“There’s someone I would like you to meet.” He nuzzled me, the rasp of his beard delicious against my skin. “Will you come with me?”
“Grier,” Amelie cried out. “Don’t—”
One of the guards lunged at her, smacking against the invisible barrier filling the doorway, and she screamed.
“Come with me,” Volkov coaxed, the scent of him effervescent in my blood. “Would you like that?”
“Mmm.” I curled against his chest, breathing him in, and let him guide me down the stairs. The driver tipped his chin at me and opened the rear passenger door. Another male sat across from me, our knees brushing. A trill of fear shot up my spine, and my heart rate spiked. “I remember you.”
“Shh.” Volkov joined us, hauling me into his lap with gentle hands. “Pay him no mind.”
“We should have done this from the start,” the male sighed, his voice husky and deep. “I wasted a week of my time on recon when you could have hooked her from the start and saved us all this trouble.”
His voice sounded so familiar… I angled my head for a peek at his face, but Volkov cupped my jaw and turned me back to him. Try as I might, I couldn’t look away from the storm gathering in his thundercloud eyes.
“I had hoped to earn her trust.” His thumb kneaded the thin skin over my carotid. “I wanted a willing partner.”
“You can make her willing.” The other male cracked his knuckles in rapid succession. “After a few months, she won’t know the difference.”
A flicker of panic tripped my pulse, but Volkov used his scent to ease my fears.
“The master should have left this matter up to me.” His fingers traced the high curve of my cheekbones. “I could have made her see reason. All I needed was more time.”
“Is that why one of my guys spotted her wearing that necromancer’s shirt to bed?”
A growl pumped through Volkov’s chest that rattled my teeth. “Mine.”
The vibration soothed me, and I snuggled closer against him, burying my face in the curve of his throat.
“Dial it down a few notches.” The other male coughed a few times. “Or I’ll have to crack a window.”
The words no sooner left his mouth than fists pummeled the glass near my head. A man with warm, brown eyes, his lip snarled up in a promise of retribution, bellowed my name. I lifted my hand in a tiny wave that Volkov stilled by pressing my fingertips to his lips.
With his skin on mine, his scent in my lungs, I slid into a sleep too deep for the banging to disturb me.
Fourteen
The glittering chandelier overhead blasted my pulse up into the stratosphere.
It was all a dream. Part of the nightmare. I’m home. In the foyer. That’s my chandelier.
“Woolly,” I murmured, lips dry and tongue thick.
“Miss?” A willowy brunette who looked no older than me bustled into the room with a pressed suit hanging from each hand. The door standing open behind her appeared to lead into a closet filled with similar outfits and a rack of coordinating shoes and accessories. “Oh, dear, you are awake at last. How marvelous.”
The room, which was not my foyer, swam into slow focus around me.
Rose-pink walls. Gleaming white furniture. Shimmering gold accents.
Bookcases crammed with children’s books lined two of the walls. Dolls slumped on every available surface, their porcelain faces sullen, all hope lost that tiny hands would ever lift them for play again. A hard lump under my hip produced a plush rabbit with a sculpted face. A dozen other stuffed animals in varying colors and sizes littered the queen-sized bed, walling me up in the center of the mattress.
All those eyes staring at me… Creepy.
A shudder rippled through me when I shoved upright and ended up palming the porcelain face of a bear. I knocked it away and wiped my hand down my shirt then startled. “Where are my clothes?” I clutched at the pink flannel button-down pajama top I wore and gaped at the matching pants and fluffy socks that completed the ensemble. “Who dressed me like this?”
“Oh, I did.” The woman hung her burdens on the back of a door then faced me and…curtseyed. That’s when what she wore registered. A pink dress, the same color as the walls, tickled her ankles. She wore a frilly white lace apron over the top, like frosting on a strawberry cake, and an equally ridiculous cap over her hair. “I told the master you were too grown for the likes of all this, but he insisted you use your old room, and one doesn’t argue with the master.”
