Richard, damn him, had never so much as told me the name of the sleazebag he’d gotten money from. All I’d ever had for the payments I’d scraped together on his behalf was a goon on a phone and a drop-off location.
I wasn’t sure exactly what the question had been, but the answer was apparently ‘the Russian mafia.’
Terrific.
Since this Ivan guy was apparently Richard’s money source, I wondered with some trepidation who else was coming to join us. Though at this rate, I was going to succumb to frostbite before I got a chance to find out.
Maybe fifteen minutes passed, and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably when another vehicle finally pulled into the lot. It looked expensive, but old—some high-end luxury car from the seventies or eighties, the dark paintwork gleaming under the lights of the other parked cars.
Speaking of the other parked cars... I heard an engine cough, and then another one did the same. I looked around in confusion as the headlight beams illuminating the area flickered, and died one by one as the cars’ engines sputtered into silence.
“What the hell?” asked the gravelly voiced goon, peering around nervously.
The old luxury car drew to a halt, its lights trained on us—unaffected by whatever had caused the others to stall. My nerves prickled.
One of the rear doors opened, and a lithe male figure stepped out. I squinted as he sauntered around to stand next to Ivan, and sucked in a sharp breath as I made out long, copper-blond hair framing haughty features.
“Well done, my friend,” said Teague, regarding us coolly. “You did an admirable job in bringing the girl here with such efficiency. Perhaps now, I will finally get the answers I seek.”
SEVENTEEN
HORROR SUFFUSED ME as Ivan preened beneath the Fae’s praise, but a few moments later, I noticed something odd. I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from Teague. I wanted to be closer to him, to have him gaze at me with the same look of approval that he’d bestowed upon the mobster.
My fingers twitched behind me, wanting to reach up and touch the reassuring weight of Aunt Mabel’s pendant. But the pendant was gone, ripped off in the struggle with the goons who’d broken into my apartment. All that was left was a faint line of discomfort where the chain had dug into my skin before it snapped. It throbbed in counterpoint to the sharper pain in my cheek, where a fist had slammed into me, sending me reeling.
But neither of those aches was enough to pull me away from the Fae’s dangerous magnetism—not in the way the magical flare of heat from the garnet pendant could do. I stepped forward, ignoring the sharp bite of gravel against the sole of my bare, freezing foot. If only I could get a better look at Teague’s eyes... I was sure I’d understand everything.
He looked at me, and my heart fluttered with excitement.
“V-Vonnie?” Richard’s uncertain voice came from a step or two behind me.
I ignored it.
“Vonnie Marie Morgan,” Teague said... and that was a voice I wanted to listen to. I wanted to hear Teague caress my name, tell me I’d done well, order me to kneel at his feet.
“Yes?” I breathed, urging him to continue. To say anything, as long as it was directed at me.
“Tell me everything you know about magic.”
I could do that. That was easy. My breath caught with excitement over the idea that telling him would please him... that I would please him.
“My great aunt believed in it,” I said in a rush. “She used to tell me stories about magic and witches and spells and curses. But when I grew up, I thought they were just stories. When she died, she willed me a garnet necklace and requested that I always wear it. I found out when you came to the Vixen’s Den that I was wrong, and magic is real. The necklace has magic for sure, but Leonides and the demon who came to visit the club one night think I might have it inside me somehow, too.”
Teague’s green gaze sharpened. “The demon?”
I nodded enthusiastically, feeling like my head was on a spring. “Yes, his name was Nigellus. He came to ask Leonides to look into the missing children, but Leonides didn’t want to do it.”
“Vonnie...” Richard said again. Again, I ignored him.
Teague didn’t ignore him, however. “You. Be silent until you are addressed.”
I craned around to look at my ex, urging him with my scowl to listen to Teague and do as he was told. Couldn’t he see that it was important that he obey?
But Richard was frowning, a look of concentration twisting his features. “What are you doing to me?” he asked faintly. “What did you do to her?”
