FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The bell sounded in the little school building just seconds before the door swung open, disgorging a crowd of youngsters down the stairs and out the gate to the frosty afternoon. Many were on their way home through the little streets of the small mining town, and others were on their way out to the forests to hunt for glittery stones or do things that their parents would never approve of.

Dannica Stanislav was one of the former. She came out of the doors a second or two after the majority of her classmates and when she got to the bottom of the steps, she paused for a moment and looked up and then back down the street. The little tigress was just thirteen years old and stood just a little over five feet tall. The telltale signs of puberty were just starting to show on her orange and black form, with small breasts starting to fill out the bust of the light blue sun dress that she was wearing. Bright blue eyes, the color of sapphires in the morning sun, scanned the narrow road, moving over the trees and the sidewalks, then she looked up at the sky, trying to decide if she wanted to go home or join her classmates.

"Dannica?" asked a deep voice behind her.

She turned and took a breath, trying to keep from rolling her eyes when she saw Mr. Olev coming down the stairs after her.

"Are you okay?" he asked, concern evident in his voice. "You've seemed distracted the last few days. Is everything all right at home, dear?"

"Yes, Mr. Olev," Dannica said in her small voice, trying to add an air of credibility to a blatant lie.

Mr. Olev frowned, but didn't say anything for a moment. "You know, you can talk to me, Dannica," he said finally.

"I know, Mr. Olev, but everything is fine." Dannica turned and looked up the street again and then started walking. "I have to get home, though, so I'll see you on Monday, okay?"

Mr. Olev nodded and watched her walk down the street, then, with a shrug, went back into the schoolhouse. Try as he might, sometimes there wasn't anything to be done, and he had learned to accept that some of his students had troubles that they didn't want to talk about.

Dannica walked up the street towards her house and she tried to keep the tears from her eyes. She didn't really want to go home. She knew that when she got there, all that would be there to greet her would be the arguing and the fighting between her mom and her dad. She couldn't tell Mr. Olev, but nothing had been right at home for a long time.

It seemed like her mother was always angry at her father, and when she got angry she tended to turn it on to the children. Dannica was old enough now that she could stay under the radar and not attract too much attention, but her younger brother, Steven, was a different story. He was a boisterous child and he managed to get into everything, especially at the worst of times. Dannica had gotten in the habit of stepping in for him whenever he attracted mother's ire, and it always made it worse for the young girl.

Today, she didn't want to go home and take it all again, so she found herself taking a side street. Novvy Urengoy in the middle of Northern Siberia wasn't large by any stretch of the word. It was a little mining town in the middle of frozen tundra and during the summer months, like it was now, the sun never set. It just went to a bright twilight. Snow still covered much of the landscape and the morning and evening frost still sparkled on the trees every day.

Dannica hated it here. It was always cold, and there was no way for her to get warm. No matter how hard she tried, she could only get warm when she got close enough to the stove, and that only lasted a few minutes before her mother tossed her back away from it so she could warm her own bones.

Her father never did anything about it either, even when he was home, which was rarely. Dannica couldn't really say that she blamed him, what with her mother being the witch she was, but it still hurt and she wanted nothing more than to get out of the town and to a city. Any city would do, somewhere she could be someone else, live another life.

Dannica kicked at the pebbles on the sidewalk as she walked down the street, lost in her own thoughts. She didn't hear the van pulling up the street, and she wouldn't have thought anything about it even if she had.

The van pulled up a little ways past her and then pulled to the side of the road and stopped. Dannica kept walking, head down, cursing a little under her breath as she thought more and more about her family. They couldn't afford anything nice. Some of the kids at school had bikes to ride home and they didn't have to walk, but her family couldn't afford anything. Her mother said it was because of her father, but she couldn't ever tell if either of them was lying. It seemed that was all they did, anyway.

She looked up when she heard the sliding door of the van open, and it took her a moment to see that it wasn't in front of her any longer, it was actually to the side. When she turned her head that way, she had barely enough time to register the face of a leering wolf as he reached out from the van and closed his strong arms around her, dragging her kicking into the van. The door shut and there was darkness around her. She felt the acceleration and heard the engine roar as the van accelerated away.

She tried to sit up, but the big wolf still held her down. She could feel her heart thumping hard in her chest and she opened her mouth to scream, but as she drew a deep breath, a hand clamped a damp rag around her muzzle and she started to feel dizzy as the world faded around her. The last thing she heard was a quiet laugh through the buzzing in her ears.

