Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) (24 page)

The bag was dragged off, revealing the outdoors, and flopping my hair across my face. I shook it aside. This was where they’d staked me out when I first arrived. Wet leaves and pieces of branches were underfoot and sticking to my soles. The cyclone had been two days ago and the ground was as mushy as porridge and strewn with rubbish and vegetation. It squished as the guard backed away.

Since they’d left
my wrists manacled at my back, and attached me with a chain from my neck to a tall, steel pole cemented into the ground, I wasn’t going far. Pity. But Jaz was here too, and I couldn’t run without her, or with all the guards around me.

After adjusting to the glare, I checked in a circle, counting. Eight guards. Some were loading gear into two trucks that were parked on the one road out. The quadrangle was an open square between the four joined parts of the Hou
se and every door I could see was open. Were they evacuating?

I looked up, squinting into the
pale, cloud-wreathed sun. The hills overlooking us were that startling New Guinea green. It’d been too long since I’d breathed outside or sun had warmed my skin. Maybe we’d die here. Maybe this was our chance?

I flexed my muscles, discreetly. If they freed me, would I be game to try something?
With one weapon in my hand, an automatic, I might. None of the guards near me were armed with more than batons.

My bones told me we weren’t out here to pick daisies.

Jazmine...I had to take her too. She kneeled six yards away, still with a bag on her head. Before her, Gregor sat in a chair and beside him was an elderly man – precisely cut grayed hair, a buttoned light gray shirt, and black pants that looked ready to match the jacket thrown over the back of his chair. Sweat darkened his shirt yet he kept it on? Executive persona, from the attitude. He focused on Jazmine like she was the last woman left on Earth, and the steel in his gaze was more than the appreciation of a good fuck or a victim for his fetishes.

This was the Client.
It was a fact delivered to me by smoking meteor.

She had no idea
, poor girl. As I tried to move my arms and was brought up short, the chains clinked. I ached to grab her and run.

This day would not end well.

Never give in.

“Glad you could join us, Pieter,” Gregor declared in a joyous tone. He’d say it the same way if announcing we were to be raped by wild pigs.
“You are here to witness Miss Jazmine meeting her client. Perhaps we will let you join in the festivities too? Hmm?”

The client shifted on his seat but barely glanced at me. His lips stretched as he looke
d at Jazmine. “Let her see me now.”

At a click of Gregor’s fingers, a guard strode up and removed the bag. Her black hair
tumbled in glossy waves down her back.

Her head came up and I thought she stared at the client. If she recognized him
, I couldn’t tell, but her fingers laced into each other as if she needed to shore herself up. Like me she was bound, only her wrists were cuffed in red leather not metal.

My ache intensified until I wanted to grind my teeth. I went forward as much as my chain allowed me.

“Impatient to get going, Pieter?” Gregor tsked. “You will get your turn.”

A guard behind me laughed.

Whatever he meant by that I really did not want to find out.

“I want to talk to her first.” The Client leaned forward. “Do you know who I am?”

Jazmine shook her head.

“Say it.” Underlying all his words was this menacing tone.

Her head must be so messed up with, in front of her, Gregor the man who skinned cops for fun, and this mystery man who had ordered her defiled and tortured.

He’d asked if she knew him. Which meant there was some connection.

She ducked her head, then looked up and said, “No,” in a strained voice. “I don’t.”

“Aren’t you going to beg me to free you?”

As if he would. Loaded question.

Her chest expanded then she breathed out roughly. “I know you won’t.
”

“Smart woman,
but you always were too smart, as well as vicious. My name...” He rose to his feet, walked to her side, and bent to whisper.

All she did was shake her head then stop.

“Ahh. Have you remembered? Do you know why you have to pay?”

“I... I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”

“You think it was nothing? He’s dead, and his wife and kid. Maybe you missed that little bit of news?”

“No. Is that
tru –” She swung her head and looked up at him. “No, I didn’t know, but I had nothing to –”

The crack as he slapped her
, then her fall to the side, seemed as lethal as a bullet. My head filled with anger that buzzed into my forehead. My teeth ached. It took a moment before I figured out why, and made myself relax my jaw.

He helped her back to a sitting position then released her upper arm
and wiped his palm on his pants. “You will pay for the rest of your life. I find I like seeing you fucked over day by day. At first I meant to have you killed, but no. I’m going to have a finger cut off so I can watch you scream, I’m going to fuck your pretty face, then I’m taking you with me.”

What they’d made me do to her had been insane but this chilled me. I could take men dying horribly but not this.

She panted loud enough for me to hear and shook her head crazily, before spitting near his feet. “Why?”

Bloody hell. I
smiled even as I dreaded his response. She was
fokken
angry.

“You’ll understand eventually. I’ll make sure of it. For that, I may take two fingers.
If you think you can bite me, think again. Gregor!” He gestured.

Gregor rose with s
ome device in his hand. A spider gag. I thought I recognized it. The metal spokes would open her mouth widely and keep it open.

I never said please, never begged, with men like this. I fucked them over and killed them.

