My Soul to Keep

by Sharie Kohler

  “Is what?”

  “Selling your soul,” Sorcha bit out.

  “Ah.” The witch tilted her head thoughtfully. “You know how it works, then. No surprise, I guess. I did find you at Tresa’s.” She fluttered a hand. “My demon loves this little operation, so he leaves me to my own devices.”

  Sorcha sneered. “You must be pretty sadistic when your demon can’t come up with anything worse for you to do than what you would want to do anyway.”

  The witch laughed, the sound grating. “That’s about right. My only regret is waiting this long to contract with a demon. I could have been immortalized at twenty-two instead of fifty-two. I held out much too long. And for what?”

  Damp and shivering from her cold sponge bath, Sorcha quickly donned the pants, top and armored vest. “The matter of your soul, I suppose,” she retorted. “That’s what keeps most witches from selling out.”

  “Who needs a soul or God’s favor if you’re going to live forever?” The witch angled her head. “I hope you make it in the arena. Half the scum down here can’t do much more than grunt their names. You I can talk to. You’d be nice to have around. For a while anyway.”

  She turned toward the door again, and the tightness in Sorcha’s skull began to ebb. “Wait.” Sorcha took a struggling step forward, desperate for some idea of what was to come. “What’s this arena you keep talking about?”

  “I’ll return for you later,” the witch called over her shoulder. “The gamekeeper likes to meet every competitor before they enter the games. He’ll tell you what you need to know.”

  “Wait!” Sorcha called out. “Who’s this gamekeeper? What games?”

  As the door clanged shut, the pain in her head stopped completely and she was able to move, to surge forward and pound out her frustration on the door.

  After several moments, it became clear that she was only exhausting herself. The witch was not returning. Sorcha collapsed on the cot, feeling drained, spent. In a matter of moments, she sank into sleep.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sorcha rolled over on the bed and stretched long and slow, feeling the pull deep in her muscles. Gradually, she blinked her eyes open. Stared at the bright fluorescent bulb dangling at the center of the room. The nape of her neck tingled, kicking her into alert. She was not alone. Frowning, her gaze darted around.

  With a gasp, she sprang into a sitting position, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes and glaring at the witch. “You again?”

  “Did you sleep well? Excellent.” The demon witch nodded as though Sorcha had answered. “Follow me. It’s time.” And then she was gone and the door yawned open.

  Sorcha remained on her cot for a moment before rising and stepping out into the eerily silent corridor. The demon witch was still there, waiting for her, a vacant smile plastered on her face.

  Sorcha crossed her arms over the stiff armored vest she wore. Sometime during the night, when she woke briefly, a peace had settled over her. Calm, cool resolve. She had little power against the demon witch. She needed to stay sharp, needed to watch. Learn and observe everything … play by the rules of her enemies until she learned their weakness. Then, she would make her move. Break and escape … or strike and kill. Whatever was necessary.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “It’s time for you to meet the gamekeeper. He evaluates all the new recruits before putting them in the field. He prefers to assess your worth so that he can best decide your role in the games.”

  Sorcha bristled at the thought of anyone judging her worth … like some slave monger. “And who’s this gamekeeper?” Really, she was asking what he was. After coming face-to-face with both lycans and a demon witch, she couldn’t imagine a human commanding such a crew.

  Above them, a train roared. Sorcha braced herself, her legs apart. For a moment, it appeared the very walls shook.

  “All you need to remember is that the gamekeeper is someone very important. He’s in charge. You’ll only help yourself if you make a good impression.”

  “Why aren’t you in charge?” Sorcha looked the deceptively frumpy woman up and down. “You’re certainly powerful enough—”

  The witch slid her a sly glance. “I don’t choose to be. Let’s just leave it at that.” Turning, she vanished down another corridor. After a moment of hesitation, Sorcha hurried after her.

  “Why not?” she persisted, following close on her heels. Their steps fell flatly on gray concrete.

  “You’re full of questions.”

  “I like to be informed.” All the better to learn about her enemies.

