That rat bastard.
"I'll rip out your tongue for this, magic man." He said it to the house, directing the words through the darkness, following them with his sight until he reached the chanting man. It was the lackey that had trailed Nicholas. The sorcerer's eyes popped open at Doulzen's words. "Gotcha."
Doulzen tipped his hat back and then pulled it forward. He gathered the darkness beneath his trench and let the room fade to gray. He used the thinning of the light to slip past the barrier and fully merge into the dark. He wasn't a shadow hunter for nothing. Parlor tricks couldn't keep him in. He slipped past the invisible barrier, through the darkness. A new chant swung at him, trying to dispel the darkness around him, but Doulzen held more power. He refocused the energy back to him within seconds. It had been years since he'd actually had to fight against magic. As a shade, he kept to himself; he didn't run into hekans often, at least not unfriendly ones.
He slid down the stairs, feet not really touching the ground as the darkness engulfed his form and took him where he wanted to go faster than any normal human could move. He was down the stairs, through a wall, down another set of wooden stairs, and into the dank basement in mere moments. It smelled of the earth. A bare lightbulb swung over an open space. The sorcerer sat cross-legged in a circle etched with chalk, the intricately weaved designs pointing toward the man. Doulzen circled his foe, examining the designs. He hadn't seen these images before. They mimicked tribal markings, but he couldn't infer their purpose.
"You are a fool, shade." The man clasped his hands in his lap and looked right at him, as if he could see Doulzen in the darkness.
Impressive. Doulzen let go of the shadows and stepped toward the light. "Who are you?"
"No one you need concern yourself with."
"Then why are you wasting your time with me?" Even as he asked the question, the answer formed. The sorcerer was a distraction.
The man smiled, his teeth yellowed.
"Where is she?"
The sorcerer started mumbling in some strange language, a guttural sound. Doulzen lunged for him, but he hit another invisible barrier. The light stopped swinging and all the shadows ran from the circle. The magic man was completely surrounded by light. Doulzen paced around the circle, trying to decipher the symbols, but he had no idea where to start. He slammed his fist into the barrier, and the house shook with it.
"Where is Priya?" In his frustration, he nearly screamed the words. He'd tracked her here only with the help of the townspeople. If Nicholas had moved her . . . the sorcerer would be his only lead.
The chanting stopped and the man looked up at Doulzen again. "You have no idea, do you, shadow hunter?" He laughed, and it echoed around the room.
"About?" Doulzen paced along the circle's edge again. If he could keep the man talking, maybe the sorcerer would let something slip, or at least be distracted long enough for Doulzen to figure out a way through the barrier.
The man laughed harder, his whole body convulsing in the fit. His eyes teared up and streams of the salty liquid slid down his cheeks. He caught his breath and wiped them away, giggling every few seconds. "I have no intention of telling you. When you find out, all hell will break loose and that is better than anything I could possibly plan for you." He rested his arms lazily on his crossed knees.
Doulzen cocked his head. What did the hekan know that was so drastic it would shift something in his life? "I already know Priya is my mate."
The magic man paled. "She's your destined . . ." The words fell in apparent disbelief. Then he came back to himself and said, "You are doomed." His eyes glossed over white and he resumed chanting, though the pitch in his voice dropped to a low, eerily smooth tone. Doulzen could feel the air displacing, as if the sorcerer intended to escape. He wouldn't let that happen.
He grabbed a pebble from the ground and threw it at the light without really thinking it through. All he wanted was the man to give him answers. The pebble hit the light, but it didn't go out. The chanting stopped, then started again, faster. Doulzen grabbed another pebble, again aimed it at the light, pulled his hand back, and threw as hard as he could. He needed the damn thing out. He wasn't completely sure it would be enough for him to get into the circle—but darkness couldn't be kept out of anything permanently.
The light popped, the man jumped. Darkness surrounded them both again, and Doulzen took advantage of the other man's surprise to slip with the darkness right into the circle. He grabbed ahold of the man and flung him away from the engravings. He hit something with a thud, but Doulzen couldn't have cared less what it was.
