33. April 16, 2023
Cherry
A girl with white-blonde hair flowing down her back approached Cherry.
She couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen years old.
Her eyes were mostly black pupils with a thin line of sea blue around them, her stare vacant.
She held out a small stone cup with no handles.
“Drink this.” Only two words were spoken, and Cherry knew the girl was under the influence of something.
Cherry threw her hand out, knocking the cup free of the woman’s hold.
The girl barely responded to it being dislodged from her hands, and she seemed to watch with abject fascination as the liquid spilled out of the cup where it lay on the ground and along the grooves between the stones on the floor.
Fire in her eyes, Cherry declared, “I’m not drinking anything you give me.”
It took only a second for Matthew to grab the girl in front of her, put his arm around her at chest height, and open a wicked, sharp stiletto knife.
The girl didn’t react to the knife at her throat.
She merely continued to watch the liquid flow along the cracks.
The man sneered at Cherry. “I won’t bother to threaten you because you’ll just be stubborn and make me kill you rather than do what I ask.
But I doubt you’ll stand so firm if I threaten harm to her.
I advise you to drink this time.” Over his shoulder, he yelled, “Bring another cup!”
A second girl languidly poured another cup of liquid from the pitcher and brought it to her.
Cherry dug her heels in. She took the cup from the second girl and locked her eyes with Matthew.
“I won’t drink it.” Slowly, she turned the cup upside down, allowing the liquid to fall to the ground and splash off the stone.
It was over in a flash. Matthew pulled his knife quickly from right to left, and the girl he’d been holding in his arms fell to the floor in a heap, bleeding out at his feet.
Her eyes never closed. She never said a word other than the initial soft gasp at the pressure of his knife.
However, Cherry knew the exact moment the girl died.
It was as if the light that had been her presence suddenly went out, and her eyes went dull.
Now her blood mingled with the spilled liquid on the floor.
Matthew grabbed the second girl in the same hold as the first. “Bring another cup,” he ordered quietly to the third girl.
His eyes never left Cherry’s as she struggled to maintain her composure. She let herself scream internally and mourn for the girl at her feet for all of two seconds before she shored up her defenses.
This time, when the third girl approached, she took the cup from her hands, and without looking away from Matthew, she drank the liquid down.
When she finished, she dropped the cup to the floor.
“Let her go.” The words were soft but filled with anger.
If she ever got the chance, she was going to kill him herself.
His smile was smug. “I think I’ll hold onto her for a little bit.
There are a few more things you need to do before the boss returns, and I want to make sure you’re ready when he gets here.
Since threatening you has no effect, this little one here will be my insurance that you comply.
” He pulled the girl tighter to his chest, the knife point nicking her delicate throat but not slicing.
“Bastard,” Cherry ground out. “Brave man hiding behind a child.”
“Don’t need to be brave,” he taunted her. “Just need to know my enemy’s pressure points. These girls? They’re yours.”
It took only a few minutes for his partner to come and pick up the body of the dead girl while two of the remaining girls cleaned up the blood as best they could.
The other three had Cherry stripped, washed, and redressed in a white robe in a matter of minutes.
Based on the paintings on the wall, she had a glimmer of an idea of how her initiation was going to go.
Hell no! She’d fight what was about to happen with every breath she had in her.
Unfortunately, knowing that she’d been drugged, she had to admit she probably was going to lose that fight eventually.
That wouldn’t stop her from trying though.
By the time her attendants had backed away, she was freezing.
She could tell that the room was still warm, heated by the underground springs, but her body temperature felt like it plummeted, likely an effect of whatever drug they’d given her.
Absentmindedly, she rubbed her bare arms, trying to feel any sort of warmth.
When the warmth came, it was like fire was racing through her veins, burning her from the inside out. Her skin even appeared to glow red and orange when she looked at it. Whatever they’d given her was going to cause hallucinations.
There was a sudden tickling sensation in her hands.
She gazed in horror at her arms, which she held out in front of her, watching bubbles racing back and forth under the skin.
When one bubble bumped into another, they popped, leaving behind a silky fluid on her skin.
One half of her was intrigued at what her brain was producing, the other half disturbed.
She took in a deep breath and worked to calm the panic trying to claw its way to the surface.
Sweat. Chemically, the drug was causing her body to overheat and produce sweat.