---

When she awoke, she was laying on a cold, hard concrete floor. She opened her eyes and all she could see around her was black. There was no light to be found. Her hands were bound behind her tightly and no matter how she worked her wrists, she couldn't get free. Curiously, though, her legs were untied.

Frantically, she looked around, trying to find anything to give her some sense of where she was. Finally, she saw the barest sliver of light near the floor a few meters away from her. She worked herself this way and that and finally managed to sit up. Her eyes slowly focused on the small sliver of light, and as they did, she started to make out the general shape of the room. It was just smaller than her bedroom at home, but larger than her mother's walk-in closet. There was nothing between her and the door, and as she looked around, she realized that there was nothing at all in the room save a bucket in the far corner and a small drain in the floor.

With a little bit of time, she was able to get her feet under her and stand up. Still trying to free her hands, she walked across to the door and listened. She'd watched enough television to know that she was probably somewhere far away from anyone who would hear her screaming for help, so she didn't even try it.

There was no sound on the other side of the door, and upon closer inspection, she found there wasn't even a door knob on her side of the door. She hadn't had time to think about where she was and what might be happening, but when she saw that there wasn't even a place for a knob, all the different possibilities came crashing down on her.

There were rumors in the school about mobsters who would take girls off the street and sell them to Americans for brides. The ones that didn't make it to that point got smuggled into the country and put to work in the brothels and as street walkers. The very unlucky were said to be taken to other countries where the laws were not so strict and the authorities much more inclined to look the other way.

She always thought that they were stories to scare the girls into doing what they were supposed to do, boogeymen and nothing more, but here in the dark room, all the stories started to sound real and very plausible. She'd been snatched off the street, after all, and now she was being held here with no idea of what was going on.

The tears that she hadn't even known she was holding back came streaming out, and for the first time, she felt her heart racing. She didn't want to go home to her fighting mother and father, but there were worse things, and this was obviously one of them. She didn't want to draw attention to herself, so the sniffle she made was as quiet as possible.

She leaned herself against the wall by the door, where the light was the most concentrated and then laid her head on her knees and cried.

It wasn't long before she heard boots on hard concrete through the door and she lifted her head off her knees. By the time she could stand herself up again with her hands behind her back, the door swung open. The sudden light coming from the hallway, combined with a harsh, bright beam in her face from a flashlight stunned the poor tigress, and she tripped, falling back against the floor. She couldn't break the fall, either, and her head struck hard, flashing little points of light in front of her eyes.

Dazed, she watched the harsh light source approach, and when it was moved from her eyes, she saw that it was held by a very large man. She couldn't make out much detail, but she could tell by the outline of his body that he was a large, strong bear. He stood much taller than her, and with her laying on the floor and looking up at him, he looked positively massive.

"It is good you are awake," the bear said in a strong and rough voice. She'd heard voices like it before. It was the voice of someone from the mines who smoked far too many of the only brand of unfiltered cigarettes that you could find in the small town.

Dannica cowered, still dazed but coming around, and as the stars cleared from her vision, she scrabbled on the floor with her feet, claws clicking and scraping on the concrete, trying to get purchase. Little by little, she managed to push herself backwards along the floor, away from the big bear.

"Why do you insist on doing that?" the bear asked. Dannica could hear the taunting smile, and when the bear moved, she watched his teeth flash in the light from the door.

"What do you want?" Dannica asked, still trying to slide away. She stopped when her head touched the far wall and she looked one way and then the other. One side was the bucket that she saw earlier, and there was nothing but a blank cinderblock wall to the other side.

"We want you, little Miss Stanislav," the bear said. His smile grew even larger at the look of shock on Dannica's face.

"Yes, I know your name. Do you think that we took just any little girl from the streets?"

The bear laughed and from behind him, there were two answering laughs that drew Dannica's eyes to the door. There just outside the door frame, and only just visible as silhouettes against the square of light, she could make out one other bear and a large cat.

The bear laughed again.

"You must think we are like those from the stories. The ones that take girls to America to be wedded to rich Americans," the bear scoffed. "No. That is not for you."

Dannica didn't know whether to be relieved or even more scared. If she wasn't the victim of one of those snatchers...

"Then why-" Dannica started to ask.

"Why did we take you? That is easy question to answer," the bear said, turning and leaning against the wall with his arms across his chest.

"You are oldest child of Mister Timofey Stanislav."

Dannica worked herself up the wall, trying to see clearly through the tears that kept falling from her eyes, and her heart skipped a beat at her father's name. They kidnapped her because of her father.