"Where is she?" His voice boomed through the shadows.
"Please. Don't hurt me." The man's voice had risen to a near squeal. "I—I can take you to her, but don't hurt me."
Doulzen stomped closer. "Take me and I'll consider sparing your life." Even considering such a reprieve was a hard thing for Doulzen to do, given that this hekan had helped Nicholas escape with Priya. He grabbed the man by his shirt and pulled him up. "Get on with it," Doulzen said in an unforgiving tone. He wanted the hekan to know only instant obedience would save him from violence.
The man mumbled something under his breath Doulzen didn't quite catch. The air disbursed around him, the darkness spun, and the floor disappeared beneath his feet.
All movement came to a sudden stop and Doulzen shuffled a little to keep his balance. The sorcerer was still trapped in Doulzen's grasp.
Once everything stopped spinning, he took in his surroundings. Gold-filigreed bars surrounded him. His arm dangled between two bars, holding the hekan just outside of the trap. The guy gave him another yellow-toothed grin before slipping out of his shirt and sauntering off toward the middle of the large white room.
Doulzen had been caged.
Chapter 12
Priya's head beat like a jackhammer, sending shocks of pain through her temples. Gads! What had happened? She tried to sit up but found her hands bound behind her back. There was something in her mouth, a piece of cloth soaked with her saliva. She slowly opened her eyes and moaned.
"You're awake," Nicholas said.
Priya's head lulled, but her vision cleared enough to zone in on her captor, who sat cross-legged outside the bars of a metal cage.
"Now let's talk about what good birds do because, my sweet little one, you have been a very, very naughty little bird. I had to cage you for your own protection. And you can thank yourself for that nice little headache you're feeling right about now."
His voice grated on every nerve in her head, making it pound harder. At least her clothes were still intact.
"Consuming your own feather was a cute stunt, by the way. I wasn't expecting it, but then there was a whole lot I hadn't expected. But now . . ." He spread his arms, beaming. "Now I have taken the correct precautions. Eventually, Priya, you will see things my way. You only get feathers when you shift."
Priya shook her head, trying to untangle her thoughts of what had happened. She had shifted again. Must have knocked herself out when she tried to get out the window. The memory of what he'd been about to do to her flooded back and she mentally checked over her body. She didn't feel pain anywhere but in her head. Nothing to suggest he had taken advantage of her while she'd been passed out. She closed her eyes and shook her body, concentrating on changing back into a bird to slip the restraints.
"Oh, my love, don't bother. I've had this cage spelled so you can't actually shift. And I've tested it. Did you know that when firebirds can't shift, they slowly go crazy? I mean, it takes some time, but if you'd seen the things I've seen, you might be impressed. I once had a firebird down here for five years. By the end, he was just a crazed shell of who he'd once been, incapable of intelligible speech or even controlling his bladder. Poor guy. But I learned a great deal about your abilities from him. I, of course, released him into the wild, like any good pet owner, but I doubt he survived long." Nicholas giggled.
Priya's chest constricted in panic as she gasped for breath. She couldn't chang
e . . . Struggling with more force, trying to free herself from the bonds, she again willed herself to change. There was no burn, no familiar sensation. Just emptiness. So empty it hurt inside.
She looked around the small cage, trying to concentrate on anything but the panic attempting to consume her. The cage was dingy, with thick metal bars keeping her trapped. Would he keep her here for years as she went insane as well? It would make her easier to control.
"You know, I tried to do it the nice way. I did. But you brought this on yourself. All you had to do was want me. Now . . . well, now we have to do things the hard way."
Priya glared at him. He was blaming her for this? She grabbed ahold of that anger. How dare he! She pulled the heat of it deep inside her and remembered how he had tried to force himself on her, and now he intended to what, torture her? Her anger fanned hotter until it formed a burning coal in the middle of all that emptiness.
