by Ava Benton
“Be sure to clothe this one right away,” Vernon added with a chuckle, standing by the cell door. “We wouldn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. He’s going to be here for a while.”
That’s what you think, I replied silently.
On the outside, I did everything I could to keep my face blank. No need to clue him into what was going on in my head.
Let him think he has me whipped.
I kept my head low as I slid into the tunic, three guards standing practically on top of me with their weapons aimed as I did. Only when I was shackled again did they leave me alone with my cellmate.
Only then did my cellmate turn to face me—slowly, so slowly. The hair was gray, where it had once been a vibrant, coal-black.
The eyes had weakened with time and faded from their brilliant blue.
She’d already been many centuries old when she gave birth to me, so it made sense that time had finally caught up to her. Still, there was beauty in her delicate features. The beauty I remembered.
“Mathair?” I whispered, unable to believe what my eyes took in. “Mother?”
“My son?” Tears filled her eyes, which she squeezed shut. “I knew your voice, but didn’t dare hope it was you. It would mean you were locked here with me, forever.”
I reached for her, but it was no use. The shackles kept me chained to the wall, allowing me to go no further than the commode, which sat behind a curtain in one corner of the cell.
I couldn’t even hold her, whisper that it would be all right. Tell her the truth, that she would be free soon.
“Do you still know the old tongue?” she whispered.
“I do.”
Something about being in her presence, and the presence of the others, brought it all back to me. I doubted I would’ve remembered much only hours earlier. Seeing her there made it feel as though no time had passed, in spite of the centuries which showed themselves plainly on her face.
She looked out the door, as though to be certain we weren’t overheard, before leaning in slightly and lapsing into Scots Gaelic. “Why did you come? There is too much danger.”
“How could we leave you all here?”
“How did you know?”
“The heartbeat. It went away.”
She nodded slowly. “They’ve kept us drugged all the while, something which would lessen the presence so you wouldn’t be able to find us.”
“But we did.”
“You did.” Her smile was sad. “But to what end?”
“You will see.”
“What does that mean?”
“You will see,” I repeated, eyes widening. “How long have you been here?”
“Oh, there is no telling,” she sighed. “They won’t let us see the outdoors, much less keep any sense of time. It could be months, it could be days.”
“What are they doing to you? To what end did they kidnap you?”
“What do you think?”
She raised her arm, and only then did I take note of the port inserted into the underside of her forearm. Blood. They’d been bleeding all of them, steadily. No wonder they were all so weak, between the drugs and the lack of blood.
“It was an ambush, entirely. I hardly remember all that happened. Perhaps it is better that I don’t remember—we lost many members of the clan that day.”
“There were no bodies at the cave. I was there, myself.”
“I’m sure they destroyed the bodies. It does seem as though they have matters well in hand, doesn’t it?”
She wrung her chafed hands and turned her gaze back to the corridor, where armed men occasionally walked back and forth.
They had dared put their hands on my mother. I would take special pleasure in their terror before I ended their worthless lives. The dragon thrashed and raged in my head, to the point where I could hardly think straight.
He demanded vengeance. I could agree with that.
“Not as well in hand as they believe,” I murmured, waiting until she looked at me again before showing her what she needed to know. I looked down at my hands, where my skin shimmered and turned into scales, before quickly reinforcing control and returning to human skin.
Her eyes bulged. “How?”
“I told you. You’ll see.” I winked.
Her mouth snapped shut. But for the first time since I’d arrived, there was a sparkle of life in her. Hope.
“You look well,” she whispered, smiling again.
“As do you.” I was so certain I’d never see her again, it was like something out of a happy dream. Except under the unhappiest of circumstances.
She scoffed, and when she waved a dismissive hand, I caught sight of the sores on her wrists from the ever-present iron.
Rage boiled up in my head again as the dragon threatened untold agony for what had been done to her. Bad enough the clan had been kidnapped, but my mother?
“I’m an old woman now,” she murmured with a dry chuckle.
“You’re as beautiful as the day we left,” I assured her, and I meant it with all my heart. A thought occurred to me then, one which I hardly dared voice. She hadn’t mentioned him. I wasn’t certain what it meant. “What about Father? Is he still alive?”
Her throat worked, though her mouth remained closed.
It was all I needed to see. If he were merely dead of natural causes, she could’ve told me so, and that would’ve been the end of it. She wouldn’t have been so close to breaking down.
“He fought so hard,” she managed to whisper, tears choking off the rest.
Not that I needed to hear anything more. I had already heard more than enough to sign the death warrant of every human in the compound.
There was no time for emotion right now, however. The time for mourning would come later, once they were dead and we were on our way home.
“Tell me everything you can about them,” I demanded. “Every single thing.”
14
Martina
I hoped I was well-armed. It was the only hope I could hold onto as I made my way through the jungle, following the path Gate and Miles had cleared as they’d traveled through. I gave them credit for trying—anyone unfamiliar with hunting or tracking would’ve been easily fooled. I silently thanked my mother for at least insisting I know how to hunt.
