Alpha men – final

You guys crack me up.  I post a thing with a long warning that it’s sick.  Half of you are emailing me to inform that you found it distubing and the other half is making gimme hands.  :dies:

Here are the two final chapters.  We’re going to stop at that.

Chapter 3

Elizabeth Meadow shut the trunk of her small red Toyota and squeezed the remote twice to lock the doors.  The car answered with a short beep.  Elizabeth nodded to herself.  Safety was important.  Not that the subdivision was particularly dangerous, but she didn’t want to lose the vehicle to some rowdy teenager intent on a joy ride.

She shouldered her purse, picked up the white plastic Kroger bags and headed to her house, sitting the shadow of a large maple.  The evening had burned out dusk.  The sun was setting and deep charcoal blackness gathered in the east, ready to drown the sky as soon as the light died.

Her feet ached.  She wore flats all day, and her feet still ached.   She could remember when she could run around in her pumps all day and then dance at the club past midnight.  Welcome to the fifties, she congratulated herself.  There wouldn’t be any dancing tonight.  But she did have a stack of history reports to grade.  She would drink some tea, pop a box of pre-fried chicken in the oven for Bob, and finish the reports.  Maybe read a mystery before bed and turn in.  Oh how the mighty have fallen.

All she wanted now was her little comfortable life, little comfortable worries.  She liked it and she wouldn’t let anything to get into the way of her routine.

A shadow dropped from the tree branch.  Elizabeth turned, but it was gone.  A cat?  Didn’t look like a cat.  It was just a blur, but a blur big enough to be a man.  “Who is there?”

No answer.

She shrugged and turned to the house.

A man barred her way.  A tall, large man with golden hair that would have made any woman jealous.  It fell in a long dense wave, hiding half of his face.  The half she could see was breathtaking.

“Where is Karina’s daughter?”

Elizabeth took a step back.  She had firmly resolved to put the disturbing incident out of her mind.  Nothing good could have happened to Karina Tucker, nothing she, Elizabeth, needed to concern herself about.  Karina’s car was discovered in the school’s parking lot, all five children asleep, Karina nowhere to be found.  Her cell phone lay abandoned on the seat.   Her purse was missing.  Some fourth graders claimed they saw two men park it, but couldn’t describe them.  All attempts to locate Karina were unsuccessful.

“Where is Karina’s child?” the man repeated.

The threat in his voice made her flesh pimple.  But the lighted door of her house was just yards away.  They stood here in the full view of the neighborhood.

“Why would I tell you?  Who are you?  What makes you think that you can come onto my property…”

The pain hit her right shin.  A horrible tearing pain, buckling her leg, as if her shin bones tried to wrench themselves clear of the socket.  She fell to the ground and screamed, screamed at the top of her lungs.  Her shin bone turned, changing the contour of the leg, twisted as if a huge worm rolled over under her skin.   Something crunched.  Tears burst from her eyes.

The man kneeled by her.  The pain eased just enough to let her catch a breath.  Bob had to be in the house, why wasn’t he coming?  Why wasn’t anybody coming?

“I can pull every bone out of its place and make it stab through your innards.”

She whimpered, arrested by the terrible fear.

“Where is the child?”

She sobbed.  “Michele has her.  Michele Romolko.  Her teacher.”

He pulled a small phone from his pocket.  His fingers flew over the keys.  He smiled, white teeth gleaming.  “I love it when people list their numbers.  Don’t you?  Makes them easy to find.”

Fear gripped her throat with icy claws.

He dialed a number and put the phone to his air.  “Hello, Michele.”  The voice that issued from his lips was frighteningly familiar.  She realized it was her own and wet herself.

“Just wanted to check on Karina’s daughter?”  He paused listening.  “I’m so glad.  Poor dear.  Give me a call, if anything changes?   I’d really appreciate it.  Here, let me give you my cell.”  He dictated the number.  “It’s so sweet of you to take care of her.  I agree, I’m sure they’ll find Karina soon.  We can only pray.  Well, good night.”

He flipped the phone closed and fixed her with his dark eye.   The bone in her leg rocked like a milk tooth about to come out.  She stared unblinking, locked into watching her face, too afraid to move, too frightened to make a single sound.

“You’ll say nothing.  You won’t warn Michelle.  You won’t tell anyone you saw me.  Or I’ll come back.”

She nodded, mute.

He rose and walked away, dissolving into the deep shadows under the tree.  Elizabeth sat on the ground, drawing hoarse breaths.  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed.  Her head was empty of all thought.

Garage door opened with a screech.  Bob staggered out carrying a big black trash bag to the oversized green bin.  He saw her and dropped the trash.  “Liz?  Liz, what are you doing?”

She began to sob.

#

Hidden by the deep night shadows, Daniel surveyed the two story house.  On the phone, the teacher had volunteered that she put the kid on the second floor bedroom, but which one?  He circled the home.  There, a dim glow of the night light in left window.  Daniel frowned.  He could climb up the house, but getting down with the kid in his arms would prove problematic.

