an insect he was studying. “I don’t want you to move for your own good, little doll…dolls shouldn’t move themselves when Wolfe plays with them…so this is for your own good…”
He reached back for a windup and threw me across the room and headfirst into the concrete. I don’t know for sure that it fractured my skull, but the gawdawful cracking noise told me that either my bones or the wall had given. Blood covered my face, trickling over my eyes. I could only feel it, not see it, because my eyelids had snapped shut. He grabbed hold of me again and hauled me into the air. My hands twitched at my side.
“Wolfe wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t hurt him. He would have handed you over to his masters, like they wanted, all safe and sound, but you had to hurt the Wolfe…not once, not twice, but thrice…and now you’re in his blood, and he needs you…and you need to learn not to trifle with big men…bad men…”
My eyes were lolling in my head as I tried to brace for the next impact, but I relaxed myself. Then he started to choke me, hard. I felt the stifling as I tried for a breath, then attempted to will myself not to breathe, hoping to get it over before he started having his fun with me, but I couldn’t. My lungs strained and I began to panic.
I tried to gasp, but couldn’t. No M-Squad was coming to save me. No cops. No…Mom. I was on my own.
Completely alone.
My eyes opened and my gaze lifted over his shoulder and I saw the box in the corner, door still open, almost leering, as though it were taunting me. Now the flashbacks came, at the end, as my pitiful life waited in the balance and I remembered moments I had tried to forget. All those years, Mom had held me in this house, like Wolfe was holding me now, keeping me captive, slowly squeezing the life out of me – and I let her, afraid of the box. Years of helpless imprisonment, putting aside everything I wanted out of my life.
It taunted me, in that corner. Years of being stuck in it, trapped, helpless.
Emotions poured over me like the icy water that had hit me earlier, a sudden, sharp shock. I remembered the last time I was stuck in that metal coffin, days without getting a breath of fresh air, and my fear built and built until I exploded, anger and hatred and sadness all rushing out. I pounded on the metal of the door, put everything into it and felt something I had never felt in all the times I had been in there.
It moved. The door moved, just a little. I hit it again and again and it budged a little more, and a crack of light from the outside peeked in. I hammered at the door, kicked, pushed at it, screaming, grunting, my weary and cramped muscles crying out to get free. The corner bent enough that I could stick my fingers through, and I pushed and the metal bent as I applied more and more pressure. With a final kick and punch I heard the top and bottom hinges strain and break and I ripped the door free, sucking in the breaths of life and falling to the basement floor, the cold concrete and breathable air letting me know that I was alive, and for once…I wasn’t helpless.
I wasn’t.
I stared back at Wolfe’s soulless eyes and the same fury washed over me, the same desperate hunger for air and life. He held me at arm’s length and my bare hands came up of their own accord and surged forward, wrapping themselves around his hairy neck. The black eyes looked at me in surprise and a smile found its way to his lips. His grip tightened on me as mine tightened on his neck. There was no way I would be able to kill him before he killed me, I knew that. And I didn’t care. I would not die without him knowing that I wasn’t a helpless, defenseless little doll just here for him to play with.
My fingers dug into his throat and he laughed. “You’re going to have to squeeze much harder than that to make Wolfe feel it, my little doll. All you’re doing is giving Wolfe a case of the tingles.”
I gripped him tighter and he squeezed me so hard my head pushed back. I