Wicked Weapon (Dark Hearts Book 2)

by Cari Silverwood

  I could plan. I could sleep. I could dream of grinding off guys’ dicks.

  I could...wonder if last night was some sleep-deprived imaginary thing. Had I truly made love to Grimm and felt that way? I questioned everything I did because I was never sure who or what was making me do things. My memories were going haywire.

  I wanted it to be real so much that my heart began to ache, so I made myself busy doing petty things.

  Afterward, after all this went away...I would think some more about what Grimm was to me.

  I had to wait until nightfall before looking for Cherie. The waiting consumed me. With the hairpin, I put a hearty number of holes in my pillow. Practice made one perfect at puncturing pillows.

  A hairpin. I turned the kansashi over and over in my hand, studying it. Despite its antiquity, the point was sharp enough to penetrate skin. The yellowed metal was quite thick and vaguely triangular in cross-section. Stiletto blades were made like that, for strength, so you could punch through flesh. Any foramen into the brain was small and made to let nerves in and out, not steel. My chances were probably slim that I would hit such a small mark.

  If the time came to use the hairpin, I’d have to choose where to strike.

  When the time came.

  Around midnight, I dressed in mauve bra and panties only, so as to make less visual clutter and be less overall white in appearance – a blind llama could find me in a snowstorm in one of those dresses – and I set out to stalk the mesmer scent that said Cherie was at the other end.

  The corridors made it no easier than before. I found the greenhouse again before I found her. I went in a few circles, through a few moments of fog, tore a toenail, and swore.

  But I found her.

  Chapter 25

  Zorie

  There should’ve been trumpets and a fanfare, clapping, but there was nothing except the sweating of my palms, the flicker of a faulty fluorescent tube, and my heart beating so hard I wondered if the guards would hear me. They went to sleep at night. I shouldn’t be that nervous. The only time I’d heard anyone down here was when dawn was close.

  Afraid that her door handle would be the only one in this catacomb of a house that would be locked, I put my hand to it and applied force.

  The damn thing turned.

  I’d looked in through the grille and seen her, sitting on her bed, but that had been surreal.

  The door swung fully open and she was still there, her head turning toward me. Her black hair, now so long it reached her waist, flowed like a river of ink over her white dress.

  Expecting her to leap up and run at me, arms wide, was ridiculous. Not to be. She blinked at me, emotionless.

  “Oh, Cherie.”

  I choked up with tears. I let myself run through a stage that was a mix of grief and joy before I blotted away the moisture with my arm and walked to her.

  What she’d been through, I knew without her saying.

  What was to come, I could imagine, unless I could get her free.

  She was so young, almost the baby of my students, and whether she was rich or poor, I’d have felt the same.

  Such promise.

  I broke down again and sobbed while sitting next to her, my arm around her shoulders.

  I made myself stop, again. This was self-indulgent. Should I wake her? Indubitably, that was a yes. But I couldn’t and shouldn’t do it fully, and I needed to wait. The shock might unhinge her. If she panicked now, it would be a nightmare.

  I wanted to hug her and explain everything that was to come, so she knew there was hope, but explaining it all would be for me, not her. She was happy as she was, in this amnesiac, blissed-out state. I knew what I could do to her. I could feel the extent of my powers.

  I could wake her, but I shouldn’t.

  So I did the next best. I sat beside Cherie, holding her hand, while I whispered enough facts and memories to make myself feel better. Just me, not her. Plus I hoped she’d retain some of this when I did draw her from this dreamlike state.

  There were lines on her face and skin that hadn’t been there before. Scars too. Bruises. Where had she been? What had been done to my girl? Babying students was stupid when they were adults. I didn’t care. That was irrelevant here and Cherie represented everything that was wrong with this place. She was an innocent, far more than I was even. She didn’t deserve any of this. My imagination about what she’d been through would’ve only scratched the surface of the truth.

  I severed that thought trail. No more.

