God of Destruction (6 page)

She didn’t get far.

The moment she reached the floor above the
prison, she was met with a room that appeared to be a cross between
a living room and kitchen. Everything about it was filthy. However,
the scum on the refrigerator doors and the mud caked on the floor
weren’t the frightening part of this room. Every kind of gun that
she could picture in her mind was leaned up against the wall across
the room from her, just passed the table seating six men. Janie
entertained the thought of grabbing one of the guns as she ran
away, but knew she wouldn’t stand a chance at wielding it even if
she could get away with one.

Once the shock of her sudden arrival had
subsided, other unfamiliar men sprung up to follow before she could
get away. Janie passed through the room quickly before she entered
a narrower hallway. There was a door in the room at the end of
hall; she could see it. No one was close enough to catch her before
she went out that door and she knew it. A wide smile broke across
her face as she prepared herself for the homestretch to
freedom.

Pain erupted in her chest so quickly she had
no chance to see where it had come from. Her body was thrown
backwards and crashed to the floor with a force that shook her
followers as they ran after her. She gasped for breath but her
lungs wouldn’t cooperate. She stared up and through the black dots
that shimmered around the corners of her vision, she began to make
out a slim arm outstretched like a statue at chest height where
she’d just tried to run. The arm dropped, stiff as a board, and a
woman stepped into sight. Feeling nauseous again, Janie made the
connection between this woman and her photos.

“Poor baby,” Natalia clicked her tongue,
clacking against the floor when she walked in her heels. She was
like a cat, Janie noted, watching the predatory stride used by the
other woman. She was obviously aware of the taunting way Natalia
circled her, knowing the younger girl didn’t stand a chance.
Natalia gripped the front of Janie’s shirt and lifted her off the
ground with little effort. “You were so close,” she smiled, showing
teeth.

Janie whimpered, but she couldn’t collect her
thoughts well enough to come up with a response.

“Unfortunately, escape is not something we
look lightly upon here,” she sang, dropping Janie. Natalia dragged
her across the floor behind her by her hair, ignoring the girl’s
shrieks of pain, especially as they journeyed back down the stairs.
She pulled open a wooden door on her way through the hall of
familiar steel doors. “I have been meaning to speak with you,
myself, anyway,” she continued, pushing the captive onto her
stomach on the cold floor. Taking a pair of stolen handcuffs from
the belt loop of her designer slacks, she bound Janie’s arms behind
her back. She lifted the girl up by her hair, which had come loose
at some point the previous night.

“This is how it is going to go,
moy
drug
,” Natalia ordered sternly. “I am going to ask you
questions, and you are going to answer them truthfully, or I will
drown you. Do you think you can remember that?”

There wasn’t any doubt in Janie’s mind that
this woman was serious. Wordlessly, she nodded, though she had no
idea where this water would be coming from.

“Good,” Natalia proclaimed, chipper façade
firmly in place. Using the hand that was still entwined in her
hair, Natalia yanked Janie toward the large cement trough against
the opposite wall and forced her to kneel before it. Janie cried
out as her hair was pulled, but could put up no resistance while
her arms were cuffed behind her. “And if you even think about
kicking me,” Natalia annunciated in her thick accent, making her
words all the more cruel, “I will show you just how badly I can
maim you and keep you alive.”

Janie decided to listen.

She stared down into the dark water of the
trough, seeing her swollen face reflected back at her. A thick gash
on her forehead split her skin from hairline to eyebrow, crusted
around the edges with dried blood and flaming red flesh. She wasn’t
a doctor, but she’d received enough cuts in her lifetime to know
that it was most likely infected. It was really no surprise,
considering where she’d been forced to live since receiving it. She
made a face, testing the skin and found out how tightly stretched
over the bone it felt. Her head pounded in protest.

“Now,
vozlyublennyy
, where did you
hide those pictures you took at the museum?” Natalia inquired
politely.

