Equal Parts (5 page)

“Leave,” said the first guy, in a voice so cool, it made the cement beneath me seem warm.

“But I thought I could maybe have a go at her, you know, after you’re –”

The sound of a struggle, and something was scraped against the wall. A horrible gagging noise filled the tiny room. “No, I don’t think there will be a
go
, Joshua. And the sooner you learn the rules, the less likely it becomes that I’ll try and mine your insides with my screwdriver. So when I say ‘leave’, you…?”

“I leave,” choked the thug. “I leave! I leave!”

“Gold star,” chirped the other, and the door blew open and slammed shut.

Seconds ticked by in complete silence. I was balled up so tightly, every muscle screamed at me in pain. But it was a good thing – the pain was the only thing keeping me from freaking out entirely.

“Now, let’s see what’s fallen into my…” The black bag was lifted, and light flooded my vision. “…lap.”

The voice sounded oddly amused – staggered, even.

Gradually, my eyes focused, and the figure crouched before me came into clarity. And when I recognized him, something like a shriek lodged in my throat.

Black eyes bored into my own, neither of us so much as breathing heavily.

I stared right back at him, knowing just as well as he did that he couldn’t hurt me, not really. I’d done more than save his life – I’d given him the means to escape, the confidence of revenge, the promise of better days. His moral code was skewed, but he wasn’t an idiot. I’m sure he knew it was better to be on my good side than have me as an enemy.

“Should have recognized the legs,” Achilles said simply, taking a seat on the cot near me. I hadn’t felt that in my blind search. His eyes lingered on the blood oozing from my exposed knees, my stockings ripped to shreds. I felt the insane urge to cover myself.

“I am
not
involved with Finn Cole.” It was the best my brain could do under the circumstances.

I expected him to launch into attack mode, but instead he threw his head back and laughed. The face paint had been redone since I’d seen him at the hospital – the details of his eyes were different, the sown-up lips more intricate, the cheeks not as hollow. I wondered briefly if he paid someone to do his make-up for him.

“I got that, from the way you let him get shot with a nail-gun,” Achilles said dryly. “So why oh why would one of my men lie to me? Any ideas?”

“I
was
with Finn at a party, but he was recounting the gazebo story to me. For some reason, he deemed me worthy of his attention, at least for a while. So your men didn’t lie, not really.”

In a flash, he was crouched beside me once more. He no longer smelled of death – it was a little mintier this time. An improvement, I guessed.

He tutted slowly. “Protecting the ones who abducted you, darling? That’s not normal at all. I think you should be more worried about protecting
yourself
. I told you your carelessness would get you killed, didn’t I?”

“I’m not dead, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I retorted, using what little courage I could muster.

“No, you’re not,” he said, a feral grin illuminating the skeletal features of his face. “But you could be, I suppose.”

“Look, if you’re going to kill me, just kill me. I don’t have any information on Finn. I have no money, no family, and the city won’t exactly mourn the loss of me. So don’t bother beating around the bush.” The words spewed out of me, a suicide note in their own right.

For the second time in two days, his hand wrapped around the column of my neck, and his other hand tangled a fist in my hair, tilting my face back. I didn’t struggle.

“I must say, I expected better from someone who specializes in dishing out happy feelings. Aren’t you supposed to be made of rainbows and daisies? Sugar and spice and everything nice?”

I made a face at that. “The sooner you realize my power has nothing to do with my personality, the better.”

For a split second, those empty black eyes widened. Then the mask reset. “Well darling, the sooner you realize I get what I want, no matter the cost, the better.”

“And what is it you want, exactly?”

His fingers loosened from my neck and hair as he got to his feet. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Until then, sit tight.”

Without another word, he left the room, a smear of black paint on the bed cover the only evidence he’d ever been there.

I didn’t know how long I sat, curled up on the paper-thin mattress of the cot, alternating between praying for him to stay away and wondering if he was ever coming back.

My legs ached from being bound for so long, and I could no longer feel my hands. The blood on my knees had dried in rivers on my legs. I kept expecting the quelled panic from before to come rushing back to me, but I remained in a state of mental limbo for what seemed like hours. I’d known Achilles was coming for me – I supposed this abduction had just sped up the inevitable.

The only thought tethering me to reality was,
it can’t get any worse
. I was in the dingiest prison cell, tied up with rope, being held hostage by the most psychotic villain in the country, with no one waiting for me on the outside. I had nothing to lose by being there. Achilles would soon realize that, and either release or kill me.

I must have fallen asleep sitting up, because when I woke, the light outside the dirty window at the top of the wall had faded. The only remaining light came from the hallway outside, which I could see clearly through the glass door to my cell. Another prison cell lay across the hall from mine, but it was unoccupied.

The door scraped open soon enough, and I saw an unfamiliar man stand in the doorway.

“Yes?” I asked bluntly, when he continued to just stand there and stare at me.

“Boss is on his way, says he wants answers. Well I’m gonna beat him to it.” The weedy man stepped towards me and clicked the door shut behind him. Instantly, my gut began to churn.

“I don’t have answers,” I told him quickly, flexing my fingers, desperately trying to regain feeling in them. If I could slip a hand out of the ropes, I could properly defend myself.

The feral gleam in his eyes was so different than Achilles’s – lustier, dirtier. It was enough to make me reconsider the ‘can’t get any worse’ mentality.

“I wonder what it would take for you to talk, hmm?” His fingers latched on to the top of my baggy t-shirt and ripped the collar wide open, exposing the swell of my breasts. “Your skin’s perfect for carving, little girl.”