  Talking to her properly, with her mind running on all six cylinders, was what I needed, for my peace of mind. I craved companionship. I couldn’t have that.

  I kept talking about her past to myself. About Jacob, who I figured wanted to marry her. About what she could make of herself if she went back to university and applied herself. More, most of it rambling. I spilled a lot of crazy stuff. It was definitely for the best to keep her spaced-out.

  My crying was supposed to be minimal, but I found I’d dry up, wipe my eyes, then start again. Crocodile tears that splashed on me. At least only my bra and my thighs ended up wet.

  “Okay.” I took one last sniff then used her quilt to blow my nose. Take that Einar, have some extra laundry. “We have to go, now.”

  I was sure we were still in the countryside of Britain, somewhere. Compared to Australia, distances were pitiful. I’d probably walked farther to my front letterbox than most Brits had in their lifetime. So long as it wasn’t blizzard weather, I’d get her out of here. Then I had to return to Grimm, because I still couldn’t leave without help.

  Grimm’s plan had ignored the fact that I could help him disable his guards.

  Fuck. There was the flaw. If they didn’t come for him today, they’d find Cherie gone, and after that, who knew what they would do to us.

  Our captors in a rage, with Grimm still locked to the wall – it wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate.

  It’d been days since I’d been taken upstairs. Wait, wait... I banged my head with my palm. Grimm went upstairs even when I didn’t.

  Relief flooded me and I placed my hand on my heart.

  Stupid me. Getting my knickers in a twist over nothing. We only had to kill three guards after all.

  Only.

  I muttered a prayer and drew Cherie to her feet, then instructed her to follow me.

  We could do this.

  If this was going to be easy, I’d not be feeling like I was going to vomit every step we took toward the greenhouse.

  Grimm probably couldn’t kill or knock out three guards.

  I couldn’t make it through that greenhouse door, but I was sure I could free her.

  Someone needed to get out of here alive.

  Yes, Mavros was a dick, thinking he could get revenge on these men, but life was for living, for trying. I would keep on hoping because without that I was nothing.

  Chapter 26

  Zorie

  Grimm had seen terrible things but he hadn’t said what they were.

  On the way to the greenhouse, I held her hand. Every step, I kept hold of her. Something was wrong, maybe everything, and I knew of nothing else to do except what I was doing.

  I was afraid, far more than ever before. The mind fogs that came and went seemed less often. The house seemed quieter, sharper, more here than ever before.

  I couldn’t say how long we’d been here.

  The more I ran through what Grimm and I had done together and the missing memories, the more wrong things seemed.

  It was as if we’d drained a swamp, expecting to find a lost ball but instead the roof of a car was revealed by the lowering water, then a hand, then a piece of clothing floating from a smashed window.

  The difference was impossible to pin down, but the house wasn’t what it should be.

  The greenhouse door was still in existence at the end of the aisle of plants. We glided past the foliage, past the silhouettes of black tendrils against the light sky, beyond the glass.

  I t
ook Cherie’s hands and looked across at her. She was a doll, pale and still, her eyes blinking rarely. Her hands were thin and cold. Such long fingers. I felt them stir feebly against mine.

  “You’d have made a good surgeon at Medecine Sans Frontieres,” I whispered. Though she’d never aimed to be a doctor. I was clutching for things to say.

  I had to free her mind soon, but not yet.

  I had to let her go.

  It pained me to. For the best. I must, but doing it seemed like I was letting go of my last link with the outside world.

  Grimm and I were trapped here – insects preserved in amber, corpses sunken deep in mud, mummies locked in their coffins. My imagination was being droll.

  I should smack myself.

  Her pendant was around my neck. I unclasped it and placed it on her, making sure to fasten it securely into one of the small links and not with the matching part of the clasp, so it drew tighter on her neck. If she fell, it’d stay on. The purple amethyst shone prettily. She didn’t react at all but I hoped she’d remember me doing this. The pendant was from before all this ugliness and she would need this reminder.

