by Richard Amos
The big fella, now recovered, stood a little taller now—obviously wanting to re-establish himself as a hard nut. “Abby says to go straight to her office, Tseng. You all have clearance. But don’t go off the fucking beaten path or I’ll beat you. Got it?”
I kept my mouth shut, though it was tempting to taunt him about how scared I wasn’t of the threat. Wanker was nothing but bravado and steroids.
Dean nodded and brushed past him.
I followed, suppressing a grin, with my other two guardians right behind me.
Dean led us down a dimly lit corridor, the floor gray stone and the walls white, to an elevator.
“That was too funny,” Greg said as we stepped inside.
It was musty, slightly damp smelling.
“I’d need hundreds of fingers to count how many times me and him have come to blows,” Dean replied, pushing the button marked with a 3. “Got a mean punch on him. But I soon learned to put him in his place. Men like Jim just need a good rattling from time to time to bring out their submissive side. He’s good in a fight, but he has to be kept in line—his mouth that it is.”
The elevator went down.
“Must have been a joy working with him day in day out,” I said.
“As fun as you can imagine.”
“He’s stupid to try and make you feel guilty about leaving,” Nay added. “Being a guardian is your calling. How ungrateful can someone be?”
Dean shrugged. “Don’t worry about him.”
It was kind of hot that he’d defended my honor like that.
Get your head in the game, not in the bedroom!
My sparks spat hungrily as the elevator slowed to a stop. This was a beast buffet down here.
The doors opened into an open-plan office. Bright fluorescent lights sat in the bare stone ceiling. The floor was blue carpet tiles that had seen better days, the desks like something out of a 1980s TV show about office workers. There were enough of them for at least twenty people. There were two—one woman and a man—working on their computers. They didn’t have on outlandish outfits with shoulder pads, big hair, or a penchant for neon. They were in black and looked bleary-eyed and knackered.
“Hi.”
To my left was a woman, also clad in black, with a curly red bob and skin so tanned it looked like she’d been on a two-week holiday to Spain with only the smallest bottle of suntan lotion—that she didn’t use the entire time.
“Hi, Abby,” Dean greeted.
“Tseng,” the woman replied. “Nice to see your lovely fae face again.”
Her sparkling green eyes didn’t leave me. Her scrutiny was so intense that I felt like a new bacteria strain under a microscope, so bloody fascinating to the scientist who’d just discovered me.
“It is an honor to meet you,” she said, stepping forward. “I’m so pleased we could help you out from time to time with patrols.”
And they had, the guards of this place, as and when they could—which wasn’t very often due to their severely depleted numbers. I could kind of understand why Jim was so bitter about stuff.
Kind of …
“I won’t shake your hand,” Abby added.
“These sparks won’t hurt you.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”
“No worries.”
“Well, welcome to the facility. And welcome back, Tseng.”
Dean said nothing.
“I think we’ll just go straight to the prisoner in question,” Nay chipped in. “Get it over and done with.”
“Sure thing.” She grinned at me, revealing even rows of pearly whites. “I want to reassure you, Jake, that the wards here are completely unforgiving. I mean, so are yours at the mansion, but these are dirty. They’ll kill you, Jake, without a second thought. There’s no give in them.”
“Erm, great.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “No, no! That came out wrong! Goodness! What I meant was that the beasts will not escape this place, and that you shouldn’t wander off without one of us present as you won’t be able to turn the wards down to get through.” She paused for breath. “This place may not be The Ritz, or the kind of glamour you’re used to, but I want you to feel at ease during your visit here.”
She was rambling, and I had a question. “What do you mean by the glamour I’m used to?”
She lifted a finger for me to hang on a moment. Abby hurried over to a desk and pulled open a drawer.
Oh, bloody hell no! Please let that not be—
Abby fished out a magazine called Tempo, holding it up for us all to see, me on the cover, spread on a bed with a sheet draped tactfully over my crotch. It was black and white and making me pray for the floor to swallow me up.
“This is amazing!” she declared.
“Rose has competition,” Greg said.
Abby grabbed a pen and came over to me sheepishly. “I know this is so inappropriate, but do you think you could sign this for me?”
What the actual fuck?
“I—”
“Then we’ll get on with the job at hand, and I won’t bring it up again or ask for anything else and I’ll be forever grateful because you’re so … handsome … and I think you’re the best and it’s a shame you just … disappeared … which is your business but that never stopped me loving you …” Her super-bronzed cheeks flushed just like mine were as she gulped in some 02.
I took the pen. “Sure.” I just wanted this over with.
Magazine cover signed, I handed it back and she giggled—almost squealed too but managed to contain herself.
I’d never got approached in London, never recognized. My career had burned out too fast. Oh, but I end up in a city I didn’t even know existed and I have two bloody super-fans!
Abby skipped over to the desk and put the magazine away. All this time, the two people in the room had kept their eyes glued to their computer screens, as if we didn’t exist.
“Amazing,” Greg whispered. “Did I tell you how much I love hanging out with you, Jakey?”
“Piss off!” I hissed.
He snorted in response.