“My old room?” Clearly, all the sugary pink was rotting her brain. I had never seen this pastel prison before in my life. “Where am I?”
“Oh, miss.” She wrung her hands and glanced toward the door. “Please don’t get worked up again.”
Again? What was that supposed to mean?
A well-aimed kick sent plushies flying and gave me room to scoot down to the foot of the bed. My legs dangled, the mattress stacked so high she might as well have been calling me Pea. As in The Princess and the…
“Who are you?” I hopped down, saved from slipping on the hardwood floor by the grabby soles of the socks. “Why am I here?”
“I’m Lena, miss.” Scurrying around the bed, she bundled the plushies in her arms. “This is where you belong. Where else should you be? What a silly question.”
With her occupied on the far side of the bed, I ran straight to the door and tried the handle. Locked. Had I really expected anything less?
“You’ve got the wrong girl.” I flew to the window and jiggled the latch. Locked. Who used a keyed lock on their freaking windows? “This is so very far away from where I belong.” Or was it? She never had answered my question. How close was I to home? To help? I gazed out the window at the expansive grounds, the manicured gardens and the encroaching forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. “Where is this place?”
“This is your home. The master has awaited your return for ever so long, miss.”
An arrangement of white roses sat on a desk beneath the window, their perfume turning my wish for home into a physical ache. I pretended interest in the flowers while weighing the gilded vase. It was metal, not too heavy, but perhaps sturdy enough. I dumped out the flowers, the water cascading over the desktop and splashing across the planks. I gripped the vase and swung it as hard as I could into the window. The metal thumped dully and bounced off the pane, slipping from my wet fingers to clatter on the floor.
Bulletproof glass.
“Dearie me.” A fang pressed into her bottom lip as she rushed to clean up the mess. “He won’t like this at all.”
The sound caused a scuffle to break out in the hall, or maybe the window was rigged with an alarm. Either way, the door burst open, and Volkov prowled through, elongated canines on display until spotting first the mess, then the maid, and lastly me.
“Grier?” He breathed my name. “What happened?”
“Where am I?” I flattened my back against the wall. “What have you done?”
“Everything will be all right,” he promised. “This is for your own safety, solnishko.”
“Are you two deaf?” I screamed. “Stop ignoring me. Where. Am. I?”
“That information is classified. Pitch all the tantrums you like, no one here will give you that information.” My stalkerpire strolled in with a grin. “Anyone who does won’t live long enough for you to share it.” He flanked Volkov, eyes on Lena. “Is that what you want? The death of an innocent on your conscience?”
I slid to the floor, pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees.
“Knock her out,” my stalkerpire ordered. “Maybe the third time will be the charm.”
“There’s no need for that.” Volkov squatted a safe distance away. “You’ll behave, won’t you?”
I stared straight ahead and kept my mouth shut.
“I am sorry,” he murmured. “I wish things could be different between us.”
When I didn’t combust in a violent rage, Volkov appeared satisfied and stood. “Le
na, send word if you require my services.” His eyes met mine when he said, “The guards will know where to find me.”
A warning. To let me know Lena was but the first obstacle should I attempt an escape.
The males left, and I kept on staring. Right through Lena, who had knelt while she checked my hands for cuts despite the fact my escape attempt was an epic failure. Even the thorns had been cut from the rose stems. Now the metal vase made sense. I doubt there was a single breakable object in my room with the exception of the dolls. That might do for a weapon in a pinch, but it wasn’t going to help me escape.
A gasp broke free of my chest, and then another and another.
“Don’t cry, miss.” Lena rubbed my shoulders. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”
But my eyes were dry, not a tear to blur the room as my vision telescoped to a single pinprick of light.
The door is locked and guarded. The window is sealed and unbreakable. There are guards in the hall.
I was a prisoner all over again.
