“She isn’t yours, either,” Lord Daryl countered.
Jaguar stepped forward, and put a hand on Lord Daryl’s wrist above where the vampire was clutching Ravyn’s arm. Lord Daryl’s grip on Ravyn tightened, and Jaguar’s grip on Lord Daryl did the same. Turquoise saw Ravyn’s eyes flicking from the faces of the two vampires to the doorway.
“Gabriel will not be pleased if you mark her.” Lord Daryl winced as if Jaguar’s grip was getting painful.
“She can’t just wander around.” There was a moment of pause, and then Lord Daryl added, “Let me go.”
Turquoise leaned back against the wall, content to watch the vampires engage in their game of male dominance.
She flinched at the sound of bones crunching.
Lord Daryl shouted a curse, flinging Ravyn away, and swung a punch at Jaguar. Ravyn instantly took advantage of her freedom to disappear out the door.
Jaguar grabbed Lord Daryl’s wrist before the blow hit and twisted it behind the fair-skinned vampire’s back; Turquoise heard the wet snap as tendons in the elbow joint tore. Lord Daryl whimpered, and Jaguar wrapped a hand around his throat.
“Midnight is my property,” Jaguar stated, “and so long as you are here, you will obey me. Understand?”
Lord Daryl started to struggle, and Jaguar’s grip tightened until Turquoise looked away from the sickening sound of her former master’s windpipe collapsing.
“Understand, Daryl?” Jaguar repeated.
Jaguar dropped his captive, and Lord Daryl fell to the ground, his hands at his throat. Turquoise watched, her emotions a mix of distaste and surprise. Here was the creature who had tormented her, terrified her, emitting soft sounds of pain from his crushed throat as it quickly healed. For the first time since the day she had first learned his title, this black-haired creature ceased to be Lord Daryl. He was still stronger than she was, physically, but he was no one’s master.
Daryl slid away from Jaguar. He pushed himself up, and coughed a couple times before answering, “Fine.” He leaned back against the wall, and rubbed his throat.
“Out, Daryl,” Jaguar ordered again. This time Daryl obeyed without hesitation.
CHAPTER 15
“AS FOR YOU …” He tossed the keys to Turquoise and then sat cross-legged in front of her. “I could not let you kill Jeshickah. The woman has very powerful friends who would have killed you shortly after. I didn’t expect that to be a problem when I hired Jillian Red to find me some hunters, but unfortunately I seem to have become quite fond of you, and it would distress me to see you tortured to death.” He spoke with a calmness that belied the violence of his fight with Daryl.
Turquoise unlocked her cuff. “You hired her?”
Jaguar nodded. “She’s a witch, very powerful and very well informed. I believe she worked with Nathaniel to destroy the original Midnight, so I didn’t think she would have any hesitation to help this time.”
“I’m confused,” she protested. “You worked in the old Midnight, but aren’t upset it was destroyed. You founded this Midnight, and are actually trying to ruin it.”
“I’m very happy with Midnight as it was two weeks ago. Jeshickah wasn’t. Her authority always has been and always will be higher than mine. Either I can let her turn my haven into her own empire again — and she has the power to do it — or I can get rid of her.”
Turquoise nodded, contemplating. “How long have you known who Ravyn and I were?”
“I was suspicious the moment I saw you,” Jaguar answered. “Nathaniel rarely trades in flesh, and his selling me two strong women, both unbroken, just a few days after I hired Ms. Red …” He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure until I saw you go for the knife, though. Jillian picked you well. I knew you used to belong to Daryl, and Ravyn’s description rang a few bells when I asked around. The more I learned, the more likely it seemed that you two were both exactly what you were pretending to be — two humans who got tangled up in the trade, and were lucky enough not to be broken yet.”
“It’s the truth,” Turquoise answered, with a bit of a smile. “You just neglected to account for the two years after I got out.”
“It also didn’t occur to me that anyone who had escaped the trade would ever be mad enough to put herself back in,” Jaguar pointed out.