"Yes, it seems Timofey owes a great deal of money to Mikhail Kaminski, the man who pays to have you taken here."

Things were starting to make sense. The late night fights that her mother and her father had about every night, the way that her mother blamed her father for everything. Kaminski was a name that she was familiar with.

Novvy Urengoy was governed by a small city council that ostensibly made the rules, but everyone knew the Kaminski family and the patriarch, Mikhail. He was a stern figure that always seemed to have his fingers in every pie in the city. All the children were told to stay away from his house. He only had one son and he was grown and overseas at university the last she had heard.

But there were other rumors about the man. There was talk among the adults that Kaminski was the local Bratva representative. Of course everything that the adults talked about was passed on by the children as well as stories in school. She never paid a great deal of attention to them, since none of it really concerned her, but she remembered some of the neighborhood children playing games that had Kaminski in the center of all the nefarious dealings.

"Mister Kaminski will be here soon. You will stay here until he comes."

Dannica realized when he said that there was something that she needed to ask.

"Please, sir," she pleaded, "I need to go to the bathroom."

The bear laughed and pointed to the bucket in the corner.

"Use bucket," he said.

Then, still laughing, he turned and walked to the door, shutting it firmly behind him with a loud thump that echoed off the cinderblock walls.

The room was dark again and the sound of her sobs echoed off the bare walls as well, persisting for a time after the door's sounds had finally ceased.

---

When the door opened next, the light from the hallway spread across the room, illuminating Dannica's body on the floor. She'd tried to use the bucket when the urge became too great to resist, and she'd managed to get her dress hiked up and her panties down around her knees before she wet herself, and she'd made it to the bucket. But when she was done, her underwear had sunk below where she could reach with her hands tied behind her back.

She was still trying in vain to find a position that would let her grab the fabric and pull it back up to at least cover her a little bit.

The cat that she saw in the doorway from earlier walked through the open door and stopped when he saw her on the floor struggling with her panties.

"Hearts," he said with a wide grin, pointing out the pattern on her underwear. "I like hearts on a girl's panties."

Dannica shuddered at the tone behind the words, and she looked up at the big cat. In the light, she could see that he was a tiger, orange and black stripes covering his well-muscled form. She was so used to the dim light now that any light from the hallway told her much more than it did with the bear. The tiger wore a set of military style pants and a black shirt that clung tight to his fur, defining his form almost as if he wasn't wearing it.

"Help," Dannica pleaded, "I can't reach."

The tiger's muzzle split in a wide grin.

"I can help you, kitten," he said and he crouched down onto one knee. Dannica didn't like the look that she could see in his eyes, and she started trying to back away again as his big paw reached out.

She wasn't quick enough to get away before his fingers closed around the cotton fabric around her ankles. He gave a quick tug and pulled her panties right off her feet, confirming what Dannica suspected about his offer of 'help.'

The tiger chuckled and lifted the fabric to his muzzle. Dannica whimpered softly in shame and fear as the tiger drew a deep breath, pressing his nose right up against the crotch of her panties. She saw the look of predatory pleasure on his face, and she wanted to be as far away from the male as she could.

When he stood up, he tucked the underwear in his pocket and as Dannica watched, she noticed the crotch of his pants had swelled a great deal since he'd walked in the door. She'd had health lessons and she knew what that meant on a male. Crying out with her fur starting to stand on end and the sound of her heart thundering in her ears, she skittered her way across the cement floor, almost crashing into the bucket as she pressed herself into the corner.

The tiger just stepped forward and kept coming while Dannica tried to make herself into the smallest ball possible and made herself ready to scratch his eyes out if it came to that.

His big hands reached down to his fly and slid the zipper down. It was a slow, deliberate move, and he kept his eyes locked on hers as he did, watching where her eyes went. She couldn't help that they went right to where he wanted them. Strong fingers parted the fabric of his pants and pulled out a large, black, spiny tiger cock.

"Come on, girl," he taunted, "I know you want a taste."

Dannica shrunk back against the corner and shook her head violently, unable to muster anything but a whimper from her frightened throat.

The tiger took another stalking step towards her and reached out with his big hands. Dannica squeezed her eyes shut when she felt his strong hands against the sides of her head, just below her ears. She could feel his large hands digging into the skin beneath her fur and she felt her head being drawn forward.

