by Dark, Raven
An acrid smell that reminded me of ammonia reached my nose and caught in my throat, making my breathing hitch.
As soon as Griesha pried open one of Sheriff’s eyes with his fingers, I tensed, dread sliding through me. I knew what was coming. The muscles on Sheriff’s neck worked, straining with the effort to move his immobilized head.
He didn’t say anything, his jaw clenched, but his fists tightened, and his arms twisted under their straps again.
Light help me, I could imagine what was going through his head. He wouldn’t give Griesha or Damien the satisfaction of seeing him struggle or fight, but I could see the effort it took not to react. Without a hope of matching his impassive demeanor, I twisted in the guards’ grips, but they just tightened their holds, keeping me in place.
Holding the dropper in one hand and keeping the General’s eye open with the other, Griesha carefully squeezed a single drop out. The drop splashed into Sheriff’s eye.
Sheriff’s body gave a violent twitch. A roar of pain ripped from him, like a huge angry beast caught in a trap. Unable to move his head, every muscle in him corded, his fingers like angry claws.
“Please stop!” I sobbed. “Don’t do this to him!” I bucked, trying to yank myself free. One of the guards holding me wrenched my hands behind my back, holding my wrists in one hand, gripping my shoulder painfully with the other.
Saying nothing, Griesha pried open Sheriff’s other eye, his arms flexing with the effort to hold his lids apart. He squeezed one drop in.
Sheriff’s back bowed until I thought it would break. Another scream tore from him, seeming to fill the whole room with pain.
His screams faded, seeming to drift through a fog, as if something had snapped inside me. I must have tried to break free again, because the guards cuffed my wrists, and the next thing I knew I’d been flung to the floor. One of their boots pressed into my back, between my shoulders.
I was pretty sure I was babbling incoherently between shaking sobs, but I couldn’t be sure. It felt as if my mind had disconnected from the rest of me.
At some point, Sheriff’s yelling stopped. The realization as to why slid through my sluggish thoughts. Griesha had started the water torture again, because I heard him pushing the tube into Sheriff’s mouth, shoving it between his teeth, and then the sound of water being poured.
Men’s voices reached my ears, muffled through the hammer of my heart. I had the hideous sense of men in idle conversation, casual as talk of the desert weather. All the while, water sloshed, Sheriff choked, and the table rattled. Everything stopped. Damien spoke. Then it started all over again.
Hours—or was it minutes?—passed. The cycle repeated endlessly until I was sure Griesha must have poured the water fifty times or more. Several times, I heard him telling Damien that Sheriff had passed out. I swore I heard the doctor say something about giving him a shot of adrenaline to keep him awake.
Still, the cycle went on.
In that moment, Sheriff’s pain became a part of me, bleeding in and threatening to swallow me whole. I knew then that a part of me would forever be broken, never to heal. Sheriff’s pain and my inability to help him, had pried apart a piece of my soul, destroying something inside me that I could never get back.
No. I wouldn’t let that happen. I went inside myself, searching in my garden for the one person who I knew had the power to fight evil with evil.
Julien, I called, sending the message to every cell in my body, screaming for him to hear me. I surrender. Please…help me. You can have me. Just please save Sheriff. My family, my men. I…will do anything you want. Please, save them. I will not fight you, you can have me, body and soul. Please.
I didn’t know how long I called, echoing the same message over and over again. But whatever it was that connected Julian to me, whatever linked me to the Violet hive-mind, it was gone. I called out in my mind, but only silence answered. There was nothing but my own thoughts, the desolation of a helplessness that stretched forever without end.
“This is ridiculous.” Damien said. “Kill him. We’ll find the men without him.”
The words sparked life in me, reconnecting whatever had been undone in my mind.
I lifted my head, looking up at Damien, who was now standing at one end of the table. “Master.” My vice was raspy, barely my own.
Damien glanced down at me. I was still pinned to the floor by his guards.
“If…if you’re going to kill him…let me say goodbye first.”