Already, her brain was struggling to separate reality from unreality.
She needed to slow her breathing. Focus.
If she allowed panic in, she’d lose whatever small grasp she’d have on what was actually going on versus what her brain tried to create as an alternative.
The room began to feel like it was moving under her feet.
Looking down her body, she realized that she was moving, only not by her own power.
The women who had come into the room to ready her for Andres were guiding her toward the altar at the center of the circle.
Her brain told her to resist, but instead, she kept moving in the direction they pushed her.
Head swimming, she felt herself being helped onto the slab, then urged to lie down.
She felt so ill, and suddenly she felt tired.
So tired. Like weights had been attached to her skin that were gently pulling her down.
A tiny little spark inside urged her to fight, but every time she tried to remember why she couldn’t just go to sleep, she felt herself get dragged further down into a swirling fog that was filling the room.
In the background of the room, she thought she heard a humming sound, like the drone of working bees in a hive.
Not an unpleasant noise itself, but given the darkened surroundings lit only by fire, it was unnerving.
There were voices, too, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Looking around the room, she saw the six girls standing in an arc around the top of the sunken space, hands clasped below their waists, eyes focused on the walls.
Their mouths weren’t moving. She turned her head toward the archway into the other room.
There. The voices were coming from there, the same place where the fog was coming in from.
If she could just focus a little harder, and if the bees would just be a little quieter, she knew she’d be able to hear what was being said.
Her head felt as if it were attached to the table.
She could move it from side to side, but if she tried to lift it, the weight at the back of her skull was so heavy, she couldn’t.
Rolling her head to the right, she noticed that the flickering lights from the torches had stopped.
The room still lightened and darkened as if they were burning in real time, and the fog continued to move into the room as well, but both had taken on the effect of old-fashioned, two-dimensional stage art for a children’s play being pushed onto a stage during a performance .
Behind the stilled flames, the figures painted on the walls began to move.
She shuddered at the grotesqueness of shifting images, but she felt rooted to the spot and couldn’t seem to look away from the walls.
The humming noise increased in volume, and the torchlight was impossibly bright at its source.
The figures on the wall continued to move around, change partners, and resume their carnal activities.
She could feel reality slipping away with every second, but despite feeling cemented to the spot where she lay, she wasn’t so far gone yet that she couldn’t feel other thoughts intruding.
Did Demon know she was gone? They’d taken her watch off, and there were no windows to see if it was light outside, so she couldn’t tell what time it was, let alone how long she’d been gone.
Was her tracker working? She had two placed strategically inside her body.
On his last mission, fish boy’s… What was his name again?
He had a broken fin. Arm? Something. His first tracker had been dug out of him, and the second one wouldn’t turn on.
Had they pulled her trackers out? She had a third one somewhere. Where was it? She hoped it was working.
The droning sound grew in volume, and the male figures on the walls began to fight amongst themselves, their faces drawn back in anger and pain.
The female figures were crying and calling for help, cowering along the walls.
There were other sounds, as well. Thuds that weren’t rhythmically timed. Grunts.
It was too much. Her head began to spin, and she felt like she was going to vomit, so she closed her eyes.
This was better. She felt herself smile.
Much better. Behind her lids, her brain imprinted a vision of Demon’s face.
How he’d smiled at her on their walk through the plantation.
His dark hair lifted in the breeze, the gentle uptilt at the corners of his mouth.
The deep green of his irises as he’d flipped his sunglasses up to the top of his head and stared straight into her soul before he’d kissed her stupid.
She felt his hands grabbing hold of her arms and putting them around his neck like he had the night down on the beach against the stone wall, and she felt swept up like a bride going over the threshold, his arms clutching her tightly to him as he carried her up the stairs to their room.
It wasn’t fair. She felt tears leak from her eyes.
She swore she could smell the ocean when she breathed in, feel the heat that the sun left on his skin under her fingertips, feel the grit of the sand he could never quite lose from any of his body, and taste the salt of the ocean as her tongue swiped out to wet her dry lips.
“Body shots later, fireball. Hang on tight.”
She giggled. What an odd thought to have, and in his voice, even.
Her body felt like it crested on a wave, the water carrying her high above the chaos below the water. The scent of sand, salt, and sun curled around her, blocking out all of the noise. She smiled and burrowed deeper into the wave, then let it take her under into the depths of inky blackness.