by Alex Rivers
Chapter 25
In a dark room, Scarlett and Elrine lay on wooden tables, bound by thick straps, their shirts torn at the back. They nearly looked like sisters—both with red hair. The only difference was that Elrine was significantly taller than Scarlett, and her hair a deeper shade of red, nearly the color of cherries.
The abductor stepped behind them, shrouded in the dark mist that snaked around her body, only her hands visible. She held a long iron bar, ending in a flat, orange surface. My heart stopped.
No. The tip of the iron burned red-hot—a branding iron, its surface shaped like a skull under water.
“No!” Roan roared, reaching for the water. He turned to me. “You have to jump through the reflection and stop it!”
Panic tore my mind apart. “I can’t—”
His eye burned into me. “You have to stop it!”
“I can’t! I can’t bond with the reflection. She’s blocking me!”
His fists clenched, his face taught with rage and fear. This woman was going to brand Scarlett—she was tormenting my friend, forcing me to watch. Letting me know it was my fault. I heard the sound of helpless sobbing, and it took me a moment to realize it was me.
The branding iron descended, pressed against Elrine’s bare back. She thrashed against the straps, trying to get away, but she couldn’t move an inch. The iron remained set against her back for what felt like ages, a wisp of black smoke rising from her skin. My body shook, my mind numb. My breath had left my lungs.
Finally, her head dropped as she lost consciousness, going limp. The abductor lifted the branding iron from her back.
I looked at Scarlett, her head turned, staring at Elrine. She’d seen the entire thing, and I could see the terror in her green eyes. But there was fierceness there as well. I tightened my fists, trying to marshal control over my mind. I had to remember that she’d been trained to withstand torture—that she’d think of this as part of the job.
The torturer stepped into the darkness, and I thought I could see a flicker of flame for a moment before she returned, her iron blazing red again. She pressed into Scarlett’s back. A dark tendril of smoke curled from Scarlett’s back.
Instantly, Scarlett tensed, her eyes wide. I could read the struggles on her face, her desperation to resist. For two seconds, she managed to sustain this rigid pose, but then she snapped, bucking, her innate reflexes taking hold of her body. I whimpered in pain as the monster seared my friend’s skin—my punishment for failing to kill Roan. Raw horror slammed into my gut.
Then, the image simply rippled away.
Sorrow gnawed at my chest. The abductor didn’t know Scarlett. She didn’t know that Scarlett drank nearly two liters of water every day, or that she needed black coffee every morning to wake her up. She didn’t know that Scarlett had once punched a man who’d grabbed my ass in Brooklyn, or that she could make toddlers laugh by pretending to think they were stuffed animals. She didn’t know that Scarlett read poems every night before she fell asleep, or that she imitated robots talking dirty to make me laugh whenever I was having a shitty day.
The abductor didn’t know or care—she was simply using her, like a thing. I was dealing with a pure psychopath. Or maybe that’s just how the fae operated. Using humans. Feeding from them. Terror-leeches. Maybe Scarlett had been right about us.
Somehow, I’d found my way to the ground, sitting in the dirt. I was crying into my hands, my body racked with fatigue. This was my fault. For whatever reason, the abductor hated me. I was the target, and that meant it was my fault Scarlett had been taken in the first place, and that I’d failed to rescue her. As my body trembled, all those things I’d buried under the surface of my mind came clawing out again, rampaging through my skull—my parents’ blood-spattered room, my mother’s half-dead body, gurgling on the floor. Mistress of Dread. Why couldn’t I manage to help anyone?
I tucked my head into my knees, the tears flowing. Mother of Death. I hadn’t cried like this in years, not since my mother had died.
“Cassandra,” Roan said sharply.
I ignored him. I couldn’t lift my face, not when the pain and anger ripped my mind apart.
“Cassandra!” I could feel Roan’s warmth radiating off his body, his firm hand on my back.
I couldn’t get that image from my mind—the tendril of smoke rising from Scarlett’s skin, her body straining as she fought to keep control.