  “You’re just nosy … looking for a way out of this. You all are. Full of questions in the beginning. I’ll tell you what all the players come to realize: there is no way out of this. The only thing left is to survive. Remember that. If you want to make it, train, study your opponents. Just don’t die.”

  They cleared a door and passed through a wide room with benches bolted into the floor. In several spots chained manacles extended from the walls, the bracelets wide open at the moment, dangling. Empty. But waiting. She rubbed her wrists as she passed, almost imagining herself chained and sitting on one of those benches.

  “This is the holding area.” The demon witch waved to the room. “You’ll spend plenty of time in here. Unchained if you behave. Or chained.” She shrugged as if it mattered little to her.

  “What’s your name?” Sorcha demanded, desperate, digging for a connection, an advantage, something, anything to hold on to.

  The demon witch glanced back at her, her smile revealing a flash of white teeth, a stark contrast to the coppery, well-lined skin of her face.

  “Ingrid,” she answered. “Not that it’s important for you to know. The only thing you need to be concerned about is following the rules. And winning in the arena.”

  Several doors lined the room’s walls. Ingrid took one that led up a winding set of stairs.

  “This will be the most important meeting of your life,” Ingrid continued. “Let your attributes shine. You’re attractive. Clever. Play it up. If he thinks you’re an asset, he’ll strive to keep you around longer.”

  Around longer … She meant alive. With cold clarity Sorcha understood that at once. Just as she acknowledged that she would do whatever she had to. To make it. To see Jonah again. Because now she got it. Now she realized she wanted that more than anything else. She wanted him. Even more than revenge on Tresa.

  The stairs ended. Ingrid stopped before a door. “Here we are. Any questions before we go in?”

  “Yeah.” Sorcha lifted her chin. “Tell me, Ingrid. Do you give everyone this little pep talk and do they actually believe you give a shit about whether they live or die?”

  Ingrid smiled, pushing the door open. Instead of answering, she said, “Don’t be nervous.”

  The room on the other side of the door was nothing like what she had seen since waking up in this nightmare. It had all the elegance and prestige of a prized private suite at a stadium. A bar and buffet were set against one wall, a uniformed waiter standing, ready to serve. Buttery leather chairs and couches sat in the middle of the room, arranged with precision on a Persian rug.

  On the far side of the room gleaming glass stretched in lieu of a wall. Clean, pristine glass, winking and shining with light. She had forgotten that anything clean existed in this world.

  On the other side of that glass a balcony extended out into the air. From where she stood, she couldn’t appreciate the view. A half dozen cushioned chairs occupied the area. In one chair a man sat, his back to her. A thin cigarillo extended from his elegant hand. Her heart sped up, her pulse quickening in her throat. The gamekeeper.

  He didn’t move, although he must have been aware of their arrival. She recognized the beast in him. And he had to have recognized it in her. Scented it. Felt its arrival a few feet behind him.

  A dovenatu ruled this little world?

  He was like her. A dovenatu in charge of his very own little corner of hell. Why n
ot? Her father had been a dovenatu and half mad, driven to all kinds of depraved schemes. A dovenatu wasn’t always like her, like Jonah. She swallowed the painful lump in her throat at the thought of Jonah. Now wasn’t the time …

  It stood to reason some dovenatus were as rotten as their lycan brethren. Worse. Because at least a dovenatu had a choice. He wasn’t ruled by hunger, possessed by moon fever. A dovenatu possessed free will. This dovenatu’s free will led his goons to capture her and hold her hostage in a rotting little room. All for his pleasure.

  Ingrid put a hand on her elbow. “Come. We don’t want to keep him waiting. He hates that.”

  The nape of her neck shivered, scraped her flesh with a familiar dread at this comment. She shoved the sensation aside. Despite her anger and fear, her thoughts burned in a straight path, determined to make a good impression. Whatever that was. Until she managed to escape, he held her fate. She’d follow Ingrid’s advice.

