No turning back
1181 Words
Mina Gourmet
“Run Wilhelmina, Run!”
The thwack of the beast’s silvery metal slicing through Father’s neck made me bolt up from the bed with a breathless gasp and a shrill scream trapped in my throat.
Memories of Father’s blood-spattered face as he sank to his knees beside Ma made me keel over and sob through the pain squeezing through my chest like a clenched fist.
How much longer would I have to live like this?
What the f**k did I ever do to the Moon Goddess to have been born with such a twisted fate?
“Please, Mina, not now, come on,” I whispered, steeling myself and wiping at the tears streaming down my cheeks with shaky hands before glancing around the dark cell.
Seven nights.
That was how long it had been since the Viper Pack beasts cut through Undercity London where all the humans and halflings had been living.
Our house was the first on the block for the blood bath, and it was all I could do to bat back the gory memory of Ma’s decapitated head before it could overwhelm me.
“Stacy? Cherry? Are you there?” I called in a low voice, pushing off the narrow prisoner bed to lace my hands around the thin icy steel bars to try and peer around the gaps in it, into the other cells.
The dark stretch of corridor left little room for sight-seeing, with dull white lights flickering in the low roof of the ceiling.
I could hear the whimpers and screams coming from all around me as the clogging scent of mildew and wet rock blew steadily into my nose.
It was the same s**t every night at The Pit, the disease and death and misery, all caused by the elite wolves.
“He’s here! Hurry!” The shrill whispers of the other prisoners made a chill race down my spine and I backed away from the bars like it was hot s**t, just in time for the whistling of the guards to fill the narrow hallway.
There was something different about the cold, assessing look on the kommandant’s broad face tonight, and I didn't like it in the least bit.
The way he glanced over the women hanging against the cages with his broad, hook nose scrunched up and his droopy eyes pinched so tightly I was almost certain it would leave permanent crowfeet by the sides of his eyes.
“Get out, Gourmet. You move and I shoot, you know how this goes,” One of the s**t-faced guards leered at me as he snapped open my cell gate, his red-rimmed eyes roaming over my body and chest in a way that made my skin crawl before he slammed me up against the slick brick wall.
“There there now, easy does it,” He purred, and I gritted my teeth as pain exploded in the side of my face where he had slammed me against the wall, stabbing the blunt girth of his bulge against my thigh before I snapped my teeth at him.
“Let go of me, you sick f**k!” I snarled, hissing and whirling to face him with my chest heaving just as he darted back, grinning like some dull-witted psycho.
Assholes…the lot of them. Damn, all the vipers to hell!
Something bitter burned in the back of my throat as the guards dragged us up the stairs to the chilling lot of The Pit.
Large wired fences surrounded the large manhole in the granite flooring where they kept us, with the small scattering of black-roofed cottage houses lining the upper parts.
The guard quarters.
“Tonight, you all will be dispatched to your assigned posts where you will serve diligently to show your allegiance to His Highness, the Alpha, and the elites of Viper Pack keeping you alive!” The Kommandant announced in a startlingly harrowing voice and I sucked in a sharp breath, glancing around the blanched faces of the girls on either side of me, forming a straight line of twelve.
Cherry’s tomato-red hair stood out from the crowd, contrasting with my own blond strands, but she hadn't raised her head to smile at me like she always did before.
Had she sensed the tension too? I listened to the bear-shaped kommandant rat off names from his list before my body jolted reflexively when he yelled out mine.
“Wilhelmina Gourmet…Lilith’s Nightclubs!” He barked, pitch-black eyes flickering over to my face disgustingly before he folded up the long yellowed scroll he held in both hands and the other guards stepped forward to drag us up.
I was going to be a call girl for the monsters. A stripper. Stacy had said it was the fastest…safest way to get out of The Pit, and yet, I couldn't forget the horrifying gossip of missing dancers and secret mistresses floating about the fancy club.
“Tito?” My heart was beating so loudly in my chest that I could hear nothing besides the roar of blood in my ears when my gaze locked on my brother’s pale face, the full wisps of his short blond hair jutting every which way.
How long had it been since I’d seen him? I could still remember the feel of his head on my chest when I took his hand in mine on that sordid night, dragging him away from where our parents’ bodies lay in the open to run through the dark forests with the snarl of the Vipers all around us.
Before we were later captured by the soldiers and brought to this goddamned hellhole!
“Tito!” I screamed, instinctively bolting across the sandy planes toward his lean-muscled silhouette before his harsh blue eyes narrowed on me.
“Get her! Stop by order of the court!” The kommandant’s thunderous bark roared behind me before Tito’s harsh voice cut through the thud of their footfalls.
“For f***s sake, Mina, stop,” He hissed forcefully, gritting his teeth and glancing around the line of human and halfling men watching us.
What was he saying? I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I’d failed him all those nights ago by refusing to fight like he wanted.
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you, baby?” I cried, cradling his cheeks before he wrenched his face away and I felt the sharp edge of the guard’s crossbow slam into my back, knocking the wind from my chest.
“You disgust me, Mina, f***s sake, enough!” Tito hissed under his breath, backing away from me with embarrassed tears in his eyes before the Viper guards dragged me back, away from the only family I had left.
His words stabbed into my chest like an icepick. I knew Tito blamed me for running, but I did it for us. For him.
Why couldn't he see that?
There was no escape from the most powerful pack in all of the Undercity, not without a painful execution!
I would find a way to get us both out of here…for good.
- Writer
