Chapter 10
I needed a drink. It was the first thought that came to mind as I fought my way through the tide of blackness and back into consciousness. My head pounded like I had a really bad hangover. For a moment I wondered if it truly was a hangover and I had consumed a few too many glasses of red wine. But then I remembered being surrounded, the heavy limbs as the sedative had coursed through my sister. A split second of panic before darkness had consumed me.
My stomach protested and I rolled on to my side in time to retch up my stomach contents all over the floor. Stomach acid burned the back of my throat as I heaved and the acrid stench of bile filled my senses. My cheek felt damp from where the sick clung to my skin but I was too tired to care. My stomach was in knots as it fought to expel the drugs from my body.
Groaning loudly, I fought to open my eyes. It was like they had been glued shut. It took all of my concentration to pull them apart. Dim light speared into my head bringing about another wave of nausea. I retched and heaved but nothing more spilled from my body. Drained, I slumped onto my back, panting from the exertion.
I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and go back to sleep like my body was demanding but I fought against the tiredness. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the light even though it still sent spears of pain racing through my head.
Letting my gaze drift, I was met with drab grey walls and cold iron bars. Forcing myself to move, I pushed my body up off of het ground, putting my knees under me so that I could crawl the few feet between me and my only route out of here. As I got closer, it was clear that these cells were old, the metal bars crudely made however the locks securing the doors in places were all new and gleamed.
Wrapping my hands around the bars, gripping them firmly, I tugged with all my strength. It wasn't a lot. With two sharp tugs I was panting and leaning against the bars. They were unaffected by my efforts but I was already slipping back towards unconsciousness and my hands were throbbing from where the jagged edges of the metal bars had cut into the palms of my hands.
"Save your energy," a voice croaked. It was male and drifted from a few feet away.
Pressing my face to the bars, ignoring the way the metal stabbed into my cheeks, I tried to get a view of the hall beyond. I couldn't see much as the only source of light came from a small misshapen window a little way down the corridor. It was several feet above the floor - not a potential escape route.
"Who are you?" I rasped, my throat aching from the strain of speech.
Tearing at the bottom of my t-shirt, exposing my midsection but I didn't have it in me to care. I used the torn off scrap of fabric to wipe the evidence of my weakness from my face.
"Caspar," the voice murmured back quietly. "You?"
"Savannah," I replied, as I tossed the scrap of fabric to the side and then allowed myself to slump even further into the bars. "Is there anyone else here?"
After much shuffling, other voices shouted out their names, some weaker than others. Some slurred as if they too were struggling against the effects of sedatives.
Pressing my face further against the bars, I found that the pain brought a margin of clarity to my muddied mind but it still felt like I was operating on half capacity.
"Do you know where we are?" I asked, my mouth struggling to form the words.
"No, I was unconscious when I was brought it." Caspar replied, his voice cracking over some of the words. Despite the way his voice broke, I could detect a hint of an American accent. "And no, I don't know who they are. As you may know, I am not from around here."
"Okay," I replied, closing my eyes in an attempt to stop the world from spinning around me. "First thing we need to get out of these cages."
"There's no way out. The guards are very careful about opening the doors. They always dart us before they open the doors. They're not risking anything."
"Maybe but they are underestimating me," I grumbled while fighting the fog to summon my sword to me. I could feel it wanting to respond but I struggled to make it corporeal. With all of the drugs still in my system it was difficult to focus enough to bring it forward.
A loud clunk reverberated down the hallway.
"Hurry, lie down and pretend you're still unconscious." Caspar urged, panic clinging to his voice.
"What - ?" I muttered before there was a loud groaning sound. I could almost the picture a big heavy door as it opened its rusty hinges.
Crawling across my cell, I laid down next to the pool of sick, my nose wrinkling from the stench before I closed my eyes. It was all too easy to allow my limbs to go limp and to relax into the floor. Footsteps echoed off the walls.
They got closer while a clunking sound followed their progress. Stomp. Clunk. Stomp then clunk.
Finally the clunking got to my cell. The steps stopping as the owner of the heavy footfall paused just a few feet away from me. I allowed my force to lay still and unresponsive even when there was a loud clang as something stuck the bars hard and a loud voice jeered from the other side.
"It looks like the woman is still sleeping Murphy, take one of the others." A voice ordered, allowing no room for protests.
I opened my eyes a crack and watched a tall man in a black nondescript uniform turned on his heels and proceeded along the hallway, his baton once again clunking against the bars in time with each of his slow, carefully measured steps. He stopped just out of sight of my cell but I knew he had located his target when there was a whimper in the next cell.
"No. Please." A small voice pleaded before a desperate sob reached me.
Clenching my hands into fists, I tried not to react but the sound of her terror was enough to touch the maternal part within me.
