Dark Days (Written Pictures #2) (2 page)

CHAPTER III – Opening Time

A simple motion of his finger summoned two retainers, appropriate tools already in hand. They approached the rough-hewn wooden crate which formed a centrepiece on the marbled, checkerboard floor he looked down on. A pause - Alexei wanted to savour everything about this moment.

With an almost imperceptible nod of his head, the two muscular men set to work on the wood with crowbar, hammer and chisel. As the men tried to jam the crowbar into place between the planks, straps gouged into the tender flesh of the woman inside to each juddering impact.

The whole crate slewed to the side with the force of the final, successful thump and Raven could hear the wood splintering through the earphones. Her incarceration was starting to fragment under the assault of hardened steel driven by obedient brute force.

It was quick, almost frenzied, as the two men tore at the crate to satisfy their Master, vying with each other to show the depth of their devoted service. Care might have slowed them but the two men were possessed by a patriotism as hard as their muscles, having cut their teeth in the Spetsnatz. They also knew an American was held inside, enemy of both training and indoctrination, and so they ripped at the planks in a melee of sinew and metal.

The first splinter pierced the latex stretched across Raven’s bicep to lodge partway in her arm but the second stab ripped a scream from her as the end of the crowbar slashed across her thigh.

The large man froze instinctively before snatching his head to Alexei.

Alexei sat impassively, seeing the first flash of red on travel-tarnished black latex stretched across a shapely thigh. Perhaps it would hint toward her fate, give her something to reflect on and Alexei knew how such things would play on a fatigued mind. He had wanted to be the first to draw the American’s scream, but he nodded to the men to allow the destruction of the crate around Raven to continue. He would let that damage to his property pass.

The wood soon disintegrated, dumping the woman onto her bowed back, driving the air from her with a grunt and causing one of the earphones to loosen. If that didn’t succeed in emptying her lungs fully, the kick that followed did the rest, shifting her into the position they desired. Another kick had her shift a little more.

There was no discussion, no word of warning, no humane interaction at all. She was an object to be positioned and she moved as their kicks decided. All Raven knew was that her body was no longer hers to control as it bucked in a blind and useless attempt to deflect each strike while shuffling to where she thought right.

She had given beatings to others during her ascent to power and at its pinnacle and had been sure in her skills in pushing a human body. She had been merely playing at it though in comparison. She was in the hands of professionals, the full danger of whom she could only guess at.

Alexei snapped his fingers to stop them but a single belated kick connected with Raven’s waist. The anger in the familiar-sounding foreign language was loud enough for Raven to hear through the dislodged earphone, and the agony from the kick told her that she had been hasty in her earlier judgement - her true danger had not yet arrived.

The raging voice approached until it seemed to be all around her. Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, punctuated by the weighty thud of fist on flesh. Raven felt a jolt as a body stumbled into her prone form, followed by the sound of a sickening thud as one of the men stumbled to the floor with a grunt.

All was silent momentarily yet Raven was certain it would only be the lull before another storm. She sensed eyes roaming over her body which, beyond the horizon of her control, shook uncontrollably from the aftermath of her transit and welcome. The noise of another kick surprised her only because it was not matched with an explosion of pain - the question in her mind answered when she heard a second man scrambling away from Alexei’s rage.

Still mostly blinded by the opaque Perspex faceplate of her mask, Raven turned her head, the only movement not married to discomfort. She soon felt fingers gouging into her jaw, prizing under the tight rubber seal before ripping it free, taking with it some of her precious hair. Blinking in the dazzle of long-denied normal light and peering through the matted strands of hair that plastered her face, Raven first made out a shape, then colours.

Feet, legs, waist, all were taken in as she slowly raised her head to explore her worst fears. A snatched grip in her hair wrenched her attention higher until she looked straight into the eyes of her horror.

“Welcome to your hell, Yankee.” The words were in heavily accented English. A fist balled tighter into sweaty jet black hair. Alexei - Raven’s worst nightmares were confirmed beyond further question. The knot at the pit of her stomach tightened, knowing his simple statement to be true.

For a fraction of a second Raven was glad of the temporary relief from the heavy backhanded blow across her face, but then as her already bloodied nose bled again her world fully blackened. With the release of his grasp, she dropped limply to the floor.

