Over Exposure (Darkroom Saga) Read online

  Over

  Exposure

  by

  Poppet

  A Darkroom Novel

  #3

  A Wild Wolf Publication

  Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2013

  Copyright Author Poppet

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  All characters and locations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.wildwolfpublishing.com

  Reading order of the Darkroom Series

  #1 : Darkroom

  #2 : Satanarium

  #3 : Over Exposure

  Prologue:

  From Darkroom

  “Please …” I take her hand and squeeze it as the nurse injects more shit into my body, “Find Victor. I love him. Please…”

  She nods and her partner leads her out of the door where I hear him say, “Well that's a classic case of Stockholm syndrome.”

  I'm so angry, but I can't focus as the sedative takes control of my faculties.

  I thought about that tree, and the wind. I did not bow and I did not break. I became the wind. I was soaring free. I was strong, and happy, and carefree. Nothing can catch the wind. Nothing can hold it, hurt it, break it. I was the wind. But the wind doesn't blow anymore. The world that I lived in has dissolved like tears left in the sun. Evaporated to nothing.

  “Oh Victor …” I miss you.

  I do not hear when the door opens again. I do not hear the entry of a new man into my life. I do not hear his words as Seth holds my hand.

  In loving memory of Victor Ward

  He was treated harshly, but endured it humbly;

  he never said a word.

  Like a lamb about to be slaughtered, like a sheep about to be sheared,

  he never said a word.

  He was arrested and sentenced, and led off to die,

  and no one cared about his fate.

  ~ Isaiah 53:7

  Chapter 1

  Serve the Lord with fear

  and rejoice with trembling

  ~ Psalms 2:11

  Present Day

  Shauna:

  My headache is so intense it shrinks my eyeballs.

  Rasp.

  The impenetrable dark, the rustling sounds, the hideous inhalations... This is a nightmare. Oh god please, it has to be a nightmare.

  Wake up!

  Rasp.

  “Shauna,” saws at me, the voice unfamiliar, the touch of leather on my face enough to make me wither. “You have come home.”

  Home?

  Wracking with convulsions, sandblasted with chills, I rifle through my memories, trying to piece together how I got here... again.

  “I was good,” I mumble, the trembling of my lip so severe I sound drunk. “I did everything you ordered...” Why am I here? No more torture, god, pleeeeease! “Just kill me,” I beg, my tone edging closer to hysteria.

  Rasp.

  A harsh graze hacks out a laugh, leather clad fingers cradling my cheek, the strength in them enough to implode my migraine.

  “Kill you? That's not how I reward good servants. You were made to serve me.”

  Peter set Victor up to take the fall for Vengeance. Am I here with Peter?

  Is he Vengeance?

  “I lost my baby because of you!” I manage to shout at the dark, wrangling to get away from his tainted touch, gripping emaciated courage and daring to speak my mind.

  My heart breaks again and I can't hold onto pride, curling into myself, the tears hot on my rimed skin.

  “Shhhh...” Rasp. “I lost my son. We must console one another through this hardship.”

  Son?

  Oh my fucking god! Victor's dad is Vengeance? He fucked me! He raped me, beat me, and covered me in petrol. He ruined my life!

  “You tortured me...” I wail, scrambling backwards until I connect with unyielding concrete.

  Laughing, his voice is muffled behind the mask I know he wears, “It was not I, it was my son.”

  “Which son?” I scream, gripping my hair, trying so damn hard to keep it together long enough to get answers.

  “I have many, they all serve me. And now you, you will serve me.”

  Shaking my head vehemently, I refuse!

  “I won't murder, torture, maim! I won't!”

  He sounds truly amused with the bellow of gruff laughter ruining my sanity.

  “Disobey me, and they will do worse to you.”

  Rasp.

  The heavy hand reclaims my shoulder, pinching so hard pain burdens my muscles, forcing anguish to squeal through my parched lips.

  The world distorts, dizzy and darker still, spots circling behind my eyelids, oblivion a gift in my cocoon of suffering.

  *

  Alpha / The Watcher:

  Leaving her cell I bump into Seth, looking pale, wringing his hands, pacing nervously as if waiting for his wife to fulfil labour.

  He's got a long wait. For a doctor he's dumber than chalk.

  “Father?” he blurts, halting, staring torment at me.

  My own son has no substance. He's never been a man, had a spine, stood in courage with conviction. Pathetic.

  Pulling the full leather mask off, I glare down at him, “Are you spying on my activities?”

  “No Alpha. I... just... she hasn't had enough time to recuperate after the miscarriage. She should be in bed–”

  “Are you questioning my wisdom, Seth?”

  He bows his head, staring at the floor, “No father.”

  “Fuck off, boy. When I want you, then I shall have you summoned.”

  He pauses, doubt and dispute betraying him, displayed openly in his expression, but he keeps his defective mouth shut and his arguments to himself.

