Wild Card (Etudes in C# Book 1)

by Jamie Wyman

  I nodded.

  “Well, it was in his temple. The caryatids ratted me out, the jealous bitches.” His face hardened. “After Zeus was done with me, he let his informants play a bit.”

  The past played over his face as rage, and Marius pushed out into the night. I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about what they’d done to him. Quietly, I followed him on the path to the Strip.

  I didn’t see any bodies out here, so I assumed the pulse had restricted itself to the inside of the Forum Shops. I made a mental note to thank Flynn…and to beg for another one of his pulse sticks. That thing came in handy. I also made a promise not to let the next one fall thirty feet to its demise.

  “I suppose this is one way to find your contact,” I said cheerfully. “We could just go look over all the bodies until you recognize him.”

  “I see you have a date, Cat,” a voice said.

  Dahlia’s slick, dark form materialized in front of us. The oily folds of black leather enhanced every curve of her lean body. The old anger boiled in my stomach to the point I thought I might be able to breathe fire.

  Great. Not the person I was hoping to find. However, if she could get me to Puck, maybe I could put my loathing aside for a few minutes.

  I looked the bitch squarely in the face and said, “Take me to Puck.”

  She drew in a breath, eyes widening. Her lips tightened, and her skin lost some of its deep color. “Why?”

  “He has something I need. Take me to him.”

  She searched my face for trickery. When she found none, she closed the distance between us. A breeze tossed her hair, and I caught her scent—jasmine and honeysuckle, as always. Her voice was a frightened whisper. “Do you have any idea what he has become? He could kill you.”

  “He won’t. Not yet.”

  “He will torture you, Cat, until you are begging for death.”

  I straightened myself and pulled on a mantle of authority. I was Eris’s emissary, dammit. A mage in my own right. That commanded some respect.

  “A third time I ask you, faery. Take. Me. To. Puck.”

  Dahlia’s smooth cheeks flexed as she clenched her jaw. “As you wish.”

  The leaf brand on her neck shimmered. Gold and green light swirled around the three of us like a winding cocoon. In ever-faster revolutions the light flared to a blinding white, and I closed my eyes. For a time all I knew was darkness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Hard To Concentrate”

  The toes of my shoes barely touched the ground as I dangled. My arms were stretched over my head, bound at the wrists around a cold cylinder. My hands ached and muscles complained from the suspension. I couldn’t see for the velvet darkness all around. Along with the pain at my wrists and shoulders, I felt moist air over my skin. The temperature teetered on the edge between comfortably brisk and wintry. Soon, the cold would lose its novelty and I’d be shivering. My nose wrinkled at the dank smells of mold, mildew, and earth.

  “Marius?” I asked, voice echoing strangely.

  Silence yawned in response.

  “Dahlia?”

  Nothing.

  The terrible quiet pressed at me, and I trembled. Though I was alone in the darkness, I felt horribly exposed. Predators lurked a breath beyond those shadows, teeth aching to tear me apart. Sweat trickled down my forehead despite the ambient chill, and my stomach quivered as my primal instincts flared to get the hell out of here. My shoes scraping against the floor, I shimmied and struggled with my bindings. I groped to see with my fingers what held me prisoner. A bracelet of steel around each wrist linked together by a few rings of metal. Handcuffs.

  I jerked and squirmed, trying to slide my hands through the cuffs, but it was no use. I was stuck. My shoulders burned and my breaths came in shallow, panicked draughts. With the sandy scratch of a match striking and the hiss of the flame, darkness parted to reveal a face mere inches from mine. I saw the strobe-flash of wild eyes and pointed features, but it’s difficult to say which parts of the face were real and which had been sketched by shadow and a terrified imagination.

  Behind me, someone chuckled. I froze, feeling as if ice had been poured into my spine. Gulping down a lump of fear, I closed my eyes and counted out twenty even breaths.

  As calmly as I could, I spoke into the darkness. “Where am I?”

  Mocking laughter echoed off of the walls, a tittering, high-pitched giggle that wormed its way under my skin and sent me straight back over the edge of terror.

