The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

4.2 - In Hell

She knew the move too well, from too much practice. All the way back to her days in the attic, when Eldor had taken it upon himself to teach his foster sister basic self-defense. Without the help of a stiletto heel, of course. But since then, she’d never stopped teaching herself. Every night spent in the shadows was a lesson in survival, and tests such as tonight’s came up more frequently than Atria could count.

And with Axel—during her days with the Golde boys, when she had opened up to Axe a little bit about her past, he had offered himself up as practice for her to sharpen her skills, should she ever need them to defend herself from forceful pigs. And she had needed those skills, on certain sultry nights back in New York, and put them to good use.

But she hadn’t been able to use them against Axe, that night. She couldn’t bring herself to fight back, when she felt that she deserved it. A feeling that she’d never had, in all her life till then…

And certainly not now. “You think you’re the first pig to try that on me?” she rasped as her wounded assailant writhed beneath her heel.

She stood to leave only once she knew that he was completely incapacitated, for a while with his mangled manhood. Left him with a few last words. “I hope you drown someday in your own dirty blood.”

She grabbed the golden necklace on her way out, stuffed it in her bag, tied her trench coat extra tightly at her waist. Pretending for a moment in her dark mind that her waistline was the jeweler’s gasping throat. The throat of every pig who’d ever tried to cause her pain.

She could’ve taken every item from the pig’s store—he had given her the key to every glass case, after all, as she had demanded before she’d disrobed. But she took nothing else. She left the key upon a countertop, taking only the necklace. For that was all she’d bargained for. Her victim may have had no honor, but the dark rose kept her word. Never stooping to the level of the swine who did her wrong.

The streets were darker now, and emptier as she stepped into the shadows once again. She thought she heard the hum of nightlife, in the near distance—the pulsing rhythm of a club, the most familiar kind of music to her ears. She moved in that direction.

At one point along her path, Atria passed a pair of local boys with wandering eyes and staggering strides. She could smell the heavy liquor on their breath, even from far across the street. They released suggestive whistles as she whisked by.

“How much?” one of them hollered. “For one night? One hour?”

How much… one hour… the haunting echo of words from her own whorish deal, far too recent to bear reminding, struck her horribly.

Ugh, the stupid brutes—the boys were scuttling across the street to follow her. One even grabbed at her belt. “One night…!” he moaned.

She shrugged them off, shot them a dark green glare that shut them up. “Spend the night in hell,” she muttered as she forged ahead.

As soon as she reached the nightclub on the next block, she asked around till granted entrance to a private backroom where the club owner engaged in shady business. Sold the necklace for a giant wad of cash, just as she’d hoped. The owner happened to be hideous, so she didn’t offer sex for extra dough. She wasn’t in the mood, besides.

She departed the club, set to find a hotel to stay the night. She was exhausted from the flight—not only today’s flight to Greece, but also and more so, the endless flight from death that had become her life. She could use a comfortable night’s sleep, in a room of her own. In a bed alone, for once. Any hotel but the Mega Bretania, she reminded herself, remembering the damned dinner that Eldor had mentioned.

In some way, she thought to herself, the dark rose seemed to be turning a new leaf. At least taking a small step, making a small change for the better, starting with tonight. A slightly different approach to selling her goods: using them to make money to pay her own way, rather than taking on some stranger as a sugar daddy. Still a form of whoredom, she reflected. But it somehow felt less dirty. Didn’t it?

Before she could decide, she glimpsed the rotating red glow of an ambulance light down the street. A crowd had gathered at the site—she found herself drawn there, against her better judgment, beckoned by a strange and sinister sense of foreboding in the pit of her stomach.

Two boys, she learned, had been struck dead by a speeding car. She did not even need to look, to recognize the pair, to know the truth. They were the stupid brutes. Whom she had told to spend the night in hell. They had heeded her orders too well. She was suddenly numb.

And the medics had more to discuss. She overheard, above the deafening dance beats of the club, the murmurs of the gathered crowd, her own thundering heart. Somehow she made out every word.

Another recent death. ‘The jeweler.’ He’d reported a robbery, but then was found dead in his shop—his lungs had spontaneously filled up with bodily fluid. He had sustained some wounds, yet they seemed unrelated to the cause of death. He’d simply drowned in his own blood. Just as she'd bidden him. In his own dirty blood...

“Dark forces afoot tonight,” a medic mumbled.

“No need to get spooky about it,” one of his colleagues scoffed.

“Don’t you just sense there’s something… unnatural in all this?”

“Doubt it. Nothing more natural than death.”

Atria felt faint. Saw a glimmer of hypnotic storm-grey somewhere in the crowd, awash with blood-red light. Then everything went black.

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So what's up with that?? Dark forces? Fatal forces... Fateful forces? Cloe's not the only one with powers, after all ;)  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Next scene, we'll follow Cloe off to meet a special someone at the fanciest hotel in Athens... And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)