The Hailey Holloway Complete Series

by K. C. Stewart

  Three more came in rapid succession. These ones cut into her lower back. Hailey was hyper aware of her body and could feel the flesh split apart. Blood seeped from the cuts and trailed in single file lines down to the waistband of her sweatpants where it seeped into the cotton.

  Her skin had turned a vicious red. It was on fire and over sensitive as he crossed lines and interwove cuts. She imagined red X's varying in degrees of severity decorated across her back. She'd look like a fucking argyle sweater when he was done with her.

  It was wet, she realized. The whip shrieked through the air and hit her skin with a tip sodden in blood, it was wet. With every crack, someone screamed. Hailey just wanted to tell her to shut up. Between the screams and the pain she could barely remember to breathe.

  Hailey's body jerked each time. Vibrations of the hit would continue on until the next one. The muscles in her legs gave out first. She sagged against her bindings, letting the metal of the cuffs slice into her wrists. Across the room she could see the man behind her. A splattering of her blood was on his face and clothing. She thought back to the word of the day calendar she used to keep on her desk at work for the right word to describe his face. Hailey settled on Euphoria, a noun meaning a state of intense happiness and self-confidence. If there was one thing the guard had, it was an intense happiness. Her pain brought him joy. The thought made her swallow the bile that wanted to rise.

  And the woman was still screaming.

  She blinked still watching the reflection again. The screaming woman blinked too. Her eyes went wide with realization. That was Hailey screaming, that was her mouth open and contorted in pain.

  Around strike number twenty-six she lost consciousness. Her head hung flaccid on her neck. He had not noticed until hit thirty when her head fell forward. She woke after something wet slapped her in the face. Her head lulled to the side, the weight almost unbearably heavy. He stood in front of her with a wet rag and slapped it against her face again. The split lip he gave her earlier stung with salty water.

  "Come on back to me, Hailey," he cooed. "We still have seventy more to go." This time the slap of the cloth went over her shoulder and hit the cuts on her back.

  She shrieked.

  Yellow and black swirled her vision. Disoriented and in a panic, her whole body shook uncontrollably as shock settled in. She didn't notice him walk behind her but when he spoke next it was on her neck. Only his breath touched her but she shrank from him like it had been his hands.

  Be brave, she had told herself when he had strung her up. But now, with her body being skinned and his breath in her ear, she told herself something else. Survive.

  "Now, count with me. One…"

  Chapter Twelve

  Darby had been busy. His dining room was covered with candles, large, small, tall, and fat. On every flat surface perched a flame that flickered contrasting lights and shadows on the walls. She had cleansed the entire house twice that afternoon and the dining room an additional third time. Darby had outdone herself, he thought as he sat at the table. A large bowl of pure spring water that had been brought from the mountain she lived on sat in front of him. He stared at the surface, willing Hailey's face to show.

  "Soon." Darby's hand rested on his shoulder. "We'll find her soon." Dacea reached up and laid his hand over hers.

  "Where is Lia?"

  "I asked her not to come, the less distractions, the better."

  He nodded.

  Darby set a photograph on the table. It was the one he kept of Hailey on his nightstand. She was stretched out on her bed with a sleepy smile on her face. He had taken it a week after they removed her from the hospital. Dacea had stayed the entire week at her apartment until she was well enough to get around herself. He would have stayed longer but was kicked out by the minx herself. It hadn't bothered him at the time since he needed to finish work on his house.

  Now he regretted not staying longer.

  "I want you to picture this in your mind." She slid the photo closer to him and took the seat across from him.

  Dacea didn't need to look at the picture, he already had it memorized from the hours at night he spent gazing at it. But still, he looked. He would always look. Hailey was his Mate, and he would never tire of her smile.