Damien’s expression turned calculating. I was sure he was going to refuse. He sighed. “Make it fast.”
The guards hauled me to my feet.
As soon as I had a good look at Sheriff’s face, my knees almost gave out.
His eyes were swollen shut and red. His face was sickly white, his breathing harsh and erratic, his chest heaving. Tears fell onto his forehead as I bent slowly down to him. I kept my voice low so that only he heard. “Master, I’m so sorry.”
I let my lips caress his forehead, wishing I could give him so much more. Wishing I could go back in time and make it so that he’d never come here.
“I’m so, so sorry.” My voice broke.
I was about to straighten up, but a rasp from him froze me in place. I bent, putting my ear close to his lips. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible, but the words were clear.
“For…the good of the club,” he murmured. “Do what you have to do…for the club…”
I gave him a confused look.
“Let me go,” he rasped.
I stared at him, horrified. How could he even ask that of me? I shook my head frantically. “No. No, Master, I can’t!”
“Let. Me. Go,” he mouthed.
“No!” A sob escaped, and my eyes blurred with tears.
He went slack, head back, as if to say, Discussion over.
“No, Master, I won’t. You can’t—”
But the guards were dragging me away and Damien was ordering them to remove me. I kicked and clawed at them, hitting their chests and screaming like a wild woman.
“I don’t care what you do to me, now, Damien,” I snarled at him. “I hope Julian comes. I hope he comes and sends you all to hell!”
“Get her out of here,” Damien ordered. “I’ll deal with her later. Begin phase two, Doctor.”
The guards obeyed Damien’s order.
The last thing I heard before I was pulled from the room and the doors closed was Sheriff’s voice in a scream that seemed to go on forever.
Then the scream cut off with a terrible finality, leaving only silence.
Chapter 22
A Woman of Many Names
I had never been a woman to give up easily.
When I’d realized my Four were in the Compound, I’d done what must have been a good job of making it seem to Damien as though I’d given up on life. On ever getting away from him and back to the Dark Legion where I belonged. But that had been an act.
As the guards marched me down the underground halls toward the gate that led to the rest of the house, I knew I’d never be the same woman who walked down these halls an hour ago. I was numb.
With everything that I’d seen in this world—all that I had experienced and felt at the hands of others—nothing could have prepared me for what Damien and Griesha had done.
I’d known Damien and Griesha were dangerous, but they were more than that. Twelve years I’d lived here. Lived among the worst monsters to walk this world.
The way Sheriff’s voice had cut off leaving only that deadly silence behind was indelibly imprinted on my mind, along with its implications. Perhaps whatever Damien’s phase two was had made Sheriff pass out, but that silence offered up a much darker implication. I had to face the unimaginable.
The possibility that the Dark Legion had just lost its General, and I’d just lost one of my Four.
Another part of my mind shouted that he wasn’t dead, that he was just unconscious. But the truth was, even if Sheriff was dead, I couldn’t give up. H
awk and Pretty Boy and Steel still needed me. They were here somewhere, and I couldn’t fall apart now.
Sheriff’s last words had been to do what was good for the club. To let him go. He’d meant for me to let him go in order to save the others, but if I gave up, I would be denying him every bit as much as if I’d blurted out the names of every other Legion man who was there in order to spare him. They needed me, and that meant the Legion, the club, needed me.
Still, my mind could barely form a coherent thought beyond the hopeless certainty that Sheriff was gone, and what that meant.
I didn’t see the stone halls on either side of me. Didn’t feel the guards’ hands on my arms. Thoughts of the others, the rest of the Dark Legion, flickered through my mind, but they were half-formed, barely making sense.
Shock. I was in shock, oblivious to the rest of the world.
The guards said nothing until they got close to the gate.
“Petch, open up,” one of them called to the watchman at the gate.
The gate remained closed.
One of the men escorting me clicked his teeth and stalked to the guard’s booth by the grille. He swore, rushed in and checked the pulse of the guard there.