Strong arms grabbed me, pulling me close, and Roan’s scent enveloped me. “Focus, Cassandra. You told me you had a plan. I need to know what it is.”
Tears blurred my vision, and those memories clawed their way out of the dank and rotten ground: my mother’s body on the floor. The tendril of smoke from the hot iron. The brand itself, a skull under water. Thoughts risen from the ground raged through my mind. That symbol felt like it belonged to me. I’d heard the screams of terror when I’d walked over the subterranean Walbrook, beckoning me to them like a long-lost lover. Why had the yeoman called me the Mistress of Dread? What had he known? Did he know that I’d hid under the bed, feeding off my mother’s fear as my father stabbed her?
“Cassandra.” A powerful hand on my back. “The plan.”
“I can’t think clearly, Roan. I can’t think.”
“You need to focus, Cassandra. We need to get them back.”
Even now, I could hear my mother’s last sharp rasping breath, hammering in my skull like an accusation. “I let my mother die. I fed off her fear. I let her die, and I hid under the bed.”
“What are you talking about?”
I couldn’t stop my body from shaking. “I could have saved her! And I didn’t. I just hid under the bed. I felt her fear rippling through the house. I didn’t know what was happening but I… I was scared, and I hid under the bed like a coward, and felt her fear. Like a terror leech. I can’t save anyone, Roan.”
The air thinned, and I felt his finger tense on my back. “What are you talking about? This is nonsense. You’re wasting my time.”
Desolate. I stared into his eyes, clutching my knees. “I once believed that evil was something you learned, not something innate in people.” I’d needed to believe that. Otherwise, what did that mean for me, given what my father was? But I couldn’t convince myself of this fiction any longer. “I thought monsters were created, not born. It was all nurture, not nature.” My fingers tightened on my knees, my nails piercing my skin. “That was before I knew about the fae, and creatures that feed off terror. That was before I knew what I was—a Mistress of Dread. A terror leech, evil and cowardly. I thrive when others suffer. I help no one—”
“Enough.” He said, his voice quiet and controlled, a hint of a threat under the surface. He was losing patience. “You are not evil. The only thing you are is exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself. You’re stewing in your own misery.” He nodded pointedly at the lilies, now closing as the sky darkened. “This is the Lake of Blood, where fae lose their minds. And you’ve seen something designed to break you, and it’s working. Besides that, the battle fury is wearing off.”
“Why is it wearing off?”
“The lilies are closing, and their spell is leaving the air. The aftereffects will leave you drained. And of course, you don’t seem like you’ve slept enough to handle any of this. You’re always tired, or hungry, or freezing. I honestly don’t know how you’ve managed to stay alive this long.”
I stared at him sullenly. The air had cooled ten degrees, and my teeth chattered, my body shaking. Already, the sun was dipping below the tree line, casting long shadows over the forest, and the air chilled around us. In Trinovantum, the daylight and the temperature didn’t seem to follow the normal rules.
In any case, I certainly felt drained. “I’m half human, half terror leech. And it’s nice of you to say I’m not evil, but you’re the one who called me that in the first place. Remember?”
Something fierce flashed in his eyes. “You’re not evil. You came back for me, into the depths of a Trinovantum prison. And you�
��re brave. I saw you slit the Rix’s throat. I called you a terror leech before I knew you. It’s different now. Get a hold of yourself.”
I wiped the back of my hand across my cheeks. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” Exhaustion washed over me. I wasn’t entirely sure what we were arguing about, or what I’d just agreed to, but I was too tired to care at this point. I could feel my eyes drifting closed. The air was cooling, and a cold breeze whipped off the lake, streaming up my skirt, raising goosebumps. I suddenly realized I wasn’t wearing underwear, and I pulled my legs in tighter. Shivering, I rested my head on my knees, and the tears kept streaming down my cheeks.
As my tears dripped onto my knees, I felt Roan’s powerful arms envelop me, pulling me into his lap, against his bare chest. Heat radiated from his body, warming me.