A quick look through squinted eyes told her what she already knew. She saw his cock right there in front of her face, the tip pointed at her muzzle, twitching with the beat of the male's heart while a drop of translucent liquid rolled out of the hole at the tip and slowly ran down the hard black flesh.

She whimpered and tried to push herself away when she felt the tip up against her lips, but the big tiger just held her even tighter. The pain of his grasp had her fighting all the more and with one last desperate attempt, she opened her mouth and took a hard, chomping bite towards the tip of his cock.

The big tiger roared as he thrust Dannica's head away and for the second time, she saw the flashing of stars in front of her eyes as the back of her head crashed into the wall. She was already hurting from where it had hit the floor earlier and the second hit so close to the first left her even more dazed. Her eyes refused to focus on anything and all she could do was lay there blinking stupidly up at the male who was still growling at her.

He walked a step closer to her and then with a feral smile, reached down and picked Dannica's limp form up by her chin and her head. It was all she could do to get her knees under her to stop the pain of him holding her entire body up by her head. She managed, though, and she didn't have the strength to fight when she felt the hard tip of the man's cock pressing once again to her lips.

He pulled Dannica's head firmly against himself, forcing the head between her resisting lips and he growled louder. Dannica tried to push him from her muzzle with her tongue, but it only seemed to encourage him more, and every time that she fought, sliding her tongue down the underside of his shaft, he responded by forcing more of it into her mouth.

Finally, she thought he couldn't go any further, and she whimpered pitifully, weakly trying to free her hands that were just now starting to respond to the signals from her brain. They were still bound tightly behind her back and she lacked the strength to truly fight against the bonds. The man only laughed and held on tightly, but he started to pull himself back out of her muzzle after a moment.

Dannica started to think that he was done and she sagged in relief, but it was too soon. With a heavy thrust, the tiger drove his shaft all the way into her muzzle back to where it was before and then past, spreading the back of her throat around its pointed tip.

Dannica tried to scream, but her cry was muffled by the swollen tiger flesh that spread her jaw painfully far apart, and she gagged as he forced himself even further down her throat. The only thing she could think was that she couldn't breathe and she needed to get away from the man, she needed to get his cock out of her throat. But nothing she could do would make him pull back until he decided to do so on his own.

The man started a rhythm of thrusting into the girl's muzzle, pulling back enough that she could take a few frantic breaths, and then he surged forward again, burying himself as deeply as he could. She lost count of how many times he did and just focused on trying to breathe when she could. Just that singular thing kept her from even fighting back as her survival instinct narrowed down her focus to just trying to draw breath.

"Starting to like this, kitten?" the tiger growled through his heavy breath. "Well get ready."

Dannica registered what he said, but only in the back of her mind. The little part of her mind that wasn't occupied with trying to stay alive wondered what it was that she was getting ready for. She didn't think that she could get more scared, but her heart sped up another notch. She couldn't swallow, and every time he drew back, thin rivulets of her saliva coated her fur on her chin.

The squelching sound of the tiger thrusting in and out of her muzzle mixed with her quiet cries of distress and fear and her tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision even as it recovered from the hit to the back of her head.

With a roar, the tiger threw his hips forward, further than he ever did before, and Dannica's eyes widened in fear as he cut off all her air supply. She fought as hard as she could to pull her head back off of his cock, but he held her firmly there. She felt him swelling and then the hard flesh twitching in her mouth as his thick semen sprayed down her throat. He was forced so far down that she couldn't even try not to swallow it.

She wanted to throw up, but she couldn't, and the reflexive convulsing of her gagging only seemed to bring the tiger more pleasure as time and again he forced his seed down her throat.

He held her there for so long that her vision began to fade along the edges and she could feel her struggling getting weaker. He must have felt it, too, because he let go of her face and laughed as her muzzle slid off his shaft and she collapsed gagging, gasping, and whimpering on the floor. The last two jets of his cum dribbled out of his cock and painted her face, matting her fur with sticky, pungent tiger seed.

"Kiril!" a stern voice called from the door. "Leave the kitten alone."

Another bear, this one smaller and more compact than the first walked through the door. Dannica could make out that he was wearing a business suit. The fabric looked expensive, even though she'd never been one who could identify things like that.

The bear looked down at her as she panted and gasped for breath, taking in the matted fur on her face and the tiger's cock hanging exposed from his fly.

"I told you she is to be intact, you inbred son of a whore!" he yelled at the tiger, Kiril.

"I've not spoiled her, Kaminski," Kiril said, tucking his cock back into his trousers and zipping the fly. "Besides, you promised me that I'd have a taste and a sample of the kitten."

