Chapter 29
Phil Collins drowned the sound of my screams.
“Help me!” I slurred.
Gravel bit into my cheeks, and my eyes were so swollen that all I could see were three blurred figures standing in front of Andrew’s car.
“No one can hear you, you stupid whore,” Andrew ground while kneeling in front of me.
He stood, and the sound of his belt buckle jingling forced a whimper past my lips.
“Are you ready to go again?” Callen joined him in laughter, and I cried harder.
“You don’t have to answer,” he said. “You’ve been such a good little slut. ”
A thousand needles stabbed my scalp as Andrew jerked me up by the hair.
Clouds of gravel dust coated my tongue from the way I fought, but it was no use.
Andrew dragged me up the front of the bumper, the metal slicing my skin and setting fire all the down until all I could see were spinning stars in the night sky.
I screamed again, clawing at his hands and begging for help I knew now would never come.
“What should I do with her?” Andrew smiled devilishly over top.
What hadn’t they done to me?
Beer bottles. Their cocks. Even their fists.
“I think,” Callen chimed in, gravel crunching off to the side as he approached. “It’s Damien’s turn.”
Andrew’s lips thinned alongside the deep furrow in his brow. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Callen said lightly, but there was a sharp edge underneath it that left no room for argument. “You’ve had several turns. I think my little bro could use some attention before you use her up.”
“Callen, please,” Damien whimpered. I couldn’t see him though. The dust coating my eyes had become hardened by the tears running freely down my cheeks. “I don’t want to. Look at her,” he whined again. “She’s half dead.”
“Half?” Andrew laughed. He let go of me and stepped back. “Try three-quarters.”
The fucking arrogance inflating his confidence that I couldn’t run sparked the ember of rage fighting for its life inside of me. I gripped it tightly, letting myself feel its searing heat through the last shreds of life I clung to.
I would not fucking die tonight. Not here. Not by their hands.
A battle cry ripped through the night as I lashed out, kicking with every ounce of strength I could muster straight to Andrew’s groin.
His yell was guttural as he dropped to his knees, gagging and retching.
I slid from the hood, willing my legs to carry me through the battle I refused to lose.
Gravel sliced through the swollen pads of my feet, but I ignored it as I ran.
Adrenaline carried me through the darkness.
Blood whooshed through my ears like the crash of ocean waves, blocking out the sounds of the surrounding forest.
Andrew had driven us down the only access road that led to old coal mines, long since abandoned.
They were right. I could have screamed all I wanted, and no one would have ever heard me. That knowledge urged my aching feet forward.
My lungs burned from the effort, but I couldn’t stop. If I could make it to the highway there was a chance I could flag down a car. The thought forced a pleading whine past my lips, a glimmer of hope dangling in front of me like a lifeline that was just out of reach.
The hum of an engine broke through the barrier between my ears and the world. I cried out in relief. If I could hear a car, then the highway must be close.
I squeezed that internal flame harder and picked up speed, pain no longer an obstacle I was forced to fight through.
“Help me!” I screamed, my voice finally seeming to carry through the night. Would it be enough for anyone to hear? “Help!”
Swaying branches came into focus from the yellow beam of headlights.
“Help me, please!”
“Yee-haw!”
A round of wild yips and hollers carried from behind, and that glimmer of hope morphed into the blackest pool of dread.
There was nothing ahead except an endless gravel road and my growing shadow. I was nowhere near the highway, and death was rolling up fast on four wheels.
I chanced a look over my shoulder and saw Callen hanging out of the open T-top.
“There she is!” he yelled over the blaring stereo.
“Somebody help me!” I screamed again, panic beginning to overpower rationality.
“Hey, Dany! Heads up!”
Something whistled past my ear, barely missing the side of my ear before it exploded off to the side of the road.
A beer can. They were throwing beer at me.
Within the next heartbeat, Andrew’s car pulled up and Callen launched another can from the passenger window. This time, however, he didn’t miss.
Pain exploded in my shoulder as the full can of beer made impact. I cried out as I stumbled, doing everything I could to stay upright and keep running. It was of little use, though. My legs gave out, sending me flying forward face first into the jagged rocks.
Sobs wracked my battered body, leaving me torn between continuing to fight or begging for death.
Fight, my heart whispered furiously.
