Forty-One
NAMELESS
I knock into a piece with the edge of my hand, sending it clattering across the floor. My ears twitching, I scurry after it. When the sound stops, I slow down, inching forward so I don’t send it flying once more. My fingers brush across the wood.
More wood.
More.
Where the fuck is it?
My heart rate increases as I think of Eduardo charging in at any moment and using his magic to take what V remains out of my veins. I can’t go back to being a prisoner without it though. Can’t survive.
My hand touches the cold glass of the broken vial, and I pick it up, running my fingers over it. It’s the bottom half of the piece, a rounded base, splintered into jagged edges. A stab of pang resonates in my soul at the idea of never seeing those I love again.
Never seeing Dayne.
Or Lou.
Never given the chance to learn to love my nephew or niece despite my own pain.
And I think about Varius.
About how I’ll never be able to kick his ass for what he’s done to me. He took my eyes, so I will take his heart.
I hope this hurts like hel for him.
Rolling onto my back, I lay the smashed vial on the floor at the top of my head, the jagged pieces up. Bear screams at me to stop. I don’t know how he’s bound, but he can’t reach me. Can’t save me however much he wants to.
But he doesn’t understand that this is saving me.
This is the only way free.
I climb to my feet, then shuffle back a bit, just enough so that when I fall, the base of my skull will land on the bit of glass. A few inches of penetration is all I need… If I destroy my brainstem, death will be instant. It’s how they kill cows when they shoot them in the head. Eduardo can keep my heart going – hel, it’ll keep going on its own for a bit, but my mind and soul will be gone. I will be gone, and the only way they’ll be able to bring me back is through necromancy.
Eduardo will keep my body alive, my heart pumping, same as if I’m on a life support machine, and they’ll use me as an incubator. They’ll breed me, abuse me.
But I will be free.
With a peaceful weight in my chest, I fall back without hesitation. Time slows, and in this dragged out moment, I think about Dayne.
I think about Lou.
And I think about Varius.
Unbidden, one of my happiest moments come back to me.
A time before all the betrayal. Before the pain. When our love was young and full of hope.
I’m singing at a karaoke bar, belting out songs with a cracked voice. I’m way out of tune. The crowd is drunk, having bought drink after drink just to get through my performance. They all want to leave, but none of them will dare, too scared of disrespecting my fiance, the Boss of the Shadow Domain – the man I’m falling in love with.
Hopping down from the stage, I head over to him, my heart so full I can barely breathe. I never want this night to end. Never want to face the day of what the future is about to bring.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
He brought me here because it was a dream of mine as a kid – to sing karaoke, to be normal for once rather than a training assassin, and he wants to make sure I’m not just done because his brother, the reaper, looks like he wants to rip out my vocal cords so he doesn’t have to endure any more of my ‘singing.’ I wish I could bring Rafiki here. Or just reenact this in our living room. Where she giggles and preens and smiles so bright, it matches the stars in the sky. I wish for so many things...
“Yes,”
I say with a smile so wide it hurts. It’s a good pain though. A happy pain. Looking into his eyes, I murmur, “I could really demolish a burger right now.”
His eyes light up, hearing the words within those words: “I like you.”
And those words stare back at me too, just more intense. “I love you.”
And I feel it then, the depth of it, and the fear inside him too.
What it would mean to love me when he doesn’t trust me.
Can’t trust me because he doesn’t know what that word means. Never learned it.
He has only ever known betrayal.
But he looks at me with such willingness to learn despite the fear of past experiences come to haunt him.
“I like burgers,” he says.
“I love you.”
“I love you, Micha Shadow.”
But now that love is gone. Turned bitter from a broken heart and betrayals too deep to fix. He took my eyes after promising me he’d never hurt me again. He abandoned me here. How long has it been, and he still hasn’t come for me? He still hasn’t killed me, using up the blood bond until the magic of it takes my life as payment rather than our shared blood.
So I’m saving myself the only way I can.
Taking the only course left to me.
Time rushes forward again, but before I can hit the piece of glass and hope it cuts deep enough to actually destroy my brain stem rather than just hurt a fuckton, I’m tackled from the side.