“I said be silent!” Teague snarled, and I flinched as a wave of invisible power slammed through me.
Richard’s jaw snapped shut—finally.
Teague’s features smoothed. “Interesting,” he mused, and the knowledge that he was talking about Richard and not me ached in my chest like a wound. What could I do to please him as much?
His gaze pinned me, and I shivered with anticipation.
“You are lovers?” He spat the word, as though it tasted foul.
My stupidly nodding head tried to signal yes and no at the same time.
“Speak,” he commanded.
“We had sex one time, fifteen years ago,” I tried to explain.
“There was a kid at her apartment, but he got away,” one of the goons added helpfully.
I spoke quickly, eager to keep Teague’s focus from wandering away from me. “He’s my son. We have a son.”
Richard made a choked noise, even though Teague had told him to be silent. The sheer gall of his disrespect made my veins burn with acid.
“You have offspring?” the Fae asked. “The two of you are the parents?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said eagerly. “We had sex one time and I got pregnant.”
“I see,” he said, before turning to Ivan, who had been waiting patiently. “It appears I will have no need of either of these creatures after all. You may dispose of them as you see fit.”
His magnetic gaze slid across everyone gathered in the abandoned parking lot, falling on each of us for a perfect moment before moving on to the next. “Once my automobile is out of sight, you will have no memory that I was ever here.” He waved a regal hand. “Do carry on.”
With that, he turned on his heel and returned to the car, climbing into the back seat and closing the door behind him. I would have mourned the loss, but I still had an order to carry out. I would do it to the best of my ability, knowing that anything less would disappoint him terribly.
I couldn’t bear to think of Teague being disappointed in me.
The old car’s engine purred, and it pulled smoothly away, leaving us in darkness as the headlights swung toward the road. We watched, transfixed, as the lights drew further and further away. When they disappeared around a corner, something flipped in my mind.
“What... just happened?” Richard asked, sounding bewildered.
I blinked rapidly. When had the headlights around us shut off? Moonlight from the city sky above was barely sufficient to make out our surroundings.
“Who—who was that guy?” Richard’s voice rose in volume, a note of hysteria creeping in. “Von, you told him about our son! What the hell?”
“What are you talking about?” I hissed. “What guy?”
Why was he yapping at me when this might be our chance to make a run for it while the lights were out?
“Blyad!” Ivan said sharply, like it was a curse. “Someone start one of the damned cars.”
He was still too close to us. An instant later, one of the goons grabbed my arm again, and the moment was lost. A car engine turned over, coughing and sputtering. The smell of unburned gasoline tickled my nose, but after a few seconds the engine caught and smoothed out. Headlights flared into life, illuminating the scene once more.
That’s better,” Ivan muttered. “Fuckin’ American piece of shit cars.”
“Ivan,” I began, trying to redirect things down a more useful path. “I kno
w you’re tired of waiting, but we’ve got a plan to get you all of your money, and then some. We were talking about it when your men broke into the apartment and grabbed us. It wouldn’t take long. You could have the money in days.”
Ivan’s eyes were hard and cold in his flabby face. “Pretty words, little girl. But you know what’s even more important to me than my money? My reputation.”
My stomach sank.
“Your payment is late, and all I hear are excuses,” he continued. “Worse, your mudak boyfriend barely pays at all, relying on a woman to meet his obligations for him.”
“The shop—” Richard began, only to be cut off.
“Letting people be late with payments is bad for business,” Ivan said, steamrolling over him. “Boys—hold him still. Make sure he watches.”
My heart pounded as two of the goons grabbed Richard’s arms, holding him in place. The other one still had a grip on me.
“Ivan!” Richard cried. “We can work something out—”
Ivan’s voice was unyielding. “Do you have my money, Richard?”
Richard’s face grew chalky in the glare of the car’s lights. “No, I... I mean, there’s ten dollars in my wallet, you can have it... that’s all I’ve got on me...”
