Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) (2 page)

Yeah, I was slightly fucked.

Never give up, never give in.

I resumed my watching of the proceedings outside on the dirt track.
Birds whooped and whistled up in the trees. I counted five raskols armed with homemade pistols and various knives and machetes. Plus three of my guards, all ex-mil like me, and armed to the fillings in their teeth. Wasn’t legal at all here, to carry, but they did. Their shotguns and shiny Sigs and Rugers were pretty weapons the raskols would be drooling to get their hands on.

The minutes ticked by. I was in no hurry. At the end of this drive might be my death.

Then a little girl in a grimy dress hopped up on the back of the truck and smiled at me. Nine, ten years old?

What the...
I blinked. Still there. I wasn’t tripping out on dehydration or concussion or whatever drug they’d injected me with a few minutes ago.

I croaked out a sound, then licked my lips and swallowed, tried again. “Hello.”

Her smile widened.

Here was someone who might be innocent enough to help.
I knew some of the pidjin English they spoke here. “Want gut moni?” But would I get her in trouble?

If I told her an address, would I get my friends killed? They were...

My surroundings fuzzed out, my tongue thickened.

Drug...

And fuzzed back in. And she was gone.
Fuck.

My windpipe gurgled as I breathed and I coughed.
Then the girl was back again, screaming and running from a snarling beast of a dog. She leaped into the truck and scrambled to me, the dog’s jaws snapping shut just a few inches shy of her leg. With my tied-together feet, I booted the mutt in the jaw and sent it sprawling back a few yards. A young man yelled at and kicked the dog then chained it up.

He levelled his
gun at me where the girl huddled quivering my side.

Typical New Guinea justice. They’d probably trained the beast to attack but that didn’t help its case. Not that I wanted the girl mauled.

Last I saw of the boy was a scowling face as he hauled her out of there. A sheathed knife fell from his belt and I stared stupidly at it, almost scraped it to me with my heel before he snatched that up too.

“
Fluck it,” I slurred, my tongue now thick enough to use for toast. Missed a chance. And goodbye world. I could feel myself going.

Blackness swirled in.

I awoke staked out, flat on my back, in an open yard. Glaring sun above. Dirt all around me. My sight was still hazy. Damn it. Who was paying for this trip? I wasn’t even getting an in-focus view of my holiday resort.

“Who is this
?” someone asked from just beyond my vision. Male or female? They could’ve been Martian for all I could tell.

I swung my head, dirt grating against the back of my head. My thick lips were stuck together. My eyelids too. But I kept
that one eye open a half an inch.

“Pieter. A traitor.
He let us down, helped the Jazmine girl escape, got men killed.”

My hearing seemed filtered through a ton of mud.

“He’s acceptable in appearance. I like him. I don’t know why you thought you could get rid of the girl without my agreement. She’s special to me. I need to see her damaged and humiliated, slowly. Clean him up. I want to see him play with her. Maybe more if he does well.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Then take care with him. I pay well. Vetrov will agree.”

The crunch of boots came closer and someone blocked out the sun.

Time sludged past, the blue sky fading in and out.

He leaned over me. “You lucky bastard. I don’t get to see you die today.
We were filming you today too. One last kick for luck.”

His boot thudded into my side and the world fuzzed out again.

On the second day, a guard yelled through the door, “The manager will be seeing you later.”

Overnight
I’d heard others, outside, speaking to this
manager
, the man who wanted me to call him sir. They called him sir too. Or sometimes Gregor. I decided not to try calling him that without permission. It seemed likely to earn a punishment. How easily I slipped into the mind-set of the conquered.

His weird
, stilted accent sounded Scandinavian, and already I could imagine that voice haunting my nightmares.

I’d not
seen anything when they delivered me, but the wind brushing through the trees and the animal noises betrayed that on the other side of that high-up window was the outdoors. I’d also heard the cries of women, their screams of pain, and some general all-purpose sobbing. There were other captives. If anyone here was having fun, they disguised it well. I’d thought this was some sort of way-point before they sent women elsewhere, after selling them. Maybe I was wrong.

Or maybe just some of them got to stay longer,
have other things done to them?

The awfulness of this pl
ace never failed to impress me.

My memoirs,
if...when I got away, would get me a nomination for horror writer of the year.

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands
tucked into my armpits and hugged myself. No one had left me so much as a nail file, let alone a way to tunnel out.

My room was simple. One single bed. Clean sheets. A
cross from the door was a deep alcove containing a toilet with a push-button flush and a sink with no taps, just a big button for cold water. A shower was next to it, also open to anyone walking in the door. I had a curiosity streak wide enough to embarrass a cat. I’d stared at my tapless sink and shower for a few minutes before it clicked. Taps could be unscrewed, made into weapons perhaps. Though I couldn’t imagine a woman overcoming any of the hard men policing this place, I guess they were being thorough.

I rose and went to the sink
to stare in the steel mirror. Just the steel collar on my neck said I was in deep trouble. Though I wore a clean black dress, with my red-rimmed eyes, streaked face, and messed-up hair, I looked like death warmed up. Where were all the other women I’d been grouped with in Australia? Had that been some of them screaming last night?

