Chapter 6 #2
But Asha had never been anywhere lovely.
She’d lived inside concrete walls for the entirety of her twenty-six years, with the same sights, the same people, the same stifling job and the indifferent husband that saw her as an object.
Her parents had been absent her whole life; it was why Claire had always come to her house when they were teenagers, to escape her crazy mother.
She’d never had many friends besides that, and her childhood was something she’d rather forget.
What good was it to escape to those lonely times?
Still, she’d been safe back then, hadn’t she?
Eric may have been an irritating sex pest, but he’d never forced himself on her.
Her job as a science teacher hadn’t been exciting, but it’d been…
stable. Her living quarters had been small, but comfortable.
She’d had decent food, clean water, and the knowledge that there was an order to things.
The only real threat of violence was for those who disobeyed the regime; if you kept your head down and followed the rules, you could enjoy a tightly controlled—but otherwise safe—existence.
“Get a move on, whore,” Dax sneered, jolting her out of her dissociation. He grabbed her arm, wrenched one of the blue doors open, and practically tossed her inside. Her heart dropped at the loud thud as it slammed shut behind her.
Asha found herself standing in a corridor. At the opposite end, it forked into three doors, all of which were surprisingly intact. She made herself take two steps forward, her heart hammering in her ears as she took in her surroundings, illuminated by burning torches on the walls.
Angel’s Wing was about as immaculate as a place could be, thirty years after the Fall.
Unlike the rest of the Nest, which was sparsely furnished, inevitably dirty, and in various stages of disrepair, Angel’s Wing was obviously cleaned regularly.
A long, threadbare rug stretched down the length of the hallway, and the windows had glass—the only ones she’d ever seen in that condition—and were framed by heavy velvet curtains.
Cracks in the walls were filled in with clay, and the walls had artwork on them, which surprised her, as no other room she’d seen had any.
Hard to care about art when you’re barely making it, she thought grimly. But if you’re the king of the Wasteland, you get special privileges.
There was an odd painting of a duck, and a faded photo montage of old buildings behind a plastic screen.
On the opposite wall, someone had painted a large mural of black angel wings, stretching outwards.
The torches on the walls made it feel like a dungeon, a thought that filled her with an even deeper sense of foreboding.
Asha was startled out of her thoughts by the door at the end of the corridor opening.
Angel appeared, outlined by the dim candlelight.
He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of loose black pants.
Across his chest, black angel wings spread out, crudely tattooed by an untrained hand.
Those heavy dark circles under his eyes stood out in the firelight, giving him a haunted look that Asha didn’t like.
“Come in,” he said, with a small smirk. “Let’s get started.”
A horrible shiver went down her spine, and every instinct inside her screamed at her to run, even though there was nowhere to go. She took several involuntary steps backward, toward the colourful doors.
“Come on, Asha,” Angel said, a mocking softness to his tone. “It won’t be so bad. I’ll even warn you when I’m gonna nut, like a real gentleman.”
Bile rose in Asha’s throat, burning it with her fear and revulsion.
Flashbacks danced in front of her eyes, disorienting her.
All at once, she relived a furtive hand snaking up her eight-year-old thigh and the murmur of an old friend’s voice: don’t you want to know how mommies and daddies make babies?
Her brief dissociation cost her precious seconds. Angel had moved toward her slowly, like a cat cornering a mouse. She backed up again, but hit the double doors. She could hear Dax, still right outside, trapping her in.
“You’re even prettier close up,” Angel said, his putrid breath falling over her face as he moved in. He touched her face, and Asha recoiled. “There’s no point in fighting it, sweet pea. Just give in. You might like it.”
Asha didn’t think as his hand migrated south; she merely reacted. Her knee shot up in a flash, making contact with his groin. Angel let out a low groan of pain and doubled over, and Asha ran.
Of course, with nowhere else to go, she ran right into Angel’s bedroom. But perhaps there was a window, or something she could—
The room was large and dimly lit with several candelabra.
A massive bed sat at its centre, covered in animal furs.
Asha stopped in front of it, casting around the room for an escape route.
The two windows on the far wall contained glass too, preventing her flight.
And a second later, Angel appeared in the doorway, his expression murderous.
“We're not done,” he snarled. “I was gonna be nice and let you just lie there and take it. But bitches like you need to be taught a fucking lesson.”
“Fuck off,” Asha spat, but her voice shook with fear.
He was too fast, too strong. Before she understood what was happening, he’d thrown her down onto the mattress.
She hit the bed hard, the breath knocked out of her, and had no time to react to Angel throwing himself on top of her.
She pushed herself up towards the top of the bed with her feet, trying to slide out from under him, but he pinned her, panting furiously, his knee coming up to force her legs apart.
“You think you can just do whatever you want, say whatever you want?” he growled as Asha struggled against him. “Well, you’re about to find out that you fucking can’t. You want to act like an uppity little whore? You’ll get fucked like one.”
Asha fought back as hard as she could, but he was too heavy for her to lift.
She squirmed helplessly like an eel trapped underneath a rock, her hands flailing wildly.
He smelled like stale sweat and alcohol, and the stench invaded her nostrils, overpowering everything else.
And in an instant, his hand closed around her throat.
She tried to gasp, but couldn’t. She felt like she was drowning as her vision darkened at the edges, desperately trying to kick her way to the surface, even as the light faded above her.
His grip loosened and blood rushed to her face, and all she could see was Angel’s malicious little smile, enjoying every second of her struggle.
“Think he’ll still want you after this?” he asked with a little laugh that made Asha’s skin crawl. “Well, Cade’s in for a nasty surprise when he fucks you and feels me still inside you, sticking to your insides. You think he’ll still take you when you’re nothing but my leftovers?”
He reached down and pulled up the hem of Asha’s night gown, and she shrieked, exposed from the waist down.
She considered giving up for a moment, afraid of how he might hurt her even worse if she continued resisting, but her body simply wouldn’t allow it.
When he attempted to shove his filthy fingers into her mouth, she bit down hard, making him scream and smack her furiously across the face to make her let go… but briefly, he released her.
Panting and aching, she flailed her arms out toward the bedside table, and her hand closed around a glass ashtray. In a split second, she’d smashed it into Angel’s face, shattering it. Blood poured from his nose, and he howled in pain and staggered backwards off of her.
“You fucking bitch,” he growled. “You almost got glass in my fucking eye.”
“Good,” Asha retorted, her breath heavy.
For a moment, she thought she’d won. She thought he might genuinely give up and return her to her bunk, seeing that she couldn’t be bullied into fucking him.
She was very wrong.
Angel went from seething to laughing in the space of a minute. It was the kind of cold, cruel laughter that could make one’s hair curl. He grabbed an empty glass bottle from a nearby end table, holding it by the bottleneck, and smashed the opposite end. Asha eyed the sharp, jagged edges with alarm.
“I like a challenge,” he said, his face contorting with a terrifying combination of amusement and rage. “You wanna fight dirty, sweetheart? Fine by me. You’re gonna scream so loud, the whole Nest’s gonna hear you.”
Unfortunately, he was right.