Guild of Truth 01 - Silent as the Grave

by Mary K. Norris

  Her muscles tensed as fight or flight started to creep in. “You don’t have to deliver me to him.”

  He sighed as if her comment disappointed him.

  Too fucking bad. She wasn’t going to be handed to Vander on a silver platter.

  Her cell phone went off. She nearly jumped ten feet into the air.

  Felix.

  Her hand shot into her pocket to dig it out when there was a small sting against her thigh. “Ow.” She jerked away and noticed Jente pulling something from her leg. A tiny needle.

  He caught her expression and smiled. “I heard what you did to those two men at the clinic and thought I’d follow in your footsteps.”

  He’d tranqued her.

  Cali’s stomach flipped. Her vision was already starting to blur. She blinked rapidly but couldn’t seem to shake it. Her mouth felt like cotton. The weight of her phone in her hand was a distant memory, the sound a faint buzzing. “You didn’t have to … do … this.”

  Jente got to his feet smoothly. “Orders are orders, Cali. You don’t understand how badly I need Vander’s resources.”

  She blacked out.

  • • •

  Felix hit redial for the seventh time.

  Still no answer.

  “Dammit.” He ended the call and barely resisted throwing his phone across the car. Why the hell wasn’t she answering? He felt sick to his stomach, the ache in his chest pulsing worse than usual. Was Cali in trouble?

  His foot pressed down harder on the gas.

  The park came into view and he swerved into the nearest spot.

  Children squealed in the background as Felix searched for Cali. Her dark brown head of hair was nowhere in sight.

  He bit back a curse and pressed onward. Cali didn’t like people, so it only seemed reasonable that she’d distance herself from them, even at a park.

  He trolled the tree line but there was nothing. Maybe he could get Joel to track her cell. He pulled out his phone and on one last-ditch effort he called Cali.

  A faint ring came from over his shoulder.

  He whirled. “Cali?”

  He knew she didn’t like to wake up before eleven, but could she really have fallen asleep out here in this heat?

  The ringing continued. He ran blindly, his heart in his throat. As the sound grew louder, the sinking sensation in his stomach became worse.

  He found her phone abandoned in the grass near a large tree. The blood in his veins froze. Terror and rage warred inside him as he picked her cell from the ground. The screen displayed a candid shot of him in his kitchen baking. He’d never even known she’d taken a picture of him.

  His fingers curled around her phone as rage won out.

  He was going to tear Vander Donahughe limb from limb. Red clouded his vision. Somehow he made it back to his Hummer, Cali’s phone tucked safely away in his pocket. He speed-dialed Joel.

  He picked up on the fourth ring. “A little busy here, Felix.”

  “They got Cali.”

  Something smashed to the floor. Joel cursed. “You’re sure?”

  “I found her phone in the park.” His teeth ground together. “We shouldn’t have fucking left her alone,” he nearly roared.

  “How’d they find her?”

  Felix sped through a yield sign and avoided a collision by a hair. Horns blared at him. He paid no attention. “That punk kid, Jente. He’s the only one that could have followed us without our knowing.” He vowed pain and dismemberment upon him if he ever saw that fucker.

  “We’ll find her, Felix.” Joel tried to calm him. It wasn’t working. “Are you driving?”

  “Yes,” he gritted through his teeth. More horns blared.

  “For fuck’s sake, Felix.” Joel sounded both scared and exasperated. “You’re going to be no good to Cali if you’re dead. Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. He felt lost. Then an idea hit him. “I’m going to Niella.”

  “Easy how you tread with her,” Joel advised. “You know she can’t Dream on command. Too many Dreams, even if they’re for good reason, can start playing with her mind.”

  “It’s all I’ve got right now, Joel.”

  Cali was all he had. She’d become such a large part of his life in so short a time. He would take on the whole Kratos Corporation single-handed if that was what it took.

  Chapter 20

  Something sharp pushed into the skin at the bend in Cali’s arm. Her body jerked to attention. Multiple pairs of hands pushed her back down.

  “Get off me,” she screamed. Her struggling did no good. It only exacerbated the pain in her arm as the needle shifted. They were drawing a blood sample. Her eyes latched onto the dark blood pouring into the vial. Nausea rode her hard.

  “Keep her steady,” someone said. Everything was still fuzzy from that damn tranquilizer Jente had shot her with.

  That little bastard was going to pay for that.

  “She keeps moving,” another complained as Cali freed one of her feet and kicked out blindly. She wiggled and wormed for all she was worth. However, she was too busy trying to get free to pay any attention to what was going on around her. One minute she was surrounded by what felt like a hundred hands, the next Vander Donahughe stood over her.

  He regarded her with affection.

  She wanted to spit in his face.

  His dark, coffee-bean hair was combed back in that rich way men of status wore their hair. His eyes were a deep, mahogany brown. They were intellectual eyes, as if they knew the secrets of the universe. He had a broad forehead and pronounced cheekbones. He was a little on the pale side but at one point in her life, a very low point, Cali had thought Vander attractive. It was the first time she’d seen him, when he’d approached her with the position in his corporation. Now she couldn’t look at him without thinking about all the evil he’d probably committed in his life.

