Chapter 4
The first thought that crept into Lilah's consciousness was the realization that her skin felt flushed and sticky with sweat; the second was that her wrists and ankles hurt. They ached with a faint throbbing in her fingertips, and less distinctly, in her feet.
She opened her eyes to find Pylea's two suns high up in the sky - a good few hours beyond where she remembered them being - and her body propped up against something hard, wrists and ankles bound together, in the middle of what looked like a market place.
The knot of cloth wedged into her mouth muffled a series of shrill, startled noises, and suffocated her suddenly panicked breathing.
Over the general bustle of the market square at midday, one low, male voice from just behind her peripheral vision rung out, close and loud, but its words were lost on her. The language it spoke was nothing close to English.
To her far right she could see a kind of table propped up, hunks of all different colored meats dangling on display along with several animals that hadn't been butchered or skinned and were hanging stiffly, swaying with the hot, dry wind.
Her arms were twisted back uncomfortably behind her, chest arching out awkwardly. She strained her head to see that her arms were tied around a heavy wooden pole, and peeking out from the other side of that pole was a familiar set of slender shoulders - the other woman's arms bound similarly to a twin pole on the other side. One of Lilah's hands groped blindly behind her, fingertips brushing over short, unpolished nails and thin hands.
She wrapped her fingers around Fred's and squeezed.
The hand squeezed back quickly, and a muffled squeak of recognition came from the other side of the pole. Texas made no motion for their hands to part, and neither did she.
Pyleans bustled past, clutching strange chicken look-a-likes and baskets full of odd groceries. Several left her line of sight to speak with the male voice behind her - whose shouts she was beginning to recognize as a sales pitch - and then strode back past carrying messy hunks of animal under their arms.
But no one spared them more than a glance - tied to a pole on the side of the market square. Gradually her breathing slowed, Fred's fingers intertwined firmly with her own.
She remembered seeing the Twig dangling by her ankles, voice cracking as she screamed Lilah's name in a desperate pitch. Then she remembered running. She remembered stumbling and franticly tugging at the other woman's bindings. Lilah remembered panic, and then she remembered nothing.
Hot sunlight pressed down on her with an oppressive intensity. She could feel beads of sweat rolling down her face to drip off of her chin into the dirt, leaving tiny wet spots that dried up almost instantly in the heat. On top of being a prisoner in a hell-dimension, that dimension would have to have atrocious weather - the kind that turned people into ice-cubes at night, and puddles in the daytime.
Angelus – the designer of this little holiday - was steadily making his way to the top of her hit-list.
A particularly vicious burst of wind picked up, and blew a bout of dirt into her eyes.
And she was already thinking of torture methods - peeling off his skin, burning him alive, slowly cutting him up piece by piece; all company favorites. Of course now, she had no company to perform said methods, but she was a capable woman, she'd figure something out.
Even with her eyes pressed tight shut, for several minutes the dirt beat like sandpaper over her unprotected face, and she could feel moisture slipping out from the corners of her closed eyes, trying to force out the dust. The world swam before her in a painful blur of browns and greens, all dirt and Pyleans - muck and green bastards that hunched over their goods and covered their faces, kicking more dust up as they walked.
One such Pylean - a short, fat woman with beady eyes – was suddenly much closer to Lilah than she would have liked, shoes carelessly kicking up extra dirt into her face as the woman circled the poles they were tied to; leaning down first to examine Fred, then moving to scrutinize her.
The woman's thin eyes narrowed further as she squinted at her, leaning in close enough that Lilah had to hold her breath not to take in the woman's foul smell. The woman spat words into her face, and several seconds later a Pylean man, twice her size, appeared finally from the other side of the pole, speaking in the same voice that had been ringing out from behind her since she'd woken.
Towering over the Pylean woman, he looked from her to Lilah, and back again anxiously, and at the woman's gesture grabbed Lilah roughly by the chin and tilted her head from side to side. Then with filthy hands forced her mouth open - showing the woman her teeth.
His dirty, invasive fingers in her mouth triggered a gag-reflex that she scarcely stifled.
When he finally released her, Lilah did her best not to choke on the wad of cloth his fingers had stuffed further back in her mouth, choking instead on a series of flustered, half-muffled coughs. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the woman produce what seemed to be a purse, gathering a series of coins in her hand and beginning to hold them out to the man before taking one more, tentative look at Lilah.
Then suddenly the woman was reaching down and jerking up the base of her shirt, revealing her wounded middle.
Her gag muffled a yelp as the woman viciously raked her fingers over her stomach wound, screaming all the while at the butcher, before moving to point her now bloodied fingers menacingly in the man's face.
But their argument fell on deaf ears as Lilah realized with a second look at her bare, blood-crusted stomach, that every last thread of bandaging had been removed. While they were unconscious, they had been examined.
Her body lurched forward with another thick wave of nausea that she barely suppressed.
Fred's hands were in hers, small and bony, but holding on with a necessity that under any other circumstances, would have struck Lilah as funny. Under any other circumstances.
The Pyleans screamed at one another viciously for several minutes, green faces turning greener, before the woman finally plopped several coins into the man's hand; seemingly less than she had held out before.
Then the man was gone, leaving the woman to tap her foot impatiently till he returned, carrying what looked like two thick, metal rings.
And the fear that the Texan's suddenly shaking hands conveyed was not lost on her. Lilah had done her homework - she knew what those collars were for. They electrocuted human slaves into submission, or simply blew their heads off.