Turquoise shrugged. “You’re the second person who’s called me mad in relation to this job,” she commented. “How will you get rid of Jeshickah now? And what do you plan to do with me for the next week?” Unless Jaguar could get rid of Jeshickah before those seven days were up, either Jaguar was dead or Turquoise would once again be a slave ready for breaking. Turquoise would trust no one to put his life above her freedom.
“I have a few ideas for Jeshickah, but none of them are quick,” he answered. “As for you … I don’t know.”
Turquoise didn’t intend to give Jaguar time to make a decision. She would get out of Midnight today, if he left her alone for more than five seconds. This job had gone bad. If Jaguar had been honest in his warning that killing Jeshickah would bring about deadly retaliation, then Turquoise needed to backtrack and plan again. Confronting Jillian Red and Nathaniel about whether she and Ravyn had been sent on a suicide mission sounded like a good idea.
Getting out shouldn’t be too difficult. It would be the easiest thing in the world to scale the courtyard wall and go over the back of the building. The iron fence was high, but she could manage it. Turquoise wasn’t worried about Ravyn; the hunter could look out for herself. Whatever Ravyn’s relationship was with the vampire to whom she had been sold, Turquoise was more than happy to turn her back on the pair.
She was silent for too long, debating. Jaguar asked casually, “What’s Catherine’s story? How did she end up in Daryl’s care?”
“Doesn’t he acquire most people the same way?” Turquoise retorted defensively as she tried to avoid answering.
Jaguar nodded. “He buys most of his slaves from other trainers.” He added, “And he doesn’t buy anyone who isn’t broken. That means he picked you up somewhere else.”
“Guess so.” She did not feel like sharing her life history today.
“How many people did he kill to get you?”
The words were blunt, and Turquoise knew her shock showed on her face. Most of the scars on Turquoise’s arms were from when Daryl had thrown her father through the second-story bay window, and she had almost followed through the broken glass. Before she meant to, she answered, “My mother. My father. My brother.” Tommy. The thought of her little brother made something in her gut wrench. He would have been fourteen now. “How the hell did you know?”
“I don’t know your exact history with Daryl, but I know his methods. He wouldn’t have taken a freeblood human without making sure she didn’t have a home to return to.”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t have had anything, even if they had been alive. How would they ever have understood?”
Jaguar didn’t argue with her. “You miss them?”
Turquoise shrugged. “I miss Catherine’s old life, sometimes. Her friends, her family. Mostly, the sense of safety she lived with. But I can’t go back, no matter how much I would like to.” Recklessly, she asked a question that she knew would end the conversation. “What about you? When Jeshickah changed you, did you miss your past?”
Jaguar recoiled as if she had struck him, but he matched her honesty as he told his own brief story. “My mother was a shape-shifter. Midnight’s laws didn’t allow for shape-shifters to be traded, unless they were first sold into it by their own kind. My father was happy to oblige.” He gathered himself quickly, but his voice was still sharp when he answered, “He sold me to Jeshickah for less than the cost of a bottle of whiskey. I could have fought him on it — I was twenty years old, and held almost as much power in the estate as he did — but I was glad to leave.” He stood, turning away from Turquoise, each movement slick and angry like a restless, caged beast.
“Why did Jeshickah want you?” Though anxious to leave this fouled job behind, she was genuine
ly curious about his background.
Jaguar rounded on her, asking, “Why did Daryl want you?”
“Answer for an answer?” she translated. At Jaguar’s nod, she explained as succinctly as possible, “My father took me to New York for my eighteenth birthday, to see a musical. We got in late, and my father went to bed, but I stayed in the hotel lobby to people-watch. I was a naïve idiot; when Daryl came up to me, I didn’t think past the fact that he was handsome and seemed to be flirting. We were in an open area, surrounded by people. No danger. I never recognized what he was — never even knew vampires existed — until he bit me.”
“Daryl’s line is weak physically,” Jaguar commented, “but if you let one of them in your mind you won’t ever think to fight them. Against an unprotected human mind, he wouldn’t need to be strong.”
