by Billi Jean
Dark-haired with startlingly blue eyes, the bloodsucker in question lifted his lip arrogantly to reveal the length of his fangs to the young wolf pup who’d just insulted him. An elder Lykae, one Torque knew well, stepped over to stand by the younger man, another Lykae in tow, if the sandy brown hair, brown eyes and lean, rangy muscled physique meant anything. Most members of the pack shared those signature looks, but not all. Torque in fact had some of the wolf blood running through his veins, not much but some. Yet he was black-haired and grey-eyed.
“Two seconds and you’re causing shit?” Torque murmured, coming up next to Jaxon.
Jaxon whipped his head around and gave him the ‘what the fuck’ look he was famous for. Torque resisted the urge to grin at him. Jaxon must have sensed it though because he crossed his arms over his chest and levelled him with a black look.
“Hey, I was talking to you, bloodsucker.”
Most vampires would go ape shit on stuff like that. Torque gave Jaxon credit, he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he turned back to face the Lykae, popped a grin, and tipped his head at the young wolf, then ignored him again to say to Torque, “I dunno, it must be my glowing personality, or something.”
“Or something,” Torque muttered, nodding to the wolves. “We’re here on council business, Alex.” He turned to look over at the angry younger man, trying to place a name. Many of the Lykae served the council when they were of age to leave their pack. “Warren, isn’t it?”
The kid nodded after only a second of hesitation. Alex didn’t. The wolf was known for two things—protecting his clan, and his coldblooded methods for doing so. He was the most intense, most controlled wolf Torque had ever met.
“I’m aware of the council business. I was sent to sit in, druid.”
Druid? No one called anyone a druid any longer. Leave it to Alex to, though. His disdain of anything not Lykae was legendary. Torque ignored Jaxon’s smirk and scanned the crowds milling around them. The place was far more dangerous than it should be. Women didn’t tread the streets alone. No one really did. People gathered in clusters, or groups, or they hired guards. Even the little witchling back at the entrance had two guards at her stall. If he’d tried to stop her sales, he would have had a fight on his hands. The old pickpocket was an anomaly. No one really felt free from harm. Not here, not anywhere, if he were honest.
He felt the blame even if he wasn’t directly responsible for the outcome. This place should be safe. The constant and ever-increasing struggle with the Death Stalkers had forced more and more of the Council’s attention on the battles, rather than protecting the outlying territories of free zones, but some of their efforts could have come here, to protect what they already had. He’d read the reports of the fights breaking out in the Midpass. Some of the eldest of the clans had packed up and left before choosing sides. Something the Council hadn’t followed up on.
He’d never realised it was this bad. He had his own battles. Midway wasn’t one of them, he reminded himself.
“Where do we meet?” Alex asked.
He focused back on Alex and jerked his chin towards the people already watching them with interest. “Not exactly the place to talk. The old coliseum, below level. There should be a guard.”
Alex didn’t bother to look around. He simply nodded sharply, eyed Jaxon with distaste, and headed off with the two younger pack members by his side.
“Yeah, it’s my personality.” Jaxon exhaled. “It’s a burden, man, really.”
“Cut the shit. Have you taken a look around this place?”
Jaxon shook his head with a sneer. He’d planted his fists on his lean hips, making his heavy leather trench coat open on the sides like bat wings. “Same shit, different day. Where’s the goods, and why call me in on this? You know I hate the Midpass. And if you think I’m sitting in, you’re wasting your time.”
“I need you at the council meeting, but we need to catch up on the club.”
Jaxon groaned. “And you want me to do what? Fill in the overstuffed council all about the news?”
Torque shrugged. “I thought we’d get this done, then hit the club afterwards. The council needs to know, and possibly come with us to investigate.” Why did Jaxon always push his buttons? The guy acted like he had no interest in the growing numbers of Death Stalkers. Nothing seemed to matter to him—living, dying or whatever vampires called their half-lives simply rolled off Jaxon’s back like he didn’t have a care which way the world turned. Maybe he wasn’t acting, maybe he really didn’t care. Torque couldn’t imagine being so blasé. “Don’t you give a shit about anything?”
