“So, how long have you been working here?” she asked and very nearly cringed herself at the sound of it.
“Really? We’re going this?”
“I’m bored. I’ll go first,” Alessia said, not wanting to stop the flow of conversation. She spoke without a filter now. “I’m a first-year PhD candidate at USC in Shifter Studies and Culture. I was Dr. Tekkin’s teaching fellow and apprentice, which is how I ended up here—”
“Well, no,” Lana said, sitting forward with a smirk. “How you ended up here is you fucked your mentor professor, don’t leave out that bit. I was there. Saw quite a bit of your behind.”
Alessia felt herself going red. But she had Lana’s attention, however uncomfortable it was. This was going somewhere, at least. This was some kind of bonding. She hoped.
“Yes,” she said with a crack in her voice. “That’s how I got here. You took Drake and I went looking for him in the wrong place—or I guess in the right place since I found him. Your turn.”
“This isn’t a therapy session.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not like we have anything better to do here.”
She could see the cogs working in Lana’s head through the confusion in her eyes. She wanted to talk. She probably didn’t get a lot of chances to talk to anyone while she was down here. In fact, she was the only woman Alessia had seen the entire time. And if there was one thing she learned in her nearly three decades as a woman, women always craved other women. Even if it was your worst enemy or the girl who stole your prom date. Any woman was better than a room full of men.
“Shifter’s gotta do what a shifter’s gotta do,” Lana said, shrugging. “It’s not like anyone wants to hire you too much when they find out what you are.”
“There’s laws against that,” Alessia said with a frown, coming forward to sit at the edge of the cell, leaning against the bars.
“Yeah, and there’s also laws against shooting people and robbing them but every morning what’s on the news?” Lana said. “People will do what they want.”
“What is it you wanted to do?” Alessia asked. “My friend, Trish, she got kicked out of an audience once.”
“Shifter?”
“Wolf. Which apparently is a sin here.”
Lana shrugged. “I personally don’t see any difference between dragon or wolf or whatever obscure shifter type might still be out there. Who gives a fuck? It’s James who gets all elitist about it and I’m in a job only because I happened to be born the right kind of society outcast.”
Alessia looked at Lana and saw something completely different in her eyes—a person. Lana looked tired and she looked far smaller than her bombastic sarcasm wanted her to seem when first Alessia met her. They had gotten somewhere and she was afraid to push for more because this was something important. So she stayed quiet and Lana didn’t say anymore. It felt like an understanding. And that was step one towards friendship.
Chapter 5
It was after two more days of talking with Lana, about things far less heavy.
“If you say the movies are better than the books, I will actually waterboard you.”
“Lana, all I’m saying is there is some merit in adaptation.”
Alessia felt more comfortable with her than anyone else in this place, maybe even more so than with Drake.
That had been something that had been weighing on her too. She wanted to find him, she’d been desperate for it. And then she did. She was ecstatic to find him alive and missed him while she was alone in her own cell. But she also couldn’t shake the knowledge that he had been lying to her about things. That he knew more than he was letting on. She expected things like this from James or his cronies. But Drake was being cagey when what they needed, now more than ever, was to be open and honest with each other.
“What’s going on in there?” Lana asked.
“Huh?”
“I just said that Amy should have won The Bachelor and you didn’t react. So, what’s going on in that head?”
“Well, I would have ignored that incredibly wrong statement no matter what,” Alessia said and Lana snorted and smirked. “But, just have a lot on my mind.”
“What, you got a busy schedule of twiddling your thumbs and marking another day on the wall?”
Alessia rolled her eyes but smiled a bit, all the same. She wondered if they were at the point where they could talk about things like this yet. It wasn’t even that Alessia wanted to get more information out of Lana. She just wanted someone to unload this information on because it ate at her, more than just a bit, with nothing but the wall to bounce her ideas back at her.
Should she trust Drake? She trusted him far more than she trusted James. But she realized Drake was a man she hardly knew. He was her professor or barely was forthcoming about letting her participate in class work, let alone about the truth when she was kidnapped by his own faction.
“Just—stuff,” Alessia said lamely.
“Yeah. I’ve heard of it. Tell me more.”
Lana was good entertainment, she was fun to talk to. But was she a friend? Alessia was slowly losing her mind in this place and, for all she knew, Lana was playing her. She could be falling for some unfortunate Stockholm Syndrome. But at this point, what did she have to lose?
“I don’t know if I can completely trust Drake.”
“She says only after she fucks him.”
“I’m serious.”
“Can you trust anyone? You’re in the middle of a war now, kid. This is a war you had no idea was going on and you don’t even know which side has you captive, but that’s the way these things go. Take what trust you can. No one’s going to tell you the whole truth, not by a long shot.”
“Does that include you?”
“Fucking right it does. The only person I trust one hundred percent with all my thoughts is me. And you should do the same and learn to be okay with it. Even if you end up marrying Tekkin someday or some nonsense. You’re never going to one hundred percent give it all to each other. No one does. If you go into a marriage knowing that, your life will be a lot less painful when it all breaks down.”
