CHAPTER 32
Ivy
Noah is pissed.
He’s a beast on his quest to find his mate. His woman.
Every cell in my body comes to life at the desperation in his tone. There’s no escaping the anger—pure animalistic need that comes across in his words. How close to losing the last thread of sanity he is.
We both are.
This is what they want. Why they push our bodies and mental state from one extreme to the other.
It was never just about taking and killing us. No. It’s always been about so much more and I see that now. They need us to break apart completely until our mental state is that of a rabid dog that attacks anything in its path.
“Baby can you hear me?” Noah yells out again, the sound loud inside my new dungeon.
All four speakers magnify his cry out for me and I whimper. “Let me out of here, please.” No amount of begging on my behalf moves them. No reaction. Nothing. Not so much as a twitch of a finger.
Instead, what I have before me are two monsters who’ve come to life with a need for blood. They don’t care whose blood, just as long as that demonic need is catered to. Satiated.
Both heads tilt to the side suddenly as if hearing something only they can. Something in my gut tells me to move and make a run. To take advantage of the maybe thirty-second head start.
My hand slowly twists the knob, it’s almost open, when my man’s voice carries down the hall. He’s close. Oh so fucking close that my skin breaks out in goosebumps. Hunger burns my veins and once again I let out a pitiful noise.
This battle from within is almost more than I can take. I’m fighting my instincts to maintain some control of my actions.
They’ve done this to us. They put us on a never-ending cycle of want and desire—drugs that create a chemical overdrive to the pleasure senses.
One minute I can breathe, and the next all I can see and feel is Noah. Only him.
“Baby . . . doll . . . where are you? Yell and I’ll come find you!” Fuck, his shadow looks close to the sole window in this room, but comes no further when he receives no reply.
In my haste to get out, I ignored the other two occupants inside the room and Raoul takes care of that reminder. As soon as my mouth opens to scream, he’s there behind me—one of his meaty hands covering my mouth, while an arm wraps around my midsection and lifts me off the ground.
I’m right here! I try to yell out, but there’s no use when he’s covering more than half my face. Jesus, it’s hard to breath and the more I struggle the tighter his hold becomes.
It hurts. His fingers are digging in—forcing the air out of my lungs until I have no choice but to stop struggling.
I’m limp in his arms and it’s then that I notice the newest addition in the room. There, on the farthest wall is now a large television with a blue screen. No picture or sound.
My eyes are glued to that screen.
Scared out of my mind, but I refuse to look away.
I know what’s coming. They’re going to hurt someone I love and as selfish as this might make me sound, I pray it’s not Noah.
Jaime please forgive me.
The screen flickers on and the lights inside the room go out. Raoul carries my limp form to the center and places me right over the drain in the floor.
My limbs shake—teeth shatter—but I maintain my composure as best I can. There has to be a way out, I just need to find it. Keeping a level head will do that for me.
If my anxiety spikes or adrenaline rushes at me from all side, they win. For the most part my breathing isn’t too harsh and the inevitable crash that will follow so many chemicals in our bodies hasn’t started.
There is time. Dammit, there has to be in order to find Noah and Jamie. We need to get the hell out of this madhouse.
Clarice presses a button on the screen and it comes to life with two figures taking up the screen. It’s them. Our captors.
That man sits behind a desk in his expensive suit with Valerie on his lap. There’s no mistaking her identity now, even with a mask.
On her neck sits the intricate gold chain with a medallion that my dad’s business partner gave her. He had asked me to help find something nice for her, claiming it was more personal than money or a gift card.
What would Mr. Racy say about all this shit? If he saw her now, he’d be disgusted. I told him and Dad that something was off about her.
Raoul removes his hand from over my mouth and places his large fingers around my neck. Squeezes just a tiny bit—the impact of fear is instantaneous and I claw at his hands.
I’m coughing. Thrashing in his hold while my nails dig in. They pierced skin and yet, not so much as a flinch.
Instead, I feel two of my fingernails break. Warm liquid seeps from the wound.
I gasp while the two on the screen continue to watch in silence. They sip from a tumbler of amber liquid they share. Just enjoying my misery.
“Ivy!” Noah yells out again, the manic edge of desperation now turning into pulsing terror.
A loud bang—the sounds of a fist connecting with something hard rents the air and I fight harder. Try to use my feet and kick this asshole jester’s knee or shins. Instead of doing any damage, Raoul’s hold tightens and black spots color my vision.
“Please,” I gurgle, spit dribbling down the corner of my mouth.
“Are you going to stop fighting and start listening, young lady? Your parents raised you better than this,” Our male captor asks while his own hand wraps around Valerie’s throat. It tightens and she moans. His other hand is out of sight.
Jesus, I don’t want to know what he’s doing.
“Answer our Master.” The sting of a hand connecting with the side of my face pulls my attention toward Clarice. In a childlike pose, she stands with a hand in the air as if to strike, and the other on her waist. She’s tapping her small feet in annoyance. “Well?”
