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Lilly cringed as the Egyptian desert heat pounded on her black clothing. She knew she hadn’t been in Egypt since her near death experience at the fort. Yet she had orders from Hector—to create ghouls in every city, every town, and every village across the world and she could no longer avoid the entire country—it would arouse suspicion which would inevitably result in pain. Lilly evaded the desert long enough, but she was running out of targets. Cairo was the next and was the last major city for her to attack. After Cairo she’d be forced to move to attacking exclusively towns, villages and other smaller cities—there were thousands of them, it would take months for her to complete the task.
Lilly appeared in a market to scope it out before turning into smoke. She watched as a couple people scurried off to their respective homes. Almost no one was in the streets here. She would have to find a populated safe house or home to attack. Eyes locked on her from shady alleys, she’d been spotted. Lilly cracked a smiled at the watchful eyes, they meant nothing. It’s not like those watchful eyes it mattered, there was nothing they could do except warn the poor citizens that the attack was here, it was finally their time. Looking around the small selection of shop owners and frightened people, Lilly tried to find a crowded spot to turn out few ghouls so she could quickly get out of this terrifying country.
The eyes continued to stare, this was different that most the lookouts. Normally they would have scurried off to warn the officials, to warn the city governors it was time to run for those who haven’t already fled to the countryside. But these people just stared at her from under their cloaks, as if they were gearing up for an assault. Were they crazy? Did they not read the stories? She was unkillable, any attack would end horribly for them.
“Mistress,” a deep voice came from behind her. Startled, Lilly turned around, she was in the center of the road with cloaked men all around her. An attack? The voice spoke again, “Do I have permission to hurt you?” the voice continued after she turned around.
Lilly scowled and responded, “What?” in the last few weeks no one ever approached her with threats. Lilly took a few steps back and withdrew her gun. This guy must be joking, that or he had a death wish.
He pulled a small panel out of a pocket in his cloak. It was another replica of the button. Lilly exhaled, it had to be another fake, just like the Queen of Britain tried. Lilly held the gun at the man’s head and said, “It’s a fake, you think others haven’t tried that already? You just voted yourself to be the slaughter of your own people.” Lilly smiled and lifted her lips to show her fangs.
Her fingers slowly tightened on the trigger as she lowered her aim from his head to his chest. At that moment a bolt of pain slithered up her arm, pain she hadn’t felt since Nikon first used it in Russia. Her hand lost all control and flung open, letting her gun hit the aged pavement. Lilly tried to use her other hand to stop the pain, to grab her left hand, but it only made the pain worse. Lilly dropped to her knees. She managed to slip her jacket up just enough to spot the diamond bracelet. All the diamonds had turned from crystal clear to a foggy yellow and she could see forks of electricity feeding from the diamonds to her skin. She tried to withdraw her right hand from its grip on her left arm, but it wouldn’t budge, the electricity had created a loop.
With as much force as she could she pulled at her right arm, her bone fingers slipped out of the glove and instead went right for the ground, to catch herself from hitting it face first. She looked up and the man in the heavy black cloak removed his finger from the button. But the pain didn’t go away. It only mellowed. Her hand shuck violently as she looked down at it again, the skin surrounding the bracelet was singed red, some of it even still smoking from the high voltage. Other than her arm, a numbing sensation filled the rest of her body. The one hand holding her up buckled at the elbow and she fell forward onto the ground.
The man crouched over her, the shade of his body hovered over hers, “I was asking permission because you killed all my comrades. You slaughtered my brothers and sisters—turned them into monsters. And you never asked my permission for that… What,” he chuckled, “did you really think one weapons exchange fort in the middle of the desert was all we had? So, I’ll ask again. Do I have permission to hurt you?”
Her mind couldn’t comprehend how he managed to get that button, there was only two left—and as far as she knew Sir Kelton and Hector had them both. Her arm was still shaking from the shock and her hand burned as if it was on fire. Between her steady breaths she remembered the deal with the devil, “Yes,” a whisper came out of her mouth.
She rolled up onto her side and tried to get up. A boot swung into her stomach and hit so hard she felt several bones crack. Lilly rolled onto her stomach with the kick, her face exposed directly to the raging sun. It was suddenly hard to breathe, and the raging pain in her chest made her hand feel like a tickle. Lilly closed her eyes and tried to cover her face with her one good hand as the heat burned her face.
The man hovering over her motioned to the eyes in the ally and several people came out, shortly after a truck rolled up the street and she was pulled up into the back. A cool rag was thrown over her face as the truck pulled away from the market place and under all the pain her eyes grew heavy.
***
When she awoke the numbness, darkness, and cool concrete on her face felt all too familiar. She slowly turned her head as a massive headache throbbed through her body. She must be just waking up from a long nightmare. Images and memories from the frozen cell in Russia flashed through her head, not again. Her eyes followed the wall, had it all been some cruel nightmare? She noticed something missing. There was no ice on the walls.
Lilly concluded that she must have been knocked out in the Russian cell for so long she slept through the winter. The flesh on her left hand starting with a burning itch, her other hand went for the itch to calm the sensation. She saw white flash across her eyes as her hand moved from one side to the other. Lilly jumped back from the sight of her own hand, the glove was off and the bone exposed—she wasn’t expecting to see it.
