by J. R. Ward
And O already had trouble… trouble that was back again as his cell phone rang for the eight hundredth time. The thing had started going off about twenty minutes ago, and ever since then the calls had been nonstop. He took the Nokia out of his leather jacket. Caller ID showed the number as untraceable. Probably U, or worse, Mr. X.
Word must already be out that the center had been incinerated.
When the cell shut up, O dialed U's number. As soon as it was answered, O said, "You looking for me?"
"Christ, what happened out there? Mr. X said the place is gone!"
"I don't know what went down."
"But you were there, right? You said you were going there."
"You tell Mr. X that?"
"Yeah. And listen, you better watch yourself. The Fore-lesser is pissed off and looking for you."
O leaned against the cold body of the Taurus. Holy hell. He didn't have time for this. His wife was somewhere away from him, either breathing or being buried, and regardless of what state she was in, he needed to get her back. Then he had to go after that scarred Brother who'd stolen her and put that ugly bastard into the ground. Hard.
"O? You there?"
Goddamn it… Maybe he should have fixed it up so it looked like he'd died in the blast. He could have left the truck at the site and walked out through the woods. Yeah, but then what? He'd have no money, no vehicle, and no backup against the Brotherhood as he went after the one with the scar. He'd be an AWOL lesser, which meant that if anyone figured out his disappearing act, he'd be hunted down like a dog by the whole Society.
"O?"
"I honestly don't know what happened. When I got there, it was dust."
"Mr. X thinks you torched the place."
"Of course he does. The assumption's convenient for him, even though I had no motive. Look, I'll call you later."
He clipped the phone shut and shoved it into his jacket. Then he took the thing back out and turned it off.
As he rubbed his face, he couldn't feel anything at all, and it wasn't because of the cold.
Man, he was in deep shit. Mr. X was going to need to blame someone for that ash pile, and O was going to be it. If he wasn't put to death on the spot, the punishment lined up for him was going to be severe. God knew the last time he'd been reprimanded, he'd nearly died under the Omega. Damn it… What were his options?
When the solution came to him, his body shuddered. But the tactician in him rejoiced.
The first step was getting access to the Society's scrolls before Mr. X found him. This meant he needed an Internet connection. Which meant he was going back to U's.
John left Wrath's study and walked down the hall to the left, sticking close to Tohr. There were doors every thirty feet or so running opposite the balcony, as if the place were a hotel. How many people lived here?
Tohr stopped and knocked on one of them. When there was no answer he knocked again and said, "Phury, man, you got a sec?"
"You looking for me?" came a deep voice from behind them.
A man with a whole lot of nice-looking hair was coming down the corridor. The stuff on his head was all kinds of different colors, falling down his back in waves. He smiled at John, then looked at Tohr.
"Hey, my brother," Tohr said. The two of them switched over to the Old Language as the guy opened the door.
John looked into the bedroom. There was a huge, antique canopied bed with pillows lined up on a carved headboard. Lots of fancy decorator stuff. Place smelled like a Starbucks.
The man with the hair switched to English and looked down with a smile. "John, I'm Phury. Guess we're both going to the doc's tonight."
Tohr put his hand on John's shoulder. "So I'll see you later, okay? You have my cell phone number. You just text-message me if you need something."
John nodded and watched Tohr stride off. Seeing those broad shoulders recede made him feel very alone.
At least until Phury said quietly, "Don't worry. He's never far, and I'll take good care of you."
John glanced up into warm yellow eyes. Wow… the things were the color of goldfinches. As he found himself relaxing, he connected the name. Phury… This was the guy who was going to be doing some of the teaching.
Good, John thought.
"Come on in. I just got back from a little errand."
As John breached the doorway, the smoky, coffee smell grew heavier.
"You ever been to Havers's before?"
John shook his head and spotted an armchair by a window. He went over and sat in the thing.
"Well, don't worry about it. We'll make sure you're treated right. So I guess they're going to try to get a bead on your bloodline?"
John nodded. Tohr had said that he was getting blood drawn and having a physical. Both of which were probably a good idea, given the stop, drop, and shiver he'd just pulled in Wrath's office.
He took out his pad and wrote, Why are you going to the doctor's?
Phury came over and looked at the scribbles. With an easy shift of his big body, he propped one huge shitkicker on the edge of the chair. John leaned away as the man pulled up his leathers a little.
Oh, my God… His lower leg was made up of a series of rods and bolts.
John reached out to feel the shiny metal, then looked up. He didn't realize he was touching his own throat until Phury smiled.
"Yeah, I know all about what it's like to be missing a part."
John glanced back at the artificial limb and cocked his head.
"How'd it happen?" When John nodded, Phury hesitated and then said, "I shot it off."
The door flew open and a hard male voice cut through the room. "I need to know—"
John shifted his eyes as the words died off. Then he cringed back in the chair.
The man in the doorway was scarred, his face distorted by a slash that ran right down the middle of it. But that wasn't what made John want to shrink out of sight. The black eyes in that ruined visage were like the shadows of a deserted house, full of things that probably would hurt you.