He approached the back door and tried the door handle.  Locked.  Cheap-ass lock.  He pulled his wallet from his back pocket, extracted a pick, and inserted it into the lock.  Pretty girl, Karina.  Pretty, pretty.  He’d screw her just to fuck with Lucas.  Bend her over something, fuck her brains out, leave the video on Lucas’s pillow as a little present.  His head would explode.  Daniel laughed quietly.

The lock clicked.

He concentrated and swung it open, absorbing the quiet creak.  A cluttered garage greeted him.  He stepped inside, waited for a moment, adjusting to the darkness, and saw the dim outline of the ladder in a corner.  Perfect.

A minute later he leaned the ladder to the house and climbed it.  A small guest bedroom lay behind the window, adult colors, adult furniture.  A small honey-bear shaped nightlight was the only indication a child occupied the room.

She slept on the bed, drowned in covers.  A tiny little thing.  Blonde.  Karina’s hair was soft, auburn-brown.  Lucas’s new toy liked blondes.  All the easier.

Daniel knocked on the window, channeling the sound to hit her.  The little girl shivered in her sleep.

He knocked again.

Emily raised her head, hair damp from sleep.  He beckoned her with his hand.  Don’t scream, little one.  Easier if you don’t scream.

She crawled off the bed and came to the window, dark eyes huge on little face.  He pointed to the latch.  She struggled with it and slid it open.  He helped her raise the window.

“Hey,” he said.  “I have a message for you.”  He shifted into Karina’s voice.  “Hi, Emily.  It’s mommy. ”

Emily froze.

“This man is very nice.  His name is Daniel.  I sent him to pick you up.  You have to listen to him and he will keep you safe and bring you to me.  I’ll see you very soon, okay, baby?  I love you.”

Emily blinked.

Daniel dropped the voice.  “Okay?” he asked softly.

“Okay,” she said.

He held out his arms.  “Come on.”

She looked at the door.

“Don’t worry about them.  They don’t matter.”

She hesitated and put her arms around his neck.  Children were a very trusting breed, he decided and gently took her out of the bedroom.

Chapter 4

Karina awoke.  The room lay empty.  Bright morning light flooded through the window, drawing a radiant rectangle on the wooden floor.  A draft burned the acrid stink of burning bacon.

Emily.

She pushed free of the sheets and almost fell.  Her head swam.  Slowly, very slowly she slid off the bed and stood upright.  A full glass sat on the bedside table with a yellow sticky that read, “Drink it.”  She could practically hear Lucas’s growl.

The memory of gnawing teeth squirmed through her, dragging nausea in its wake.  Karina bent over, gripped the night table to steady herself, and saw a square bandage hiding her arm.  She tugged at it, sending a jolt of pain through her limb.   It remained stuck.  Karina pulled harder, trying to rip it away as if she could shed the memory of Lucas with it.  She struggled with it for a few seconds, pain pounding up her biceps in hot prickly bursts, and finally tore it free.

An enormous bruise stained the bend of her arm.  Dark purple, it sat there like a brand.  Lucas’s proof of ownership.  Dried blood caked in the center, where his teeth had mangled her veins.

The price she paid for Emily’s life.  And her own.

Karina stepped to the window, slid the latch free, and threw it open.  A wide green expanse spread before her, a wooded slope gently rolling away and down.  Mountains, emerald and hunter-green, fading to blue and eventually grey in the distance, cradled the valley, as if it were a jewel in the folds of dark velvet.  The mountains breathed scents of forest and autumn in her face.  She was a long way from Oklahoma panhandle.   Ozarks, perhaps?  She wasn’t sure.

No houses broke the enormous trees.  No help.  She was trapped in the wilderness.

Karina let go off her bandage and it fluttered in the wind, floating with the breeze until it fell, like a dying bird, into the trees below.   She wanted to cry.  Hovering on the verge of tears, she leaned on the windowsill and tried to steady herself.

The ache in her arm pushed her to scream at the sheer mind-boggling unfairness of it: at being attacked, kidnapped, hurt, forced, held down by brute force, robbed of her daughter, stripped of her freedom.  At being plucked from her life and dumped in the middle of nowhere, with every human connection severed.  At being overpowered by something that wasn’t suppose to exist.   At being owned.  Only a day ago, she felt reasonably safe, secure in the knowledge that she could dial 911 at any moment and bring a police cruiser to her door.   She had rights.  She had protections.  She was a person.

Karina closed her eyes and breathed in the breeze.  She was still a person.  No matter how they treated her, she had to treat herself as if she was still a person, because the moment she lost her self-respect, her identity, she would give up on any chance of escape.  She couldn’t stand up to them physically.  They could do horrible things to her body and she wouldn’t be able to stop them.  But no matter how deeply they clawed, they couldn’t get at her core.  Karina took a deep breath and pushed from the windowsill.

#

A cloud of oily smoke greeted Karina in the kitchen.  By the stove, Henry cursed, slid several charred pieces of bacon out of the pan with a spatula, and deposited them onto a plate.  He saw her and waved the spatula around, flinging hot drops of grease onto the table.  “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she answered.  “My daughter?”

The spatula pointed to Henry’s right.  “Through that doorway.”

