch, before his smaller sister shot down a hand and grabbed him by his balls.

Switching to English for the benefit of the woman on the bed who clutched the thin sheet to cover her sweat-sheened body, Natalia screamed her opinion of her brother. “You have a fucking Achilles dick, Alexei!!” She twisted her grip to underline her point. “Always fucking any cunt you can.”

Natalia’s look shot to the woman who scrambled away as far as the ankle chain would allow from the wild woman. “That’s right, Ki-Ki,” Natalia spat with eyes aflame. “You’re just another whore to him. Far from the first and probably not even the last of the week.”

The words bit as hard as anything she had gone through in the last forty-eight hours but Raven could do nothing, still chained to the bed. Natalia’s head snapped round to look at her brother. “I know how to treat an American whore. You should remember she was brought here for the Games.”

Alexei had never seen his sister in such a rage before. He had to deflect her in some way before she totally lost control and killed his woman. He bowed his head to her, grasped her hand and kissed it deferentially. His move knocked her off her stride.

All in the room paused, shocked. Was this the sign of who was really in charge? Raven couldn’t think quickly enough, couldn’t process events as they careered past.

With a wave of the hand Alexei was moved aside and a somewhat calmer Natalia purposefully approached the woman on the bed. Raven’s eyes were wary, a little fearful. Looking down into them with a new steely resolve in her own, Natalia repeated in a voice of disturbing calm, “I know how to treat an American whore…”

She placed a hand firmly on Raven’s shoulder. The pressure soon started; the small woman’s thumb pressing in on the epicentre of the damage until Raven had to twist, struggling to cope with the pain.

Leaving words and wound to percolate in Raven’s head, Natalia relaxed her grip. With three short sharp pats to her cheek, Natalia left her to a torrid night of half-sleep. Shell-shocked, Alexei turned and followed his sister out, leaving Raven naked and chained to the bed on which they had just made love.

CHAPTER LV – Senseless

“You need time to think things through properly, Ki-Ki,” goaded Natalia as she positioned a black rubber mask above Raven’s head in preparation to take away her sight and muffle her hearing. It would match the catsuit she had been made to wear, entombing her back in the type of outfit she once loved.

“You are not his in the way that you think you are, you will never be that.” She fussed for a moment with the air intakes until, satisfied, she double checked that each of Raven’s limbs was properly secured to the four corners of the frame.

“You are just the current whore he uses. And as sure as night follows day, another whore will follow you. Now he has fucked you, you are removed from his ‘to conquest’ list, Ki-Ki. Seen it before, will see it again, yes yes.”

Natalia turned the mask in her hands to inspect it, the sickly sweet smile on her face telling Raven that she was sticking to the mother-hen act, despite having revealed what really lay underneath the day of Red’s death. Now her supposedly gentle advice was coming across with the same foreboding as an offer of a poisoned apple.

“Yes yes, seen it
all
before. Just another whore to fuck and forget, leaving Natalia to pick up the pieces. I’m sure you think you love him, they all do, but he didn’t defend you, did he?”

Allowing her final words to leech into Raven’s soul, Natalia started to tug the thick rubber over the American woman’s head.

First, the mask occluded Raven’s sight. Then, as if under water, the sharpness of her hearing was taken too. When her nostrils were covered she started to feel her first alarm and opened her mouth to take in air only to find it suddenly filled with a wide rubber mouthpiece which she had no choice but to breathe through.

The air that met her lungs was chilled and tainted by the rubber hosing it travelled through from a cylinder. A low mush of constant sound started in her ears. White noise. She knew about that. It had been used on Katarina during her rush from the hotel to the station to isolate her with her thoughts and ensure carefully chosen words wove deep roots into a lonely mind.

Natalia’s harsh voice broke into the haze of noise via small earphones embedded in the hood. “You’re just another fuck to him, Ki-Ki. You depend on me to exist.” To drive her point home she twisted the valve to Raven’s mouthpiece, closing it off.

She didn’t notice at first but on the third attempted breath, panic pestered for attention again. She tried to struggle but splayed and chained to the metal frame, there was no way for her to do anything but wait until Natalia’s words returned. “You depend on me.” And the air hissed back, Raven sighing as she breathed again.

She tried to keep her breath steady but it took all Raven’s effort to keep calm. When the world started to tip she had nothing to grab onto but an increased pressure on the metal bands trapping her arms started to take some of her weight.

The chains to the upper corners of the bed drew tight. There was no pain. That in itself was unusual. There was only a jolt when the frame finally reached horizontal and stopped with her face down.

Raven felt another sensation now, as if she was being lowered, though without the help of most of her senses the feeling was imprecise and she couldn’t be sure.

Unknown to Raven, she was being lowered into a tank. All she recognised, dulled by the latex that gripped her body, was a feeling that something was creeping over her, smoothly slithering over every pore, fusing with her body.

The water had been prepared exactly of course, such was Natalia’s way, and it matched Raven’s body temperature perfectly, offering no stimulus as it settled around her like a millpond.

Slowly, steadily, Raven breathed through her mouthpiece, trying to stay calm enough to take stock. Chained, splayed and stretched, she only had the flow of oxygen into her lungs to assure her that she was still alive. That and her thoughts of course - the last words she had heard from Natalia hanging like a weight around her neck. Had she got it, and Alexei, all wrong?

== ~ ==

She might have slept but Raven couldn’t be sure. Suspended there, unable to move, it was difficult to tell. Five minutes? Five hours? Days? A lack of hunger told her with as much certainty as she could hope for that it hadn’t been that long. Yet with all they had done to her so far, she couldn’t discount being drugged and force fed.

Images flashed in her mind to fill the sensory void. The killing, the fucking, the refusal of that fleeting opportunity to seize control and perhaps bid for freedom; all rattled around uncomfortably in her head.

The soundtrack of the day replayed relentlessly in Raven’s head.
Was
she just another casual fuck to him? He was Alexei and to him everyone was disposable. But she had felt more and was sure he had too. That kiss, that fuck, they had held more than just some statement of conquest. And God, he had driven deep.

He was Alexei and he took whores to fuck and then dispose of. Women were disposable, weren’t they? That was what had been said. Why was she so convinced of that though, who had said it? The conflicting thoughts jousted in her head – her reasoning was becoming more and more sluggish.

And Natalia? Raven’s first thought was that she depended on Natalia to exist, but then knew that thought had been deliberately planted. And yet it wasn’t quite so strange. Who cleaned up the wreckage of Alexei’s whims? Who disposed of whores like her? With her fastidious attention to detail and sycophantic dedication to her brother, it had to be Natalia.

And what of the slap she gave Alexei, and the fear he plainly had of his small, shrew-like sister? Was she the real power behind his rise? Was she the one in fact in control?

Picking through the evidence, Raven subconsciously selected facts to prove the theory of her conscious mind. Natalia had been the one to declare it a fight to the death. She had thrown the knife. She had slapped Alexei and seen him bow to kiss her hand. Hell, she had even grabbed him by the balls in a graphic display of control.

It all fitted and the debate in Raven’s head circled, reinforcing itself, gathering new evidence with each pass. It was making better sense now. She did indeed depend on Natalia to exist. Natalia was the power behind it all and when she said Raven was just another whore to Alexei, then she must be. The thought anchored, replaying images again and warping them with her new sense of reality as she drifted back into sleep.