The Heart of War (22 page)

Luckily for Sha’Quanda there was Maggie who’d come to collect the children and bring them safely back to the orphanage as she did every evening. She had been standing just behind Taejour, Jaakim’s younger and scrawnier brother, when he discovered the rough stone in Sha’Quanda’s pocket. He shoved the barrel of his rifle into her face as he laid a heavy hand on her trembling shoulder and then forced her toward a group of men and a waiting jeep.

Last ride.

They started to pass Maggie, Sha’Quanda remembered, gathering the strength to raise her frightened eyes to look at the Good Sister and found her looking back with a worried brow. Two more steps and they were past her and then all hell broke loose.

“I don’t know how she did it,” Sha’Quanda said to Ares as she sat on his lap, “but she broke his neck.” One moment he had been beside her, gun in one hand, her shoulder in the other. The next there had been a very loud crunching/cracking sound and then he was on the ground.

Dae’Jave stepped in at this part as he had actually seen it when Maggie’s eyes watched Sha’Quanda and Taejour pass. “She was like a lioness striking from the tall grass,” the boy whispered with awe and then stood up to demonstrate what he had seen. “They walked past, she crouched down,” he crouched as he had seen her do, “she took two steps,” so did he, “then she leaped high in the air.” This part the boy demonstrated more than spoke. As he jumped he put his left hand out in the air as though it were grabbing something or someone, put his right hand where Ares figured Maggie put hers on the back of the man’s head, and as Dae’Jave came down to the ground he gave a great jerking motion before landing on his feet. As he watched the boy act it out, Ares wondered what type of Fey had such hand-to-hand combat training. “Other than the snapping of bone, there was no sound at all.”

At that point, they all looked from the fallen man up to see Maggie standing over him smiling in victory. Then she grabbed Sha’Quanda and shoved her toward where the other children were standing. She shouted at them to get into the rickety VW Bus in which she shuttled them to and from the mine. Maggie grabbed the gun from the corpse, backing up all the way. She fired, but not in sloppy manner. “She pulled the trigger very…very…” she looked at her brother for the word. She held her hands out in front of her as thought she had the weapon, she took careful aim, fired, took careful aim, fired.

“Dally—delly—” Dae’Jave stammered.

“Deliberately.” Ares picked the word out of the air. Alena told him she could fire a gun and hit her target, seemed she’d been telling the truth. He began to wonder what other truths there were to her. Yesterday she proved herself a skilled hunter and showed the promise of being a skilled lover. Today that promise turned from lover to warrior—he wasn’t sure which one piqued his interest more.

“Yes,” Sha’Quanda agreed with a quick nod. “De-libb-rat-lee. Pop. Pop. Pop.” She was greatly outnumbered but the Good Sister Maggie brought down eight of Jaakim’s men that day before she sped the children to the orphanage. The men remaining behind scrambled to catch up with them but Maggie was slick—she had fired at the tires of their jeeps, rendering them useless as she climbed behind the wheel of the bus. They made it back and hid behind the safety of the walls until nightfall.

Maggie had shown considerable strategy in building the walls around her meager encampment; they were just slightly taller than Ares and smooth as the bottoms of babes. Not easy to climb. Ladders were in scarce supply as they probably weren’t needed here—who needed a ladder when everything around was flat?

When night came, the darkness suddenly began to light up like daylight as Jaakim’s men, having waited outside all day long, began to throw Molotov Cocktails over the wall, setting small fires in the orphanage. That would not have been such a problem if it had not been for the thatched roofs. Slate would have been better, but expensive and not easy to obtain. They scrambled to put out the flames as fast as they could, but it was nearly impossible to keep up as water was also a scarce commodity. Maggie wouldn’t stand there and watch all of them burned out of their home. Even though Sister Augustine and Father Murphy begged her not to do it, Maggie walked up to the big doors, opened them, and then walked through. Sha’Quanda told of a very cold chill that settled over the ratted camp, one that went right through the heart and to the bone.

“She was very brave,” Sha’Quanda whispered.

