Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York Lu Zagalsky is in a shallow, fitful sleep when Spider slips off the gag and slams the needle of undiluted bleach directly into her voice box. The chemical will burn out her vocal cords and render her incapable of a squeak, let alone ascream. Keeping the gagon would be to run the risk of her choking on her own vomit, and he doesn't want her to die. At least, not just yet.
'Shh, shh, don't struggle,' says Spider, dropping the needle and holding down her shoulders.
The wrist-chain has worked a notch loose on her right-hand side and Lu instinctively tries to punch him. The metal links snap tight and nearly dislocate her arm.
'Stop it! Stop it now!' he shouts, quickly putting his right hand around her neck. His fingers are steely strong and they stab like knives into her throat. Spider feels enraged and aroused. His vice-like grip tightens around the tender tissue where the bleach is already eating through her larynx.
Lu thinks she's going to die. It's now! He's going to kill you right now! There'll be no Ramzan, no life outside the Beach, nothing more than this.
Despite the agonizing pain she manages to bend her neck and snake her mouth round his hand just enough to bite him.
Spider feels her teeth snap shut and sink deep into his left hand.
Her mouth locks closed on his flesh like the savage bite of a wild street dog. He tries to stay calm but this woman's jaw-power is extraordinary. Her bony canines are cutting their way into him, grinding through skin, slicing into the bones around his thumb. He frees his right hand from around her neck and punches her.
Lu barely feels the blow. Her mother brought her up on a daily diet of beatings a hundred times more brutal than the one this ebanat's trying to dish out. She ignores the dull throb on her left cheekbone and chews down hard on the flesh in her mouth. She can feel his skin bursting around her teeth, his stinking vonuchaya blood seeping into her mouth.
'Fuuuuck!' Spider screams.
He punches her again, but he can't get any uplift to deliver a proper blow. The little bitch's teeth have bitten into nerves and tendons and the pain's so intense it sparks a bolt of agonizing electricity up his elbow. Spider falls on top of her and uses the momentum and his body weight to try to suffocate her, to try to jam his hand deep into her evil little mouth. Little bitch will either let go or choke to death, he thinks, as he pushes through the pain and bears down on her.
Lu doesn't lose her grip. Even as his weight collapses on her, she grinds her back teeth.
She can't see now and is struggling to breathe. His body heat and weight are overwhelming, there's no air to suck in.
Everything begins to go black and fuzzy for Lu, as once more he rams the palm of his right hand across her face and again leans all his weight upon it.
She starts to retch as he forces his left thumb deeper into her mouth, deeper into her bite.
She knows what he's doing; knows that he can't pull his hand free without severe damage, so he's trying to choke her. Well, you give it your best shot, mister, it's gonna take a lot to choke Lu Zagalsky; therehavebeen biggerthingsinthis mouthandheavier people on top of this body than a creep like you.
Lu drills deep into her childhood memory; the nightmares of abuse flood into her brain, the anger boils up and over. She bites so hard she feels one of her teeth crack and splinter away. The latest wave of pain is so severe that Spider falls off her and crashes to the floor.
Lu spits out his blood and her broken tooth. It feels good, it feels wonderful! She feels like Rocky when he beat Apollo Creed. Bloody, battered but victorious. Only she knows that this victory is going to be horribly costly. Her mind flashes back again to her bedroom in Moscow and the last time she bit a man like this.
You don't have to take this shit.
Whatever happens, you don't take this kind of shit.
Fight for your life, Lu, fight for every second you can draw breath. Whatever happens he can't take your spirit away from you.
Spider cradles his left hand in the palm of his right one. Jesus Christ, how did she do that? The flesh is open and he can see inside his own hand. He can see bones and veins, blood and tissue oozing from the crescent-shaped wound caused by her vicious teeth.
He wipes sweat off his head with his right forearm and looks across the basement for something with which to make a tourniquet. His eyes settle on a sink in the far corner and some cotton rags that will be okay if he washes them first.
He turns on the single mixer tap and lets cold water pour over his damaged hand into the deep ceramic trough. The water is red with his blood but it is cool and helps ease the pain that is roaring through him. He soaks one of the rags, the type he usually uses for gags and facial bindings, and squeezes it out as best he can. Spider wraps the sodden cotton around the bite wound, makes a loop and then grips one end of the rag in his teeth so he can pull tight. Further up his forearm he ties a second tourniquet across the veins he suspects may feed blood into the wound.
Lu watches helplessly from the bondage table. She's thinking of when she was a small child watching snowflakes for the first time from the window of her parents' tenement building, thinking of when she was free and innocent, running in the meadows of Gorky Park.
She's thinking of what life with Ramzan might have been like.
She's thinking of anything other than what might happen to her next.
Spider dries his left hand on his trousers and looks straight at her.
'Bad Sugar,' he says, shaking his head from side to side. 'Bad, bad Sugar.'
Lu's eyes are fixed on his hand. Not the hand she's bitten, but his good right hand. In it, gripped tight, is what looks like a large bone saw.