The reflection of the shower caught my eye. The inside wall was lined with bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I reached inside for the bar of soap. It smelled of lemon and verbena and was embossed with a French name. The bottles were just as haute.
A cabinet mounted on the wall next to the mirror was filled with more extravagant things: perfume, body lotion, bath salts. There were thick towels—far too plush for my skin—neatly folded on a small table next to the shower, and a pair of slippers pushed underneath.
I walked past the dress hanging on the bathroom door and headed for the closet. A sick feeling began to roil up in my stomach as I walked inside.
The closet was big enough to fit a bed, and the walls were lined with clothes. On my right were dresses in every color and style conceivable. The left side was stuffed with pants and shirts and an entire section reserved for designer jeans and T-shirts. But the most outrageous part was the wall in front of me. From the floor to the ceiling was a series of slanted shelves displaying shoes. There must have been a hundred pairs: sandals, pumps, flats, stilettos, wedges. There was even a shelf for sneakers and running shoes.
It was obscene.
That feeling was coming back—the one that felt like a cat fighting with my intestines. I stepped back from the glow of the closet light and steadied myself against the dresser just outside the door.
“I believe the sizes are correct.” Daemon was standing behind me. “Anything that doesn’t fit will be replaced.”
I turned around slowly to keep my balance. The clothes, the scent of lavender, the ostentatious bath paraphernalia—it was all for me. He intended to keep me.
“I don’t want any of it.” My head shook as I took a step back.
“Don’t be silly, Alex. This is your home, now.” The smile left his face. “Would you prefer I stock the closet with rags and buy your toiletries from a dollar store?”
He didn’t get it. “You can stock this jail cell with anything you like, but I’m not wearing any of it. I won’t be bathing either. Maybe you should think about that.”
He prolonged his stare, as did I. When it was clear I had no intention of backing down, he puffed up like a ruffled rooster. “This is for your own good,” he said between slightly clenched teeth. “Do I need to remind you of what happened the last time I left you alone? Would you like to go back there? What do you think will happen if you do?”
Before I could answer with an I’ll-take-my-chances kind of response, he elaborated. “You’d be on your back in that other room with those animals crawling on top of you.”
“You know that Greer will kill you when he finds this place, and he will.” I had to believe that or I’d fall apart. I could never let Daemon see that weak spot.
He glanced at the dress hanging on the bathroom door. “Get dressed,” he instructed as he left the room.
The living room was empty when I came out of the bedroom. The light was obscured by the blinds covering the windows. I remembered the night Daemon showed up on Columbus Avenue, telling me that the light made him uncomfortable, asking me if he could touch my skin.
The smell of bacon and freshly brewed coffee made my mouth water. There was enough food on the dining room table to feed half a dozen people. But as hungry as I was and as much as I wanted a cup of that coffee, the thought of accepting it felt like a betrayal. He’d have to force me to eat it like he’d done the night before.
Daemon came out of the kitchen and assessed the dress he’d chosen for me. His eyes ran down my body, and then back up to my face. “You look lovely.”
He motioned to the table. “Sit. Please.” When I didn’t move, he came toward me and took my arm with just enough tenderness to mask the aggression my defiance had stirred. “I don’t like raising my voice to you, Alex. Please don’t make me do it again.”
I jerked my arm from his hand and looked him in the eye before walking to the table and sitting down. “I’d be more cooperative if I knew what you had planned for me.”
He reached over my shoulder and poured coffee into my cup. “Cream and sugar?”
“I’ve got it.” I grabbed the creamer before he could.
“Did you sleep well?” He sat across from me and poured his own cup. “I took the liberty of giving you something.”
“You drugged me?”
“I wouldn’t call it a drug. Just something to take the edge off. You were a difficult girl last night.”
That edge was coming back in droves. I had no memory of the last evening past the part where I’d forced myself to eat the food he’d threatened to shove down my throat. He could have done anything to me. Such an easy mark I must have been, with all my humanness.
He sat and stared at me, waiting for me to serve myself before taking his first bite. Well, what do you know, a predator with manners. I thought about antagonizing the situation by refusing again, but that tactic seemed to backfire. And I was really hungry. Fighting my way out of this nightmare would be difficult enough without a raging hunger in my throat.
I leaned across the table and spooned some scrambled eggs, bacon, and an English muffin on my plate. When I was done assembling my breakfast, I sat back and looked at him, giving him the green light to dig in. He continued to wait until I finally put a forkful of food in my mouth.
He began to eat as I chewed, and I wondered how many more of these meals I’d have to suffer through before he finally lost the manners and showed his true colors.
“Why don’t you just tell me why I’m here.” I reached for the muffin in a show of good faith that I was willing to cooperate. “If it’s the vessel—”
I stopped myself from saying the words that might get Dr. Oxford killed, or at best maimed when they ripped the lenses from his eyes. If I told him those ridiculous glasses were nothing but a ruse and we needed Oxford in the flesh to find the vessel, I would seal that poor man’s fate. I couldn’t live with that.