  "Give me your hands." Her palms were stretched out on either side of the bowl. He placed his palms in hers, and at her nod, he closed his eyes and drew the picture of Hailey. Her brown locks of hair spread in a wild mass of tangles on the pillow with one piece beginning to fall in her face. Her smile was a closed mouth one; she didn't share that smile with just anyone and when it graced her lips, he knew she was thinking of him. He drew her eyes last, big and brown; they looked at him with a sleepy happiness. He knew why too. She had woken to find him asleep on the floor beside her bed.

  Vaguely, he heard Darby chanting. Dacea let the picture come to life. He woke with a crick in his neck and an angel staring down at him. Every morning she told him that he could have slept in the bed with her but he always told her no. She was still healing and he worried he would hurt her if he crowed her too much. It also helped with the temptation of her body smothered against his. However, Dacea would sleep on the floor for the rest of his life just to wake up with her looking down at him again. That's when the smile hit her and he took the picture with his phone.

  "Darby," he choked out, "where is she?"

  *****

  Hailey's arms were swinging freely over her head. With every footstep her ribs gave a pinch in her chest and an agonizing ache in her back. The guard had tossed her over his shoulder to carry her back to her cell. She thought it was considerate of him not to drag her again.

  Her consciousness had flowed in and out like the tide. One minute she was hanging disoriented and screaming. Then she was on the cold cement ground. There was no strength left in her, her muscles depleted from being strained for so long. Finally, she was being hoisted from the ground and tossed like a doll over his shoulder.

  Her lip was split from when she kneed him in the groin; it had earned her the first hit. She knew that one of her eyes was completely swollen shut from where he had punched her after she kept passing out. Hailey didn't want to think about the scars that she would have from the whipping or the damage he did when he decided to use her stomach as a soccer ball.

  "We had fun, eh?" The guard slapped her butt.

  Her voice was all but gone, and her throat dry from screaming, but she still managed to say, "Fuck you."

  They had reached her door. Hailey could see Alex staring at her. His white face looked on with horror. At this point she was pretty sure there was more color in her face, even if it was just dried on blood. She had to blink her one good eye a few times to focus on him clearly. Her hand began to lift to wave but survival mode had turned off all other functions than the basics.

  Her head swam with all the blood that rushed towards it as she hung upside down from the guard's shoulder. The familiar beeps of the keypad sounded. She tried to keep her head on straight. Don't pass out, she repeated over and over in her head. She had to stay focused for just a little bit longer and this would be over.

  Once in her room he dropped her on her bed. A scream she hadn't known she had left in her tore from Hailey's dry throat. Her back viciously protested the weight it was now bearing.

  "Same time tomorrow, Sweetheart, and that's when the fun really begins." Alex pounded on the wall. The guard looked up and sneered. "That's right, go ahead and hit the wall, won't do you any good."

  She kept her eyes closed until she heard the lock click in place. The darkness was pulling at her again. It beckoned her like a moth to flame.

  "Jesus." Alex was right by her head on the other side of the glass. Her eye fluttered open. This man had lived for hundreds, if not thousands of years; he had seen war, famine and torture, and yet he could barely look at her.

  "Hailey, can you hear me?"

  "My ears are the only part of me that work right now." Blood began to seep into the sheets.
She could feel it dampening underneath her. It reminded her that she was topless. Modesty should have been the least important thing on her mind but it wasn't. It was a problem she could fix. Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes as she slowly lifted her arm and rested it across her chest. The spots she had become so familiar with over the last few hours had returned to her vision.

  "Alex?" She had said a little while later. He had been pacing the room and came back to the wall.

  "You're back," he sighed. Hailey must have passed out again. "Please stop doing that."

  "No promises." She tried to smile but she could feel her healing lip begin to split again. "Can I ask a favor?"

  "Of course."

  "I'd like to go home now."

  His eyebrows tightened together as he gave her a pitying look. "If I could get you out I would, Hailey."

  She swallowed trying to wet her dry mouth. Her shaking hand lifted from the pool of blood it sat in up to the wall. Hailey wrote out the numbers that spelled her name, hearing each beep as she went. "Four, two, four, five, three, nine." He spoke aloud as she wrote. When she was done her arm dropped heavily to the bed. Alex stared at the bloody numbers painted on the glass. She waited for the flicker of recognition to hit and saw the smile spread across his face.