The green bastard was in her face again, his hand taking a rough fist of her hair and yanking, stretching her throat out to the side. She writhed in place, jerking away from him and cursing the gag that prevented her from biting. She was punished with a swing from the man's basketball-sized fist that hit hard in the jaw, and slammed the back of her head with a thud into the pole.
There was a click as the heavy, metal collar clamped around her neck – the silver band fastening itself shut with an electronic beep.
Then the hand in her hair was gone and a yelping noise, as if from pain, came from behind her. Fred's nails dug into the lawyer's palms as the same electronic beep sounded a second time. All the while Lilah's head pounded, closed eyes still stinging from the dust.
Then the huge, calloused hands were on her again, prying her hands out of Fred's. Her eyes flashed open in time to see her own arms - suddenly free from their bindings - drop to her sides as the Pylean moved cut her ankles loose.
And the man was gone. The portly woman stared down at her tentatively in his absence, and for the first time in a long time, Lilah didn't bother trying negotiation. The woman barked what sounded like an order.
Lilah's now free hands worked to pry the knot of cloth from inside her mouth, which she spit out in a hacking cough, swallowing with relief as she took in several long breaths.
Her cheek stung where the butcher had hit her, and she longed passionately for her cell phone, where the first number on her speed-dial connected her to Wolfram and Hart's assassination squad. Though, on second thought, what she really wanted was the second number on her speed-dial - the torture committee. Death was too quick, what the butcher and the wench really deserved was to spend eternity screaming.
Her gaze shifted to find that the Texan was standing upright beside her, shaking violently with her fists clenched rigidly at her side, and eyes wide with a dreamy kind of horror - the kind that combines past and present terrors.
The Pylean barked the same order again, lip curling with malice as she produced what looked like a remote, finger hovering over one of the buttons as she pointed it at Lilah's collar.
She took the hint. With some level of effort. and one hand on the pole for support, Lilah pulled herself to her feet; spluttering vicious curses all the while.
Her head throbbed and her eyes burned, and she wanted nothing more than to bludgeon the butcher and the green wench to death. Karmically, she really didn't think that wasn't too much to ask.
Lilah had no sooner hunched over, free arm clutching her stomach, than thin arms were around her. One of Fred's hands curled around her waist, the other moving Lilah's hand off of the pole and over a small set of shoulders.
Lilah tried to speak, but the air passed through her lips soundlessly. Big, brown eyes looked back at her. They were wet with tears, but the Texan's jaw was set.
It was the first time that she'd seen Fred face to face since she'd come to - and she saw now that half of it was decorated with cuts and scratches. The hunter had probably just cut her out of the tree, and let her fall on her face. Funny image - under any other circumstances.
The silver band around Fred's neck glinted in the sunlight and she felt the weight of her own, heavy around her throat. Slaves. Lilah Morgan, a fucking slave. Her hand twitched as the desire for her speed-dial came back in full force.
Instead, at the demon woman's impatient gesture, she made her way across the marketplace with Texas under her arm, the two of them trailing after the wench. The sun skewed the Pylean's stumpy shadow along the ground beside her; and in its wake Lilah found that her shadow and Fred's had morphed into one.
The wench slammed the barn door shut behind them, plunging them into near-darkness. Several seconds later, a heavy lock clicked on the other side of the door.
Lilah's stomach ached heavily from walking. Apparently the green bitch lived several miles outside of town, several miles for which they were forced to practically sprint after her.
For a pint-sized, tubby thing, she sure could hustle.
In the back half of the seven by nine foot barn Lilah could see a pile of hay, the rest of the floor was bare earth. Leaning back against the wood wall and clutching her side, the lawyer slumped down onto the dirt.
Fred hovered by the door.
For several moments all was silence - both of them fixing their eyes on the floor. Eventually, the Texan's voice broke the quiet in a shuddering sigh "Are you..does your stomach-"
"It's bleeding again." Lilah's eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, picking out new details on Fred's face as she slid down beside her, eyes still leaking quiet tears. The metal ring around the other woman's neck glinted in a stray ray of light.
Lilah's own blood moistened the palm of her hand as she pressed it to her stomach, the gash oozing slowly where the green bitch had touched it.
Texas cocked her head to get a better look as Lilah lifted her hand away, the physicist touching fingertips lightly to the wound's edges. Shivers of pain traced through the lawyer at the touch.
She stared past Fred, eyes fixing on the cracks and crevices in the barn where sunlight leaked through in streaks, illuminating patches of the dirt. Her eyes felt painfully dry, stinging in the afternoon heat.
It took several moments for her to notice that Fred was no longer studying her wound, and had crumpled into herself - thin frame shaking with sobs.
Lilah looked away in annoyance, but the sobs only got louder. Her eyes narrowed. "Oh stop sniveling!"
For a moment brown eyes looked at her in horrified silence, but lowered to the floor as the physicist's small chest began heaving even more uncontrollably. Lilah stared past her at the cracks in the wall.
The sobbing continued, scarcely muffled by Fred's hands. Lilah's fingers flexed, thinking of her speed-dial. Anything to shut her up.
"Oh just, fuck. Here" Lilah's arms wrapped around the Texan's small shoulders, pulling her into an abrupt embrace.
Fred didn't move towards her, but she did nothing to move away either. Lilah gathered the other woman's thin body up in her arms, and Fred's frame, racked with violent sobs, shook against her as Lilah eased the brunette's head down to rest on her chest. The other woman's breath and tears were hot on her skin, and she found her fingers stroking and petting down dark, tangled hair as Fred's wept into her chest, cries slowly fading into whimpers.
And all the while her side ached, dry eyes stinging in the afternoon heat.