And how to handle weaponry. Did she know even then that I would need them one day? Or was she only doing what little she could to take care of me without my knowing?
What was the story which led her to the work she did? Klaus had alluded to it without giving me anything other than more questions.
What could’ve happened to her that she would turn to working with shifters? Just how far did her network stretch? It was a little unnerving, thinking of my mother as a sort of general, leading these men around.
Yet the more I pieced it together, the more likely it seemed that she was just that. Her secret meetings, the office I was never allowed inside, the men who came and went at all hours. Big men, powerful ones, like Klaus and the others. Men with scars. Men who had seen more of life than I could ever imagine.
Evidently, since I’d only just discovered the existence of shifters. Was I really that deep in the dark? I’d always assumed they were a fantasy, fiction, the way witches and other creatures were. The Loch Ness Monster and Area 54, that sort of thing. I had never seen one, and as far as I could tell, I knew no one who ever had, either. How wrong I was. How very wrong.
I gave my head a sharp shake, both to clear it and to wave off the bugs which couldn’t seem to stay away from my sweat-slicked forehead. My hair was up in a knot, the bandana still around my neck, a semi-automatic rifle strapped to my back, and another in my hands.
At my waist were several clips and two long hunting knives which I’d found on the boat.
Klaus was, I hoped, either sleeping off the head wound I’d delivered or—better yet—going back to the resort for help. If he could even steer the boat straight at this point. Once again, that was something I might have done well t
o consider at the time. But it wasn’t as though he gave me much of a choice, either. It was knock him out or kill him. He wasn’t about to cooperate.
I should’ve been terrified, but I wasn’t. My palms weren’t even sweating. My pulse was slow and even. I knew what I had to do, and a sort of laser focus took over. All that mattered was getting the antidote, tucked into the many pockets of my heavily-belted, oversized cargo pants, to the clan. And freeing Gate, of course.
What would he think if he knew how much he already meant to me? As much as I didn’t want to lose my heart to him, it would be worth the loss if he lived. As long as he lived.
I came up to the clearing and waited, eyes sweeping the area. The scraps of clothing were gone.
Damn it. I knew it was too much to ask, hoping that they’d be waiting where I’d seen them fall. Too easy, and nothing had been easy throughout this entire situation.
They’d found the antidote, then. So long as they didn’t know what it was, we were still in the clear. Would they be able to find something like that out so quickly? No more than an hour or two had passed since I’d watched the capture.
The thought of Gate being tortured crossed my mind again, and I pushed the thought away with all my might. I wouldn’t entertain it. Couldn’t. The image of him contorting in pain caused me physical pain, too, and brought me close to tears. I couldn’t give in to that. My pulse threatened to speed up—I focused my attention on lowering it. There was no room for anxiety.
They were back to keeping a single guard outside the door. He was armed, though the rifle was slung across his back. Evidently, they assumed that since the men were locked up inside, there were no further threats. Or they were just tired of waiting around for a threat to materialize.
I watched, holding my breath, as he pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack and cupped his hand around a lighter, touching the flame to the tip.
And just that fast, I was behind him.
“Freeze,” I whispered, pressing the butt of the gun against his back. “Hands up. Drop the lighter. Let the cigarette fall.”
He did as I ordered, but not without trying to turn his head to look at me.
“Eyes forward,” I growled.
I didn’t have to will the strength into my voice. It was there without trying. I only had to remember seeing Gate with shackles on his wrists for my rage to make itself audible.
“What do you think you’re gonna do, little girl?” he snickered.
“I think I’m going to make you open that door.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll pull the trigger. Don’t test me.” I was quick to unbuckle the strap which held the weapon against his back—when it hit the ground, I kicked it as far away as I could.
“You’ll pull the trigger if I do, anyway,” he chuckled. “Come on. Don’t try to sweet talk me.”
“Just open the damn thing.” I looked over at the control panel and wished I’d been able to see him use it.
How did it work? A flat panel, nothing more. Just big enough for a hand to spread out across it. I wondered.
“One more chance,” I whispered.
When he didn’t move fast enough, I didn’t have a choice but to slam the butt of the gun against the back of his head.
He fell to his knees, raising one hand to cover the gash I’d created.
“I told you there was a chance. Now crawl. Do it.”
“Crawl?”
“To the door, asshole. On your knees. Go. Now. Hands behind your head. Fingers laced.”
He did as I asked this time, breathing heavy, swaying back and forth but making it there.
I shoved him. “Do it. Now.”
He lifted his right arm and pressed his palm against the sensor, which made a pinging sound when it accepted his handprint.
The door swung open.
“There, bitch. Happy now?”
“Thrilled,” I whispered before delivering another blow which left him flat on his face, bleeding from yet another wound.