I scream as my hope is ripped from me. I am pushed through the air by a massive body of fur. The ground slams into me, and the beast lands on top of me. Pain punches through my body, but the tears come from the agony in my soul.
I am never escaping this hel.
I scream and cry as the wolf pins me down, and another man places his hands on me, forcing his magic through my body to take out what V remains.
I beg for them to stop, to just let me have this. I promise them I’ll be good and obedient and fuck them as much as they want if they just let me keep my sanity.
My protection against the pain.
But Eduardo makes my own body work against me. It uses up the V – sudden and quick, and I get a little high from the orgasm it pulls from me, but it isn’t enough to sedate me. And then it is gone, and I remain.
I don’t want to fucking remain.
I want to be gone.
I want to go home.
To her.
To Varius…
To that moment in the karaoke bar when everything was beautiful and perfect.
But instead I am here, carried back to the bed by a wolf twisted in form. Held down by a witch whose magic makes me feel sick.
“Shit,”
Sunny says after they manage to tie me down and he shifts into his human form. He sighs in annoyance even though I’ve stopped screaming, stopped fighting, once again consumed by unbearable grief. Just a broken shell stretched out on the bed, wishing for death. “You couldn’t have killed him, Bear?” Sunny demands.
“Antonio would have killed me when he got back!”
he protests, no longer from his position on the floor. Given the witch’s snares are wrapped around something again, they must have set him free so he could work the magic of my binds; only the one who put them on can command them.
“I broke both of his arms and legs and tied him to the mast,”
he growls. His voice is still shaky though, still full of pain despite his anger. “He’s only free because of Eduardo.”
“What the fuck?”
Sunny says, turning on the witch.
“Antonio isn’t going to kill him when he’s the only one who can breed hybrids.”
He talks with all the sootiness in the world shoved up his ass. “What do you think Tim would have done to me once he got free?”
“We could have blamed him for the V.”
He pauses. “We could still do?”
“And if Antonio doesn’t care enough to kill him?”
There is a second of silence as Eduardo’s words weigh them down. “No. The risk is too great,” he says. “Besides, he might not even be coming back. He’s been gone for weeks. He could be dead…”
“Shit.”
“Then we should kill Tim,”
Bear says.
“And face Antonio’s wrath if he does come back?”
“Shit.”
Sunny again.
“So what do we do? We can’t just live under his tyranny.”
“He won’t go that far. Not unless he knows Antonio’s dead. Otherwise, even if he could stop him from using the portal to get back here, he will never be able to get off this ship,”
Sunny says at the same time Eduardo says,
“We pray Antonio comes back and is forced to stay now that the Shadow Domain has destroyed every place he can hide.”
Their footsteps move away from me. A door opens. The hum of magic in the air dissipates, felt in its absence as I was too focused on screaming to realize its birth. A broken silence rune.
The door shuts, and the magic hums to life again. It seems they wish to save their ears from me now that I’m no longer docile on V.
Feeling so utterly helpless, I don’t care if I’m only doing what they expect of me. I can’t help but scream.
And cry.
And pray to Varius to please…
Please fucking kill me.
I can’t survive anymore.
I don’t want to.
Please… I’ll forgive you for everything.
Just fucking kill me.
Bear brings me food, but he’s forced to funnel it down my throat again. I’ve lost all desire to eat. He carries me to the bathroom for a shower and a shave and a brush of my teeth, trying to remind me that I’m still human. But I move like a puppet, like a doll with no purpose of my own. I don’t feel clean despite how much he cleans me. Pretties me.
The thing in my belly is a disease. I can feel it again, and I want it out.
I want it out.
I want it out.
I don’t know how much time passes. Hours, days, weeks? Months? Years?
I don’t sleep enough to tell the time – the nightmares feel like days anyway. I can’t track the number of meals as the fog in my brain makes them roll together. There’s just pain. And more pain. And more pain. It never stops.
I want it to stop.
“Please,” I beg.
But no one ever listens.
It’s only me and the pain.
The increasing agony.
The fire in my veins, like ants marching against my skin, burning bites injecting venom. Filling me. Consuming me. Until there’s no part left that’s me.
“Please…”
“Please…”
“I thought about this all night,”
Sadist says as he enters my room. I lift my head, feverish for his attention. He was the last one to give me V. Maybe he’ll give it to me again.
