God of Destruction (8 page)

Janie was aware that her stay with the
assassin and her team had been extended indefinitely, but she
didn’t know how long it had been since she’d last seen sunlight.
Each minute, hour, and day blended seamlessly into the next since
she did nothing but lie on the frigid concrete and nurse the leg
she knew was broken at the shin. Long ago, it seemed like forever
she‘d lain there, the woman had broken it in one of their sessions;
the bone protruding from her skin made any movement she dared
another fresh, crippling dagger to her abused flesh.

The infection that followed from her
deplorable conditions had been serious enough that a doctor was
brought in to help her, but the sessions had begun with a new
passion shortly after. Unfortunately, the doctor had been hired
only to take care of the infection, and the leg had been left to
heal in all the wrong ways. She couldn’t have hoped to stand on it
the way it was, let alone try to escape again.

Janie had begun estimating how long she’d
been locked down there by the feel of her scarring skin and the
growth of hair on her legs. Her wonderful hair, braided to her
waist when she’d first arrived, fell below her hips in wild
disarray around her horrendously filthy face. The face in question
was pressed completely to the floor. Sweat, polluted water, and
blood mingled on her emaciated face, outlining her newly concave
cheeks. Her once glowing Texas tan was ghostly pale now and brown
hair sprouted from her legs like a man’s, pushing through the thin
material of her leggings; she could guess that she’d been there for
a few months at least. There seemed to be no end in sight.

She felt nothing now, since she’d resigned
herself to the realization that she would die there, whether from
starvation, drowning, or a particularly cruel blow to the head. The
picture she hid was pressed into her flat chest, burning a hole
through her skin whenever her interrogator demanded it. She would
have given the picture, and the location of the others, if only to
bring an end to the infinite suffering, but she’d developed such a
deeply rooted resentment of the people holding her captive that she
would rather die slowly from starvation than give them the
satisfaction.

Her tongue found the abyss in her mouth where
she’d recently lost two teeth from a particularly violent encounter
with her captor. The total was nearing five now that she’d lost and
another two that had chipped and cut up her mouth. Nevertheless,
she lived through each day with just enough slop to keep the breath
in her body and just enough will to keep swallowing it. She
consoled herself with the knowledge that she was losing weight
fast.

She wouldn’t be going on very much longer,
whether she wanted to or not. Under her shirt, she could feel her
ribs pressing out from the rest of her, her breasts having
flattened almost entirely, and between her hips the skin sloped
inward. The athletic legs she’d once prided herself on back home
were crippled and void of all the strength she could have possibly
mustered. She was a shadow of her former self, nothing more.

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

Sighing, she rolled closer to the corner of
the room, wishing that if she could flatten herself against the
wall, she would disappear completely into the darkness. A low hiss
echoed through the cell from betwixt her teeth as her leg protested
and she collapsed against the ground again. A growl of frustration
fell into a tearless sob before she bit her lip to silence it. She
didn’t know where the blonde assassin skulked around most of the
time, but Janie knew that the woman enjoyed the sound of her cries.
The last time she’d heard the captive wallowing in self pity, the
older woman had dragged her out of the cell by her hair for another
hour in the ‘pool.’ She’d never cried again, even when she felt
like her leg was being crushed beneath a steady stream of
traffic.

The scraping of metal on metal made Janie
scream and reel backward as she pulled herself toward the wall with
her hands. Her crippled leg dragged behind her despite the pain.
She caught her mistake immediately and threw her hand over her
gaping mouth. Her other hand wrapped tenderly around the back of
her knee, daintily propping it up to alleviate some of the pain, to
no avail, and waited for the invisible force in the dark that would
inevitably pull her up and drag her away. Shockingly, the muffled
cry filling the room from the shadow obstructing the light in the
doorway suggested otherwise. Still, Janie didn’t permit herself to
make a sound. A loud
thump
followed shortly after, and she
made out the faintest outline of something writhing on the
floor.

