Page 23 of Lash

"Yes, it is best. We can rest and take turns keeping watch."

I look at Tatiana. "Are you able to walk? The train station is some distance from here, but we are not likely to find a taxi at this hour."

She shrugs. "Do I have a choice?"

"Not really." I peel out of my shirt and use it to wipe the blood from her face. Her white T-shirt is splattered with it, as are her jeans and leather jacket. There is nothing to do about that, however. Once I have cleaned the worst of the blood from her face, I shrug back into my shirt—it is now wet and tacky, but that doesn’t concern me.

And so we walk—block after block, mile after mile, three killers and an innocent young woman.

first touch

Tatiana

We catch a night train to Split because that's the only train leaving at this hour. We get a couchette compartment for the five of us. We each choose a bunk, and within minutes, both Lorenzo and Scarlett are asleep. Solomon and Lash sit beside each other on a bottom bunk, conversing quietly while I try unsuccessfully to fall asleep.

My mind whirls and spins like a child's toy top, spinning and wobbling as it slows.

I close my eyes and see Georg slumped over the hood of my car, sightless eyes staring at nothing while blood spreads in a crimson pool.

Again and again, I see Filip drawing his pistol and casually blasting a hole in Ana's head and then Katya's. I see their heads snap backward in slow motion. I see blood spraying, brain matter spattering.

My eyes wrench open and I stare, eyes burning with exhaustion, at the underside of the bunk above me. I struggle to quiet my mind, and slowly, slowly, sleep begins to pull me under.

In the bunk below me, I hear Solomon whispering to Lash. I only catch fragments, but it seems as if he is relating the events that brought him to the cell in Tata's compound. I hear exotic sounding places like Quito and San José, and descriptions of gunfights. Lash asks Solomon about Scarlett; I nod off as Solomon relates a story about an operation gone wrong in Venezuela.

Darkness enshrouds me. My feet are heavy, trapped in quicksand pulling me inexorably under. I smell body odor, a rank, thick miasma of rotting onions. A hand closes on my left wrist, and I try to scream, but no sound emerges from my throat.

LASH!The scream echoes in my skull, but my teeth are fused together, my lips stitched shut. I cannot move, cannot withdraw my feet from the sludge encasing them, cannot jerk my wrist out of the painful hold. The scream, my plea for Lash to help me, is stuck in my throat, trapped behind my fused teeth and stitched lips.

Body odor chokes me.

A hand slides up my belly, and then I feel Filip's fingers painfully pinching my nipple. I try to writhe away, but movement is impossible—my limbs are encased in granite, so I cannot push or pull, stand or sit, run or crawl.

Darkness swirls, eddying around me like fog. A big, bulky male figure hulks in front of me, outlined by a murderous red glow. His teeth flash white, all sharp predator incisors dripping blood, and his shaved head writhes with living tattoos, and his hand grows large enough to encompass the entire world as he reaches for me, and I cannot run, cannot run, cannot run.

His hands imprison me, the jaws of a Kraken crunching my bones, pushing me to the dirty wet cold ground; his weight is titanic and immense, and I cannot dislodge him. His breath stinks of beer and meat. His body odor is all-consuming, almostworse than his huge cruel hands scraping my belly as he gropes my breast.

Panic boils in my gut, surging like vomit up to my teeth.

JUST A LITTLE TASTE.The words scratch over my skin, crater in my skull.JUST A LITTLE TASTE BEFORE I GIVE YOU TO HIM.

I cannot scream, cannot scream, cannot scream.

He shakes me, rattling my bones.TATIANA, he growls,TATIANA, WAKE UP.

I cannot wake up, cannot wake up, cannot wake up.

TATIANA.

I try to scream, to run.

He’s too strong, too heavy.

I grope for his eyes, trying to punch my thumbs through the soft jelly. Try to knee his crotch. Claw his face. Bite his throat. Snarl like a cornered she-lion.

I feel something cold and hard and slender—a knife. Fumble for it while his hands fumble at my chest, clumsy and cruel.

It's a knife.