East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) (25 page)

The van door slammed shut. I kept screaming.
"Help me! Help me! Help!"

The men spoke loudly to each other in a
language I didn't understand. There were three voices. I tugged and
moved and fought. Brutal hands yanked at my wrists and handcuffed
them to a chair, then my ankles. One of them smothered my mouth
again. They shouted at each other, arguing.

I felt the cool wind against my legs, then
between them. I tried to close them but they'd tied them in such a
way that I couldn't, not completely.

A deathly foreboding screeched through me
like bloody nails against a blackboard.

My bladder almost broke.
Almost. But I held it. My dad hadn't taught me to be a pussy. I'd
get them. I'd get these fuckers somehow. I was brave, ready to face
whatever happened, ready to fight these scum to the very end. No
matter
what
.

Come and get me you sick fuckos. I'll rip
your cocks off with my teeth if I have to!

I tensed my fists, the only weapon I
had.

But then I heard gunshots.

My hands opened, not enough strength in me
to tense them anymore. I gasped.

The van door opened. One more voice came
into it. More shots. The door shut.

We screeched off.

Conall!

The hand against my mouth was replaced by a
cloth, and a sweet smell. I became light-headed.

When I woke up, I was cold.

Water dripped in the
distance. I tried to place it —
back
right?
— but couldn't.

They'd blindfolded me. The blindfold felt
oddly like soft wool or some material like that. A cashmere
blindfold?

Cold wind scraped my legs and arms, found
its way underneath my collar, down my back, down my breasts...

As I'd awoken, I'd whimpered, and the sound
had echoed back to me. The blindfold would be lifted from my eyes
later, revealing a warehouse, but now, all I knew was that I was in
a cold, breezy room. Cars honked in the distance, very far away. I
was still in that chair they'd had me in, in the van, my hands tied
behind my back. My ankles were shackled to it at the bottom. The
right one hurt like a bitch because of the coffee burns. My foot
throbbed. A low, dull throb that somehow spread to my thigh and
occasionally made it twitch in pain. The cold wind only felt good
on that leg, burned and scalded as it was. The rest of me was
freezing.

I shivered.

A desperate thought came to me... I shuffled
in my seat, felt that I was still wearing underwear. They hadn't
taken it off. The relief that coursed through me at realizing that
was almost painful, weakening. But I still worried about it. I put
all my attention between my legs, feeling, trying to sense if
anything was...different.

I swallowed. It hurt a little, but only a
very little. And that had probably been because of Conall the night
before. Yes, yes it was! I remembered. I remembered being in the
kitchen and sensing a slight discomfort!

I gasped out again, not realizing I'd been
holding my breath. My gasp echoed back at me.

They hadn't done anything to me, these pigs.
Yet.

I wanted to tug against the
chair, wanted to fight the
FlexiCuffs
holding me there. But I
was afraid. I was afraid that someone might be in this echoing room
with me. The whimper earlier, and the exhalation now, had both been
cacophonous in this otherwise deadly quiet room.

Quiet, that is, except for that endless
drip.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Sometimes it skipped a drip, and other times
it dripped faster.

Drip. Silence. Drip. Drip. Drip drip drip.
Silence.

Drip.

Then another thought hit me.

Those gunshots.

Conall?

Stubborn tears fought at me
behind my eyes. I played the scene a hundred times in my mind,
a
thousand!
There
was the van, the men with guns racing to Conall's room, and then
the bullets...

Had it been seven? Eight? Had I heard his
voice?

No, I hadn't. Only that foreign language, in
the van. Then desperate calls — probably to leave — screeching
tires.

And we'd left.

But two men had raced past me. And I'd only
heard one new voice enter the van after the shots.

I counted again. Seven? No six.

Think, Leora! Think! Was it seven shots or
six!?

Like it made an iota of a goddamn
difference...

I thought of Conall again.

And those gunshots.

I bowed my head, felt the bitter breeze upon
my skin.

I forced myself to stop thinking about
it.

I must've passed out again, because what
awoke me was something that filled me with such revulsion that I
almost hurled.

A finger, hard and calloused, and a
fingernail... The nail was rough, as if its owner had chewed it.
This finger scraped up the inside of my left thigh, and then
stopped. I'd twitched when I'd first felt it. Now that I was awake,
the finger no longer moved.

I lifted my head, trying to see under the
blindfold. Dirty fatigues was all I saw, and a light-source in the
back. That's all.

My fear was held back by my anger. The
finger had only made it halfway up my thigh, but it had made me
angry, made me brave. I didn't know how long it had been since the
van, since the last time I'd awoken. What I did know, was that I
was no fucking victim.

Do to me what you will you
sick fucks. But I will get you. I will find you and cut your
fucking pricks off with a blunt saw-knife if you've done anything
to my Conall. You'd
better
kill me, or else you're dead fucking
meat
.

I clenched my teeth. If I'd
been alone, maybe I would have gotten sad. But here, with
this...
thing
...in
front of me, his despicable digit pressing against the inside of my
thigh, the thought made me mother
fucking
livid. Braveheart all the way
you
asshole
.

"What do you want?" I said.

The finger's pressure
eased, only slightly. I forced myself to
keep
my leg there, to
not
move it away,
to
not
show that I
was afraid! (Even though I was, I really was freaking
terrified.)
Let him touch me. Let him. I
won't show my fear.

A slow, rumbling laughter started from this
man in front of me and began to fill the room. It got stronger,
until it was all over me, bouncing off the walls and hitting me
between the ears.

Do. Not. Move. The. Leg!

I would not show my fear.

Clown-Man kept on laughing, an "I'm so
fucking tough because I pick on women tied to chairs wearing
nothing but panties and a man's dress shirt" kind of laugh.