Before the fear could paralyze me, I swung my bound feet at him, hitting him in the stomach. He staggered backwards and I jumped off the bed, throwing my weight into him, sending us both into the cement wall.

Foul words hit my ears as we struggled, and he finally got me pinned. Well, good luck to him – he’d have to cut my foot ties to open my legs, if he was really planning on going through with this. And as soon as my legs were free, I was planning on shoving a knee or six into his groin.

“He’ll be impressed,” slobbered my attacker in my ear, his hands pressing onto my chest. “Just give me a secret, and I’ll leave you alone, I promise. Tell me something.”

I bucked him off once, twice, until he growled and slammed my head into the concrete. My vision swam, my teeth rattled in my skull.

“TELL ME!” he screamed into my face, but I couldn’t talk, even if I’d wanted to.

Again, my head smashed into the floor. A ringing noise filled my ears, and a weird cry escaped me. A door opened, voices were raised, my brain seemed to deflate…

And the world fell out from underneath me.

Chapter Four

The Daily Grind

I awoke to a hand tapping against my cheek, so insistent I had no choice but to slowly come to.

“Come on, darling, no time like the present. I’ve seen worse brains splattered across a floor before.”

That
had my eyes flying open in horror. “What?” I shrieked, though my voice was a wisp.

Achilles’s skeletal face hovered above my own, the details of his mask a little less defined than usual. It was then that I realized I was missing my glasses.

“W-what happened?” I asked, though I vaguely remembered my head being used as a bouncing ball for one of his goons. My eyes felt dried out; my brain felt as though someone had flattened it with a hammer.

A cackle. “No brains, I’m just teasing. Here.” A bottle of water appeared in my line of vision, blocking Achilles’s face, and I nodded in thanks before sucking half the thing down in one go.

As my close-range vision came into focus, I realized there was something beside me. No,
someone
. Slowly, my brain registered the puddle of blood haloing my head, the stench of excrement and death, and worst of all, the sightless eyes of the corpse lying next to me.

Water sprayed from me as I scrambled backwards and hit the wall in an instant. The body of my attacker was spread out like Thanksgiving dinner on my cell floor, his hands cut clean from his arms and stuffed into his mouth in a nightmarish fashion. His throat was slit from ear to ear, the sound of blood dripping into the pool around him drilling into my mind.

I made it to the toilet just in time to empty out the few contents of my stomach. I rinsed my mouth out with the water and heard Achilles say, “Alright, take him out.”

The corpse was dragged out of the cell by two goons just like him, leaving a thick trail of blood as they went. If I’d had anything left to throw up, I would have.

My body wanted nothing more than to collapse on the bed and never wake up, but I knew I was very much still vulnerable with this psychopath in the same room as me. Balling up next to the cot, away from the blood and gore left behind, I kept my eyes strictly on Achilles. His face, though somewhat terrifying in itself, was a welcome distraction.

“You did that, didn’t you?” I whispered, remembering the voice that joined the chaos of my mind right before I passed out. “Why?”

He bounced across the pool of blood and onto the bed, pillowing his cheek with both hands and turning to face me. “Does it really surprise you?”

“No, but it would still be nice to know why you felt the need to … to make a show of it.” My vocal chords were regaining strength with the help of the water.

“He broke these,” he said, off-topic, handing me …
my glasses
? One of the lenses was cracked a little in the corner, but at least I could see properly again. I didn’t
need
my glasses to see, but it made me feel a lot better, knowing there was a barrier between me and the rest of the world.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“You’re
thanking
me?” He gave me a funny look, even from behind the black eyes and face-paint.

“Do I get an answer if I thank you?”

Time stretched out to an almost-awkward length, and then he said, rather quietly, “I told Joshua not to touch you. There are rules to working for me, darling, and he broke them. So he lost his hands. Then, because he tried to undermine me by interrogating you himself, I choked him with them.”

I shuddered. “And the cut throat?”

He shrugged. “To set an example.” But his tone was too tight to be truthful – I had a sneaking suspicion he was lying.

Not that I would ever voice the theory. I liked my hands attached to my body, thanks very much.

Speaking of my hands, it was only then that I realized my ties had been cut. Did this mean I was free to move again? Or was he just playing with me, getting my hopes up? I didn’t dare thank him for
that
, in case he thought he might be going soft on me, and decided to tie me up once more.

“Oh, I forgot to open my present,” said Achilles suddenly, reaching into his pocket. I fully expected him to pull out a gun – or something equally
violent
– but instead it was my wallet. My wallet!

“That’s mine!” I gasped, lunging for it. I managed to get a hand over his before he flipped me over, pressing my whole body into the mattress, holding the wallet outstretched, away from me.

“Ah, ah,” he tutted, his body far too close to mine for comfort. My hands immediately flew to my open shirt to cover my skin, a gesture he didn’t miss. “I’ll give it back once I’m done. We aren’t even on first-name terms yet, darling, and it’s killing me.” With a grin that could only be described as wicked, he pushed away from me and sat at the end of the cot, my feet tucked under his arms.

“Right, what have we here?” He flipped the wallet open and took out my small bundle of cards. The name on the first card made him frown. “Felicity Eastwood?”

“Yeah, so?”

I hadn’t imagined it; the frown deepened. “Nothing.” He flicked through the cards, visibly bored. “Not a very active lifestyle, Flick. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were a bit of a drifter.”

“Then it’s lucky you don’t know me at all,” I reminded him.
Flick
. I’d never had a nickname before, and it was so, so wrong that the first one I received was from a homicidal maniac.