PRIMAL Fury (The PRIMAL Series) (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

CROATIA TO HUNGARY

The minibus nosed its way onto the car ferry that was tethered against the concrete wharf. Two men swung the gates shut behind it and the boat chugged its way out onto the Drava River. It was late at night and most of the twelve girls on the bus were sleeping. Only Kalista peered out of a window, watching the men guide the craft across the slow-moving river that cut the border between Croatia and Hungary.

She was the elder of two sisters, her seventeen-year-old sibling Karla snuggled next to her in a thick jacket to protect her from the cold. Tall, beautiful, and blonde, both girls had won a local beauty contest to earn their place on the bus. Men from Hungary had come to the village and run selections before awarding the girls the opportunity to leave their families and head for the bright lights of Budapest. There, they were told, they would learn the skills of modeling before gracing the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

It had been young Karla’s idea to enter the competition. She was by far the bolder of the pair. Some would have even called her reckless, always the first to throw herself into any adventure, forever trying to escape the drudgery of village life. Physically, the sisters were almost identical—the same high cheekbones, blue eyes, and full lips. They had long been the most popular girls in the village. Boys would whistle as they rode past on bikes, long tanned legs flashing as they pedaled furiously, Karla always racing to be first.

The bus shuddered as the ferry nudged up against the wharf on the Hungarian side of the river. Karla murmured and nuzzled her head against her sister’s shoulder. The other girls on the bus did not stir; like the sisters, they were all aspiring models, plucked from obscurity by the Hungarians. The bus drove off the ferry and up the bank to a border security post. There, the driver and a modeling agency representative got off, the second man carrying a large envelope.

“What’s going on?” Karla mumbled.

“Nothing, just the border crossing. We’ll need to show our passports.” Kalista rummaged around in her backpack but stopped when the two men got back on the bus. The driver jumped behind the wheel, the bus started off again, and they drove through the glaring lights of the security checkpoint into Hungary.

“Wake up, wake up!” A man’s voice jolted the girls from their slumber.

Kalista’s head snapped to the front of the bus, where a rough-looking man with a heavy beard was standing. He glared at them with the intensity of a wild animal.

“Get up and get off the bus!” he screamed in English.

All the passengers were stirring and one of the younger girls burst into tears. Kalista grabbed her sister’s arm and backpack and jostled into the aisle. They were the first off the bus and into the floodlit courtyard that greeted them. More bearded men stood at the edges of the open area. Karla rubbed the sleep from her eyes and they grew wide as she noticed the large guns the men carried. A dog could be heard barking in the background.

All the girls spilled off the bus gathering in a huddle on the cobblestones, under the watchful eye of the heavily bearded brute and the guards. Once they were all off the bus he yelled at them again. “Get into line, whores.”

The girls stared at him in shock.

“I said get in line, bitches. Are you fucking deaf?”

Kalista stood defiantly. The guard moved forward and grabbed her by the arm. She lashed out, driving her foot into the man’s crotch. He grunted, doubling over, and she hit him in the back of the head with her backpack.

“Karla, run!” she screamed, grabbing her sister by the arm. They sprinted around the bus and down the driveway toward the estate’s gates. The metal gates were closed, flanked by tall stone walls.

The girls were fast, used to physical exertion on their father’s farm. They covered the distance in seconds. Spurred on by the sound of a barking dog, they leaped onto the gate and started climbing.

Kalista felt a searing pain in the back of her leg as she was torn from the wrought iron. She screamed in agony as the Alsatian attack dog savaged her leg, pulling her down. She hit the ground with a thump and the dog bit her arm, its fangs tearing into her flesh and meeting bone.

Karla leaped from the gate and landed on the dog. It yelped in pain, released Kalista’s arm, and backed away snarling. As it launched forward to attack again, strong hands pulled it up short. The handler wrestled the dog away, disappearing into the darkness.

“You fucking idiots. Look at her, she’s worthless now.” The bearded thug yanked Karla off her sister and bent over the wounded girl. The dog had mauled her arm and leg, leaving deep wounds that wept blood. The girl moaned, concussed from falling off the gate and in shock. “Together they would have been worth a fortune. Now this one is worthless. May as well put the bitch down.” He turned away in disgust, heading back up the driveway to the stone manor and the other girls.

One of the guards scooped the wounded girl off the ground and carried her toward the manor. Another grasped Karla by the arm, dragging her sobbing to an adjacent building. The wooden barn once housed horses but now it was a basic dormitory. He pushed her through the double doors into a large room filled with beds. The doors slammed shut behind her, and a bolt slid across, locking them in. All the girls from the bus were in the room, huddled in twos and threes on the metal frame beds.

