Release In The Dark (DARK erotic romance series) (4 page)

“
Hi yourself. What's your
name?” One of the girls asks in a challenging tone.

“
Zo—” I clear
my throat hurriedly. “Ana. My name is Ana Zen.”

“
You just came in last
night, right?” One of the older girls tilts her head at me.

I gulp and look down. I'm
supposed to have been here two nights. That's what the Warden said.

Luckily for me, the girl takes
my silence to be a sign of disorientation or nervousness. “Hey,”
she says softly. “It's okay. It can be really frightening and
confusing at first. But—you'll survive.”

I look up to see her smiling
kindly at me.

“
I'm Pam. And this is
Kylee, May, Lilin and Riko.” She introduces the girls in turn.
I smile up at them shakily. “Grab your toiletries, Ana,”
Pam tells me. “We have to go wash up and get ready. You only
have one hour.”

“
One hour?” I
sputter. Just to brush my teeth and wash my face?

Riko laughs, throwing back her
black curls. “That was my initial reaction as well. One hour
is barely enough, sister. You have to brush your teeth, bathe,
shave, oil...” She begins ticking off the tasks on her
fingers.

I fumble for my toiletries and
see a small shaver in the mug. “Shave? Oh...”

“
Yup. Everywhere,”
Lilin chimes in, raising her arms and parting her legs to make her
point.

“
Got it.” I grab
the towel from the side of my mattress.

“
It looks like she has
already shaven...down there,” May widens her hazel eyes and
stares between my legs.

A few eyebrows are raised, and I
detect pity and disdain on some of their faces. They must think that
I have been working as a prostitute before I came to the Red Lantern,
that I am just a transfer from the other Lantern branches around the
State. All the girls speak at least a few words to me, at me or
about me, except the red-haired one, Kylee. She just stares at me,
her blue eyes watching me carefully. She keeps her face blank, her
body language neutral, revealing nothing. She takes in everything,
but gives nothing away. I can't tell what she is thinking or
feeling. In this respect, she reminds me a little of Irin.

They start to leave the room,
still muttering to one another while glancing furtively at me. I
shuffle after them, keeping my head down. None of them attempt to
engage me in conversation once we leave the room. The corridor is
packed with girls from the other rooms. I estimate there are close
to forty girls squeezed into the three rooms, which means that the
other rooms house an average of seventeen girls. There are only six
of us in our room, but I remember hearing May and Lilin whisper that
more would be coming in tomorrow night. As replacements for...for
what? Why is there a need for replacements?

An involuntary shudder courses
down my body.

Back at the Palace, new Slaves
and Sirens were captured and delivered to the Palace to replace those
who were killed. I saw what they did to the Sirens and Slaves at the
Palace. They were tortured and forced to fight each other to the
death for the entertainment of the Emperor and his guests. The
Sirens were abused and mutilated for the perverse pleasure of the
Emperor and his guests. Those who survived were forced into gray
uniforms to serve as Matrons. Others were tortured to death. Of
course they had to have replacements. They had to replace those who
were killed.

It must be the same here.

Squeezing my eyes shut briefly,
I force those gruesome memories out of my mind. I have to blend in,
survive, and find out as much as I can from the influential,
well-connected patrons who frequent the Red Lantern. This is neither
the time nor the place to lose my wits and have a meltdown.

Steeling myself, I trudge after
the jostling crowd of girls who are making a beeline for the sole
bathroom at the end of the corridor.

Squeezing into the cramped, dank
bathroom, I stare around as the girls start stripping and stepping
under the shower heads lining the walls. There are no partitions or
walls or doors in the bathroom. You will have to wash, shower, do
everything in the open. There are about ten shower heads and ten
sinks. All the showers are turned on at full blast, and I see the
girls have started soaping and shaving rigorously. I catch sight of
Pam brushing her teeth at a corner sink. She sees me and waves me
over.

“
No time to stand and
stare, Ana. You have to do this with military precision and speed
every morning,” she says, rinsing her mouth. “Once you
see an empty shower, go for it. Then head back to the room and do
your make up.”

I nod, but she has already spun
round and is heading for the showers.

Fumbling for my toothbrush and
small tube of toothpaste in the mug, I manage to clean my teeth and
wash my face in a hurry. I spot an empty shower and gather my things
quickly. But as I turn around, Kylee elbows her way past me and
beats me to the empty shower. As she strips, she turns her head to
the side and watches me out of the corner of her eye, studying my
reaction.

The water runs down her face,
but still she keeps her cool, impassive gaze on me. I meet her eyes
steadily, calmly, until I notice that the blond girl beside her has
finished showering.

Still keeping my face blank, I
walk quickly over to step under the shower once the girl leaves. I
start pumping soap onto my palm from the plastic dispenser mounted on
the wall and start shampooing and soaping. I can still feel Kylee's
eyes on me, but I am not bothered. I have to keep up with the rest
of the girls. Treat this like a military operation, Pam said.
Swift, sharp and silent.

I rinse the soap off my hair and
body, and I blink the water from my eyes to see Kylee shaving her
underarms and legs with practiced, efficient strokes. I run the
blunt shaver a couple of times down my legs to get rid of one or two
stray hairs, and rinse off quickly.

By the time I finish drying
myself, Kylee has already wrapped her towel around her body and
gathered up her things.

The bathroom is almost empty. I
count less than half a dozen girls left in the bathroom. I don't
want to be the last to leave so I wrap myself up in the rough towel
and trail after Kylee. We enter the room together, but she doesn't
even glance at me this time. She simple strolls over to her mattress
and unwraps the towel around her body to dry her hair. The rest of
the girls are combing their hair and passing a tube of lipstick
around.