A fleeting smile crossed his face as he tore at a piece of bacon and chased it with a glass of orange juice. When he’d sufficiently chewed and swallowed, he wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin and laid it next to his plate. “Yes, the vessel. There is that,” he said with enough curiosity to make me question the crux of this whole abduction.
Something unpleasant settled in my gut and gnawed at my intestines, like a tiny rat chewing on the wires inside my walls. It was that old intuition that a girl should never ignore.
The sound of my fork meeting the tabletop resonated through the air as I looked at Daemon’s still face, his eyes resting on mine as if he were waiting for a bright, shiny lightbulb to appear above my head.
“I’ll keep asking the same questions over and over until you can’t take it anymore,” I promised.
He released a heavy sigh and looked at me exasperatedly. “You frustrate me so…completely. Don’t you trust me?”
I had to remember that he was deluded, capable of convincing himself of whatever he needed to in order to justify the fantasy he’d created in this apartment.
“I will tell you one last time, and then the subject will be closed. This,” his eyes traveled around the room before settling back on mine, “is your home now.”
The chair made a rough scraping sound as I stood up and nearly toppled it over. I made it to the bedroom and slammed the door. There was no lock, but I imagined it wouldn’t matter if it had a deadbolt. A man—or should I say male—like Daemon wouldn’t let a little contraption made of metal keep him out of the room.
The door swung open. He leaned into the frame as I took the lamp from the nightstand and hurled it at the wall.
“There’s another one over there.” He gestured to another lamp on the dresser.
I ran to the closet and started pulling the clothes from the hangers, throwing dresses and shoes and blouses through the door into a pile on the bedroom floor. “I don’t want any of this!” I screamed.
He watched what he must have thought equivalent to a childish tantrum, with his face expressionless and sober.
Then the clothes started flying back at me. Each garment flew back on its hanger, and each shoe landed right back in its place on the shelf. The shards of the shattered lamp began to move, and then they reassembled as if a giant magnet had called them back together.
“Are you done?” he asked calmly.
My blood felt like it was on fire. It raced through my veins, causing my heart to thump wildly and pulse in my ears. I ran into the bathroom. A moment later, I was running at him with a razor in my hand. He caught my arm and held it at a distance, looking at the thin shielded blade as if trying to make sense of how I intended to use it.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Alex.” He lowered my arm and smiled in that condescending way a parent confronts an insufferable child.
And then I did it. I lifted my other arm and swiftly shoved my wrist along the edge of the blade. Just a drop would do it. An intense pain radiated from my arm and shot through my body as I managed to slice a small gash along the vein of my wrist.
Daemon dropped his hold on me and stepped back as I inhaled sharply and gasped. His eyes went to the blood running down my wrist, and then they slowly reached back up to my face. “What have you done?”
I waited for the monster inside of me to emerge and prayed that it would know what to do. Greer had trained me to control it, but only with him, not with someone my monster had never met.
As I stood there bracing myself, Daemon took my hand and raised my wrist to his lips. I watched in horror as his tongue slipped from his mouth and pressed against the dark red fluid that was draining down the inside of my arm. He covered the surface of my wrist with his mouth and sucked. Then he raised his head and licked the blood clean from the rim of his lips. “It is as perfect as I imagined.”
The cut stopped bleeding, and I watched as the wound healed itself into a thin pink line. And then it was over. Just like that. Nothing happened.
I looked back up at Daemon whose eyes had turn an intense black. His lips parted to accommodate the acceleration of his breath, and for the second time, I was staring into the eyes that almost detonated my life so many months ago in the park. I knew that look like I’d seen it just yesterday, and I knew what would happen if I didn’t run.
His fingers slid around the edge of my jaw while his thumb skimmed my lower lip. “You understand that this has to happen, don’t you?” His look bordered on incredulous as he scanned my face for acceptance. “If it was one of the others, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be treated with the respect you deserve.”
That doubtful expression began to change and turn agitated. His eyes moved back and forth between mine as if one might be saying something different from the other, and I could sense his growing anger as his grip on my jaw tightened.
“You ungrateful girl,” he whispered.
Sophia’s face flashed in my mind as the word ungrateful rang through my ears. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on my proclivity for gratitude.
Run, my brain kept saying. But there was nowhere to go. I was in a room with my attacker between me and the only way out, and there was nowhere to run.
He let go of my face, but only to shut the door. We were alone in the apartment, but some things are too reprehensible even for an empty house to see.
There’s a time for curling into a tight ball and shutting the world out. And then there are times like these when that kind of weakness can get you killed.
I was alive, more so than ever because a deep and festering wound had been gouged straight through my soul, and I could feel every bit of its torn edges with acute awareness.
I know I should have felt sickened and violated by what he’d done to me, but all I felt was rage for what he’d taken, for the future he’d just ruined. All I could think about was Greer’s face. All I could see were his eyes looking back at mine and knowing that this girl wasn’t the same one he’d walk through fire for.