  Dawn was approaching. Pale streaks dressed the sky and a wind was rising. Outside the door, a ball of tangled twigs rattled past the glass, rolling.

  The familiar molasses effect gripped my legs and sucked me to a halt.

  “Go. Tell Jacob to take care of you.” I let her hands slip from mine, gave her one big hug, saddened again at how thin she’d become, then I commanded her to walk.

  Cherie went toward the door, easy as pie, in spite of the new dose of tears dribbling down my cheeks. She opened the door and she stepped out.

  My influence didn’t reach forever, but I figured it would go farther than Einar and Kaage’s if I stretched. I was here and they were far away. And so I let her walk another ten or twenty yards. I couldn’t see her when I released her. As the veil lifted from her mind, I shoved a final urgent command at her.

  If she remembered anything of what I’d babbled to her in the room, she’d know what to do.

  “Go,” I whispered, and I fell slowly to my knees onto the grit on the stone pavers. I’d been holding myself strong for just this moment and now my foundations had turned to dust.

  The shockwave of her reality reasserting itself arrived in my mind. I tried to calm her, but there was some urgency to this. She must not stay here.

  “Go,” I repeated to myself and to her. Go.

  Eventually I felt her steel herself, in spite of her chaotic thoughts, and she turned away. There must be roads out there. Cars. People. Go! For as long as I could, I steered her away.

  She could drive, think, walk, her mind was functioning if somewhat stunned.

  And I hadn’t really said goodbye. Not one true word of goodbye. The poor girl. That pained me and I put my hand to my throat. What if she became lost and I never saw her again? I didn’t know where she was going or who would find her. None of us knew where this house was on a map. I prayed there were some good Samaritans out there this morning.

  When she was truly gone from my senses, I stayed on my knees for several minutes, gathering the pieces of myself that had shattered away, then I climbed to my feet.

  I was still here. Grimm was still here, so were all the other women.

  If she found the police today, perhaps Grimm’s plan wouldn’t be needed.

  I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. Not yet. There’d been so many disappointments. We’d go on with this, because we had to.

  I sneaked back to my room. When I opened the door, Einar was sitting on my bed, waiting.

  When I fell to my knees, it wasn’t of my volition.

  “Well. Well. You have been wandering, my guards tell me?”

  My protest died before I could speak.

  “No lying, please. You don’t lie. I don’t lie? Agreed?”

  I nodded, my head seeming as if it would burst from the pressure. Kaage was somewhere nearby too. I hadn’t felt them, until this moment. Which meant they could hide from me.

  This was what I’d been missing, and no wonder. I knew the reason for my rising dread. The entire time I’d been in this house, they’d exerted control over me. I knew what he’d say before he said it.

  “Of course, this means I should be truthful too. My truth, girl?” He rose from the bed, pretending he was contemplating, and he stalked over with three lazy strides. I felt, heard, a guard come up behind me, saw his shadow. Einar leaned down and combed my hair with his fingers, arranging the strands around my face, then he pulled it into one handful behind me and wrapped elastic around it. “Better if we get this out of the way.”

  My lips and fingers, my legs, cooled, quivered. What I’d missed was that nothing here had ever been real.

  They’d coated reality in lies.

  The guard was busy wrapping my wrists together behind me, with coarse rope, tying it tight. The fibers scratched me. The act terrified me. This was the unknown.

  “The truth is that we’ve been following you every night. Cameras here. Cameras there. This room, Grimm’s, the hallways. You were never as tricky as you thought you were. Are you sorry about that?”

  Oh fuck. Yes. How evil of him to stretch this out. If he’d seen me in the corridors, I knew who else he’d seen tonight.

  He raised his eyes to look at the man standing behind me. “We’re going to have a nice picnic in the greenhouse with Mister Grimm and the chess board. You will tie her to the table and gag her with my favorite gag.”

  Grimm. Oh shit.

  Einar was planning something bad. Of course he was, and it wasn’t just me who would suffer.

