B00T3PMJTS EBOK

by Tracy Tappan

Nỵko turned around for the last time and took off into the Hell Tunnels.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Oţărât

  There was a horde of them.

  Faith was awakened by their loud male voices, arguing, chortling, grunting, growling—they sounded like animals frenzied by the hunt, ready to move in for the feast.

  And Faith was their kill.

  Pain in her shoulder sockets told her she was hanging by her arms from bound wrists, her feet dangling God knew how many feet off the ground. And the worst: she was naked.

  She flinched with the need to tuck her legs into her chest, every feminine instinct urging her to curl into a fetal position right there in midair, to cover and protect herself. She wasn’t a prude or anything, certainly not. A woman couldn’t be a dancer and be shy. How many times had she had to do a quick change backstage in front of men and women alike? Early in her career she’d even danced an avant-garde piece topless. But this was different. Without even looking, she knew she was vulnerable and helpless in the most absolute way imaginable.

  She squeezed her eyelids tighter. Sensations beyond sight were making it painfully clear that she really, really didn’t want to see whatever was out there: the stench of old sweat, human waste, rotting garbage, decay, and sour blood. A rush of bile plugged up her throat. More sweat slid over flesh that still felt sensitive and sunburned from her trip to get here through literal Hell.

  God, that heat…

  Two seconds into her journey through the Hell Tunnels atop her captor’s shoulder and she’d started screaming. Five seconds, and not enough moisture had remained in her mouth to scream. By eleven seconds, the agony had driven her into unconsciousness. And such a horrendous journey could only have landed her someplace equally horrendous. Her chin quavered with the threat of tears, although her dehydrated body probably wouldn’t be able to produce any. Faith, come on. See how bad this actually is.

  She pried open her eyelids. Catastrophic.

  A small squeak of fright slipped passed her cracked lips before she could stop it. She was strung up next to Pändra—still unconscious, but fully clothed—at the far end of an arena of sorts: an area naturally created by a huge curvature in the cave wall. A violent-looking assortment of men, a couple hundred of them, were gathered in a seething mass fifty feet in front of them. Hair color was either black or red with no shade in between. Most of them were tall and muscular, all of them shabby, and every single man clearly needed to cut down on the caffeine. Or the testosterone. They were shoving at each other and snarling, already ripping clothes. Some were bleeding.

  She saw Jøsnic among them. He was easy to spot standing head and shoulders above the rest and with that luscious red mane of his. Only one other man could match his towering height, and he was…was…

  The personification of evil.

  This man didn’t have a single quality to soften his menace, like Jøsnic with his beautiful hair and teeth. Black-haired, this man’s face was viciously constructed out of large, indestructible bones, his right temple marked with a tattoo of black teeth that sliced into the corner of his eye. His body—probably no more ruthlessly muscled than Jøsnic’s—somehow gave the impression of being equipped exclusively to cause pain. He was shirtless, although his forearms were covered with strange spiked leather coverings. He wore black leather pants and combat boots with a ring of knives circling each of his calves.

  A scream rang out behind her.

  Faith whipped her head around to look over her right shoulder. She stiffened on her chain as dread dumped another load of adrenaline into her veins in a sickening flood. A man was dragging off a kicking and screaming woman by her hair…strange-colored hair, dark blonde several inches from her scalp, then brassy blonde for the rest of it. Like a bad dye job that had grown out partially, but not completely. The two disappeared behind an open-fronted building—just a roof and three walls—of what appeared to be a recreation area.

  Inside, there were half a dozen television sets arrayed in front of three tattered couches, a couple of desks loaded down with computers, a beat-up pool table with the green felt worn in places.

  Someone was moaning from the rickety building next door. This one had a medical red cross painted above the door and a steady billow of steam rising from a tin chimney.

  She craned her head around to check out the left, finding the beginnings of a neighborhood…or an attempt at one. Ramshackle houses trailed far back into the cave, too far back for Faith to see them all, but the visible ones looked like they’d been put together on a song and a prayer. The wooden walls were warped and gaping, the ceilings lopsided or unfinished, the doors pitted and split. No quaint drapes, fake plants, or decorations like there were in Ţărână’s family neighborhood.