Janie debated for a split second whether or
not to trust that the assassin would let her live if she told.
Either way she went, she couldn’t foresee a positive outcome. With
that in mind, her brilliant utterance was, “What pictures?”

Her head had been shoved into the tub before
she’d even gotten the entire word out. Unable to catch a breath
before she was plunged into the cold, Janie floundered to no avail.
Her lungs burned from the lack of air, bringing out her more
desperate instincts, eventually leading to the kicking she’d been
warned against. Her sneaker connected with the hard abdominal
muscles of the older woman, but she was unyielding, keeping Janie
from moving an inch under the water. That fact alone was enough to
inform Janie that she’d just made a
huge
mistake.

The force that struck and pierced Janie’s
calf was unmistakable: a stiletto heel. Warm blood spilled over her
skin and hot agony shot up her leg. Unable to scream when there was
nothing in her lungs to expel, Janie, impulsively, inhaled the icy,
disgusting water. The pain of her leg was forgotten, however, in
light of the ache of deprivation in her lungs. As she coughed, more
water forced itself into her lungs.

Her head was abruptly dragged out of the
tub.

"That...was not a good idea," Natalia scolded
like a parent to a child.

Through Janie's heaving, she sobbed. "Don't
put...me back...in the tub," she sputtered as loud as she could
manage.

"Are you going to cooperate?" Natalia asked,
jerking her head back to look her in the eye.

Janie nodded once, biting her lip, hoping she
couldn’t decipher her lie. Natalia glanced at her captive's face
for less than a second before she found what she was looking for in
Janie’s eyes. Unfortunately for the younger girl, the fist that
split her lip once she’d falsely agreed was a clear sign that her
wish went unfulfilled. Her head was submerged again. Shaking with
hysteria, she gasped for a breath and wailed over and over again
when her face was brought to the surface, "Don't put me back in the
tub!"

"Tell me where the pictures are, and I will
give you something to eat," Natalia promised sweetly.

Janie licked the droplets of blood and water
away from her growing bottom lip, but gave no answer. She braced
herself to be submerged again. True to her word, Natalia pushed her
under a third time. "Do not be fooled into thinking that you are
being brave, Miss Campbell. In my experience, I have found that
what others call 'brave' is what others, including myself, would
consider stupid."

Janie kept silent.

"Is your own welfare not motivation enough?
Would you be willing to assist me if I told you I could track down
your parents? Would you condemn them to this so that you could
retain your sense of heroism?" she snapped.

Janie's mind snapped to attention. "How do
you know my name?"

"Ah, she speaks!" Natalia cheered, moving to
sit on the edge of the tub. "I make it a point to know everything
about everyone,
dorogoy
, especially my captives. And you
told my friend from the hotel. It was not difficult to find out,
Miss Campbell."

Janie didn’t understand the word she’d called
her, but knew immediately that it was sarcastic. She scowled
weakly. "Leave them alone."

"Tell me the location of the pictures you
took."

Janie stared into Natalia's face, one that
could have been chipped from stone. "I don't know what you're
talking about. I don't have any-" She was under again.
Don’t put
me back in the tub
, she begged;
don’t let me touch the
water
.

As Natalia felt the fight in Janie begin to
wane, she heard her cell phone shriek. It took very little effort
for her to throw the motionless body roughly to the floor and
answer the phone. "Petrov."

"Leave the girl for now. I have another
mission for you," the scratchy voice of her employer
admonished.

"Mr. Cole as well?" she requested.

"No," he replied curtly. "Go alone."

She obediently agreed and listened to his
instructions as she dragged Janie back to her prison. Janie, for
her part, had no other option but to be pulled by her ankle back to
the room she’d woken in. Natalia threw the limp body into the dark
prison, snapping her phone shut when the employer hung up. The
hollow thud of Janie hitting the hard floor echoed in the
assassin’s ears.

"Please, have a good evening, Miss Campbell,"
Natalia bid before slamming and locking the door after her. As the
older woman walked away, the sound of quiet sobbing echoed through
the corridor around her. She smiled.