CHAPTER IV – Brand New

It was harder than she imagined. Sure, Immelmann had beaten her – she had even taunted him until he had no choice. He had thought he controlled her, and now he was dead. Those beatings had hurt. She could clearly remember times when she had almost regretted pushing him but still purred inside as the punishment rained down. But that was then. This wasn’t the same. Raven guessed that as her bruises blackened, they had been targeted with a precision that would burn deeply yet ensure recovery ready for whatever lay ahead.

‘Probably more of the same,’ Raven thought to herself. Her ballet-booted feet occasionally scrambled for stability as she was dragged down the corridor between the two large men. She didn’t fear pain. Somehow it was cathartic, a throwback to the mental anguish she had felt with the shattering of the relationship with her mother. Pain had been a constant companion in her life. It was one of the few never to leave her side, never to steal, never to disappoint. In it she had always found a kind of solace. Feeling alive, feeling invigorated, simply feeling.

On another day and in other hands, Raven would have fought, found their weaknesses, used her body and had them both cowering under her high heel. That was indeed another day though. Before they had raised her from the crumpled heap she lay in, the two men had twisted each arm through a half-turn to ensure the strain on her shoulders held her rigid and utterly controllable. They were professionals and as each jolt to her pointed toes struck through her tormented shoulders, Raven feared dislocation was only a nudge away. So she held herself back and simply endured, precisely as they knew she would.

A turn, a dodge right, up a flight of stairs before left again and descending down a windowed corridor. Each change of direction seared a memory into Raven’s shoulder joints, barely leaving her with the presence of mind to look up and out of the windows to search for a clue to her captivity. Her head hung, black hair matted and straight. It veiled the grimace that was brought by each step.

Finally, they approached a heavy wooden door with black ironwork. Their pace though didn’t slacken and Raven winced as one of the door’s heavy spikes seemed destined for her face. Like so much would be in her new reality however, things were choreographed, firmly in the control of her captors. As she flinched, bracing for the blow that would surely come, the door creaked back to beckon them to the darkness that lay beyond it.

After the oily blackness, the first thing that hit her was the smell. No, it wasn’t a smell, Raven corrected herself. A smell was tangible. This wasn’t. It was nebulous - she sensed it rather than smelt it.

It was something that even a few days before would have brought a smile to her face. Raven had revelled in drawing it out, in manipulating it and ultimately breaking it back over her latest victim. She had wielded it with such consummate skill that her reputation had been built on it. Now though, she felt it infiltrate her nostrils and slither into her soul, constricting it and chilling it at the same time. It was something that she had thought long behind her and yet, as the strike of her flailing heels sparked on the cold stone floor, Raven knew that the very thing that hung heavily in the dark room was part of her. And that thing was fear.

She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t rationalise why, and yet, at the simple act of being dragged across the threshold, an icy ball formed in the pit of Raven’s stomach. This was a place where evil things happened. It was no quantum leap to understand that evil things would probably soon reach out for her with their cloying embrace. Whatever was to be her fate though, Raven knew it couldn’t be meekly accepted. With a gut-wrenching scream of “No!” she drove her heel into the foot of the man to her right.

It was a mistake that even she couldn’t anticipate the consequences of. As the man staggered, his partner drove a heavy fist into her kidneys, robbing her of air and what little balance she had. Fired with a pain-fuelled rage, her victim cracked a knee into the side of hers. It took Raven fully off her feet, almost causing her shoulder to dislocate and tear a pitiful wail from her lips. She didn’t even notice when he spat his hatred in her face.

She had played with pain before but this was no game. She had never felt it quite like this. Her shoulder ligaments wrenched as she dangled between them and her knee refused to support any weight to help. Words fired around her, foreign words, Russian words. They were angry and fired from one man to the other and back again before being abruptly aborted with the thud of a punch. It was instantly followed by a renewed tear on her arms as one of the men staggered under the weight of the blow. Hierarchy re-established. That seemed to be how discussions went here.