Listening intently, I heard the girl gasp and then the guard was passing my cell once more. Opening my eyes fully, I watched as he tugged a girl behind him. She couldn't have been more than fifteen. Her hair had been shorn close to her scalp but I could make a few blonde wisps. I bit back my anger when I noted the crusted blood where someone had got a little too close to her skin when shearing off her hair and had actually cut away the skin. She was wearing a blue jumpsuit which hung from her body – meant for a fully grown adult the fabric bunched around her bare feet, rasping against the floor with each step she took.
As the girl stumbled past my cell, her head turned towards me, and I watched as the last of her terror faded away behind the drugged haze. She stumbled blindly along behind the guard like a lamb being lead to the slaughter.
Oh god, she's so young and so helpless. I closed my eyes and tried to bring my sword into being but still it would not come.
I hated this feeling – being powerless against evil. It brought me back to my very first day at Satani Media, when it had been my own life and that of my son at the mercy of evil. Lucius had saved me then but did he even know I was missing? And was Castiel safe?
The guard did not close the door behind him. There was no groan of the door swinging shut on its hinges or clank as the long was reengaged. For just a second I thought it was a lapse in security but I knew the reality was worse. They wanted us to fear. They wanted us to know what awaited us on the other side of the door because just for a moment there was only silence. And then the screams started.
Putting my hand between my teeth, I bit down into my flesh as the young girl's screams came through the open doorway. It was almost like they were magnified. The girl screamed so loud and for so long I could think of nothing else but her tortured cries. Soon there were no more screams but just a hoarse gargling as she screamed her voice into ruination.
I closed my eyes, oblivious to the pain in my own hand from where my teeth had broken through the skin under the weight of the girl's torture. Over and over again I tried to call forth my sword with my free hand but it would not work. Even now, when adrenaline was coursing through my veins, there was a sense of lethargy within me. No matter how much my body fought to right it, my body was continually being drawn back into the half drugged state. Even my wings, which were so much a part of me, would not respond to my commands for them to unfurl from my back.
I had no sense of time passing as the girl's torture continued. I could hear the men laughing as they inflicted unimaginable horrors on the small girl and there was nothing I could do to stop it. All of my training and special talents were useless right now. I was locked by hind iron bars and my only defence was not working.
And then it was over. The guard returned, dragging the girl behind him by her arms, her feet trailing along the ground. I swallowed back bile. Her face was unscathed but showed the signs of her torture even in the relief of unconsciousness.
It was her hands and feet which drew my attention. Her fingernails and toenails had been just a short time ago, there were now only bloody bits. Her hands were covered in her own blood, turned crusty in areas where it had already started to dry. What kind of men were they that they would torture a young girl? Torture her with tactics which would make a full grown man or woman beg for mercy.
The guard dropped the limp form into her cell heavily so she fell to the floor with a thud. There was another thud and another. I didn't have to see what was happening to know he was raining blows down upon the vulnerable form.
"Stop it!" I shouted, dragging myself across the cell.
There was one more blow and then it all stopped.
The door to the cell shut with a loud clang and the lock engaged.
The footsteps which followed were slow and taunting, edging closer and closer until the guard was standing before my cell. He was smiling but there was nothing pleasant about the way he was looking at me.
The man was unfamiliar and perfectly nondescript. There was absolutely nothing memorable about him. His features were average and unremarkable, his short hair an ordinary mousy brown. It was only his eyes which set him apart. True, there was nothing special about the colour. It was what lurked within the depths of those brown eyes which had my hackles rising and unease filling my heart.
"You're finally awake sleeping beauty. No need to get jealous about her getting all the attention." He smiled at me, his face leaning closer to the bars as he spoke his next words. "Now that you're awake, it will be your turn next."
He licked his lips, as if the mere thought of torturing me was fulfilling some desperate fantasy.
"I can't wait." He said through a moan his eyes taking in all of me.
Involuntarily, I backed away from him and the bars in an attempt to put as much space between us as I could.
He laughed, and then with a jaunty whistle, he proceeded back down the hall with his baton clunking against the bars of the cells as he went.
I closed my eyes as the door behind him. The relief of his departure was brief as dread swiftly took its place. I was no longer human but that didn't mean I was any stronger mentally. I had only just managed to recover my backbone after months jumping at shadows.
What if this was the moment I was broken so completely there was no coming back from it?
I closed my eyes and prayed. I felt weak for doing it, but I prayed for the impossible – for Lucius and my friends to rush to the rescue before I was subjected to the same as the girl in the cell next to mine. After a few minutes of the fruitless exercise, I tried to strengthen myself against what was to come because my survival would depend on me alone and no one else. It was a terrifying thought.