Page 6 of Merciless
His punches had little power behind them, even with the extra weight on his hands. If my hands were free, I was certain I could break his jaw with a single punch. But I cried out in protest, begging and pleading for him to stop as I tried to escape the abuse.
He punched me until he was completely spent, leaning with exhaustion against the wall. Sweat coated his skin, dripping down his smug face as he slipped the brass knuckles off and returned them to his pants pockets.
“We’ll play again tomorrow, big bitch,” he told me, turning to the prison door.
“No.” I shook my head at him, putting a grimace on my face. “No more.”
Relief made me sag in my restraints as he unlocked the metal-barred door to leave, then locked it again behind him. To him, I looked sad and pathetic slumped against the dungeon wall, but the day had been a good one as far as these went.
They hadn’t touched Reaper at all today.
He sat against the adjacent wall, completely silent during the beating I took. When the guard was gone, he remained staring at the door. I started cleaning my wounds with the meager amount of water I had rationed, a skill I had never fully unlearned.
“You need to stop doing that,” Reaper finally said, his voice raspy from dehydration.
I paused in my washing, then continued on. “No, I don’t.”
“Shadow.” He looked at me for the first time, one eye normal, the other a swollen, purple bruise from his beating yesterday. His speech was also off, slurred, probably from a swollen tongue. “They’ll kill you.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. My pain reactions may have been fake, but the damage to my body was real. My muscles were seized up and stiff around my injuries. I was finding it more difficult to breathe.
But there were two of us. And if we both didn’t survive, one of us had to.
I was built to withstand torture. The first twenty-odd years of my life had forged me into this. Pain had become a distant memory and abuse, my constant companion. I adapted to this because I had no other choice. Even after a much better quality of life within the last several years, my old survival habits kicked in like they’d never left.
Sure, I might die, but it wouldn’t happen quickly. So far, these shitheads with their metal pipes and weak punches didn’t hold a candle to the Bathory cult that raised me, nor the sadistic bitch who brought me into the world.
“Better me than you,” I said, pressing a hand to my mouth to stem the flow of blood from my lip.
“Why?” Reaper demanded. “Why are you playing into these sickos’ torture fetish so that they pile on you and forget about me? You think I like watching you get beat?”
“Because I can handle it.”
“So can I!”
“Iknowtorture, Reaper. And I can’t feel pain. It just makes sense.”
“So what? It doesn’t mean you should. Fuck, man.” He returned to staring straight ahead at the door of our cell. “You’ve been through enough, Shadow.”
“And you shouldn’t have to go through it at all.”
“Why the fuck not? Am I not in the same fucking dungeon as you?”
“Because you’re the president!” I had never truly spoken to a child before but it felt like I was arguing with one right then. “The club needs you more than it needs me. Mari needs you.”
Reaper huffed out a defeated laugh. “Everyone says that, but no, she absolutely fucking does not. You, on the other hand...” He glanced at me with his good eye. “You need to get back to her. And she will be pissed to find out you’re taking all the hits to save my ass.”
“She’ll understand, I think.” My bloody lip was finally clotting, so I pulled my hand away. “And we both need to get back to her.”
We were both silent for a while. There was nothing to do except talk, sleep off injuries, or stare at the walls. Meager food and water rations were brought once a day like clockwork. No one spoke about any plans for us, about the Sha, or whatever it was.
“Do you think Four Corners is still standing?” Reaper asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Mari and the others haven’t been thrown in here with us, so I hope that’s a good sign.”
“Yeah, I think we’d know if she was here.” Reaper’s throat worked in a swallow, like he wanted to say more. “I’m sorry, Shadow.”
My head had started to droop with exhaustion, but it lifted back up at that. “For what?”
