Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Violet
“She looks disgusting,” Les, of all my tormentors, said with a frown as he studied my naked body. “She’s put on some weight already. Fucking pig.”
Gabe decided to continue my humiliation ritual and despair by bringing in one of the few other people that truly terrified me.
My first real victim, still alive, walking with a gait now, a peculiar hunched over form like he was trying to accommodate for the missing appendage between his thighs.
I suppressed a smirk, bolstered by the knowledge that I’d harmed him.
That act is what started it all, I think.
“You feel lighter, I bet,” I scoffed back, looking at his empty crotch.
Les slapped me as I finished speaking, his fury evident in how it radiated off him. “You fucking bitch, I ought to-”
“Lesley,” Gabe admonished, and Les scowled.
Lesley, yikes. It was a strange kind of fear I had for him, because there was no respect.
He didn’t make me cower, I knew what I’d done, why his hatred ran so deep, but the terror was more primal than that.
If he could, he would. It was there; the only thing stopping him from killing me were his orders.
I truly believed the torture he might lay upon me would be right up there with Rafe, so as he strode towards me, my heart tried to stop. Even if I wanted to snark at him too.
It had been a shock to see him alive, to see him moving around in semi-decent condition. It was a bloody disappointment he hadn’t died while I was chewing up his rancid penis. Why had Rafael even bothered?
“What should I do?” Les asked, holding up the dress. “She’s too fat for it.”
“Just force it onto her then, I don’t have time or care for this,” Gabe said, typing into his phone, not glancing up or paying us much attention. Now that I knew his game, he was over it. “That fucking blondie who was looking after her has disappeared, and Rafe doesn’t want to hear about it.”
“Where did she go?” Les asked, his eyes never straying from mine.
Gabe only shrugged and stayed focused on his phone, typing away furiously.
He seemed stressed about whatever he was reading on there, and Les looked wicked as I turned my gaze from his.
They were talking about Lucy, the girl who’d never said a word to me.
She was gone. Good. I hoped she was far a-bloody-way from here.
We were in a bedroom I didn’t recognize, not the one I’d rotted in for months of my life, but one with a lot less opulence.
It was almost bare, with only a bed, a table with an old-fashioned lamp on it, and a rack of clothes that appeared freshly dragged in.
I’d only seen a select few rooms of this god-forsaken mansion, so it was no surprise I had no familiarity. It only added to how unsettled I felt.
I tried to cover my body with my arms when Les looked me over again, just forever reminding me of my lack of autonomy, but he smacked me round the face again.
“Drop them,” he demanded, nodding to my arms over my breasts.
Glaring at him, I did. It would make no sense to defy this creep now; I needed to bide my time. This was all so strange.
But if Theo was dead…
If he was dead, nothing could stop me following him to whatever afterlife or lack of existed. The thought made me smile. That this might be all over soon. Cozy death must be close. It was almost freeing, knowing there was nothing tying me to this life.
“Fucking hell,” Gabe muttered at his phone, before looking up at Les.
“I’ll be right back.” He pointed a finger at Les’s face.
“Touch her beyond dressing her and die.” Gabe’s gaze then slid to mine, and for a second whatever was stressing him out leaked away, replaced with pure, evil humor.
It twisted up his face, and I couldn’t see anything of the lie he’d lived before.
He opened his mouth to say something, then bit it back with a glint.
Gabe left me alone with Les, and my heart squeezed.
But Rafe was in this house, I could sense it, so much of my danger alarm was focused elsewhere that Les just seemed a gnat.
Les was an evil bastard, but he wasn’t calculated, just reactive and pathetic.
My eyes slid from the door to Les, and I knew there was no way he wasn’t about to try to hurt me. My shoulders slumped.
Rafael’s presence loomed heavy in the house, a weight that made my skin prickle and my bones ache. And I hadn’t even set eyes on him yet. Les was a wasp, annoying, persistent and hard to kill. But Rafe was the entire hive.
I shuddered as Les threw the dress at me, a white lacy thing that looked ridiculous in my battered, bloody hands.
“Put that on,” he demanded.
I don’t know why. I really don’t. Because I understood what it would do. I knew that I should just accept that sensation of letting go, let it happen so I wouldn’t suffer any more. I should let Les treat me badly and keep my mouth shut to prevent it being any worse.
“Fuck you,” I spat instead, the harsh word weird on my dry tongue. “You put it on.”
When Les met my eyes again, his face wasn’t even angry. It was excited, like he was getting exactly what he wanted.
I didn’t have a moment to react before his hand flew towards and grabbed between my legs, cupping the entire fleshy area and squeezing.
I screamed out at the pain, but his hand landed on my mouth and he rushed me against a wall, slamming me into it and making the world spin as his fingers probed through my labia, so intrusive and vile.
“You’ve done it now,” he growled, his fingernails digging into me. He twisted his grip, pinching and pulling at my flesh, and pain vibrated down to my toes, making my eyes water as I fought not to scream into his sweaty palm.