  "Is that?"

  "My name," she croaked.

  "You're a genius. Just hold on, I'm going to take you home." She heard the beeping of the keypad before she passed out again.

  *****

  "Well?" Dacea looked forward into the water. His eyes strained as he searched but all he saw was a bowl of water. "Darby! Where is she?"

  "Here." Her head fell to the side as she studied the water.

  "What? I don't see anything."

  Darby lifted her milky white eyes that were heavy with magic from the water to the doorway. "There."

  Following the line of her out stretched, pointed hand, Dacea turned his head toward the foyer. He could move neither his body nor his mind, both of which did not want to trust what his eyes clearly saw. Hailey lay draped in the arms of another man. Her head hung off her neck like a broken doll, her arms limp in the air while her ashen skin paled by the moment. Dried blood marred her skin and the sheet that she was wrapped in.

  Dacea couldn't hear a heartbeat over the pounding rhythm of his own and the anguished cries of his dragon. It was a misconception. One's heart didn't stop in moments like these. No, it gets louder and louder until the only thing keeping you conscious is the constant rapid thudding of your pulse.

  To love someone, means to fear for them. Without one, the other cannot survive. Good and bad, light and dark, love and fear, all sides of the same coin. In this moment, he truly knew what fear was, and in turn, what love was.

  Her bruised skin was purpling already. Someone did that to her, purposefully. Hailey was an innocent in their world, pulled in to the chaos because of him. She bled because of him.

  "What happened?" Darby's voice penetrated the silence. Dacea pushed back from his chair and took her from the man's hold. Time slowed as he bared her weight. She was too light in his arms; he feared he would harm her further with even the gentlest of touches. As if boneless, her head fell toward him and rested against his shoulder. He kissed her hair, praying that she live through this, and time sped back up.

  Darby quickly cleared the table. "Put her here." Carefully, as if he were holding an infant, Dacea laid her on the table. Picking the pieces of hair that had stuck in the dried blood off her face, he saw the proof she held on. Her chest rose and fell with a shallow breath.

  Protect and save. Genetics, love for his Mate, and his dragon were all telling him to protect and save. Darby would heal what she could. Her eyes flicked to him and then to the man, silently telling him to do what he needed to do. Dacea turned toward the man with murder in his eyes. Darby would save. He would protect.

  His dragon was flirting under the surface. His Mate was harmed and this man, who was covered in her blood, would pay. Three steps and Dacea was on him. He threw a punch and hit him square in the jaw. Blood dripped from his mouth but the man did not fight back. So Dacea threw another, and another. He had him cornered by the throat with the talons of Dacea's half changed form, and still the man did not defend himself.

  A strangled wet cough sounded from behind him. Dacea loosened his grip slightly and turned to see Darby wipe some blood from Hailey's mouth. Crimson on porcelain.

  "That was not my doing," the man said from behind Dacea's grip.

  He turned his amber stare from his Mate and faced the man again. His dragon lent him a calm that cleared his mind. Only then did he notice the scent of dragon. He took the scent in expecting to smell the woody pine of a Green, instead it was salty. His head tilted. Not Green, but Blue. Dacea lessoned his hold on the man and stepped back. "Who are you?"

  "Alex."

  "You are not one of Silas's men," Dacea stated.

  "No, I am not."

  "Then who are you, Alex?"

  "Hailey's cellmate. Like I said, that was not my doing, nor was it Silas's. It was a guard and it would have been worse if she had not gotten us out." Alex looked over at her with concern. "He was only playing with her there, tomorrow was when he had planned to do the real damage."

  Dacea's fist went through the wall next to Alex's head. A cry of misery bellowed from his mouth. He left the dragon where he was and turned to grip Hailey's hand. Her breathing was evening out but her skin looked far worse than just a few moments before. Alex's words ran through his head in a battle with his own thoughts. This was the result of someone "playing." Such a harmless word turned into a nightmare.

