by Lindsey Duga
“McCarney believes you, dummy. But his bosses don’t. We’ve been watching the building of Brocker and Kurtz Holdings.”
BKH.
“He’s found your dame. She arrived at the New York Harbor this morning.” He glanced back at me. I was still sitting in the chair, holding the cuffs and the hood. “What the hell are you waiting for?” he snapped. “Let’s get moving!”
Chapter Thirty-One
The Siren
When the shock wore off, I dropped the throat lozenge onto the carpet and crushed it under my heel. The hard candy snapped and popped, and the cellophane wrapper crinkled. It was all muffled to my ears.
So. It had been him all along. At least now I knew why the cyclops woman had looked so familiar. She had been his so-called “wife” back at St. Agnes—the woman coming out of the confessional. And come to think of it, I could’ve sworn I saw her dressed as a maid outside Colt’s hotel in Boston, too. Had that been when she first confirmed it was me? The first of Brocker’s monster attacks had been at the vet, just after I’d seen her.
Brocker walked down the long stretch of carpet, tucking a hand into his pocket and arching an eyebrow. “You’re angry,” he commented.
He came to a stop five feet in front of me, and I returned his amused expression with a blank one. Keeping my face as neutral as possible, I clapped slowly.
Well done for figuring out that one, ole sport.
He chuckled. “So expressive. Even without words, I know exactly what you’re saying.”
I dropped my hands, curling them into fists at my sides, and stomped the broken throat lozenge deeper into his expensive carpet.
He stopped smiling and returned my glare with an even, steady gaze. Then he dipped his head and gestured to one of the fancy leather chairs. “Take a seat.”
I remained immobile as he strode past me and looped around his gigantic oak desk to sit on the kingly chair. His actual appearance hadn’t changed at all since seeing him at St. Agnes, but now his entire…essence exuded power. It wasn’t just the fact that he wore a finely tailored suit, or that he was surrounded by extravagance, it was in the way he carried himself. In his stare and cadence of words.
Mr. Brocker nodded toward the bowl of hard candy. “Please, take one. I’d prefer if this conversation wasn’t quite so one-sided.”
Folding my arms, I stared right back at him. If he thought I was going to roll over and take a treat like a dog, he had another think coming. Besides, if he was comfortable enough to offer me a candy to give back my voice and my powers, he had a trick up his sleeve.
I had no desire to give this man what he wanted.
“Eris, I will only warn you once. I don’t tolerate disobedience.” He leaned forward and steepled his fingers together. “I’m generally an understanding man. I even abided by the rules of the sanctuary and left you in peace at St. Agnes.”
He regarded me for a moment, observing every line of hatred and distress on my face. I wanted to be stronger, to hide how deeply he frightened me, but I was weak. Always will be, too.
“You’ve grown into quite the young woman, Eris. One of the things I regret most in life is letting that woman take you away from me.”
Madame.
He stood and crossed to me and I struggled to stand my ground. To not move an inch. With his left hand, he tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. By some miracle, I resisted the urge I to jerk away.
“She’s not your mother, my dear. She’s nothing but a kidnapper. And it hurts my heart to see you make that face on her behalf. If she hadn’t taken you from here, we’d be working together to pull off my plan. We’d be standing side by side.”
My eyes narrowed up at him. What plan? I’d known all along my creator wanted me back in his clutches to use my power, but I’d never given any thought as to what, exactly, he needed my power for.
His gaze shot to the bowl with all the red cellophane candy wrappers. “Take a lozenge, Eris. I won’t tell you again.”
I shook my head. He’d have to force me. Stuff it down my throat. God, I never hated anyone before like I hated this man.
His chin tilted downward to glare into my eyes. A dark aura seemed to surround him, consuming the powerful essence into something terribly sinister. “You’re disappointing me,” he ground out.
Mr. Brocker turned to the left wall where the subtle outline of a door stood out among the panels of oak. He hooked his fingers into an indention and the wall glided over the carpet without a sound.
The long sliding door opened up to another room with three people in it.
I gasped, hands flying to my mouth. My whole body gave one violent shudder.
Madame Maldu sat tied to a chair in the center of this hidden room. Her wrists and ankles were each bound with thick, coarse rope and a handkerchief gagged her mouth. Blood trickled down her hairline over the cloth threaded through her lips, and she sported a black eye. Two men in suits—I recognized them as the men who’d brought me here—stood on either side of her, hands clasped behind their backs.
Mr. Brocker strode over to her, and automatically the man on the left drew out a pistol and handed it to his boss.
Mr. Brocker cocked the gun and raised the muzzle to Madame Maldu’s temple. “Do I need to repeat myself now?”
I lunged for the candy so hard and fast that it knocked the delicate glass bowl to the carpet. It shattered, sending stray pieces everywhere. Scrambling for one, and feeling shards of glass prick my hands, I grabbed a stray lozenge and unwrapped it with trembling fingers. I stuck it in my mouth and sucked hard until the cherry flavor burst through my taste buds and soothed the rawness in the back of my throat.
