Dark Days (Written Pictures #2) Read Free Page A

worst fears. A snatched grip in her hair wrenched her attention higher until she looked straight into the eyes of her horror.
     
    “Welcome to your hell, Yankee.” The words were in heavily accented English. A fist balled tighter into sweaty jet black hair. Alexei - Raven’s worst nightmares were confirmed beyond further question. The knot at the pit of her stomach tightened, knowing his simple statement to be true.
     
    For a fraction of a second Raven was glad of the temporary relief from the heavy backhanded blow across her face, but then as her already bloodied nose bled again her world fully blackened. With the release of his grasp, she dropped limply to the floor.

CHAPTER IV – Brand New
     
    It was harder than she imagined. Sure, Immelmann had beaten her – she had even taunted him until he had no choice. He had thought he controlled her, and now he was dead. Those beatings had hurt. She could clearly remember times when she had almost regretted pushing him but still purred inside as the punishment rained down. But that was then. This wasn’t the same. Raven guessed that as her bruises blackened, they had been targeted with a precision that would burn deeply yet ensure recovery ready for whatever lay ahead.
     
    ‘Probably more of the same,’ Raven thought to herself. Her ballet-booted feet occasionally scrambled for stability as she was dragged down the corridor between the two large men. She didn’t fear pain. Somehow it was cathartic, a throwback to the mental anguish she had felt with the shattering of the relationship with her mother. Pain had been a constant companion in her life. It was one of the few never to leave her side, never to steal, never to disappoint. In it she had always found a kind of solace. Feeling alive, feeling invigorated, simply feeling.
     
    On another day and in other hands, Raven would have fought, found their weaknesses, used her body and had them both cowering under her high heel. That was indeed another day though. Before they had raised her from the crumpled heap she lay in, the two men had twisted each arm through a half-turn to ensure the strain on her shoulders held her rigid and utterly controllable. They were professionals and as each jolt to her pointed toes struck through her tormented shoulders, Raven feared dislocation was only a nudge away. So she held herself back and simply endured, precisely as they knew she would.
     
    A turn, a dodge right, up a flight of stairs before left again and descending down a windowed corridor. Each change of direction seared a memory into Raven’s shoulder joints, barely leaving her with the presence of mind to look up and out of the windows to search for a clue to her captivity. Her head hung, black hair matted and straight. It veiled the grimace that was brought by each step.
     
    Finally, they approached a heavy wooden door with black ironwork. Their pace though didn’t slacken and Raven winced as one of the door’s heavy spikes seemed destined for her face. Like so much would be in her new reality however, things were choreographed, firmly in the control of her captors. As she flinched, bracing for the blow that would surely come, the door creaked back to beckon them to the darkness that lay beyond it.
     
    After the oily blackness, the first thing that hit her was the smell. No, it wasn’t a smell, Raven corrected herself. A smell was tangible. This wasn’t. It was nebulous - she sensed it rather than smelt it.
     
    It was something that even a few days before would have brought a smile to her face. Raven had revelled in drawing it out, in manipulating it and ultimately breaking it back over her latest victim. She had wielded it with such consummate skill that her reputation had been built on it. Now though, she felt it infiltrate her nostrils and slither into her soul, constricting it and chilling it at the same time. It was something that she had thought long behind her and yet, as the strike of her flailing heels sparked