Maggie’s surrender was not enough for them. Several armed men stormed through the open gate and searched for Sha’Quanda, and they pulled her out of this very room. Up until that point, Maggie had been quietly going with them, resigned to whatever Fate had in store. Then she saw them hauling the little girl from the safety of the walls and she began to scream at the men, who laughed in turn until she hit the first one. Thinking themselves wise or merely cruel, they had bound her hands together in front of her body and when Maggie hit the first one, she did it with a hard double axe-handle that broke the man’s jaw. Shrieking at the men to let go of Sha’Quanda, she bent down to grab the handgun from the dead man’s belt. A man came up from behind and tried to grab her, Maggie kicked back hard planting her foot in his sack, he went down and she shot him in the head, point blank. No hesitation. “Let her go!”

Then all of the guns in the hands of all the men turned to Maggie, who stood there in defiance and dared them to shoot and deny Jaakim his prize. To the amazement of all, she then raised the gun in her hand to her own head and promised that if they did not shoot her she would do it herself. A tense moment of silence followed before the two men holding Sha’Quanda began to release their grip and then,

“Maggie!”

Maggie turned to look behind her to where Sha’Quanda was pointing just in time for the rock to hit her squarely between the eyes. The sudden impact caused the gun in her hand to fire, causing the bullet to graze along the side of her head as she fell to the ground.
A cheer erupted from the armed men as they shouted out that they had finally brought down The Witch.

“They always called her that, The Witch,” Sha’Quanda whispered. “She’s not a witch, Mr. Ares.” He kept silent and she continued with her story, which was difficult now that she was coming to the really hard part.

The men loaded an unconscious Maggie and a squirming Sha’Quanda into the back of a jeep and drove them down to the torture tent where Jaakim was waiting. Not wanting to give her the chance to kill or maim any more of them, they strapped Maggie to the bloody bench before throwing alcohol into her face and down her throat to wake her. It flowed over her face, not just down her chin and over the bodice of her blouse but upward, over her eyes and the gash on her forehead where it stung and burned. The thugs thought it was funny to make the troublesome little Witch take in the alcohol and get her drunk before they really started having a good time. After all, what was the rush? Who was going to stop them?

No one.

Maggie forced her bleary stinging eyes opened and saw the men gathered around her and then she saw Sha’Quanda on her knees before Jaakim in his wheelchair. He had his hand on the back of her head as he forced her to suck on his cock. The girl was naked from the waist down, her young budding breasts being pawed roughly from behind by one of the guards. The bulge in his fatigues was quite large and unmistakable.

“Leave her alone,” Maggie croaked and tried to fight against the heavy leather straps keeping her in place.

“Ah, the The Witch awake,” Jaakim crooned as he smiled and then jammed that hard hot tool further down the little girl’s throat. “She’s not so good at this. I hope you’re better.”

“I am. Let her go and I’ll show you.”

This made the men around her laugh. “Such bravery from one so small…and vulnerable,” Jaakim intoned and then began yanking Sha’Quanda’s head up and down rapidly, his eyes rolled back in his head as the girl between his legs cried. She tried to back away when something hot and salty sprayed from the horrid stinking thing in her mouth, but the hand in her braids wouldn’t let her. It forced her to stay there until it was done and she swallowed the nasty liquid. “Maybe there’s hope for her.” Jaakim sat forward, pulled Sha’Quanda’s head away from him, and stared deeply into her frightened eyes before turning his cold stare to Maggie. “Shall we find out?”

“Coward,” Maggie spat. “It’s easy to terrify a little girl, why don’t you try me instead?”

“Defiant to the end, Sister Maggie.” Jaakim’s hand let go of Sha’Quanda, shoving her to the ground before he began to clap mockingly. “You think your God protects you? Where is He? I don’t see Him.”

“I don’t need a God to defeat you.” Maggie pulled at the restraints again and as she leered at the men in the room. “You’re all cowards. Thugs. Thieves. You’re nothing.”

“Nothing, am I?” Jaakim met Maggie’s cold gaze. “I’ll show what Nothing can do.” He stood up from the wheelchair on legs that were just as sturdy as any. Drawing the Bowie knife from his belt, he slowly walked the short distance to her. “You killed my brother, for what? That little bitch?” He pointed across the room with the knife at Sha’Quanda shaking in the hands of two men openly pawing at her young body. “She’s nothing. In a year or two she’ll be just another whore giving it up for a crust of bread.”

“He was a prick.”