The force of her sexuality had always been Raven’s primary defence and she had wielded it as her weapon choice. Expensive yet attainable, her sexuality had often been used to bribe and bedazzle her chosen victims. Here though, she felt impoverished. Brute force seemed to be the sole currency, chosen or otherwise and she already had wounds to arm and leg and bruised ribs to add to her bloodied nose. Things were different here and she was only just beginning to realise how much and how far they might exceed even her worst fears.

With a groan born of more than frustration, Raven felt herself hoisted higher, off even her towering heels, manipulated like nothing more than a ragdoll. With a skilled pull on her arm, she screamed afresh as it was stretched down before being released, drawing out her muscles to allow them to snap her shoulder back in place.

The damage would linger though. It would be some time before even a touch to her shoulder wouldn’t bring a wincing expectation of pain. Dragging in air, she refilled her lungs as she tried to scramble together enough of herself to deal with everything, both physically and mentally.

She was Raven. Feared and idolised in equal measure, now she could do no more than whimper. Each breath was an act of willpower and when one of the men leant a heavy hand on her shoulders, Raven meekly knelt without fight or sexual promise for the first time in years.

If kneeling was a humiliation, pressing her head lower onto the metal plate took it to new levels. When a metal brace was closed over her neck and quickly screwed down to fix her in place, it was a depth that even Raven wasn’t properly prepared for.

She felt her arms stretched out to each side. Shots of lava seared her newly-damaged shoulder. She flinched, twisting to try to ease the strain only to be drawn back to the centre. Her wrists were soon braced and fixed in place. Raven kicked out frantically in an attempt to deal with her new reality though she was only delaying the inevitable. It was an act of protest she needed to make despite already knowing it was worth nothing.

Free from obligations to restrain her arms, she felt iron hands snatch each of her ankles and roughly pull her legs apart, ensuring she continued to kneel. She had spent her entire adult life struggling to avoid such helplessness and when the cold metal braces trapped her ankles far apart, her mind shrunk back.

It was a dark place not visited since she had been left alone years before with not a cent to her name. They were already pushing her in a way she had not been pushed before. The once proudly narcissistic woman lost her normal self-control and started to shiver against the metal encircling her neck, wrists and ankles though it wasn’t entirely through cold.

Splayed wide and bolted in place had a permanence to it designed to hammer home her new standing, a far cry from what she had been just days before. It was nothing though compared to what she was to come.

Metal sizzled to protest its thrust into hot coals which spat in a brazier just a few feet away. She knew what would be coming. If she survived, she would never forget the sound or the smell, even without the permanent reminder she knew she was about to receive.

And so Raven, Dominatrix of many dark nightmares, knelt motionless, head bowed, locked in place. One of the men had moved behind her. Why were they waiting? Just fucking get on with it. Her mind shouted orders to keep calm but her body was incapable of following them and continued to shudder as heavy footsteps now approached to the accompaniment of sizzling metal.

She smelt his sweat first, the sweat of a man who had spent too long in his own company. His breath was felt next as he leant over the trapped woman, deliberately not touching her. That was perhaps the thing that shocked her most. She was Raven. She was used to disarming even the most distant with her body. This man though was driven in another way. No lust. No longing. Hate, only hate.

“Nice ass, Yankee bitch.” Droplets of spittle showered her ear. Perhaps his lust wasn’t totally subjugated to his dutiful darkness. Maybe there would be a way, there always was. Even if it didn’t work now it would perhaps be a seed that would grow and moving her hips in response to his words, Raven tried the last thing she could think of and clenched her buttocks.

The pull around her middle in response was a surprise. She felt the latex of her catsuit stretch and winced to it pinching tightly on her sex. He was touching her. Had she got him? It didn’t last and too quickly Raven felt the latex tug easing until she realised that, with the slash of a knife, she had been exposed.

Still her mind wouldn’t let go of what her body, her sexuality, was capable of making men do. She may have looked like hell but there had to be something she could work with, even if not to help her right then, but to set off a chain reaction for the future. A chink in the armour of at least one of these men was all she needed, something to worm an idea through that would grow and ultimately help her.

So Raven tightened her butt again, all she could do in that position. The man needed no more encouragement for what he was about to do and driving the scorching brand onto her clenched buttock, he tore from her a feral scream.

To the stench of seared flesh and the agony of her branding Raven was taught that hatred always trumped lust. Her tears flowed and she panted in air before her world blended to black.