Mr. Brocker waited, his expression blank, as I sucked on the candy. Madame Maldu stared at me all the while, imploringly. Her big green eyes were rimmed with old mascara, and streaks of it stained her cheeks.
I cracked the lozenge with my back molar and tried to chew it, to get it down faster.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Mr. Brocker gave me a cold smile. “That’s my girl.”
Madame squeezed her eyes shut.
Just as I was swallowing the last few morsels of the candy and could feel my voice rise up in my throat, the pistol went off.
Madame Maldu’s head dropped to her shoulders as red and pink sprayed across the carpet and the wall.
My scream pierced the air and I wailed like a banshee. The floor-to-ceiling windows cracked. Several spider-webbed, the rest of the glass exploded from its frames. The two men stumbled backward, holding their heads, while blood oozed from their ears.
Brocker didn’t even flinch. He simply handed the gun to his henchman.
I slumped onto the carpet, the glass and the cellophane candy sticking to my damp, sweaty skin like red and silver sparkles. Footsteps padded their way across the carpet toward me. A hand moved my hair away from my cheeks and stroked my skin with cold fingertips. “Don’t disobey me again, Eris.”
Shaking violently, Madame’s execution replaying in my head over and over, I turned and threw up, barely missing Brocker’s shoes.
He took a step back.
While I collapsed on the carpet away from my sick, voices carried on overhead. Orders. More orders.
“Get her up and cleaned. Don’t let her touch the body. I don’t want any blood on that dress. It’s expensive. And for godsakes, call the damn window company. I want those windows replaced before tomorrow night.”
The other men hoisted me up and shoved me around like a limp doll.
Time still went on. The earth still rotated around the sun…
…as if my world hadn’t just ended.
For a long time, I couldn’t comprehend much. It was like my brain had just turned off. Like a lightbulb, it had flickered and died. Useless. Broken.
At some point I remember being taken back to…my suite, I sup
posed. The maids dabbed away sick and made me rinse my mouth. They washed away blood from my shallow cuts from the glass and applied some antiseptic that stung.
Then they left me on the bed for a long while.
My mind had changed from a burned-out lightbulb to a film reel. Flips of scenes from The Blind Dragon flickered through my vision. I could remember every detail.
Madame teaching me how to pour drinks.
Madame tucking me back into bed when I was still young and I had a nightmare.
Madame taking me to the market to buy groceries.
Then Madame shaking my wrist, her eyes wide and frightened, as she told me not to speak. Warned me. Many times.
Don’t speak, Eris. Don’t ever speak.
All along I’d hoped that maybe one day I could talk to someone. Tell them my wants and fears, and hopes and desires. Share my heart with them.
But a monster didn’t deserve that.
I thought of Colt, then—and his own past. People had died because of him. Madame Maldu had died because of me.
I’d tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault—but could the same be said for me?
I could’ve saved Madame. I could’ve been stronger somehow. Eaten the candy sooner, commanded him to stop. But I’d been weak and indecisive and stubborn and now she was dead because of me.
Some unmeasurable amount of time later, a voice raised me from my self-loathing. “You should do what he wants.”
Jerking up, I twisted around to find the cyclops woman standing in the doorway. Her long dark hair fell around her shoulders in silky waves, and her clothes and makeup were as perfect as before, but her expression was tired. Weary.
I glared at her, fisting the sheets as overwhelming rage boiled inside me. “You will help me escape from here.”
The woman’s delicate eyebrows pulled together in sympathy. “Oh, Eris, my sister, I wish I could.”
In answer to the shock written on my face, she pushed back her dark hair to reveal a cream foam-like substance wedged into her ears. “Ear plugs. Mr. Brocker had them made specially for all of us. And many of us have been trained to read lips.” She shook her head. “There has been so much preparation for your return.”
Dammit. Dammit. I wanted to scream again. I knew he had a trick up his sleeve. There’s no way he’d give me back my voice when I could turn this whole building against him.
“Listen to me.” In three long strides, she was at my bedside, looking down at me. “There is more at stake than just your life. You have to agree to his heist. For all of them.”
Her words made no sense. “His heist?” I asked. “What is he planning to steal?”
Before she could answer, the sound of the elevator opening echoed through the suite. She grabbed my hands and pulled me off the bed, guiding me back into the living room just as the two large henchmen stepped into my suite.
“She’ll go willingly,” she told the men.
Wordlessly, I followed them to the elevator, noting the plugs in their ears as well.
Its iron bars unfolded to cover us in the ornate cage-like contraption and we left the cyclops behind in my suite, descending to the thirteenth floor. Compared to the rest of the building, this hallway was downright dull. It had simple thin carpet and bare walls, no expensive vases with rare flowers or Impressionist paintings.
The two men walked me down the hallway to the door at the end. The first one opened the door and stepped back to let me pass through first.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting in this building of horrors, but it hadn’t been a room like this. The floor was shiny white with white walls and stainless-steel tables, and it reminded me of Dr. Boursaw’s veterinarian office. A glass window panel spanned across the three walls of the strange room that faced inside the building, showing concrete walls straight across.