  In the middle of a cluster of these “homes,” there was a squared-off space—what appeared to be a communal area—containing a couple of wooden picnic tables with benches, a large aluminum tub, a rusty stove, a refrigerator hiccupping along like it was on its last legs, a lineup of Sparkletts water containers, and half a dozen stacked barrels, some marked “supplies,” others “sewage.” Up near the ceiling, exposed electrical wires ran the length and breadth of the cave, snaking down in tangled vines to the houses and appliances. Naked light bulbs sagged from the uppermost wires at regular intervals. Again, crude and careless rather than quaint and homey.

  The saying, You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, never fit more appropriately than now. Ţărână suddenly wasn’t so “hick” and “backward” anymore, was it?

  “Have you ever been raped?”

  Faith startled, rattling her chain, and dropped her chin to look down.

  A woman was standing on her left side, her neck angled up to meet Faith’s eyes. She had dark blonde hair cut very short, nearly buzzed off, and was dressed for practicality in olive-colored cargo pants, a stained beige T-shirt, and dirty white tennis shoes. She had a clipboard tucked in the crook of her arm. Someone in charge? Please, say yes. This woman looked normal.

  “No,” Faith answered the question, her voice a mere croak. “I’ve never been raped.”

  “Good.” The woman nodded firmly. “Because you’ll get raped here, and the women who’ve been raped before handle it less well.” She aimed her chin at where the shrieking woman had been. “As you saw with Kendra.”

  Faith repeated the name to herself. Kendra…She drew a quick breath. That poor woman who’d been dragged off was Kendra Mawbry, the Dragon woman the Vârcolac had saved, but then re-lost one night to the cruel Topside Om Rău Videön.

  The clipboard woman exhaled roughly. “Unfortunately, Kendra doesn’t listen to anything I say and gets herself into trouble all the time. Before her, came Ashling, a spoiled little rich girl who spends her time weeping about wanting to go home.” She gave Faith a quick, clinical once-over. “I hope that’s not you.”

  “I…I…don’t…” Her words were hitching up inside her head. She’d made the biggest, dumbest mistake of her life agreeing to come to Oţărât. She’d way—way, way—overestimated how brave and practical she could be about this.

  “I’m Gwyn Billaud, by the way.”

  She had to swallow twice. “Faith Teague,” she managed to introduce herself. Sorry I can’t shake your hand, but I’m hanging from the ceiling naked. Her lips quavered.

  “Some pretty bad stuff is going to happen to you,” Gwyn continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “I know what you’re going through right now is immense. So it probably seems callous of me to stand here and talk to you about it while you’re in your current position. But if I can prepare you as much as possible beforehand, it’ll help you deal and settle in more quickly.”

  Faith glanced again briefly at the ramshackle neighborhood and nausea burned her nose. “Settle in?” she gasped out.

  Gwyn made a sound that sounded almost like a laugh. “Oh, Oţărât looks bad now, but trust me, it used to be way worse. I’ve organized the place, and now we’re cleaner, we have scavengers
traveling topside regularly for supplies and water, we’ve formed groups for enjoyment—for playing cards and games and sewing and whatnot—and we have systems for safety, Faith. Important systems you need to follow in order to limit the abuse you suffer. You won’t escape it entirely, but if you’re smart, you can keep it to a minimum. Okay?”

  Faith couldn’t locate her voice to offer an answer. Not including the constant berating dancers typically tolerated from their choreographers, she’d hardly ever endured a harsh word: never from Idyll, rarely from Kacie. She’d certainly never had to put up with abuse of the magnitude this Gwyn was hinting at. Her dry tongue spasmed in her mouth against the urge to shout. Why, why, why had she run away?!

  “In a few minutes there’s going to be a fight for you and”—Gwyn gestured at Pändra—“this woman. Whoever wins you will become your mate. He’ll be the first to have sex with you, marking you so you can have only his children.”

  Faith dropped down her eyelids in an extra-long blink. Children. By one of them. She couldn’t think about that.