Lungs burning, I gulped oxygen until I choked from swallowing. Not enough. Never enough. I clawed at my throat, raking furrows in my skin. I couldn’t breathe. The walls pressed closer, suffocating me. Air whistled through my teeth. No use. It was no use. None of it. I was trapped. In this room and in my mind and in my body. I couldn’t escape.
The speck of light extinguished, and I was thrust back into the darkness.
The cold seeps into my bones. The putrid stink of my own filth clogs my nose until I part my ragged lips and suck in rank air swirling near the floor where I press my cheek. A man whimpers nearby. He cries all the time. Doesn’t he realize that only makes it worse? For all of us? Somewhere a woman sings in a language I’ve never heard, her voice ruined after a guard crushed her neck beneath his boot. She bit him. I think she wanted him to kill her. Instead she was whisked away to the infirmary, given a taste of clean sheets and warm food, then cast back into her dank cell to suffer the memory.
“You’re home now.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if whoever spoke the words meant them as a comfort or as a taunt.
“…five years in Atramentous…”
“…this room is hardly a prison…”
“…needs to breathe…”
“I will tell the master.”
I rocketed toward consciousness and propelled myself right off the bed.
I stood alone in a different room, this one blessedly normal, a guest suite done up in soothing blues reminiscent of Savannah’s coastal waters instead of some twisted princess theme. No sign of Lena.
A warm swirl of night air gusted my bangs into my eyes as I gravitated toward a set of French doors someone had left propped open to let in a breeze. I padded outside onto a patio. When that wasn’t enough, I kept walking until my toes sank in the plush grass. I bent down and tugged until I pulled up roots. The rich, earthy scent of soil grounded me.
I used to dream about places like this during the times when it made no difference in the landscape if my eyes remained open or closed. Gardens without walls. Sky without end. Moonlight on my skin.
Freedom.
But it was all an illusion. The boxwood maze that hemmed in my spacious yard backed up to a stone wall. An inch of exposed rock peeped over the top, ruining the fantasy. The sky might be limitless, but I wasn’t as fortunate. The caress of moonbeams was a small comfort. While I was sleeping off my panic attack, or Volkov’s remedy, they had transferred their new pet from her gilded cage into a terrarium made of stone walls and stars.
The thought made me laugh, though my throat was too raw for me to make a sound.
Bone-weary, I sat on the lawn and let my mind wander. Bits and pieces of my abduction slid around in my skull, but none of the pieces interlocked. The one clear image I salvaged was of Boaz as he pounded on the glass, his eyes full of wrath, the promise of a painful death carved in every line of his face.
What was he doing now? Formulating more of his plans? Knowing him, he’d implemented half of them before Amelie finished screaming my name. At least they had each other. And, apparently, a few years’ worth of pent-up rage at the system that might help them cope if the worst happened.
The slight tremble in my bottom lip infuriated me, and I bit down until I tasted copper.
I will not break.
Maud was gone, a chunk of my life wasted, but I was still here. I had survived. I would survive again.
All I had to do was swallow down the fear clogging my throat, breathe through the band cinching tighter around my chest, and stay present. No hiding behind mental walls when reality got too hard.
Time to put my resolve to the test.
Where was I? I couldn’t have been unconscious that long. Then again, I had no recollection of waking prior to the last one. How far had he put me under to erase chunks of my memory? What had happened to me during that time?
After conducting a mental inventory, I decided I felt fine. A small headache, some tightness in my chest and a few other aches and pains that could be blamed on a long sleep without switching positions. I studied my hands, the ones I’d never expected to hold a brush again, and wished more than anything that I could speak to Maud one last time.
What have you done, you wily old coot?
Burying her head in the sand wasn’t like Maud. Better than anyone, she should have known ignoring a problem wouldn’t make it go away. Maybe she had wanted me to be older before I faced this. Maybe she thought she could protect me. Maybe death had seemed so abstract after all her centuries of living that she had miscalculated how much time she had left. And then those precious few decades that remained had been snatched away. Whatever her plan, it was a bust now.