Kaminski shook his head and glared at Kiril. "That is why I brought you here, but the father must witness. It does no good to do this to his daughter if he is not watching."

Dannica shuddered on the floor, suddenly very cold. Nothing she could do would stop the shaking, and neither of the two men seemed to pay her any attention at all as they continued their argument.

"Then go get the camera and let's show him," Kiril said.

"It is set up, but you must be patient. The rules must be observed. We are not common thugs and rapists. We are Bratva. There are courtesies that must be followed."

Kiril scoffed and shook his head, but he said no more, just walked calmly out the door.

Kaminski knelt down by Dannica's shaking body and surveyed what had been done. When his big paw reached out for her head, she cried out and pulled away, trying to avoid his touch.

But his strong paw was gentle as it probed around her head, and though she didn't want him touching her any more than she did Kiril, she couldn't stay the way she was forever, and she finally sagged, ceasing the struggle to get away.

"Water and a rag!" Kaminski called to the door. A faint sound of acknowledgement sounded from the other side and within seconds, a bucket of water was set next to the bear with a clean rag hanging off the handle.

"We need you cleaned up," Kaminski muttered as he dipped the rag in the water. With gentle hands that seemed out of place on a strong bear his size, he carefully cleaned away the tiger's leavings on her face and wiped the matted fur under her eyes and her chin. Then he laid the rag over the edge of the bucket and picked Dannica up in his arms.

"You come with me. You will deliver a message to your father."

His face showed nothing when her eyes met his. There was only professional coolness behind them, and though she wanted to fight and try to run, something told her that this man would be even more ruthless than Kiril, and that she would regret anything that she tried to do. So she lay in his arms while he carried her from the dark room.

---

Dannica watched the lights move overhead as Kaminski carried her through the hallways, and by the time that he stopped moving, she had recovered enough to look around, though her eyes were still blurred a little by tears that refused to stop.

She sniffled and blinked her eyes when Kaminski set her feet down on the floor, trying to clear the tears from them. She had to lean against the bear to keep her balance as she fought off a wave of dizziness.

The room was warmer and brighter than the hallway and in front of her was a single metal folding chair, the kind that they always had to line up in neat little rows in the cafeteria when it doubled as the auditorium. It even had the same cracking brown paint all over it, though the stencil that should have read the name of the school was faded and unreadable.

She looked curiously around the room as she tried to maintain her balance. She still felt sick, and she didn't know if it was from hitting her head so hard or from the lingering taste of Kiril's semen coating her tongue and the back of her throat.

On the far side of the room, she saw a video camera set up on a tripod. She recognized it only because the state news agency had been through their village a few weeks ago and all of the children at the school had turned up to watch them filming something about the mines. None of the families in Novvy Urengoy was wealthy enough by half to afford one of their own. It was a big, boxy contraption with a large red light on one side of the oversize-looking lens. As she watched, the lens rotated slowly, adjusting its focus.

On either side of the camera was a high-powered light focused on the chair in the center of the room. Here in the glare of the lights, she was almost too hot to stand, a marked difference from the room she was just in. It didn't help any with her balance, either.

Kaminski reached down and lifted her back up by her underarms and then sat her down in the chair.

"Sit, girl," he commanded.

She didn't think about disobeying. She sat as she was bidden and held on tightly to the seat of the chair with her shaky paws still bound behind her back while the bear knelt down next to the chair.

"I will speak, and then you will beg your father to come and save you."

Kaminski's voice was hard and cold, and the look in his eye brooked no argument. She only nodded, not quite registering what it was that he was asking her to do.

"If your father takes our warning, then you will go as unharmed as you are now."

Dannica could hear a touch of anger at the last words, and when she looked up at the bear, she could tell that the anger wasn't directed at her. For the first time, she felt a little hope. She just needed her father to do what the man said, and she would go home. And as much as her parents fought with each other, she knew that her father loved her more than anything in the world. He would come and save her, no matter what.

Kaminski looked away from her and into the camera, and Dannica followed his gaze, watching the slight twisting of the lens while the big bear spoke.

"Mister Stanislav, as you can see, we have your little girl. You know what you owe to the Bratva, and we always collect on our debts.

"Your business arrangement with the Americans makes it very difficult for us to collect in the usual manner, and we believe that you have used that to avoid paying us, so we have had to resort to harsher means of encouragement."

Kaminski smiled directly at the camera, a cold and professional smile.