And then the laugh stopped,
abruptly. Two dirty hands covered my thighs, pressed up, and
foul,
deathly
breath wafted up my nose as Mr. Halitosis here eased into my
face and said, "Dis is
not
joke! You think you tough? Ve vait. You see how
tough you feel later."

Stink-Breath moved away.
Thank God! I gagged, and choked.
Dental
appointment anyone?

"What the
fuck
do you want with
me?"

I tried to place his
accent. It wasn't Russian, not German. Those I knew well. Not any
of the Romance languages because of his substitution of W's by V's.
A bead of sweat broke on my brow as I put together the only accent
it
could
be...

Hungarian.

"Oh, vith you?" His voice was further away,
walking away from me. Dickwad Man flipped a Zippo, lit a cigarette
and inhaled.

Right, that explains the
bad breath. May I recommend
Fisherman's
Friend
?

I tilted my head back. He'd moved far enough
away that I could almost see his whole body now from under my
blindfold. Big black army boots stood on a glistening floor which
was covered with puddles of water. Moonlight reflected off
them.

"Ve have zero interest in you, Miss America.
Ve have only interest in your friend, Mr. Villiams."

My heart caught. I waited for more.

"But, sinking about it" — I
got that he meant
th
inking — "if Mr. Villiams does not reply to our demands, vell,
maybe ve
vill
have
some fun vith you." He gave a half-choke, half-laugh, then threw
his cigarette on the ground where it fizzled out on a puddle he'd
been standing on.

I saw his feet turn and
come closer. Then his feet disappeared and his fatigues were all I
could see. He pulled my blindfold off so fast that it caught in my
hair and, as he tugged it, my chair tipped over and I fell —
thud
,
crack!
— on the ground! I landed
deafeningly on my shoulder.
I just broke
my arm
, I thought.

I groaned in pain. He'd gotten the blindfold
off alright, along with a chunk of my hair.

I bit my lip,
refusing
to cry out in
pain. Not wanting these guys to see an iota of fear in me.
Hammering stings of anguish thudded up and down my arm. I reeled so
much that I didn't even think to look up at my assailant. All I saw
was the wall in the distance, the broken windows. And then his boot
as it swung,
slammed
, into my stomach, once, twice. And a third fucking time just
for good measure.

I coughed, tasted blood in
my mouth. Tough-guy walked away, leaving me there on the ground, on
my
broken-or-maybe-not-broken-but-definitely-hurting-like-a-
biatch
arm (one of my ribs was
absolutely
broken, if not more than
one.)

I felt woozy. My vision
started to fade. But before it did, I thought of one last
thing:
I am so going to Fuck. You. Up.
Dick.

The next time I awoke I was being pummeled
with fists. Only it wasn't fists. It was water. And I was against a
wall.

"Come on, pretty. Boyfriend is coming. Ve
need to show him zhat ve have taken care of you. So, clean dat
fucking blood off your eye. It look like shit!"

Boyfriend is coming?
Conall is
not
dead!

The firehose cracked me against the wall.
Forget soap. Forget anything. It was just me, still dressed, being
whipped with a firehose. As it hit my broken ribs I felt my eyes
roll back and food come up to my throat.

I forced it down with all the will I had
left. (That will was dying fast, and my bravado act was needing
bolstering by now.)

And then the room spun, firehose and all.
All my tough-girl-atoms disappeared. These guys were just too
strong for me. My mind was willing, but I just couldn't fight them
anymore physically.

I fell.

The lights went out.

Snow covered my body. Then
angels came down. Then Amy from
The
Passage
by Justin Cronin was next to me,
making Snow Angels with me. And the Snow Angels were the Angels of
the Sky and it was OK that my body ached because of the cold
because that's what happens with Angels, they pick you up when
you're coldest, don't they?

An evil insect crawled into my stomach,
chewing away at my rib, just one of them. Nibble nibble nibble...
It hurt, it hurt so fucking bad. Then there were more of them. They
chewed at my ankles and my butt and one of them pulled my shoulder
out of place. Not the shoulder that had hit the floor earlier, the
other one now.

In my dream, I was sad because I felt I
needed that shoulder, the good one, because I'd lost the other one
and insects couldn't take the good one because I needed it. And I
also needed my ankles. But my butt hurt. It hurt a lot. They chewed
and chewed and...

No, it's not insects, no... What?

I woke up.

Someone had me by the arm, dragging me
against the ground. My shoulder yowled in maddening torment. My
head hit the floor. My butt scraped against pebbles covered by
water and little stones and maybe nails... My heels scraped against
the same.

But the pain didn't faze me, it didn't
dampen my spirits. What dampened them, finally, was the stupidest,
dumbest fucking thing ever. It was when my underwear snapped, and I
felt it, as I was being dragged, scrape against my thigh, and get
tangled up at my ankle. The bottom of me was nude. I was suddenly
angry with myself for having worn thinly strapped lace panties, as
if that would have made a difference.

I writhed. I struggled. Burly dickhead
basically lifted me and dumped me on a metal table in one fell
swoop. It popped my shoulder audibly. The jackhammering drill
stamping through my arm and body made my eyes loll back but I
willed myself awake, spinning room and all. I knew what was about
to happen. I knew it well. And I would be awake for it. I'd fight
this motherfucker all the way.

And just
make
me go down on you,
you fuck. Because I swear to god I will chew that fucker
off.

Four men held me down on the table, each
holding one limb. My legs were wide open. I saw my panties on that
right ankle of mine. That was the only thing I couldn't face, the
rest I could. I looked away from them. Why had they not just fallen
off completely? That would've been better, I thought.