Devil to PayPart 22(Note. I have pieced together what happened from what Lighe told me afterwards. I wanted to get it all straight in my own mind, too. This is the best way for me to do it. See the whole picture. ....) Andy stood when Elijah and his uncle - his fucking "uncle!" - came into the cave. He sat down again, looking sick. But not as fucking sick as I was. The word 'uncle' kept pounding in my brain. Smiley pushed Lighe towards the wall. "Sit!" he commanded, as if Lighe was a dog. Lighe lifted his head and looked him straight in the eye. He started to pull his jeans on. "Leave that!" Basil barked. "I still have a mind to have you later, pretty one, if Tino doesn't want you. Tino?" Tino shook his head. His gun was still pointed at Lighe. Another man came through the cave door, armed with a gun, and pointed it at Lighe. Tino put his away. I was shaking. The shock was too fucking much. I was petrified with fear, not for myself, but for my Lighe. What if the bastard had him after all I'd gone through to save him? What if he killed him for spite? What the fuck could I do about it, any of it? Smiley leered and moved towards me. "Too clever for you, were we not?" he gloated. "You thought you had escaped, my friend. I - I let you go! It was too difficult keeping you confined...feeding you without adequate provisions. Guarding you. So I let you go. I knew where you'd be." I made myself look at him. I held myself so rigid I almost snapped. He wasn't going to see me shake. Not this bastard. He was so full of himself he didn't notice. "Then Constantine thought of a brilliant plan - such a worthy leader of my group he will be after my days! - to lead you here, to his grandmother's house - my aunt's house. With a radio telephone to keep in touch with me." His grin grew even broader. "Help was SO near, if only you'd known it, my friends!" I was speechless. Tino? Andy? Oh, fucking hell! How come we got it so wrong? I groaned at the way it had turned out, and wondered what the hell had happened to Billy. Lighe gave me an anguished look. "Sblom?..." "Silence, little bitch! Speak when I say so. Not another word!" Lighe closed his mouth, and lowered his eyes. Only me - so used to his body language by now, I could read his every move like a book - saw defiance in every limb. Andy stood again, and said something in his own language. Smiley smiled. The bastard. The cunt. "Speak in English, Andrea. I want them to understand. To know what I shall do. Every detail of what I intend to do." "What do you intend, uncle?" Smiley was standing at my side, now, prodding me, with the toe of his boot. He didn't look at Andy when he spoke...he looked at me. My bowels began to loosen. I was so fucking scared then, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I just hoped I wouldn't shit myself - not in front of them. Not in front of my Lighe. "I intend, Andrea, to have this whore once more. Yes, it'll please me to make him scream - and scream again. After he has finished screaming, I shall take my knife...the one your father gave me...and cut his cock off and shove it down his throat. Oh, not to kill him! To show him no-one, no-one defies me, and gets away with it. No-one!" I heard the words but they didn't make sense. I couldn't think he meant me. What had I done? It was only when I registered the gasp from Lighe, the shock and disbelief. "Jesus!" was all he said. I knew then. Me. This was going to happen to me. Smiley was enjoying this. He carried on. "If he survives, he'll never be able to have his little catamite again, and his despair in that, although I shall not see it, will afford me much pleasure. I shall leave his balls. Thus the desire will remain, but not the performance." "You can't do this!" Lighe's protest filled the cave. I didn't think of the danger that put him in. Smiley's words paralysed me. I couldn't think properly. "Tino, push that metal skewer in the fire - he'll need cauterising." He said it in a calm, even tone, like a man ordering a pint at the local. I glanced over at Lighe, and looked quickly away. If I never see that expression on his face again, it'll be a day too soon. Tino just stood there for a moment - then moved to put the large, flat-ended metal skewer in the heart of the smouldering fire. I gaped at it. Surely this couldn't happen. It was a sick joke...any moment now Smiley would laugh and call us cowards and maybe beat me but not this.... Andy slumped down, as if his legs wouldn't hold him any longer. "But Uncle...you said they would not be hurt!" he pleaded. "You promised us...Tino and me...that after the ransom was paid, you would free them unharmed!" Smiley smiled again. "I lied", he said softly. "You should know me better than that by now, nephew. Besides, the ransom has not yet been