She pulled herself up against the wall of the cell and now sitting up rolled the dirt covered sleeve to examine the itch. It was the bracelet. The skin in direct contacts with it had turned black and the skin preceding that was bright red. Then she remembered what happened, the man with the cloak the button he managed to obtain, and the pain that drew every last bit of consciousness out of her. She wasn’t in Russia, this wasn’t a dream.
She tried to take in her surroundings. A single yellow light was above her; otherwise the room was unpainted gray concrete. In front of her was about ten feet of vertical metal bars with concrete on either side filling in the rest of the space on that side of the room. One corner had a toilet but there was no bed. She slowly got to her feet and walked up to the bars—what was beyond them was darkness in all directions. Even with her keen eyesight the only thing she could see was a thin path of concrete blocks with un-railed cliffs on either side. She concluded that the cell she was in was on the edge of some sort of pitch black pit.
A glint of metal flashed from across the darkness. Lilly tried to see what it was. It was coming closer fast, she tried to back away from the bars but it was too late. A metal arrow sped through the bars and made direct contact with her arm, going right through it with ease. The friction of going through her arm drastically slowed the arrow and it stopped mid-way into her arm. The itching in her wrist was forgotten as pain soared through her body from the impact point. Her right hand went for the metal projectile in her arm, but she was unable to get a good grip on the slick metal. The bone had no grip, she needed her glove.
“Pain,” A deep voice growled from behind the bars, “I know how you react to pain.”
Blood ran down across the white bone as she let go of the metal, all holding it was doing was making the agony more intense. Instead her fingers went for the flesh itself—trying to hold the sting back. She looked the arrow wound, the arrow had metal feathers on its backside and a metal tip, the entire arrow was one large piece, she wouldn’t even be able to break it out. She cringed at the thought that the only way to get the arrow out would be to pull the tip back through her arm.
“It’s a marvelous thing, pain. It can cripple even the best of people in the time they’re needed most. It can freeze people in their place and have them double over to make it stop. It can make people go as far as to kill themselves to make it stop. But for you it’s something entirely different. It’s your prison. It’s your jail keeper. It’s your ultimate enemy.”
Steps grew closer on the concrete walkway, every footstep echoed throughout the hallow pit. Lilly backed further away from the bars until her skin tickled knowing the wall was inches behind her. She pushed her body up against the cool concrete and slowly slid down it—refusing to remove the pressure from the arrow wound.
“But it’s also your greatest joy. Your ecstasy. You love to watch the people around you suffer, to bleed, but without ever feeling the suffering on your own. Your creatures aren’t exactly the saints of death either. They maim and gore those they come in contact to. They let the victims suffer from mind blowing pain before their bodies go numb and their eyes close forever.”
Lilly was on the ground, the small room was spinning around her. She wasn’t able to concentrate on the metal gate in front of her, but only on the knives slicing up her skin in waves.
The man came into sight, it was the same one from Cairo, but his cloak was gone. The man was, instead, wearing an armored vest—his tanned large muscles were covered with scars. His legs were in a similar fashion as his arms, but it was his face that stood out. It looked as if his face had been shoved into a blender, and then stitched back together by a child with wool. Disfiguring scars covered his face, most so poorly stitch together he almost no longer looked human.
“Yes. YES look at me, look at my face, you see it? It’s horrible isn’t it? Unimaginable pain, something that,” he signaled at the arrow in her arm as he swung around a crossbow in one of his hands, “Makes that look like a toothpick in your arm. And do you want to know who did this to me? I’m sure you may want to jump to conclusions, my Father, some phyco, no no—a war, a bomb, maybe I was born this way—but no, I’m sure you may have a guess by now who really did it... it was you. You killed hundreds of my comrades, destroyed the only home I’ve known, and sabotaged millions of dollars in merchandise that helped feed me,” he searched through a key ring and clicked open the gate, it slid smoothly to one side and he stepped into the cell, “What? Did you really think that fort was our only outpost? Did you really think those people were our only assets? We have dozens of places just like it across the desert. We’ve been waiting for thousands of years to make our move. Thousands of years to once again have our shot at power. One pathetic attack can’t possibly hinder a thousand years of planning.
“I’m going to make you suffer. I’m going to make you bleed for every single one of my comrades that you killed. Two hundred and eighty seven, that’s the number of graves we had to make in the desert. That’s how many of my friends who are now gone,” he was now standing over her while twirling the crossbow in his hand. His hand suddenly got a strong grip on the metal just after the string on the bow and he swung down the back end of the crossbow. He aimed at Lilly and the metal butt of the bow made contact with her shoulder, just above the arrow lodged in her arm, “This is for Jerhmea!” he roared above Lilly’s short scream.
***
Lilly let in short breaths, time had passed, but she had no clue how much—a week, two, three maybe? All she knew was that the daily routine was always the same, it always started with that man and with every name he roared cuts appeared across her flesh, sharp objects were jammed into her, and she was torn open, only to be stitched up and have the entire process start the next day.