Brocker stood at the glass, his head tilted downward like he was watching something below. He turned at our entrance and his expression held nothing—no remorse, no emotion. Just cold, businesslike indifference.
“Come here, Eris.”
I didn’t move. I was disobeying him again, but I didn’t care. Just kill me. At this point, you’ve taken not one but two people I cared about most in the world.
He regarded me for a long minute while no one else moved. No one even breathed. Then he turned fully toward me, tucking both hands into his pockets. “Helena’s real name was Helena Kurtz. She was the wife of my partner, Robert Kurtz. When she found out I had the pearl embedded in your mouth, she escaped with you into the night, and her husband helped her. I killed him that very night.” His hard, cold gaze locked with mine. “You see, Eris, no one steals from me.”
I glared back at him, hatred pouring through my veins like molten lava. It ignited life inside me again, not healing what had been broken with Madame’s death, but making it hurt worse. Inflicting pain upon pain until I could do nothing but try to breathe fire through it.
Brocker’s mustache quivered as his lips pulled to a smirk. “You think you have nothing left to live for. That there’s no other way I can control you. Oh, but how wrong you are, my dear. I have one hundred and twenty ways to control you.”
What the hell did he mean—one hundred and twenty ways?
He tilted his head toward the glass. “Come here, and I will show you.”
Something told me not to go anywhere near that window. That whatever was down there could break me into even tinier pieces.
“Why?” I rasped.
His smile stretched wider. “Words at last. Good. Now more. Why what, Eris?”
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop my whole body from quivering with rage and pain. “Why are you doing this? What do you want to use me for?”
Watching Brocker, my stomach clenched and my blood pumped faster in my ears. He didn’t give any indication that he felt my magic, even though I knew the air had to be thick with it. There was too much raw emotion in my words. Too much anger and fear.
Still, he gave no response to my words affecting him. He didn’t have ear plugs, either—I would’ve noticed. Was he like Colt, too? A dragon but with no wings?
Instead, his smile merely grew wider. “Such power in your voice. I can feel its call in my very blood.” He dropped his gaze to look down at his hands, then he clenched them into fists. “With you, this will work.”
“What will work?”
In two short strides, he had me by the back of my neck and jerked me to the window panels, my heels slipping across the squeaky clean floor. Catching myself with my palms slamming against the glass, I was forced to finally look down.
Rows upon rows of beds were aligned two floors below. A child lay in each one, hooked up to a bag of glowing blue liquid.
The chimera agent.
A sob bubbled up in my throat as Brocker whispered next to me, “You ask me why? Then I will answer it with a question of my own. What does every king need?” His hand curled around my shoulder like a claw, worse than any other demon’s touch I could imagine.
I stared at the rows of children ready and prepped to become monsters.
“An army,” he whispered in my ear.
My knees buckled and I slid down the glass, silent, heavy tears rolling down my cheeks.
No, please no.
I felt his hand pet the top of my head. Like he would a dog. “Don’t think for a second that they are important to me. Orphans—unwanted children—are a dime a dozen. I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if you don’t do as I say.”
“Let them go,” I said.
Brocker flinched, but then he exhaled, threw his head back, and laughed. “Yes, an order does make a difference, doesn’t it? And I thought merely your emotions were strong. No, words are indeed more powerful. But that won’t work, I’m afraid. You see, I’ve built up an immunity to your voice. When you were
young, first experimenting with your pearl, I would listen to you talk and build up a tolerance to your voice.” Brocker cocked his head thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, that’s probably how your dragon boyfriend was able to resist you. I’d heard the BOI had recordings of a siren’s voice. How convenient for them, and how very cruel for him.”
“It hurts, Eris, to resist the pull of a siren. At least in the beginning. It’s painful, like trying to carve out a bit of your soul. Your own will fighting against you.”
He knew about Colt. Did he have BOI contacts that told him about Colt’s origins?
“Now that you know what’s at stake, Eris, perhaps you will be a bit more compliant to my plans. Tomorrow we will review them in detail,” he said.
At that, the henchman strode over and picked me off the floor. I could still feel Brocker’s gaze crawling over me like spiders as I was led to the door.
It all felt so, so hopeless. How could I stop this? Wasn’t there something I could do?
Then a terrible, awful idea struck me. It came with a memory that seemed like it was years ago. Colt, kneeling over the body of a manticore and saying, “Many men choose death over being captured. That way they escape torture, and the possibility of giving up information to their enemies.”
“Oh, and, Eris?”
I froze.
“Since I know you’re thinking about it…consider this—if you choose to end your life there will be no one around to protect them”—he nodded downward, four floors below—“from my wrath at seeing you dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Dragon
The building of Brocker and Kurtz Holdings was one of the largest private buildings I’d ever seen. It stood solitary among other older and shorter buildings, like a chrome sword stretching up into the night sky, the moon hanging above it in a hazy yellow glow.
“I can’t believe I haven’t heard of these people,” I ground out irritably, rapping out a harsh rhythm on the door handle.
Jimmy took a sip of his joe and shrugged. “We’re too busy looking at the underground, not the upside. Don’t beat yourself up. Corporate crimes ain’t part of the SOCD.”
