He lowered the vial and lifted his head, raising his eyes to his cousin’s face. She stared at the vial he held, her gaze distant but filled with concern. She wasn’t only worried about him. She was worried about Cait too.
“What will he do with her?” Julianna shifted her gaze down to meet his.
Owen closed his fist around the vial and frowned as a dark need filled him, a fierce desire to seek out Marius and destroy him for what he had planned for Cait.
“He’s going to sell her on the black market.”
CHAPTER 12
Cait slowly became aware of her surroundings. Quiet murmuring drifted around her, interspersed with some sort of chanting that was more distinct among the blend of sounds. She frowned and moaned as her head ached, her skull feeling as if someone had stuffed it full of cotton wool. The cold against her side sapped what little strength she had and she was vaguely aware that she had to move into another position, one that would keep her warmer.
A chill breeze blew across her naked flesh and she shivered and curled into a tighter ball.
It was no use. She couldn’t remain where she was, even though she felt sure that if she tried to move, the entire world would begin spinning again and the ache in her head would grow worse.
She wriggled her arm free from beneath her and used it to lever herself up off the icy ground. The chanting nearby stopped and she felt eyes on her.
Cait drew in a deep breath and waited for her head to stop spinning violently before opening her eyes. They stung as the world struggled to come into focus for her. When it finally sharpened, she saw her worst nightmare.
She was in a cage. The black bars were as thick as her wrists, impossible for her to break if she had been at full strength, let alone hazy and weak as she was now.
She shuffled into a sitting position and rested her back against the bars on one side of her small four-foot wide cage. She mentally checked herself over and then fought her way through a visual check as her eyes switched between focused and hazy, the drug keeping her off balance. She frowned as she looked down and her chin hit cold metal.
Her eyes dropped to her chest and all of her hope died as she saw the thick steel collar around her neck.
It was loose now, but if she shifted into her more powerful form, it would be tight around her neck, choking her.
She needed to escape it.
She shoved at it, each weak attempt to push it up over her head stealing more of her strength, until all she could do was slump against the back of her cage and breathe, her hands limp in her lap.
What the hell had they given her?
She needed to get out of this place. She wasn’t sure how long she had been unconscious, or where she was, but she had to break free of the cage and her collar. Owen needed her. His life depended on her returning to him and making him drink her blood. She couldn’t be here.
She had to escape.
The thought of Owen suffering while she was trapped in the cage sent hot prickles dashing over her skin and she fumbled with the collar again, desperately tugging at it, refusing to let her weakness stop her this time.
When she couldn’t get it off over her head, she focused, intent on shifting to see if her stronger form could help her break the cold steel.
Nothing happened.
She growled through her short fangs.
There was magic in the collar.
Cait used her brief burst of clarity to investigate her surroundings, because there was little point in escaping if she didn’t have a route planned. She wasn’t in any condition to fight. If she managed to break free of the cage, she needed to slip out quietly without drawing any attention.
She looked beyond her cage and realised that it was going to be impossible to avoid drawing attention to herself if she did escape.
She was in what appeared to be a sort of canyon. The black rock rose around her, cragged and sheer, leading her eye up to the dark sky above. Torches on thick wooden stands cast golden light across the walls and the oval space between them. There was only one exit if she couldn’t clamber up the vertical walls, and it was at the far end of the oval. To reach it, she would have to navigate through a maze of cages of various sizes, all of them occupied by males and females. Mostly females.
She knew some of the species by smell. Close to her, in a small cage like her own, were two nude elf females clutching each other, their wrists bound by silver manacles and their violet eyes warily taking in their surroundings. If their restraints were anything like Cait’s, they couldn’t teleport to freedom and they were weakened by the magic in them.
Cait looked towards the source of the steady gaze she could feel pinned on her.
The solitary female sat in a black cage closest to Cait, directly opposite her. She was huddled into one corner, her knees held against her chest as she rocked, jangling the chain between her manacles. The female stared straight at Cait, unblinking. The dark crescents beneath her haunted eyes and the pallor of her skin warned Cait that this female had lived through a nightmare.
A nightmare Cait might be sharing soon.
The presence of the female told her one thing though.
They were in Hell.
Based on how the female appeared, covered in dirt and cuts, and bloodied and scarred around her wrists from the manacles, she had been captive for weeks or more.
If they were outside of Hell, the female would have been dead by now.
She was a dragon.
Cait slowly shuffled towards the other side of the cage, closer to the female.
“Hello,” she whispered, not wanting to draw any attention to them in case someone made a ruckus and guards came. She had to get information out of the female. “I’m Cait.”
The dragon stared at her through dull eyes.
Cait tried a smile, hoping it might work. It didn’t.
“What’s your name?” she hissed in a low voice.
The dragon blinked. “Taryn.”
Now she was getting somewhere. “What’s happening?”