  “Where am I?” I bellowed.

  Angry and beyond terrified, I closed my eyes and let out a roar. Something electric snapped in the air, a presence that I sensed with my blood. Power. There was a power outlet or something nearby. Something I could tap into as a technomage. Focusing, I reached out with my magic and groped for the source. As if I’d used sonar, a picture formed in my head of a cold bulb. Dormant. Off.

  I poured all of my fear and rage into one word: On.

  Directly overhead, a light bulb flared to life, burning my eyes and painting this odd place with fire.

  Holy shit. It worked.

  The wan light wasn’t much, but some of my fear ebbed away at the idea that I could control something even if I was dangling. Again.

  The shadows receded in every direction, but anything more than five feet away was bathed in nightmarish murk. In the gloaming I made out stone walls and a packed dirt floor. I thought a rickety wooden staircase stood in one corner. It appeared I’d been strung up in a basement. For the life of me, I couldn’t say how I’d gotten there.

  Though I still felt as if hungry monsters lurked just beyond the circle of light, I saw no evidence of the person who’d laughed or the haunted eyes I’d seen briefly in the match glow. A few feet in front of me was the slack face of my companion.

  “Marius?” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer.

  At first, I thought his hair hung across his face, but looking closely, it was blood oozing down from a gash at his temple. Another cut formed a crust over his swollen right eye.

  “Marius!” I barked. “Wake up!”

  Panic churned in my stomach, sending the acrid taste of bile to my mouth. Did he look pale? Were his lips blue? I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. Shit! I’d gotten him into this. I’d promised to help him, not get him killed by fucking faeries.

  Hooking my foot around one of his legs and using the bar above as leverage, I shimmied closer. My lip quivered as I said his name. “Marius?”

  I felt his response as a gentle rhythm against my stomach. He was breathing.

  Relieved, I let my head fall forward and my body sag. His forehead on mine burned fever hot.

  “Marius,” I said wearily. “Please wake up.”

  In the wan light, I saw his eyes flutter open. It took him a few moments to focus, but he lifted his head and looked at me with confusion.

  “Cat?” he asked. His voice, weak and thin, lacked his signature bravado. His brow furrowed. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  This was news to me. I had a dull headache, but I ignored it. “So are you,” I said.

  “Bugger,” he whispered.

  I swallowed hard, willing my hands to stop shaking. To get my mind off the horrific things the Fae could have done to us—or what they planned to do—I focused on Marius.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  He shook his head sleepily. “Not really. Last I recall you told the faery to take you to Puck.”

  “I don’t know where we are and I don’t remember what happened,” I said, giving over to the shivers. “And my goddamn shoulders are killing me. I hate dangling!”

  “Look,” he said as he emerged from his daze. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a hair pin or something we can use to pick the locks on these handcuffs?”

  Then I remembered what I’d done with the car locks, with the hotel room door, and with the bulb above us. Those were all electronic, sure, but I’d seen Flynn work his trade on simpler machines, too. Machines of al
l kinds, even the most primitive. I could turn on cell phones and rewire security systems in Eris’s office. Surely, I didn’t need a bobby pin to pop the lock.

  “Hang on,” I said, eager to prove myself. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Not much else for me to do but hang on, is there?”

  Believe it or not, the tinge of his snark gave me hope. I smiled. I could do this. We’d get out of here.

  I shuffled myself forward, groping for a grip on his handcuffs. As I did our bodies came together.

  “I’ve almost got it,” I said, rocking into him.

  My fingertips grazed the steel of his shackles, but couldn’t get a hold. I needed to be closer. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I swung myself forward. Cheek to cheek, I fumbled for the keyhole on his cuffs.

  The soft curls of his mustache and goatee tickled my face. Then came the sensation of his dry, cracked lips along my jaw line. My pulse hammered against his mouth as he traced temptation down my throat. Marius laid another whisper-light kiss on my neck, and my body responded. Nerves I’d thought long dead perked up and swelled with life. My skin prickled with desire, and the small hairs on my arms stood on end as if reaching for him with aching need.

