Chapter Twenty-One
Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO or HoO series by Rick Riodan.
*PLEASE READ MESSAGE BELOW*
Okay, this chapter, and probably this one only, is rated M for torture scenes, and torture scenes only. Nothing sexual. I've read several other stories rated T with torture in them, and usually the authors come back in the next chapter and apologize for not warning their readers. So, here's your warning. You can't say I didn't warn you.
That is all, read on!
Kyra's POV
"In you go." Beckendorf says, opening the vault-like door of the "department."
"Thanks Beckendorf." Nico says.
"What for?" he asks.
"Being so nice, I guess." Nico says, shrugging.
Beckendorf laughs. "Well, you are a friend." he says.
"Yea. Yea, I know." Nico says, nodding.
Beckendorf closes the door and I look around at the dungeon. It looked the same as it had when we had been taken out hours ago, but over where the chains were, there was a sort of rolling cart with a bunch of different locked boxes on it.
"Nico, what do you think that is?" I ask, nodding to the cart.
"I dunno." he says, shrugging.
We walk over and peer at it. The boxes ranged in size, some the same size as a loaf of bread, others the size of a microwave.
"I wonder what's in those." I say, bumping one of them.
"Well, sweetheart, you're about to find out." a gravelly voice says from the door.
Nico and I turn around to see two figures illuminated by the bright lights out in the hall. They enter, the larger of the two closing the door behind him, and start walking over to us.
I grab Mike and pull him behind me. The bigger man had tan looking skin and a ragged scar diagonally running from his hairline to the bottom of his jaw. He was tall and muscular, and his eyes were an orangey yellow color, like a cat's. His hair was an extremely dark brown, almost black, and it was slicked back.
The other man looked like a scarecrow. His clothes hung loosely off of his stick-like frame, and his face looked like it was made out of scars since there were so many. His eyes sort of bulged out of their sockets, like that of a pig's, and his nose was long and came to a sharp point.
"I've been waiting years for this sweet, sweet moment." Cat Eyes says, looking at me and licking his lips.
I get a bad feeling in my stomach from the way he said that. I had obviously met this man at some point in my life, I just didn't remember.
"Chain her up." he tells Scar-Face.
"What? No." Nico says, moving in front of me.
Cat Eyes grabs Nico and Mike and drags them to one of the cells. Scar-Face grabs me by the hair and pulls me over to the chains. I try getting away, but he only pulls on my hair more. I scream as he yanks at it. It felt like a vacuum cleaner was sucking all my hair off of my scalp.
"Get your hands off of my son!" Nico yells, kicking his legs, trying to break loose from Cat Eyes' strong grasp. Mike was crying and struggling to get away.
He chuckles and throws them in the cell, slamming the door before Nico had the chance to escape.
Scar-Face takes a knife out of his pocket and cuts the rope off around my wrists, then shackles me to the wall. He then cuts the bounds on my ankles and shackles those as well. Sadly, he did it before I could get a good kick at his face.
"Ah, good. You can go. I'll contact you when I'm finished with her." Cat Eyes says, patting Scar-Face on the back.
He leaves and Cat Eyes turns and looks at me.
"Do you remember me, Kyra?" he asks.
"I can't say I do." I say, grinding my teeth.
"Let me refresh your memory." he says, "It was 19 years ago. You were at Camp Half-Blood, walking through the woods. You were on your cell phone, talking to someone. I was there as well, watching you from behind the trees. I stepped on some branches and you heard me. A minute later, I came out and I talked to you for a few minutes. Remember yet?" he asks, smirking at me.
I gasp. It was him. "You—what the hell are you doing here?!" I scream, trying to launch myself at him, but only being jerked back by the chains.
"Ah, so you do remember me. I knew you would. That moment in the woods, so many years ago, I knew there was something special there." he says, his smirk broadening into a grin.
"Get away from me, Daemon." I spit.
"Oh, I'm going to do quite the opposite of that." he purrs.
He unlocks one of the boxes on the cart and opens it, revealing several different kinds of weapons and tools. He takes a remote from his pocket and presses a button. The lights in the room grow a bit brighter. He sets the remote on the cart and then takes a knife out of the unlocked box. He examines it in the light now. The blade looked wickedly sharp.
He moves towards me and I tense up. "Now, now. Not going to do anything just yet." he says.
He takes the hem of my shirt and then cuts it with the knife. He then tears it right up the middle, exposing my stomach and chest. Thankfully, I had a bra on, but that still didn't make me feel much better.
Daemon drops the knife into the box and grabs a whip of some sort. It was an awful looking whip. There were small, Celestial bronze blades attached to it. He turns back to me, an eyebrow raised and a grin on his face. I felt sick.
Then, he lashes me across the stomach. I bite my lip, refusing to give him the pleasure of hearing me scream, no matter how much it hurt.
"Aw, come now. You can show a bit more emotion than that. I know you can. If I recall correctly, you screamed like a banshee that day in the woods. That is, before I shut you up." he says, lashing me again.
