Primal Promise

Twenty-One

The silence was worse, somehow than the screams. Even the soft sobbing had petered away an hour ago. Faintly through the walls, she could hear the first of morning birds start singing. That meant it was dawn. It was her only measure of time here in the room.

Her lips were dry and cracked with thirst, her stomach ached with hunger. Three days? Four maybe, she'd been in this room. Long enough to know a whole lot about nothing that would get her out of here.

She had been kidnapped by a group of men like Jameson, but alike only in the way that Cocoa Puffs and dishwasher detergent were alike because both came in a rectangular cardboard box.  There were six of them that she knew of.  

The three she'd met on the road, Cormac, Luke, and Russel, aka Rusty. Then there was Douglas, the dreadlock blonde, as well as two younger boys maybe fifteen or so. She didn't know their names, she'd only seen them once through the window, training in the yard outside. 

There was a seventh, but he was only a voice on the phone. Douglas had been quite unhappy about the bruise on her neck, and Cormac was now missing the end of his pinky finger. Luke was punished as well for his little stunt in the truck, though nothing had been cut off.

She pulled again at the zip-ties that had been used to put her into the chair again. They bit into her skin and she stopped. It would only cause her pain and she'd no idea how to get out of the trailer, much less the compound even if she were out of the chair. It wasn't wise to run headfirst into trouble. Hadn't she learned that lesson already? She closed her eyes, the smell of the wounds she'd opened and the decaying wood of the trailer walls stinging in her nose.

She heard a sound that she recognized. It was the high pitched plunk of a water leak in a basement.  It dripped a cadence slow but constant. She could feel the cold, dank air on her skin, making her shiver. She was afraid to open her eyes. Afraid because he would be there. She peeked, just a crack. The room was lit by a high window, dirty but still allowing enough sun in to guess it was late afternoon. The house faced east, so it was always brighter in the afternoon when the sun came in the back windows.

She looked down at her hands, the links of the chain, the heavy padlocks. She felt a flutter in her stomach, then a sickening shift, a rolling feeling like her guts were being gently twisted. It was then she noticed the swell of her stomach, the faint movement stilling as her palms pressed against it. Lifting her gaze, she saw the shine of the camera lens, the tripod on which it sat was, currently, not being manned. He was out.

She felt herself slide to a crouch, then to stand. She caught her shadow on the wall. She looked like those terrible bloated starving children on those 'feed the world' ads. All skin and bones except for the swollen stomach. There were footsteps coming across the floor upstairs. She closed her eyes again, her fingers clutching tightly into fists, feeling something inside of her like a yawn, a stretching, deep breath that pulled something more than air into her.

"You will not touch this child."  She felt the words, but the soft tone, marked by pain and desperation, it was not her voice.   The something from within was fed and grew until a man stepped into the room and a bright pop of light seemed to burn into her retinas even through her eyelids. 

"Good morning, Cousin." The voice snapped her lids open. She was in the trailer, there were no chains, and she was damn sure not pregnant. Doug was back.

"I am..." She licked at her dry lips. "Not your cousin."

He stalked over and pulled the folding chair so he could sit, knee to knee. "Your grandma was a traitor to the pack. She ran off and left her mate behind." His breath stank of liquor and cigarettes. "She got knocked up by her human boyfriend, and when he dumped her, she came crawling back like the whore she was. My daddy was her uncle.  He was there. He saw the whole thing."

CJ had heard the story so many times by now that she knew it by heart. She also knew it was a lie made up of twisted facts.   The vision at the ranch had been the first one, but it had not been the last.  She had seen the truth through eyes that were not her own. 

 Being stolen from her father's truck as he lay bleeding out over the steering wheel, the man locking her up, beating her, raping her, torturing her.  She felt the girl's pains and fury.  Felt her hatred and her desperation.  Horrible as it was to be forced to see those things, it had made her current situation seem less painful somehow. 

"So you dickless wonders thought you'd beat up a pregnant girl. How very manly." Sarcasm dripping from every word.

He backhanded her hard, the pain and taste of blood rushing over her senses, stars popping in her peripheral as he caught her hair and pulled her head back around to face him. "Watch your mouth." He let her hair go. "They were only doing what's right. Women that breed outside the pack ... It can't be allowed."

Her eyes flashed fire as she turned them back to him, watching as he twitched and took a half step back, loosening his grip.   She grinned, her teeth turned crimson with the blood from the cut inside her lip. "Weren't expecting what came next, were they?"

She spat the blood out into a gross splotch on the floor between them and she thought she might have pushed too hard, he looked ready to risk it and finally get his hands on her, but from inside his pocket, the phone began to ring. He glared and stalked out, answering it. "Yes, Sir. No, Sir, she wo..." and he was gone beyond the reach of her hearing.

Alone again, she spat a couple of more times to try and get the taste of copper out of her mouth. The day wore on and her only visitors were the women who she had seen chained up when she arrived.   They were tourists from some Eastern European country and did not speak much English, but after the truck, Doug didn't trust any of the men to be alone with her but himself. 

The other women would come in twice a day, cut her bonds, take her to the 'bathroom' which was just a five-gallon bucket in the closet, then tie her back up.  Despite her attempts to make friends, the blondes were too afraid to risk veering from their duties even to allow her to stretch her legs much less sneak her a knife or the like. 

The afternoon was marked by a sound of hammering and a power saw outside. She hadn't heard it before, and from what little she could remember from when she'd arrived, it didn't look like they did much in the way of remodeling.  

Dinner was a bottle of water and a strip of jerky.   As she chewed, she watched the woman watching her.   CJ could see the obvious bruises on her throat.  Familar enough bruises that CJ risked saying the name aloud.  "Cormac?"

The woman flinched and spat out something that, while CJ did not know what it meant, she knew it was not at all complimentary. Whether it was directed at the man, or at her, she wasn't sure. 

"Please... let me look?"  She set her index and second fingers on her cheeks beneath her eyes, then with them pointed toward the window.  She was curious what the sound earlier had been. 

"No." She looked panicked and CJ lifted both hands in a placating gesture, taking her seat again and letting the girl tie her back down.  If she was going to get out of here, she would need some kind of help and she had to, somehow, prove she was trustworthy to the other women. 

Tied and alone again, she closed her eyes and let sleep take her.  As always, her dreams were her own, and in them she made far different choices.