The Tied Man

He sighed.  ‘Look, I really don’t want to leave, but I’m going to have to go back to my room  – didn’t bring everything I needed, y’know?’

‘I know.’  I didn’t need telling: I could already feel the tension beginning to buzz in his sinews.

‘Sleep while you can, huh?  I promise, I’ll come back – then we can start thinking about how we’re going to play today, okay?’  He ran a hand from my jaw to my waist as though he was reading me in Braille, then pulled the duvet around me so that I was enveloped in its warmth.

‘‘Kay.’  My eyes were already beginning to close by the time he reached the door.

Chapter Twenty Two

Lilith

‘Alarm call for Ms Bresson.’ Coyle O’Halloran dragged me out of bed by my hair and threw me onto the floor.

I didn’t even have time to scream as he clamped one sweating hand over my mouth and grabbed my wrists with the other.

He leered at me through the darkness.  ‘You any idea how long I’ve waited to do this, you stuck-up slut?’  His breath reeked of stale whiskey and sickness, and I recoiled.  ‘What, am I not up to your usual standard of fuck, eh?  Like a certain scrawny-arsed faggot?’  He hauled me to my feet, twisting me so that I had my back to him.  ‘Ach, don’t be worrying about that just yet – I’m under strict orders to deliver you in a half-decent condition.’

That hardly reassured me.  I tried to cry out, but even if Coyle’s hand had not still been across my mouth, an imminent asthma attack and sheer fear would have rendered me speechless.

‘What’s that, bitch?  If you’re calling out for our Finn-boy, you’re wasting precious breath – me and my boys have already seen to him, and it was the most fun I’ve had in years, let me tell you.’  He began to drag me towards the door.  Still sleep-dazed and subdued, any struggle had no effect.  ‘Don’t think you’d find him such a pretty boy now, mind you – my lads got just a wee bit slap-happy, if you get my drift.  Wanted to get one back for that messy business in the pub.’

Fatal minutes too late I found some fight.  I let Coyle take my weight and kicked back hard against his shins.  I made good contact and I heard him give a sharp, rewarding hiss of pain.

‘Fuckin’ bitch!’ he yelped, but my rebellion merely made him even angrier.  He brought his other hand away from my mouth and began to bundle me down the corridor.

I had no idea where we were going, or what was about to happen;  I only knew that wherever I was being taken it was highly unlikely to be pleasant, so as Coyle dragged me down the long corridor, I battled him every step of the way.  It wouldn’t do me any good – my self-defence training had never covered being hauled, still asleep from my bed by a coked-up , steroid-pumped bastard – but I could no more have surrendered than grown wings and flown.  The only outcome was that by the time we reached the kitchen, I was already exhausted.

The table had been pushed to one side so that the floor was clear, except for two carver chairs that now faced each other across the expanse.  One was empty, but the other was already taken.

‘Still fancy him now?’  Coyle laughed.

Finn was tied to the chair’s frame by strips of silver duct tape at his wrists and ankles, and another piece had been stuck over his mouth.  He still wore his pyjama pants, but he was bare-chested now, and Coyle’s coterie had certainly had fun.

His chest and stomach were covered with boot marks that were already turning storm-cloud black, and by his jagged, painful breathing I guessed they’d managed to break a rib.  A streak of fresh blood marked an unchecked trail from his nose and down the tape across his mouth, and his left eye was swollen shut.

‘What’s that?’ Coyle asked Finn. ‘You want to say somethin’ to your new girlfriend?  Like, ‘Sorry I needed my fix more than I needed to protect you’?  or maybe, ‘Sorry I just landed you in more shit than you’ve ever known in your entire existence’?’  With one arm still locked around me, Coyle reached over and ripped the tape from Finn’s mouth.

‘Oh God Coyle, don’t hurt her.  Do whatever the hell you like to me, but don’t hurt Lilith.  Please…’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Coyle hollered.  ‘D’you think anything you say’s going to make any kind of difference to what I do to this little slut?  Huh?  I’m about to do whatever I like to you, just as soon as I’ve finished here.’