Charming Charly (English Edition) (Lords of Arr'Carthian 3) (19 page)

“Steven says your husband was an MMA fighter. It shows how wrong you can be about people. I would have thought that you’d find yourself a smart office bloke with glasses. I always thought that you’d never cope with a proper man. Maybe you’ve grown up. Maybe you’re now better trained to work for us.”

“As far as I’m concerned you can kill me. I don’t care,” she shouted at him. “But I won’t spread my legs for you.”

He hit her again and she would have fallen to the ground if he had not been holding onto her arm. She was close to losing consciousness. Her jaw felt as if it was broken. It probably was. The pain was unbearable and she sobbed.
 

“That’s enough!” said Steven. “You’ll ruin her whole face for weeks. How’s she going to go on the game like that, huh? Let it be for now.”

“OK. Let’s go!” said Sam, throwing Charly over his shoulder.
 

She struggled and screamed but then she felt a prick in her bottom and she began to feel very strange. Her limbs became heavy and numb. She was conscious but she could no longer move, not even make a sound. Mute tears ran down her face. The only thing she could see was Amano’s body streaming with blood.

Chapter 13

“Wherever could those two be all this time?” asked Lory, worried. “Perhaps they’ve gone for something to eat together,” said Kordan.

“Without letting us know? No! I can’t believe that. Something’s not right.”

“Do you know where her flat is?” asked Kordan.

“Yes, she told me. We’ll go there. Right now!”

“OK,” Kordan agreed, getting up from the bed. He took Lory in his arms and stroked her back. “Nothing will have happened to them. We’ll find them.”

“They’ve been here,” said Lory threateningly. “I know they have. So, where’s Charly’s flat? I want to take a look.”

“I can’t just let anyone into my tenant’s flat!” the man resisted. “How should I …”

He got no further because Kordan had put his hand round his throat and was lifting him up a little. His legs were suspended in the air and his face was turning red. Gradually Kordan put him back down, but without taking his hand from his throat.

“Ask him again,” said Kordan.

“Right, Buddy!” hissed Lory. “My friend here is pretty much out of control. He sometimes kills people quite by accident and I can do nothing to stop him. The only thing that can save your worthless ass is taking us to Charly’s flat right now. Understood?”

The man nodded and Kordan let go of him.
 

“I … I must … the key …” the man croaked.

Lory and Kordan followed him into the flat. With trembling fingers, the man took a key from a board holding spare keys.
 

“He-here, Th-that’s the key.”

“Good,” said Lory. “Now go!”

He led them up one floor and stopped in front of a door. With his hands still shaking, he unlocked the door and Kordan swung it open.

“Oh. My. God!” cried Lory.
 

Kordan stormed into the room. The man was going to turn and run, but Lory grabbed him and pulled his arm up behind his back. He screamed in pain
,
but let himself be led into the room. She pushed him into an armchair and glared at him.

“Don’t move or I swear by God that I’ll kill you. And slowly.”

He nodded frantically and Lory turned to Kordan who was bent over Amano’s motionless body.

“Is he still alive?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, but his condition is serious. He’s lost so much blood. If he were one of your race, he’d already be dead.”

“Fuck!” shouted Lory, running her hands frantically through her hair. “Where’s Charly?”

Kordan took his radio from his pocket and passed it to Lory. “They need to beam him up. I’ll look for Charly.”

Lory communicated with the
Cordelia
and explained, in brief, what had happened, not letting Charly’s landlord out of her sight. Amano was beamed up at the same moment as Kordan burst back into the room.

“No sign of her,” he said, beside himself.
 
“Ask him!”

Lory grabbed the landlord by the collar and looked him right in the eyes.

“Where – is – she?”

“I … I don’t know,” he stuttered.
 

Lory grabbed him in the crotch and squeezed. He screamed out in pain.

“If you don’t want me to make a woman out of you, you’ll tell me the truth right now, for a change!”

“Her … her brother. He … he took … her with him.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know exactly. He took half an hour to get here. I don’t know anything more.”

“How do you know how long it took him to get here?” asked Lory. Her voice was ice-cold.

The man looked at her, panic-stricken. He knew that he had just made a big mistake.
 

“Pl-please. I … I’ll tell you everything that I know, only … don’t hurt me.”

“What a miserable whiner,” Kordan snorted in disgust.
 

“Speak!” demanded Lory.

“He g-gave me hi-his number so that I could call … call him if … if …”

“You told him that Charly was here? Is that right?” asked Lory, suppressing her rage with great difficulty.

The landlord nodded.

Kordan took the radio.

“Beam us up!” he ordered.

“Including the person that’s with you?” the
Cordelia
officer’s voice
came over the radio.

”Yes, him too. He’s a prisoner.”

***

Charly was lying on the bed. She still felt paralyzed. But gradually she could feel a tingling sensation in her toes and fingers. She thought that the effect of the substance that her brother had injected into her would soon be completely gone. She did not know how long she had been here, but it had been dark outside for a long time. They had taken her to the brothel and thrown her here, onto the bed. Then they had disappeared. Since then she had seen no one.
 

A while later she was able to move her fingers, and a little later still, her whole hand. Once the paralysis had finally eased off, she sat up carefully. Her face was hurting now – the disadvantage of the numbness going – because it had also numbed her pain. The only pain that was constant, and was not going to go away, was the loss of the only person that she had ever loved above all else and who had loved her back, likewise unconditionally. The place in her chest where her heart had been was now empty. At least it felt as if there was a huge hole there. Icy coldness was creeping through this hole and spreading from there to her whole body. She no longer wished to live. Without Amano there was no meaning in anything and she would rather be dead than carry out the wishes of her brother and Sam.
 