I pull the plastic comb from my
mug and start dragging it through my tangled brown hair. Taking the
cue from the rest of the girls, I dress myself in the thin tank top
and tiny shorts.

“
Here, Ana.” Pam
holds out the lipstick to me. “Each room gets just one tube of
lipstick. Use it sparingly. Apply a little to your lips, cheeks and
eyelids. And blend, blend, blend.”

I nod and do as she says. Pam
tilts her head to the side as she watches me. I throw a sidelong
glance at her and she smiles. She is half a head shorter than me,
with brown wavy hair, full lips, gangly limbs and small breasts. She
even has a scar on her left shoulder, like me. She could be my elder
sister.

As she moves forward to replace
the cap on the lipstick, her eyes linger at the ugly scar on my left
shoulder.

“
This scar...” she
begins.

“
Yeah.”
The
Emperor gave it to me.

Her lips quaver, but she doesn't
ask further. I won't ask her how she got that jagged scar on her
shoulder either.

“
Hey, if you're done, can
I have the lipstick?” Kylee calls out impatiently.

“
Oh, sure.” Pam
gives me a shrug and moves off to hand the lipstick to Kylee. I
stare around at the other girls' made up faces. They have applied
the color expertly, with their lips, cheeks and eyelids subtly
shaded. Frowning, I gingerly dab my fingers over my lips and cheeks.
I think I might have applied a tad too much color on my face. I
can't imagine how ridiculous I look right now.

May and Lilin come over to me,
tittering. “No, no, you're overdoing your cheeks,” May
shakes her head. “You don't want to look like a clown.”

“
And your eyes,”
Lilin says in a disapproving tone. “Do you want to look like
you've just been in a fight? Here, let me do it. You've got to
blend it outwards, like this...”

The two of them cluck and
chatter non-stop as they knead their fingers all over my cheeks,
eyelids and lips. I hold my breath, listening to their rapid fire,
half-completed sentences and comments.

Finally, they step back and
survey their handiwork. “There! This is how you do it.”

They hi-five each other, and
smirk at me.

“
Um, thanks,” I
stammer.

Shrugging, they turn and leave
the room, as I raise my hand to feel my gooey, sticky face. There is
no mirror, so I can't really see what they have done. Pam walks past
me and smiles. “May and Lilin are really good with make up.
They were traveling with a dance troupe, doing the dancers' make up
before...” She trails off.

“
Before they were caught,”
I offer.

Pam shakes her head. “They
were sold. The troupe needed money. The troupe master sold them to
the Red Lantern.”

“
Sold,” I repeat
numbly.

“
Yes. They hope to buy
themselves out of the Red Lantern. They just have to earn enough.
But enough is...” She doesn't finish. Instead she lets out a
brittle, bitter laugh.

Enough is never enough.

The girls can never buy
themselves out.

“
Let's go,” she says
with a soft sigh. “There is a new Warden in this morning. If
you get into the Warden's bad books, she can make one week feel like
a century.”

“
The Wardens are soldiers
from the Imperial Army, aren't they?” I say as we leave the
room.

“
Yes. They usually send
the female soldiers. But don't be fooled. They may be female, but
they're soldiers of the Imperial Army all right. They are
well-armed, and they can call for back-up anytime. Last month, a few
girls tried to escape. The Warden pressed the alarm, and in a matter
of seconds, I swear, seconds! The entire castle was swarming with
Imperial soldiers! The girls didn't even make it to the edge of the
woods behind the castle,” she finishes quietly.

“
Were they...”

She nods. “Shot in the
back.”

“
No wonder there are no
guards around,” I mumble.

Pam snorts. “The soldiers
are better deployed elsewhere. Fighting, killing, invading, crushing
and capturing the rebels...”

Her last few words send a stab
of cold fear and dread through my heart. Jaxon was a Commander of
the Imperial Army. Now, as a rebel leader, he would be hunted down
by the black-uniformed soldiers he had once led. He was a wanted
man, a traitor of the State. If he had been captured—

“
Ana, Ana! You okay?”

I gasp and jerk back from Pam.
She withdraws her hand from my shoulder in a hurry.

“
Ah...I'm sorry, Pam.
I...I just...”

“
That's okay. The first
day I was brought here, I was catatonic. The soldiers pulled me away
from my fiance and when he tried to stop them, they shot him. I saw
them shoot James in the leg. But I know that James is still alive.
But if I tried to escape, they'll kill James...”

I reach out to hold her hand.
She squeezes my hand hard, and turns to me with round, dead eyes.

I don't know what to say to her.
In all likelihood, her James is dead, killed not long after she was
taken. But I can't tell her that. She would never accept that.

My grip on her hand tightens as
I suddenly realize that I might be stubbornly clinging on to the same
illusion. No, no! Jaxon is not dead! I will never accept that.
Never.

Riko and Kylee push past us out
of the room. I release Pam's cold hand and stumble out into the
crowded corridor. There is a loud beep and the sliding door opens.
With nervous coughs and murmurs, the girls stream out of the door and
step into the plush interior of the Red Lantern.

I suck in a steadying breath and
sweep out of the corridor with the rest of the girls.

I feel the lush carpet under my
feet, and see the rich wood paneling of the walls, a stark contrast
to the world we inhabit behind the sliding door. I am going back the
same way I came last night. We walk across the grand foyer with the
beautiful, marble fountain. I glance at the glittering water and
frown at my reflection as I brush past the fountain.

I look somehow changed, aged.
Much older than my eighteen years.

At the side of the foyer is a
set of ornate double doors, which open to a majestic dining room.
The long table is set with porcelain plates and silverware. The
girls immediately take their places at the long table, sitting down
in silence. I find an empty seat and plonk myself down. I don't
want to be the last one standing.