Chapter 7 #3
“Oh sweetheart.” The older man’s tone drew me away from the Northerner.
He faced me, a smile twisting up the side of his mouth.
A prickle of something touched the back of my neck as his eyes avidly scanned my body, the Northerner’s blade in his hand.
“I didn’t save you from him.” He tilted his head, a malicious gleam in his eyes, shifting from the sweet, hospitable man to something which dropped my stomach into the floor. “I saved you for me.”
He lunged for me with speed I wasn’t prepared for, his shuffle and aging frame vanishing in a blink.
Screaming, I twisted for the door. Two steps and the man grabbed onto my hair, yanking me back.
Pain surged in my body, a cry burning up from my gut.
My spine slammed back onto the wood floor, a blade coming to my throat, his stocky body over mine, his expression twisted in a snarl.
“You try that again, tik.” Bitch. The tip of the blade broke through my skin.
I felt the warmth of blood trailing down my neck to the floor.
“I will keep you awake through the whole thing.” He grabbed my arm, prodding the knife into my kidney to get me to move.
“Now, get up!” He took both my wrists, yanking me up to my feet.
“Please,” I sputtered, hearing the terror in it. Clearing my throat, I tried to keep calm. Rational. Just like my father taught me.
“You cannot reason with someone, if you yourself are irrational,” he would tell me. “Emotion hurts your case, makes you desperate. Illogical. Fight your case with reason and sense, and you might get your way.”
“You don’t want to hurt me.” I tried to keep my tone even as he moved us over to the fireplace.
The blade dug into my side, and I bit down in pain.
Yanric had trained me well. I just had to wait for the moment to fight back.
“I swear to you, if you let me go, you will have whatever reward you desire.”
“Sure, sweetheart.” He snorted, kicking the large dirty rug away from in front of the hearth. My throat tightened, my head spinning. A secret door was hidden inside the floorboards.
Intuition bayed in my ear, telling me not to let him get me down there.
“Please.” My breathing labored, getting dizzier. “You . . . don’t know . . . who I am . . .” My mouth struggled to form the sentence, a numbness stalling my mouth. Suddenly my heartbeat was all I could hear, laboring in erratic thumps. My limbs were heavy, my mind grappling to take things in.
“No . . .” I mumbled, sliding my focus to him in hopes I was wrong.
“I put it in both in the stew and the mead.” His mouth pulled in confirmation. “You should’ve been out along with him, but this is more fun.” Bile burned up the back up my throat. I didn’t eat a lot, but it was enough to slow me down, make it harder to fight.
He flipped open the hatch, his other hand still holding my wrists together.
Lamps were already blazing below, filling the underground space with light, as if he had been down here before our arrival.
Most homes had food storage under the floor, to keep things cool and dry, but there were no crops here to store away.
Dread pulsed against my throat, my instinct to run wriggling me against him, but every movement was like wading through thick mud, dotting my vision with panic.
“No.” I put all my energy on getting out of his hold.
“I love when they have some fight in them.” He grinned, shoving me down the stairs. Everything was in slow motion. A cry barely left my lips as my body tumbled down the short steps, my face smacking the hard-packed floor.
His boots struck the wooden steps like a warning drum. Landing on the ground, he crouched down, leaning over into my face.
“Go ahead and fight. Scream. Beg. They all do.” He seized my arms, dragging me across the ground to where I saw a set of chains on the wall.
Bottomless terror hazed my vision even more, vomit pooling in the back of my throat.
Was he going to rape me? Torture me?
I hadn’t even realized I said those thoughts out loud until he laughed.
“You aren’t my type, sweetheart.” He yanked on the chain, pulling it down to me.
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy you another way.
” He clasped the cuff onto my wrist, tugging me into a sitting position against the wall.
“I will relish the taste of you.” He stood up, licking at his lips.
My gaze caught on objects behind him, a gleam of a huge handsaw hanging from the beams above, the sharp rust-covered ridges.
My head whirled around, taking in more of the space.
Workbenches lined each wall, two filled with tools, the others chock-full of pickling jars, each floating with something.
A long sturdy table sat in the middle of the room, with cuffs attached to each end and a branding tool, one you’d use to mark your livestock.
The letter J curved on it. Dozens and dozens of various cleavers, saws, and knives dangled on the walls and from the beams above.
The floor below the table was stained a brownish red.
Frantic breaths punched my chest, the depths of my terror shaking my bones when my brain understood what I was looking at, what was in the jars. A scream bubbled up, echoing shrilly in my head, but nothing came out of my mouth.
“You’re too pretty for stew.” He reached up for the rusty saw. “I think you will be delicious in a pie.”
It wasn’t rust. It was blood and flesh. The jars were not pickled vegetables . . .
They were body parts.