“Where are we?” one of them asked.

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“Where’s Kalista?”

The chorus of questions continued until the lights were turned off. The girls wept in their beds, terrified of what the next day would bring. Karla sobbed uncontrollably. It had been her idea to try this modeling contest and now her older sister was badly hurt.

At precisely seven o’clock the next morning, the doors opened and a woman entered. She was a brunette, petite and pretty, with the body of a dancer. The woman gathered the girls onto two of the beds and spoke to them in English, a language most of them understood. Karla interpreted for the few who didn’t.

“I know most of you are very scared. You don’t understand what is happening.” She paused for Karla to translate. “My name is Aurelia, and if you follow my instructions and do as you are told things here will not be so bad. These men will not harm you. You will be taken from here to another place where you will be given to other men. If you listen to me and learn, then these men will also treat you well. They will lavish you with gifts and you will live like princesses. If you try to escape, you will die. It is that simple. Now we will eat breakfast and then we will start with your lessons.”

She led them out of the dormitory and across to the manor, where the girls would be fed and trained. They glanced at the high stone wall that surrounded the estate and at the heavily armed guards patrolling the grounds.

As they filed in through the door to the dining hall, Aurelia pulled Karla to one side. “Your sister will live,” she whispered, “but she won’t be coming with you. I will look after her but you need to focus on yourself now.”

Karla nodded and followed the other girls to the line for food. Tears welled in her eyes as she picked up a bowl of watery gruel and took her place on the long wooden table. They ate in silence.

CHAPTER 2

THE MANOR, SOMOGY COUNTY, HUNGARY

Over the next week, Aurelia prepared the girls for their new lives. She taught them how to apply makeup and how to dress, walk, and entertain powerful men. She provided them with a wealth of advice, all of the tricks she had learned in her days as a professional dancer, including pieces of information that would help make their life in sexual slavery a little more bearable.

“Are they ready?” the thickly bearded Gusztáv asked. He was responsible for ensuring the girls were prepared before they were shipped off to the crime syndicate’s headquarters for auction. He regularly summoned Aurelia to his rooms to update him, and occasionally for her to service his more personal needs.

Aurelia was dressing in the corner of his bedroom. “Are they ever ready? What woman could ever be ready for this?”

Gusztáv lay sprawled on his bed, naked except for a pair of shorts. His muscular frame was covered in tattoos; dragons and other mythical creatures wound their way around his arms and over his shoulders onto his hairy chest. “Deep down inside, every woman is a whore. These girls were born ready; you just polish them up a little—and we are smart enough to make money from it.”

Aurelia watched him with barely concealed hatred as he hunted in the drawer of an antique bedside table for a cigar. The bruises on her neck would be visible for days. She took her only solace in knowing that as long as he found pleasure in abusing her, the girls would be less likely to feel his rage. She might not be able to protect them once they left the manor, but at least here they were safe.

“Their photos are done.” She took a USB drive from her handbag and threw it onto the bed.

“Good, we can ship them off early. Maybe András will give me a bonus.” He found a cigar and fumbled on his side table for a cutter.

“What about Kalista? What will happen to her?” She walked across to the table on the other side of the bed and picked up the cigar cutter.

“Kalista? Who the fuck is Kalista?” He snatched the implement from her hands and snipped the end of his cigar.

She handed him a lighter from the same table. “The girl who was injured.”

“Oh yes, dog-food girl.” He lit the cigar and puffed a foul-smelling
cloud of smoke into the room. “If she lives, I will sell her. If she dies, then the dogs can finish what they started.”

Aurelia’s eyes fell on the handgun that occupied the same table as the cigar cutter and the lighter. How easy it would be to take it and shoot this devil dead in his bed.

She sat down on the bed. “Where do the girls go from here?”

He took the cigar from his mouth and gave her a look. “I’ve told you before, Aurelia, ask questions like that and you will find out. You might be a little long in the tooth, but some Arab with an anal fetish will still pay good money for you. Then what would happen to your sick mother, hey? You should be thankful that I’m so generous. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

Aurelia nodded and made for the door. She opened it, then turned back to face him. “My mother…do I still have your permission to visit her this afternoon?”

He puffed another cloud of smoke into the air. “Only because you still fuck like you enjoy it. Now go!”

After she left the room, Gusztáv picked up the phone by the bed. “Aurelia is allowed to go to the village but have someone keep an eye on her. That bitch is asking too many questions.”

He slammed the phone into its cradle and turned his attention back to his cigar. He puffed another cloud and stared at the door, deep in thought. After a few moments, he picked up the phone again. “Load up the bitches. I want them on the road to the castle in an hour.”