Sequel: New Beginning

Columbine

Chapter 40

I’ve heard it said that you can never really know what the future holds. I have to say that that phrase had never been truer than when I woke up with a very bad headache, a bag shoved over my head, a gag in my mouth, and my hands and feet taped up tight enough to make those particular appendages almost completely numb.

It took me another moment to register that someone was carrying me. I would have screamed and wiggled as hard as possible, but whoever had tied me up had done a damn good job.

A series of emotions passed through me, starting with confusion, climaxing at uncontrollable fear, and finally ending with the knowledge that I was deeply, irrevocably screwed. Then I got to thinking. Who would kidnap me and why?

The first thought that popped into my head was the someone had decided to screw human pride and humility and just go for that bounty reward after all. Had something happened to Sarah, too? But then I realized -- why go through all the trouble of kidnapping when you could just grab an agent off the street and lead the way? Surely the pyramid that protected the Blood Bank wasn’t as fearsome as all that.

What I hated was that none of my kidnappers were saying anything. I could tell there was more than one, since I could hear several pairs of feet marching quickly through the desert. I could tell it was the desert, too. It was flat, sandy, and the wind was stinging the ample amount of my bare skin that my current state of dress had failed to protect.

“Damn it!” One of the men finally exclaimed. “I just stepped in camel shit!”

“You can wipe it off when we get back.” The man carrying me said. “We’re not stopping just so you can get cleaned up.”

“What’s a camel even do this far out, anyway?” The other guy asked.

“They’re camels, dumb-ass. What do you think they do?” The man carrying me said.

“Stop your bitching.” A third man cut in. “You’ll wake up the girl.”

“Don’t worry, Doc. She’s fast asleep.” My carrier assured him. I hoped that they wouldn’t bother to make sure that assumption was valid.

“You’d better not have given her hemorrhage. We need her alive.” The man called Doc warned.

“We’ve already gone over this. She’s fine.” My carrier was starting to get annoyed.

“You even sure she’s the right one?” The one who’d stepped in camel shit asked.

“I’m positive.” My carrier snapped. “Just shut up and keep walking.”

The discussion stopped with that. I’d practically held my breath the entire time. So…they needed me alive. For what? I was starting to freak out in earnest now. Truth was, I’d never been kidnapped before. I’d been stabbed just once, and that had been so many years ago, I’d almost forgotten the feeling. My last encounter with a Demataxt agent had been months ago, and somehow the irregular pattern of events had caught me off guard.

I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d been knocked on the head. It was still night, so it couldn’t have been too long. I wondered if anyone had noticed I was missing yet. More likely than not, my absence wouldn’t seem strange until the morning. Who knew what kinds of things might happen in the hours that were in between? I really didn’t want to imagine, so I tried my hardest to block the situation out of my head. I might as well have tried to move things with my mind.

“You really sure this is enough?” Camel-shit guy suddenly asked. “What if we need more people?”

“Believe me, we’ve got enough people.” Doc assured him. “Any more and they’ll think we’re kissing up to them.”

“We wouldn’t want that, now would we?” My carrier asked sarcastically.

“You got a problem with what were doing, Simon?” Doc asked. “We agreed that we wouldn’t turn back. We won’t tolerate any second thoughts.”

Simon, my carrier, didn’t say anything back.

“Besides,” Camel-shit guy said, “With that reward money, we’ll be set for life. You won’t regret it when you’re lying in a hammock in Costa Rica.”

I froze as my suspicions were confirmed. They really were going to sell me out to the Demataxt. What if they were taking me there now? What if my life was already over, and at the hands of some money-hungry punks, no less? Didn’t they realize what they were doing?

Dennis’s and the ringleader’s words suddenly started to edge nearer to my heart than I’d ever expected them to.

Suddenly the kidnappers stopped. I heard knocking and almost shit myself then and there, when good old common sense came and reminded me that there were no Demataxt office in the desert. They were all in the central area of town, and we couldn’t be anywhere near there.

“Open up!” Doc yelled. “It’s us!”

I heard a door open, and another voice asked,

“You got the girl?”

“Of course we’ve got the girl.” Doc assured the new voice. “Think we’d have come back if we didn’t?”

“Good.” The voice said.

My kidnappers entered the house. There wasn’t an enormous difference in temperature, but I did hear the crackle of a fire. I heard the sound of boots on a wooden floor. I knew that the house was probably a piece of shit, much like the House of Morgan was, only much smaller. No one bothered to keep up maintenance on homes so far out in the desert.

After electricity died, if you didn’t live in an urban area, you were probably going to end up migrating to one for the sheer reason of having a shot at a lifestyle that didn’t closely resemble that of a hermit.

“Put her here.” The fourth voice commanded.

‘Here’ turned out to be a very uncomfortable wooden chair.

I didn’t have much time to prepare myself before the bag was ripped from my head, giving me no chance to pretend to be asleep. It was probably just as well, since it allowed me to get a proper look at my surroundings, as well as my kidnappers. The gag was still in my mouth, so I didn’t get much of a chance to scream, or even attempt to make any sort of bargain.

