Sapphire scars, p.5
Sapphire Scars, page 5
Swallowing hard, I stepped back.
It wasn’t my job to save these jewels.
It didn’t even look like they wanted to be saved.
I wouldn’t interfere, but I would threaten them…just a little.
Casually holding up the axe, I made eye contact with the two Masters. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard the castle gossip, but I killed Daxton Hall and permanently disabled a guy called Roger. Instead of punishing me, Victor gave me a job.”
“Yeah, we heard.” Stewart nodded with a wince. “You’re his in-house exterminator.” He glanced at his partner. “Ben and I are fully aware how strict Victor runs his home, and we’ve never given him any reason to discipline us.” He crossed his arms. “We pay our membership fees, come for some R and R, and leave.”
Stewart took over. “Like we said, we, eh…we’re not like the others.”
I laughed under my breath. “Bullshit.”
“It’s true,” Ben, the bald guy, jumped in. “We have tamer tastes than the rest.” His eyes narrowed. “Compared to you and the rumours circulating about your love of blood, we’re probably pathetic, but…we run a stressful company together. We’re the bitch of every board member we stupidly appointed, and this is the only time we get to de-stress.”
“By fucking slaves.” I sniffed. “If you’re rich enough to visit Victor, then you could afford a good fuck out in the real world.” Stepping forward, I lowered my voice. “You’re fooling yourself that you aren’t one of us.”
“We’re not fooling anyone,” Stewart said. “We know our limits. Ben and I don’t have time to date, and we can’t hire prostitutes if that’s what you’re getting at. Our company is public and of a sensitive nature. We’re watched every fucking moment. The board would steal our company if there was even a whisper of controversy. In fact, they’ve been trying to do exactly that for years. The one time I risked going on Tinder, the girl I matched with was one of their spies. So…fuck you and your judgement. We want companionship as much as the next guy. It sucks we’ve had to resort to this, but…Victor provides us a safe space to play and—”
“What Stewart is trying to say,” Ben said with a sharp edge, “is…fuck off and leave us alone.”
Lowering the axe, I glanced at the jewels.
I studied their trusting eyes.
I vibrated with both man and beast and felt the nudges of that idiotic hero who’d come here hoping to save them.
But…that wasn’t my path anymore.
Without a word, I turned on my heel and left.
* * * * *
My torch stopped working in the fourth hour.
Four fucking hours and I still hadn’t found her.
I trembled with a deep-seated chill, and my ancient Casio hinted the morning had well and truly bled into afternoon.
I’d heard nothing.
Seen no one.
Just me in this ancient tomb, slowly dying in the dark.
Every crevice led to a blacker cave.
Every alley spat me out into emptiness.
I was lost and turned around and—
Pinpricks of light.
I stopped moving and peered at the cold ceiling above.
My eyes slowly adjusted to the claustrophobic blackness, aching with the need to see.
And…bit by bit, glow by glow…I did.
Raising my arm, I touched the forever-wet rock and stroked the faint luminescence.
A rustle of legs. A wriggle of insects. The light glowed brighter, then vanished as the critter scrambled behind a crag.
More light blinked on around me—like bluish stars falling from the heavens.
For the first time in my miserable existence, I stood in awe as more and more dots began to glow, following the contours of the cave, lighting up the space with cool teal radiance.
It felt as if I’d stepped into another dimension.
Found a portal and fallen through.
Glow worms.
The name popped into my head, followed by a stabbing memory of sitting on the rug in my childhood lounge and watching David Attenborough. He’d bewitched me with his iconic voice, filling my young mind with facts about all sorts of animals. His documentaries were the highlight of my weekends, all while my mother stayed locked in her room.
I’d been lonely and lost and living without any kind of guidance.
I was raised by the TV and consoled by the radio.
Enough!
Shaking my head, I pressed my fingers to the lump on my temple from the blowhole sucker-punching me.
I had to have a concussion.
No way would such a pointless, ridiculous memory dare trespass otherwise.
No way would the pathetic little boy inside me dare, fucking dare, make himself known.
Hefting the axe, I tossed away the useless torch and followed the path of glow worms.
* * * * *
I heard them before I found them.
Laughter and grunts.
Glee and despair.
Stepping from the seam that’d grown so narrow I’d had to travel sideways, I blinked at the brightness of lanterns. The four Masters didn’t notice me as two of them fucked two jewels on the ground while the other two watched.
Their paintball guns were tossed in the corner, forgotten. My stolen one clung to my back, occasionally pressing against a bruise. My jeans and t-shirt hadn’t dried. My feet were blocks of ice. And I had no doubt I was now filthy as well as orange.
Five hours I’d been stuck in this hellhole.
Five hours was a long fucking time to stay sane when every bend and shadow whispered with nightmares.
A jewel screamed as a Master rutted into her like an animal.
The cries from these jewels weren’t like the ones with Stewart and Ben. They weren’t given with an edge of acceptance or trust that their Masters wouldn’t go too far.
These men weren’t here just because they had nowhere else to go.
These men were here for pain.
Seconds ticked past as I watched.