  “None of the other Om Rău will mess with you during that marking period, but afterward, it’s open season. If you happen to be wandering by another man when the mood strikes him, he’ll jump you. The only one who’ll protect you in this instance is your mate. Partly out of a pride thing, but mostly because he’s been properly motivated to do so. By you. Get on your mate’s good side immediately, Faith, I mean it. I don’t care if you abhor him. You need to please him. Find out what he likes and give it to him. And never refuse him sex. No matter what, don’t. One time I had a raging urinary tract infection. That night my mate came to my bed. Do you think I wanted to have sex with him? No. What did I do? I shut my mouth and spread my legs.”

  Faith stared down on Gwyn, appalled.

  “That was Kendra’s mistake number one,” Gwyn went on. “Her nonstop whining made her mate hate her. He won’t do squat to protect her now, and the whole of Oţărât knows it. And you can see what happens.” She gestured behind Faith.

  Faith turned to see the man who’d dragged Kendra behind the recreational building just emerging, tugging his pants up. Barrel-chested with massive thighs and a puckered scar where his left eye used to be, he sauntered toward the main horde of Om Rău.

  A shiver wracked Faith’s entire body, and—

  She spotted another Om Rău male intently watching Kendra’s attacker.

  This man was leaning against the cave wall on the other side of the red cross building, his crossed arms displaying an array of black teeth tattoos along his forearms—a requirement for this place, it seemed. He had spiky black hair, a downturned mouth, and strange, bright black eyes—eyes that shifted over to focus on her. After a moment, his lips tipped sideways, as if they shared a secret.

  “W-who is that man?” she asked Gwyn hoarsely. His face was oddly familiar, even though she knew for certain she’d never seen him before.

  Gwyn thought she meant Kendra’s attacker, gesturing at him as she said, “That’s Bøllven. A real jackass. He’ll get to you at some point. That’s guaranteed.”

  Faith’s brain fuzzed at the edges, her heart flatlining through a couple of missed beats. Weighing in at a hundred and two pounds, she wouldn’t have a chance in a million against a man like that Bøllven. If he wanted to rape her, she’d end up just like Kendra, kicking and shrieking. Panic filled her mouth with a flood of acid. “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice going high-pitched as she reached the end of her capacity to cope with sudden impact, like a crash dummy meeting a cement wall. Her next words stuttered out of her. “I-I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  Gwyn wrapped a hand around Faith’s ankle and gave it a squeeze. “You can,” she said firmly. “You have to. Listen, not all of the men here are bad. Relatively speaking, that is. You might get lucky.” Gwyn gestured to the red-haired Om Rău who’d been Faith’s transport into Oţărât. “That’s Tøllar, one of my best scavengers. He also looks out for his women really well. He mainly needs to bathe more. Krølan’s not bad, either, and Ejøhn…actually, he sucks. Cantortħ’s pretty good, and…wait, where’s Cantortħ?”

  “Dead.”

  Faith turned her head at the same moment Gwyn did, and grimaced. Her shoulder sockets were really hurting now.

  The woman who’d just spoken was an athletically built female with black hair hanging in dreadlocks down her back: an Om Rău by her black eyes.

  Gwyn scowled at the woman. “Ħavel, I gave you a post to man. You’re supposed to be watching the children.”

  “I know.” Ħavel stepped closer. “But I need to warn you that this is going to be badder than usual, Gwyn. Some Vârcolac killed Cantortħ and Frøve, slammed their heads together from what I hear. So now the men are extra riled up, but Lørke and Jøsnic ain’t gonna let anyone fight.”

  “Aren’t,” Gwyn corrected. “Why not?”

  Ħavel pointed to Faith. “This one’s a Royal Dragon, and that one”—she shifted her finger over to Pändra—“is one of them Rău-Fey females from topside. As special as they are, Lørke and Jøsnic want to pair them only with their pure bloodlines.” Ħavel swept a gesture at the two tallest men.

  Faith blinked rapidly, switching her attention back and forth between Jøsnic and… Wait…Lørke. That black-haired horror who didn’t possess a shred of mercy or decency was Nỵko’s father?!

  “Which means,” Ħavel sneered, “all of these pricks are going to take their stank mood out on the rest of us.”

  The words had just come out of Ħavel’s mouth when an earth-shaking bellow rang out.

  Faith cringed.