And to top it all off, the guy had fresh blood on his pant leg and left shitkicker.
That vicious gaze narrowed and hit John's face like a blast of cold air. "What are you looking at?"
Phury lowered his leg. "Z—"
"I asked you a question, boy."
John fumbled with his pad. He wrote fast and flashed the page to the other man, but somehow that just made the situation worse.
That misshapen upper lip pulled up, revealing tremendous fangs. "Yeah, whatever, kid."
"Back off, Z," Phury cut in. "He has no voice. He can't talk." Phury tilted the pad his way. "He apologizes."
John resisted the urge to hide behind the chair as he got raked over visually. But then the aggression radiating from the guy eased up.
"You can't talk at all?"
John shook his head.
"Well, I can't read. So we're SOL, you and me."
John worked his Bic quickly. As he showed the pad to Phury, the male with the black stare frowned. "What did the kid write?"
"He says that's okay. He's a good listener. You can do the talking."
Those soulless eyes shifted away. "Got nothing to say. Now what the hell do I set a thermostat at?"
"Ah, seventy degrees." Phury went across the room. "The dial should be here. See?"
"I didn't turn it up enough."
"And you've got to make sure this switch on the bottom of the unit is all the way over to the right. Otherwise, no matter what the dial is on, the heat won't kick in."
"Yeah… okay. And can you tell me what this says?"
Phury looked down at a square piece of paper. "It's the dosage information for the shot."
"No shit. So what do I do?"
"Is she uncomfortable?"
"Not right now, but I want you to fill this up for me and tell me what to do. I need one dose ready to go in case Havers can't get here fast enough."
Phury took the vial and unwrapped the needle. "Okay."
&n
bsp; "Do it right." When Phury was finished with the syringe, he recapped it and the two spoke for a while in the Old Language. Then the scary guy asked, "How long will you be gone?"
"Maybe an hour."
"Do me a favor first, then. Lose that sedan I brought her back in."
"I already did."
The scarred man nodded and left, the door closing with a clap.
Phury put his hands on his hips and stared at the floor.
Then he went over to a mahogany box on a bureau and took out what looked like a blunt. Holding the hand-rolled between his thumb and forefinger, he lit it and breathed in deep, keeping the inhale down, closing his eyes. When he exhaled, the smoke smelled like roasting coffee beans and hot chocolate combined. Delicious.
As John's muscles relaxed, he wondered what the stuff was. Not marijuana, certainly. But it wasn't just a cigarette.
Who is he? John wrote, and showed the pad.
"Zsadist. My twin." Phury laughed a little when John's mouth went slack. "Yeah, I know, we don't look much alike. At least, not anymore. Listen, he's a little touchy, so you might want to give him some space."
No shit, John thought.
Phury slipped on a shoulder holster and popped a gun in on one side and a black-bladed dagger on the other. He went into a closet and came back wearing a black leather peacoat.
He put the joint or whatever it was out in a silver ashtray next to the bed. "All right, let's go."
CHAPTER 11
Zsadist was quiet as he stole back into his room. After he fixed the thermostat and put the medicine on the bureau, he went over to the bed and leaned against the wall, staying in the shadows. He became suspended in time as he loomed over Bella and measured the slight rise and fall of the covers that marked her breathing. He could feel the minutes dripping into hours, and yet he could not move even as his legs grew numb.
In the candlelight he watched her skin heal right in front of his eyes. It was miraculous, the bruises fading from her face, the swelling around her eyes draining away, the cuts disappearing. Thanks to the deep sleep she was in, her body was throwing off the damage, and as her beauty was revealed once again, he was so damned grateful. In the lofty circles she ran in, a female with imperfections of any kind would be shunned. Aristocrats were like that.
He pictured his twin's unmarred, handsome face and knew Phury should be the one taking care of her. Phury was perfect savior material, and it was obvious he was into her. Plus she would like to wake up to a male like that. Any female would.
So why the hell didn't he just pick her up and put her in Phury's bed? Right now.
But he couldn't move. And as he stared down at her while she lay on pillows he'd never used, between sheets he'd never turned back for himself, he remembered the past…
Months had gone by since the slave first awoke in captivity. And in this time there was not anything that had not been done to him, in him, or on him, and there was a predictable rhythm to the abuse.
The Mistress was fascinated by his privates and felt the need to display them to other males she favored. She would bring these strangers into the cell, get out the salve, and show him off like a prized horse. He knew she did it to make the others insecure, for he could see the delight in her eyes as the males shook their heads in awe.
When the inevitable violations started up, the slave did his best to release himself from his skin and bones. It was so much more bearable when he could rise up into the air, rise higher and higher until he bounced along the ceiling, a cloud of himself. If he was lucky, he could transform entirely and just float along, watching them from above, playing witness to someone else's humiliation and pain and degradation. But it didn't always work. Sometimes he couldn't free himself, and was forced to endure.