  What was the point? To see how much money he could make before he died? Anger flooded her, chasing away the rational fear she should be feeling. She renewed her struggling.

  “Sir,” one of the people at her feet said. “It’d be so much easier if we could sedate her.”

  Vander glanced over his shoulder. Whatever expression he gave the person shut them up fast. “Sedation won’t be necessary.” He was back to staring down at her. “Cali will cooperate, won’t you, Cali?”

  “Fuck you,” she seethed and pulled at her restrained wrists. The woman on her right was due for a manicure, her dirty nails digging into the flesh of Cali’s wrist.

  The whole room held its breath after she spoke.

  A muscle in Vander’s jaw ticked but he remained calm, his voice like steel. “You will do as I say because if you do not, I’m afraid I’ll have to exercise my own power against you.”

  “Oh yeah? And what the hell is your power, to look filthy rich?” She knew she was digging her own grave, but she wasn’t going to go quietly. “What do you want with me?”

  Vander knelt next to her and brushed aside her bangs, his fingers lingering on her forehead. She expected his touch to be cold and clammy, like evil should have its own distinct feel so people would know to watch out for it. But instead his fingers were warm. Gentle.

  “I want you, Cali,” he said genuinely. “You’re my soul mate, after all.”

  All the air left Cali’s lungs.

  He’s lying! He’s a goddamned fucking psycho! Don’t you dare believe him, Cali.

  She blinked, too stunned to do much else.

  The needle was ripped from her arm. Someone put pressure on the puncture.

  Vander smiled. “There’s a good girl.”

  Those four little words were like a slap in the face. Cali shot up, and a few people yelped in surprise followed by cries for her to be restrained. She barely got to take in her surroundings. She was in some kind of large bedroom. Wood was everywhere. The bed where she lay was a canopy bed with lace drapes hung around the four posts.

  Where the fuck was she?


  A smooth, warm hand wrapped around her wrist like a vise.

  Vander.

  “I was really hoping you’d learn to cooperate,” he said as if talking to a child.

  The nasty retort she had ready died on her lips as a sudden, unexpected pain ripped through her body like a blade.

  Her knees buckled. One of the flunkies closest to her caught her before she hit the floor.

  Vander’s hand didn’t release her.

  Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to wrench her arm free from his grip. There was another fierce stab of pain. She cried out. Her whole body shook as her strength left her. Bile rose in her throat as another lance of bone-deep pain exploded. She felt like she was dying, slowly, her life seeping from her body.

  “Stop.” The plea was a low croak, and distantly she realized it had come from her.

  “You see?” Vander was talking to the room at large. “All that is needed is one swift example.”

  His fingers tightened and Cali screamed as her world went black.

  • • •

  “What the fuck is taking so long?” Felix ran his hand through his hair for what was probably the fiftieth time. It’d been two days since Cali was taken. Two fucking days!

  The other members of the guild eyed him warily.

  Joel looked up from his laptop where he’d been spending all his time trying to hack into Kratos’ main database. He was looking for any and all signs of Cali, but so far the firewalls and encryptions had deterred their progress.

  Joel got up from his seat and placed a comforting hand on Felix’s shoulder. He shrugged it off.

  “Look,” Joel said in a lowered voice. “You have to keep it together. You’re scaring the girls. We’ll find Cali, okay? The information we’re searching for might be buried in the database I’m cracking. I’ll keep looking, and at the same time I’ll search for anything that can help bring down Vander. So far I’ve only found accounting and marketing documents. There’s no record of anything illegal, but it’s only a matter of time before I find it. You just have to keep it together.”

  Felix knew Joel was speaking logic, but his brain and heart just wouldn’t listen. Somewhere out there Cali was alone, at the mercy of Vander. His hands fisted. “Have you found anything on where Vander Donahughe lives?”

  The location of the CEO’s home was proving to be as elusive as finding anything illegal in the Kratos database or anything on Cali.

  They were getting nowhere.

  Joel looked crestfallen. “There’s no address under that name. Everything including his electric bill is sent to the corporate building.”

  Felix’s anger spiked a few more notches. “They don’t even have a rough guess as to where he lives? Nothing?”

  Joel held his ground. “Listen, Felix, I can imagine what you’re feeling right now. If anything happened to Sydney — ”

  Felix’s temper snapped. “You don’t know what I’m going through. Sydney isn’t your Mirror Mate, and one day you’re going to have to accept that she’ll belong to another.”

  Sydney stared as if she didn’t know him. “Felix — ”

  It didn’t matter what she would have said. Joel’s fist connected soundly with the side of Felix’s face. The pain felt good. It helped him focus on something else. It eased the hurt inside of him.

  He threw a right hook and caught Joel in the jaw.

  Everything else faded into the background as they got into it. The closed space they occupied didn’t allow enough room for them to really move around.

  Felix dimly heard Sydney crying out for them to stop. She tugged insistently on Joel’s arm. He could tell Joel wanted to shrug her off, but he let her pull him over to the couch. He watched Felix with angry eyes.

  They were both breathing heavily, the tension in the air nearly suffocating.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Sydney yelled at him, though her eyes were red-rimmed.

