Stephanie's Revenge (16 page)

As quietly as
she could, not wanting to disturb Jasmina, she pulled away the
sheet—

Everything
happened at once. A man sprang from the floor alongside the bed,
caught Stephanie by the shoulders, pushed her back on to the bed,
and jumped on top of her to hold her down with his body. A thick
leather glove over her mouth gagged her scream. At the same time a
second man leapt from the shadows and, in the instant Jasmina
awoke, stifled her screams with his hand, jumping up on the bed
too, kneeling over her to hold her down.

Stephanie's
heart was beating like a wild bird trapped in a cage. What did they
want, who were they, how did they get in? They must be robbers. The
castle had immensely valuable furniture, antiques, paintings. Even
in her panic she found herself wondering how on earth they would
get the stuff off the island. They'd need a huge boat.

Jasmina
started to buck her powerful muscles, pushing at the man.
Fortunately for him, her arms and legs were trapped under the
sheet. She tried to roll her head to get his hand off her mouth,
but it held firm.

A third man
stepped into the pool of moonlight. He held a small black case,
like the case of a geometry set.

The man on
Jasmina hissed a question in Italian to his companion. Jasmina had
wrestled a long black arm from the bedclothes. The man caught it by
the wrist, but Jasmina twisted it out of his grip and, in a flash,
raked his cheek with her blood-red fingernails. Real blood appeared
instantly from three parallel scratches on his face, as though he
had been mauled by a tiger.

'Lupa!' he
snarled, catching her wrist again before she could repeat the
treatment.

Stephanie did not struggle. There was no point. Whatever these
men had come for they were going to get it, no matter what. They
would not care if they left casualties. Stephanie had read about
the Italian
banditos
, and cursed Devlin for not taking better precautions. If she
could have spoken she would have told Jasmina to stop her
struggles.

The third man
had put the little case down on the bedside table and opened it. He
drew out a large hypodermic syringe and filled it from a vial of
colourless fluid. He put the vial back in the bag and pushed the
plunger of the syringe until fluid jetted out from its tip. Then he
moved to Jasmina's side.

'Lupa!' the
man on top of her repeated.

Jasmina saw
the man coming and redoubled her efforts. The bedsheets had worked
down to her waist and her naked breasts quivered with her efforts.
The arm that was not trapped in the man's hand was under his knee.
She concentrated on trying to worm it free.

'Do not move,'
the third man hissed. The needle was inches from the top of
Jasmina's arm. 'If it breaks, is bad for you,' he whispered, in a
heavy Italian accent. Jasmina's eyes filled with fear and she
stopped struggling. The needle jabbed into her arm.

'Uno, due,
tre, quattro, cinque...' the third man counted quietly. By 'cinque'
Jasmina's eyes had rolled up and her body went completely
loose.

The man
climbed off her. He pulled the sheet off the rest of the body and
looked down at her long-limbed nakedness. The third man came round
to Stephanie's side of the bed.

'You are more
sensible,' he said, still whispering. Stephanie looked away as she
saw the needle approach her arm. The gloved hand over her mouth
would not let her head turn far, but she could see Jasmina's naked
body and see, to her relief, that she was still breathing normally.
The man who had sat on top of her was running his hand over her
navel and into her sparse pubic hair. He started to open her
thighs. He wants to see what she looks like between her legs,
Stephanie thought. Never seen a black woman's cunt. It was at that
moment the needle went in. She could feel fluid pumped under her
skin.

How were they
going to get away with it? How were they going to deal with the
servants, how were they going to get the stuff in their boat...

'Une, due,
tre, quattro, cinque...'

Stephanie did
not hear the word 'cinque'. The moonlight disappeared, everything
disappeared: images, thoughts, sounds. There was only blackness, a
blackness so profound, so perfect, it had no seams, no corners, no
edges and no end.