Taryn looked around and Cait noticed how unusual her eyes were as she turned her face towards the nearest torch. Her irises were rich purple around the outside, but in their centres around her pupils they were white. They matched her hair, which Cait could now see began as violet at the roots, but slowly faded to white at the tips.
“They will come soon,” Taryn said, her tone distant but holding a haunted edge that chilled Cait to the bone. The dragon stared off into the distance towards the only exit. “Six times… each time it gets worse…”
Cait shuffled closer still, pressing against the bars as her head turned fuzzy again, derailing her thoughts. She waited for it to pass before speaking. “You’ve been through this six times?”
Taryn nodded and shifted her solemn gaze back to Cait. “I always fight the men who purchase me. I never let them near me… and then they grow angry and they bring me back and sell me… and replace me with someone compliant.”
Cait wished she had the dragon’s strength. Even bound as she was by steel and a spell, Taryn was probably stronger than Cait was without any drugs and magic inhibiting her.
“I want to be free,” Taryn muttered and raised her strange eyes to the dark sky. “I want to fly. I need to fly.”
She began rocking again and Cait reached through the bars of her cage to her, easily slipping her arm into Taryn’s one. She strained, but couldn’t quite reach the female dragon.
Taryn suddenly dropped her chin and stared at Cait through wide eyes. “I must escape.”
Cait nodded. “I have no intention of letting these bastards sell me. I’ll fight them. I will escape. Will you help me?”
Taryn began to nod and then shook her head. She lifted her hands, the chain between her silver manacles swaying from the action.
“I cannot shift.”
Cait clutched the bars of her cage with both hands. “You are strong without your dragon side.”
“I have to be free. I have to escape.” Taryn
’s violet-to-white eyes turned wild and she crawled across the cage towards Cait and gripped the bars. “I must escape.”
The female dragon nodded and looked to the sky again.
“We can escape,” she whispered, her gaze distant and unfocused. “He is coming… I can feel it. Not for me… not yet… but when he comes… then we will be free.”
“Who is coming?” Cait looked beyond Taryn to the only entrance, afraid that she meant that the guards and Marius were coming for them.
No one entered the oval area.
She shifted her focus back to Taryn, who continued to stare at the sky, a glassy quality to her eyes.
Some dragons had an incredible ability.
They could see the future.
Had Taryn seen their future?
“Who is coming, Taryn?” Cait grabbed her wrist and fought a bout of wooziness that came out of nowhere and made the world spin.
She swallowed hard and struggled through it, desperate to hear more about what Taryn had seen, needing to know who the male was because her heart was racing, her mind following it, rushing to a conclusion she feared would be wrong.
Owen couldn’t be the male Taryn had seen.
Cait had to ask herself why he couldn’t be the male. He was mortal, but he was a witch. A powerful one too. He could use one of the many portals that linked places in the mortal realm to places in Hell if he knew the right spell. He could track her with another spell. It had to be possible.
But it couldn’t be Owen.
Owen was sick, dying because of her, weakened by the transition into a hellcat.
Her hope shattered and it felt as if her heart had shattered with it.
Had she not bitten him, Owen would have had the strength to cast the necessary spells to use a portal and even find her.
But she had bitten him. She had condemned him to death and now she faced life as a slave. She sagged against the bars and closed her eyes as that truth washed over her, carrying away the last fragments of her hope.
Taryn touched her hand. “He is coming.”
Cait wished those words were about Owen, but she knew in her heart that they weren’t. They were about another male, one Taryn had seen in a vision of the future. A male who would somehow set them free.
A tiny speck of hope clung to life in her aching heart and began to grow again.
Taryn had seen them escaping.
Cait couldn’t give up now, not on securing her freedom and not on Owen. He was strong. He could survive long enough for her to find a portal and return to him. There would be a portal in the fae town. As soon as she landed there, she would save him.
Right now, she had to focus on saving herself.
A jeer went up a short distance away and Cait looked up at the top of the black cliffs off to her left. A glow lit the air there and she could smell people, a whole mass of them.
Taryn tensed. “It begins.”
She looked beyond Taryn as a brawl broke out between a large blond male wearing dark clothing and a naked female. He held her by her long white hair, shoving her towards the exit.
Cait’s eyes widened as two big dark-haired males dressed all in black pulled open two more cages and dragged their occupants out by their restraints—a male by his collar and a female by the chain between her wrists. These two didn’t fight their guards. They walked with bowed heads. Cait wanted to shout at them to fight, but the look on Taryn’s face warned her to keep quiet.
She could only sit in her cage as the others slowly emptied, listening to the jeering of the crowd and the bidding wars that erupted as each new piece of meat was auctioned. The oval area felt colder and colder with each pair of captives they pulled from it and Cait shrank further and further back into her cage, fear of what was to come battling against her sense of hope that Taryn was right and someone would free them.
She looked to the female dragon for reassurance.
Taryn smiled sadly. “It is time.”