They pushed the gag into her mouth, despite her screams and violent attempts to evade them, and strapped it on.

I couldn’t take this. As a guard came forward with a pair of bolt cutters, I growled, surprising even myself at the animalistic sound. Gregor brought over a small solid stool, undid her cuffs, and wrenched one
of her hands over, pinning it flat.

“Wait!” I lunged forward, jerking as my collar chain snapped taut. “Please. Let it be me. Take my finger.”

“Really?” The client angled his head, assessing me. “You’re that enamored of her? I was going to have you fuck her ass while I fucked her mouth, but I like this idea. Of course, if you can’t get it up, I’ll have you shot after.”

This man was Gregor’s equal. I stared at him. If it wasn’t me, he’d get a guard to ass fuck her. “Do it.”

Though she couldn’t speak, Jazmine pleaded with me with her eyes and made whining sounds. I figured she was saying no. I ignored her.

He nodded. “Take the stool over there. I’m not having him near me with his hands free.”

Now this had possibilities. The bolt cutters were big, mean looking, and heavy. A lethal thing if you hit someone with it. I could kill with it. But eight, no ten men? If I killed Gregor and him, would the others scatter? They’d get me, but maybe I could free Jazmine and she could run? So dangerous a situation, so iffy, but it might be her last chance at freedom.

Never ever give in.

Only Gregor had ideas too. They hauled over the stool, strapped one arm to my body, thoroughly, and forced me to my knees. There were guns on me. No one gave me an inch. They strapped my knees together, before freeing my other hand with a chain attached. Then they chained it down to the stool. I had nowhere to go.

Fok
them.

I was going to lose a finger, at least.

A guard wearing a baseball cap came forward and took the bolt cutters. “Which one?”

“The little finger.” The client
unzipped and took out his cock, began to roll on a condom.

Grinning at me, the guard
anchored down the stool with his boot on the rung underneath the seat, and fitted the blades over and under my finger. “Say cheese.”

Then he closed it with a crunch.

The pain was immense, burning my hand, burning up my arm, exploding in my head. I screamed once then tensed up, shuddering.

Blood squirted from the stump. Least he’d missed the one next to it, my logical mind informed me.

I bowed my head and muttered curses. My finger lay in the mud inches away, blood staining the ground. More blood dripped from the edge of the stool. Grunting in air like I’d run a race, or had a digit
bloody well severed
, I raised myself up. They wouldn’t see me grovel.

The client had his cock an inc
h away from Jazmine’s mouth with Gregor holding her head in place. He studied me. “Take another finger. The one next to it.”

“Sure. Man, you’re fucked.”
The guard wriggled the blades through the blood and under my next digit.

I stared at my hand, sa
id a goodbye to my finger, and had a mental block. Why was I doing this again?

Because of her.
I looked at Jazmine, waiting there, gasping and wriggling to avoid the cock he was presenting to her mouth, waiting to be defiled yet again. If I could’ve killed them all with my eyes, it was done, then, in that very second.

When it was me
hurting her, it was better, because I cared for her. My sight blurred and I blinked to clear it. I could have wept but not for me. For her. I’d give a whole hand to have her for my own.

I met the guard’s eyes, took in that stupid grin. “
Fok
jou
.”

“You too.” His chuckle ended in blood as his head ruptured. Pieces of flesh splattered
into the air and pattered like rain onto my face.

What the
fok
?

It took me al
l of three seconds to figure it out, with the rapid
thwap
of rounds coming in. Some harder, with more boom. These were sniper rounds. An attack.

I ducked, spent all of a millionth of a second on the asshole next to me twitching and bleeding out through a hole in his brain.

Were these good guys or bad? They couldn’t be worse than Gregor?

Bullets cracked through the air
. Strapped in place, though trying to keep my head low, I watched the guards spin and fall. The Client was down. Gregor sprinted toward the nearest covered way. He tripped, tumbled, and slid, with blood spray decorating his vicinity, like a ragdoll through the slush. When his body stopped sliding, he moved not at all.

Gone.
Possibly dead. Badly wounded at least.
Fuck yeah.

I was sorry they weren’t mine to kill.
These ambushers shot straight and fast.

A straggly line of men
, likely to be raskols, ran in, weaving past the trucks. As they passed downed guards, they shot them again.

By the time I was freed,
Jurgen, Glass, and Randall had arrived toting scoped rifles. Now I knew who the first shooters had been. Rescuers, not worse. My heart slowed as relief washed in.

There
were none still alive, except a moaning and crawling Gregor. The client lay silent and twisted with his cock still out and limp and half his chest blown away. My finger hurt but a man had tied it off with a cloth tourniquet before releasing me.

Sounds were muted
. My head rang from a round that’d spun past my ear.

Jazmine clutched at my leg, wiping her face.
“Show me your hand.”

“It’s fine. I’ll fix it after.”

“God, I’m sorry. I wish... Do you know these people?” The last was whispered after she climbed up and stood, and she stared up at me, desperately hoping.

“Yes. They’re friends. Wait. I’ll be back.
Sit down on the chair. Okay?” I led her to it and made her sit.