She slowly got up from the bed and went to the window. It was barred. No way through. So jumping was out of the question. So she would have to find a weapon. Something that she could use to cut through her veins would be good. Hanging was out of the question. She did not have the courage for that. It would take ages if she did it wrong.
 

Half an hour later she fell onto the bed in frustration. She had found nothing that she could use to kill herself with. What was she to do? Her brother and Sam would return in the morning, at the very latest, and she was certain that she was going to suffer then. Just the thought that Sam might touch her again, or her brother, made her tremble with fear and disgust. She had told no one that she knew who was hiding behind the mask. Also, no one knew that it had not been just one, but two masked men who had raped her. She knew, whenever her torturer had not spoken, that it had not been Sam. He had remained silent in the belief that she would then think he was Sam, but she had still recognized him. Even though he had always thrown
a sack over her head before raping her
.
She had remained silent because she had felt ashamed. What would people say about her? No! No one could ever find out that her own brother had raped her again and again. It was bad enough that she knew that and had to live with it. It had destroyed her. Until Amano had healed her. Amano.
 
Her gentle, loving Amano. Again, tears ran down her cheeks. She rolled herself up like a fetus
,
and at some point, exhausted, she fell asleep.
 

She awoke to a humming sound.
Shocked, she opened her eyes. She tried to scream but the scream stuck in her throat. This could not be happening! This was impossible! Her eyes grew wider before she collapsed into unconsciousness.

***

“I am going to kill that bastard!” snarled Amano, clenching his fists.
 

He breathed in deeply before opening his fist again and stroking Charly’s cheek with his trembling hand. She was purple, almost black and it looked as if her jaw was broken. What was more, the side of her eye was swollen shut and one of her lips was split open. He felt Kordan’s hand on his shoulder. A shudder ran through his body as, with all his might, he tried to suppress the rage that was sweeping through his veins – intense and powerful.

“We’ll bring the man to justice. But we mustn’t lose our heads,” Kordan warned him.
 

“I know,” responded Amano between gritted teeth.
 

“You should try to wake her. She can help us identify the bastard. There are a lot of males in this house, I can hear their voices. And females. My goodness, it sounds as if they …”

“It doesn’t only sound as if they are!” snarled Amano. “We’re in a brothel. Charly told me that her brother tried to force her to work for him.”

“You mean … as …”

“As a whore, yes!”

“Bastard!” snarled Kordan.

“She’s waking up,” said Amano. He went straight to Charly’s side and gently took her hand. “Charly, baby. Wake up. It’s me.”

She opened her eyes, blinking.

“Amano?” she whispered. “Am I dead?”

“No, no, why should you be dead?”

“But how am I able to see you then?” she sobbed. “You … you are d-dead. I saw. He … he shot you.”

“Lory and Kordan found me in time. I was weak, unconscious, but not dead. They beamed me onto the ship straight away and put me in the medical unit.”

“But it’s not possible for you heal that quickly. With Lory it …”

“Lory’s a human. Carthians heal more quickly, especially warriors. I’m not a hundred per cent, but I’m OK. Can you take us to your brother?”

“There are two of them. My brother Steven
,
and Sam.”

“Who’s Sam?”

“He’s … he’s the man who …”

“THE man?”

She nodded.
 

Amano snarled and, leaping up, he started walking back and forth like a lion in a cage. He was tearing at his hair
,
trying to control his rage. The man who, for months, had done all of those horrible things to his mate – he was here? He would kill them both. He stood still and looked at Charly.

“Take me to them!”

“The door. It’ll definitely be locked.”

Kordan went to the door and kicked it. With a crash, it fell into the corridor. Amano took Charly by the hand and pulled her along. People were coming out of the rooms, women were squealing, men were shouting. The male guests were hurrying to pull on their trousers and clear out of there. Then two men came out of a room at the end of the corridor and Amano knew straight away that it was them. The very fact that his mate suddenly froze would have told him this, but there was something else. He saw the similarity to Charly and, even though everything had happened so quickly in her flat, he still thought that he could recognize, in the man at the end of the corridor, the one that had shot him.
 

Amano pushed Charly back into the room and ordered her to stay there. Then he charged down the corridor with Kordan. Charly’s brother and this Sam fled, but they caught both men on the staircase.
 

***

Charly was lying in the medical unit looking into Amano’s concerned, warm eyes. He was smiling at her encouragingly.

“You’ll see. In one hour you won’t feel anything any more and soon you’ll be as pretty as ever again.”

“What are you going to do now?” she asked. Amano had completely misunderstood her fear. She was not at all afraid of the treatment. She was afraid that something might happen to him. She had heard him talking to Kordan, saying that he wanted to fight a duel with her brother and Sam – that is, both of them against him. And yet he was not yet one hundred per cent healed. He had been riddled with bullets.
 

“You don’t need to be at all worried,” Amano reassured her. “They will never hurt you again. They will not hurt any women again. Today I will avenge you – and all of the other women that have suffered because of them.”

“Why don’t you at least wait until you’re fit again?”

“I’m fit enough.”

“There are two of them!”

“I’m better than they are,” said Amano with determination.