Fight.
Agony was a tangible thing as I rallied what little strength remained.
“Fight,” I whimpered, running a shaking hand over the ruined planes of my face. A jagged piece of sandstone protruded from my left eye.
A shrill scream rang through the night air, a torrent of rage and anguish for the unjust.
“Get up,” I spat, refusing to let weakness win.
Every part of me protested as I pushed up onto two feet again.
“Look at this,” I heard Andrew say. “This bitch doesn’t know when to quit.”
“I like a fighter,” Callen answered, and I could hear the bloodlust lacing his excitement.
Sociopath.
The cabin light illuminated the psychotic glint in his eyes. I didn’t blink as I stared back.
“Drive,” he growled.
Andrew did a double-take, looking from me, to Callen, and back to me. “Like…?”
“Do it.”
Andrew didn’t look sold. A worry line creased his forehead accompanied by a blink of surprise and slight hesitation. And maybe– was that…
Fear?
“Dude,” he whispered harshly toward Callen. “It’ll fucking kill her.”
I was still staring defiantly at Callen. At first, it was to call his bluff. Now, though, I could see the rot in his soul. There was no bluff. He got off on seeing how much he could do before I would break.
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. She seems hell-bent on living. Let’s see what else she can take.”
Andrew didn’t move. His body was rigid as if he were fighting between whatever sense of morality he had and that command of his friend. A friend who, no doubt, kept total control over their relationship through pain and fear.
As Andrew slipped back into the driver’s seat, I clenched my fists and tried to prepare for whatever cards fate dealt. My body wasn’t going to be able to jump out of the way. If I unlocked my knees, I would fall and that would be the end.
Callen must have sensed my determination because his smile was the most evil thing I’d ever seen.
The engine revved, and the breaklights flashed when Andrew kicked the car into reverse. Dust flew as the tires spun. It was only seconds before they caught traction and the car was flying backward.
They say that in the seconds before death, life replays behind your lids like an old projector movie.
Fuck that.
I kept my eyes wide open, not caring whether or not it heightened the sick lust burning in Callen’s eyes. They burned, but I refused to blink.
When the car made impact with my hips, bones shattered.
As the car stopped, it sent me flying backward through the air.
I barely felt the landing. Death wrapped its arms around me like the most natural sort of sedative, yet he wasn’t kind enough to take me home.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t ready to go. Not yet.
“Damien,” Callen growled, and it sounded so, so far away.
I grabbed onto the sound of his voice like a lifeline, refusing to let the darkness drag me under.
Three shadows hovered over top of me; one had their hands in their hair, another crossed their arms over their chest, and the last was relaxed as only a sociopath could be in a moment like this.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Callen,” Damien whined.
Callen went from relaxed to on edge in the blink of an eye. Steel flashed in the midnight light.
“You’ll do what the fuck I say or you’ll die right beside her.” Callen pressed his blade against Damien’s throat, and his whines deepened to a panicked cry.
“Shit,” Damien said as he paced. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Callen,” Andrew cut in. “We need to go, dude.”
“Not until Damien fucks her.”
“He can’t even get his dick up.” Callen threw his hands up in the air.
“Yeah, Callen,” I croaked. “Little brother can’t get hard. Must run in the family.” I coughed a weak laugh.
Of all the things that had happened tonight, Callen had only watched. A voyeur to the worst night of my life as if it were nothing other than a fucking sitcom.
That streak ended, however.
Callen's face twisted into a monstrous sort of rage, eyes so dark they looked like empty sockets on his pale face. He squatted down and gripped my cheeks in a bruising hold with one hand.
“I’ll fucking show you, you whore.” One hand held me while the other worked at unbuttoning his acid washed jeans. “You’re going to regret being too stupid to die.”
He did unspeakable things to me then.
I’d lived my life around men with the same sickness eating away at Callen’s mind.
They lacked the ability to feel anything except a sort of joy and lust the rest of humanity would never understand.
It was an all consuming need to hurt people, chasing a high that not even a drug addict could understand.
I didn’t scream, or try to beg for my life. We were past that.
Instead, I cried furious tears, staring into the depths of his rotten soul to tell him all the things words could not—that he could torment my body, even take my life, but he would never own my death. The way I left this shitty fucking world would be my choice, and mine alone.