  Breath staggered out of me, and I glanced away from the cuffs. “We…we need to get out of here,” I said weakly, my words trembling.

  Marius ignored me, his attention devoted to the hollow of my throat.

  “Marius…” It was a plea, but for what? His focus? For him to stop? To continue?

  I swallowed hard, steeling myself against the intoxicating moment. I closed my eyes, and there was only his touch. Like tunnel vision for the senses, the world distilled into just the feeling of his body near mine. The cloying scent of cologne and blood mixed with the indescribable aroma of pheromones.

  His kisses began a slow ascent back up, and then he stopped. He tilted his head as he had in the elevator, and this time I moved to meet him. As our lips almost touched, I pulled away.

  Don’t kiss him. Kissing him changes everything.

  Dammit all! Hadn’t I already sacrificed so much? Hadn’t I always given other people what they needed? Wasn’t it time for me to have something I wanted? I compiled a list of all the chances I’d let fly by as Eris sent me hither, thither, and yon for her stupid tasks I’d been a puppet on strings for so long.

  This, though? This I had control over. No goddess to order me around. No friends to sway my decision. Just me.

  From beneath his long lashes, Marius’s green eyes burned with a question. I tightened my legs around his waist and pressed my lips to his in a smoldering kiss. Rather than quench, it ignited a fervid desire. Bolts of pleasure shot through me as he returned the kiss with a guttural noise, equal parts moan and growl. Marius rocked his pelvis into mine, and I felt his whole body stiffen.

  Overwhelmed by a surge of need, I clutched at his bonds. It had been too long since someone had gotten to know my body, and I ached to be touched. I pooled all of my longing, all of my desire, and used my will to break the lock. His arms fell to his sides, and he let out another growl. Gripping my ass in both hands, Marius yanked me forward in rhythm with another thrust of his hips.

  My head fell back as I gasped. Marius’s hands moved up under my shirt, and each nerve, every cell of skin he touched, responded with a flare of heat and an extra beat of my heart. He gave a teasing flick of his thumbs over my breasts then pawed down my ribs. Arching my back, I bucked against his body. With a flood of hot breath and the tickle of his soft beard, he buried his face in the bend of my neck, teeth nipping. Clawing at the pipe over my head, I hissed at the sweet snap of pain and pleasure.

  My fingers fell over the handcuffs, the lock popped free, and I wrapped my arms around him. Even though the pipe no longer supported my weight, Marius’s strength proved to be up to the task. With one hand cupping my ass and the other pressing against my back, Marius took quick steps until I found myself up against a wall.

  I set my feet on the floor as he whipped off his leather coat. Greedily, I pulled at his T-shirt and helped him get rid of it. As my hands traced over his firm chest, fingertips curling in the soft hair there, the satyr loomed over me, blotting out the weak light from the lamp. I stood on tiptoe to taste his lips while his fingers danced at my belt loops. He pulled my hips against his, and I raked my nails over his shoulders.

  His name escaped on my breath.

  “Will you?” he asked.

  Grinding against him, colors flashed in my vision. I wanted him, craved him. His hands tugged at the pockets of my jeans, pulling them down a fraction of an inch. Whatever he asked of me, I would do.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “You will? Do you swear it?”

  His fingers slipped into my pockets and rooted around, taunting me, urging me toward recklessness.

  “Yes,” I moaned. I lurched forward to taste his full lips again, but he drew away, keeping his mouth a promise away from mine.

  I opened my eyes, disoriented, and a golden apple flashed. Marius’s stare was cold, now, laced not with desire but with malice. He held a poker chip between us.

  “You’ll give your soul to me then?” he asked. “To have as my own?”

  “What?”

  Pinning me against the wall with the promise of pleasure, Marius rocked forward. Nuzzling my neck, he said, “Swear that you’re mine, Cat, and I’ll give you everything you need.”

  His lips hovered a scant breath away from mine. Though my body still vibrated with yearning and my being cried out for him to fill me, to make me whole, I shook my head.

  “No,” I muttered.