The feeling
was like being steamrollered by cotton wool clouds. The blackness
cleared a little, enough to allow billowing whiteness to roll in,
and pass over, as if it was going to suffocate her underneath it.
Then more blackness. Gradually longer periods of white cotton
moving like clouds, almost rolling in and over her, knocking her
down as she struggled to come round, every effort her mind made to
grip on to something that wasn't black or white, defeated by the
clouds that pulled her down again into the numbing edgeless
void.

Eventually,
after hours, or minutes, or days, the whiteness turned to grey.
Only at the edges at first. But now there were edges. There were
shapes, even straight lines for a few minutes, before the clouds
returned and whited everything out. With the greyness came nausea.
Something, somewhere in her mind, told her nausea must be a good
sign. She felt her gorge rising hot and acid in her throat. Then
she was back in the downy whiteness again.

It was the
nausea that woke her up. The clouds cleared and she sat up,
convinced she was going to vomit. The feeling passed, replaced by a
dizziness caused by sitting up too quickly. She had a pounding
headache, its rhythm in time with her pulse. She opened her eyes
and closed them again, not believing what she saw. She must still
be dreaming.

She took a
deep breath and felt a little better. She opened her eyes again.
Her first thought was to wonder how on earth they had managed to
change her bedroom so drastically and completely in such a short
time. It took quite an effort of mental reasoning before she worked
out that this was not, and never had been, her bedroom. Her mind
took it on from there, normal thought restored. The men had not
come to the castle to rob it. They had come for her.

She looked
around slowly, not wanting to make any sudden movements to
exacerbate the hammer that appeared to be driving a nail into her
forehead. The room was small, not much bigger than a double bed.
The walls were of unplastered brick, two looking as though they had
been recently built, two looking old, the mortar crumbling. There
was a heavy wooden door but no window. The floor was paved in large
flagstones. She was sitting on a wooden-framed single bed, covered
with a thin mattress. There were no sheets, no pillow, no bedding
of any sort. The room was lit by a single light bulb hanging from
the wood beamed ceiling. In one corner of the room there was a
bucket. Beside the bed, incongruously, was an English Windsor
chair. On the seat of the chair was a glass of water.

Seeing the
water, Stephanie realised she was desperately thirsty. It was
probably the drug they had given her. Slowly, she swung her legs
off the bed and tried to take the two steps to the chair. She only
managed one before her legs buckled and she sank to the floor. But
at least she could reach the glass now. She took it in her hand and
drank the whole glass.

She felt
nauseous again, as the cold water drained into her system. She also
felt cold. The room was damp and chilled. Getting back on to the
mattress she tucked her legs up to her chest for warmth. There was
absolutely nothing else she could use to cover herself. They had
left her as naked as they'd found her.

Examining her
body, she found a small, sensitive bruise where the needle had been
injected into her upper arm. Otherwise, she appeared to be
untouched.

Her feeling of
disorientation was beginning to lessen. Her mind formed questions.
How long had she been here? Where was Jasmina? What time was it?
Automatically she looked for her watch and, as she stared at her
bare wrist, remembered it was sitting on the bedside table back at
the castle. Where was this room?

One thing she
didn't have to question. There was only one person who could be
responsible for this: Gianni. It had to be Gianni. It was the only
explanation; his vengeance for what she had done to him. She cursed
herself. She should have known better, she should have been on her
guard, she should have realised that a man as powerful and
egotistical as Gianni wouldn't simply ignore the humiliation she
had meted out to him. How stupid not to have taken
precautions...

And he'd
probably taken Jasmina too. Taking her was one thing, in a sense
she accepted she was fair game. But not Jasmina. Jasmina had
nothing to do with it.

She rolled
herself into a foetal position, more for warmth than anything else,
and closed her eyes. The headache was pounding less and, curiously,
she began to feel a sense of euphoria. She felt lightheaded, the
feeling of having had just a little too much to drink. Despite her
situation the world began to look rosy, she was smiling to herself.
She felt good. It was puzzling, but her mood meant she had no
desire to question it. She lay back on the bed, grinning.

She heard the
key turn in the lock and saw the door open. Gianni walked into the
cell, his face creased in a grin that matched her own.