The Mistress always had to use the salve on him, and of late he'd noticed something strange: Even when he was trapped in his body and everything being done to him was vivid, even as the sounds and the smells burrowed like rats into his brain, there was a curious displacement below his waist. Whatever he felt down there registered as an echo, as something removed from the rest of him. It was odd, but he was grateful. Any kind of numbing was good.
Whenever he was left alone, he worked at learning to control his huge, posttransition muscles and bones. This he succeeded at, and he'd attacked the guards a number of times, totally unrepentant about his acts of aggression. Verily, he no longer felt like he knew the males who watched over him and who found such disgust in their duty: Their faces were familiar to him in the manner of dream figures, naught but hazy leftovers from a wretched life he should have enjoyed more.
Each time he'd struck out he'd been beaten for hours—although only on the palms and the soles of his feet, because the Mistress liked him kept pleasing to the eye. As a result of his offensives, he was now guarded by a revolving squad of warriors, all of whom wore chain mail if they came inside his cell. Moreover, the bedding platform was now fitted with restraints that could be sprung from outside, so that after he'd been used, the guards didn't have to endanger their lives letting him go. And when the Mistress wanted to come calling, he was drugged into submission either through his food or by blow darts that would be shot through a slot in the door.
The days passed slowly. He was focused on finding the weakness in the guards and on removing himself as much as he could from the depravity… when for all intents and purposes he died. And died so hard that even when he was out from under the Mistress, he would never truly live again.
The slave was eating in his cell, trying to keep his strength up for the next opening within the guards, when he saw the sliding panel on the door shift open and a hollow tube protrude. He leaped up, though there was no cover to be had, and felt the first sting in his neck. He pulled out the dart as quickly as he could, but he was hit with another and then another until his body grew heavy.
He woke up on the bedding, shackled.
The Mistress was sitting right next to him, her head down, her hair shielding her face. As if she knew he had found consciousness, her eyes shifted to his.
"I am to be mated."
Oh, sweet Virgin in the Fade… The words he'd longed to hear. He would be free now, for she would need no blood slave if she had a nellren. He could go back to his duties in the kitchen…
The slave forced himself to address her with respect, although to him she was no female of worth. "Mistress, will you let me go?"
There was only silence.
"Please let me go," he said raggedly. Considering all he had been through, to throw his pride out for the possibility of being free was an easy sacrifice. "I beg you, Mistress. Release me of this confinement."
When she looked at him, tears were in her eyes. "I find that I cannot… I have to keep you. I must keep you."
He started to struggle, and the harder he fought the binds the more the look of love overtook her face.
"You are so magnificent," she said, reaching down to touch him between his legs. Her face was wistful… nearly worshipful. "Ne'er have I seen such a male as you. Would that you were not so far beneath me—I would show your face in my court as my consort."
He saw her arm moving slowly up and down and knew that she must be working that rope of flesh that interested her so. Mercifully, he could feel it not.
"Let me go. …"
"You never harden without the salve," she murmured in a sad voice. "And you never find completion. Why is that?"
She stroked him harder now until he felt a burning down where she was touching him. Frustration bled into her eyes, darkening them.
"Why? Why do you not want me?" When he stayed silent, she yanked at his male staff. "I am beautiful."
"Only to others," he said before he could catch the words.
Her breath stopped, as if he had choked her with his very hand. Then her eyes slid up his stomach and his chest to his face. They were still glossy with tears, but rage also filled them.
The Mistress rose from the bed and stared down at him. Then she
slapped him so hard she must have hurt her palm. As he spit out blood, he wondered if one of his teeth wasn't leaving with it.
While her eyes bored into his, he thought for sure she was going to have him killed, and a calmness came over him. At least the suffering would be over then. Death… death would be glorious.
Abruptly she smiled at him, as if she knew his thoughts, as if she'd reached into him and taken them out of him, as if she'd stolen them just as she had laid larceny to his body.
"No, I shall not be sending you unto the Fade."
She leaned down and kissed one of his nipples, then sucked it into her mouth. Her hand drifted over his ribs, then onto his belly.
Her tongue flicked yet and still over his flesh. "You grow gaunt. You need to feed, do you not?"
She worked her way down his body, kissing and sucking. And then it happened quickly. The salve. Her getting up on top of him. That hideous merging of their bodies.
When he closed his eyes and turned his head, she slapped him once… twice… many more times. But he refused to look at her, and she was not strong enough to force his face around, even when she grabbed onto one of his ears.
As he denied her his eyes, her weeping grew as loud as the slap of her flesh against his hips. When it was over, she left in a swirl of silk, and not long thereafter the chains were released.
The slave eased himself up on one forearm and wiped his mouth. Looking down at his blood on his hand, he was surprised that it was still red. He felt so soiled, it wouldn't have been a shock to find it some kind of rusted brown.
He rolled off the bed, still groggy from the darts, and found the corner that he always went to. He sat with his back to the juncture of the walls and curled his legs up against his chest so his heels were tight to his male parts.
Sometime later he heard a struggle outside his cell, and then the guards pushed a small female inside. She fell in a heap, but launched herself at the door as it closed.
