Chapter 1 Decimation
The rough fabric of the sack grates against my cheeks, my eyelashes scraping against it with every frantic blink.
I can’t see, but I can hear the low thrum of an engine, feel the vibration of tyres on smooth tarmac.
I can smell the stale scent of my own fear, the coppery tang of blood from a split lip, and the musky odour of the men who took us.
My arms are wrenched behind my back, bound so tightly that the rope bites into my wrists in a constant, burning reminder of my helplessness. The gag is a foul-tasting cloth, shoved so deep it threatens to trigger my gag reflex, a dry heave that only brings more pain.
Next to me I hear my mother’s muffled sobs, a desperate, rhythmic keening that is the only anchor I have in this darkness.
I’ve lost all sense of time. Hours? Days? The journey was a disorienting nightmare of motion and silence, punctuated by rough hands forcing sips of water in through a straw.
I knew, with a cold certainty that settled in my bones, where we were going. Who was waiting for us.
The vehicle slows, then stops. The engine cuts off, and the sudden silence is more terrifying than the noise. Doors open. Warm, dry air washes over me.
Rough hands haul me out. My knees buckle, my legs numb from confinement, and I crumple onto a hard, polished floor. They drag me, my feet scraping, my shoulders screaming in their sockets.
My mother’s cries intensify, a wordless plea that is cut short by a sharp sound; a slap, maybe, or a shove.
We are forced to our knees as a voice, smooth as oil and cold as ice, cuts through the muffled chaos. “Leave us.”
The footsteps of our captors recede. A door clicks shut. The silence that follows is absolute, broken only by my own thundering heart and my mother’s ragged, gag-muffled breathing.
This is it. This is the end of the road my foolish hope built.
Hands, familiar yet alien, grip the top of the sack. With a brutal yank, the world explodes into blinding, painful light.
I blink, my eyes watering, struggling to focus.
The light is from a single, monstrous crystal chandelier hanging from a vaulted ceiling.
I’m kneeling in the centre of a vast, opulent room.
Everything is marble, black, and polished gold.
Sterile. Expensive. A museum of cold taste and standing before us, flanked by two hulking men in dark suits, is Konstantine.
He hasn’t aged. Perhaps time seems to fear him too. His black hair is swept back, his suit impeccable, his face a mask of chilling, amused contempt. His eyes, the colour of a winter storm sweep over us, and a slow, cruel smile plays on his lips.
My mother, on her knees beside me, lets out a fresh wave of sobs against her gag, her body trembling so violently I can feel the vibrations through the floor.
“Look at you,” Konstantine says, his voice a low, venomous purr that echoes in the cavernous room. “The traitor and her whelp. Crawling back after you thought you could just disappear. After what your family did.”
My mother shakes her head violently, a denial trapped behind the fabric in her mouth. Her eyes are wide, pleading pools of terror.
He takes a step, then another, coming to a stop in front of my mother. She shrinks back, trying to make herself small, insignificant. It’s no use.
“Please,” the word is a distorted, wet mumble through her gag. “Konstantine, I beg you…”
He backhands her so fast I don’t even see the movement. Just the crack of his gold ring against her dark cheekbone, the snap of her head to the side. She cries out, collapsing onto her side, a fresh trickle of blood marring her smooth skin.
“It’s too late for begging,” he snarls, looking down at her crumpled form with utter disgust. “Far too fucking late.”
My own breath hitches in my throat, trapped by the gag and a terror so profound it feels like my insides are turning to ice. I am frozen, a statue of fear, forced to watch the prelude to my own destruction.
Konstantine turns his stormy gaze from my mother’s quivering body to me.
I want to look away, to close my eyes, but I can’t. His eyes lock with mine, and I am pinned, like a butterfly under a cruel, scrutinizing lens. Only, the contempt in his face shifts. It doesn’t soften, but it changes. The anger seems to recede, replaced by a dawning, impossible confusion.
He freezes.
Is this it? Is he deciding how to hurt me first?
He takes another step, then another, until he is looming over me. He slowly, almost hesitantly reaches out. I flinch, expecting a blow, but his hand doesn’t strike. It cups my jaw, his thumb rough against my cheek, forcing my face up to the light. His touch is not gentle, but it is searching.
The rage in his eyes is completely gone, replaced by a look of such profound, unsettling shock that it’s somehow more terrifying. He stares at me as if he’s seeing a ghost. His lips part.
“Ines?” he whispers.