I
leaned my forearms on the sink and though I stayed calm for a while, I wanted that release, here, now, when nobody was watching. The first tears merely dribbled down my face. I waited some more, my forehead throbbing, for the dam inside me to break. A sob cracked from my aching chest. I lowered my head and cried my heart out. The tears pattered into the sink. My sobs grew weaker. My legs trembled and gave way. I ended up on my knees, hanging onto the sink, still crying in silence.

Least when I was done
, it wasn’t far to go to wash my puffy face.

I
was drying my face with my dress when I heard the small hatch in the door being slid aside. Then the door unlocked and I turned to look. Mr. Gregor himself. Where some big men stalked, his steps were careful and calculated. The blond stubble on his head looked unchanged. I imagined him beginning each day staring in the mirror, seeing his own incisive blue eyes, while he painstakingly scraped a razor over his scalp.

A chill shivered through me.

“Come here.” The door shut behind him as he beckoned.

I hated that he could see I’d been crying. Hated my weakness showing. But I took a breath, pressed my forearm into my eyes and did a quick
sniff as if it was nothing and maybe I’d had something in my eye. I walked to him even though hugging the wall was where I wanted to be.

Whenever I was close to one of my captors
, fear kicked in. I’d been in their hands for long enough to have memories that haunted me. Zoe being made to sit still for the knife as Scrim taunted her – that was one of the worst.

“
If I do this.” He clicked his fingers. “You’re to kneel.” Again he clicked them.

I kneeled
and felt the skirt of the dress settle on my thighs. I waited, staring at his shorts. The man had bright green surfer shorts on today and it was so weird seeing those, and his hairy knees.
Slice
was the brand name. How apt.

“
Give me your arm, Jazmine.”

I held it up and tried not to flinch when he took my wrist.

“This is yours now. Wear it every day.” He slipped a silver bracelet on my wrist and fastened it – something tiny, with petite wings, dangled from the chain, catching the sunlight streaming from the one tiny and barred window high up on the far wall. “If I see you without my angel, I punish you. If I ever take it off you, it will be because you’ve been very bad. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Say yes, thank me, and kiss my hand.” He put the back of his hand near my mouth.

Even in this there was menace. His eyes narrowed as I leaned forward.

As if I wouldn’t. I kissed his fist. “Thank you, sir.”
You utter pukeworthy bastard. Your mother was a fucking pig and so are you.
I put on a fake smile.

“Good.” He patted my head. “You’re a
lucky, lucky woman. Someone has taken a liking to you. You’re going to be part of a show that should last a few weeks. As long as you perform.”

Perform?
My fear spiked up a notch. “What does that mean?” His hand drew back as if to slap me and I hurried to add, “Sir?”

He chuckled. “You will see. Tonight, perhaps
, is your first time.”

My throat
closed. I held my breath and rested my laced fingers in my lap.

“Be good, remember? Hmm?” He ran his fingers down to my cheek. “You have to be an angel for me. We mustn’t disappoint the customers, must we?
Not like the last girl.”

Slowly, I shook my head.
The bracelet on my wrist was cold, as if it had recently come from a fridge. A tiny red spot on a link speared my attention.
Oh fuck.
My reply was soft. “No, sir.”

I prayed he didn’t have the final say in this
– in assessing whatever I was to do. Someone liked me. I shut my eyes.
Liked
. Maybe they just wanted me to dance or do a striptease?

Panic was there in my mind, coiled up, ready to
explode. I screwed it down tight.
I mustn’t. I mustn’t.

This wasn’t going to be a dance.

Late that afternoon they came for me.

Their s
tandard procedure, I discovered, was to have my wrists cuffed together before me and a heavy bag over my head – strapped around my neck over the top of the steel collar. The only light and air came from some neat round holes down near my mouth. When I breathed, the bag sucked in. I’d had asthma as a child. It’d left me with a fear of being unable to breathe. A little desperate, but trying not to draw attention, I plucked at the fastening strap.

If they tightened it, I might choke. The potential for pain,
for death, for nastiness, was so ripe in the air here that I might suffocate from that alone.

Someone bre
athed, from an inch beside my ear. I froze. They were watching me.

“That’s so you can’t see. Leave it alone, my angel.”

Him.

I lowered my cuffed
hands, shut my eyes, and tensed. Even my pussy clenched in. I had no underwear on. Also standard operating procedure with these men, like the bag, like the ever-present danger.

“Walk,” he added.

They drew me onward down some maze of corridors until we entered a room. I could tell from the openness, the echoes. My attempt to see through the holes at my mouth revealed the concrete block on which they’d displayed me when I arrived here.

He’d done nothing to me that time. Only scared me. This time...

From somewhere in front of me, he spoke. I raised my head.

“Jazmine, we have a rich client who wants to see things done to you. I don’t have all the details
, but I think they want to see you hurt, in stages. You might think this is bad, but it’s not. Do you want to know why?”