Sprawling on my back, I crossed my ankles and folded my hands behind my head.
I stared up at the sky until I couldn’t tell one blackness from another as my eyelids closed.
Fifteen
Three days into my captivity, as best as I could tell, I climbed into the comforting void in my head and stayed there. Not even the enticement of the outdoors tempted me from under the covers. I saw no one except Lena, who fretted over me, tucking and untucking me on the downy mattress I had no strength to leave. The entire scope of my world had narrowed to the bed, and I had trouble thinking beyond its comforting softness. Even the nightmares left me alone to cuddle my pillow and drift.
That was their first mistake.
Allowing me to wake in bed night after night tipped me off to how wrong I had been acting, how wrong I felt. I hadn’t fought them since that first night, and that wasn’t like me. I was a survivor. Not this docile invalid who swallowed spoon-fed lies and asked for seconds.
I scrounged up the will to examine the floor under the bedframe on the fourth night. The lack of sigils meant magic wasn’t the culprit. No, they must have gone a more traditional route and drugged me through food and drink. That was the only explanation that made sense.
Otherwise I would have literally been climbing the walls by now, and the boxwood would have made it easy. Knowing my luck, Volkov would have been waiting to catch me on the other side. Him or my stalkerpire, who I had yet to hear named. Was his identity as protected as our whereabouts? I was starting to wonder why that might be.
Lena had breezed through the doorway at some point. I wasn’t sure how long she’d stood there, looking down on me while I daydreamed of escape, before I smelled steak with grilled onions and noticed her.
“Would you like me to help you up, miss?”
I turned my head toward her. “Can I eat on the patio today?”
“I don’t see why not.” Her left fang dented her bottom lip. “It’s such a lovely night.”
“I’ll behave.” I forced a laugh that sounded like the dying gasp from a corpse. “I need some fresh air.”
A change swept over her upon hearing the word air. “Let me clear a path.” Her movements blurred in their swiftness. Clearly, my panic attack had spooked them. “Just keep breathing.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.” She whisked the food out to the table I’d barely noticed my first night in the garden room and rematerialized at my elbow. “I can get Mr. Volkov if—”
“No.” I forced my tone to calm. “I don’t want to bother him. I’m sure he’s very busy.”
“He’s the master’s right hand these days.” She exhaled a breathy sigh. “Handsome too. Kind. Generous. Such a power for one so young. You’re awful lucky to have caught his eye, miss, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
If you like him so much, then you can have him. “He makes an impression for sure.”
How well he’d lied to my face, faked being my friend, acted like he cared that I have a say in our relationship sure impressed the heck out of me.
Accepting my backhanded compliment as earnest praise, Lena helped me sit upright then swung my legs over the side of the bed. I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to make it across the room, but my feet never touched the floor. She scooped me up into her arms, carried me outside and deposited me in my chair, all without breaking a sweat.
“There now. That’s much better.” She straightened her apron, which was still white, but made of linen. Her uniform had mellowed from Strawberry Shortcake into more casual attire. A white dress shirt with capped sleeves paired with dove-gray skirt and ballet flats. “I’ll go tidy up your room while you enjoy your dinner.”
Steaks came precut these days. Couldn’t risk me playing with knives, could they? I popped a tasteless cube in my mouth to show what a good girl I could be when I put my mind to behaving. “Do you think you could get me something?”
“I will do my best.”
“There was a bunny plush in my other room.” I spooned up the mashed potatoes and forced down the first bite. “I was wondering if you might bring him to me.”
“That I can do.” A happy laugh bubbled out of her. “I thought you might remember him. He was always your favorite. That’s why I put him where you couldn’t miss him.”
What I remembered was waking up with his face imprinted on my right butt cheek. That was the extent of our relationship as far as I was concerned.
How to Save an Undead Life (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 1) Page 17
