The Search I

Cold.

It was so damn.. c-cold.

“Mhm..”, I moaned, not being able to open my eyes. Was I asleep? Was this a nightmare?

A heavy pressure was  weighing down on my head so that I was not able move my head nor open my eyes.

A fog was clouding my mind when voices reached my ear from far and further.

“Slap that bitch before I kill her!”

“We are supposed to bring her unharmed!”

“Alive! No one said anything about unharmed!... or untouched!”

“Fuck off! You already had your fun with the Nash bitch! We are not supposed to touch the King Girl!”

More voices. More noises. Were they fighting?

“HEY!”

“Fuck – who is that?!”

“Shit. This is one of the bastards twin sons.”

“I’ll take care of it”

“Wait! Take this. This motherfucker made our job easier! Use this!”

“LET HER GO!”

…was that Brandon? …

Where they fighting…? What was going on?

“I don’t get it, why don’t we take him instead of this bitch?”

“Because it hurts more!”

Laughter. Nasty, nauseating laughter.

„Which one is this?“

„The gay one. The other king went with the others!“

“Leave him there. Let that faggot crawl back to his Russian fucker.”

Doors were closing. Engines were getting started.

“Why bother taping her mouth? This bitch is mute. Besides, she won’t be able to suck my dick like that.”

“She might be mute“ Pause.

„But everyone screams in pain..”

“Bran…” My lips barely moved and I felt my head spin. I wanted to wake up. 

Someone, please. Wake me up!

The fog got heavier and heavier until I lost consciousness.

I woke up with a gasp as if I was surfacing from deep waters. My eyes snapped open only for darkness to greet me.

A whine slipped my lips when I tried to move my hands behind my back. My bound.. hands?
Why were my hands tied together?
I was laying on my side and realized how my feet were bound too. My muscles were sore and I could feel all the punches and hits my body had received. It felt like that time I got beaten up and was left to die before Killian had found me.

My head was hurting as if someone slammed it against a wall. Over and over again.

What was happening?

Where was I?

Little pieces and snippets of dark memories flooded my mind suddenly.

We were out. With the girls and…

Kill… Kill please help me. I saw some guys carrying Annika and Cecily out. I can’t find Ava and Ariella.. please..

My eyes widened in the dark when my mind brought back the last happenings. My heart started pounding at the realization that I was.. kidnapped.
My chest tightened and I felt how air was slowly but surely getting thinner around me. I was in a room, a dark, pitch-black room but I couldn’t make out how tight it was. Either way I felt like I was suffocating. As if I was in a casket under the sea.
I started hyperventilating, the scream for help stuck in my throat as I was not able to gather enough air to form a sentence yet alone a word.

Where was I?
Why was I here… where was Ava? And Cecy and Annika and.. oh god Ariella..

A sob left my lips as I tried to suppress the panic that was overwhelming my body.

I gasped as a sudden thought infiltrated my mind. I didn’t know why I was suddenly thinking of that but.. this was the feeling I felt for months when I thought I didn’t want to live anymore.

The feeling of being caged in a dark nothing with no light and no way to find out. 
This room was my nightmare, the dark abyss I survived years ago.

“No..no”, I chocked.

I fought a lot to escape this place. I fought so much with myself, with the world and against the demons that tried to pull me down. 
I tried to beat them with a power that was so hard to find, so hard to collect that I know I wouldn’t be able to do that again.

Tears streamed down my cheeks when I thought of the person who helped me collect that power. That inner strength that had been shattered all over this dark place.

It has been so dark that I was sure that the pieces didn’t exist.

That that strength was lost forever because I couldn’t see it.
Then he came who had lightened darkness so I was able to find- no.

No.

He never illuminated my darkness.
No.
Killian has always been the darkness himself.
He didn’t light up the place for me to find my courage to keep going.

He simply taught me how to deal with it.
Killian became one with my darkness and made me comfortable enough to move. 
He adjusted my eyes so I could finally see in the dark.

Life wasn’t black anymore because I myself could finally make out demons.
I wasn’t blinded but was roaming like a cat through the night as if I was born to be here.

He taught me to embrace my fears and accept them for what they were.

I reminded myself of how far I’ve come. How I talked with my mom more, how I worked on my relationships with my siblings and how I never missed a family day in order to bond with them stronger. How I still had daddy-daughter dates with my amazing father and how my grandparents loved me dearly. They all supported me when I went to therapy, they all loved me so unconditionally from being broken Glyndon to the now stronger and much healthier Glyndon.

This couldn’t be the end.
This wouldn’t be the end, it just can’t be!

Killian was looking for me. Everyone was. I was sure of that. And just like how the jump off the cliff wasn’t the end, there was still a possibility that this wasn’t either.

Hope.
Even if it was small, I had it and I was damn proud of myself for still believing in the light.

My heartrate slowly got back to normal and I felt how my breathing slowed down as well.

Think, Glyndon, think.

I looked around and narrowed my eyes, blinking a few times to adjust my eyes as much as I could.
I had to sit down first before anything else.
Groaning, I forced my hands to move down my body while lifting my knees to my chest, to thread my legs through my tied hands.

It hurt a lot because of my sore muscles and it seemed like I had an open wound on the arm I was laying on but I bit down on my teeth and pushed myself to get through with it.

When I had my hands in front of me I laid back on my back, took a deep breath and sat up.

“S-shit”, I cursed when pain snapped through my spine, making me clench my eyes.

What did they do to me?

Focus, Glyndon.

I touched with my nose the what seemed like ropes around my wrist and tried to feel the spot where it was knotted. After biting and pulling on it I groaned in frustration, my teeth hurting.