The longer I witnessed their monstrosity, the less control I had over my sanity.
Their thrusts scrambled my mind.
Their lust seeped through me like a disease.
The loneliness of my childhood twisted into a toxic thing.
I didn’t know if it was the silence down here. The burial down here. The vacuum of everything I thought I knew and all the hauntings of memories I daren’t recall, but I’d never felt so…adrift. So lost. So fucking confused.
I’d been alone for so long.
But now I’d found men who shared my sins.
My bare feet shifted to join in.
I grew hard.
My heart pumped for the first time in hours.
I wanted Ily.
I wanted her on her back.
I wanted her heat, her fight, her kiss.
Fuck, that goddamn kiss.
I wanted to lick her again, taste her again.
I needed her to yank me back from this abyss.
This timeless, endless abyss where I became nothing more than death.
My hands balled.
The axe grew heavy.
I backed deeper into the shadows as my instincts roared into power.
As one Master came with a snarl and another moved to take his place, I fell.
Deeper into darkness.
Harder into sickness.
I no longer knew who I was.
Boy or man. Saint or sinner. Good or bad.
Watching these men…seeing myself in them…it enraged me, corrupted me, gutted me, redeemed me.
Why was I fighting it?
Why exist in such suffering?
I could be free if I—
Stop it.
Wedging a fist in my belly, I rode out the sadistic urges.
You need to get out.
I needed sunlight to banish this nightmare.
I needed open skies to resurrect me from this crypt.
I need…
I need—
Blood.
And pain.
And her.
I crashed against the wall as my floodgates smashed wide.
My teeth ached. My senses heightened. I lost myself to a creature with no name, no rules, no master.
Ily.
I have to find Ily.
I’d made the mistake of walking in darkness.
Of killing in darkness.
We were one and the same now.
Bonded by all the bad things I had done.
While Masters raped and celebrated, I stared into the black, and the black stared back, and it was over.
It opened its jaws and swallowed me down.
I sank into its belly and…ran.
Threading myself back through the chasm, I scuttled like a crab, sideways and breathing hard.
I had to get away.
I have to get the fuck out of here!
I wriggled and burrowed, desperation rising, claustrophobia clawing.
Desperate to taste fresh air.
Gasping for freedom.
Panic.
Fuck, panic.
It vised around my chest, gluing my ribcage to my heart so every breath wrenched and suffocated.
I tripped and stumbled.
Fumbled at the black wall.
Blinked with blind eyes.
With a groan that sounded as if it came from a tortured, pitiful thing, I tumbled out of the alley and back into the cave of wonders.
The glow worms flickered with indignation at my arrival.
They judged me as I collapsed to my knees like a pauper and gasped for redemption like a thief.
Pressing my sweaty forehead to the damp cave floor, I fell to my side and flopped onto my back.
Darkness.
Everywhere.
Fucking everywhere.
In me. On me. Around me.
But pinpricks.
Staring back.
Glittering like glowing sapphires, forming an entire galaxy above me.
I focused on them.
I clung to their light.
The angelical luminescence wasn’t strong enough to forgive or absolve me.
I was unforgivable.
Unredeemable.
I was nothing but blackness and death.
Chapter Five
………………………….
Ily
“WHICH WAY, PETER?” RACHEL TAPPED OUR broken friend on his pasty cheek.
Peter mumbled something and tried to lift his head, but unlike all the other moments when he’d been able to power through his pain…he no longer had the strength.
With the softest groan, he tumbled sideways where we’d placed him against the wall.
“Oh no.” I caught him before his head cracked against stone, gently lowering his cheek to the cave floor. “Peter?” I shook his lax shoulder. “Jaagate raho, Paavak. Chalo bhee. Aap theek hain.” (Stay awake, Paavak. Come on. You’re okay.)
Nothing.
None of us spoke for the longest time, all of us hoping for a miracle where Peter opened his eyes, sprang to his feet, and led us to victory.
When none of that happened, our small group of nine—our diligent, brave little group that’d bonded with trust and hope—fractured like crystals shattering under too much pressure.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.” Caishen scratched his arms as if he’d grown allergic to the weighted dark. “I never thought I was claustrophobic but knowing tonnes of rock are above me? That any moment it could bury me alive…fuck.”
“Me too.” Kaya—a girl I hadn’t spoken to before today—nodded. “It’s taking everything I have not to run off screaming.”
Caishen gave her a sympathetic smile, his face almost sinister thanks to the fading torch and its inability to banish the night.
“How long do you think we’ve been in here?” Catherine—the other girl I hadn’t known—shivered. “Because I’m literally seconds away from losing it.”
“No one is losing anything,” Rachel muttered.
“Keep it together, guys,” Mollie said, tucking dark blonde hair behind her ear. “If one of us snaps, we all snap.”
Pressing the back of my hand against Peter’s forehead, I hissed at his blazing fever. “If we don’t find a way out soon, I’m afraid he’ll die down here.”