  Marius’s hands gave me every reason to change my mind as they moved down to my hips. As his fingers slid up my thighs he said, “I don’t think you mean it.”

  Loud and clear my voice rang out. “No!”

  Shuddering, I felt the tattoos of his kisses still fresh and hot. I squirmed away from him and staggered a few steps down the wall. The light from the overhead lamp pooled around the satyr, making him look all the more dangerous and attractive.

  He flipped the poker chip like a coin. “I wonder,” he mused, voice even and cool, “if I collect all these tokens myself, does it mean I would hold the deed on your soul?”

  An old wound on my heart burst open. As the heat of embarrassment blazed in my face, my mouth tingled with the taste of battery acid.

  I’d gone and done it again.

  “Then again,” he continued, “I don’t know that it would do me much good.”

  He flicked the chip, and it hit me in the chest. I didn’t move for it. I stared at Marius in horrified disbelief.

  Stupid! I screamed at myself. So damn stupid!

  “Go on,” he barked. “Take it. It’s worthless, after all. Who would want anything to do with a scrawny, weak, little thing like you?”

  Tears rolled down my face as each of his words stung me like the lash of a whip. How often had I asked myself the same thing? Who would want me?

  “Used goods,” he sniped. “Victim to the charms of love and look what it got you: it made you a slave.”

  Marius took slow, confident steps toward me. Shivering, I moved away from the wall. As I backed into the lamplight, my knees gave way, and I fell to the floor.

  He circled me, his expression dripping with derision and cruelty. “Nothing but a slave. Worthless! Empty!”

  The words bit into me, drawing fresh tears that fell like hot blood.

  He squatted and took my chin in his hand, forcing me to look into his glacial eyes. Flashing his lopsided grin, he said, “You gave yourself up, and now you’re just being passed around. You’re like the nub of a joint at the end of a good night. There’s nothing left of you anymore. Nothing worth taking. Well…” He laughed. He traced a single finger down my throat into the valley between my breasts. “Almost nothing.”

  Vines shot up out of the ground, and I screamed as they twined around my ankles, my neck, and my wrists. As the tendrils yanked me to the floor
, Marius’s eyes once again took on the verdant glow signifying he’d used his power. Horns curled out of his skull, longer now and hooking back like those of a ram. As if finally able to stretch after a long time spent in a cramped space, Marius’s eyes rolled in satisfaction, and his mouth dropped open with a sigh.

  I kicked, trying to skitter away on my back, but the vines held me pinned to the dirt. With the slow, lean stretch of a cat, Marius crawled to where I struggled.

  “Waste not,” he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Breaking the Girl”

  The more I pulled and strained against the living ropes, the tighter they wound about me. Coarse thorns sank into my flesh with a searing pain. Flashing a malevolent smile, Marius lowered his face over mine. My stomach knotted, and my pulse raced. As his breath splashed over my cheeks, I turned my head.

  What happened? How had I gone from taking what I wanted to being taken against my will? How had I lost control?

  “Marius,” I said, pleading.

  “Good,” he purred, “you’re going to be saying my name a lot tonight.”

  “Please, Marius, don’t do this.”

  “No? Mere moments ago you ached for a kiss, and now you don’t want me? Not even in the slightest?”

  “No,” I said through my teeth.

  “Your mouth says no, but when I do this”—His hand tantalized me, and my back arched to meet his touch—“your body says yes. Which is it, Cat?”

  Blood flowed as the thorns cut deeper into my arms.

  “Well? Which is it?”

  I tried. I wanted so much to explain.

  I don’t want it this way, weak and out of control. I want to be my own person! The words caught in my throat with a sob. I no longer begged for his body but his pity. Please. I didn’t mean it. It was a mistake. I didn’t know what it meant.

  In my mind, a more cynical, dark voice responded. This is what you get.

  I knew that voice. So many nights, I’d tossed and turned with that voice as my sole companion. Ever since my ex betrayed me, left me soulless and in the employ of a bitch goddess, that voice had been the evil twin to my optimism, the avatar of harsh reality.