Lost Girls(69)

Barely breathing, bloody, arms and legs bound, and a gag in his mouth.

Agent Bennet.

He fell to the floor, unable to get up.

He was the one who was supposed to rescue us, but now it looked like he might not survive. Lauren and Bennet and I were alone, no one to help us. Unless, maybe, that text to my dad got through and he understood what it meant. Unless he knew how to find us and he somehow managed to get here in time and he had a small army with him...

“You’re going to fight for me or this man and your friend, Lauren, will die. Both of them. Painfully and slowly. While you watch,” a sinister voice spoke behind me.

If Pink Lightning hadn’t been flooding my veins, giving me strength, I would have cringed. I recognized this voice. It was the man who bought and sold girls and boys like stray dogs. It was the man who had sent Nicole to her death.

It was the man I’d run away from, all the way down the mountain.

I didn’t want to see his face. I knew that everything would come flooding back as soon as I looked into his eyes and I was too terrified to remember. But that didn’t matter, because he took my face in his hand and turned me toward him. The first thing I saw was the row of new track marks on his arm. Four red pinpricks, so fresh they each still held a glistening bead of blood in the center. It was his way of showing he was stronger than me, he was the alpha, he could crush me with one hand no matter how much Pink Lightning I had taken.

I fought the trembling in my legs and the shudder that blurred my hands. I didn’t want to look at him and he seemed to sense it. A coarse laugh bubbled up from his chest, and he lifted my chin, feeding off my fear, forcing me to lift my gaze.

He towered over me, shoulders broad, muscles pumped, every inch of him screaming that he was in charge and he could take down anyone who stood in his way. His eyes were the color of slate, the color of a world without light or hope, his skin and hair so pale they were almost devoid of pigment.

“Rachel Evans from Santa Madre,” he said, revealing that he knew exactly who I was and where I lived, and I remembered how my driver’s license had been in my pocket when I was found. He’d been sending me a message. I know who you are and where you live. He watched me as I processed all of this. “I knew you would come back and I’m glad you did. You’re worth twice as much as before. I can’t believe how many times your stupid patron ripped up the invitations I sent him for you to attend the Platinum Level. He won’t be ignoring my instructions ever again.” He laughed again. “The only way we could get you here was to invite one of your friends. It worked. Both times.”

My muscles had grown strong enough to shake off his grip, but the cold expression in his eyes kept me trapped. I wanted to stop the memory that I knew was coming. But it was like trying to fight a tsunami, a force of nature caused by something that had quaked long ago and far away and was much stronger than I was. Then the wave swept over me, knocking me backward, a sensation so visceral I couldn’t tell whether it was a memory or whether I was really being carried out to sea, right now, away from that lake where all the Swan Girls had been swimming together for too long.

I was here, but not back in this secluded dressing room…

.

I stood in a corner, watching Nicole as she fought, as she lost, horribly. Twice I tried to run up onstage and help her but, after the second time, two strong guards grabbed me and held me back. Meanwhile, Nicole lost consciousness—a sign that the fight should be over—but the other girl wouldn’t stop. She must have been double tapping and, maybe nothing seemed real to her anymore, but she was close to beating my friend to death. The crowd yelled and screamed and gyrated as if this was a fantasy they had been hoping for, dreaming of—

The only rule here was there were no rules.

I stopped trying to break past the guards and fight my way toward Nicole. Instead I backed up, taking two cautious steps away from the guards, hoping they wouldn’t notice. My fight was already over and I’d won, so maybe that would grant me a little grace.

I turned sideways—I had changed back into my street clothes after my fight—and I slowly slid my cell phone from my pocket. Head slanted down, I punched in one number, then another.

9-1—

One of the guards saw me before I could hit that last digit. He knocked the phone from my hands, while the other guard grabbed me and jammed a gag in my mouth. They dragged me out to a van that rumbled outside. There, someone tied my hands and feet. A few moments later, one of them tossed Nicole in beside me, her body landing with a dull thud. It took a full minute before I realized she was still breathing. I dared to hope we might find a way to escape.

Up until a few minutes ago, I’d thought we were at a normal Platinum Level fight. But when she lay beside me—her eyes fluttering open, her lungs gasping for air—I knew what was really happening.

We were being kidnapped.

I tried to scream, I tried to talk to Nicole, I tried to comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be okay, she just needed to wake up, please, wake up. But everything I said came out muffled and unintelligible. The guys driving the van looked back and laughed at me.

That was when I realized there were other girls and boys in the van with us, all of us bound and gagged. Most of them were like me, with just a few cuts and bruises. Nicole was the only one who looked like she’d been crammed through a meat grinder, her flesh cut and dark with purple bruises, bones poking out of the skin on her left forearm and her right shin. I winced when I looked at her, my eyes never leaving hers as if I could magically transfer my strength to her. Tears slid down my cheeks, but she didn’t cry. She stared straight ahead, a glazed expression in her eyes, the light fading with every slow-motion thud of her eyelids.