“You loved getting your clothes off,” Nay added. “Most of the pictures of you I’ve seen have you half-naked.”
“You can piss off too!”
Her and Greg giggled together like two naughty school kids.
I turned to Dean, my face nuclear with embarrassment.
He smiled warmly and said nothing.
“Right,” Abby said. “Time to go down.”
Thank fuck for that!
Chapter Seven
We took a different elevator on the other side of the open-plan office down to Level 8 of the facility.
The temperature was cooler down there than it was upstairs. Abby led us down a set of stairs in a dimly lit space of black walls and floors, through some iron gates that were guarded by a man, and then onto a prison wing.
The walkway was wide, room for a line of at least ten people stretching from left to right. On each side of it were huge, seriously heavy duty, metal doors, green wards flashing across them. I could feel the buzz of their energy as they kept their deadly prisoners safe within.
My sparks crackled at the potency of beast essence around me.
“Here,” Abby announced, stopping at a cell marked 154.
The weapon … A voice in my head, softer than a whisper and female. It wasn’t the goddess.
I looked behind me, down the rows of cell doors. We were about halfway down, so I looked both ways.
My scalp prickled. I knew well enough that the voice had not been my imagination. No way. I’d heard it loud and bloody clear.
“I heard something.” There would be no secrets, no keeping it to myself for everything to then go wrong and my guardians having zero information because I was a dick head. “A voice in my head. Female.”
The overhead lights flickered. No voice.
“Stay close,” Dean said. “You’ll be okay.”
I moved closer to him, Gre
g coming up to my front, Nay on my other side. They were my shell of kick arse.
“Please don’t worry,” Abby reassured me. “Just stay where you need to stay and everything will be fine.”
There was a beast in here that could reach out to me, and I think I knew who it was. Dean had said about Lilisian’s mum being locked up here, having some skill in making heads go pop. Though I wasn’t worried about that so much, seeing as she was suppressed in there, I still didn’t want her poking around in my brain.
Abby pulled a swipe card from her pocket and placed it on a panel at the side of the door.
The green ward flashed and disappeared, the door swinging open.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yeah. Let me go first.”
“No,” Greg said, striding into the cell.
Nay and Dean followed him before I could blink.
Abby smiled at me. “You have a great team looking out for you.”
One that also knows how to keep me on a leash … sort of. And I loved that. “I sure do.”
I entered the cell. It was cool and dim, with a bed, a toilet and a sink. There was one lamp in the corner casting weak light onto the bed, and all the walls were black and slimy-looking. Strapped to that bed was Purple.
Man, she looked rough. Her plum hair was all over the place, her skin dirty and ashen, gray rags covering her body, her feet bare. She was giving me the mother of all death glares.
“Getting them to sweep the room for you,” she said to me. “How pathetic.”
My guardians stood slightly back from the bed and me—only slightly. “They’re good at their job,” I countered.
“Unlike you.”
“Don’t you start. Been talking to Jim, have you?”
“Seeing your face, Jake, is more depressing than this cell. My poor queen—”
“Has left you here to rot,” I cut in. “She doesn’t sound so wonderful to me, you know, for all the praise you lay at her feet. Aren’t you glad for the break?”
She eyed up my sparks. “Your lights will go out.”
“Yeah, so I keep being told. Got nothing new to say?”
“Praise her glorious name.” She spat at me, the ball of phlegm just missing my face.
“Nice.”
“Dirty cow,” Nay said.
“Fuck off, witch!”
“Nah, enjoying watching you all trussed up like a turkey.”
“Bitch.” She bared her teeth.
“That’s me.”
“Death to all of you. I’ll get out of here and you’ll—”
“The only way you’re getting out of here is by the touch of my hand, Dana,” I added.
“Do not use my name, scum!”
I shook my head. “This is your end, not mine. But first we—”
“The first time I laid eyes on you, I hated you. I saw you, just like your precious guardians did back when you were chosen by your vile goddess. Couldn’t even get the drop on us, your pathetic side. Thought they could hide you from us, pull you out as some sort of wildcard. Supreme Lilisian knew better, she was always working to be free. And she got wind of you, we all did from that fucking traitorous priesthood.”
“What about them?”
“I’m not telling you shit. Lilisian will kill you before you know anyway.”
Well, her rambling definitely indicated that we could glean stuff from her.
“Nay?”
“Oh, I’m so on it.”
She popped open the vial and spilled iridescent violet liquid in Purple’s face. The color was fitting really seeing as the beast loved all things purple so damn much.
The beast screamed and writhed in her restraints. “Fucking witch! Fucking weapon!” Violet smoke curled up into the air in pretty spirals.
Ten minutes of her wails went by, of her curses on my life and all of us, how she wanted to spill my brains all over the floor and watch the rats chew on them.
Lovely.
When she finally calmed down, albeit with frantic breathing and a body drenched in sweat, I said, “Tell me about the beast priesthood.”
Her bloodshot eyes locked onto me. “Bastard.”