  I wait until he's gone before locking the door, moving to the viewing room, showing me the woman through night-vision, letting me enjoy the moment she regains consciousness, whimpering, scratching at her naked legs, disoriented and terrified.

  Victor did well. She is perfectly conditioned. Put her in the dark and she is consumed with panic, awaiting suffering.... expecting it.

  The mind is so easy to control. Once you condition a human to pain, all we need do to ensure complete co-operation is to immerse them back into the environment where torment was their daily bread, and subservience is immediate.

  He has paved the path, now all I need do is walk down it, making the resurrected angel worthy of god.

  She trembles, it is a sign of worship. In her darkest moment she praises me, she serves with fear.

  Shauna hugs herself, wailing, “Oh god... oh god... please...” It disintegrates to sobs.

  She's calling me. My ears are not deaf, my heart is not stone, she begs me, and I will deliver her.

  Laughing, I leave the dungeon of dominion, easing out of leather, freeing cramped muscles, ready to exercise my anger on the dullard.

  Seth you have failed me, in every way.

  Chapter 2

  Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

  ~ Berenice Abbott

  Alpha:

  Stomping to the lift, I take it up, opening on his floor, stepping into the foyer, walking stealthily from room to room, pleased to see everything she owned set up on her side.

  He must be in his wing.

  Rotating my shoulders, cricking my neck, power surges through me, ready to deliver discipline.

  I sneak in, ins
pecting the weakness that is Eve's infidelity. He's shorter than all of my boys, and two heads my inferior, yet I raised him as Victor's brother. If anyone knows how to find him, this bastard does.

  “Well?” I snap, glaring at the boy who hinges guiltily to stare at me, looking away from his view through the dungeon bars which protect every window.

  One can never be too careful. We wouldn't want unwelcome intruders sneaking in here.

  He visibly wilts against the windowsill, looking like a cornered rat faced with a hungry cobra. “Father?”

  “What are you doing here, boy? If you haven't found Victor's missing body then you are unwelcome inside these doors.”

  Despair and panic flirt across drawn features, his brown eyes bleak, “I looked everywhere. I don't know where else to–”

  “I'm not your floozy, paid to listen to excuses. Get out. Don't return unless you have a corpse with you. I can't bury my son until his fucking body is recovered! Understood?”

  He nods, duress inciting the weakling to wrestle his fingers into tight knots. Substandard degenerate that he is, I should have drowned him when Eve squeezed him out. He is the boil that should have been expunged.

  “Good,” I snap, riled and aggravated. He's an imbecile, an ongoing insult that walks and breathes when I should have put him in a grave with his mother. He no more deserves Shauna than he deserves a place at my table.

  I turn to walk away when he squeaks, “What of Shauna? I haven't made her my wife yet.”

  Grief, I'm tempted to laugh at his idiocy. “Don't you worry about her, boy. She's in good hands.”

  Every sinew and muscle would like nothing better than to pound the daylights out of the entity that lives to mock me, but I need him to recover Victor. I can't rest until my firstborn is home, where he belongs.

  I will make Victor a saint and use his bones in the ossuary.

  *

  Shauna:

  The groan of objecting hinges startles me and I shrink back, pressing flat against the wall. Vengeance has no mercy and I am a wreck at the thought of what hell awaits me next.

  “Shauna?” whispers across the dark.

  “Seth?” I hiss back. “What are you–?”

  “Shhh, I don't have much time.” Warm hands that thaw my frigid bones wrap around my arm, pulling me against him, so close that I can smell the shampoo in his hair. He smells so clean. I want that, I so desperately want to be clean again.

  Bending his head, pressing against mine, he engulfs me into a hug, whispering in my ear, “I'm so sorry. If I'd known, I wouldn't have brought you here. Father wanted us safe, and I was stupid to think he'd protect you and give me the time I needed to help you heal. I'm mourning, just like you, but I have to leave. I promise you I'll leave no stone unturned. I won't return until I find him.”

  “Him?” I gasp, parched and distraught.

  “Victor.”

  Just one word injects an eternity of sorrow, his name delivering a harsh pain to my womb, to my chest cavity, bludgeoning my eyes with a fresh assault of tears.

  The last happy moment I shared with Victor was when I gave that lady my phone to take a photo of us together. Newly married and deliriously happy, it was the dawn that died before the sun rose. We had a private marriage, a civil ceremony, just the two of us. Inside that perfect bubble I had a man who cherished me, protected me, and prepared me for conflict against Vengeance, I was pregnant and delighted... but before we'd even toasted to our new life as husband and wife, everything I had, I lost. I was married for the perfect half of an hour when Peter murdered Victor in front of me and his father.

  I remember now! When he met me Vic's dad said, 'You have come home'. He said that earlier. What does it mean? Why was he dressed like Vengeance? Why does he imply I am returning 'home' when I've never been here?

