‘Darling, is it meant to take this long? And are you meant to cut that deep?’ Selena’s voice suddenly sounded worryingly sober.
Emperor Roycie paused in his task and I rammed my head into the wall in agony. He didn’t notice. ‘Well I don’t bloody well know, do I, my love? I shouldn’t think so, but the bugger won’t keep still.’ Frustrated at my continued off-script struggling, Royce straightened up and punched me in the stomach. ‘Fucking well stop it!’ he barked.
It wasn’t the worst blow I’d ever received, but Selena gave a pathetic little squeak of horror. ‘Royce!’ she hissed. ‘What the hell have you done? Didn’t you say we wouldn’t do anything too damaging?’
‘It’s a bit late for that, my love, and I didn’t think this would be quite so messy, did I? I mean, didn’t think the bastard would fight back.’
‘Shit, what if he dies? I mean, there’s an awful lot of blood…’
‘For fuck’s sake, woman! You were the one who wanted the authentic experience! If he does, I can’t imagine the BBC buying my next series, can you?’
Selena stopped being a Roman empress pretty sharpish, then. Raw panic took over, and I heard a sob catch in her throat. ‘We need to go, Roycie,’ she whimpered. ‘Now, please? I don’t want to be here anymore.’
‘And what the fuck do we say to Lady Albermarle, eh? I hardly think that this is going to make for pleasant small talk at breakfast, do you? Hell, look at all this mess – it’s all over my toga...’
‘I don’t care what we say. I just want to leave. Now. We can tell that man who brought us here I’m not well, and just go. Please, Royce.’
I knew what was going on in her head. Selena, in her naivety, still thought that if they ran far enough, fast enough, that they could leave all this behind them. I could have told her that if they ran all the way to a small hut in the Amazon, Blaine Albermarle would track them down with a bill for the dry cleaning, but the gag that had been so kindly shoved into my mouth was making the simple task of breathing pretty tricky. Anyway, they’d find out the hard way soon enough.
Royce was panting now, desperately trying to find a way out of the nightmare he’d manage to create for himself. ‘Right, come on then,’ he grunted, and I heard something metallic skitter across the floorboards, followed by two pairs of bare feet scuttling down the corridor, and then nothing at all except my own laboured breath.
I had a vague feeling that unconsciousness wasn’t meant to be smart in situations like this, but couldn’t for the life of me remember why, and then the final salvo from my personal record dose of temazepam arrived and everything ceased to matter.
Lilith
My solid oak door shook on its hinges as I kicked it shut. ‘Arsehole!’ I hollered, loud enough for Finn to hear, wherever the bastard was.
As I undressed, adrenaline coursed through my body and I trembled like a malaria victim.
I had hit Finn.
Everything I knew about him and his life, everything that I had witnessed, had meant nothing in that one dreadful moment of betrayal in a shadow-filled corridor. I had no doubt that it had been engineered by him so that he could triumphantly declare that he had been right all along, but this did nothing to assuage my guilt.
‘You twisted fuck.’ I climbed into bed, having decided that I didn’t give a damn what happened to him anymore.
By three in the morning I still didn’t care. And I still hadn’t slept.
The soft tut of the outboard motor cut through the silence, and I sat up. I couldn’t imagine Henry needing to go into the village at this hour, and Royce and Selena had paid too much to leave so early out of choice.
The whisper of disquiet that had begun the previous evening returned as a full-throated roar and I retrieved my paint-stained tracksuit bottoms and vest-top and ran barefoot to the cavernous reception hall, where Henry had just let himself back into the building.
‘Lilith! What on earth are you doing awake at this hour? You’re not ill, are you?’
I ignored his concerned questions. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Just sorting out the launch so our latest guests could get back to the mainland. Apparently Selena had a migraine and she’d left her medication in their lodge.’
I fought down the panic that had begun to flutter in my throat. ‘You let them leave? And take the boat?’
Henry took a step back, startled by my aggression. ‘I don’t think there’s too much of a problem. They decided she’d be better off staying on shore for the rest of the night, and they said they’d bring the launch back first thing in the morning. She was looking rather peaky.’