Stephanie
tried to pull herself off the bed, tried to summon up her anger,
fly at him in rage, claw at his eyes, knee him in the balls. But
nothing worked. Her body would not respond, nor would her mind. Her
muscles refused to work, her anger would not rise. She couldn't
even wipe the foolish grin from her face.

'Come on then,
English,' he said. 'You don't want to beat me again, eh?'

She wanted to
say that he had got what he deserved, but instead she continued to
grin.

'No? Well,
that is good.' He sat down in the Windsor chair, pulling at the
knees of his trousers so as not to spoil the crease in his Gucci
slacks. The tone of his voice changed. 'You really think I let you
get away with it? Ah? You think you can do that to me? Lupa! Bitch!
Well, now I teach you the lesson. A longer lesson. I learn quick. I
learn from Devlin. From your castle. I think I start my castle
here. All my friends come here. You will entertain them, no? Give
them a show. Like at the castle. They can have what they want, my
friends, like at the castle. Anything they want. And you are my
star attraction, I think. You'll be very popular.'

Stephanie
tried to say something, she wasn't at all sure what, but couldn't
form the words.

'You think
this is good? I teach you, Giancarlo Gianni cannot be treated like
a piece of meat, hung up like a piece of meat.' He was getting
angry. He stood up. She thought he was going to hit her, but
instead he reached into his pocket and tossed a ball of material on
to the bed. 'Here, these will keep you warm.'

He slammed the
cell door and Stephanie heard the key turn in the lock. It was a
long time before her muscles would respond to her commands again.
As the strange feeling of euphoria wore off, so her muscles allowed
her to move again. She didn't try to get off the bed, but reached
down to the balled material Gianni had thrown at her feet.
Unravelling it, she found a thin black satin suspender belt and a
pair of sheer black stockings. As quickly as she could, she put
them on. It may have been Gianni's idea of a cruel joke, but the
stockings did give her some warmth.

After a while
she ventured off the bed and managed to get her legs to support
her. She tottered around the room like a child learning to
walk.

One thing was
certain. There was going to be no escape from this room. The door
was thick and moved not at all when she put her shoulder against
it. There was a ventilator grill set high up in the wall above the
bed, but there was no way she could reach it, and anyway it was
only six inches wide and three inches deep. She couldn't reach the
light in the ceiling either and there was no switch in the
room.

She walked
around the tiny room like a caged animal. In the door she noticed a
peep-hole, the kind people have on their front doors to inspect
visitors, but she could see nothing through it.

There was no
way of knowing how long it was before a small section at the bottom
of the door opened - an arrangement like a cat-flap, the hinges for
which she hadn't noticed - and a tray of food was pushed into the
room. It was no more than a bowl of soup and a piece of bread.
There was another glass of water.

Stephanie
realised she was starving hungry. Not wanting to repeat her nausea
however, she tried to eat slowly. Judging from her hunger, it must
have been some time since she had eaten. How long had she been in
this room? And what the hell was she going to do?

It was not
more than five minutes after she had finished the soup, a
concoction of beans and vegetables, that the light went out. The
room was plunged into total darkness, or almost total. As her eyes
became accustomed to the gloom, a weak line of light appeared
around the frame of the door. But after two or three minutes that
too clicked out.

Stephanie had
no choice but to close her eyes and try to sleep. She curled
herself into a ball and, surprisingly, was asleep in minutes.

The light woke
her. For half a second she thought it was daylight, that she had
been having a nightmare, that she would open her eyes and turn to
Jasmina and walk out on to the terrace and into the warm sun. She
opened her eyes to find a bare brick wall. It was not a dream.

The tray she
had eaten from was gone. On the Windsor chair was another glass of
water. She drank it, once again having woken with a ferocious
thirst. There was something else different this morning if, of
course, she could take it that the light being turned on meant it
was morning. It was warm. The room was warm. It did not take long
to track down the source of the warmth. Heat was flooding out of
the ventilator duct above the bed, a steady flow of warm air.