Well, everyone, this is my new fic that I have been dying to write for some time now. I've been itching to write a Mello story for what feels like ages…
I will still be working on Through Glass, but I just couldn't wait any longer to write this…so, here's chapter one of Trails of Fire!
We all wish we owned Death Note, don't we?
…blood?
The only taste that overrides the sweaty, foul cotton stuffed into her mouth is the pungent flavor of her own blood. It is seeping through the slits of her teeth onto her bruised lips, left to meander down her chin and eventually fall to its death on the cold floor that she has been splayed upon.
I…can't move…
Where she is, Bea Magill is clueless. The bastards have blindfolded her, cutting off yet another vital sense that could ease her confusion down a notch. However, she is fully aware of the voices swelling around her in a blurry vertigo. As the fog in her brain begins to dissipate, Bea listens, shivers, bleeds against heartless cement.
"Man, you better hope that ol' Jack doesn't see this one," a man grumbles. "You know he's always liked them a little soft 'round the edges."
…soft? Are they going to…no, no, no…please, no…
Before her mind can wander a second longer, another man speaks, gruff and threateningly close to her face. "Nah, I think Jack'll have to put up a fight with Rev for her. She's a clean one, alright."
Bea stifles the urge to vomit. His breath is nothing short of rancid, and it stings her nose with a vile bite. She squints her eyes shut beneath the blindfold and clenches her fists desperately behind her back; her wrists are most likely tattered from the harsh chord that ties them together, making her immobile.
Where am I…? What's going to happen to me…?
In an instant, there are rough pads of fingers against her temples, ripping the blindfold away from her eyes and mussing her hair.
She would have preferred being blind than beholding the sight before her.
The man is leering into her face, grinning like a madman, with teeth nearly rotting out of his skull and eyes bulging out of their sockets. Bea impulsively shuts her eyes again, blocking out the horror that is this man, this monster, but feels his fingers forcing them open once more to look at him. Her nails are digging so furiously into her palms that more blood flows from her body, in which is feeling more mangled by the second as her nerves sharpen from their oblivion, and her terror dominates her eyes as they begin to blur with tears.
He chuckles and smears the falling droplets down her cheeks until fresh ones arrive for him to assault and belittle. "Don't cry, little miss," he hisses, "we're gonna take real good care of you here. Right, Biff?"
The other man, a beefy, fat-lipped one with a head shaped like a massive melon, jerks with a snort of a laugh. "Yeah, that's right."
They know that she is terrified, and Bea knows that they are very pleased that they have such an effect on her. Against her will, she whimpers and tries to wriggle away, but only earns a chorus of cackles in return when she fails miserably. There are men in the doorway, men standing against the walls, men mocking her for having a normal human reaction after awakening to a cold floor, a bloody mouth, and an ape of a man mere inches away from her face.
If there is a calm fiber remaining in her body, it flees the scene the second that the man takes his knuckles and glides them across her chin to collect a thin stream of blood. Bea stares in horror as his grin stretches wider before painting her cheek with the scarlet that he has stolen from her, and uses the energy that has not been wittled into dust to roll away from him. As her hands are pressed into the floor with her weight, she releases a strangled scream through the gag in her mouth at the sudden ambush of white-hot pain that pulses around her wrists once the chord makes a clean slice along the soft skin.
More blood. More sticky red tributaries slithering down her arms and staining her denim jacket.
More laughter, as well, pulsing around her ears and intensifying her humiliation. Bea faces the wall and feels her mental barrier snap and shatter as she tries to sob, but is only reminded of the putrid cotton and coppery blood invading her mouth. She cannot cry, but she can break.
In which Bea does as she is flipped back over and tugged at below her waist. Before she has time to react, her skirt is being clawed at until it is a pastel heap at her ankles, and she kicks wildly at the air that is now suffocating her in a mad attempt to strike her potential rapist. Her ankles are caught by another man, one that she has not seen before, as bony fingers latch around her underwear.
Mercy cannot be asked for when there is no compassion in the room. Bea learns this all too quickly as the gag is removed from her mouth and she lets loose a scream, a shrill pleading for a leniency that simply is not there.
"N-no!" she shrieks, her legs still in full throttle against the men pinning her down. "Get off of me! You don't know what you-"
"Wrong answer, baby cakes," a stranger growls into her ear. He takes hold of her hair and yanks it to one side to expose her neck, and in spite of her vicious thrashing, she is somehow contained against the floor. Her underwear remain intact, but her fear is a violent cannon that is imploding around her head and into the air in futile kicks and screams for someone, for anyone to show her a fraction of care.