  "Thank you." Dacea found it hard to speak. His voice was thick with too many emotions.

  "She did the hard part."

  "She always does." He kissed her knuckles.

  "I'd turn her on her stomach if I were you. Her back…" Alex cleared his throat, "her back is where the majority of her injuries are."

  Darby helped Dacea roll her over. He stripped off his shirt and bundled it under her turned head. Alex had averted his eyes but it wasn't for the modesty of his Mate. Darby's fingers carefully peeled the bloodied sheet from her back. It had begun to dry and stuck to her skin in spots. She had to work slowly or risk causing more damage.

  Hailey's skin was shredded. A whip most likely, he had seen his fair share of whippings in his life—had even been on the receiving end a dozen times or so, but this was brutality at its finest. He knelt by her head, resting his forehead against hers and his hand over her hair. It was cowardly of him, but he couldn't look at her injuries. They were dozens of reminders of how he failed her.

  Darby's hands were glowing as she hovered over Hailey's shoulders and slowly moved them down her back. She wasn't a healer but knew enough to help when things got rough. "How bad?" he asked her.

  "Just give me a few more minutes and then you can take her upstairs." The witch continued to move over her body, glowing hands and a few words before moving onto the next section. Color began to pinken her cheeks slowly. Dacea picked up the discarded rag Darby had been using and continued to wipe Hailey's face of the ordeal she lived through. With soft gentle strokes he removed it all. The furrow in her brow relaxed. If he had not known differently, Dacea would have thought she was merely sleeping.

  "I'm done for now." Darby gave Dacea's shoulder a squeeze. "I'll get things cleaned up here. Go get her into bed. I'll be up in a moment with a salve for her cuts."

  He began to move her but as a moan came from trembling from her lips, he abruptly stopped. No matter how Dacea touched her he would be hurting her. After hesitating and hovering for a few minutes, he seceded with folding her over his shoulder. As he got her into position, Alex stepped forward.

  "I wouldn't hold her like that."

  Dacea didn't like being told what to do when it came to caring for his Mate. He growled and pushed past the man. Hailey began to thrash in his arms. Her legs kicked wildly and a, "no no no no no," came from her strangle v
oice. Alex rushed forward and with his help they got her safely onto the floor leaning against Dacea.

  "I told you not to carry her like that," he scolded. "It's how he brought her back to the room after he was done."

  Hailey had calmed again and rested her head against Dacea's shoulder. He kissed her and whispered onto her skin. "I didn't know. I…I'm sorry." He closed his eyes and pressed his lips once more to her hair. "There are guest rooms on the second floor. Have your pick. I'm taking her to the third floor. Once she's settled, we'll talk."

  Alex knew better than to ask him if he needed any help. Instead he nodded and began up the stairs. Dacea held her a moment longer. What was left of the bloodied sheet had fallen down a few inches. A dark purple bruise formed at the top of her breast. Pushing the sheet down another inch he saw the two arches of teeth marks embedded into her chest. "Oh Céile…" The bastard marked her. Her shredded back were all his marks but this was his signature. She would be able to live with what he did to her, but the bite would haunt her. It would haunt him.

  He lifted her, being careful to touch as little of her back as possible. Getting her in a bed was first priority, he would show Darby the bite and hopefully she could fix it. Otherwise, Hailey would be getting it surgically removed. No one left a mark on his Mate but him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Silas had the last of the proof he needed. He had been to the hospital and the adoption agency, but nothing could fully confirm what his heart already knew.

  Hailey was his sister.

  Her parents had just proved that fact over a very nice coffee cake and tea. They hadn't been especially forthcoming at first, but he had some magic and felt no shame in using it on them. They told him everything from the day they brought her home up until when he had last seen them in the hospital. When Hailey had been placed in their care, his father had come by to check on them. Her parents had no recollection of the visit, just like they wouldn't have any of his, but he had been able to pull it out of their subconscious.