"Oh look at you. That's it, little bird, don't lose heart. Hold on to that glimmer of defiance. It will be so much more fun when I break it." Nicholas stood and tapped the cage, almost as if encouraging her. He turned his back on her and she wished she could burn a hole with her eyes right through his ugly brown shirt and straight into his ugly heart. She seethed inside.
Nicholas grabbed something off a desk on the far side of the room. That's when Priya registered everything else in the space. The long, dirty medical table with cuffs hanging from the sides. The dingy fluorescent lights humming overhead. The test tubes that looked like they hadn't been cleaned in weeks. A small cage with a decaying mouse rested against the wall to the right near a rusted sink, and a couple old computers and their monitors sat on a desk. But she couldn't take her eyes off of the tank in the corner.
A half woman, half bird floated in some strange clear liquid. As if frozen in a partial shift. Her bare breasts jutted out, nipples still bright pink. Her face was a mask of wide-eyed horror, her mouth frozen in a silent scream. Dark brown hair floated around her head. Bright orange feathers grew from her stomach, elongating down to her tail, and they shuddered every few seconds, as if her body was in a heightened state of constant pain or stimuli. Who the fuck was Nicholas? Because she no longer thought he was a shade. She'd heard many nightmares about shades, but nothing like this deluded, mad scientist.
Shades killed and fed on firebirds. Whatever Nicholas was doing here . . . it wasn't natural and she really needed to find her fucking way out of here. She pulled on the rope binding her hands behind her back, but it only tightened around her wrists, causing them to burn every time they moved. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rubbed her face against them, scooting the gag down until the piece of cloth in her mouth finally broke free.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Who are you?"
Nicholas turned, shock briefly lighting his face before he covered it with a sly smile. "Oh good for you. You've found a way to talk. Let's see, what question to answer first. Well let's start with who I am. I'm the man you will come to love. And what's wrong with me?" His eyes lightened with a giddy look. "I hadn't noticed anything was."
Priya just stared at him. He thought she could love him, after all this, after seeing what he'd already done to one of her kind? "You're crazy."
His face reddened, and faster than Priya thought possible, Nicholas closed the distance to the cage. His eyes slit as a vein popped out in the middle of his forehead. "You. Will. Regret. That." Each word came out pointed, directed with such anger Priya backed up into the bars, huddling in on herself.
Just as quickly, all his anger disappeared again. He leaned over to the wall behind the cage and flipped a switch, and a jolt hit Priya unexpectedly. Pain shot up from the bare bottoms of her feet, lancing through her legs, pulling every tiny hair on end, saliva falling from her mouth with the jolt of electricity. He shut it off and she gasped for breath as her body fell to the floor of the cage, convulsing.
"Your first lesson. You don't call people you care about names, little bird."
Her eyes fluttered as she tried to focus on anything but the little aftershocks jolting through her body. When her breathing calmed, she slowly sat up. The pain in her head stomped between her eyes, over her temples, and behind her ears. Her mouth was dry and she flicked her tongue slowly over her lips. "What's—" She huffed a breath. "What's that saying? You only hurt the ones you love?"
Nicholas looked at her for a long moment. "I'm so glad you are starting to see things my way. I don't want to hurt you. Don't make me. This is all for your own good." His eyes softened as he moved to the rusted sink and turned on the faucet. When he turned around, he had a cup in his hands, but Priya wasn't sure where he'd gotten it from in this giant open space. The other side of the room was just walls and an empty floor. "A little water to help. I really don't like seeing you hurt." He handed Priya a small paper cup, then realized she couldn't grab it so he moved it up to her lips. She opened her mouth and drank, spilling some of it down her chin. His eyes followed the drops as they slid down her shirt, cooling the skin between her breasts. He moved the small cup away and Priya inhaled air as she swallowed the last little bit, not realizing how thirsty she really had been until that cool liquid hit her tongue. She resisted the urge to thank him. This was his fault; she wasn't going to thank him for any of it.
"You are such a beautiful creature." He put a finger in the cage and pet the top of her head. Her hair clung to her neck, knotting in her ponytail, the frizzy strands tickling her flesh.