Just before she is exposed to the entire clan of men, a door swings open. Bea turns her head sharply to see who is entering, but her view of the scene is obscured by her own tears and the group surrounding her pathetic form. The room falls silent, as if on cue at a rehearsal; as if this entire diatribe upon the sixteen-year-old girl on the floor was nothing more than a trial run, a take one of a cinematic feature. She is the helpless leading lady sprawled out onto the floor for the supporting actors to feast upon, before her hero vaults through the door and sweeps her away into safety.
If the situation was not what it is, the idea could have sparked a smile on her lips. But, as it is, Bea sniffles and shudders upon the cement floor of the room and waits for a remedy.
She is hastily thrown her skirt, as if she can possibly put it back on in her unaided state, and the men scatter from around her as the new arriver stands in the doorway.
Bea cannot possibly look at whoever it is, not half-naked and blood-streaked and sobbing feebly on her side. She shuts her eyes tightly and awaits a strike or a question.
There is a deadly pause before a voice of lethal calm speaks, a voice that can only be compared to a sharp metal being seared into shards of glass. It is a young voive, nevertheless, lacking the hardness of age that is apparent in the other older men, but one that holds far more clout and blood-curdling resilience than Bea has heard all night.
"I suppose that this was the best you could do, Biff?"
Biff. She knows this name, she knows the face that it belongs to, but the man has retreated to the other side of the room instead of the three foot distance that had once been between she and the man. He clears his throat before responding with, "Well, boss, we couldn't find him anywhere in the house, so we just-"
"She was the only one in the house, boss," another man chimes in, greatly resembling a street rat with his dotty voice and long, narrow nose. Bea shudders at the thought of said man scuttling over to her and picking her apart like a fresh hunk of cheese.
The young man (she presumes that it is a young man; something about his voice strikes her as being younger than the others in spite of the effect his presence has on them) does not respond immediately, and Bea still cannot catch a glimpse of him. She imagines him to be the cliché villian in the black and white movies that she used to watch; slick black hair swirled into intricate designs atop his head, a dashing smirk and a heady gaze, and sharp clothing that demands the attention of everyone in the room.
So far, he already possesses the demand of attention without having to request it aloud. This alone frightens her.
Whatever he says, they'll do…oh, please let this one be a good guy…did they knock one of my teeth out…?
It would explain the blood, and a quick assessment of her tongue and a sprint of pain tells her that one of her top teeth, near the corner of her lips, has been swiped from the bridge of pearls. Why she did not notice the pain before can only be explained by the tirade of panic that has been exponentially swelling in her stomach, and just before she believes to nearly vomit from the fetid copper dripping down her chin and her racing nerves, the young man speaks again.
"Then you'll find him," he snaps, his voice reverberating around the walls of the room. "I don't care if you have to search the whole fucking country, but you will find him, got it?"
Bea's hopes of this man being a hero are slashed in the throat barely before they can breathe. Without even having a glance at his face, she knows that this man is seething; his chilling voice does the work for him, and she whimpers from both the pulsing pain in her raw wrists and her dread. Something is going to happen to her, something brutal and R-rated and immoral, and she will be completely unable to stop them.
He speaks again. "Is this true? Were you the only one in your house?"
Goodness, why is he so angry? Could it possibly be her enraging him so callously?
"Answer me!" he orders. "Were you the only one in your house?!"
Bea intuitively clenches her fists, which only leads to a steadier blood flow from her wounds. "I don't know," she says feebly, "I-"
"Speak up!"
Another sob, more trembling. "I don't know! I c-can't remember anything!"
This is true in its entirety. When trying to think back to before waking up in this room, Bea is unable to. Her mind is an endless, endless blank, and she hears a strangled growl when she begins to cry again at her ineptitude. "Oh, Christ," one of the men mutters.
"Gag her," the young man at the doorway stipulates. "She isn't any good, just like I figured."
"N-no, please!" She shakes her head, she kicks ferociously, she screams and cries until her throat is sore, but it does not stop the gang from moving in around her to silence her. One is holding the blood-soaked cotton that had been forced within her mouth earlier, the others are simply staring at her heartlessly as she pleads for pity.
The cotton is shoved into her mouth, and a hearty kick to her head sends her mind reeling. Muted voices swirl in her ears in a mess of indecipherable sounds and vowels, and through her hazy vision, she sees the gang scattering carelessly away from the barely-cognizant minor in the corner of the room.
She looks to the doorway in desperation. The last thing she sees before the door is slammed into pitch darkness is a flash of golden hair.
I'll delve deeper into why Bea is there in the first place in the next chapter…it'll all make sense in time, hopefully.
Matt will also most definitely be in this, by the way. How could I resist?
Reviews are greatly appreciated!
Until next time.
phollie.