18. Vanya
18
VANYA
F reezing water hits me in the face.
I would spit it in their face if I was not so thirsty. So I take what I can get.
These Mocro are not kind.
It’s nothing that I haven’t endured before, but in the hours since I awoke in this cell, they have made things particularly unpleasant for me. I know it is only the start.
What I do not know is the end game.
Why they kept us alive, when they could have simply eliminated us. Perhaps they want to know if there are more Bratva on the way.
Knowing there is no one coming for me is a concept I accept. What I am having a harder time with, is not knowing what happened to Shakal. Thinking of him that way, as the laughing psycho from the Gulag, helps me keep things in perspective.
It also keeps his identity safer.
They will wear me down, and I do not want to slip up.
After another visit from my guards, I lay still, assessing the state of my body. My head hurts, no surprise.
They clubbed me as I rode past on the motorbike. Which explains the road rash on my leg. My back. Otherwise, I am mostly hale. Aside from a few fractured fingers, a broken toe, lacerations on my arms and sides from our knife fight, and the splits on my lips and cheek.
“Shakal…” I whisper the name periodically in the pitch black, between bouts of unconsciousness. It’s sleep, of a sort. The kind where you do not remember passing out or waking. Time passes, though I cannot keep track. Other than the growing pain in my stomach, the gnawing hunger.
My only sense of day and night finally comes when my captors hose me down again, longer and more viciously than the other times. When they go, they leave a cup on the ground. Presumably so I can scoop up what I can from the grimy floor to drink.
If they think this is torture, they do not have a clue.
Survival, pain. This is the Bratva way. The Volk in particular have always prided ourselves on our knowledge of the hunt. Staying alive in impossible situations.
Pyotr taught me well.
So I drink the tepid, dirty water.
I bleed a few of the deeper cuts to flush out as much dirt as possible, then I pinch the wounds tight. With nothing else to do, I know this is a crucial time.
Hours pass, and eventually I fall asleep, curled in a ball in the corner.
When I wake, I am not alone. My mouth is parched.
“Good morning,” I croak, assuming from the long break that night passed.
“Hm. That’s a clever tactic,” the shadow mutters, his voice smooth, devoid of caring.
“Worth a try.”
“Anything to keep your mind on the outside,” he muses, almost as if he is talking to himself. This time when he speaks, it’s chilling in the way they make vampires out to be in the movies. If he wasn’t so inhuman, he would sound alluring.
“So, this is the psychological part of the torture? You will offer me solace, play mind games, etc.?”
“No. I will ask you one question. You will answer.”
“If I do not?” Likely another day or two of water torture, cold.
“The men outside will not come back, if that is what you are thinking. My time frame is short.”
“That’s inconvenient for you.”
“Who is the man you were with at the casino?”
“My brother’s boyfriend.” I sniff because laughing hurts my ribs. “Where is Pyotr?”
“I would not expect a Volk to be so glib,” he says mostly to himself. “And I will ask the questions.”
In the dim, I can just barely make out his shape across the cell from me. He stands perfectly still. Until suddenly he is next to me. It takes everything in me not to flinch at that deadly speed and precision.
The fraction of light leaking under the door gleams in his eyes. Hollow. Dark.
“His name. And you go free.”
“He did not tell you? He is movie star. Bryan Reynolds. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure.”
He does not sigh. He does not react at all.
That anticipation makes everything worse, waiting for him to strike, to slash me. But nothing.
For some reason, it’s shaking me to my core.
Even more when he’s back at the door suddenly, looking back as he steps into the hallway.
“You think you will endure this for him. I will use that against you. We will see how well he endures.”
Alone again, I breathe deeply, centering myself.
There is nothing they can do to harm me. Even if they take Ciro…
I will tear them to shreds if they kill him. I will die avenging him, to join him.
Darkness deepens. I close my eyes.
Pain lances through my back, I’m being dragged to the door. To my feet. Shoved out into what is likely a dimly lit corridor. But to my light-starved eyes, it’s a thousand suns searing my mind.
Every muscle aches, stiff with cold and disuse over the last two days. I should have warmed up. Stretched. But conserving energy is key.
The room they drag me to is empty, save for a single chair. I am thrown into it, told to stay put. A single candle lights the room, on a table in the corner.
As soon as they leave, I shuffle to it, cupping my hands around the heat.
I could use the fire as a weapon. Better to use my dress as a rope and strangle one of them. It’s already in tatters around me.
But I will wait, keeping as much material covering my skin as possible.
Lifting the candle holder, I return to my seat to wait. I stare at the door for hours. Until it finally creeks open slowly.
He is lean, tall.
Instead of his leather moto outfit, he’s dressed in a long sleeve black turtleneck shirt. Slacks. Gloves. All very stylish and fitted to his figure. The mask is the same though, covering his face and part of his head, revealing only his jet-black hair.
“You are as strong as they say.”
“Who says?”
“Rumors. I have never met a Bratva before.” His thoughts seem disjointed. His words even more so, like he speaks his thoughts without realizing it.
He circles the room, his footsteps completely silent.
“Clearly. You are still alive.” Does this mean they really do not have my uncle?