  It was the one called Bøllven. He stomped over to Jøsnic and began a snarled conversation with him.

  Gwyn watched the argument. “Bøllven disapproves of the decision,” she murmured. “Understandably. He hasn’t been given a shot at a woman in years.”

  Ħavel snorted. “Maybe because he gets up on everyone else’s women alla time.”

  Jøsnic leaned toward Lørke and spoke to him. Lørke nodded. Bøllven’s lips snaked into an expression of malicious satisfaction.

  “Bøllven will be given the chance to fight,” Gwyn translated. “For this one,” she indicated Pändra, “since her ability to breed is in question.”

  A red-headed toddler scampered up and hugged Gwyn around the legs.

  “Ðange!” Gwyn exclaimed. “What are you doing out here?! You know you’re supposed to stay in hiding when there’s going to be a fight.” She scooped the little boy up, kissed his pudgy cheek, and handed him off to Ħavel. “Go!” Gwyn watched the two leave, then glanced at Faith. “My son.”

  Proper manners probably dictated that Faith should coo about how cute the toddler was, but she was sort of hanging with her armpits stretched to the limit right now.

  “He’s Jøsnic’s,” Gwyn supplied. “I’m one of his women.”

  Faith blinked rapidly. You’re…? Her thought cut off as an Om Rău approached her with a knife. She jerked on her chain, a breath hissing out of her. But he went over to Pändra and began slicing her leather jumpsuit off.

  Meanwhile Bøllven entered the center of the arena and bellowed again.

  The Om Rău with the bright black eyes stepped forward from the red cross building. “I challenge.”

  Bøllven threw back his head and laughed.

  Lørke laughed, too, but nodded his approval.

  The two combatants circled each other.

  Lørke headed toward Faith, his satanic gaze fixed hungrily on her.

  “Wh-what’s happening?” Faith choked.

  “Lørke will take you,” Gwyn said.

  “No.” Hysteria rose fast inside Faith. He’ll be the first to have sex with you, marking you so you can have only his children. “Please, n-no.” She clenched her bare thighs together against the sudden urge to pee, even though she doubted her body could make enough liquid for such an embarrassment. “I can’t!” A scream clawed at her chest.

  “Faith,” Gwyn said. “Remembe
r what I told you. Don’t fight him. Faith? Faith, calm down and listen to me.”

  Faith cycled her legs in empty air. Somehow she managed to open her voice box, and screams burst from her, one after the other. Hot vomit piled into her raw throat, a terror unlike any she’d ever known blocking her breath. Strength ebbed from her, but she found voice for one last scream.

  “Nỵko!”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Pändra slitted her eyelids open as the last of her jumpsuit was sliced off her body. She’d been conscious, but playing possum, for most of the confab between Faith and the woman calling herself Gwyn, so she’d heard the plan to pair that smidge of a ballet dancer with the arsemonger, Lørke.

  Not too keen on that, was Faith? One could hardly blame the girl. The two leaders, Lørke and Jøsnic, were frightful creatures. So this was why Raymond had never allowed Pändra to come down into Oţărât to deal directly with the Underground Om Rău. Even with her strength, she’d be hard pressed to defend herself against the two leaders should they decide to…well, do anything to her they fecking pleased.

  “Nỵko!” ripped out of the ballerina, and the one called Lørke stopped.

  The gang of Om Rău went quiet, too, as that name bounced around the cave, then faded. Even the two combatants stilled.

  That had been the bloody wrong thing to yell.

  Lørke’s eyes darkened to the shade of overturned earth, like ancient volcanic soil. “You Nỵko’s woman?”

  Faith heaved on her chain, her lips bloodless and her eyes wide.

  Lørke curled his mouth into what could only be termed a demon’s version of smile. “Not anymore.” Turning around, he stalked over to a bench, the lethal way he moved eerily reminding Pändra of Jaċken, and grabbed a bucket and hammer.

  “Oh, crap.” Gwyn shot a worried glance at Faith, then backed away.

  Faith’s head swung around. “Pändra,” she rasped out.

  Lørke returned to Faith and set down the bucket below her feet. He shoved his hand into it, pulling out a small metal piece of something, his hand dripping with runny black fluid.