The man was slumped over the desk.
The guard who’d escorted me rounded on his partner. “He’s dead.”
My heart leaped into my throat. How…?
“Check this place,” the other one ordered, still holding me. “One of the pirates must have gotten in here.”
He grabbed my wrist and hauled me back down the hall the way we’d come, but he didn’t make it two steps.
A body dropped from the ceiling, and the next moment, a pair of legs scissored around his neck. My head jerked up.
Hawk hung from a candelabra on the ceiling. His legs flexed, there was a snap, and the guard dropped to the floor.
The other guard grabbed at Hawk, but Hawk kicked him in the face. The guard flew backward. Dropping to the floor, Hawk drew one sword from a scabbard on his back, and as soon as the guard was on his feet, Hawk spun. The sword in his grip flashed. I turned to see the body drop to the floor and the head roll after it.
In the otherwise silent hallway, Hawk spun me around to face him.
“Master…” Elation swept through me, so dizzying I practically fell into him.
“Kitten.” He sheathed his weapon and cradled my face in his hands. “Are you all right?”
“Damien… Sheriff…” I shook my head. “Where are the others?”
“Pretty Boy found them. They’re dealing with the rest of the guards.” He drew his other sword, then spun both weapons in his hands, his face dark and cruel. “Where is he?” he growled.
I didn’t know if he meant Sheriff or Damien or both.
“Back here.” I hurried back down the hall the way we’d come, panic setting in. “Hawk, Sheriff. Maker, what they did to him… I think he’s dead.”
I was babbling.
“He better not be.” His voice scary.
I turned to him, still at a distance from the doors to Damien’s torture chamber. “But, Master, wait. Damien is in there with him. He and—”
“It’s all right.” He took both blades in one hand long enough to cup my nape, the warm touch calming me. “Kitten, listen to me. This is what I want you to do. I want you to open the doors to the room where he is. As soon as you do, you’re going to drop to the floor. Flat to the floor, you understand? I’ll take care of the rest.”
“What are you going to do, Master?”
“Trust me.” He held one sword in each hand again, his grip on the weapons leaving no doubt in my mind that blood was about to be spilled.
“Hawk, if he’s dead…”
“If he is, you will see how much of a pirate even a Yantu can be.”
Drawing an unexpected reassurance from this, I nodded and headed for the doors.
As soon as they were open, Damien whirled around from a table at the back of the room. Griesha did the same. Sheriff was still lying across the table, still whole, that apparatus on his head.
“What are you doing here?” Damien snapped. “Where are—”
His voice cut off when I dropped onto the floor.
“Hello, Damien.” Hawk’s voice was more menacing than I’d ever thought him capable of.
Damien’s face went white before Hawk started toward him.
I looked back at Hawk in time to see him lunge forward and throw one of his swords.
The blade went end over end through the air. It hit something with a loud, meaty thwack. When I looked across the room, Damien was slumped over Sheriff’s prone form on the table. Hawk’s blade was sticking out of Damien’s chest, a few inches of the blade’s tip jutting out of his back.
Hawk bent and pulled me gently to my feet, then hurried with me across the room to Griesha. The doctor had thrown himself against the back wall.
“This won’t help you, Yantu. Every guard will be on you in minutes.”
“Not likely.” With one grip on my arm to keep me close, Hawk put his other sword under Griesha’s chin and pressed until the doctor raised his hands and went limp. “Untie him and get that fucking thing off him.” Hawk nodded to Sheriff.
“You can’t get out of here ali—”
“Now!” Hawk thundered.
The power in his voice, one I’d only ever heard as rational and calm, seemed to shake through the whole place.
Griesha’s haughty face crumpled. As soon as Hawk lowered his weapon, the doctor went over to Sheriff. He pushed Damien off him to the floor, then worked the straps on Sheriff’s arms, legs and head loose. He was shaking.
“If he’s dead,” Hawk said slowly, his blade pointed at the doctor’s back, “you’ll have first hand experience with how this device feels on you.”
