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

on the cold stone floor, Raven knew that the very thing that hung heavily in the dark room was part of her. And that thing was fear.
     
    She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t rationalise why, and yet, at the simple act of being dragged across the threshold, an icy ball formed in the pit of Raven’s stomach. This was a place where evil things happened. It was no quantum leap to understand that evil things would probably soon reach out for her with their cloying embrace. Whatever was to be her fate though, Raven knew it couldn’t be meekly accepted. With a gut-wrenching scream of “No!” she drove her heel into the foot of the man to her right.
     
    It was a mistake that even she couldn’t anticipate the consequences of. As the man staggered, his partner drove a heavy fist into her kidneys, robbing her of air and what little balance she had. Fired with a pain-fuelled rage, her victim cracked a knee into the side of hers. It took Raven fully off her feet, almost causing her shoulder to dislocate and tear a pitiful wail from her lips. She didn’t even notice when he spat his hatred in her face.
     
    She had played with pain before but this was no game. She had never felt it quite like this. Her shoulder ligaments wrenched as she dangled between them and her knee refused to support any weight to help. Words fired around her, foreign words, Russian words. They were angry and fired from one man to the other and back again before being abruptly aborted with the thud of a punch. It was instantly followed by a renewed tear on her arms as one of the men staggered under the weight of the blow. Hierarchy re-established. That seemed to be how discussions went here.
     
    The force of her sexuality had always been Raven’s primary defence and she had wielded it as her weapon choice. Expensive yet attainable, her sexuality had often been used to bribe and bedazzle her chosen victims. Here though, she felt impoverished. Brute force seemed to be the sole currency, chosen or otherwise and she already had wounds to arm and leg and bruised ribs to add to her bloodied nose. Things were different here and she was only just beginning to realise how much and how far they might exceed even her worst fears.
     
    With a groan born of more than frustration, Raven felt herself hoisted higher, off even her towering heels, manipulated like nothing more than a ragdoll. With a skilled pull on her arm, she screamed afresh as it was stretched down before being released, drawing out her muscles to allow them to snap her shoulder back in place.
     
    The damage would linger though. It would be some time before even a touch to her shoulder wouldn’t bring a wincing expectation of pain. Dragging in air, she refilled her lungs as she tried to scramble together enough of herself to deal with everything, both physically and mentally.
     
    She was Raven. Feared and idolised in equal measure, now she could do no more than whimper. Each breath was an act of willpower and when one of the men leant a heavy hand on her shoulders, Raven meekly knelt without fight or sexual promise for the first time in years.
     
    If kneeling was a humiliation, pressing her head lower onto the metal plate took it to new levels. When a metal brace was closed over her neck and quickly screwed down to fix her in place, it was a depth that even Raven wasn’t properly prepared for.
     
    She felt her arms stretched out to each side. Shots of lava seared her newly-damaged shoulder. She flinched, twisting to try to ease the strain only to be drawn back to the centre. Her wrists were soon braced and fixed in place. Raven kicked out frantically in an attempt to deal with her new reality though she was only delaying the inevitable. It was an act of protest she needed to make despite already knowing it was worth nothing.
     
    Free from obligations to restrain her arms, she felt iron hands snatch each of her ankles and roughly pull her legs apart, ensuring she continued to kneel. She had spent her