My eyes swam with tears, but my vision still focused over Les’s shoulder. Gabe had returned, watching, interested but not moving, just observing the action in a detached, cold way, staying right by the door. My knees tried to buckle when Gabe shook his head. Don’t come to me for any help.
Les’s slimy fingers probed and grabbed, like he was trying to rip my vulva clean from my body.
“No!” I shrieked into his skin, trying to fight, to bite his palm as he squeezed it over my mouth.
But he was determined, one hand holding me to the wall, the other clawing at my sensitive skin.
He was attempting to rip it off, he was. Revenge for what I’d done to him.
His fingernails popped through the top layer of skin, just above my clitoris, and I bellowed, battering him with all my might as sick images raced around in my mind.
I couldn’t let him do this. It was a clear, easy attempt at retribution.
An eye for an eye. A pussy for a dick. I drew up all the fight I had, pushing back the desire to give up.
A surge of adrenaline boiled through me, and my teeth sank into the skin of his palm. I bit until my teeth met with a clank and then I pulled back, a huge chunk of his flesh coming away as metal flooded my mouth and skin got stuck in my canines.
“What the fuck!” Les screamed, stumbling away before punching me with his uninjured fist. Blood poured down his other arm, dripping onto the floor.
“Are you a fucking cannibal, you lunatic!” He lunged at me, but I dodged with a gasp, spitting out his flesh as I ducked out of his way on unsteady legs. Still naked.
My eyes were frantic as I looked for a weapon, for anything I could use to hurt this man.
In a split-second, he would be back on me, returned to injure or kill.
And yet, Gabe rested against the door, his phone in his hand, hardly looking up.
There was a faint smirk on his face, almost like he’d planned or anticipated this…
“Fuck, Gabe!” Les shouted when he spotted his colleague. “Help!”
Gabe did not help. Gabe watched. Les muttered something and turned his full attention back to me, his face red with rage, veins popping purple in his neck.
I shoved against him when he dove for me, using every bit of might I had to keep him away. My hand wrapped around the dusty old lamp on the bedside table, and I yanked it, the wire pinging from the wall as I beat Les across the head with the heavy bottom.
I felt feral, alive and full of fury as I went for him. He wasn’t having me. Wasn’t touching me. Of course, I wouldn’t surrender. I hated that my mind had even gone there. No way. Not when Theo might still be alive out there, coming for me.
But Les was stronger, and he got the upper hand with ease, sending me to the dusty carpet with an oof, the air in my lungs pushing out and momentarily winding me.
It was enough time for Les to wrestle me flat and straddle me, sitting on my stomach with his full weight.
The fabric of his jeans scratched against my midriff as I squirmed.
“I might not have a dick to fuck you with anymore, but I’m going to make this fucking hurt,” he promised, spittle flying.
“Les!” Gabe chastised. “We don’t have time for you to finger fuck her, get on with it.”
I gulped back a cry, squeezing my legs together when Les ignored Gabe and tried to pry my thighs apart. I kicked my knees up, desperate to buck him off me. He wasn’t a big man, and I was so full of fury. I got my hands free and clawed at his face, digging my fingers into his eyeballs.
An old trick at this point. Me and mutilated eyes.
He screamed and fell, collapsing forward so I could twist him round, slam him to the floor, and straddle him right back. I think the hit to the head dazed him because he didn’t retaliate right away; he looked starry-eyed, his mouth lolling open. Good.
I breathed in, once, twice, then pushed my fingers into his eye sockets until they popped. His scream was fierce, manic, desperate, his hands flying up to try to stop me. But nothing could. Nothing would. If this were the last of my tormentors I could end, I was going to make it count.
Another man who could never look at me again.
Pulling my thumbs from his eye sockets made me gag, but his whimper, the pathetic way he tried to push me off with weak arms, kept me focused.
I leaned down, so we were almost nose to nose, and stared into those bloody messes that used to be his eyes.
Just sockets full of gore, mush. It made me smile.
All the things he’d called me, claimed I was.
My teeth piercing through his neck was harder than with his dick.
There was more sinew, muscle, veins to get through.
More blood gushing, more fight. I wasn’t a vampire; I didn’t have sharp canines; I had to bite down hard.
Like biting through a boiled sweet or a frozen carrot.
My jaw ached and my teeth strained, but I kept going.
He called me a cannibal; he was getting one.
I got there.
I used my teeth to kill him. Even when the last ebbs of his fight crept away, his arms growing ever slacker, his pulse slowing from a gush to an unsteady bleed out. Even when there was nothing more. I clung on until he was definitely dead.
Then I ripped out his throat, rearing back and spitting it all out onto his lifeless body. My heart pounded, feeling both free and close to attack with how much adrenaline rushed through me. Another one down.
Blood coated me. Les lay dead between my legs.
Gabe laughed.