The name is a breath, a prayer, a question laden with something I’ve never heard in his voice before: disbelief, and a terrifying hope.
I know I look like her, I know we have some resemblance. But the way he’s staring, the way he’s acting is like I’m a thing reborn.
His thumb strokes my cheekbone, his gaze tracing every feature of my face, my eyes, my nose, my mouth, with an intensity that feels like a violation all its own.
I have to break this spell. This wrongness is more frightening than his rage. I force my tongue against the vile gag, struggling to form words around the obstruction. “M-my n-name… is Leee-Leandra,” I stammer, the words thick and slurred.
The effect is instantaneous.
His face contorts, and the brief glimpse of whatever haunted memory I’d triggered shatters like glass. The confusion is burned away by a white-hot fury. The spell is broken, and the monster is back, angrier than before.
“Don’t you lie to me.” he roars.
His hand in my hair, once almost caressing, becomes a vice. He yanks me to my feet by it so violently I see stars. A scream tears from my throat, muffled by the gag. The pain is excruciating, like literal fire across my scalp.
He drags me close, his free hand fisting in the back of my dress, holding me upright as my legs buckle. He brings his face to the crook of my neck and inhales deeply, a grotesque, animalistic sniffing. He’s, he’s smelling me?
“No,” he mutters, his voice a ragged thing. “No, it can’t be.”
He pushes me back, his hands rough on my shoulders, my arms, turning me, examining me like a piece of livestock. His fingers dig into my flesh, probing, assessing.
I whimper, trying to twist away, but his grip is iron tight.
He stops, his hands on either side of my face again, forcing me to look at him. A strange, awful light dawns in his eyes.
“You’re like her,” he breathes, and the rage is still there, but it’s now mixed with a demented awe. “So like her. The eyes, the hair, the scent. A perfect echo.”
Tears stream down my face, soaking into the gag. I shake my head with a frantic, tiny motion. No, no, no. I’m me. I’m Leandra.
He doesn’t see me. He’s looking through me, at a ghost he can’t possess.
His mouth crashes down on mine.
It’s not a kiss. It’s an assault. The gag makes it a brutal, suffocating violation.
I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. His tongue forces its way past the fabric, a thick, invasive violation that makes my stomach heave.
I taste his anger, his madness, the stale bitterness of coffee and power.
He kisses me with a desperate, furious hunger, as if he can consume the memory he sees in me.
When he finally breaks away, gasping, his eyes are wild, unfocused. “Ines,” he moans, the name both a benediction and a curse.
I’m choking, sobbing, my entire body trembling. I shake my head again, the only denial I can manage. “Leandra,” I try to say, but it’s just a wet, garbled sound. “My name is Leandra.”
That’s the final trigger.
His face darkens, a storm breaking. All traces of the haunted man are gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated rage.
“You ungrateful bitch.” he screams, the sound echoing off the cold walls. “After everything I did for you…”
His fist connects with my stomach.
The air leaves my lungs in a whoosh. The pain is a supernova, blinding and absolute.
I double over, but he holds me up by my hair and hits me again, this time in the ribs.
I hear a crack, feel a searing hot lance of agony.
I’m screaming into the gag, the world dissolving into a haze of pain and terror.
“Stop pretending.” he bellows, driving a knee into my thigh. “Stop denying me. You’re her. You’re MINE.”
He throws me to the floor, and the marble is unforgiving against my bruised, exhausted body. I try to curl into a ball, to protect myself, but he’s on me in an instant. His hands are on my clothes, grabbing, pulling, ripping. The cold air hits my skin, and a new, primal terror takes hold.
He’s a frenzy of violence. My dress is shredded and pulled away. I kick, I thrash. I try to fight, but I am a paper doll in his hands. A thing. He forces my legs apart with a brutal knee, his weight crushing me into the cold, hard floor.
I am screaming, screaming, screaming, but the sound is trapped inside my own skull, a silent plea to a God who abandoned us the day we were born into this man’s shadow.
He fumbles with his own clothes, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t look, I can’t see this. I try to leave my body; to float away from this horror but the pain anchors me here, in this moment.
The searing, tearing pain as he slams into me almost makes me pass out.
It is a violation so complete, so absolute that it shatters inside me. The world narrows to this agony, to the crushing weight of him, to the smell of his cologne and his sweat, to the sound of his ragged breathing in my ear.
And then, the chanting begins.
A low, guttural mantra, grunted with every brutal, horrific, punishing thrust.
“Ines.”
Thrust.
“Ines.”
Thrust.
“Ines.”