It was too tight.

I looked around, trying to focus on my surrounding when I decided to stand up.

An instant ache spread along my legs and I felt like I was going to fall over when I jumped clumsily ahead and crashed against a wall. 

So either the room wasn’t as big or I was at the far end.

Jumping along the wall I reached one end and when I couldn’t identify anything in the darkness I moved back, feeling along the wall.

Somewhere here must be a door. How else did they get me in here?

When I moved along the room, I realized that they put me into the far back of it because I was still jumping to reach the other end when a sudden noise interrupted me.

“Find that bastard who gave us the room. Toropitsya!”

My eyes widened at the familiar voice. This rough, lethal voice. The provocation in his tone was not unfamiliar.

Nikolai.

Oh my god, this was Nikolai.

“H-Hey. HEY. NIKO! NIKOLAI IM HERE!”

A happy sob caught in my throat when I realized that I was right. That I in fact really wasn’t forgotten. That they came to rescue me – us – from this hell.

Killian.. my Killian was here too. I knew he was.

“NIKOLAI! NIKOLAI I’M HERE!”

I groaned in frustration when I realized that I wasn’t heard. I screamed louder, with as much energy I could collect until I felt like my voice cords were about to snap.

Why couldn’t they hear me when I heard them?

Panic gripped me when I listened to them moving away, going further away from me.

“N-No! NO! NIKO! I’M HERE!! I’M HERE!”

Tears streamed down my face when I tried to arbitrarily push against the walls.

Where was the goddamn door?

I looked around, cursing at myself for not being able to decipher anything. My eyes couldn’t adjust. It was so bloody dark as if I was in the pit of hell.

I kept jumping, fresh adrenaline giving me strength to keep going, now knowing that the guys were so close.

Another voice reached my ear but it wasn’t anyone familiar. They were talking another language.. Italian?!

This time I concentrated from where the sounds were coming from and the closer I moved to a corner, the louder it got. I kept on jumping until I crashed into another wall.

The voices.. they were coming from above me.

I looked up but of course I couldn’t make out anything but I realized that there couldn’t be an opening either as there was no light coming from there.

Was that a speaker?

I screamed into the corner, hoping the strangers heard me but they didn’t even stop their talking before they went further away.

An engine sound made me stop in track.

Was that a car?

I jumped slightly to get closer to the corner and screamed.

Louder and louder

Please.

Someone.

Anyone.

The more voices I heard the louder I got.

Louder.

Louder.

And freaking louder.

My screams were getting more desperate.

More helpless.

More broken…

… more silent..

Hoarser...

I lost track of time and though I didn’t know if it was day or night I could swear that I was screaming for help now for hours.

My throat burned from all the yelling and my cheeks from the salt of my tears.

Helplessness was overcoming me, engulfing my heart with its dark hands. My whole body started to tremble at the realization that no one was hearing me and no one would.

“Kill…”

I slid down the wall, a fit of sobs chocking me when I rolled his name over my lips.

“P-please.. help”

My voice was barely a whisper, sounding abused and defeated.

I didn’t know how long I sat there, whispering to myself, words hardly leaving my lips. It felt like hours, days and years. Time and again voices from the outside were audible in the dark cave I was but none of their words reached my ear.

Besides the fact that it was mostly Italian I couldn’t gather the strength to even try to understand or filter through the voices for a possible hint or sign that would help me.

Was I really lost?

Would no one find me?

I was about to drown in my own tears again, a panic attack building up in my chest when I heard a door being shut close loudly. Which made me halt was the familiar voice.

“You don’t fucking have the right to piss me off right now, when it was your and your cousins fucking fault!”

E-Eli?

“No. No. NO! I don’t fucking know okay. We searched everywhere! They know who we are because of YOU!”

A crashing sound was hurt as if he had kicked something metallic against the wall.

“Find her Dad…”

I blinked tears away in the dark hearing my cousins voice this vulnerable for the first time.

“We found Ariella and Cecily but something is telling me we don’t have much time. We didn’t find them because we were searching. We found them because we were supposed to find them.”

Eli’s voice was getting closer and I found myself standing up on wobbly legs, tiny spark of hope pumping through my veins.

He was… he was behind this wall.

I was sure of it.

“Please… find her” 

I never heard my cousin beg and it shattered my heart into pieces. A lump was forming in my throat, new tears gathering in my eyes.

“If something happens to her I…”

He was chocking on words. My ruthless cousin, Eli King, who had never shown any weakness ever before was close to a break down.

Oh how much did he love Ava..

Hate and wrath engulfed me for those who did this to us. For putting my cousin, my brothers… my Killian into a situation of such despair.

If Eli was breaking… how were the others?

Even as kids I don’t remember Eli ever crying or showing any emotions close to weakness. He was the strongest and most dangerous person I knew. He never allowed any vulnerable emotions. Eli was always strong for all of us, especially Creighton, so when he was at his limits.. what were the others going through?

I looked up to the corner that I couldn’t see, opened my mouth and closed it again with a pained moan knowing screaming would be in vain. He couldn’t hear me.

I leaned my forehead against the wall, imagining that my cousin was on the other side.

How long were they looking for us? Searching for us?

How many days have passed?

“Yes”

A shiver run down my body, hearing the lethal tone in his voice again.

“Yes. I’ll send you the location. We’ll be waiting for you all.”

My eyes widened as I realized what he was saying.

If this was true… if I understood it correctly then…

This was bigger than I imagined this would be. Bigger than I feared..

This..

We‘ll be waiting for you all…

Our Dad’s were coming.

And they wouldn’t return before they get us all.