Page 20 of Darkness I Become
Lana’s mouth hardened into a thin line. “I think you know, Asha.”
Panic flooded Asha’s system at her words. She’d expected Lana to give her some kind of comfort, or an alternate explanation. Instead, she was left with only the horrible truth: she had no control over what happened to her next.
After that, they spoke only occasionally. Lana went into her closet and found a skintight black dress that was a little short on Asha and barely covered her ass, which was probably the point. She sprayed Asha with rosewater to make her smell good, and applied some approximation of lipstick to her lips.
“What now?” Asha asked, her voice cracking.
Lana sighed, her expression weary, like she’d seen a thousand nights just like this one. Like she was tired, not just of this, but of everything—of living.
“Now, you do your best to forget, sugar.”
Half an hour later, Asha stood in front of the colourful doors to Angel’s Wing, where Dax the doorman was waiting. He gave a low whistle on seeing her, and it made her want to peel her skin off.
“Hot piece of ass. No wonder the boss couldn’t wait any longer.”
For a moment, Asha was frozen, unable to make her legs move. She couldn’t think about what that man would do to her. She took a deep breath and tried to think of what Lana had said just before she left:just close your eyes and let him have his way. Pretend you’re somewhere lovely. I like to think of a beach I went to when I was a little girl.
But Asha had never been anywhere lovely. She’d lived inside concrete walls for the entirety of her twenty-six years, with the same sights, the same people, the same stifling job and the indifferent husband that saw heras an object. Her parents had been absent her whole life; it was why Claire had always come to her house when they were teenagers, to escape her crazy mother. She’d never had many friends besides that, and her childhood was something she’d rather forget. What good was it to escape to those lonely times?
Still, she’d been safe back then, hadn’t she? Eric may have been an irritating sex pest, but he’d never forced himself on her. Her job as a science teacher hadn’t been exciting, but it’d been…stable. Her living quarters had been small, but comfortable. She’d had decent food, clean water, and the knowledge that there was an order to things. The only real threat of violence was for those who disobeyed the regime; if you kept your head down and followed the rules, you could enjoy a tightly controlled—but otherwise safe—existence.
“Get a move on, whore,” Dax sneered, jolting her out of her dissociation. He grabbed her arm, wrenched one of the blue doors open, and practically tossed her inside. Her heart dropped at the loudthudas it slammed shut behind her.
Asha found herself standing in a corridor. At the opposite end, it forked into three doors, all of which were surprisingly intact. She made herself take two steps forward, her heart hammering in her ears as she took in her surroundings, illuminated by burning torches on the walls.
Angel’s Wing was about as immaculate as a place could be, thirty years after the Fall. Unlike the rest of the Nest, which was sparsely furnished, inevitably dirty, and in various stages of disrepair, Angel’s Wing was obviously cleaned regularly. A long, threadbare rug stretched down the length of the hallway, and the windows had glass—the only ones she’d ever seen in that condition—and were framed by heavy velvet curtains. Cracks in the walls were filled in with clay, and the walls had artworkon them, which surprised her, as no other room she’d seen had any.
Hard to care about art when you’re barely making it,she thought grimly.But if you’re the king of the Wasteland, you get special privileges.
There was an odd painting of a duck, and a faded photo montage of old buildings behind a plastic screen. On the opposite wall, someone had painted a large mural of black angel wings, stretching outwards. The torches on the walls made it feel like a dungeon, a thought that filled her with an even deeper sense of foreboding.
Asha was startled out of her thoughts by the door at the end of the corridor opening. Angel appeared, outlined by the dim candlelight. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of loose black pants. Across his chest, black angel wings spread out, crudely tattooed by an untrained hand. Those heavy dark circles under his eyes stood out in the firelight, giving him a haunted look that Asha didn’t like.
“Come in,” he said, with a small smirk. “Let’s get started.”
A horrible shiver went down her spine, and every instinct inside her screamed at her to run, even though there was nowhere to go. She took several involuntary steps backward, toward the colourful doors.
“Come on, Asha,” Angel said, a mocking softness to his tone. “It won’t be so bad. I’ll even warn you when I’m gonna nut, like a real gentleman.”
Bile rose in Asha’s throat, burning it with her fear and revulsion. Flashbacks danced in front of her eyes, disorienting her. All at once, she relived a furtive hand snaking up her eight-year-old thigh and the murmur of an old friend’s voice:don’t you want to know how mommies and daddies make babies?
Her brief dissociation cost her precious seconds. Angel had moved toward her slowly, like a cat cornering a mouse. She backed up again, but hit the double doors. She could hear Dax, still right outside, trapping her in.
“You’re even prettier close up,” Angel said, his putrid breath falling over her face as he moved in. He touched her face, and Asha recoiled. “There’s no point in fighting it, sweet pea. Just give in. You might like it.”
Asha didn’t think as his hand migrated south; she merely reacted. Her knee shot up in a flash, making contact with his groin. Angel let out a low groan of pain and doubled over, and Asha ran.
Of course, with nowhere else to go, she ran right into Angel’s bedroom. But perhaps there was a window, orsomethingshe could—
The room was large and dimly lit with several candelabra. A massive bed sat at its centre, covered in animal furs. Asha stopped in front of it, casting around the room for an escape route. The two windows on the far wall contained glass too, preventing her flight. And a second later, Angel appeared in the doorway, his expression murderous.
“We're not done,” he snarled. “I was gonna be nice and let you just lie there and take it. But bitches like you need to be taught a fucking lesson.”
“Fuck off,” Asha spat, but her voice shook with fear.
He was too fast, too strong. Before she understood what was happening, he’d thrown her down onto the mattress. She hit the bed hard, the breath knocked out of her, and had no time to react to Angel throwing himself on top of her. She pushed herself up towards the top of the bed with her feet, trying to slide out from under him, but he pinned her, panting furiously, his knee coming up to force her legs apart.
“You think you can just do whatever you want, say whatever you want?” he growled as Asha struggled against him. “Well, you’re about to find out that you fucking can’t. You want to act like an uppity little whore? You’ll get fucked like one.”