Alessia didn’t want to admit the very good point there. She wanted the romanticism of it, just a little bit. She wanted to believe in some goodness and in some fairy tale parts of her life. She and Drake could be some kind of Romeo and Juliet without the suicide at the end, but that’s not the way things worked. The suicide happened because they were naive and careless, Alessia would have to be smarter than all that.
She sighed and sat back against the wall. She would have to weigh her options. She truly trusted no one. So, who were the ones she distrusted less than others?
**
A few days later, they let her see Erik. Lana came into the cell and told her they set up a meeting with him in the interrogation room. This time she didn’t drag her out of the cell with rough hands and yanking limbs. She let her walk freely down the hall to her destination without forcing her along like a puppy on a leash. They’d come that far at least. Though Alessia doubted that Lana would truly let her perhaps walk right out of this place one day. At least she had some semblance of a friend.
She walked into the room and sat in a chair. Now it was set up with a table in the middle. Erik sitting on one side, watched by some hulking man that Alessia had seen around the base before. She dropped into the chair across from him. He looked better. His deep purple bruises had gone the green color of healing around the edges and both his eyes were open fully once again. His cuts were fading and scabbed over. He looked more awake but he was thinner than she remembered, a bit more gaunt in the face. The deadness in his eyes seemed to be chased away, like bugs in a flashlight, when he saw her.
“Alessia,” he wheezed out. She cringed. He needed a doctor.
“Hi,” she said softly, wondering if their handlers would snap if she reached out and took his hand. “How are you?”
“Better. But not good,” he laughed. “You look
better than I was afraid you would.”
“I think it’s because I know how to not mouth off,” Alessia said with a laugh but immediately regretted it for the implication that Erik was somehow responsible for his own wounds. He smiled and shrugged.
“You know I’ve never been able to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “Those debates in the seminar were a warm up for this. The big leagues.”
“Convince anyone to back your shifter resource sustainability plan?”
“Not a damn chance.”
They chuckled together and then got silent again. Alessia wasn’t sure what the point of this was. Lana hadn’t said much on the way there and there was no obvious agenda for their discussions. Was it simply to see that Erik was still alive? Would it become part of a larger blackmail? She was happy to see him okay and on the mend, but what she really wanted to know now was if Diego was alive. She hadn’t seen him since they’d been brought there and only had James’ word from days and days ago that Diego was still alive.
“Have you seen Diego?” she asked, waiting for Lana or the man behind Erik to jump up at some taboo conversation between prisoners. But they didn’t move an inch.
“A few days back,” Erik said. “He looks okay. Not beat up or anything but pretty thin and tired.”
So, he was alive as of a few days ago. Alessia had to tell Erik what she knew though. “These are all dragon shifters,” she said, low in the voice. “Diego is apparently some kind of minority here because he’s a wolf.”
“You think they’ll kill him?” Erik asked, leaning in.
“I don’t know. Drake said this isn’t a place that Orlando controls but that doesn’t mean they don’t share his prejudices,” she said.
She was waiting for the blow, for someone to tell them they had to change topics. Lana and the man could certainly hear them but they let them speak. Alessia wondered if that was important or not. But she decided she needed to get out as much as she possibly could, while she could.
“So, what’s next for us then?” Erik asked.
“I don’t know. They could have killed us already.”
“They also could have let us go.”
Alessia’s face went grim. They were truly stuck in a limbo that she didn’t know the outcome. There was no obvious plot here, no obvious way she was being driven. They were just existing as prisoners, fed, occasionally allowed to shower and use the bathroom, and then returned to their cells where she had a debate with her captor about the merits of the film adaptations of Lord of the Rings.
There was a lot they could have done. They were keeping them around for something. She thought of the story of Diego’s girlfriend and the horrific way it ended. Perhaps in the end they’d force them to carry out some awful plot. Maybe this meeting between her and Erik was a way to placate them until then.
Or maybe James didn’t know it was happening at all. Alessia looked around the room. Lana and the other man were busy talking amongst themselves, not even giving a second thought to what Erik and she were saying to each other. They wanted them talking. Alessia looked up, the cameras seemed functioning at first but after squinting and looking closer, she saw the red light usually signifying a recording was nowhere to be found.
“I don’t think James knows we’re talking right now,” she said in a whisper, like they were still in mortal peril in the room.
Erik’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Alessia nodded to their captors huddled in the corner, conferring amongst themselves. “That doesn’t exactly look like the poster child for a couple of people not doing something shady.”
He looked over and looked back at her. He shrugged. “So what do we do?”
“Where are they keeping you?” she asked.
“The walk is a right turn out of this room, two lefts, a small flight of stairs and then I’m there,” he said. “And you?”
“I haven’t quite memorized it yet, but I know it’s a left turn, down some stairs, a straight walk for a while before a right turn and I think I’m there,” she said. “I’ll try to memorize it on the way back. And Diego?”