“No one is dying either,” Rachel snapped. Rubbing her sore middle where Victor had repeatedly kicked her, she sighed heavily. “You asked how long we’ve been down here, Cath?” Shooting Catherine a look, she shrugged. “I’m guessing about five hours—”
“Five hours?” Caishen shot to his feet, almost bashing his head on a stalactite. The small cave we’d tumbled into barely gave enough room for all of us. “Right, that’s it. I can’t do this anymore. I need to leave.” He clawed at this throat. “I-I can’t breathe anymore.” He jumped as if something stalked him in the shadows. “I-I’m seeing things, and I’m sick of fucking shivering. The game has to be over now, surely?”
“It has to be.” Kaya sprang up from her crouch. “Victor said we all had to return before dusk. By the time we make our way out, it will probably be dark.”
“Alright.” Caishen nodded. “New plan. We retrace our steps and—”
“Peter’s unconscious,” I said quietly. “Are you proposing we leave him?”
“Course not. We’ll carry him.”
“Through all those narrow cracks?” I shook my head. “There’s no way—”
“Leave him in here much longer and like you just said…he’ll die.”
“Yes, but perhaps there’s a way out up ahead. We just need to—”
“Peter said it himself.” Caishen crossed his arms, trying his best not to tremble from the ice that’d settled into all our bones. “Ever since we left that cave with the glow worms, he didn’t have a clue which way to go.”
My shoulders slouched.
For approximately five hours, we’d travelled as one, heading deeper and deeper into the island. At one point, Peter said we were directly beneath the fortress. A staircase and tunnel led from the dungeons to the cave system, but Victor had stopped using it two years ago because a rockfall had shut off the main path to the Temple of Facets.
We’d kept going, even when Peter admitted he’d reached the end of his knowledge and every choice was now guesswork.
He’d glanced at all of us, ready to pass up the leadership mantel. The wistful longing in his eyes said he wanted someone else to forge ahead and take responsibility, but…as awful as it was to keep the pressure on someone so wounded—none of us stepped up.
With unanimous, unspoken decision, we all rested a little and gave Peter a breather before hauling him to his feet and helping him hobble through puddled seawater and continue crawling into smaller and darker caves.
One of our torches had failed on the first hour.
The second only minutes ago.
If the third went, we’d be trapped in here. Completely lost with the very real fear of starving to death or drowning. That fear now overshadowed even the terror that the Masters would find us.
Catching Rachel’s haunted blue eyes, I—
“Don’t.” She shook her head and bared her teeth. “Don’t even say it.”
“Caishen might be right,” I whispered. “By the time we get out of here, the gong will go, and we’ll be safe.”
“Safe?” Her nose wrinkled. “Do you honestly think the Masters will obey Vic? After a day of chaos? Fuck that.” She paced the small space, bumping into Sonya. “We go out there, and we’re at their mercy.”
“I say we take a vote.” Caishen held up his hand. “Our fearless leader is out cold. We have no idea where we’re going, and it’s idiotic to think we’re skilled enough to find a way out. I’m not even certain we can retrace our steps before that torch dies, but if we’re gonna try, we have to go now.”
Making eye contact with all of us, he demanded, “All those who want out, hands up.”
Everyone but Rachel and Mollie swung up their arms.
Lowering my own, I glanced at the two girls. “I know you don’t want Victor or Roland to find you, but…we can’t stay here.” I arched my chin at Peter. He barely breathed. His burned hands and feet covered in grit and dirt; his dusky skin far too pale in the dark. “We need to get him to Dr Belford…before it’s too late.”
Mollie sighed, her green eyes flashing. “How about a compromise? We’ll wait here for an hour or two. Peter will hopefully wake by then, and we can help him walk rather than drag him. It should be nightfall in a couple of hours and Victor will have rounded everyone up, thanks to his guards. We stand a better chance of avoiding this game altogether if we let Victor wrangle his guests into order rather than go out there while they’re being absolute maniacs.”
“Peter might not have two hours.” I stood too, balling my hands.
“Ily,” Rachel muttered under her breath. “You have to understand. Roland is a fucking creep. If he knows he can get away with shit and finds Mollie…he’ll kill her.”
“He’s a necrophiliac.” Caishen shuddered. “I’ve seen him kill before. I was with a Master in the same room. Yumeko only survived because the guards dragged Dr Mel in with her resuscitation kit before it was too late.”
The torch dimmed as if taking part in our debate and adding a fresh layer of panic.
Caishen’s tolerance snapped. “Right, that’s it. The batteries are dying. I’m leaving. All those who want to follow. Let’s go.”
“Go then if you’re that afraid. I’m going to wait for Pete to wake.” Rachel slid down the wall and sat beside Peter.
“Me too.” Mollie sat beside her.
I stood in a dank, chilly cave and was absolutely torn in two.
I understood why they wanted to wait for him to revive. I was on board with that plan—none of us would have the strength to drag him for long—but…every minute was a minute he couldn’t afford to spend.
“Just wait thirty minutes, Caishen.” I stepped toward him. “Surely, you can—”
“If he’s not going, we are.” Sonya snatched the torch from Caishen’s hands, sending the beam bouncing around the cave. “I’m done. How about you, Citra?” She arched her eyebrow at the Indonesian girl.