“Prick? This is a prick.” He grabbed hold of his own cock still sticking out of the fatigues and coming back to life. “My brother was a warrior.”

“Your brother was a punk,” Maggie spat. “Just like you. All of you. You’re not warriors, you’re just a bunch of cowardly misfits. When you die the Gods will punish you, they will burn your soul for eternity.”

Jaakim kept walking to her until her reached the place where she was chained and he swung one leg over her. “Perhaps, Sister Maggie, what you say is true, but I’ll worry about it when I’m dead.” The man grabbed hold of the collar of her blouse with one hand and drove the blade of the knife through it and the strap of her bra with the other, ripping the material open with a loud shredding sound that made Sha’Quanda cover her ears. “You’ve been nothing but a pain in my ass since you got here and now I’m going to be a pain in yours. Show you what it feels like,” he promised as he hovered over her.

Maggie gathered what wetness she could and spat in his face.

Jaakim grabbed Maggie by the hair, pulled her head upward as far as it would go and then slammed it down again with double the force. Her eyes swam in her head and she saw stars dancing in the air. Her mouth dropped open in shock and surprise. “I’ll shut you up, huh?” The heavy brute shoved his hardening cock between her open lips and into her mouth. “That’s better, you bitch.”

The act of having to suckle him was terrible enough—the shaft was filthy, and it was encrusted with sandy grit that scraped along her tongue. Nothing was worse than the stench of him. It was nauseating. Old sex, fresh sex, dirt, piss and shit, he reeked of it to his core. Having to breathe the foul air through her nose buried into the knotted matted hair between his legs, she tried not to gag. All around her, the men cheered and egged him onward.

It was so hard to get air and Maggie pulled and pulled at the restraints on her wrists as she tried to get away from him, but it was no good. The only hope she had of getting the precious oxygen she was seeking was to go along with him. Choking down her rage and disgust, Maggie suckled him; she worked him with her tongue and her lips so well that Jaakim came before he could truly begin to enjoy what he was doing. Usually taking his time to relish the squirming and writhing of the woman under him, he let out a cry of insulted surprise as his cock ushered out a long spew. “That’s all right,” he whispered, “I’ve got you for as long as I want you.” Grabbing hold of the ripped strap, he pulled the bra down to expose one soft breast and then seized it roughly in his hand. Her mouth opened to let out a cry but no sound came. Breaking her was going to be more fun than he had thought. “To do anything I want with you.” Worming his way down her, not letting off his weight as he went, Jaakim put the tip of the knife under the waistband of her long skirt, but as he settled over here with thought of penetration running wild behind those menacing eyes, he felt something hard and maybe even cold beneath him. Then she smiled at him, a wicked little grin that clearly relayed the message ‘fuck you’. Cutting open the material and ripping it all the way down as he’d done with the blouse, Jaakim met with the gleaming sight of gold. An intricate band of it ran around her waist and between her legs. “What’s this?”

“A safety net,” Maggie said slyly.

“Who’s saving you? Whose woman are you, Maggie?” His ebony hand ran over it, over the tree and the strange writing etched there before his finger squeezed into the band and began to pull on it, but the metal wouldn’t give.

“Not yours.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that.” Climbing off her, he put one hand under her ass and heaved her upward as far as the restraints would allow so he could get a better look. All he saw was more gold. No latch. No keyhole. Dropping down on her, he wedged his knee between her spread legs to pry them further apart and take in the two small holes in the gold. No man’s penis was ever going to fit in there, but his finger would. Without much thought he pushed his index finger into the small slot but before he could get it inside her it bit him. Jaakim let out a cry as he pulled his hand away and looked at the deep scrapings along the tip of his index finger. The holes were studded with sharp bits of metal. He looked from his bleeding digit to the nearly naked woman on the bench. “I bet it hurts you more than it does me.” Every time she sat, walked or moved at all, those things must bite into her as well. Looking behind him, Jaakim usher his command. “Get it off her!”

The first thing they tried was pulling it off. They finally gave up when four of them had their fingertips wedged into the band at her waist and those between her legs. They pulled, pushed and tugged with all they had, and they were not small men. The gold would not budge; it only cut into their fingertips and her inner thighs where heavy trickles of blood began to flow. Every time it cut her, Maggie laughed. It hurt, but it was better to laugh at their misfortune than cry over hers.