Prologue
Arianna
“Help!” I scream, myvoice cracking. “Someonehelp!”
“No one is coming to save you,” the demonic-like voice says with amusement.
Everything is ice cold. A shiver rolls through my body as I slowly drag my weak and naked body across the ice. The shadows loom over me, and I know the demons want more—I can’t escape this hell. Hands dig into my thighs as they are forced apart.
I try to fight.
God, do I try…
Pain surges through my belly, and a shrill scream rips from my throat when the stick is rammed into me again and again as I try to crawl away. It’s brutal and unforgiving. My nails dig into the ice, trying to make it another foot. Another inch. Anotheranything. I don’t want to die. This feels like what I imagined death to be. The longer I claw my way across the rink, the more bloodied my fingertips become. I am dragged back, and my screams turn even more panicked.
This is it.
It’s going to get worse.
“Grab that other stick and fuck her ass,” the voice growls.
“Please. I’m sorry,” I sob. Agony suddenly shoots through me when the handle of the other hockey stick is forced into my ass. Their cackles echo through the rink as they jam them into me. It’s like a game to them. They laugh as if my pain is the punchline, and my blood coating the ice is the meat of the story—details matter.
“Open your fucking mouth again and I will fucking kill you,” a voice growls in my ear as my head is pulled back with fingers tangled in my hair.
I try to apologize again, but my face is slammed into the ice. My body is suddenly numb, and I can feel the warmth of my blood on my face. The world is too loud. I am flipped to my back, and the sticks are yanked out of my body, forcing more whimpers between the groans of pain. I am dazed as I stare upat the ceiling. The metal beams look as though they are melting, and I can almost make out faces looking down at me as the weight of the demon presses down on me. A grunt is forced out of me when he rams his penis into me over and over. My blood is acting as a lubricant, but I can’t feel anything. My fingers are tingling, but the ice doesn’t feel so cold anymore.
I made the one mistake every girl my age should know better than to make. I took a drink from someone, and whatever they drugged me with is making the world look different. Colors are brighter, and their faces look demonic.
Two demons with hockey sticks.
I thought if I just got across the rink and to the door, I could escape to my car. I could get away. I’d be safe. I should have known better than to think I could outrun them. I knew the consequences of speaking up, but I did it anyway. I thought I was safe, but I was dead wrong. I am so weak, but I still try to fight. I refuse to die because I gave up.
I try to push the demon’s face away when he leans in. At first, my brain doesn’t quite understand what’s happening. My hand is on fire as I try to pull it free from his teeth. I hear a sickening crunch before I scream when blood is suddenly everywhere. Hands grab the sides of my head before the demon lifts my head and slams it back down to the ice. He is screaming something at me, but the world is quickly fading.
When my body is limp and the weight is gone, I put all my remaining energy into opening my eyes. I know this is the end for me, and dying doesn’t seem so scary anymore from downhere at rock bottom. As my eyes flutter shut, and I descend into darkness, I am surrounded by beautiful crimson ice.
Chapter One
Arianna
Six Months Later
“Fuck, Ari. Stop beinga little bitch.” I curse myself as I stare at the front entrance to the building. I swore to myself when I got out of the hospital that I wouldn’t hang my head in shame. Coach fired me after being brutally raped and beaten. No one believed me that I wasn’t the one who took the acid. They didn’t give a shit. They were more concerned with the fact that I was in there after hours and that they had to pay for biohazard cleanup. I was high out of my goddamn mind on top of all my injuries, and the moment I woke up and could speak, they fired me.
There are a lot of missing details, but I remember enough to make sense of it. To know that this time I need to just shut the fuck up. I turned two players in for sexually assaulting a girl in the locker room, and they didn’t like that. Conrad Booth and Ethan McConnell are their star players as the center and the goalie, and clearly, they can do no wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing by speaking up, but it was the biggest mistake of my life. My next biggest mistake was deciding not to tell anyone who did it. I was high and hallucinating, so it’s not like my words were reliable.
I spent weeks in the hospital and the last six months in physical therapy. I was finally discharged from care, and now I am cleared to return to work. I have my limitations, but I’m just a personal assistant, not a player. I have to force myself to go into this fucking building and get my shit that they have been holding onto for the last six months first, though.
“Hey, Ari,” a hesitant voice says from behind me. I beg myself not to tear up as I turn to face Logan. Literally every other player but Conrad and Ethan is great. They all came to visit when I was in the hospital and checked in with me via text daily, but this is the first time I have seen them in person.
I have a gnarly scar across my forehead that fades into my hairline. I am extremely happy they were able to avoid shaving my head, so the scar in the back of my head is hidden by my hair.
I suffered from a traumatic brain injury from the attack. The blunt force trauma to the back of my head and even the hits to my face caused a brain contusion, brain swelling, and a moderately severe brain bleed. I obviously had a concussion, butit could have been much worse if my brain had shifted around too much in my skull and had torn nerve fibers. I might not be here if they had hit me even one more time. I narrowly avoided brain surgery but managed with minimal long-term effects. They tell me I am lucky to have survived, but they aren’t the ones who deal with the nightmares of being attacked by demons. The one surgery I couldn’t avoid was repairing the perineal and rectal tearing. My cervix was also damaged, but healed in time. Turns out if you get fucked with hockey sticks, it rips you open. Who knew?
While they did that repair and stapled my scalp back together, they did the best they could with my hand. One of the sick fuckers bit my goddamn pinky off. Who in the fuck does that? I remember it happening, but it still blows my mind. They picked the least useful finger to bite off, so it doesn’t affect me day to day, but still. What the fuck?
Long term, I have migraines and dizzy spells that will take me down fast if I push myself too hard. I am learning my limits and also paying attention to my body so that I know when I need to relax. The nerve pain hits me every so often, but it generally coincides with my migraines. Physical therapy helped me significantly to help me stop pissing on myself. I think that was the most embarrassing part of it all. I sustained so much damage that my bladder said, “fuck you,” and I simply couldn’t hold it. In the beginning, just existing was hard. I had to relearn how to do a lot, but I was fucking determined to get as close to normal again.