“He’s in a solitary cell,” Erik said darkly. “From what I hear, they have him locked up in a room with a little pinprick of light.”
“They don’t like him because he’s a wolf, that’s what Drake said.”
“Is Drake with you?”
“He was. They moved me. I don’t know where he is now as far as place is concerned.”
“Well, if dumb and dumber are on our side, then maybe we can figure it out,” Erik said with a wink.
“Is that the smirk of a man plotting an escape?” Alessia asked with a smile of her own.
“I don’t think we’re the ones doing the plotting,” he said, nodding to Lana and the man. “They seem to have something all their own going on. I say we lay low and let it play out. They won’t kill us, they feed us, they let us bathe. It’s basically the existence of a pet but it’ll keep us safe and alive, and maybe these guys will do the heavy lifting for us.”
“We have to figure out a way to talk to each other,” Alessia said. “I don’t think this little midnight rendezvous will work twice. Besides, we need some kind of eye on Diego and Drake.”
“See, this is why I say you watch too many movies,” Erik said with a chuckle and Alessia couldn’t help but smile back. Maybe she smiled for a little bit too long before she pulled away with a gruff clearing of her throat.
“I think time’s up,” Erik said, nodding to the people headed their way. They broke apart with a nod.
They had a plan. Others around them had a plan too. But something weird was going on and Alessia was more than willing to be a part of it if it meant getting back home to the comfort of her bed and a phone call to her mother.
Chapter 6
“So…” Alessia said when next she was with Lana in the cell a day or so after she’d been carted off to see Erik. “What kind of weird chess game am I now a part of?”
“What are you talking about?” Lana asked from where she was playing solitaire on her phone. They didn’t get service down below so Lana had stocked her phone with games that could be played offline. Once or twice, she even let Alessia play when she needed to put her eyes on a real book or anything that wasn’t the damaging blue light of a digital screen.
“Something tells me James didn’t know about that meeting the other night,” she said.
“Was that ‘something’ blatant obviousness?” Lana said. “You’re no spy, Alessia, but I’ll give you credit for all that show.”
Alessia pouted and turned a little bit red and Lana laughed as she closed the game down and focused her attention on the girl in the cell with a slightly more serious look—as serious as Lana could get, anyway.
“I just hope you and Erik made productive use of your time together in that room,” she said.
“We did,” Alessia said, not wanting to give too much away. Just because Lana was up to something (and occasionally snuck her more food) didn’t mean that she was worthy of too much trust.
“Good,” she said and backed away. “You’re going to meet with your hubby next.”
Drake. Alessia hadn’t seen him in days by measure of the amount of food she’d been given. She didn’t think there was a chance he was too worse for wear, but she also didn’t trust his tension-filled communication with James the last time they were together.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Is this some weird, long-con, mind game?”
Lana’s left corner of her mouth picked up in a crooked grin and she let out a breathy chuckle. She had an air of superiority that would make her and Erik get along just fine. Alessia bristled at staring into the face of someone who thought they knew better, but she held her tongue. Lana was her one chance at getting any kind of freedom from whatever strange game they were in. She wouldn’t piss her off over some pride.
“I’ll let you know when you need to know,” she said. “For n
ow, just play along and go with the flow.”
Alessia didn’t like waiting around and being told what to do. But she didn’t have a choice. She was quickly learning that in virtually all of this, she had no choice. They told her to sit and she did. They said jump and she reluctantly asked how high. Going with the flow felt a lot like being a helpless child, in her eyes.
***
Alessia didn’t like Lana’s words but she also didn’t have a choice in the matter. She was a captive audience and, as Erik so eloquently put it, a pet. She was on a leash and subject to the moods of her owners. She’d have to deal with it all in stride, shut off that pride and the need to know everything. Her mother always said she was a little too curious. She needed to let go.
She wished she was one of those religious people who could so calmly say to themselves, “It’s in God’s hands now,” and be content in her own faith. But her mind buzzed too much for want of sunlight and the feel of real air. She was getting restless and wanted out of this little hellhole of a place they’d locked her in.
“Time to go, princess,” Lana said.
“Is there meant to be a goal for these little meetings?” Alessia asked, getting up and brushing herself off.
“You have your plots and we have ours. The more organic this happens, the better it works for all of us,” she said.
“It might help if we were working together.”
“Don’t mistake this for an alliance,” Lana said, carefully. “I don’t like you that much. You have goals and so do we. They might be aligned, but I’m not about to fall into the trap of being too tied to your allies.”
“I’m guessing ‘we’ doesn’t include James.”
“I’m guessing you should stop prying and just be excited you get to see your man—well, one of your men; that Erik fellow certainly likes looking at you,” she said.
Alessia glared and walked ahead, allowing herself to be pointed in the direction of the interrogation room, this time truly trying to memorize the way. Any part of this place she could map out was better than nothing.
Battalion's Bride (Alien SciFi Romance) (Celestial Mates Series Book 8) Page 49