Karina forced herself not to run.   She skirted the table and walked through the doorway into a living room.  Her heart pounded.

A small shape curled on a couch, hidden by a green blanket.  Karina pulled back the covers.  Emily lay on the pillow.  Her mouth was open slightly, her eyes were closed, her hair a tangled mess.

Karina knelt, hugged her gently, put her face to Emily’s cheek, and clenched herself, trying not to cry.

“Daniel brought her early in the morning.”  Henry said softly from the doorway.  “Lucas already called the main house.  They have a nice room set up for her.”

Karina turned.  “I want her to stay with me.”

Henry looked uncomfortable.  “There is a reason why the three of us are separated from the main house.  Of the entire family, with the exception of Arthur, Lucas is the most feared, Daniel is most despised, and I’m least trusted.”  He paused.  “This house isn’t the best place for a child.”

She thought of Lucas and the violent rage rolling off him.  A whole house full of strangers like him and nobody to protect Emily.  She had to shield her from them.  Karina clenched her hands.  Screaming and hysterics would do her no good.  She had to reason with them.  She had to be smart.  ”She’s my daughter.  She’s safest with me.”

“Speak to Lucas,” Henry suggested.  “I’m sure he will permit some sort of visitation.”

Lucas.  Lucas had said he owned both of them.  She had to make him understand.  Karina fixed Emily’s blanket and rose.  “Can I make her breakfast?  Or should I ask Lucas’s permission?”

Henry stepped aside.  “You’re welcome to any food we have.”  He cleared his throat.

The fridge contained eggs, several pounds of bacon, some slimy cold cuts, a hunk of mozzarella cheese – dried, yellow, and brittle, and pack of green-looking hot dogs.  Karina pulled out eggs and bacon.  “Flour?”

Henry dug in one of the cabinets, looking lost, frowned, and opened a door, revealing a huge supply room.  “I think in here somewhere.”

She stepped into the room.  Rows and rows of wooden shelves, filled with cans and jars, a huge spice rack, fifty-pound bags of sugar, flour, rice…  Enough food to feed three men for years.  “Are you expecting a long siege?”

“You never know,” Henry said with a thin smile.  “We’ve had a few.”

“You, Daniel, Lucas, me, Emily…  Is anybody else coming?”

“No.  Does this mean we’re invited to the meal?”

“I’m using your food.”

Henry exhaled, picked up a plate of black bacon strips, and dumped them into trash.  “Thank God.”

She opened the window first, letting the kitchen air out, and set about making breakfast. Henry parked himself by refrigerator and watched her. There was something disquieting about Henry. When she looked at him, she got an impression of length: long limbs, long frame, long face. Even though she vaguely recalled him to be the slightly shorter than Lucas, he appeared taller. He seemed lean, almost thin, but even that impression was deceiving – his sweatshirt sleeves were pulled up to his elbow, revealing forearms sculpted with hard muscle.   He smiled often, but the curving of his lips lacked emotion.   It was paper-thin, an automatic, knee-jerk reaction.

She found granny smith apples in the bottom of the fridge and set them to fry slowly, sprinkling them with cinnamon and brown sugar.

“It smells divine,” Henry murmured.

“You don’t cook often.” The bacon rack was missing in action, or perhaps they didn’t have one. She layered a plate with paper towels, placed the strips on top and popped it into microwave.

“On the contrary. I cook quite frequently, out of sheer necessity. Unfortunately, most of what I produce is inedible. Daniel is even worse than me, if such a thing is possible. Lucas can grill quite well when pushed to it, but in the kitchen his idea of a meal involves a raw piece of meat, burned on the outside.   Adrino was our cook.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dead. About nine months ago.”

She paused to look at him. “I’m sorry.”

Henry nodded. “Thank you.”

Karina resumed stirring the pancake batter. “How did he die?”

“Lucas bit him in a half.”

Ice slid down her skin.

“Was he a member of your family?”

‘”He was. He was Lucas’s cousin on his mother’s side and my stepbrother.”

Karina found the griddle and sat it on the burners to heat up. She stirred the apples with a wooden spoon, pulled the bacon out of the microwave and peeled it from paper towels.

“I can do that,” Henry offered.

“Thank you.” She poured the first pancake batter on the griddle in quick drips and watched it puff and bubble at the edges. “Why did Lucas kill him?”

“Adrino tried to murder Arthur.”

“Why?”

Henry smiled, a quick baring of teeth, meaningless and flat like a mask. “Adrino had raped a woman in the family. As a punishment, Arthur chained him for two months.”

“Chained?”

“In the courtyard. Eventually Adrino was let off the chain and everything went quite well, until he attempted to solidify Arthur’s blood during the Christmas dinner.” Henry smiled again. “You will find that we’re a violent, vicious lot, Lady Karina. All of us hate Arthur, hate each other, hate who we are, what we are, why we are. This hate is so deep within us, it’s in our bones. Lucas hates stronger than most of us. But he recognizes the simple truth: Arthur is the glue which holds us together.   May I just mention that your pancakes smell delicious? I don’t suppose there is any way I could steal one right now?”