Turquoise raised one brow. “Apparently he did need to be.” She finished the story quickly. “Or maybe he was just careless. Either way he didn’t manage to catch my mind. I started to fight him, smashed my soda glass against his temple, kicked …” She remembered fondly that memory, less fondly the one after. “I caused enough of a scene that he couldn’t keep people from noticing, and had to let me go … for the moment, anyway.”
Jaguar nodded, knowing the gist of the rest, if not the details. Daryl did not kill most of his prey but he did not like losing one. If Catherine had not fought him, her interaction with the world of vampires might have ended on that night. But thwarted once, Daryl had been twice as determined to claim her.
“Daryl hates you too much to have let you go willingly,” Jaguar observed, “and even with his temper, he wouldn’t have scarred you unless he planned to kill you. Yet you somehow managed to get out and become a hunter. How?”
“I fought him. I got out. I joined Bruja,” Turquoise answered vaguely, her tone adding the words end of subject. One of Nathaniel’s conditions for his help had been her silence about his part in her escape. “What about my question?”
“Jeshickah picks her trainers for physical beauty, mental acuity, moral void, and what she calls a trainer instinct — the instinct to watch a person, determine her weaknesses, and destroy her.” He paused, and then added, “I had shown a knack for such. It also didn’t hurt that Jeshickah had a fondness for shape-shifter blood.” He said the words dispassionately the same way Ravyn had referred to her master’s taste for “exotics.” Turquoise wondered if she would ever be able to look at her own experience as a slave so unemotionally.
Turquoise had seen how deeply Jeshickah’s claws of ownership went. Unless she counted the years before his father had sold him — a very small portion of his long life — Jaguar had never been free.
Physical beauty and mental acuity — Turquoise could still see those descriptions applying to Jaguar. Moral void, she could not. “What changed?” she asked.
“A hundred years without Jeshickah,” Jaguar answered. He spoke slowly choosing his words with care. “There was a slave of mine who survived when Midnight burned. I had owned her since she was four, when I had bought her in one of my many attempts to annoy Jeshickah — she had been born blind, and Jeshickah had been planning to kill her.” He smiled a bit at the memory. “She was faultlessly obedient. That was unsurprising; she had been raised a slave in Midnight. Only after Midnight burned did I realize that I had never once struck her. I had never needed to.”
He sighed, his expression distant. “Over the years I realized I didn’t want to own her; I wanted to know her. I enjoyed her company, especially once she grew brave enough to speak freely with me. She trusted me implicitly and I was wary of betraying that trust.
“I’d had people fear me, hate me, envy me….” He shook his head. “Trust was new, and it was precious. It took me a long time to figure out how I had managed to earn it.”
“And when you did?” Turquoise asked, caught up in the story.
“I realized I didn’t think of her as a slave, and that I hadn’t treated her like one since Midnight’s walls fell. You can’t earn a slave’s trust, or loyalty — only her obedience. But blind obedience doesn’t make for interesting conversation or companionship; I prefer spending time with a defiant equal more than an obsequious slave.” Jaguar shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said I always enjoy the challenge. The relationship between master and slave is clear-cut, easy and sometimes it’s tempting to slip into the familiar role and demand submission from someone who is refusing to give me what I want.”
“Such as?” Turquoise pried, thinking of how easily he had ordered Daryl away, and wondering whether that was an example of his giving into temptation, or simply a good decision.
Jaguar laughed a little, shaking off the question. “You don’t want to know the answer to that one.”
She frowned, wondering if he was laughing at her or at himself.
“We should go outside,” Jaguar said. “I need to find Jeshickah before she starts hurting my people, and the courtyard is the only area in this building that’s free from Daryl.”
He escorted her to the courtyard, his mood contemplative. Heavy clouds hid stars and moon from sight, and Turquoise welcomed the darkness that matched her mood.
She jumped as Jaguar caught her shoulders, pulling her forward in an impulsive embrace. He kissed the top of her head.
“I know,” he said, holding her loosely enough that she knew she could pull away if she tried, “that you are going to disappear as soon as I turn my back.”
Turquoise did not argue; there was no point to it.
“That being so, I have one favor to ask.” He nodded toward the alcove where he usually napped during the day, and Turquoise’s eyes reluctantly made out Eric’s form there. The boy was watching them warily as if thinking he should leave but not wanting to. “Take him with you?”