  He controlled my body, not my mind, this time, and all the while he’d manhandled me, one thought had run around and around in my head.

  Where the fuck was the ability to push back that Mavros had said I had in me? Where?

  I needed it, now, like never before. I’d tried and tried and tried. I’d had no success against Grimm, but, really, I think I’d wanted what he did to me.

  Two mesmers. How did I beat two?

  I would’ve wept except I was too busy being desperate and trying to fight.

  Tied up, yes, but what was coming might be death. I didn’t want to be one of the meek ones and lie down in my grave for this man. I wanted to rip his throat out first.

  Einar didn’t bother reinforcing his words with mental commands.

  The guard had to drag me onward with my hands bound. The man didn’t seem disconcerted by my struggles, apart from growling curses in my face to get me to quieten when I screamed. If anything my struggling pleased him. He left his hand painfully wrapped in my hair, and grinned across at me a few times.

  Whatever Einar’s reasons for this, I liked being able to call them both assholes, though it made the guard wrap a dirty cloth about my face. I glared at him. I was making up for lost opportunities.

  Finally my brain was clean of their influence. I could think, regret, hate even better.

  Grimm had never questioned why I wasn’t caught while exploring, had he? Had I ever told him how far I was going? I couldn’t remember. Maybe not. I hadn’t had time to elaborate on my nighttime excursions. I hadn’t trusted him enough either.

  If he’d known what I was doing, Grimm would’ve yelled at me.

  All that time I’d wandered the corridors, they’d had me; they’d never quite let go of me. I was a collectable. When the hell would I get to own myself again, in entirety?

  Now? My mind was free.

  Which gave rise to another deduction.

  Maybe my death was coming. I could see Einar wanting me to see that – to see it clear as day. He was such a fucking sadist. He’d love to know I was aware of everything.

  Grimm was being brought here, oblivious of the trouble we were in. He’d think this was another training scene.

  I left a trail of scraped away dirt and leaves on the greenhouse floor as they took me along the aisle, dragging my heels, while I coughed at the cloth gag a
nd swore through a mouth stuffed with cotton.

  Daylight. I sagged and let the guard carry me the rest of the way. Daylight made this place seem just as eerie. Most of the plants were dead. Gray sky above. The wind howled past. The rattle of the greenhouse structure and leaves whipping by on the ground beyond the door said this was a miserable day.

  Cherie was out there somewhere. If they’d found her, Einar would’ve paraded her before me in triumph... Wouldn’t he?

  The uncertainties were excruciating.

  Swallows flew overhead, one even darted past us, having found a hole in the glass, somewhere.

  The bird was free. Cherie was. I pined after them both, especially when the guard stripped me and forced me to my knees before a square table. He pulled me facedown across the timber until my head hung over the edge. He bound me there, naked, wrapping leather about my thighs, wrists and arms, to secure them to the table legs then he added a doubled-over leather strap across my back that he cinched, tight.

  I couldn’t move, except to hunch my upper back or my ass an inch or two in the air or sideways. I tried but got precisely nowhere. The bastard grinned at me some more while I spat swear words into the sodden gag.

  When he began to ink something onto my back with a marker pen, I was sure it would be a chessboard. I’d spotted a small box filled with delicate, silver-and-gold chess pieces on a chair beside the table. Einar had said they were to play.

  Quaint. I liked chess. I was fairly sure they weren’t going to ask me to solve chess puzzles.

  Grimm sauntered into the greenhouse just as the guard was wriggling a chunky metal gag into my mouth. As he worked the gag into place, a metal bar slid in that held down my tongue. I retched once then settled. Fuck them.

  I couldn’t warn Grimm, couldn’t even be a clever ventriloquist, with my tongue immobilized.

  As he fastened the buckle behind me and over my hair, I could see Grimm’s feet arriving, off the side. He said nothing, only crushed the dry leaves underfoot with a crunch.

  Barefoot. Men had such big feet.

  I had things to tell him, desperately important things. Mostly run!