“Please,”
I start to beg.
“Oh, I’ll give it to you,”
he says as he moves towards the bed. There’s two sets of footsteps. The unknown is making me anxious and sick. “But first you need to do what I want.”
He stops beside my bed. I flinch, but I don’t jerk away. He’s offered me V. Whatever he does to me can’t be worse than this pain, and it will be temporary. If I don’t do it, then there won’t be any end to my pain.
“Anything,” I rasp.
He chuckles. “Release her. She’s so fucking keen for this.”
Someone stumbles into the bed – shoved perhaps.
“No,”
Bear says.
“Don’t be an idiot. I can just break the bed to free her. I’m giving you a chance to get back on my good side. Don’t you want that?”
“Antonio’s never going to believe I’m the one responsible for all this.”
Sadist laughs, then tsks multiple times. “All this fire you have because of her. It’s gotten you hard, hasn’t it? Having someone be so dependent on you again?”
Bear doesn’t say anything, so I break the silence. “Do it for me. Please.”
If he wants dependency, I’ll play the role to perfection. I have worn many masks during my life as an assassin. I can be whoever he needs me to be.
“Cotealos,”
he mutters, the word said in his voice the key to undoing the golden chains around my wrists.
“Now sit up and put this on,”
Sadist says.
As soon as I sit up, he throws something at my chest. I catch it on reflex, though my arms are weak and tingly from having been tied up all night.
All night.
Not nights… The pain of living without V has made time stretch unbearably. Panic runs rapid laps around my throat as I think about how terrible it’ll be to survive a week like that. Every minute so agonizingly intense, it feels like a day. I couldn’t survive. I won’t. I need the potion to help me.
Frantic to do whatever I need to to get it, I feel the item in my hands. Flat leather lines lead to a large dick.
Having never worn a strap-on before, I struggle to put it on. It’s hard to work out which straps are for the legs and which is for the waist, but eventually I manage it. I kneel up on the bed, waiting to see if Sadist will tell me I’ve done it wrong.
“Grab hold of it,”
he says, “and rub it up and down.”
My hand responds immediately, and a spike of arousal pings between my thighs. Orgasms are tied to the magic of the V, and I am desperate for any kind of relief from the pain inside of me.
“Cup your breast with your other hand.”
I obey instantly, rubbing my nipple until it’s hard. I jerk when a mouth closes around my other breast and sucks on it, but I don’t pull back. Don’t dare. He bites down on me hard, and I whimper.
Lifting his head, he trails his half-severed tongue up my chest, then my neck, all the way up to my ear. His fingers wrap around my dildo, jerking me off. Each tug of his hand pulls on the plastic straps around my waist. I start to pant, ready for the release he’s promising me.
“The V…”
I murmur, but he grabs my throat with his free hand, silencing me.
“You’re going to fuck Bear’s ass, and then you’re going to get him to fuck your pussy while you suck on this dildo. Then I’ll give you the V.”
I want to beg him to give me just a taste now, but I know he won’t. The only way I’m going to get my high is if I do what he wants. So I nod, so desperate to begin.
He laughs, making me feel sick, but I beat it down. It’s only temporary. Then I can leave all this pain and shame and self disgust behind.
Pulling away from me, he orders Bear on the bed. The man must resist because he gets slapped a couple of times and then tossed down. He might be able to take Sadist when he’s in his werewolf form while the latter is not, but he’s no match for him now.
There is a moment of hesitation as I recall all the kind things he’s done for me.
He’s been a friend.
The only one to care.
I know how devastating and painful rape is. How can I do this to someone who doesn’t deserve it?
Because I need the V.
Hurting him is the only way to stop my own pain.
Reaching over to him, I find him on his hands and knees. I move behind him and grab his hip with my left hand while my right holds my dildo. I jerk it around, trying to find his hole.
Doing it without sight is frustrating, but I pull on all my training to focus. His hip is here. That mean his crack must be here. And then his hole...
The bed dips as more weight is added to it – Sadist in front of Bear perhaps, ready to have his cock sucked.
I rock my hips forward as Bear tenses, trying to refuse me. I don’t tell him to relax. I know it won’t help. Nothing will help reduce the pain and humiliation he’s about to go through.