The next thing Cait knew, an immense dark-haired male dressed all in black was beside the cage, opening the lock on it. Every instinct she possessed told her to fight, but out of the corner of her eye, Taryn shook her head. Cait allowed the man to grab her arm and drag her from the cage. A second male pulled Taryn from her cage and marched her through the empty cages towards the exit.
The nude female dragon walked with her head held high, softly chanting, “He is coming.”
Cait followed with her guard, breathing slowly to steady her nerves and keep her head from spinning. Whatever drug they had given her, the effect of it was beginning to fade. They had probably given her a dose that would last until the auction, intending for it to wear off before it was her turn to take to the stage so she would be nice and lucid for it.
She looked up as they passed through the narrow gap between the canyon walls and her guard dragged her left, down a natural corridor towards another open area. Steps formed the end of the corridor, leading up onto a high stage. The torches on it burned brightly, illuminating a sea of eager faces beyond. Her stomach turned and she had to fight for air as she drew closer to the stage, her panic rising and crushing her throat and lungs again.
Taryn walked steadily onwards and Cait tried to mimic her, not wanting to give the male waiting at the top of the steps the satisfaction of seeing her afraid.
He loomed above her, clad all in black like the others, as she took the wooden steps up, her guard behind her now, shoving her in the back.
Marius’s blue eyes narrowed as he smiled.
Cait wanted to claw it off his smug ugly face.
He grabbed hold of her collar when she was close enough and yanked her against him. He raised his hand, lifting her off her feet, and she flinched as the metal cut into her jaw and the back of her neck. She flinched again when Marius planted a wet kiss on her mouth and then growled and tried to bite the bastard’s tongue off.
He tossed her onto the stage and clucked that tongue at her. “I was going to bid on you too.”
She scowled at him and picked herself up, ignoring the hungry eyes that she could feel on her naked body as she turned to face Marius.
“I’m getting out of this collar, and when I do, I’m going to kill you,” she snarled and tugged at the metal ring around her neck.
Marius chuckled and lifted his right hand.
Her guard pulled something from his belt and flicked his hand out. A long black stick extended in it and he brought it up in a fast arc, striking her hard across the side of her head. She cried out and staggered forwards from the force of the blow.
“Maybe I’ll buy you just so I can break you.” Marius smirked and she wanted to launch another verbal attack back at him, but the guard looked as if he was itching to deal another blow with his black baton.
She cursed him in her head and turned away from him, coming to face her audience for the first time.
She curled her lip at the slathering males from all different species, disgusted by how they raked their eyes over her and jostled for position closest to the stage. Some of the males and all of the females were already leaving with their purchases, ushering them towards the open end of the canyon.
There was a town in the distance. Pinpricks of yellow light in the darkness.
If she could make it there, she might find a portal.
She could guarantee that most of the people who had come to the auction hadn’t been in the area. They must have travelled and the fastest way to travel in Hell were the portals.
“Shall we begin?” A deep male voice hollered and the crowd settled, their focus leaping to the owner of it.
The pale-haired male stood close to seven feet tall, his crimson eyes appraising her and then Taryn.
He was different to the guards and even Marius. More dangerous.
Deadly in fact.
The impeccable crisp black suit made him look the part of a charming and respectable businessman, and it could hide things about him that would make those less familiar with the creatures of Hell tr
ust him, but she knew his kind.
She had met one once and that had been enough to imprint their scent on her instincts.
Instincts that had catalogued his entire kind as extremely dangerous and a species she didn’t tangle with under any circumstances.
A fallen angel.
The seductive quirk to his sensual lips as his red gaze roamed back to her warned that he was on to her and knew she was staring at him for reasons other than his incredible looks. She dragged her gaze away before she gave him ideas about purchasing her for himself because she wouldn’t last a second with a fallen angel.
They were sadistic and violent in everything they did.
Marius moved out of the corner of her vision, loping past the fallen angel to stand on the other side of the stage, together with other males who had no doubt supplied some of the people they had auctioned off tonight.
She bared her fangs at him.
The crowd jeered, evidently enjoying the show. Several shouted that they wanted to see the goods.
She didn’t want to know what they meant by that. She was already naked. What more did they expect?
She tensed when the guard behind her snapped a thick chain onto her collar and whirled to face him, her eyes leaping from him to the length of steel links. They flowed across the stage and ended at a huge ring attached to a thick stone and steel post.
The male’s fingers flexed around the grip of his black baton and he eyed her with sick excitement in his dark irises. He was going to enjoy whatever was about to happen and she wanted to claw his eyes out because of it.
Hush fell over the crowd and she snapped her head to her left when chanting filled the thick air.
A slender male dressed in a black suit who had been standing at the back of the stage beyond the fallen angel approached her, muttering something.
The sensation of restriction began to fade and strength flowed through her limbs.
He was unlocking the spell impregnated into the collar.
Dread rippled through her, cold and crippling as she realised what they were going to do.
Bitten by a Hellcat Page 11