I opened my eyes to look at him. “What are you doing?”
“Sleep here. When you wake up, you can tell me about your plan. You’re no use to me until you’ve slept.”
I blinked away the tears, staring at the lethal-looking tattoos covering the golden planes of his chest—the vicious-looking ogham slashes, the whorls that ended in sharp points. One of the designs by his heart caught my attention, and I gently traced my fingertips over the shape. It almost looked like three leaves, their edges spiked.
“What’s this?” I asked, fighting to keep my eyes open.
“Wild strawberry leaves.” I saw something cross his features—a flicker of pain, nearly imperceptible.
I wanted to ask him about the vision in the lake, but it seemed too risky. Too much raw pain lurked beneath the surface for him.
Gently, he ran his fingers over my throat, whispering something in his fae language. Slowly, I felt some of the sharp sting subside from the bite on my neck.
“Out here in the woods, you must spend a lot of time in silence,” I said. “Don’t you get lonely?”
“Mmm. Why do I get the feeling that you hate silence?”
He wasn’t wrong there. My eyes grew heavy, and I leaned against his chest, his heartbeat thudding rhythmically against my ear. His hand slid higher up my back, resting behind my head.
I didn’t trust him yet. He’d nearly killed me not that long ago, and he kept more secrets than I could imagine. And yet, his skin felt amazing against mine, his scent so intoxicating. My body relaxed in his arms. “You said you’re only attached to Elrine. What happened to the rest of your family?”
He tightened his powerful arms around me, warming the shell of my ear with his breath. “Go to sleep, Cassandra. You’re safe.”
Slowly, my eyes drifted shut, and I fell into a deep sleep on the bare, tattooed chest of Roan Taranis, dreaming of wild strawberries growing by the edge of a woodland path.
Chapter 26
I’d slept for hours in Roan’s arms, probably drooling on his bare chest. He hadn’t complained. When I’d woken again, feeling refreshed, six hours had passed. We spent a half hour traveling through the woods to get to the oak portal. After a quick trip to my hotel for underwear, a shirt of my own, and my backpack, I took off for West London. I stopped in several stores on the way to buy some supplies for the tense upcoming night.
When I reached the embassy, it was nearly midnight. I could only hope that the CIA’s London station was mostly empty by now. I imagined there were some CIA operatives working late into the night, but it was a risk I had to take. I’d already spent far longer sleeping than I’d meant to. Now, every minute I wasted was another minute the abductor could demand another task from me. I had to do this now.
Standing across the street from the embassy, hidden in shadows, I pulled out a small hand mirror from my backpack. I gazed into it, praying the abductor wouldn’t contact me now. Once I bonded with the reflection, feeling it click with my mind, I reached out and felt for the reflections in the CIA Fae Unit offices.
Nothing. I could feel a bunch of reflections in the building, but when I imagined the office where Scarlett had taken me, I sensed no other reflective surface.
The CIA had seen what I could do, and they had taken precautions, covering up the reflective surfaces. It didn’t matter. I could work around it. Oddly enough, I found it reassuring that at least part of the American government was capable of protecting themselves from someone like me.
However, there was a large mirror in the elevator that went down into the CIA offices.
I stared into the compact mirror, searching for the elevator. It appeared in my tiny mirror, and I immediately bonded with its reflection. For just a moment, I hesitated. What if I got stuck between the reflections, in that painful, gnawing void? What if my magic wasn’t strong enough to get me through?
Still—Scarlett was in trouble, and I didn’t have time to panic. I dipped my finger into the cool reflection, feeling its cold, liquid surface. I let the reflection pull me in, like a black hole, and its surface skimmed over my skin.
My heart pounding, I stumbled into the elevator. Frantically, I looked around the cramped space. Was there a CCTV screen somewhere, showing me inside? Probably. How long did I have until the embassy’s security noticed me, called for backup, sent some guards after me?
Not long at all.
