I was exactly where I intended to be, albeit utterly exhausted and craving something to take the edge off my pain.
I couldn’t say the same for Arlen, who had woken up mad as hell. She stayed close to me, not looking any direction but straight.
We were surrounded. The redhead was to our left and Romero was on my right. The third man walked close behind us. I indiscreetly studied them whenever I got the chance.
They looked like they were around the same age, all covered in various ink with the same inverted cross tattooed below one of their eyes. They were all dressed in black: black shirts, dark jeans, and black boots—like a small army of shadows.
For the most part, we walked in silence; I put all my focus on placing one foot in front of the other. My brain was churning at a mile a minute, but I couldn’t analyze anything yet.
By the time we cleared the woods, I was even more of a mess. My shirt was clinging to certain areas near my open wound, the mud coating my skin had dried and was starting to itch, and I was about to perspire into a puddle.
We emerged from the trees and approached a matte black jeep that looked like it had been customized to drive through anything.
“Wait.” Romero held an arm up, stopping us in our tracks just outside of it. “Sack em.”
“What does––? What are you doing?” I yelled as something black was placed over my eyes.
“Safety first,” the redhead joked, making sure I couldn’t take the damn thing off.
“This is bullshit; just let us go!” Arlen snapped, blindly bumping into me.
We were both ignored and roughly placed inside the jeep. Neither of us knew where they were taking us or what they planned to do when they got us there.
It didn’t take long to get to wherever they went. We were removed from the vehicle after approximately twenty minutes. A door—a large one, from the loud groan it made—opened and then slammed shut behind me. I breathed through my mouth, trying to listen for any kind of sound, but there was none aside from our footsteps. Another door opened and I was hit with a cool draft, led a few steps forward and then stopped.
“Down you go,” the redhead said, pushing on my shoulders.
I blindly felt out around me, encountering something smooth and metal. Before I could guess what it was, someone shoved me all the way down to my back.
“What are you doing?” I asked in alarm, choking as something was pushed beneath the sack and shoved in my mouth. “No,” I protested, realizing it was some type of pill.
“Swallow it,” Romero demanded, covering my mouth with one hand and rubbing my throat with his other. “Cobra, grab me some liquor.”
With no other choice, I swallowed the round, dry pill and his hand disappeared. I began turning my head from side to side to try and get the cover off it. When I attempted to sit up, I was instantly shoved back down.
“You do that again, I’ll tie you up,” Romero warned.
“Here,” the redhead—Cobra—said from above me a moment later.
What the fuck are they doing?
“Stop it!” I shoved someone’s hands off just to have mine stretched and pinned above my head.
“Ugh,” I growled, finally managing to get the stupid cover off my head.
The first thing I noticed was the metal beams running across the high ceiling and Cobra being the one holding me down. Then, I turned my head and saw two bodies.
I recognized the habit immediately as one given by The Order, but I didn’t know the woman wearing it. Someone had slit her throat open in a ridiculously tidy fashion and done some damage to her mouth. She hung upside down from thick pieces of rope wrapped around her arms and legs. The dead man across from her looked like he’d received the worse end of the bargain.
Finally looking towards the end of the table, I was greeted with the sight of Romero holding the knife he had just stabbed through a man’s skull in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other.
“Shit,” I gasped when his soulless eyes met mine and he began approaching me with purposely slow, even steps. I had pictured my death in a million different scenarios. Being gutted or cut up had never crossed my mind. I hoped this wasn’t karma catching up to me.
“Easy,” Cobra warned as I wriggled around, tightening his grip so I couldn’t go anywhere.
Without a word, Romero grabbed the hem of my ruined shirt and sliced it right up the middle, easily pulling it off. I was left in nothing but a dirty bra. I hissed when he tore the leftover pieces of fabric off me, detaching them from my skin.
Shit. Following his stare, now aimed at my stomach, I saw the puncture wound was surrounded by inflamed purple skin, and slowly leaking pus.
“This is gonna hurt,” he warned, flashing his eyes to mine.
“What’s going to hurt? What the hell do you think you’re––”
He didn’t let me finish before he leaned down and dumped liquor right onto the wound, using it as irrigation.
It. Was. Excruciating. Firewater was raining down on my flesh.
“Sonofabitch!” I sucked in a breath and swallowed a scream, unknowingly squeezing the circulation out of Cobra’s forearms.
I could hear the area sizzle and managed to catch a glimpse of blood, pus, and clear liquid running together. When he did it again, I planned his death in my head. The smell was horrible. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from me or the dead nun across the room.
“Take a sip,” he demanded, a little more gently, pressing the bottle to my lips.
I didn’t have to be told twice. I eagerly welcomed the burning sensation in my throat over the one on my torso.
He wordlessly pulled the bottle away after a few seconds and disappeared from view.
Leaning my head back, I swallowed, staring straight into Cobra’s smoky-grey eyes.
“I think he likes you.” He smirked down at me.
I attempted to furrow my brows to say, “Are you shitting me?”, but whatever I had just been made to swallow was starting to kick in.
Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t fast enough. When I looked down again, Romero was heating what looked like a large fishing hook with a lighter.
“Don’t even––” I began to protest, just as Cobra covered my mouth with the palm of his hand and dropped his elbows on my shoulders, essentially blocking my view with his upper body.
I felt Romero’s fingers near the wound a second before the pressure began. He pushed until the end of the hook popped through my skin, tugging something on the end of it and then pushing it through the other side.
I don’t know if it was from the pain of having a hook shoved through my flesh over and over again, the pills, or both. Either way, I closed my eyes to hide my tears and didn’t open them again.