Jaxon twisted his neck around to watch a slim nymph walk by in barely anything more than fairy dust and some leaves.
“Jax!” Torque barely kept the growl out of his voice.
Snapping his attention back to Torque, he winked. “Sure. Me, myself, and I. I care a hundred per cent about that. Otherwise, nah, not worth it.”
“Really? Interesting. I heard a different story about your sudden taste for coffee. Seems you’ve found something—”
A glimpse of something caught Torque’s attention and he turned, breaking off in mid-lecture to stare off into the crowd. He spotted a slaver’s mark hanging from the doorway of an archaic-looking cathedral. When had the council last visited the Midway? No wonder the Death Stalkers flourished. Ahead of him, through the crowd, he spotted a blonde head then, when a burly shoulder blocking his view shifted out of his way, golden skin and a face came into view then vanished.
“Did you see that?”
He turned his head to glance over at Jaxon, but the vampire scanned the crowd, suddenly alert.
“Yeah, I saw her. Pretty, blonde, witch.”
Pretty? She was damn near too beautiful to look at straight on. Like staring at the sun.
* * * *
The free fall lasted long enough for Susanna to panic. In the darkness of a travel spell, there was no time, no sound, no comfort at all but the sound of blood pumping through veins. She counted, remembering to silence her fears and concentrate. Before she reached twenty, bright light burst along her senses and the sound, smells, and feel of cobblestones beneath her bare feet brought a rush of tears to her eyes. Emotions, hundreds upon hundreds of emotions hit her empathy and nearly brought her to her knees. Quickly, she built up her mental walls, reinforcing them with a softly spoken spell she’d learned as a child.
All around her she spotted people. All shapes, sizes, gender and races. Immortal warriors strode alongside tiny pixies while old hags complained in loud, shrill voices to vendors selling goods.
A glance around, and she swallowed past her fear. Midway. She was in Midway. It had to be. She’d heard of the place, but had never ventured here for anything. Her herbs and spells could be created with what she grew, or if not that, what she found in the hidden markets along the witches’ corridors of most mortal cities. This though, this was crazy. She’d never seen so many races all side by side and while they weren’t exactly talking, they weren’t drawing swords either.
“Aye, there, what are ya doin’ out of line?”
Susanna turned and found herself face to face with a disgusting leather vest covered in what looked like a year’s worth of food spills and stains. She backed up. And up. Giant. Holy moly.
“Aye, did ya no’ ‘ear me?”
Tilting her head, she tried to figure out what he meant. A sign behind him caught her eye and she planted her hands on her hips. She’d just escaped, barely, from Death Stalkers and now this huge, stupid giant thought to sell her as a slave.
“Listen to me, you idiot. I’m not a slave.”
He blinked ginormous brown eyes and scrunched up his face like she’d spoken too fast. “Aye, ya are wearin’ my slave clothes, ya are mine.”
She glanced down at her tattered gown and felt bile rise up in her throat. Her dress had been another torture. The Death Stalkers couldn’t touch her, when they tried, somehow or another they went crashing into walls. But they could whip h
er. And they could make her play their slave. She’d put the dress on her in exchange for food. She’d worn it to serve at the head table, to show the strength of the vile Dark Lord.
It had once been a parody of beautiful against the fresh whip marks marring her skin.
Anger hit her system hard enough to make her pause in the process of lashing into the stupid giant. The huge guy took it as a sign she was simply willing to go along with him. He reached out and grabbed her arm. Instead of the spell protecting her sending him crashing into the crowds of people, she called on her magic, filling herself with the golden glow. Her power flooded her to her fingertips. It had been years since she’d been able to cast a spell. Part of her felt badly for the giant now at the receiving end of her torture. But part of her laughed at the chance to teach someone evil—the slaver—a lesson.
Calling on a truly awful spell, she cast it with full force, like a too-tight sapling branch that was released, right in his face. He staggered back with a loud cry into a table, knocking over the large pewter tankards and spilling yellow foaming ale all over the group of men and women sitting there.