I didn’t dare open fire in case anybody happened to hear, and I’d have to leave his body lying there or else risk the door closing as I moved it. I hoped it wouldn’t take long to get where I was going.
The corridors seemed to go on forever, zigging and zagging. I looked up at the walls, the ceiling, watching for cameras but unable to find any.
I hoped I would actually be that lucky, for once.
I wasn’t.
The sound of pounding footsteps met my ears, growing louder by the second. I didn’t have any other choice but to hold the rifle at waist height and brace myself.
It was just like hunting. Just like hunting.
Gate’s face was the last thing to go through my mind.
15
Gate
“I’ll ask you again.” Vernon stood in front of me, one of the syringes held between two fingers. “What is this?”
“I’ll tell you again: I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“What makes you think that?”
His eyes narrowed, his entire head flushed red—even the bald scalp—and his body vibrated with fury. “Because you were carrying it in your pocket, along with several other identical syringes.”
“They weren’t my pants.”
“Liar.”
“I was carrying them for a friend?”
“Enough!” His voice ricocheted around the corridor, bouncing off the hard floors and glass-doored cells.
I felt my clansmen and clanswomen watching from inside those cells, their mournful eyes following the doctor’s every move. Doctor. I wondered if he actually was one, or if he only called himself that in order to inflate his self-worth. And his soldiers would follow a doctor. They wouldn’t follow a weak little man with only a few credentials to his name who wanted to steal the blood of dragons.
“How much are you paying your men?” I whispered, watching him closely. “You certainly seem to trust them. What’s in this for them, then?”
“That’s none of your concern, and not the topic of our conversation.” He nodded to the man standing behind me, who applied the cattle prod to my back.
I grimaced, straining against my restraints.
The real battle was in not allowing the dragon to break free. He would’ve done anything to make the pain stop and taste vengeance. But it wasn’t time for that yet. Not yet. I would know when. So I fought to hold him back.
It finally stopped.
I heard the soft, barely-muffled sobs coming from a handful of cells and hoped my mother wasn’t one of those who cried for me. I would’ve given anything to spare her the pain of watching me go through this.
“Again, what is in this syringe? We can do this all day. All night. For as long as you think you can handle it.” I opened my eyes to find Vernon smiling down at me. Smiling. The cold-hearted monster.
He leaned down, closer to where I sat, until his face was inches from mine.
I did what I could to keep from recoiling in disgust.
“Do you know how many of your clansmen died back in Scotland?” he murmured, watching me closely from behind those thick glasses of his. “They were better men than you. They didn’t rely on sarcasm or supposed intelligence. They didn’t think they were more clever than me or my men. They fought. I give them credit for that. They did fight. But they died.”
My father was one of them. Not that I’d ever imagined seeing him again, but there was a difference between knowing he’d died peacefully after a long life, and that he’d been murdered by a greedy, heartless bastard like the weakling standing before me.
“What are you giving them?” I asked again. “Or are you going to pay them once you’ve sold all the blood you’ve collected? I’d imagine there’s a fairly lucrative market for it. I didn’t know mercenaries worked on IOUs. They must be getting antsy.”
“Hit him again,” Vernon ordered.
I braced myself for what was about to happen.
The sound of gunfire distr
acted all of us.
Vernon spun in the direction of the reverberations. “What’s that?”
“What does it sound like?”
The real question was, who was it? Had Klaus gone in for backup? Had they gotten there so quickly? The sound grew louder, louder, until it was clear that whoever was peppering the corridor on the other side of the double doors was getting closer.
Was this my chance? It had to be. The dragon rejoiced as I allowed it to burst free, the shift taking over in a heartbeat. He was that ready to fight.
The shackles shattered, bits of iron shooting in all directions as my body changed.
“What the hell?”
That was all the prod-wielding bastard behind me had the chance to shout before I swiped out with one of my arms and sent him flying against the wall. His lifeless body slid to the floor, eyes still open wide in shock.
One of the glass doors shattered, the pieces flying out into the corridor as Miles burst out of his cell, taking two of the mercenaries along the way as they tried to run.
His roar filled the air, coupled with mine as I glared down at Vernon.
Our eyes met.
“How?” he whispered.
A yellow stain began to spread across the front of his lab coat.
I closed my talons around his neck and lifted him to eye level, wanting to be that close to him when I ended his life.
“No…” he croaked, trying to claw at me.
It was no use. I tightened my grip. Tighter. Watching the life drain from him until his neck snapped.
I dropped his body and roared in satisfaction as he landed with a thud among the screams and gunfire all around me.
That was when the doors flew open.
The human part of my mind expected an entire army, led by Klaus or Mary.
Never in a million years would I have expected to see just one blood-stained, sweat-drenched, gun-toting Valkyrie stride into the room.
Martina.
Just Martina.
I roared in approval as my heart swelled with pride.
She was our woman.
Neither I nor the dragon had ever been so certain of anything. She was a queen, a warrior, and she was ours.