Simon, the one who’d carried me was clearly the largest of all four, which had probably been the reason he’d been carrying me in first place. Camel-shit guy was average-looking, thin and under-nourished, mousy hair and ears that stuck out a bit. Doc, the one who’d given the most commands during the short frame of time during which I’d been awake after being knocked unconscious, was a tall one, with blond hair and standard handsome features. The fourth guy who’d been in the house was short and wore glasses. His nose looked like it had been broken more than once in his lifetime.

“She’s awake.” Simon pointed out. I stared at him, hoping that my wide-open eyes would communicate everything that my mouth currently could not.

“I think we can take the gag off.” Doc said. When the three looked surprised at the suggestion, he shrugged.

“Well, it’s not like anyone’s going to hear her if she screams.” He pointed out. I wanted very much to get up and hit him, but being taped up had its disadvantages.

Simon took the gag off, just as Doc had suggested.

I didn’t scream as soon as the gag came off. I took a moment to lick the sore corners of my mouth and allow moisture onto my tongue before I started to holler as loudly as my lung capacity would allow.

Nobody stopped me for a full minute, until Doc finally seemed to get tired and finally slapped me. I knew it wasn’t as hard as it could have been, but it was hard enough to hurt my feelings. There’s something about the gesture of a slap that just cuts deep.

“What the fuck!” I screamed. “What the fuck was that for, you cock-sucking piece of shit!” My dormant vocabulary of insults came awake. “Tell me what the hell is going on around here, or I swear I will feed you your balls on a stick!”

Another slap loomed ahead of me, but somehow I managed to lift both feet and plant them hard into Doc’s groin. That second slap never made it to its intended destination.

“Jesus Christ, please shut her up!” Camel-shit guy said.

“No, why don’t you go fuck yourself while I watch. That’ll shut me up.” I spat at him. Camel-shit guy blinked.

“Why don’t we make sure that she really is the right one.” The fourth guy suggested. I stopped dead in my vocal tracks.

“I’d say that was a good plan.” Doc nodded.

I prospect of what was going to happen if they were going to follow through on their plan was harrowing. The last thing I needed was to get cut up. I knew perfectly well that trusting any of my kidnappers with a knife was probably not the wisest of choices.

Doc reached underneath his pants leg and revealed that his boot had a knife strapped to it. He pulled it out, and a frighteningly large, jagged blade glinted in the light coming from a few cheap glow sticks hammered to the ceiling.

“If you stay still, it won’t hurt as much.” Doc tried to sound reassuring, but all he sounded like was a psycho with a blade.

“Bullshit.” I spat.

I knew he was right. The less I squirmed, the less chance I had of getting an ugly scar. Sarah wouldn’t be around to fix it this time, and if I ever made it out of this house alive, I’d just have the reminder of this misadventure.

The tip of the knife touched my arm. I held my breath and tried not to look as I felt the blade press harder against my pounding skin. A sharp bolt of pain shot through me when the knife finally fulfilled its destiny. As I knew it would, music started to play. It was a soulful female voice singing something that was probably very sweet and romantic, but I couldn’t exactly appreciate it in my current situation.

“Holy shit.” Simon uttered. “It’s true.”

“Yeah?” I snarled. “What else did you think it was?”

Simon didn’t say anything to me.

“Explain something please.” Doc said. “How does your blood do that?”

“Fuck you.” I told him instead. He didn’t look pleased.

“This can’t be normal.” Camel-shit guy said. “I mean, come on! Blood is blood -- it doesn’t do anything!”

“When was the last time you’ve seen something normal?” The fourth guy asked.

“I’m just saying…this is pushing it.” Camel-shit guy shrugged. “Mages and demons…maybe I can begin to understand. Blood that plays music? That’s something else.”

I dared look at the wound that Doc had inflicted. I was relieved to see that it wasn’t too big. There was a red line of blood that had trickled down my arm from the half-centimeter-wide hole.

“I hope you die. Slowly.” I told the four of them. Nobody answered me. They just kept listening to the music. Fortunately, the blood clotted in what seemed to me like record time. I didn’t know many people that timed the rate of coagulation for their own blood, but mine accomplished just that in five minutes. I felt oddly proud of myself.

“That’s enough for now.” Doc finally said. “Put her in the cellar.”

Simon lifted me out of the chair and carried me to another room, and then opened a trap door that revealed some shaky-looking wooden stairs. I assumed that this was the aforementioned cellar. Doc and Camel-shit guy followed him.

The cellar was just cold enough to make me shiver, but not freeze entirely. I could tell that I was going to be extremely uncomfortable.

There was a single, solitary glow stick hanging from the cellar ceiling. Beneath its yellowish light I could make out one person lying crumpled against a wall. His hands and feet were tied with actual rope, unlike mine, which had been very thriftily taped. In the dim light, I could tell only that he was male, and that he was wearing a coat that I couldn’t help but envy.

“Get up, shithead.” Doc told the guy lying on the floor.

