“Actually, I just lost my appetite.”
He clicked his tongue at me. “Careful now, Princess. You may just find yourself back in your cell and tongueless if you don’t learn how to control that mouth of yours.”
My retort quickly died in my mouth as I remembered how easily he split Damon in two.
“Contrary to what you believe, I am not the bad guy you’ve made me out to be in your mind.”
“Are you deranged?” My mouth quickly popped off before I could think twice of it. “You’re holding me prisoner. You’re draining my blood every day—all day, just so you can force me to hand over the one thing that’s keeping me alive right now! How is that NOT the bad guy.”
“Well, it could be a lot worse,” he answered calmly, bringing his hands onto the table.
“Really? How so?” I asked and then glanced at Dominic who was quietly watching our exchange.
“You could be with the Dark Legion instead,” he said, binging his fingers into a bumpy steeple. “You could be responsible for raising the biggest evil this world has ever seen.” He blinked slowly as a small smile formed on his dark lips. “You could be home…being hunted by your friends and dearly beloveds, never knowing which day will be your last day.”
“Nikki. Is. Not. My. Friend.” I was clenching my jaw so hard, I nearly cracked a tooth.
“Yes, that much was evident,” he said, chuckling as he glanced back at the bald bag of muscles standing behind him. “I was referring to the members of your Order. Your dear uncle. The ones who were supposed to protect you.”
“I never involved him in any of this,” I pointed out, desperate to keep some of my dignity and a sense of control.
The truth was, after I discovered my true bloodlines, I wasn’t sure who I could trust. And that included everyone in The Order. Dominic had made it clear that if they found out what I really was, they wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate me, and even though I didn’t want to believe him, I couldn’t completely rid my mind of the possibility either.
“And what makes you think he would’ve done anything to help you if you had? Do you think they are that much different than I am?” He laughed gruffly as though the joke were completely on me. “Make no mistake, child. There is no such thing as the good guys anymore. Not in this world.”
“That might be true, but I’d chance my luck with him over you any day.”
“You already have, child. And if I recall, it didn’t go very well for you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grumbled defensively.
“Don’t I? Then riddle me this, child. Who exactly do you believe attacked you in the woods that night? It certainly wasn’t one of us, was it?” He spread his arms wide and looked around at his men before settling his eyes back on me. “Then again, I’m sure you’ve already realized that all on your own, haven’t you?”
“Not really,” I lied. Frankly, I refused to give him the satisfaction. I wasn’t about to let him walk away from here with the delusion that he was anything more than a calculating monster. “It could have been anyone.”
“Not anyone,” he corrected. “Only those who weren’t aware of your possession of the Immortal Amulet.” A skeleton of a smile creeped across his pale face. The sick bastard was basking in this.
“What the hell is your point, Engel? That I can’t trust anyone? News flash. I already know that.”
“Just making an observation, child. It seems to me that you have a lot more to lose going home than you do staying here. Perhaps if you learn to embrace our way of life, you may find a home for yourself amongst us. It would please me to no end to have a being such as yourself by my side.”
“You’re joking, right?” I looked at Dominic again but he just sat there expressionless. “You want me to what, join your little hive? Be the permanent blood donor that keeps you all protected? No thanks, pal!”
“That’s one option, though not a very appealing one, I’m sure.” He titled his head to the side, his eyes burning holes into me as though he were trying to infiltrate my mind. “Or,” he said, holding his finger up, “You could Turn…walk amongst us as our equal.”
“Turn?” A burst of nervous laughter pealed out of me. “That is never going to happen. I’d rather die!”
“Well, yes. That’s precisely the predicament you’ve found yourself in, isn’t it?” He leaned forward onto the table, his hard eyes weighing heavy on me. “Use your head, child. You have the ability to make all of your problems go away in one glorious night. To be stronger than you’ve ever imagined. To become the hunter and not the hunted. To live…forever.”
I shook my head so hard I nearly gave myself a migraine. I didn’t want to hear this. He was trying to put wicked things into my head. To turn me against the only world I’d ever known, and I didn’t want any part of it.
“I’m not Turning, Engel. Not now or ever. You can keep me prisoner for as long as you want. The Order and The Dark Legion can hunt me until the end of my days. I will never be like you. I will never give up my humanity.”
“Tsk, tsk. What a pity to see such potential wasted on the young.” Something darkened his eyes as he continued to watch me. “Perhaps if your mother were around to better guide you, you’d be able to see this as the gift that it is.” He pushed back the chair and slowly stood. “She certainly did.”
The blood drained from my face. “What are you talking about?” I asked, my hands gripping both sides of the table to keep myself from toppling over.
Calm down, angel. You’re spiraling, said Dominic to my mind.
“What did you just say about my mother?” I repeated, louder this time, my nails digging into the wood.
“I think you heard me just fine. Whether you choose to listen is entirely up to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? What do you know about her? Answer me!” I shouted, slamming my hands on the table as I rose from my chair.
Dominic quickly sprang up beside me, snagging my elbow as he tried to pull me back down to my chair.