"I do not wish to harm your kitten, Mister Stanislav, but if you do not pay what you owe, then I will have to commence with the unpleasant business.

"You have until five o'clock tomorrow to pay your debt in cash at my office, or the next video you receive will be of your daughter being given to my associate. I will make you watch while he rapes her and then cuts off one piece at a time to send back to you. He will save her head for last."

Dannica couldn't believe what she was hearing and she tried again to get loose from her bonds. The urge to be sick was almost overwhelming and she started whimpering, pleading with the camera.

"No, Da! Please! I want to come home!"

Kaminski laughed, "You see? She wants to come home. Pay your debt and bring your little kitten home, Mister Stanislav."

Dannica's sobs answered his words and the red light beside the lens went dark. Kaminski stood and smiled down at her.

"We shall see how much your father cares for you. For your sake, I do hope that he pays. I do not enjoy killing children."

He turned and walked towards the door, speaking over his shoulder as he walked.

"This is why I have Kiril. He enjoys it more than anyone should."

Then he walked out the door and she could hear his footsteps echoing down the hall.

She couldn't remember how she got back to the room with the bucket. She had a vague impression of a scarred and tattooed rabbit almost dragging her back down the hallways and tossing her through the door, but when she finally looked around again, she was huddled in the far corner of the room, staring at the bucket with the bare fur of her backside against the cold stone floor as she cried.

---

She didn't know how long she spent in the dark room, but it was long enough that she had to use the hated bucket once again, and she'd watched the door carefully, dreading that it would open and Kiril would be there again. At least she didn't have to deal with her underwear being in the way again.

She was sitting huddled in the corner again when she heard the commotion outside the door. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew that it concerned her and she pushed herself up against the wall a little tighter.

The heavy door swung open, rebounding off the wall with a crash and Kaminski barged into the room with Kiril right behind him. He had merely to look at her to have her on the verge of screaming. There was unbridled rage behind his eyes and at a simple gesture from him, Kiril started towards her.

She tensed herself up, waiting for him to get closer and when she thought that he was in range, she kicked out with all the force she could muster with her young legs. Kiril easily sidestepped the kick, though, already expecting that she'd try to fight. When her legs flashed by, he grabbed hold of her ankle and twisted hard.

The force of the move turned her over onto her stomach and a sharp crack sounded in the bare room followed closely by her raw and feral scream of pain as the bones in her leg broke and separated.

Her scream hadn't finished echoing off the walls before Kiril dropped her ankle and grabbed the other one. The pain flared white hot again as Dannica's injured leg hit the concrete floor.

"Try that again and I'll break the other one, too," Kiril said in his cold, hard voice.

Dannica could do nothing but whimper, but he took that as assent and started to drag her out of the room. The rough stone floor lifted her dress up, bunching it under her armpits, exposing her bare bottom and sex to the tiger dragging her, but she hardly cared. Her mind was too muddled with pain to even register her exposed position.

Kiril laughed and dragged her out the door and down the hallway. She recognized the turns, and she knew that they were going back to the room with the camera. Her guess was confirmed, though when she was able to turn her head to look, the chair was gone, replaced in the center of the room with a white claw-footed tub.

Kiril easily lifted her off the ground by her uninjured leg and hefted her into the tub. She had a fleeting glance of the camera as she went by, noticing that the red light was on.

Da didn't pay, she thought. And with that thought came fear unlike anything she'd ever known. The only thing she could think of was that she had to get away. Kaminski had said that they were going to kill her while her father watched, and the fear of her death overrode everything else.

Again, she kicked out, not caring that it was the broken leg that she was using. The pain flared again when she connected with Kiril's crotch, but she took satisfaction in the grunt that she got from him. He didn't let go of her leg, however, and when he straightened, he grabbed hold with both hands and with another sharp twist broke that ankle as well.

The pain coursed through Dannica and tore another scream from her throat, this one louder than the first. It was cut short when Kiril let her legs both drop into the tub with her.

As she laid in the tub, moaning in pain, she heard Kaminski speaking to the camera.

"I told you, Mister Stanislav, not to go to the Americans. This was spelled out explicitly, and yet you ignored my instructions."

The anger was clear in his voice and Dannica heard footsteps walking towards the tub.

"You will watch, then, while she dies."

Dannica cried and screamed and tried to get any kind of purchase against the smooth surface of the tub interior, but between the pain from both broken ankles and the hands bound tightly behind her back, she succeeded only in flopping in the bottom of the tub like a dying fish.