I gritted my teeth and turned to the keypad. Concentrating, I focused on the moment two days ago, when Scarlett and I were in the elevator together. She’d keyed in the code, and I’d looked, of course—reflexively, as I’d been trained to do. I keyed in the same code. Slowly, the elevator descended, and I backed into a corner, my pulse racing.
If I fucked it up, Scarlett and Elrine would die.
The door opened into the CIA branch and I hurried inside. It wasn’t entirely empty. I could hear a keyboard tapping from one of the open doors, and in another room, someone cleared his throat. But there was no one in the entrance. I hurried down the hall that led to the Fae Unit offices, keeping my footsteps as soft as possible.
It took me only a few seconds to reach the large steel door, which unfortunately had a thumb scanner. My thumbs wouldn’t do any good, and I wasn’t about to get anyone else’s. I crouched down—just as I hoped, there was a tiny crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. I pulled a sheet of aluminum foil from my bag and slid it under the door—one half on my side, the other half in the room.
Taking a deep breath, I focused on my blurry reflection in the aluminum. Once I felt the mental click—the bond with that reflection—I searched for the other half of the foil, just on the other side of the door. I let the reflection pull me in, until I was falling into it, feeling the cool metal wash over my skin, slide over my body like icy water.
When I found myself emerging from the foil on the other side of the door, I loosed a long sigh of relief. I quickly pulled the aluminum sheet from under the door, leaving no trace behind me.
As I crept down the hall, I approached an open door, and I could hear someone tapping away on the keyboard, just on the other side of the doorway. Chances were, they were facing the hallway.
I crept forward, intent on glancing inside. If I had to, I’d pull my gun on the person in the office, tie him up. But it was a huge risk; one that I wasn’t prepared to take just yet. I was just two steps from the door when I heard the unmistakable sound of a chair shifting across the floor. Whoever it was, he was standing up, and heading out of the room.
Frantically glancing around, I spotted another door labelled Unit Chief. I hurried to it, opening the door and sliding inside. As quietly as I could, I closed it behind me. In the darkness, I could make out the shapes of office furniture. A desk, a file cabinet, a large potted plant. I pressed my ear to the door, listening to the sound of footfalls echoing in the hall, and they were getting closer. Whoever it was, he was probably on his way to the elevator, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. I crossed to the desk and hid behind it, crouching low.
Of course, he’d been heading right for this room. As my heart raced, the door creaked open, and the light flicked on. I tensed, terrified, one
hand in my backpack, clutching my gun.
The man’s boots clacked slowly over the floor, and he hummed to himself as he moved in the room. What was he doing here? Had he come inside to search his chief’s files? Maybe look through his desk?
I heard a strange sound, and it took me a moment to place it. It was the sound of a zipper being unzipped.
And then, the sound of liquid splashing into something soft. Unable to help myself, I lifted my head a bit and peeked.
It was my friend Fulton, standing with his back to me.
He was peeing into his chief’s potted plant.
I sank back into my hiding spot, a deranged giggle threatening to emerge. I forced myself to think of what would happen if they caught me. I would be charged with treason, or perhaps they’d just shoot me right there. Scarlett would die, and… and…
The peeing trickled down into short, happy spurts, and I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing.
Finally, Fulton’s act of rebellion was done. He zipped up and left the office, shutting the light behind him. I wondered how often he did this.
Once he left, I shot up, walking softly to the door. Carefully, I opened it, peeking outside. Fulton was returning to his office. As soon as he moved through the doorframe, I rushed past the doorway, heart thumping, sure that he’d notice the shadow cast into the floor of his office.
He didn’t. His thoughts were probably still lingering on his chief’s plant.
It took me only a few more seconds to reach the armory door. Here, an eye scanner blocked my entry. I pulled out the aluminum sheet, ready to slide it under the door…
There was no crack.
Desperately, I looked for anywhere I could slide the sheet through. Nothing. The damn thing was airtight.
I needed an eye. Fulton’s eye.
I swallowed hard. I had no other choice. I’d force him down to the door, push his face to the scanner and…