The little shock he'd given her made her think twice about saying what she thought of him. Instead, she bit her tongue. She had to find a way out. She pulled again at the restraints behind her back. They loosened just a touch. It wasn't inches or anything, but a mild shift in tightness that gave her a tiny bit of hope. But even if she managed to get her hands free, how the hell would she get out? Priya looked around the bars, but she didn't see a latch or a lock.
"If you're good, I'll get you a pillow and a blanket in a little while. I'm sure you're tired, but I still have some work to do before bedtime."
"Is it night?" she asked. Her voice scratched against her throat and she tried to clear it, but to no avail.
"It is. After you passed out trying to break the window, I had Marcus move us to my clinic. There is only one way in: magic. And only one way out: magic." He smiled and slipped his hand out of the bars.
He sauntered back to the table he'd been looking at before. He flipped a switch or pushed something she couldn't see and the girl in the tank unfroze. She blinked and thrashed, and bubbles floated up from her mouth. Priya's gaze met hers for the briefest second before he hit the switch again and the woman refroze, her painful gaze fixed on Priya. Priya looked away. Tears tumbled down her cheeks. She wished the woman weren't still alive. How could she free them both? She'd wanted so badly to find her kind, and here was one of her own, trapped in a glass container as Priya sat helpless in a crate.
Chapter 13
Horror sucked the air from Doulzen's lungs as he took in the white room, acknowledging most of his surroundings for the first time. Across the room, Nicholas stood at some kind of table with a monitor. Beside it, tucked back into a corner, was a human-sized glass container with a half female, half firebird writhing inside. Her movements lasted seconds, then the woman's face and body froze, her gaze staring off to one side. Doulzen followed her gaze and saw Priya huddled down in a cage with her hands tied behind her back.
He grabbed ahold of his gold bars and yelled for her. "Priya! I'm here. Don't worry." But she didn't respond. Had Nicholas done something to her? Made her deaf? Or was she too hurt to respond? He shook the bars. "Hekan, what has he done?"
The shirtless man leaned back against the wall, one foot up like a flamingo. "With what?" The man chuckled. "Do you know how easy it was to goad you? Though I truly was shocked to find out she is your destined. How easily one falls when love is involved . . . but is it yet love?" He stared at Doulzen as if waiting for an answer.
He chose not to ans
wer. This pathetic excuse for a mortal didn't need to know what he felt. Instead, Doulzen sneered. Just because they were meant to be together didn't mean he loved Priya, but he wanted to know her, wanted the chance to love her. First he needed to get them out of whatever hell Nicholas had trapped them in. "Priya!" he called again, but there was no answer.
"She can't see or hear you, shade. I've created a barrier with my illusion magic. All she can see is an empty room. You get to stand back and watch. Don't worry, the doctor will be with you soon." The sorcerer sat on the floor and began a low chant. Nicholas turned in his direction as if acknowledging the magic.
"Little bird, I'll be back in a moment. I have some business to take care of. Don't worry, I won't leave you alone for long." Nicholas almost skipped over to the hekan. He passed right in front of Doulzen's cage and stopped. He moved through the invisible barrier as if it weren't there.
"Shadow hunter. So nice of you to drop in." He turned to the sorcerer and said, "Marcus, thank you so much for your services. I'll call again when I need you." Marcus stood and chanted again while he slowly vanished. "Now where were we? Oh you're my guest. Please understand I have to keep all my pets safe. I didn't wish to cage you in such a way, but safety first. Did you know I had special lighting put in just for you?" Nicholas looked up at the ceiling. Doulzen's gaze followed.
Glass-encased lighting lit up nearly the entire ceiling. He hadn't noticed it before, but the lighting was arranged in such a way that he cast no shadow, and neither did Nicholas. It was as if light surrounded them both.
"I had a little help with magic and bulbs; thank goodness for hekans like you and Marcus to help keep the lighting in place, yes?" He grinned as if Doulzen agreed with him.
"What have you done to her?"
Dark Burn: Fated & Forbidden Page 6