paid. Negotiations are still going on, and I feel like...I shall leave my mark on him!" Lighe raised his head. The words hissed from him. "You've done that already, you sick fuck. Leave him be. Take me instead." I don't remember screaming a protest. Lighe said I did. I remember the contempt in Smiley's words. "I will. Do not worry, little bitch. But first him." His eyes bored into mine like fucking lasers. The man was off his head...anyone could see that. A bead of saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth. I think I started to pray then. No one was coming to stop him. There was a noise outside. I prayed it wasn't Bill or any of the others. The man in the cave mouth went out to investigate. "Where are our friends?" Lighe asked, looking again at the floor. Tino moved to stand in front of him. "They are safe, Elijah," he said. "They are in the farmhouse, under guard. They are safe." I know I should have felt something but I couldn't. I was trying to remember the prayers I should say and they wouldn't come. Only the same words over and over. Nighttime prayers from when I was a kid. "Save your prayers, my fine friend," Smiley snapped. "I am all the God you will know or need." He put one leg over mine, and stood over me, grinning. He opened his fly, took out his cock, which had begun to swell, and pissed all over me. I choked with the shock of it. Andy made a sobbing sound in his throat, and went over to sit by Lighe. Lighe held his hand. Tino didn't blink, but moved to the cave mouth, and looked out. I tried to wipe the warm piss from my eyes with my hands. It stung like hell. Sick bastard. Tino came back. I wanted this to be over. Smiley was staring at me. I was staring at his dick. It grew harder. My bowels rolled, again. Please! Please Lighe's God, let me be brave... Andy was shivering so hard, Lighe took him in his arms, and held him close, his head away from us, so he couldn't see. He was a child, not a man. No child should witness such.... Andy put his hand into Lighe's. It was not empty. The man with the gun had returned. He stood there, silent and approving. This was their way. There was no other. Smiley knelt across my legs, pressing them into the ground. He took my arms, and pushed them hard under my back, trapping me. Then he took out the knife. I wanted to shout and scream abuse at him but my throat was tight. I think I started to cry. He intended to cut my jeans off me, but he missed. The knife went through the waist of them all right, but it went though me as well. I screamed as a red hot pain scoured my gut. Tino moved. Something snapped in him, I suppose. Like lightening he bridged the gap between us. "No, uncle - please! Do not hurt him any longer...this is not right !" He tried to push his uncle off me, just as he'd done when Lighe had tried to save me in the farmhouse. But Smiley was a man with a mission. He shoved Tino aside. Tino got to his feet and came at him again. Smiley struggled to his feet, with Tino clinging like a monkey to his back. And as he turned, Smiley took hold of Tino - his own nephew - and flung him as hard as he could against the cave wall. Tino hit the wall hard and his head seemed to bounce off the rock. There was a cracking sound. He slumped to the floor. Anyone could see he was dead before he landed. Andy ran to his brother, and took him in his arms. "Tino! Tino! Tino!" he whispered, over and over again, cradling his brother softly. Tino was dead, and there wasn't even a mark on him. Smiley didn't even glance at them. All his attention was on me. He continued his work with the knife. I knew then I wasn't going to survive this. Lighe moved slightly. I couldn't see how, or what happened, but the man in the doorway dropped like a rock. "Basil?" Lighe whispered, just that one word. But - my God - the tone of his voice literally frightened the shit out of me... Basil... Smiley... turned his head towards the voice. Lighe's arm moved so fast it hardly registered. Smiley fell across me, his eye socket pierced by a little pebble. Then another. His head hit my stone table with a crunch. The second pebble lay embedded in his cheek. It had a number 10 drawn on it, I noticed. One of Andy's football team. One sigh, one twitch and he was dead. Lighe threw down the slingshot - his slingshot that Andy had slipped to him - and ran to me. He pushed the dead weight of the mad bastard off me, and took me in his arms, cradling me just as Andy was cradling his Tino. "Sblom! My Sblom!" he kissed my face, piss and all - crying softly. My eyes were stinging. I had shit myself... and my gut was burning, the pain coming in waves. My last coherent thought as the SAS popped into the cave and started barking orders at us, was "He did that for me"... Then I was falling into darkness. |