  Ingrid slid the glass balcony door open with a swoosh. In the air, the clang of weapons rang out harshly. The balcony looked out over a small stadium of maybe three hundred seats. Far below, in the center of the arena, a barren stretch of sandy earth served as some sort of fighting grounds. Three men and two women practiced, ran through drills in full armor, putting forth an impressive display of skill.

  Far below, six lycans stood guard at the single entrance into the area, a steel-barred gate between them and the practicing fighters.

  Ingrid motioned for Sorcha to wait. The witch moved to stand beside the gamekeeper, waiting to be acknowledged as he clapped vigorously at the antics below.

  The blood rushed in her ears, everything slowing to a crawl as he turned, still clapping, to face them. She gazed at his profile, a sick feeling slithering through her.

  No. No, no, no.

  He turned to face her, and she realized she had spoken aloud.

  The gamekeeper stared at her, and she couldn’t deny it. Not with those horribly familiar brown eyes drilling into her, so cold, dead and utterly mad. A madness she had seen before. Had lived with all the days of her youth.

  A time, a life, she had fled and never thought to see again stared her in the face.

  “Sorcha.” Her stomach plunged and a hard shudder racked her body. The breathy sound of her name on his lips brought a surge of bile to her throat. No, no, no, no …

  Her father said her name again, stronger, firmer, full of delight. “Sorcha, my dear!”

  Even though she had no possible chance of escape, she turned, a strangled cry choking from her lips as every horrible memory of the man bombarded her. She ran back into the elegant suite, intent only on escape.

  The wild thought occurred to her, flitting like a frenzied moth through her head: Again, again I’m running from my father, running for my life.

  As that awful, familiar buzzing filled her ears, forcing her legs to lock and wait for Ingrid’s bidding, she knew. This time there would be no escape.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Stop.

  The word wasn’t uttered aloud, but she might as well have heard it spoken. Ingrid might as well have yelled it for all that Sorcha heard it and was forced to obey.

  Without a sound, Ingrid pulled at something inside her, some force that Sorcha could not resist. She stopped. Her muscles locked tight and frozen, waiting for a command.

  It was a terrible sensation. She couldn’t move forward. Couldn’t turn around and flee. She could only wait for Ingrid’s bidding.

  Ingrid’s smoky voice rolled over the air. “Come here.”

  And like that, her muscles loosened, liquefied. She wasn’t even certain if Ingrid spoke the command aloud or if she just heard it inside her head. Whatever the case, Sorcha moved, rotated on her heels. The control the demon witch wielded was total and complete. Sorcha might as well have been physically bound. She felt like one of those marionettes, only guided by chains instead of strings.

  “Let me go!” she hissed between her teeth.

  Ingrid shook her head, her look disgusted. “You know what I can do, so why do you even bother? You can’t run. You can’t escape. Why would you even think to try?”

  How can I not? How can I stay and endure him? How can I share even one breath in the same space with him?

  “I’m afraid that has everything to do with me.” The voice rolled over her like liquid, terrible in its familiarity even after all these years.

  There were some things one never forgot: faces, voices … the man who had given her nightmares for so long, who’d bred fear in her heart from an early age. She’d never forget him. Finding Jonah, he’d been in her head, lurking in the darkest corners. Because, face it, if Jonah was alive, she had wondered if her father could be, too. Now she knew.

  Here she was. Here he was, his face unchanged. Handsome. All sharp angles. High cheekbones. The brown doe eyes like her own … down to the twisting light at the centers. A horrible beauty, unwanted, reviled. Lethal.

  He moved forward with long-legged strides and grasped both her shoulders. “Sorcha.” He beamed at her as if they were long-lost friends enjoying a reunion. “You look lovely. I hardly recognize you … you look so like your mother when I first met her.” He brushed her hair, fingering her bangs with a light touch. “She once wore her hair like this.”

  A shudder of revulsion racked Sorcha. She wanted to look nothing like Danae. Staring into his eyes, she knew it would be useless to deny her identity. Her reaction to him alone only served as confirmation. She shook like a leaf so close to him, gripped in his hands. Feeling like that frightened little girl all over again, she wished only to run.