She saw another male holding the bulky camera over the edge of the tub as she tried to fight her way to a sitting position. From the other side of the tub, a sour smell stung the inside of her nose, and she saw Kiril there working with something.

She locked her eyes frantically on Kaminski. "Please," she cried, "no, please. Da didn't mean to. Please!"

Kaminski just watched her with his expressionless face and then nodded to Kiril.

"We will take her eyes first," he said to the camera.

A set of strong hands reached down from over her head and clamped down on her face. She couldn't see whose they were, but she could feel the grip of thick rubber against her fur as fingers pried and held her eyelids apart. She struggled frantically trying to free her head, but the hands held her fast.

On the side of the tub, she saw Kiril lifting a glass cylinder filled with a clear liquid. He, too, was wearing heavy rubber gloves.

"No, please!" Dannica cried out again, still struggling.

Kiril leaned over the edge of the tub and tipped the cylinder. Dannica watched almost in slow motion as the liquid sloshed over the edge of the beaker and dropped, a steady stream towards her head held tightly in place.

Then the first bit splashed against her eyes and in an instant white fire erupted in her head. She felt that her eyes were on fire. The scream that she made had her throat burning almost as badly as her eyes and it only lasted a second before her vocal cords gave out and all that was left was a hoarse whispering cry of anguish.

The pain in her eyes didn't stop. She tried to close them as her vision went from a blurry to a red-tinged glow, and then finally to pitch black. The liquid rolled off the side of her face, the thick rubber gloves over the hands that held her protected the rest of her face from damage. After a couple seconds, she began to feel something thicker than the watery liquid sliding down her face and she heard someone retching in the background.

"My god," she heard a male voice say, "her eyes. They just melted."

Finally, mercifully, the pain began to fade and for a moment, she felt lighter than she ever had. There was nothing but a buzzing in her ears, through which she heard faint screaming. Her mind didn't register whose it was, but the hands that held her head finally let go and she slid down the back of the tub before she finally drifted beyond consciousness.

---

There was nothing but pain when Dannica awoke, though it was duller than it had been, and it didn't burn as badly. It was more of an ache that transformed to a sharp pain any time that she tried to open her eyes. There was nothing but darkness.

Frantically, she tried to pull her hands from behind her back only to realize that they were no longer bound. She thrashed them about, trying to find something, anything that would tell her where she was and what was going on. She cried out, a hoarse scream for help as her hands found bars on either side of her. The motion brought on a fresh wave of pain from both her legs, and she realized that she couldn't move either one.

She grabbed hold of the cold metal and only then realized that she was lying on a soft mattress with clean-smelling linen and blankets on top of her body. She was naked beneath a layer of soft cotton, but she was warm. The feeling was enough to calm her just a little.

She let go of the bars she'd been clinging to and slowly brought her hands to her face. Beneath her fingers, she felt rough gauze wrapped thick around her eyes. Her fingers followed it around behind her head and when they felt the pillow she let them fall back to the bed at her side.

"Hello?" she called. Just that much speaking hurt her throat, and it came out as barely a whisper.

Further exploration with her hands found a small plastic cylinder with a cord snaking off the bed. On the top, she could feel a button. A call button, she realized. She pressed the button and listened, hearing a bell sounding a ways away.

It wasn't long before a soft voice spoke from the area around her feet.

"Good, you're awake."

Dannica didn't recognize the voice and she shivered under the covers.

"Who are you? Where's my da?"

"Easy, kitten. I am Aleksandra. I'm your nurse."

"Nurse? But where-"

"You are in the hospital in Moscow. You were brought by an American soldier."

Dannica took a breath, realizing deep down that she was finally safe.

"My eyes," she started to ask.

"I am sorry, kitten. They are gone. You will not see again."

The words tore through her heart and she whispered an anguished wail, as she reached up to try to tear the bandages off her head. She couldn't be. She had to see. She couldn't believe that she would never see again.

Soft hands took hold of her wrists and firmly pressed them into the bed.

"Easy, easy," Aleksandra whispered in her ear. "I am so sorry, kitten."

Dannica lay in the bed while the nurse held her down and she cried, noticing that she wasn't dampening the gauze at all. The observation had her crying all the more until finally there was nothing left to cry.

She felt Aleksandra's hands release hers and she tried to roll over, stopping when the pain in her legs reminded her that she couldn't move.

"You are a lucky girl, kitten," Aleksandra said quietly. "The Americans found you before the bastards could do anything worse."

Dannica just nodded.