“Stop, Clarice. Enough with the violence.”
“Yes, Master. I apologize.”
While they argue, I feel the loss of oxygen throughout my body and my fingers begin to go numb. Two fingernails have broken in my fight to breathe and blood drips from the tips. I’m slipping away, and yet my heart is beating so freaking fast inside my chest.
Sounds are magnified.
My skin prickles and feels over-sensitive to the touch.
I’m afraid and trapped.
“Release her.” At his command, I’m released, and like dead weight, my body falls to the floor. “Look up here, little doll. Your eyes need to be on this screen at all times or . . .”
The threat isn’t lost on me and I heed it. The picture within the screen breaks in two and the scene before me brings tears to my eyes. Causes my heart to clench painfully.
Air doesn’t reach my lungs fast enough—they burn and I cough, but keep my focus where it has to be.
“Dammit, baby. Where the bloody fuck are you?” Oh, God. There he is at the end of a hallway again. It’s almost as if he’s going around in a giant circle.
The television switches to a shot of Noah. He’s barreling down the hall, bathed in red light. His head moves left and right as he looks around, eyes crazed and chest rising fast with each labored breath he takes. He turns right and another camera captures his face; anguished and desperate, he’s living the nightmare not knowing where I am.
What they’ve done to me.
If I’m alive.
“Ah yes, loverboy is still lost,” their master speaks once again and my eyes shift his way for a second, just long enough to notice the smirk—see Valerie giggle, and turn to kiss his neck. Notice the subtle shifts of her body over his lap.
Assholes are getting off on this sick game.
A flash of white catches my eye and I look away from the other two and back toward Noah. He rushes into a room halfway down the hall and disappears inside while Agnes steps out from the shadows. She holds her beads in one hand while the other, still coated in dry blood, is brought up to her lips in a shhh action.
Noah rushes back out of the room and straight into another not noticing the danger looming close. Not seeing the glint of metal she hides at her waist.
“Please stop. No more.”
“Give me one good reason why we should?” Valerie moans out; her eyes are closed and head thrown back. “Make it good, bitch. One signal from me and my nun attacks.”
“I’ll trade places with him.” Offering my life for his isn’t a hard decision to make. He’ll always come first. “My blood for his.”
“I already have you, Ms. Reed. Today, tomorrow or next week. . .” she looks up and into the camera; her smile wicked “. . . it doesn’t make a difference. I’ll bathe in your blood soon enough and then spit on your corpse.”
“Then what else could you want from me? Like you said, you have me.”
“To see you a broken doll at my feet. To have you realize that all those around you died because of you. Their deaths will be on your hands. Every. Single. One. From Robert all the way to your parents.”
She doesn’t mention Noah, only my parents—
“No!” The implications of those words hit me like a battering ram and I can’t breathe. No. Fuck no. She couldn’t have. “You’re lying. You fucking, bitch. You’re lying.”
“Tsk tsk,” her companion admonishes but I can barely hear what follows through the rush in my ears. He’s speaking, my eyes are on that TV, and yet I can’t make a out a single syllable past my shock.
Clarice comes toward me, but stops a few steps away. I’m being pulled up by my hair, hands digging into flesh, but pain doesn’t seem to connect with my brain.
Again, the screen shifts. Now I have an empty hallway and a bedroom I know like the back of my hand.
My parents room.
It’s gruesome. Bloody. The scene of a crime and two bodies are lying side by side across and near the balcony door.
I can’t see their upper bodies but I don’t have to. My entire soul recognizes them.
Mom.
Dad.
“No!” A loud wail rents the room and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s coming from me. Pain consumes my every intake of air until I can’t hold myself up and collapse in Raoul’s hold. “It’s not true. It’s not true.”
Valerie fucking giggles. She just had her boss and his wife killed—my mom and dad!—and she’s laughing about it. “They’re gone now, Ivy. Too bad.”
“You’re lying. You fucking, bitch. You’re lying!”
“Ivy can you hear me?” Noah shouts again.
I can, but my mouth won’t cooperate enough to whisper a response. My eyes shift to his side of the screen, but from my peripheral I can still make out all the red on the walls where their blood splattered.
“Do you wish to see him, Ivy? Need him to give you some comfort in your time of need?” The masked man on the screen asks.
“Please.” I choke out past the lump in my throat; his question catches me off guard.
“Then call me master. Ask me nicely, and I’ll gift you this small reprieve.”
“Please let me see him, m-master? Let me go to him.”
“Raoul and Clarice?”
“Yes, sir,” Clarice answers while Raoul grunts.
“Open the door and let our lamb find her beast.” At his command the door opens and they each step back and leave me to stand in the middle of the room. The door unlocks and opens. I move back toward it and no one stops me. Another step, and I turn around giving them my back. It’s a mistake, and I realize it before I feel the burn of a knife slicing down the back of my arm.
It was my penance.
“Run.”