Ivan gestured to the goon holding me with a flick of his fingers. “Kneecap her. Both legs.”
“What?” I squawked, jerking against the man’s hold on my arm as he pulled me into the open area between Ivan and Richard.
“Ivan, no!” Richard yelled, struggling against the two men restraining him. “Stop!”
My guard spun me until he was at my back, his grip on my bound arm punishing. My breath caught on a protest, or a plea. This was happening too fast. It couldn’t be real—
An explosion of sound half-deafened me, and my right leg just... stopped working between one pounding heartbeat and the next. I crumpled forward, not understanding what was wrong with the limb, why it seemed to be bending all wrong and not responding to my brain.
The pain hit an instant before my face impacted the crumbling pavement. I couldn’t catch myself with my wrists zip-tied behind me, and in all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop my fall even if they’d been free. The agony was paralyzing—worse than childbirth, worse than the time Dad had gotten in a car accident and I’d broken my arm, worse than anything I could have imagined in my most gut-twisting nightmares.
The scream was too big to get out of my throat. Dimly, I was aware that Richard was screaming for me—shrieking and cursing, his hoarse voice choking on sobs. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.
Beyond the pounding of blood in my ears, I heard Ivan say, “You have twenty-four hours to get me my money, or I come back and kill her, mudak. Twenty-four hours after that, I come for your kid. And then, I come for you.”
A second shot exploded, ripping through my other knee as I lay face down in the abandoned parking lot. Fresh agony erupted, and the scream finally tore free, shredding my lungs as I wailed and howled and screeched.
“Fucking bastard!” Richard roared.
“Drag them to the nearest intersection and dump them by the side of the road,” Ivan said, raising his voice to be heard over my breathless screams, “Knock him out if you want to. Then call an ambulance for the girl. I don’t want her dying before her twenty-four hours are up.”
“I’ll kill you for this... I’ll kill you!” Richard was ranting, as though that would somehow help, as though it would stop the burning torment in my legs from swallowing me alive—
His threats went ominously silent between one word and the next, but I couldn’t focus on why, couldn’t focus on anything except the tsunami of pain when rough hands grasped me and pulled me up, my legs trailing limply beneath me. My gorge rose and I vomited, bile splattering on the pavement.
“Bet you wish you hadn’t fucked this loser, huh, bitch?” said a gravelly voice, as I was hoisted over a shoulder.
“Fuckin’ cunt pepper-sprayed me earlier,” said another voice. “I ain’t gonna shed no tears for her, that’s for sure.”
I moaned and gagged and tried to scream again, but I was choking, and my throat had been stripped raw. All that came out was a pathetic whine. Consciousness slipped, merciful darkness ebbing and flowing over my awareness like the tide coming in.
We were moving, the rhythmic jounce of being carried jarring me intermittently back to my surroundings. On the cusp between waking and fainting, the pain felt distant enough that coherent thoughts began to thread their way through animal instinct.
My legs. My legs were wrecked. Destroyed. They’d shot through my knees. No surgeon would be able to fix that. I would never walk again—assuming the pain and blood loss didn’t kill me outright. I would be in a wheelchair... they might have to amputate...
The goon carrying me dropped me unceremoniously on my back, and the world erupted into hellfire. I howled, finding fresh strength to push the feral sound of desperation past my ruined throat.
“Fuckin’ ambulance’ll be able to find her just by following the squeals,” the gravelly voice muttered. “Dump the other one over there, and let’s get the hell out of here so I don’t have to listen to it anymore.”
I tried to draw breath for the next scream and couldn’t, the air rasping and catching against my throat like sandpaper. My captor loomed over me, silhouetted against the murky nighttime sky.
“Shit, someone’s coming,” said a different goon. “Looks like a motorcycle.”
“Leave them here. Let’s go,” said Gravelly Voice.
Could pain cause a heart attack, if it was bad enough? The overworked muscle in my chest thumped with an irregular beat, feeling like a fist was squeezing it into pulp. I still couldn’t breathe past the agony, my lungs wheezing pathetically with each stuttering rise of my chest.
