Where All Paths Lead

Chapter 2

Vidar wasn't used to not  knowing what to do. Even if his decision was  to do nothing, he was  always confident in the thought process that led  him there. What  knowledge he lacked could be supplemented by inference  gathered by  context or relevant experience, or at least assurance that  more  information would soon be acquired to build on. He had no context  or  relevant experience with this, and the outlook of acquiring any   information seemed grim. What he had was insufficient data and an insane   creature of a girl sitting at the edge of his bed, telling him not to   do anything in response to the sudden end of the sociopathic maniac who   had held control of his life for the past two months. He knew just   enough to know that he knew nothing. That was why he was packing his   suitcases with his bolt action hunting rifle loaded and ready within   reach.

"Where will you go?" she asked, fiddling with the broken ribbon of her blouse like a guilty child.

"We are going anywhere they won't find us," he answered. "Stop that."

Her  hands fell to fold  politely in her lap without hesitation or even a  scornful look.  Whatever hellion she may have been when she had answered  Maier's  questioning with vitriol and violence was nothing like the meek  little  thing before him now, but he couldn't trust that this was really  her  either. He didn't know what to think of her anymore.

"I can't leave," she said. "And I can't stay with you."

Vidar wrinkled his nose in irritation and revulsion at the reminder of their dreadful use of her, sneering, "You are just going to let them have you after what happened last night?"

"If I don't, they will punish you for my disobedience. Besides..." she paused, and he could see how tight her hands nervously squeezed together. "What   they want is not any different than what you've done. It's not a   problem for me anymore. You've done a good job at being my handler."

He  froze in the middle  of folding a shirt into a suitcase, his widened  eyes drifting to her in  shock. She wouldn't look at him, her carefully  blank stare fixed to  the floor and her posture tense and rigid. Anger  seeped in past the  dissolving wall of shock in him and he slid the  suitcases off the bed  and onto the floor, the heavy thumps of them  hitting the hardwood  making her breaths come quicker and her hands  clench tighter.

"Let me make some things clear,"  he said  as he stepped closer. She didn't resist him when he pushed her  by her  shoulders to lie face-down on the bed, didn't fight him as he  moved to  straddle her thighs. "I am not your 'handler'. I did not do a 'good job' to train you for their use. What he wants is nothing like what I've done."

She  didn't resist him  sliding her skirt up or lifting her ass with a yank  on her hips, but  her hands curled into fists at the sound of him  unzipping his fly.

"I am your master. I am training you to better serve me. What I want is what I take from you, because you are mine to take from."

He  reached over and  pulled the tube of lube and a short length of nylon  rope from his  nightstand drawer. The skin of her wrists was rubbed raw  and bruised,  but she still did nothing to resist him as he tied them  together behind  her back. The horrors he'd learned, the madness that had fractured his  mind, the violence that had befallen him and his brothers for having  merely brushed the truth that had been concealed from them; there was  nothing that could possibly make any of this ruination and terror worth  it, but she was a start.

"You did so well taking the whip," he cooed into her neck. "All that time alone with Henrik, you must love him to protect him so devotedly. Do you think he would do the same for you?"