  Air hissed from her lips in barely suppressed loathing as he pressed a kiss to each cheek. She marveled at the warmth of his lips, that a man so cold could feel warm in any way.

  Pulling back, he looked at her with delight brimming in his dead eyes. “I should be surprised, I suppose, but I’m not. I never believed it. Never thought I could have lost all of you in the explosion.” He assessed her up and down. “You look well. Strong. Come, don’t you have anything to say to your father?”

  “Father?” Ingrid blinked, looked between the two of them, her mouth a small dark O against the tips of her blinding-white teeth.

  “Yes. Sorcha is my eldest daughter. The others, my daughters, sons, my mate … all are dead.” He said this so unfeelingly that she knew he hadn’t cared when he’d learned of their deaths. If he’d suffered remorse at all, it would have been the loss of what they could bring him—not them specifically. He’d never loved them. “Maybe the others will turn up yet, hmm.” His eyes gleamed with a faraway light and she recognized the madness there, still running strong. Maybe even stronger. “I do miss your mother,” he murmured, as if reading some of her thoughts. “She was a comfort to me.”

  Sorcha felt little sorrow for the mother who had looked right though her, who had only ever been distant, aloof, indifferent to anyone except Ivo. She cared nothing for the children she gave him, nothing except that she made him happy providing him with offspring.

  He drew Sorcha to a plush leather couch. “Good work, Ingrid. I take back all those nasty things I said to you when you didn’t return with Tresa. We’ll still find her, I’ve no doubt.” He snapped at the waiter tucked in the corner. “Fetch another drink. Sorcha, what will you have?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Nonsense. Are you hungry?” His lips twisted in a self-deprecating grin. The kind she’d seen politicians use on television. He could be that way. All smiles one moment, then dangerous snarls the next. “I imagine the fare we provided you with earlier was merely palatable. Well, that’s at an end now. What do you like? We have a wonderful pâté. Oysters on the half shell? Didn’t you love seafood?” That had been her sister. Sorcha grimaced, remembering her sister flicking shrimp tails in her face and her father laughing.

  “Nothing. Thanks.”

  He frowned at her and pinched her chin as if she were still ten. “Still difficult, I see. You always were a petula
nt little sourpuss.”

  She jerked her chin from his fingers and stared him straight in the eye. “Let me go. I want to go home.”

  “You are home. At last.” He spread his arms wide.

  She shook her head and edged back a step. “I have a life—”

  He scowled. It was an expression she remembered well. She resisted pulling back in a flinch. “You’re not striking the proper tone with me, Sorcha. A little gratitude, a little excitement at seeing me again, might be in order.”

  She sucked in a breath and glanced around. Anywhere but at him. “So. You’re running … this enterprise.”

  “Yes, impressive, I know. Quite an operation. Not what I originally planned for myself, but after Istanbul I count myself lucky to be alive. Hunters captured me, EFLA, the Federation—but I convinced them not to destroy me. That I could be useful to them. It wasn’t easy, but I finally convinced them of my use. Eventually we came to this arrangement. I’m quite content. For now. It’s marvelous—you’ll see. The last games we could hardly fit everyone in the seats. We may need to expand soon. Open a second—”

  She nodded toward the arena. “Who are the spectators?”

  “Who else? Lycan hunters. They need their fun, too.”

  She faced him again. “It’s disgusting. You deal in death, torture … and make it a grand game.”

  His smile vanished. And she was reminded of his fire-quick temper, the flashes of rage that would send her hiding in corners. “Still a judgmental little prig, I see. I had hoped that with age you might grow out of that. Grow and accept what you are. Pity.”

  “Apparently, I haven’t.”

  He scowled. “If this is what you are, you might as well be dead to me.”

  “If it helps for you to forget me, then go ahead and do that. Think of me as dead.” She stepped toward the door again. Ingrid inched closer, ever ready to rein her in, to work her cruel, will-robbing magic.