Griesha nodded jerkily and finished untying Sheriff. He took the tube out of his mouth.
As soon as the doctor was done, Hawk slammed the butt end of the blade into the back of Griesha’s head.
Griesha crumpled to the floor and didn’t move.
I meant to bend and check if he was dead, but I didn’t get the chance.
“Hawk.” Pretty Boy stumbled into the room, holding up a ragged, half-conscious looking Steel. Steel had one arm around Pretty Boy’s shoulders. Doc and Blade followed them in, neither looking much better than Steel. At some point, the men must have changed out of their servants’ attire, since they were dressed normally now.
“The guards taken care of?” Hawk asked, sheathing his sword.
I ran to the others and put Steel’s other arm around my shoulders. He gave me a foggy, strained smile and stroked my hair.
“Most of them are dead. We locked the rest in closets and storage rooms for now. Fuck.” Pretty Boy was at Sheriff’s side in an instant with Steel and me, his face pale.
“What the hell did those fucks do to him?” Steel spat.
Doc had rushed around to the same side of the table as Hawk while Hawk yanked his other sword out of Damien’s chest and wiped it on a rag from a table. Doc checked Sheriff’s pulse.
“Is he alive?” Pretty Boy demanded. “He better be alive or I’ll cut off every head in this place myself.”
“He has a pulse.” Doc carefully opened Sheriff’s swollen eyes, examining them. “He’s alive. Barely.”
“What did they do to him, Hawk?” Pretty Boy looked the General over and then glanced at me.
I swallowed, hating to even say the words. “Water torture.”
Pretty boy muttered a string of curses and shook his head.
“It’s too bad you killed him, Hawk.” Doc’s voice was steel as he checked Sheriff over for other injuries. “I’d have gutted him myself.”
“What the hell is wrong with his eyes, his face?” Steel demanded.
“I dunno, but we have to get him out of here now. Setora, Pretty Boy, go find me some blankets to cover him up.” He shook his head. “He’ll be lucky if he hasn’t had a stroke or suffered brain damage. Steel, can yo
u carry him?”
Steel nodded. When Pretty Boy wouldn’t let go of him, he shook his Brother off. “I’ll be fine.”
Pretty Boy and I found some blankets in a closet on the other side of the room and brought them to Doc. As soon as Doc had Sheriff’s naked body wrapped in the blankets, Steel carefully picked Sheriff up, doing so a little awkwardly with his broken fingers. He put Sheriff over his shoulder like a man-sized rag doll.
“Masters. We need to leave, fast.” I nodded to a clock on the wall.
“Right, it’s almost midnight,” Hawk said, sheathing the sword that he’d pulled out of Damien’s chest.
“What happens at midnight?” Blade asked.
“Julian is coming,” Hawk said.
“What?” Blade looked at me, his eyes wide. “He’s real now?”
“Yes, sir.”
Blade scratched his head. “Well. This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”
“Blade,” Hawk said, “Go on ahead. Sound the horn for Bear and Grim.”
I hadn’t even noticed the ram’s horn hanging at Blade’s belt until Hawk mentioned it. Blade nodded and trotted out of the room.
Steel hoisted Sheriff’s weight more firmly on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
I paused, just for a second, making sure that Damien--the man who’d trained me, who raised me, who owned me only to tear me apart again and again—was truly dead. I felt nothing but relief.
Did I wish him an eternal hell? Was I just as cruel as him? I honestly didn’t know. That I had such thoughts at all was something I knew I’d have to come to terms with, but not today.
I turned around and followed my men.
Hawk led the way to the doors and then turned to the rest of us. “Doc, Pretty Boy, watch Setora. Which one of you has the canisters?”
Pretty Boy held up a sack.
“As soon as we’re near the doors, drop them.” He drew both of his swords again. His eyes were vengeance. “This ends now.”
My heart gave a strange bound. I’d never heard Hawk talk that way before, and it took a second to realize what was different.