“What?”
Eric would be a liability If Turquoise had to protect him, that would make facing anyone she encountered on the way out more difficult. Eric would slow her down. Unless Jaguar was willing to help … no. Jaguar would give her the opportunity to leave, but he couldn’t afford to help her.
Jaguar all but echoed her thoughts. “In a couple weeks, Jeshickah will be … out of the way Until then, she’s going to cause trouble. I doubt she’ll kill me.” Isn’t that reassuring? Turquoise thought, as Jaguar continued, “But she won’t hesitate to hurt me, or to go through my possessions to do so. She knows I’m fond of you, but you can handle yourself against Jeshickah. Eric …” He shook his head. “He’s tough, but he’s a kid. I can protect him against almost anyone else, but Jeshickah could destroy him, and she will, because she knows I would keep him safe.”
What on Earth would Turquoise do with a kid once she got out? Eric had no place in Bruja — he was a victim, not a fighter — but Bruja was all Turquoise knew. Bringing this boy along would play hell with her plans.
But leaving him behind would be leaving him to die.
She nodded sharply.
“After you get out, I recommend laying low until Jeshickah’s gone. She’ll be raising merry hell.”
Turquoise smiled wryly He hesitated, and Turquoise could read fear, desire, longing, and an oversized portion of regret on his face. “I doubt you’ll want to come back to my world, even after Jeshickah is gone. Would you mind if I came to visit yours?”
Turquoise swallowed, trying to shove down the lump of nervousness in her throat. Jaguar had disrupted her life enough as it was. Eric was going to mess it up even more. Continuing her association with the vampire any longer than necessary was a bad idea.
“I’m planning to disappear for a while,” she answered. “If I don’t want you to find me, you won’t.” That was honest, and it would give her a chance to think.
He accepted the answer. “Best of luck, Audra.”
And then the world shifted, and he was gone.
CHAPTER 16
THE AIR BARELY CLOSED on the space Jaguar had occupied when Turquoise turned to examine the wall. The natural stones would be perfect for climbing, w
ith plenty of handholds; scaling it would be easy.
Reluctantly she turned toward Eric. He was fourteen, still a kid no matter what he had seen. He needed a family; instead, he had Midnight. He needed a father; instead, he had Jaguar, who was so tangled in webs of dominance he could hardly help himself.
She was getting sentimental, and that was dangerous. Time to get out of Midnight while she still could.
“Do you want to come with me?” she offered, while the sane part of her mind berated her with every possible insult it could consider.
Eric nodded.
“It’s going to be rough,” she warned. “I’m no good at taking care of other people.” A vision of Tommy assaulted her suddenly, a vision of Daryl striking him down. She tried to shake it off, but it wouldn’t disappear.
“I’m okay at taking care of myself,” Eric assured her.
Please, don’t let me let him get hurt, Turquoise pleaded of whatever powers existed.
“We’re going over the back wall. Stay low at the top. Can you climb?” she asked belatedly.
Eric nodded.
Turquoise boosted the boy up, making sure he could find handholds in the rough stone before she followed. They stayed low on the roof to avoid making themselves into silhouettes, and crossed quickly to the back.
The wall here was smooth, and offered no purchase for climbing down. The guard was nowhere to be seen as Turquoise turned and gripped the edge, lowering herself as far as possible before letting go and falling. The impact was jarring, but she knew how to take a fall. She reached up to catch Eric, who mimicked her strategy.
Turquoise’s peripheral vision caught movement the instant Eric dropped, a faint blur of color — a cougar. She saw its muscles bunch to pounce.
She twisted awkwardly, pushing Eric behind herself and out of the cougar’s way Off balance, she took the brunt of the creature’s initial rush; stars spattered her vision as her back struck the gravel, and she felt claws bite into her skin.
The guard’s hesitation was her salvation. Turquoise belonged to Midnight, and the cougar was reluctant to permanently damage her. Turquoise took the moment to get a knee between herself and the cat and shoved full force, sending the guard stumbling a couple feet.
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