She now cursed her transformed body, before she thought her healing was a gift—good fortune to help her recover from those bad places quickly. But now it was an utter nightmare. A slash down her arm would heal in a couple days, only to be split open once more. And no matter how much she took, or how much the man gave more was always expected. She wanted her body to give up, to shut down, but it refused. Her body just kept healing and pushing on.
He’d break a leg and it’d be grown back in a few days, he’d send thousands of vaults through her chest and the burned skin would be fresh and red in a day. He’d slice her back open and yank at her spinal cord until she blacked out and she’d come to with nothing more than cramps.
He enjoyed this much too much, she’d lost count of how many names had passed—how could she keep track, there was nothing to think about other that what brutal torture was planned for the day. Now was her downtime, the end of the day, the part of the routine where she was stitched back up for another day.
A woman was next to her, there was always a woman next to her at the end of the day—always the same woman. She was carefully spreading a soothing cream over Lilly’s black crisp skin. The weeks passed by in a blur. The only solid thing she could remember happened on the third day of torture, it was the first time he used fire, locking both her arms in a fire pit, one healed in two days—but they didn’t know the nature of the one with the Devils Mark. Instead of healing the skin on that arm grew worse and slowly peeled off. Now her entire hand and half her arm was white bone, the rest of her arm up to her elbow was badly charred skin. The skin hurt as if the devil touched it every time anything glanced across it.
The man, she never got his name, quickly learned how much pain touching the skin near the mark caused her. He found out that he didn’t need to use fancy equipment, radical strategies, poison, drugs or weapons to make her scream. He just needed to touch the skin near the bone, a finger, feather, dust—anything and she’d experience more suffering than anyone should be able to withstand—and the worst part about this pain, she never blacked out from it like she would with other methods of brutality. She would beg for him to stop—something she never did with any other torture. She begged for anything to stop the suffering, even death.
A day after experiencing the pain from the Devils Mark the first time she remembered being pressed face down in her own blood with a shaking gun in her hand under her body. The gun was pointed at the feet of man from Cairo, barely held up in her trembling hand. The charred hand was rested carefully under her stomach. She was trying to hide it from him.
“I made a promise to someone more terrifying that you’ll ever be,” she said under the shaking—her voice hardly loud enough to hear, “But I’m ready to break that promise, I’m ready to kill every person in here. All the pain you’ve experienced with your face, it’s a pinch compared to what that someone I made a promise to can do.” The gun clinked on the ground, but she held it in the direction of the man, “A gunshot hurts, but you’ll pass out from blood loss. Fire sears the skin, but after the nerve endings are melted you feel nothing. But imagine that moment you got third degree burns—think of that ten second period where it hurt like nothing else,” the volume of her voice dropped so low it stopped echoing in the small cell, “stick that moment onto the tip of a needle. Now, press your finger against your skin. Count, count how many needles can fit in the space below your finger. Think of how many times that moment of pain can be inflicted in such a small space. And the nerves don’t melt away; you don’t pass out from blood loss. It just keeps going, on and on and on.” Her hand loosened on the gun, she wasn’t able to hold it anymore. “Some things are out of this world, some things are not meant to be toyed with…”
Boundaries, that’s what they learned on that fifth day. They learned that even in the moments of upmost hate—even when he wanted to make her hurt for every person she killed, there were some things best left alone. From that point on the hurt wasn’t inflicted on her charred hand. Instead ointment was spread across it to dull the tenderness of her arm. That arm was off limits.
“What number am I on?” Lilly asked the lady next to her between short breaths, back in the present. She hadn’t opened her eyes for the past two days, everything she saw was grim. She figured it felt worse if she knew what was coming.
“Open your eyes, there will be no one cutting you today, they’ve all gone on important business.”
Lilly didn’t listen, she didn’t believe anything said to her over the past few weeks—it was always lies. Torture of the mind was just as painful of that to her skin.
“You’re on number thirty eight,” the lady finally said, after seeing Lilly refuse to open her eyes, “I’m not lying, their out for today and tomorrow, have you ever seen me do anything except mend your aches?”
Lilly shuck her head, feeling the dry brick crumble in her hair as she rubbed against it.
The woman carefully wrapped a bandage around the bone of Lilly’s arm, just past the charred skin and placed the sling over Lilly’s neck, making sure nothing touched the charred skin, “Well, open your eyes for a few days, the darkness is no good for you. I’ll bring down some real food in a few hours. None of that crap they’ve been giving you.”
Lilly nodded her head in agreement, thanking the woman, but refused to move from her spot against the wall or sneak a peek at who helped her every night. She hadn’t seen the woman’s face at all and refused to look at her, last thing Lilly wanted was someone that helped her to be taken away, she felt killing the woman that helped her every night would be just as horrible, if not worse, than the cutting and breaking that happened every day.
Lilly already knew no help was coming, she learned that in the first few days—no one knew she was here. She couldn’t feel Sin anymore, Pop would never help, and it’d be impossible for Hector to track her down. She was for all intent and purposes, gone, dead, lost—no one would ever come for her. She’d just have to suffer until the man was finally done.