  I ran for help, away from Peter and his gun, but fell, plummeting down the steep incline, landing in oncoming traffic. The pain in my abdomen was excruciating, I was haemorrhaging. I woke up in hospital with Victor's body missing, him accused of murder and falsely accused of being Vengeance, the angel who tortured me, and then … then they found the evidence in his darkroom.

  Peter planted proof. I am positive Peter is the source of all my pain and shame. My psychiatrist and the cops finally had hard evidence that I'm not mentally unstable, that what I claimed happened to me truly did. It was a paltry consolation in my despair. A despair that still shrouds me and refuses to dissipate.

  Every repulsive act Vengeance performed on me was caught on camera, the photos blown up, videos of him raping me wearing that leather suit, beating me until my eyes were swollen shut and blood and bruises covered every inch of me.

  My heart aches.

  Why would his best friend do that to me? Why?

  “Find him,” I beg Seth. “Please find him. I need him.”

  I need him the way I need spinal fluid. I just don't function without him.

  He hugs me tight, as if trying to impress comfort and compassion. Victor was his world too. I lost my husband and only friend, but Seth lost his brother; his childhood ally.

  “When I get back, we need to talk. Father will look after you while I'm gone.”

  Before I can form coherent words through my grieving sobs, he disengages, the door closing, locking me back in the lowest level of suffering.

  ~~~

  A Fortnight Past

  Jude:

  Through the windscreen I watch him roll into the road from up high, without escape, blood staining his t-shirt, pain contorting his face.

  It's a split-second decision. I burst out of the car, hooking my hands in his armpits, shifting under his shoulders while Shauna goes careening between the vehicles up ahead, ignorant of my actions and spurning me into urgent speed.

  Balling him into the back, I plunge into the driver's seat, the engine still idling, and casually turn the car around, deliberately pickling slowly down the drive from Signal Hill.

  I am late, serendipitously, but for once in my life I will do the right thing. I know Peter's gun had blanks in it. It was a test of his commitment to the cause, of his allegiance to Alpha. John's our best sniper and he ended Vic, planting slugs in him. I need to get the hell off this road to assess how bad the damage is. We can't risk hospitals. They'll find us and kill us both.

  We all went to medical school, it's a prerequisite of Alpha's adopted children. I'm adept, and I know if I can get him back to my secret surgery, I can save him.

  Alpha thinks he's god, I think otherwise. I'm intelligent enough to keep my opinions to myself. Behind his back I've been building my escape. I have a plane, my pilot's license is thanks to my training at his expense, and I have a small apartment kitted out on the other side of the country.

  He'll assume I'd flee the border, because that's how he thinks. This is a game and the time is nigh for me to outwit the kingpin.

  Victor's execution is because of a secret. A secret I didn't want to believe when I picked up the footage and feed going to Alpha's computer. The one under lock and key in his study.

  To a fault, Victor has been obedient.

  Looking over my shoulder, panic overwhelming me, I keep checking the mirrors, hearing sirens advancing toward us.

  It's instinct, I turn into a quiet side road, muttering, “Hang in there buddy. Just stay with me. We'll get her back.”

  It's killing me to act casual, taking a sedate drive to the bottom of the hill, turning into traffic, and then finally finding a safe spot to pull over and examine my patient.

  Opening the back doors, I lay him flat, his breathing alarming. He's gurgling, coughing in short spasms, blood coating his lips.

  Yanking his t-shirt up, the location of the bullets drops my grip on calm. Trepidation is instant and I know I have little time to get him to safety, and stabilised. He's taken two hits in the thorax and one to the kidney.

  It's the thorax slugs that have me panicked. Victor needs immediate surgery and ICU, he's been hit in the lung!

&nbs
p; Fuck!

  John wasn't fucking around. These wounds would have dropped the oxygen level in his blood immediately, forcing him to pass out, making abducting his body from the crime scene a walk in the park. He had no way to escape on foot to get these treated. John delivered fatal kill-shots.

  Shit! Fucking shit!

  Slamming the door closed, checking my watch, I have no clue how the hell I'm going to get from here to my clandestine lair on the outskirts of the Blaauberg Nature Reserve in the time I need to save his life.

  Disregarding every law of the roads I hightail it to the R27, scything between traffic congesting the Waterfront, breathing with a modicum of confidence when I hit the double lanes and the open highway of the industrial region stretching from Paarden Eiland to Milnerton.

  “Hang on Victor! Just stay with me buddy!”

  Chapter 3

  Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer's concept.

  ~ Ansel Adams

  Shauna:

  Unable to get warm, I lie on my back, hugging my knees to my chest, drowning in anguish. I ache from my feet to my hair, every inch hurts.

  I think it was the fall, the trauma to my body, from cops and accusations, the miscarriage, all of it... potent unfiltered nazi level stress, and now it's sheer abuse and lack of sleep. I don't dare doze because this time I want to at least try some of the techniques Victor taught me. I refuse to just be Vengeance's punch-bag and convenient whore without fighting him. I'm not the easy victim I used to be.