I stared fixedly at the goon standing over me as he started to turn and leave, desperate for anything to keep me tethered to life... to sanity. That was the only reason I saw the cloud of mist as it coalesced into a solid form before my eyes and slammed into my tormenter, driving him through the air and into the side of the nearest building.
EIGHTEEN
AFTER A MOMENT of blank incomprehension, I flashed back to the dark alley behind the Vixen’s Den, where a man with a knife had charged at me even as I’d tried to shove Kat behind me. The same thing had happened then, in the instant before the blade would have struck me—Leonides hadn’t been there, and then suddenly, he had been.
Appearing, as if from nowhere.
“What the fuck!” someone shouted.
The roaring noise of a motorcycle engine filled my ears, growing louder and louder until it was punctuated by a sharp squeal of brakes.
Gunfire sounded, then more cursing. “Shit... shit! They’ve got vests on or something—”
More gunfire, followed by screaming that didn’t come from me... at least, I didn’t think it came from me.
Silence settled over the area, broken only by my wheezing breaths, each one ending with a pathetic whimper on the exhale. I couldn’t seem to fill my lungs. Coppery blood trickled down the back of my throat. Vaguely, I was aware of the throbbing pain from my nose—broken when I face-planted onto the pavement, probably. I hadn’t even noticed it until this moment, buried beneath my more serious injuries.
“Oh my god,” said a voice from the past.
It sounded like... Zorah. The friend I’d let down when she needed me most. Another person I’d lied to, rather than admit to anyone how fucked up my life had become.
“I’ve got her. Check the other one. He’s alive—I can hear his heart beating.” That voice was definitely Leonides—the boss who tried his best to protect the strays he collected. Even the ones who were too stupid to admit they needed his protection.
Strong hands lifted my upper body, supporting my head and shoulders against a solid chest. Tears overflowed my eyes at the flare of agony caused by the jostling... but I could breathe more easily now, the se
nsation of choking on my own blood receding.
“Oh, Vonnie,” Leonides said. “Damn it, why didn’t you come to me for help?”
Even if I’d been able to speak, I couldn’t have answered his question. I continued to pant—small, wounded animal noises slipping out of me every few seconds. My eyes had slipped closed at some point.
“Look at me, Vonnie,” he commanded. “Eyes open.”
I peeled swollen eyelids apart to find a glowing violet gaze boring into mine.
“Hurts,” I managed, the word a bare rasp.
“I know. We’ll fix it, I promise. Keep watching me. You don’t feel afraid, because you know everything will be fine in a few minutes. Rans! Get over here—your blood is stronger than mine!”
Despite the sheer ridiculousness of Leonides’ claim that he could somehow fix this, my muscles relaxed. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, I let go of my fears of imminent death or lifelong disability, leaving only serenity behind. My body still hurt. It hurt so badly. But the pain became a mere fact of the present moment, unattached to any emotional consequences or expectations about the future.
The voice had said that I would be fine in a few minutes. I trusted that voice, even when it was telling me impossible things. My ragged breathing evened out.
Fingers brushed my cheek, directing my bleary gaze to the side. To a new face... a new set of glowing eyes. These were a brilliant, glacier-deep shade of blue; not as striking as Leonides’, though they held me trapped all the same.
“Hello, darling. I just need you to swallow this for me.” This voice had an accent—English, like something from Downton Abbey. “It will make everything feel worse for a few moments, I’m sorry to say. But then, just as my good friend here has promised, you’ll be right as rain again afterward.”
I opened my mouth without thought, catching the cool blood that dribbled past my lips. It tasted no different than the blood I’d swallowed earlier from my broken nose. But within moments, everything that had been shattered and torn in my body began to tingle, to burn—the nerves clamoring in confusion. A moan of distress escaped my lips.
Vampire Bound: Book One Page 13