I waited. Please let the potion have w—
“The beast priesthood worships an ancient beast known as Claec. Sometimes he’s known as the Ancient One. Lilisian overthrew him a long time ago, sealing him away in the beast realm. No! Fuck! No! I won’t say anymore!”
“Yeah, you will. Tell me more.”
She spat and raged and then cooled off to a calmer state. “He was dangerous, part of the old ways. He was … antiquated. His power had no place in our realm anymore. Lilisian was the bright star to lead us, the daughter of greatness. How can a tyrant set out a vision for our future? He had no dreams of colonization, of rising the beasts up to be the most dominant force in the universe.” She hacked up some phlegm and launched it at me. Again, it missed. “Filthy magic! Get it out of me!”
I folded my arms. “So, this Claec doesn’t want to dominate the universe, then?”
“No. He’s … he’s all about dominating my race, never letting us be anything but servants to his tyranny.”
“And Lilisian isn’t that?”
“Don’t you speak her name!”
“Tell me.”
She struggled, screaming more obscenities, until the truth magic kicked her backside. For a form of magic that wasn’t too successful, this was working bloody marvelously.
“She is a born leader with great ideas. We bow to her greatness, and she will reward us by bringing our race into glory.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“It will.”
“If Claec doesn’t want any of that, why does the priesthood want him back?”
“Because they’re just as antiquated.”
“What about the white eye guy?”
She started laughing. “Your blood. It’s all about your blood. I want to see it all over the walls, the floor, staining the faces of your failed guardians. The other side, this creature with the white eye and those priests, they want to use it to bring Claec back.”
“The fuck?” Greg asked.
“You heard me right.”
My mouth was suddenly dry, my head spinning.
“You’re the cow in pasture, Jake,” she said with sneering glee in her tone. “When you’re done getting fat with juicy energy, you’ll be slaughtered.”
I squeezed my fists so tight that my nails cut into my palms. “When?”
She licked her lips. “T-Tw-Twentieth of March. The Spring Equinox. That’s when it has to happen.”
Deep, calming breaths. I had to keep doing them in order to stop me from flying out of the cell and hunting that bastard down.
A gift. He’s often called me his fucking gift. So that’s why! But … “Why does the white eye guy want Claec risen? What does he get out of it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
She laughed. “Idiot. I’d be telling you, wouldn’t I? I don’t know why he’s involved, neither does Lilisian or that traitor Floyd you keep in your mansion. So, you’ll have to use this filth on that white-eyed prick too. And no, before you ask, I don’t know what he is apart from the fact that he has magical ability. Witch? All I know is that him and the priests will be coming for you on that day—the day of your ripening.” She really laughed her stupid head off at that.
I failed to see the funny side. “I have to get out of here.”
“Oh, poor Jake,” Purple mocked. “Little boy needs to go and cry.”
A hand on my shoulder. Dean.
She was roaring with laughter again until she fell into the throngs of a coughing fit.
“We’re going,” Greg said. “But not before she’s dead.”
“She could be useful,” Nay responded. “Might have more info.”
Violet mist was spraying out of Purple as she hacked her guts up.
“Wearing off,” Nay added. “We can make more, get more out of
her now we know it works.”
More deep breaths, hopping from foot to foot, fists still clenched. Purple was right there, so available for death. I could do it now, have her gone for good in less than a minute. Man, would I take so much pleasure in it. She had it coming so hard. All the shit she’d done—the torturing, the horrendous use of humans as pets. She was cruel and vile and—
I closed my eyes, drawing in a long breath. After I held it for ten seconds, I released it.
“Help, does it?”
I opened my eyes to find Purple staring at me, a sneer on her face.
“Comfy, are you?” I retorted.
That had the sneer fading a little.
“I hope you are,” I continued. “Because I’m thinking death is too good for you. It’s an easy way out. Not the mercy you showed on the people you killed, the hours and hours of agony you put them through while you used them as your pets. Yeah, rotting on that bed will be so much more deserved. Think about it, Dana. You can’t die at all. There’s nothing that’ll happen in here that’ll allow you to leave that body because what else is there to do but lie on the bed and be force-fed? This is your life now, until I say it isn’t. You’ll have nothing to do but be strapped to that frame in this shitty cell, going over all your failures that landed you in here.” I moved closer, but not too close to do any damage. She wasn’t getting anything from me just yet. “See these?” I held up my hands. “These set you free. Lilisian isn’t coming for you. No one is coming. You failed her, and she’s cast you aside. She’s made no move on this place because why bother when I’m the most important character in her life?”
Purple pulled on her restraints. “Shut your mouth!”
“Oh, she must think about me all the time. I’m in her head, you see? Me. Not you. What’re you but the beast who let her down?” I chuckled. “Man, you had so much front when I first came here. You nearly cracked my head open with a crow bar, remember? Nearly. So close. Like all the times you’ve tried to kill me. My guess is she’s having a reshuffle, finding new players in her bid to snuff me out. Get that into your head. Me. All about Jake Winter, bitch.”
She went wild then, thrashing, her face turning a shade of purple she would be proud of if she had a mirror to hand. “She’ll fucking kill you! All of you! She’ll destroy this city and all you hold dear and—”