A fight broke out immediately with the giant trying to inform the table it was Susanna’s fault. The spell had swollen his face though, including his tongue, so all he managed to do was mangle his speech—which she thought already sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles—into something that sounded like he was braying like a donkey.
Two feet from her, a man dressed in black and carrying a sword at his hip started over to her from where he was securing a line of women for sale.
“What do we have here? A feisty one?”
She didn’t respond. Once she would have. Once she would have tried to talk, but the evil in this one’s soul bought him no kindness. She stripped him of his sword, kicked him in the gut and used the sword hilt to bash him in the temple. He fell in a messy heap in the muddy ale and tankard mess. Not wasting time, she raced to the line of women, used a spell to untangle the heavy chains binding them and motioned with her chin to the crowds.
“Go, get new clothes, and get out of here.”
A redhead frowned, looking confused. “Who are you?”
The dark-haired beauty next to her grinned and winked. “Does it matter? Let’s go.”
“We should help you,” the first woman argued, eyeing Susanna’s clothes and wounds. “You don’t look able to hold off the crowd alone.”
Susanna glanced over her shoulder at two more giants. No way was she fighting them. They were too big. Turning back to three women who still remained, she smiled and shrugged. “I’ve got some pent-up frustration, you know? You go, I’m not up on that block anyway and believe me no one is ever caging me again.”
The women exchanged a look and nodded. “I’m out of here. I’ll get my family and we’ll be back. Slavery is illegal.”
Susanna nodded and turned to face the two giants. She spotted a sturdy table and jumped on the chair, then the tabletop. The giants both lumbered over, looking confused, like someone had taken their toy away for no good reason.
She smiled. She’d barely left her own imprisonment behind, could still hear the cries of others in pain, but inside she was bursting with life. Home. From here, she could go home but first, she’d make sure these bastards didn’t show their faces again. And definitely didn’t sell others into slavery.
“Now, why did ya do that?”
“Slavery is forbidden.” She used a spell to amplify her voice and focused on the crowds beginning to double in size around the slaver’s stall. “In fact, the Immortal Council has marked it as an illegal trade. Everywhere. In this place”—she gestured with borrowed sword—“it carries a fifty-year sentence.”
Both giants grumbled at this. The crowd didn’t appear too happy either. Well, too bad, so sad. She levelled them all with a glare and shook her head as if she could sympathise. Not.
“Look, that’s the way it is, and I’m here to put an end to it, got it? Now, pack up, hit the road, or I will take you in.” She was betting on a bluff. Her foster mom, Star, a vampire with more style than Madonna, had always advised a good bluff when outnumbered.
Suddenly, she felt like someone had dipped her in icy water. The slavers disappeared from her focus and deep in her bones she knew—with absolute certainty—the Death Stalkers were on their way. She shouldn’t know such a thing. No one could trace a shift from one location to another, but she did. Her insides felt like someone was wringing them dry like a soaked towel.
Through the crowds, she spotted a man who stood out from the others as if she stared down a kaleidoscope and everything but his face spun in shards of colour. She froze. He was tall, very tall with midnight black hair cut short but long enough that his hair dragged down over his furrowed brow. He turned more fully towards her and she stood, mesmerised by his light eyes and the way his dark goatee framed his strong face. Her heart slammed against her chest.
Mine.
Whoa. Blinking, she exhaled only then realising she’d been holding her breath. What the hell? As if life hadn’t thrown enough curve balls her way, now, dirty and disgusting from years of torture, she stumbled into the man who might be her bonded?
The chill returned, signalling that the Death Stalkers would be there any moment, she was certain. Never again. She’d never be caged again.
With a rush, the market resurfaced and the man who might or might not be her bonded disappeared in the flood of faces. Another giant lumbered up to her, clearly still keen on getting her to settle down. Smiling, she tossed her hair and drew her power. She’d practise on the slavers then she’d teach the Death Stalkers a lesson on trying to hold a witch.