“So would your people, if things had gone according to plan.”
I can’t tell if he is misleading me, trying to get me to reveal something. Most of his statements seem innocuous, unplanned.
We sit in silence for a time, the shadow leaning on the wall behind me, my eyes focused on a stone on the wall ahead of me. If he will not speak, I will not.
“His name. Last time.” His tone tells me that he will begin the real torture next. So I must find my center. Latch onto my anchor.
“Shakal,” I finally say, the image of my lover, my warrior, locking into place.
“Hm.”
“ Shakal .”
“When he sees what I’ve done to you, he will break.”
“Shakal does not break.”
“We will see.”
Hours. The cell grows colder. Men bring in a box, leaving it by the door. I do not open it.
Mask strides in a bit later. He abruptly snatches my hand.
And breaks my pinky finger.
Agony ricochets up my arm, through my head. My breath comes in heaving gasps through my nose as I grit my teeth.
Then he sets my finger, rests my hand on the arm of the chair. Where he proceeds to strap me down. I start to struggle, until he breaks my other pinky, setting it and returning my arm to the rest.
He is setting rules. Boundaries.
In the flood of pain, I cannot move enough to resist him belting my ankles. He takes his time opening the box, his back to me.
When he turns, I see the reason for the straps.
Wires. Two thick cords leading to prongs resting on the floor, the other red and black disappearing under the door.
The show is as much a part of the endeavor. But I do not need it.
I have been electrocuted before.
A shudder quakes through me, forcing me to close my eyes. He fits a strap between my teeth.
When the current hits my arms, it feels like someone hit me with a car.
Every muscle seizes at once, locking up. The sensation is unique. Almost like every fiber is cramping so hard it tears. To my perception, it lasts minutes, though only a few seconds pass.
I open my eyes. Drool pools in my lap, my head lolling forward.
“Who is Shakal?”
“A real man.” I spit the strap out. He forces it back in.
Shock. An eternity of hell.
Then cold. My entire body shivers uncontrollably.
He is careful not to keep it on too long, allowing me time to recover somewhat before he continues. Still, I can smell smoke and a faint odor of blistered skin.
“Shakal,” he whispers in my ear. Then hits me again, pressing the prongs to my chest.
The change of position staggers my resolve, shakes my focus.
“Shakal!” I scream it through my gag.
It goes on too long this time. I black out.
Water kisses my lips. Cracked and bleeding, I suck in a sip, swallow.
“His name, dear. Then you can rest.”
“Shakal,” I whisper.
Three more times. Four.
I lose count. But I hold to the image of him, my Shakal. My rock. He is here, somewhere. Or he is out there, coming for me. To murder every single one of these bastards.
Delirium sets in for a time. I dream.
Then I wake. I can’t open my eyes. They just do not want to respond.
“Sh…Shak…” I mutter.
Until I feel a warm hand on mine. Fingers lacing, palm pressed against my palm. He’s here…
“ Volchitsa …”
“You know I hate that nickname, Ciro…”
My eyes snap open, my head jerks back.
“NO!” I scream, glaring into the wide black eyes behind the mask. And he just sits there in the chair next to me, his gloveless hand still intertwined with mine.
With a wordless roar, I twist my wrist, locking my fingers. At least one of his dislocates before he can jerk his hand back.
“Shit!” A low, menacing grunt muffles into the mask as he stands, stumbling back a step. With another growling sigh, he popped them back into place, straightening.
“There. You got what you wanted,” I grit out, my lips frothing with rage.
“Yes. I did.” He storms toward the door. Stops. Turns. “Now the Mocro must get what they want. I am sorry. Well, maybe not that sorry.”
He holds up his hand as he leaves.
Men come in his wake, turning me in my chair. A panel on the wall opens, and my soul leaves my body. In the next room, through a thick, tinted window, Ciro sits strapped to a chair just like mine.
And he looks like death. His eyes roll, his mouth open, dripping blood onto the stone floor. My heart breaks for his pain. For his suffering. As if mine was nothing.
Something about seeing him this way flips a switch inside me.
Pure, unfiltered fury boils over, unlike any I have ever felt.
And so it is that I must watch through a haze of red in my vision as they continue to torture him. For hours. Waterboarding. Submersion.
Yet for some reason, they never come to me. They only make me watch this horror show. So I do not look away. I behold their every strike, every wound they inflict on my lover.
Marking it down to return it tenfold on them.
But then the skeletal man administering the pain reaches for a pair of pliers, clamps them to Ciro’s fingernail. I cannot control the scream that tears itself from my throat.
Brutal, primal, it echoes out, reverberating through the walls.
His name.
“Shakal!”
The torturer hesitates, looking at the window.
Ciro’s head rises, just enough to look ahead. And I see my name on his lips. “Vanya.”
His eyes flick to the side, to the man still distracted by my wail. Standing a bit too close. Ciro’s forehead takes him full in the nose, spraying blood and sending him tumbling back.
Though I cannot hear the sound, I see the man’s mouth open. Shouting in agony.
It brings a smile to my face.
After this, the torture seems to be over. For now.
They return me to my cell. But this time, I am not alone.