  He didn’t know what was wrong with him. His whole body felt on edge. His nerves were frayed, his temper always at the breaking point. He wasn’t normally so temperamental but he found himself unable to calm down. Not even baking calmed him like it once did.

  He scooped his keys off the counter. “I need to clear my head.”

  Niella rolled out in front of him, nearly cutting off his toes. “Hold on there, Del Valle. I don’t think it’d be wise to let you go off when you’re this riled up.” She held her hand out for his keys.

  Again he found his temper spiking. What the hell was wrong with him? He never got upset at Ell. If anything she should have been the one upset with him. Especially after he’d demanded that she Dream about Cali’s whereabouts the other day. He’d clearly been in the wrong, but she’d brushed him off and acted as if his slip into madness had never happened.

  His anger shouldn’t be controlling him like this. His keys bit into the palm of his hand. The back of his neck began to prickle.

  His animosity gave way to a sudden jolt of terror.

  He tightened his hold on his keys even more, unwilling to move any part of his body even an inch for fear of his powers Erasing something.

  He hadn’t lost control like this in years.

  He stared into Niella’s hazel eyes. They were hard as granite but turned puzzled when she noticed his shallow breathing.

  Joel and Sydney were talking in hushed voices behind them.

  “What’s wrong?” Niella whispered.

  Felix swallowed. “I’m not safe to be around,” he said through tight lips.

  Niella regarded him for a few moments. “Then go take a lap around the block to cool down,” she ordered and wiggled her open palm. “Leave the keys.”

  “I need you to take them from my hand.”

  Niella finally seemed to understand the severity of the situation. She carefully reached into his hand and pried his fingers apart.

  Careful not to move his hands, Felix made his way out the door to clear his head. The fresh air and warm sun helped ease the tension in his neck. The tingling faded as he gained a little more control over his emotions. His face, on the other hand, was starting to pound and throb as the hits from Joel started to swell.

  Good. He deserved it.

  He felt like such an ass for what he’d said. It wasn’t Joel’s fault he hadn’t gained complete access to the Kratos database yet. He’d only been trying to help. The only person he was entitled to be pissed at was himself or Vander. A part of his anger stemmed from the unknown of what Vander was doing with Cali.

  They hadn’t figured out why he wanted her. Would he brainwash her into working for them? Like he had Collette all those years ago?

  Collette …

  Felix stood a little taller as the wheels in his mind started to work. She’d have to know where Vander lived. She’d know where Cali was being kept. All he had to do was find her.

  He jogged the rest of the way back home.

  While he no longer knew Collette’s home address, he knew the next best thing.

  • • •

  Cali was in hell. The hours — or was it days? — passed in a hazy blur. She had no concept of time. She remembered the first time she woke up after Vander had done whatever the hell he’d done to her. She’d been too weak to even feed herself. She’d had to swallow the humiliation of being fed by Vander. Naturally, he’d practically jumped at any opportunity to help her. Of course that help fell short when it came to letting her go.

  She’d tried escaping on her own. Twice. The repercussions were to be drained by Vander until she nearly threw up or blacked out.

  When she factored in all those instances, she guesstimated her capture time to roughly four days, if not five.

  She was unfortunately well acquainted with her new living quarters. The bedroom was filled with wood and historical artifacts. Old tapestries made of dark fabric hung on the walls. They depicted black, swirling demons, raining chaos and ruin among the living while they seemed to suck the very souls from the fleeing bodies.

&
nbsp; African masks caught in screams of agony rested on the right, each one crying out in desperation, forever searching for someone to help them. And straight ahead of her stood terracotta statues of gargoyles and mutated half demons, sneering like angry sentinels.

  Cali had wanted to scream bloody murder the first time she awoke to her surroundings, but she resisted.

  By eavesdropping with her powers she found she was being held at Vander’s home. When she’d first found out she was being kept at a home address, hope had flared white-hot in her chest. But it had been days since then and Felix still hadn’t found her.

  Had something terrible happened to them?

  She’d gone over the question again and again as she bided her time pretending to recover from her latest draining session. When others thought her to be weak she was left unattended.

  She fell into a light sleep as she debated what to do for her next attempted escape. She was jostled from her nap by the door opening. She didn’t know if her fortune had gotten better or worse as Collette strode in like she owned the place.

  Rage flooded her whole body.

  At least it’s not Vander.

  She stayed as still as possible as Collette drew closer. She looked down on Cali with pity. Genuine pity.

  Cali didn’t want her sympathy. “What?” she growled.

  Collette jumped as Cali opened her eyes completely. Any trace of sympathy was wiped clean as Collette smiled down at her. “Comfortable?” she asked sweetly.

  “What are you doing here?” She wanted to sit up, but was afraid if she showed any sign of improved strength she’d be drained again.

  Collette slammed a hand on either side of Cali’s head, shaking the entire bed. She leaned so close to Cali that Cali could smell salad dressing on her breath. “I want to know what you’re playing at,” Collette seethed.

  “It’d help if you could be a little more specific with your accusation.” Cali reveled in pissing Collette off even more.