Torque concentrated through the crowds of people and spotted the blonde again. Had he ever seen anyone so beautiful before?
No. Hell no.
She shook her head angrily, said something he couldn’t hear and gestured with her arm, a no-nonsense downward slash of her hand accompanied by a toss of her hair that made his gut clench with desire. She had such fire. What would it be like to bed a woman like that? To have all the heat directed at him? His heart sped up like some crazy horse scenting sweet grain after a too-long ride at the mere thought.
Torque dragged his eyes away from her long enough to see what had to be the biggest male he’d ever come across facing off with her. The beast had to be a half-giant. Standing at nearly eight feet tall and built like a forward on the Scottish rugby team. Giants dealt in all things illegal in the underworld. They would sell their own mothers if it turned a good profit. As Torque watched, this one raised his hand to the woman, as if to hit her.
Something like a shot of pure adrenaline raced through Torque. He’d once tried the illegal substances known to get you higher than a crack addict with a hit of heroin. This was ten times stronger. Everything around him slowed down, or felt like it, while his body surged to battle readiness. His temper rose to the boiling point. Every muscle hardened ready to engage in the fight.
It startled the hell out of him. He never came to the rescue. Never.
But he had to admit that his body wanted him over there, kicking ass. Instead, he stood frozen in place, trying to pull his shit together before he could head towards her or else simply dive in, sword drawn, and slice the giant in half.
“Torque? What the hell’s up, man?”
Torque turned back to Jaxon and frowned at the vampire’s confused look.
“Follow me,” he said, already turning to head through the crowd. He pushed people out of the way, not even sparing a glance at the curses that rang out at his rough treatment. His focus zeroed in on the blonde. She ducked and grabbed a pot off a rack behind her. He stumbled to a halt, watching her smoothly whip around to slam the pan square in the slaver’s ugly face with a swing Babe Ruth would have envied. Left-handed too, because in her right she carried a sword.
The giant sailed backwards into the wall behind him. Feminine laughter pealed out over the suddenly quiet crowd. The laugh was pure, sweet, and full
of something that sounded a hell of lot like fun.
“Well, damn, I think the slaver might have made a bit of a miscalculation, huh?”
Torque didn’t bother to respond to Jaxon. Instead, he watched her fling the frying pan at the giant, jump down with a wince from a table, hook her straight blonde hair behind her ear with her free hand, and narrow her eyes at the prospective buyers as if she were sizing them up for who would feel her wrath next. She was barefoot. Her dingy white dress was ragged, ripped along the calf-length hem and still it fit her like some fairy princess gown complete with wisps of tattered chiffon flowing from the snug, scoop-necked bodice. One man moved forward and she crouched down, the battle stance fluid as she faced off, sword up and her body full of power.
The guy said something and she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I don’t care what I look like, I’m not a slave and if you think for one instant I’m letting you or your grubby, nasty, disgusting paws on me you simply don’t understand the day I’ve had so far. Now, back off, buddy, there’s more trouble than you coming this way.”
“Damn, I think I just fell in love,” Jaxon muttered.
He tossed a glare at Jaxon over his shoulder. The vampire had a smug shit-eating grin on his face, as if he’d scored one over on Torque. The damn nosey vampire knew him too well.
“Were you saying something about my life? I think a mini-Torque lecture or something like that?” Jaxon asked.
“Shut the hell up. We’ll discuss your taste in women later. Right now we have to go help her.”
Jaxon anchored his fists on his hips, more than ready to argue.
Before he could open his mouth, Torque growled, “What? We can’t allow her to be sold into slavery! The slave markets are supposed to be banned.”
Why the hell do I sound like I’m making excuses?
“Oh, I’m sure we can’t. But whatever we’re going to do, we’d best do it. She’s not getting the crowd to settle down is she, with talk like that? What kind of day she’s had? Shit that’s funny.” He jerked his chin at the rowdy crowds. “She’s a young one, one of those full of snappy come-backs with enough power to back it up, but even she might need some help in a place like this.”