Janie lay still and broken on the floor for a
long time, enjoying the warmth of salty tears running down her
face. She missed everything about her home in Texas, from her messy
dorm room to her parents, whom she hadn’t seen since the start of
the semester. She wanted to go home, but if she was to be punished
in the same way for attempting another escape she would rather rot
there on the floor, burning with fever from infection and nursing a
gaping wound in her leg from Natalia’s shoe. She was in serious
need of medical attention and something to eat, but she knew she
would get neither. Rather than run the risk of invoking another
session of torture with the cruel Czech woman, Janie remained
sprawled out on the concrete floor and begged sleep to overtake her
and ward off the pain of consciousness.

Don’t put me back in the tub
.
Don’t
put me back in the tub. Don’t put me back in the tub.

Chapter Six

Newark, New Jersey; June 26
^th
, 2012

The sleek, black BMW raced across the highway
toward the nearing line of traffic leading up to Newark Airport.
Inside, a young woman sat alone in the backseat, tapping her foot
impatiently against the floor, leaned back in her seat so far that
she was practically laying on it. Her statuesque figure was
bedecked in her high school’s uniform of a dress shirt, blazer,
pleated skirt, and knee-high socks in shades of blue and grey, but
the once crisp ensemble was disheveled and her shirt hung halfway
out of her skirt. Her striped, blue tie lay in a crumpled heap on
the floor. The girl’s long, curly hair was as gold as the sunlight
and pulled up into a ponytail, bearing her sky blue eyes, porcelain
skin, and angular face. The faint pink flesh of the birthmark over
her heart peaked out from beneath the collar of her shirt.

Claire stared at the screen of her cell phone
as it vibrated in her hand. She didn’t want to answer, knowing it
was her best friend, Alex, calling to berate her for being late,
again; in the back of her mind, she knew she deserved it, but
Claire was getting
really
sick of apologizing to Alex and
enduring her constant scolding. Sighing deeply, she answered the
call and held the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

The shrill crow on the other end was a
startling contrast to the high-pitched bell voice Claire had
answered with. “Where the
hell
are you, Claire!? If you
miss
this goddamn plane, I’m gonna break your goddamn
neck
!”

Claire held the cellular away from herself
when Alex’s voice made the phone crackle and shake with static. It
didn’t make much of a difference, though, since the voice came
screeching out like it was on speaker. “Alex?” she called
warily.

The voice on the other end ranted on as if
she hadn’t spoken. “I swear to God, you’re late for everything! I
knew you should have slept over last night; if I’m not there,
you’re
always
late!”

“Alex,” Claire sang, studying her nails.

“The plane leaves in a half hour! How the
hell are you gonna get through security and on the plane in a half
hour? You
always
do this and it’s really starting to piss me
off!”

“Alex!” Claire yelled, successfully shutting
up her livid friend waiting at the airport and startling her father
in the front seat. “I’m s…stuck in traffic outside the
b…building.”

“Well you better get out now, otherwise
there’s no way you’re making this flight on time,” Alex advised,
curtly snapping her phone shut.

In the terminal, the rest of Claire’s group
sat around the rows of chairs while the other passengers on the
9:00 a.m. flight to Paris lined up at the doors, waiting to board
the plane. In all, there were six of them, sitting in a circle
around their baggage. Each of their faces was painted in escalating
degrees of irritation as they listened to Alex reprimand their
missing friend. They looked up at the annoyed
crack
of
plastic hitting plastic.

“Well?” James demanded.

“She’s on her way in, now.”

Alexandria Clove held her head in her hands,
wishing that she’d learned since the last time they’d gone through
this ordeal that she couldn’t trust Claire to responsibility. Alex
was a short girl, barely passing five feet tall and the floral
dress and flats she wore emphasized it, painting her out to look
like a doll. Her long, dark hair was loose around her, falling in
smooth waves, except in the front where it cut off abruptly over
her frosty, green eyes. Her golden skin had turned ashen with
exhaustion and worry, but she remained an obvious, exotic
beauty.