He very promptly kicked him in the gut. The guy groaned, but didn’t move at all. I wondered if maybe too many of his bones had been broken. Camel-shit guy joined Doc in the kicking of the figure crumpled on the floor.

“You like that, motherfucker?” Camel-shit guy snarled. “You like how that feels?”

I wanted very much to point out the obvious: there was no way anyone could enjoy having a hole pummeled into their torso, but I was too horrified by what I was seeing to talk. I couldn’t even summon the willpower to say a single curse word.

“That’s enough.” Simon said after he’d plunked me down onto the ground. “There’s things we have to take care of. We can’t waste time with him.”

Doc and Camel-shit guy seemed to have trouble accepting Simon’s words, but they finally did as he’d suggested. They went back up the stairs and slammed the cellar door shut, leaving me and the guy they’d just kicked into a bloody pulp alone.

To my surprise, the guy they’d been kicking suddenly lifted himself off the floor and leaned back against the wall with a sigh of relief. He turned his head in my direction, but it was too dark to make anything out. He couldn’t have seen my face, because I couldn’t see his. I could barely see anything at all.

“Hello?” The guy that had just been kicked what seemed like a hundred times asked, voice perfectly normal, as if nothing was even remotely wrong.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked with trembling lips, not liking the fact that I was in a dark cellar with a person I didn’t know.

“And who the hell are you?” He asked. There was a slightly sarcastic repetitiveness of my same sentence structure. I frowned.

“I asked you first.” I shot back. The guy sitting across from me seemed to contemplate the question for more time than was required to come up with an answer.

“I’m Damien.” He finally admitted. “And you are?”

For a moment I was at a loss. I wasn’t sure if it was the best of ideas to give my name out to strangers, but then again, we were both in the same shitty boat. Then the smart part of my brain spoke up, and I blurted out, “Beatrice.” Oddly, it was the first name that had popped into my head.

Damien seemed to buy it, because he didn’t ask again.

“Nice to meet you, Beatrice.” He said. I gave a small snort of laughter at the absurdity of it being in any way nice to meet me -- especially under such bad circumstances.

“Yeah, nice to meet you, too.” I smiled grimly to myself.

He didn’t say anything back for a while.

I couldn’t help but be grateful. I’d never been a big fan of small talk, and people who didn’t feel the need to fill every second with meaningless words were somewhat refreshing. At least something was going my way.

Then I thought about how dark the cellar was, and remembered the Blood Bank. If the architect of the house had been decent at all, there should have been a secret passageway out of it.

“Have you tried looking for a way out?” I asked, prematurely disrupting the silence.

“The only ways out of here are through the front door and the back door. There’s no secret tunnels down here, if that’s what you were hoping for.” He said, seeming to read my mind. I scowled, even though he couldn’t have seen it in the dark.

“I’m sorry if I discouraged you.” He apologized.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “I’m not that disinterested in staying alive.”

“That’s good news, because neither am I.” He sounded just mildly pleased. I didn’t know what to make of that, so I stayed quiet.

The silence of the cellar was almost deafening. The added impatience for my kidnappers to come in and say something made it even worse.

If there’d been even a shred of light, I’d have had as much fun as possible counting the amount of bricks in the walls, or the number of tiles on the floor. But because it was pitch black in the cellar, I couldn’t do a single thing to distract myself from the facts. The facts were gruesome enough without being mulled over in my head dozens of times. For once I decided that small talk wasn’t so bad, if it could keep me from going insane.

“Why are you here, anyway?” I asked Damien. He seemed to think about it for a moment, before answering.

“I’m fairly certain that these people intend to use me as a hostage.” He said.

“Hostage?” I blinked. “Hostage for what?”

Damien sounded reluctant to explain, and when I heard his answer, I fully understood why. I also wished more than anything that he hadn’t told me.

“They think returning an agent to the Demataxt will get them a reward.” He said.

I sucked in my breath and went almost completely rigid. The ringleader’s words came to mind, him telling me about how the FFH had captured an agent. A demon hybrid. Before the shock of that fact could even take effect, something else occurred to me. If the FFH had kidnapped an agent, and I was tied up with that agent…then it had to have been the FFH that had kidnapped me!

“Shit.” I whispered as something cold and horrible slithered down my back.

“So you don’t approve of my profession.” Damien said. I didn’t answer right away. My head was spinning so hard I thought I might throw up. I took a deep breath, trying to suppress that urge as much as possible. Something told me that if I did puke, no one would bother cleaning it up for me.

“I assure you, I mean you no harm, despite the behavior my co-workers have probably displayed.” Damien said. He didn’t sound like he was particularly passionate about that idea. He sounded merely matter-of-fact.

“So you’re the agent I heard about.” I swallowed. “The one the FFH had kidnapped.”

“Word’s gotten out, has it?” Damien sounded just a little bit interested in that information.

“Oh, yeah.” I said. “Your pals went around town looking for you.”

He didn’t say anything. He stayed quiet for a while, during which I took some time to breathe and allow the disturbing reality of my situation to sink in.