by Ella James
STOLEN
Stained Series Book Two
by
Ella James
Copyright © 2012 by Ella James.
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
He is to be put to death. For crimes. Against us.
The words rang in her ears like gongs, inciting horror. Cayne—put to death? For hurting people like her? No freaking way.
Julia opened her mouth to argue. To tell the dark-haired Stained guy what an idiot he was. Then she saw the harsh glint in his eyes and bit her tongue.
Okay. So he didn’t look like he was lying. Didn’t mean he wasn’t. The thought steadied her a little. Made the too-still museum parking lot churn back to life. She heard sirens over the roar of the confused crowd, saw the flicker of streetlights as somewhere in the vast city, the power surged.
She took a deep breath.
“Look—”
Before she could go further, the guy caught her wrist and squeezed. “You don’t know who he is.” His brown eyes burned. “You don’t know what he is. You don’t know anything. If you did, you wouldn’t even want to look at him!”
Julia snatched her arm away. “I don’t know who you are! Freak.”
She wobbled back, her fists unclenching, fingers grabbing at the chilly air. The hard-eyed guy moved with her, following her retreat in-step, grabbing her shoulders like they were partners in a dance.
“Listen to me, Julia. Your ‘friend’ is not a friend. I don’t know what he wants with you, but disregarding this—” He waved from his chest to hers. “Disregarding any allegiance to your own kind—which should come first—he’s not whatever he made you think he was. He doesn’t have a conscience. If he told you he cares about you, he’s—”
Julia wheeled around, planning to run to Cayne. Screw the Stained guy and his lies. She pumped her arms and threw one leg out, leaping into a run. A run away from ‘her kind.’ She didn’t get far.
A millisecond later, the guy slammed down on top of her, his boyish features weighted by regret that didn’t reach his eyes.
They took her prisoner.
The Stained—Nathan, the prick’s name was—caught her by the arm, apologizing tersely for the rough treatment even as he dragged her toward two windowless white serial killer vans parked along a nearby curb. Every cell in her body cried run—and she could have. She maybe could have. She could have screamed and struggled, fled into the crowd. But if this guy’s posse really had Cayne—and judging from the lack of rescue, they did—she had to get to him.
How? It was hard to believe they had snared him in the first place. He must be hurt. The big question now: Would she be able to heal him? If he was hurt enough to not rescue her, their chances of fighting their way out of this were practically zero.
Julia’s heart rose to her throat when Nathan opened the door of the rear van…but when she got a look inside, it fell into her stomach. Cayne wasn’t ‘in custody’ as the guy had promised.
She tried to whirl, but Nathan’s hands clamped tightly on her shoulders. There was an instant of That Sinking Feeling…a fragment of time in which she knew she had screwed up. Screwed up bad. But it passed quickly, fury growing in its place.
“Where IS he?”
“The Nephilim is contained inside the van in front of—”
“Let him go!” She struggled, freeing one hand, slapping his chest before he snatched her hand in his. “LET ME GO! We didn’t do anything!”
“He did. If you want to see him, you’ll have to come with us. In this van.” He must have mistaken her rage for fear, because he widened his eyes in a way that conveyed irritated reassurance. “You’re one of us. We won’t hurt you.”
That as his death grip pressed a bruise onto her wrist. Julia fought the urge to scream. Just open her mouth and shriek—this is wrong this is wrong this is WRONG! She tried to think of a way out, but his grip tightened. “You’ve got ten seconds. Nine.”
She couldn’t think.
“Eight.”
What if they took Cayne and she never saw him again?
“Seven.”
She’d be alone again.
“Six.”
“Fine!” She locked her jaw, and Nathan pushed her forward.
“Good,” he grunted. “Get in.”
He stuffed her onto the middle bench between two college-aged guys in gray suits and slammed the door behind her, appearing a few seconds later in the driver’s seat.
Julia’s eyes darted around, her vision pulsing with each heartbeat. She crossed her arms and forced herself to assess her surroundings with a clear head. She could see out of the corner of her eye that there were three more weirdos in gray uniforms—two guys and a ball cap-wearing girl—on the back bench.
The van lurched into gear, and Julia felt the walls close in on her. How had this happened? Was Cayne really in the other van? She stared at it, willing his aura to pop into view, but it didn’t.
That’s okay. No biggie. Stay calm.
She usually had to be able to see people to see their auras. She’d thought it might be different with Cayne, but obviously it wasn’t.
You’re going to get him out. No problem.
Sweat ran down her temples, dripping down her neck. Outside the van, downtown D.C.’s huge buildings sailed by. If she let herself, she could really freak out.
Not an option.
She turned her attention to her captor, the one called Nathan. She could see his face in the rear view mirror. Short dark hair, almost buzz cut, not-bad-looking face with big brown eyes almost too pretty to be a boy’s. Long lashes… Julia’s gaze clung to his eyes and she realized: she knew that face. Oh God, she knew it from a vision, the one she’d had at Rosa’s house—the one with the pretty Korean girl on that weird train. All well and good EXCEPT SHE DIDN’T HAVE PROPHETIC VISIONS!