I’d lost everything. He’d stolen everything.
The bed moved as Daemon shifted next to me. The heat from his skin crawled over mine, inciting a mild panic at the thought of it suffocating me.
My eyes closed and I went completely still, hoping he wouldn’t wake and force me to look at him again. That moment was the most significant of my life, as I waited to see if he’d turn to me or continue to sleep. The latter was my fate, and when I was sure I wasn’t about to suffer another round of his twisted form of love, I quietly rolled my back to his.
I would survive this, and then I would kill him.
TWENTY-EIGHT
A thunderstorm cracked the sky and rumbled the tail end of its whip through the room, waking me from a dead sleep. But when I turned toward the window I saw a beam of sunlight, with all its particles of floating, white dust, cast across the wood floor. For a few beautiful seconds I was at home in my bed, with thoughts of Sophia’s French toast and freshly pressed coffee.
And then I wasn’t.
My memory of what happened was as clear as sparkling water, but I still tried to manipulate the images like a collage or a storyboard, reconstructing the events leading up to this very moment.
I turned around, careful not to disturb the mattress. The other side was empty. Maybe it had all been a vivid nightmare. Or maybe my monster had come through for me after all, and I’d feel Daemon’s slaughtered body under my feet when I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
My head craned in the direction of the door as it opened. A man walked in and looked at me like he had the right to inspect my naked body.
He must have been six foot six, but moved as if maneuvering in and out of standard door frames wasn’t a challenge at all. His blond hair had the slightest hint of orange, and it was pulled back in one of those man buns that seemed to be all the rage with the hipsters. Or maybe he was rocking Buddha.
Either way, I doubted he cared what anyone thought about his choice of style, because he was wearing a kilt of deeply hued blue and green tartan. His heavy black boots laced up to the middle of his shins, and for a moment I thought I heard bagpipes skirling up from the bright green knoll I visualized around him.
“Maelcolm?” I asked. Who else would it be?
He walked around the perimeter of the bed, examining me from every angle. Then he raised his head as only a Maelcolm could, and turned it toward the bedroom door.
My eyes followed his. Daemon was standing in the doorway with a man at each side. The man on his left was holding a metal chain that led to a thick cuff circling Daemon’s neck. He took an involuntary step toward me and the chain snapped with a violent jerk that pulled him back outside the room.
Maelcolm turned his attention back on me. “Did this man force himself on you?” He pointed in the direction of the door.
Why did it matter? I wondered. Wasn’t that what they did? Didn’t they make sport of preying on women? Had protocol been broken, turning their neat little system into undisciplined predation?
I turned to look Daemon in the eye. I knew they’d do something horrible to him if I testified in that room. And though I wanted to kill him myself, the humanity in me suffered a small pang of compassion as I delivered my answer.
“Yes.”
Maelcolm nodded once and the two men hauled Daemon away. Not a single protest left his mouth as he disappeared from the doorway. The chain rattled as they led him down the hall, and then the sound abruptly stopped.
“Put some clothes on.” His heavy boots hit the floor with an unexpected grace as he headed for the door.
“I need to take a shower,” I uttered in a voice that was barely a whisper. I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to do, but Daemon was already being dealt with. There would be no report, no need for evidence. That’s not how it worked in this world.
“Very well,” he allowed. “Ten minutes.”
“Twenty,” I replied boldly.
He conceded by saying nothing as he walked out of the room.
I walked into the ridiculous closet and found my own T-shirt and jeans, newly washed and hung neatly along with all
the new clothes that were meant for me.
What a waste, I thought. What a fucking waste. I wanted to set the closet on fire, destroy any evidence I’d ever been in that room.
My hands shook as I laid the clothes on the countertop and stepped into the stream of water. It wasn’t hot enough, but any hotter, my skin would boil and slide off of my flesh. The contrast of the cold stone tiling the shower wall soothed my back as I slipped down to the floor and took every second of my twenty minutes.
Maelcolm was staring out the window when I walked into the living room. The light seemed to have no effect on him, and I wondered if the aversion to it was all in Daemon’s twisted imagination. In his delusion, had he convinced himself that he was some sort of night crawler?
From his profile, I could tell it was an east-facing window. The bright light made his pale skin look almost white from the intense glare. He had a deep furrow running across his forehead, softened by the exaggeration of his thick arched brow.
He ran his hand over the length of his beard and turned to looked at me. I averted my eyes to the man standing guard near the front door. There were two more nosing around in the kitchen.
“What will happen to him?” I asked.
His expression was neutral as he examined my wet hair and the clothes that seemed to hang on me like old rags. They used to fit me perfectly, but I was beginning to shrink under the weight of everything happening around me. I hadn’t even noticed I’d lost a full size over the past few weeks.
It’s funny how that happens. You’re dieting and anxiously checking the scale every morning for that half-pound loss, stripping naked before stepping on because your underwear obviously yielded that half pound that wasn’t going away. Then all of a sudden you’re wearing a size six instead of an eight.
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 26