She watched whatever it was for another few
minutes, as far from it as she could manage, until it finally
emitted a bitter
snap
. “Son of a bitch!” a masculine voice
finally screamed, throwing away what could have only been rope; a
thin, frayed piece slapped her in the face. Slowly, the figure
staggered into a standing position and pulled something from the
pocket of his pants. A dull glow flooded up into the face of the
newest addition to the cave in an orange halo, blinding her for a
short moment. When her eyes finally adjusted to the change, she saw
him.

Her first taste of human contact, other than
the beatings from people she wasn’t able to see, was a beautiful
specimen. He was, perhaps, one of the tallest men she’d ever seen
with an average, if not slightly above average, muscular physique.
He was dressed well in a classic, black suit, complete with tie,
and his brown hair was slicked back neatly with gel to showcase his
chiseled face. His eyes were crazed, darting around the room with
secret calculation as he surveyed his new surroundings, ready at a
second’s notice to pounce. Janie was positive he couldn’t see
her.

“Petrov!” the man snarled, scowling furiously
at the door. “Kidnapping? I always thought petty theft was beneath
you! Where are those morals now?” He waited for a moment, but when
he received no answer, he kicked the door and cursed again.
Exhaling deeply, he continued a bit softer, this time to himself,
“I
will
get out of here, Petrov, and when I do, I’m gonna
kill you.”

The door swung open, hitting the man in the
face with a force that should have broken his jaw, and sent him
flying into the opposite wall. The orange light fell to the floor,
rolling toward the door and the woman’s foot, where it was crushed
beneath her expensive-looking shoes. Then, it was merely a glowing
liquid on the cement. “I would not sound so sure of myself if I
were you,” she laughed. “After all, I am not the one in a cage; you
are. I could kill you now if I had a wish to, Taran, but I have
something
better
in mind.”

Janie couldn’t see it when the man, Taran,
threw himself at the door, recovering so quickly from his recent
head trauma that he had to be superhuman. The sound of a gunshot
and a low grunt of pain, however, were difficult to miss. The dull
flash of the gun illuminated the scene for the amount of time it
took for the bullet to leave the gun and hit home in Taran’s chest,
just below the collarbone, and throw him to the ground. Janie
suppressed another scream while she shook against the cement
wall.

“Pathetic, Taran,” Petrov tsked, shaking her
head, “just like I remember.” Then, without another word, she
slammed the door behind her, plunging them back into the pitch
black, without even help from the glow stick.

The silence stretched on with only his
staggered breathing and pained moans occasionally breaking it.
Janie didn’t speak to the other prisoner for fear that he would
disappear if she acknowledged him. She didn’t dare breathe too
loudly.

“Stupid,” her companion whispered
breathlessly to himself as he snarled through another wave of
agony. “So stupid.”

Knowing that there was absolutely nothing she
could do for him, she deadpanned, “You won’t die.” She cleared the
hoarseness in her throat from lack of use. “She’ll want to keep you
around.”

The gasping halted for a long moment. “Who
said that?” the voice inquired evenly. His suit crinkled when he
tried to reach his feet.

“Don’t get up!” she pleaded.

“I asked you a question!” he demanded, though
his attempt to stand seemed to end. “Who are you?”

“My name is Janie; I swear to God, I was
kidnapped, too!” she insisted, hoping this would silence his
outburst before the woman came to investigate.

He breathed a long sigh of relief. “Thank
God. Can you give me a hand with this?”

She gulped and tried unsuccessfully to move.
“I can’t move,” she confessed, “my leg is broken.”

There was a crack and another glow stick
sprung to life. At first he held it up in the air while he lay on
his back, trying to get a better look at Janie’s face. After his
first inspection proved nothing miraculous, if only for the amount
of dirt smeared across her face, he held it before the bullet
wound. “And you wouldn’t happen to have any peroxide on you?” he
wondered aloud, chuckling to himself.

She rolled her eyes. “Nah, sorry. You’ll be
sticking it out until
she
doesn’t need you around
anymore.”

He gave a kind of grunt in agreement. “How
long have you been in here?”

She shrugged, knowing he couldn’t see her. “I
have no idea. What month is it?”

“June,” he answered reflexively, pushing his
fingers into his shoulder to remove the bullet.