And yet she’d seen him.
What did it mean?
Vaguely, she remembered the Korean girl’s friendliness. She hadn’t liked the guy—Nathan. But she hadn’t disliked him, either. Oh, damn: Julia thought she remembered the girl saying something like I look forward to meeting you.
If she was going to meet some girl, she was really, truly going somewhere with these people.
And if she was going somewhere with the Stained, and they thought Cayne was a murderer… Her mind spun. Why did they think that? It couldn’t be true, could it? He’d said he’d done bad things, roamed with Samyaza… But that was a long time ago.
Was Cayne—her Cayne—the Cayne that had sworn to protect her and patiently helped her find these people—actually Enemy Number One?
Oh, God. What if he was? He probably wasn’t even in the other van!
Adrenaline surged through her veins, until her vision was swimming and her breaths weren’t enough and she felt like she was going to shoot out of her skin. She looked left and right, then tried to turn around in her seat and felt a firm hand seize her wrist.
“Calm down,” the hand’s owner said softly, and she had the wherewithal to think at least he’s not a mind-controller, ’cause I don’t feel calm.
Her mind was slipping into aura-seeing mode, and out of long habit, she did her breathing thing. In through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose…
She told herself she wasn’t in any immediate danger. He’d said they wouldn’t hurt her. But Cayne was clearly a different matter. Whatever they thought he’d done… She shut her eyes. And if he wasn’t in the other van at all…?
The hand released her wrist, and she wondered about its owner; he was clearly a guard, but she wasn’t ‘with it’ enough to coolly look into his face. She’d started shaking, and her stomach felt like a playground for hyperactive earthworms.
She focused her bleary gaze on the windshield, half surprised they didn’t
have a sack over her head. She could see the winding highway perfectly. The shoulder was choked by trees that bent and shifted in the wind, so the light of the moon flickered eerily over the roof of the van in front of them.
She decided, just for a little while, until she felt less rattled, to let herself think of it as Cayne’s van. She and Cayne were going to the same place, each in their own van, and when they got there, she would get this whole mess settled.
She thought about Cayne pressing a kiss on her lips in the Amtrak station. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t. Whatever had happened… They could fix it.
Feeling more gathered, she braved a glance at the face of the guy who’d told her to calm down. He was black, and English, if she had his accent right. Automatically she did the thing she did to read people—kind of like the way you crossed your eyes to see those 3D pop-out pictures, only she focused with her whole mind.
Whoever he was, his aura was okay. Kind of subdued—a placid amber color—but there were worse things than a boring aura. She shifted her senses to her captor, behind the wheel, and felt a sharp burst of pain under her ribs.
“Ow!” She doubled over, stunned and panting.
“Stop.”
Julia sucked in a painful breath and glared at the front seat’s headrest. The prick had sensed her probing. Obviously. Did that mean he could see auras, too? What if they were the same? These crazy kidnappers and her. They were the same. They were all Stained.
Wow.
She stole one last look at Cayne’s van, then closed her eyes. She was still sweating like a kid at fat camp, and her mind felt like it was wrapped in a wad of Bubble Yum. If she was going to be any good for Cayne or herself, she needed to calm down. To think strategically.
Nathan had said Cayne was going to be killed. He had made the accusations, too, but she’d worry about that later. For now she was rolling with her conviction: Cayne was good; she knew he was. Cayne was good to her, so she would fight for him.
Fighting for him involved playing every card right. It was hard to contain her emotions, but she’d faced harder. She endured the rest of the ride by looking at Cayne’s van and focusing her thoughts on him. She wondered again how he’d been captured, what state he was in now. Thinking about that gave her a clawing, hopeless feeling.
After a long time on the tiny road—a long time without houses, headlights, or any other sign of life—Cayne’s van turned into the woods, and hers followed. They rolled into a tunnel of limbs and leaves, and all was dark.
Chapter 2
In the darkness, she saw a speck of light. It ballooned as they drove closer, until finally it materialized, a serious-looking limestone sign that read “X Enterprises.”
Her mysterious prick of a tour guide turned around in his seat, lips pulling into a smug prick smile. “This is our North American base of operation.”
Base of operation?
“It’s just a front,” he said, blasé, like the universe hadn’t gone insane. Talking about the ‘base of operation’ made him sit a little straighter, talk a little louder. “The business is defense contracting. Basically, designing weapons.”
Julia blinked at him, unsure what to do with that information. Was she supposed to be impressed? Forget about Cayne and put on a Stained Pride t-shirt? Whatever the guy had expected, he must not have been getting it; he frowned and sat a little straighter still. “It’s a billion-dollar a year business, owned completely by the Brotherhood.”