He does this several more times. My skin felt like it was on fire. I could feel warm blood running down my stomach and I could hear Nico screaming himself hoarse.
"I'll say it one more time. Let me hear you screeeam." he says, lashing not my stomach, but my face.
That was when I broke. I screamed so loudly, I don't think I've ever given such an ear-shattering scream in my entire life.
Daemon throws his head back and laughs with glee.
"You're sick." I mutter, spitting blood at him.
I hear him drop the whip and I look up, my vision blurry and tinged with red. He was grabbing something from the bottom shelf of the cart. He turns around, holding a bucket.
He walks back over to me and then dumps the contents of the bucket all over me. I was instantly freezing cold. He had poured ice water on me.
"I know." he whispers, his hot, disgusting breath on my cheek.
I hear a rattling beside me and turn my head to see what it was. Nico was in the cell, gripping the bars so tightly that his knuckles were white, and shaking the door.
"You let her go, you sadistic son of a bitch! Take me instead!" he screams.
"I would, but this is just too much fun." Daemon says, cackling.
He turns back to me and grabs a dagger out of the box.
"Let's have some fun, shall we?" he asks, coming closer to me.
"I don't know what your definition of fun is, but it sure isn't close to what I consider it to be." I say.
He laughs again as I squirm, trying to get away from him, but fail. Stupid fucking chains.
The next hour was filled with mine and Nico's screams, Mike's crying, and Daemon's insane laughter.
A/N:
So uh, I think you can see why I had to rate this particular chapter M. The idea of the torture scene just smacked me in the face like a brick one day. I wrote it and then I thought about it and realized that this story is actually rated T, not M. But I wasn't going to change the rating of the whole story over just one chapter, hence the warning before the chapter actually started.
So when did you figure out that Cat Eyes was Daemon? I thought that idea was brilliant. Have the guy who did an unspeakable thing to her nearly twenty years ago come back and do something else that's pretty awful to her.
I can not wait to get these stupid fucking braces off. I had another readjustment today and now I have three rubber bands in my mouth. It's kinda hard to explain where they're at, but this third one that I have to wear now is finishing off the job by closing the gap between my front teeth and my bottom teeth. So, hopefully, if I remember to wear it all the time, I'll have these fuckers off in a few months. That's just my guess, but since this is the last thing that needs to be done, I'm thinking it's only going to be a few months.
Sooo, on Friday in the surprise update I mentioned that my mom and I were going to the animal shelter to look at dogs? Well there was one, two sisters actually (Pepper and Snickers), and they're the cutest things. They're terrier mixes, can't remember what they're mixed with, but they shouldn't get too big. They're only three or four months old, so they're still in the puppy stage.
Anyway, I held the smaller one, Pepper, and she was the sweetest little thing. And since it's going to be my dog, we had to make sure I was the one who held her and loved on her. So my mom and I went to this little visiting room and I played with her and she didn't bark the whole time and she just wanted me to hold her. When I gave her to my mom, she sorta wiggled and my mom put her back down and she came right back to me. So I knew that she was the one.
Then, when we came out of the room to adopt her, the lady at the desk said she and her sister weren't allowed to go up for adoption til the 18th since they were strays and their owner could be looking for them.
Y'know how when an animal doesn't want to be moved and they lean all their weight in a certain direction? Well, that's what she was doing when the lady was trying to take her away from me. It literally felt like a piece of my soul was being ripped out of me and thrown into a fucking blender.
So I've been pretty down for the past few days because I've been really worried that I wouldn't get to claim Pepper. This morning though, I called the shelter and asked if she was still there or if she and her sister's owner had come and gotten them. The lady told me that they were still there and that if I really wanted Pepper, I'd have to be at the shelter gates really early since it's first come first serve.
But that makes me feel sooooo much better knowing that she's still there. Not only do I want Pepper, I feel like I need her. When I was holding her and playing with her, there was definitely a connection there.
When I get her, and I'm convinced that I will now, I'll be renaming her Zoe. Pepper is just the name the shelter gave her since she wasn't found with any tags or a microchip, same goes for her sister Snickers. I've always wanted a dog named Zoe, and she just looks like a Zoe.
So yea, I have to get up at about 6:00 tomorrow and be down there at 7:00 and wait for them to open at 11:00. Honestly though, I doubt I'll get much sleep tonight because I'll be too excited. The sleep deprivation will be worth it, I'm sure of it. And when I claim her, I won't actually get to take her home until the 23rd (maybe the 24th since they're closed on the 23rd) because they have to spay her. So, she'll basically be a Christmas present ^.^
Also, my mom's work Christmas party was last night. We went bowling and it was a lot of fun :)
I've done so much stuff since Saturday, but I'll save that for later, I feel like this AN is long enough as it is.
M/A:
"'Stop and stare
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere
Yea I know that everyone gets scared
But I've become what I can't be, oh
Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you're here not there
And you'd give anything to get what's fair
But fair ain't what you really need
Oh, can you see what I see?'"
Stop and Stare by OneRepublic.
XOXO,
Mrs-diAngelo25