Under the pillow, I gripped a six-inch-long nail made for holding seven-foot steel swords to the wall. It was large, heavy, and rusty. If I couldn’t kill him, at least he’d die of an infection after I got him.
Hanna’s eyes found mine, and she begged me to do it and she begged me not to at the same time. “I’ll come with you, Doug,” she finally said.
“That’s a good girl. This one”—he jerked his head to me—“I’m gonna sell.”
“You don’t own me,” I said.
He didn’t want to kill me. How gallant of him.
He tugged Hanna’s hand and turned to leave.
I leapt out of bed and onto his back. Before he screamed and woke up the entire place, I jabbed the nail though the back of his neck, then hung on his back with my hands over his mouth. We fell, my back hitting the floor with a thud. The big man on top of me struggled, but I kept my hands over his mouth. From the back of his neck, blood seeped onto my face and spread on the floor. He kept jerking, trying to get away, while I chastised myself for not jabbing him harder.
I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. They hadn’t fed us in three days, and I was skinny to begin with, so I gave it the best I had. Hanna rushed to us and placed her hands over mine, her eyes filled with horror. But she understood we had to do this. If they kept drinking and forgetting to bring us food and water while keeping us prisoners, we’d die.
Even with the nail in the back of his neck and our hands over his mouth and nose choking him, it felt like he took a year to die. With one last twitch, his body stilled.
Hanna’s bloody hands flew to her mouth. “Oh dear God, what did we do?”
I pushed the body off me and sat up. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I said, “We had to. If he kept getting drunk, one day he’d forget us and we’d starve in here. Don’t think about it.”
She sat next to me, and I hugged her shaking body. “Forget about him. You have maybe fifteen minutes to get out of here before the others find him. Go.”
“Go where?”
“Anywhere but here.” I couldn’t leave Mike, even though I’d pay for this.
“I don’t have money, food, nothing.”
“I heard them say there’re cans in the broken-down truck, maybe a half a mile from here. Go north, and it should be there.”
Bending, I searched Doug’s pockets, looked for money, but found nothing. Of course, the ugly bastard had gambled it all. “Shit,” I mumbled. “Nothing.”
Hanna handed me a brown sack, and I took it. She glanced at the nail. “I might need that.”
“Good idea.” I placed my foot on his shoulder and yanked out the nail. It dripped with blood, and I wiped it on my dirty black drape. It used to be a dress. Now it was a drape. I spat on his dead body. Men of Earth had come to our circus, promised us money in exchange for room and board. Now that I knew they intended to take some of us girls to Texas so they could breed us with whomever and by force if necessary, I knew better.
I should’ve run away with that one blonde girl when I had the chance. She’d picked up on their bad intentions when they’d killed the first performer. She’d taken off into the night. I stayed, staking my fate on Mike. Poor Mike. He couldn’t keep me safe from these monsters.
I turned to follow Hanna outside.
Then froze in midstep.
A man stood at the door. Behind him, three more observed us the way spiders watched trapped butterflies. The one in the front flipped the light switch. Doug’s dead body lay at my feet. Our hands, our dresses, our faces were bloody.
“Stay,” he ordered the other three men and closed the door behind him. He walked past us and sat on our bed. “Hm. What to do with murderers?”
“It was self-defense,” I said. “He attacked me.” I pointed at my swollen cheek.
The man observed me still, and then I saw what could only be described as a lightbulb light up in his eyes. He’d figured out what to do with me. “You’re a killer. You will kill again. Come with me. I have something for you to do.”
“And Hanna?”
“You will repent for your crime. If you’re a good girl, nothing will happen to Hanna or the old man you care about.”
Chapter Two
Mayhem
On a perfectly cold January night, instead of hunting, I sat on my ass. Kill me now and let me die a great hunter before I go down in history as Mayhem, the lazy boy in the chair. My fourth auction would begin within the next half hour. It seemed I was not to die a great hunter; I was to die of boredom right here in my leather recliner. I threw a leg over the chair’s arm and reclined farther back as my tribe filled the large room. It used to be some high-end hotel’s ballroom and now that the building had been remodeled, it served as my tribe’s court.