“Get off me! He knows something about her!” I roared into Dominic’s face as I pulled my arm loose from his grip and snatched up a dish from the table. He pulled my arm back just as the china left my fingers, throwing off my aim by at least two feet. The plate smashed into pieces on the floor beside Engel’s feet.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” said Engel as he straightened out his shirt like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb over my life. “Take her back to her cage until she learns how to behave herself.”
8. PRETTY LITTLE LIAR
My adrenaline was still surging when Dominic and Maz returned me to the dungeons. They left immediately afterwards on Engel’s orders, neither one saying a word to me. And I couldn’t care less. I was glad to see them go—both of them. I needed some time on my own to make sense out of everything that had been said tonight, to let it sink in, and I couldn’t do that with Dominic hanging around in the shadows of my consciousness, distracting me.
Always distracting me.
And Engel? Always tormenting me.
That twisted son of a bitch was taunting me with something. Something about my mother. And of course, just like with everyone else in my life, the secrets he was keeping from me were a game to be played.
Only I didn’t have a playing piece.
I was powerless, completely alone, and standing on the outside of my own freaking life again.
“You stupid coward! DAMN YOU ALL!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I fell to my knees on the dirty concrete floor. Tears stung the corner of my eyes, but they weren’t tears of sadness or self-pity. They were tears of anger—of unbridled rage that prickled through my veins like a roaring tsunami.
My palms burned like fire and my heart was racing at dangerous speeds. My anger was raw and it was coiling and clawing inside of me like a vicious bird, screaming at me to release it. I needed an outlet, someone to unleash my fury on or I was going to self-implode into a million unfixable pieces right here
in the gallows of a dead man’s dungeon.
Faces of my enemies twisted through my mind, taunting me with their crimes and their lies, laughing at me as I struggled to make sense out of their senseless riddles. My hand balled into a fist—shaking, pulsating—cracking like I had on the inside. There was no more space inside to keep in it. No more place for me to hide it.
I crashed my fist against the solid concrete slab beneath me. My knuckles immediately split open as crimson liquid peppered the floor around me, littering the ground with my pain, but it felt damn good. I stared down at my blood—my devil blood—and then punched the ground again, and then again. I wailed on it like a madwoman let out of her straitjacket, stopping only when my tears finally ran dry and my hand stopped feeling pain altogether.
Only when my fuel dissipated into fumes was I able to pull myself away from the bloodbath.
Dazed and eerily calm, I crawled back into my corner and sat there, stunned and unmoving until Dominic came back down to see me later that night.
But I didn’t want to be seen. Not by him. Not by anyone. I wanted to disappear into myself, to let go of what I was holding on to and fall through the endless darkness until I couldn’t remember I was falling anymore.
“Are you awake?” he asked, unable to see my shadowed face from the corner I was perched in.
“I’m awake,” I answered listlessly.
“Good. We need to talk.”
“Talk.”
He clicked his tongue. “Angel.”
“Dominic,” I mimicked.
“Will you come out of that corner please?”
“I’d rather not.”
I heard him shift on his feet. “Is that your blood on the floor?” he asked, having just noticed it.
“You’re the expert. You tell me.”
His mouth slipped into a tight line. “I’m losing my patience.”
Better than losing your sanity, I thought, though I kept that one to myself.
“Come here. Now.” His voice reverberated in my mind, bouncing off the walls like a memory I couldn’t hide from.
I stood up and walked right over to him—I had no choice in the matter.
“Stop compelling me,” I said, glaring at him as I stood in front of the door.
His eyes flicked down to my hand. “What happened?” he asked, ticking his chin to my mangled knuckles.
“The concrete was giving me the side eye,” I fake-smiled. “Figured I should teach it a lesson.”
He stared back at me unimpressed. Annoyed even.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” I warned, pointing my finger at him and then slamming my hand against the bars. The noise ricocheted off the dungeon walls like an echo. “You try living on this side of the door!”
He looked bored. “Are you done or would you like to waste more energy beating up inanimate objects?”
“I’ll let you know when I decide,” I said and started to turn back towards my dark corner.
“Jemma.”
I stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t heard him call me by my name since the first day we met. It sounded strange coming from his lips now, like a secret he wasn’t supposed to know. I turned back and faced him.
“Are you done?” he repeated, his tone softer this time.
“Did you not hear what he said, Dominic?” I defended myself against his unspoken judgements. “He knows something about my mother! My mother, Dominic! What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Bury it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Do you want to get out of this place alive or do you want to stick around here and chase after ghosts that have been dead for years?”
“I want to get out of here, but he knows—”
“Whatever he may or may not know about your long-lost mother is neither here nor there. He’s trying to get inside your head, angel. Do not let him.” He leveled me with the intensity in his smoldering eyes. “He wants you to believe it’s hopeless, that you can’t beat him, all in the hopes that you will join him instead.”