"My da, is he coming?" she asked.

"Yes, he has been told."

Dannica nodded again and her ears twitched when she heard the ringing of the phone outside the door.

"Be calm, kitten. I'll be back soon."

Dannica listened to Aleksandra's steps moving out of the room and she lay there in the darkness listening to the sounds of the hospital all around her. The room smelled like disinfectant and it made her nose itch. She focused on the sounds and marveled at how clear they were, how much she could hear.

She could hear the laughing of the nurses outside the door to her room, and she could hear the whispers happening even closer. She recognized Aleksandra's voice even though it was a hushed whisper. She was speaking with a male voice, one that Dannica had not heard before. Finally they ceased, and Dannica heard heavy footsteps coming into the room, steps that were decidedly not Aleksandra.

"Dannica?" a male's voice asked. She could tell that he was standing near the door when he spoke. His voice was tinged with an accent that she'd heard around the house before. He was an American.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"My name's Duke. I'm with the twenty third airborne out of the states. I'm the one who brought you here. I'm a friend of your fathers."

Dannica nodded. There was something about his voice that sounded familiar, and then she placed it with the handsome young lion that had come around their house a time or two. Dannica had watched him around the house the last time that he came, secretly harboring a crush on the polite and very well-built young man.

She blushed at the thought and squirmed a little in the bed, stopping at the warning from her legs.

"I remember you, Mister Duke," she said.

"No, it's just Duke." Dannica could hear something behind his voice and it made her perk up.

"Okay, Duke," she said, apprehensive at the hint of bad news in his tone.

"Dannica, something's happened. Your family, they..." he trailed off and seemed to collect his nerve. "They were killed, kitten. They were leaving to see you and when they drove out of the driveway, the car exploded. They were all killed instantly."

Dannica didn't think that what she was feeling could get any worse, but at the words from the American, she broke down in a fit of screaming and sobbing, and she didn't even notice when Duke knelt by the bed and held her tightly to him.

When she was calm again, she felt him stroking her hair gently and singing a strange song in her ear. She didn't know the words, but the tone of his voice was perfectly comforting. She didn't speak, but just let him rock her and hold her until finally she was too exhausted to stay awake.

---

The days went by, one blurring into another, and Dannica slowly lost track of what time and day it was. Sometimes she'd wake up and push the call button only to find out that it was the middle of the night. The only thing that could tell her night from day was the activity in the hospital, and she clung to that, learning the nurses rotations and what time the meal carts rumbled by her room. She learned what times the nurses changed her bandages, and she suffered through as bravely as she could.

Finally, a few days later, Duke returned. She heard his heavy footsteps clomping down the hallway and she pictured him in her mind, in his tidy, well-fitting uniform and the heavy boots. When he stopped in her doorway, the scent he brought with him had a smile on her face for the first time that she could remember. It was the smell of flowers.

"I'm sorry I didn't get you some sooner, but the nurses told me they wanted to make sure your nose was okay. Looks like you're in the clear on that, kiddo."

Dannica took another breath of the scent and nodded. "I can smell just fine."

"Well that's good to hear," Duke said as she heard his footsteps walking to the side of her bed. The quiet clink of glass on wood told her where he'd set the flowers and she turned her head that way.

"Thank you, Duke," she said, her voice falling a little.

"What's bothering you, Dannica?" Duke asked.

"Ma and Da and Steven. They're gone. What happens to me?"

Duke was quiet for a moment, and Dannica focused on listening to his breathing. His slow and even breaths helped keep her centered.

"I talked to the hospital, Dannica, and I knew your father very well. They've agreed that if you want, I will take you home with me to America. You'll be my daughter."

Dannica's breath caught in her throat. She didn't know what to say. It felt almost like a betrayal to her father to go with this man, but he was a friend of her da's and she knew that her da trusted him.

And she knew what would happen if she stayed. She would be sent to an orphanage. There were too many stories about what they did to the children that ended up there.

"Okay," she said, nodding. "Thank you, Duke-" she stopped and smiled shyly, "I mean, da."

She jumped a little when she felt his hand on her head, ruffling the curly hair there.

"You can call me either, Dannica," he said, and she could hear his smile behind his voice.

"Now rest. You've got a lot of work in front of you, and it's not going to be pleasant, but I'll be here every step of the way, okay?"

Dannica smiled and settled back down in the bed, nodding. She was still scared and in pain, but with Duke there beside her, she wasn't nearly as lonely any more. She could face whatever came knowing that he would be there with her.