She gasped, staring at the bloody mess
soaking through his white dress shirt. “That’s gonna get infected!
Stop it!”

“It’ll get infected if I don’t,” he snapped,
pulling the offending scrap of metal free. “That bitch!” he mumbled
to himself, staring at the bullet between his thumb and forefinger.
“Just an inch lower—” he shook his head in mock amusement. “She’s
losing her touch; didn’t even lose movement like last time.”

“She knew
exactly
what she was doing,”
Janie whispered. “She always does.”

He seemed unmoved by her palpable fear of
Natalia Petrov, the assassin who’d been trying to catch him for
years. She was slippery, yes, he could admit to that, but, in
talent, she wasn’t nearly as skilled as others he’d met. As a
fighter, she’d lost to him many times, but she’d always slipped
away by the skin of her teeth. Then, their dance had begun anew. He
snorted.

Janie’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally from
behind the wet hair hanging in her face, “Something funny?”

“You shouldn’t be so impressed, miss,” he
chuckled smugly, unfazed by her sudden venom. “I’ve been beating
her in hand to hand for years now. She’s not as good at what she
does as you think.”

Janie suddenly wanted to laugh, really
loudly, but she resisted. “Then why are you here?” she snapped with
dark humor evident in her voice.

Taran held his breath, biting his tongue so
hard he tasted blood. “I was…distracted. Otherwise,
Natalia
,” he spat like a curse, “wouldn’t have had a
chance.”

“If you say so,” she rolled her eyes. “How do
you know her?”

“Who? Natalia?”

“Ya.”

He didn’t look highly upon a long discussion
of their intertwining dark pasts. His face crinkled in distaste. “I
guess you could call her a coworker of sorts.”

“Some work you must do together. Do you
torture terrorists, bad men, and murderers? Or is it just me? Or do
you only partake in the robberies?”

His face pinched, eyes staring down at the
wound in his chest in disgust while he, absentmindedly, tore the
hem of his suit jacket, looking for any reason not to answer. As he
wrapped it tightly around his injured flesh, stopping the flow of
blood, he mumbled, “You didn’t answer me.”

“About what?” she whispered, rolling onto her
side in an attempt to alleviate the pain in her leg.

“How long have you been here?” he repeated
politely, though he genuinely didn’t care much for the rude
child.

She did the math quickly on her fingers. “Six
months.”

He felt no sympathy, but he put on a brave
face for the girl who couldn’t have been any older than thirteen.
He estimated by the shape of her body that she had to be
pre-pubescent. “Your parents must miss you,” he winced, realizing
immediately that it was definitely not the best thing he could have
said to a captive child.

“I moved out three years ago,” she confessed.
“I hope they don’t miss me too much.”

“Moved out?” he questioned. “Why?”

“College,” she closed her eyes.

Taran began to rethink his assumption. “How
old are you?”

“I guess twenty-one now. My birthday was in
April,” she shrugged, immediately regretting it when her weakened
bones cracked.

“Twenty-one!” he gasped. “You’re so small!”
He sat up, with a small amount of difficulty, and crawled closer to
her, placing his back against the wall beside her head.

“I don’t know when they feed me, but it’s not
much,” she explained, her voice breaking with her effort to sit
up.

“Don’t move,” he ordered. “You said your leg
was broken?” She nodded. “Let me look at it.” As he moved to the
other side of her body, his pant leg landed in something cold under
her body. Before he made to move again, he resolved that he would
kill her himself if it was piss. “
Why
are you all wet?”

She visibly flinched, even in the dark. “You
don’t need to know what they do to me, here,” she said.

That was all she said on the matter.

A bit perturbed by her disagreeable remarks,
he ignored her for a moment and focused on her leg instead. Taran
was accustomed to disgusting injuries when on missions, but even he
had to give a shudder at the state of her shin. The skin had grown
over it in a bulbous, shiny scar, but the bone was clearly split,
the bottom half pointing out over the top. He was surprised she
could feel the leg at all in the state it was in. It would be a
grueling process to fix it, and she would most likely never regain
full use, but he wished to help her in any way he could. As
unskilled as she was, he was fully aware of how malicious Natalia
Petrov could be.