I started to shake my head and then froze in my tracks. “Oh, my God. You’re right. You’re totally right.” I pushed my hands through my hair as I tried to put it all together in my mind. “He probably never even met my mother. He’s just trying to screw with me to get me to do what he wants. To turn me against everyone on the outside so that I stay on the inside with him.” Wasn’t that exactly what he had said earlier? That he wanted me to join him—to Turn.
Dominic didn’t say anything.
“Wow.” I shook my head at how ridiculously gullible I could be. If I was going to survive this godforsaken world, I really needed to start shielding my weak-ass mind from people like Engel. “I can’t believe I almost fell for it.”
“Don’t dwell on it, love. Use it against him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let him think he planted the seed,” he said ominously and then leaned in closer to the bars. “If you ever want to get out of this place, you’re going to have to start playing nice with him. He needs to think the bond is starting to work. We need him to trust in that so that he loosens your strings again.”
“But how am I supposed to do that?”
“Retract your claws, love. Make him believe your defenses are coming down. That you’ve considered his warning and appreciate all that he is doing—that you don’t trust the outside world anymore. Whatever it takes. The more he believes the bond is forming, the more he’ll let his guard down.”
I bit my lip as I mulled it over. I could do that. I could totally do that. The faster I learned to play nice with him, the faster I could get out of this hell-hole, and that was the only thing I wanted.
“Consider it done.”
The next few days went exactly as planned. I used every feeding with Engel as an opportunity to win him over. Each time he fed on me, I resisted a little less. Each time he spoke to me, no matter how much I wanted to claw his eyes out or roll my eyes into the back of my head, I bit down my tongue and smiled at him. And it was starting to work.
He definitely noticed the change in my demeanor, and with Dominic whispering lies about the fake bloodbond in his ears, he even allowed me to eat and bathe on two separate occasions. It didn’t sound like much, but it was infinitely better than what I had before; which was a big fat nothing at all.
Of course, Dominic continued to sneak food down to me during his nightly feedings. He needed to keep my strength up while systematically draining my blood. Ours was a game of life and death and each time he moved on me, he risked tipping the scale in the wrong direction. That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t doing his best to take as little of my blood as possible, all while ensuring that our bloodbond was alive and well. And it was.
With every feeding that passed, my fondness for Dominic grew stronger. I found myself on pins and needles waiting to see him, to spend time with him alone in the dungeons. And it wasn’t just because I knew he would feed on me, that he would inject me with the kind of euphoria you only read about in books. It was more. I…I liked being around him. He didn’t judge me or expect anything from me. He didn’t care what I’d done in the past or how I’d gotten here. My bloodlines were of little importance to him. He could handle my jabs and he put up with my meltdowns. Somewhere along the way, he’d become a friend to me. Maybe even something more.
Later that week, Dominic and Maz took me to the atrium where Engel was expecting me for his nightly feeding. There was something off this time though. A static in the air that warned of a coming storm. My skin prickled with goosebumps as I approached Engel, almost as if my body instinctively knew that something bad was coming my way.
“Good evening, Princess.”
“Good evening, Engel.” I walked up to him without prompt and kneeled before his chair.
Reaching around my head, I scooped up my hair and brought it over my right shoulder, giving Engel a clear path to my neck like a good little prisoner girl.
Engel looked
up at Dominic and Maz behind me and then his right hand man, Baldy. He was so freaking proud of himself, it was sickening. Little did he know, the joke was on him.
“It’s nice to see you’ve come such a long way, child.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you given any more thought to my offer the other night?” he asked suddenly.
I froze. I wasn’t expecting him to make small talk with me, let alone put me on the spot with questions.
Answer him, angel.
“I, um, I have not,” I said, shaking my head. I needed to use this to my advantage. “I haven’t been able to keep my eyes open very much lately. I just feel so tired and weak all the time.”
He nodded, considering it. “I imagine it’s been quite difficult to sustain my appetite. Even for a Slayer.”
Lowering my lashes, I nodded modestly.
He went quiet for a moment. “I’ll tell you what,” he began, running a pale hand through his dark hair. “How about I let you have the night off. Perhaps a good night’s sleep in a proper bed is just what you need to see things clearer.”
I raised my eyebrows in mock surprise. “Really? You would do that for me?”
He smiled at me again, this time looking wholly pleased with himself. “Dominic. Maz. Have our Nora set up the main guestroom for our Princess here.”
“On it, boss,” said Maz and then zipped out of the atrium. He was practically dying to take orders from him.
I’m impressed, angel. You got him wrapped around your little finger.
A tiny smile on my lips was the only response I gave him.
“Oh, and Dominic,” called Engel as Dominic began to lead me out of the room.
“Yes, boss?”
“Cancel your plans for the night. You’re on watch.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The hallway leading to the guest bedroom was lit by candlelight, making the narrow space appear even darker—more eerie—than the rest of Engel’s estate. There weren’t any paintings or portraits on the walls or any other décor that might lend some life to the house. Just the burgundy and gold wallpaper that went on forever and a matching carpet runner that covered the entire length of the corridor.
Iniquitous: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 3) Page 6