Don’t do it, Micha.
You know how bad it feels.
But I can’t think of anyone else right now.
I’m barely surviving.
Save yourself before you save another; that’s what every emergency manual says...
My skin itching, my soul breaking, I push the dildo into Bear’s tight, resisting ass. He cries out, but he’s quickly muffled, his mouth filled with another man’s cock.
There’s resistance, and I remember my own pain. Being in his place. Getting my own ass ripped apart. A toy to use and discard.
Choking on my guilt, I grab hold of his hips and push in deeper. He tries to move off me, but I lean down and wrap my arms around his waist. I rut him like a dog, my face pressed to his back to hide my shame, my hips bucking awkwardly, not used to being on this side of things.
I slip out all the way sometimes and have to grab hold of the dildo to push it back into his ass. The first time I touch any shit that’s coating it, I gag, but I wipe my hand on his stomach and keep going. Eventually, I figure out the right rhythm, the right distance to pull out before pumping back in.
Now I’m sliding my clean hand down his stomach to his cock. He’s starting to harden despite his whimpers of pain, and I jerk him roughly as I follow Sadist’s commands. I have to get him hard enough to fuck me after this. That’s what he said.
“Such a willing whore,”
Sadist grunts, breathless and full of pleasure.
I hate this.
I hate him.
I hate me.
The tears come, and I let them fall, knowing it’ll get him harder. If he likes me, maybe he’ll give me more V…
Sickened with myself, on how far I’ve fallen, I duck my head and focus on getting Bear hard enough to push inside me. At the moment, he’s only at half-mast, nowhere near firm enough. Definitely not hard enough to come quickly once he’s in me, and I don’t want to have to ride him for long.
Sadist grunts.
A slap resonates in front of me.
“Swallow it,”
Sadist demands. “You want to get back on my good side, right? Want me to blame one of the others instead of you when Antonio gets back? Then keep your lips closed like a good fucking whore and swallow.”
I keep pumping into him as he does what he’s been told, not sure when I should stop.
“That’s it, let me see that throat work. Now clean me up, you fucking bitch.”
A few more seconds pass – the only noise the slap of my hips and the slurp of Bear’s mouth as he cries. Next thing, I am being pulled off him and the strap-on’s removed.
“Go on; get him hard,”
Sadist snaps, a cruel note in his voice that gives me pause.
I still, a deer in headlights as the old me screams at me to run. But the fog is too thick. I don’t know what direction to go in, so I stay frozen until it’s too late.
“I guess you don’t want –”
Panicking, I lunge forward. “I do, but I don’t know how. I tried… touching him while I… was in his ass.”
My throat tightens with shame. “And you’ve taken the… the thing.”
My stomach twists even more when Sadist laughs, loud and cruel.
“You think he’s gay?”
A chill runs across my skin. “No, you dumb bitch. Bear got run out of his pack because he raped a little girl.”
“I didn’t rape her,”
Bear says with such disgust that I believe him. This is just Sadist being an asshole, getting into my head and trying to turn me against the one ‘friend’ I have in here.
But then he says something that makes my blood run cold.
That makes my disgust almost push past my need for V.
“I loved her,”
Bear protests, “and she loved me.”
I cry out as Sadist laughs, curling in on myself, wanting to be sick. I can’t do this. I won’t.
But the shaking tells me I will.
The pain in my heart that I can’t bear to carry anymore.
Just thinking about what Bear’s done has me wishing for a vial.
I need the pain to stop.
I need it to stop.
“I would never hurt a kid,”
he says, and I want to claw at my own skin. I want to break my hands to stop myself from doing what I know I will. “We loved each other.”
“How old?”
I demand, feeling my chest caving in.
I hate myself.
Don’t do this.
Stop it, Micha.
You’ll never come back from this.
I scratch at my thighs, feverish with addiction.
I need the high.
I need the escape.
I can feel the thing eating its way through me, can feel the absence of Rafiki.
Can feel my self-disgust and horror at what piece of shit I’ve become.
I can’t cope with this.
I can’t.
Sadist laughs. “What age do you think? There’s a reason we call him teddy Bear.”