Despite everything, Julia let out a pfft. Brotherhood. As if women had no part in anything. She hadn’t planned on speaking, but she couldn’t help herself. “And what exactly is the Brotherhood?”
Nathan, who had started driving again, glanced into the rear view. “You and I and the other Chosen.”
Chosen? “I thought it was Stained.”
His lip curled. “We’re only called that by our enemies.”
Enemies like Cayne. She pushed the crazy thought away. “And what exactly are Chosen?”
He frowned into the mirror. “I understand you have questions, but I can’t answer all of them right now.”
“Can you answer any of them?” Her heart hammered her ribs. “I deserve to know why you took my…why you took my friend Cayne. You can’t just kidnap people without any evidence. It isn’t fair. And trust me, what you think you know about him is wrong.”
“It isn’t fair.” The words were sarcastic, and loaded with fury. “Did you hear that, Andrew?” Nathan said, glancing into the rear view, at the guy beside her. “What we’re doing to the Nephilim isn’t fair.”
Julia cut her eyes at Andrew the Englishman, but his face was carefully blank. Kinda like a solider during the changing of the guards or something. She filed the detail away for future dissection and pushed her tangled hair behind her shoulders. She fixed her eyes on Nathan’s in the mirror.
“Do you hate all Nephilim or just my friend? Because you don’t even know him. He was the one who got me to D.C. To find you.”
“Be quiet. Now.” The face in the mirror tightened; his breath puffed out, and Julia felt a sort of mental pressure. The sensation was similar to how she’d felt when Cayne tried to order her around, back when they’d first teamed up—except it was easier to shake off.
Nathan took another breath, probably noticing she didn’t succumb to his little voodoo act, and in an easier voice, he said, “Be patient. You’ll get your explanations.”
“When?”
He broke eye contact in the mirror, effectively dismissing her, and Julia pressed her lips together, suddenly struggling not to cry.
She was sending bad vibes toward the driver’s seat when they rounded a curve and her universe shifted. She saw a crystalline pyramid gleaming in the center of a moonlit field. The thing was enormous. Gargantuan. James Cameron big.
And yeah… she’d definitely freakin’ seen the thing before—in a freakin’ dream. Her throat closed as she realized…she was really, truly, seriously having prophetic dreams. Visions. Both. Which meant two terrible things: a) she was even weirder than she’d thought before and b) all of this must mean something. Something that… Well, it probably wouldn’t lead her down a road that ended with her and Cayne living next door to each other in little brick apartments, walking to college classes together and…
She squeezed her eyes shut.
To have seen the Stained prick, Nathan, and also to have seen this huge glass pyramid…
She wrapped her arms around herself and wanted to wail—because suddenly she remembered she’d dreamed about other things, too.
She bit her lip, remembering a dream she’d had at the Peabody Hotel—the one where Cayne had been flying over the pyramid and the sun had melted him like a wax doll. There’d been the dream where she’d had wings. But they weren’t like Cayne’s. Hers had been white and über fluffy. More like angel’s wings. In that dream, the pyramid had stretched so high she couldn’t see its peak.
What about the dream where Cayne had been—oh, shit—nailed up on a billboard?
She stared at the pyramid with dread, willing it to be imagined, to disappear, and suddenly…it did.
Julia blinked twice and realized they were approaching a wall—a big wall, right in front of them, blocking her view of everything but the pyramid’s gleaming tip. It was easily two stories tall and made of some kind of cement. The van slowed next to a thin metal security tower with a keypad, and she watched Nathan’s arm stretch out the window, his fingers press a glowing blue screen the size of a Kindle. Then a red light flashed and the wall ripped open. Like, ripped open—Hollywood-style.
The moment they shot through, the wall slammed shut with earthquake-like force, shaking the van and jarring Julia to her ribs.
They drove through a thick metal gate and cleared a wire fence that flickered with electricity. They passed a checkpoint guarded by burly men and strong-looking women in black jumpers. Then the pyramid was visible again, out to her left, standing alone in the middle of a field that overlooked a valley
, where three mini skyscrapers rose from the grassy ground.
She glanced out at the path in front of them and realized she no longer saw the van that carried Cayne.
Before she had a chance to freak out over that, her van hooked around a big, square parking lot and rolled onto a worn grass path that led toward the pyramid. Looking at it straight on, she could see how enormous it really was. Twenty stories? Thirty? A little gasp escaped her lips, and Nathan turned around in his seat.
He smiled. “Welcome home.”
Home. What a freaking joke. For a long second, Julia considered lunging out of her seat and slapping him. But she had Cayne to think about, and assuming Cayne was in the other van and it was still around here somewhere, she might need the douchebag Stained to help her get to him. The realization made her feel like hurling, but there it was. She folded her hands and bit her tongue, feeling eerily like a child on a group home field trip. Put your finger over your mouth and sit still until we get out of the bus.
