by Billi Jean
The dark-haired guy managed to drag the girl out of the room but stumbled back into the wall.
Torque was all over him. He threw a spell to freeze them both, tossed the girl aside, and flung the lifeless mage over his shoulder and slammed the door to the hallway. He dropped the mage and faced her looking hotter than anything she’d ever seen before and determined.
“Explain this again.”
“Look, do we have time? I mean, you saw what was going on in those monitors. Can we talk or should we act?”
“Shit, Jaxon is gone. I need to call some backup. This guy can’t be the one in charge—”
“He’s too young, not powerful enough.” She nodded.
“Right.” Torque drilled her with a firm, pissed-off look but finally pulled out his phone. “I need more weapons. If you can shift here, you can shift to the Lodge.”
She nodded.
He waited.
“I can do that.” Sure she could, right?
* * * *
Ten minutes later, they were back at the lodge. Torque had made three phone calls, hauled the mage over his shoulder and ordered her to shift them to the lodge. She’d done well, she thought. Considering that he’d not said more than those few words to her. He’d gone off with the mage, she supposed to tie him up or something and she’d paced the bedroom.
Torque stalked back in, went to the walk-in closet, and disappeared inside, but she could still hear him gather his gear.
“Get your things. I need to secure the mage there.”
She stared at the closet for a full minute before his words penetrated. Not his words, his meaning. He wanted her to go with him to the compound, while he spoke to a Death Stalker.
“Beauty?” Torque must have realised she simply stood there, flat-footed and frozen because he finally re-emerged from the walk-in closet with his weapons strapped on, leather trench coat over his arm, to give her a quizzical look. “Did you hear me?”
She nodded, swallowed past the lump in her throat, and nodded again.
His silver eyes searched her face before a quick grin split his handsome face. “Surprised you, didn’t I?”
“You could say that.”
“Get your jacket, let’s hit it.”
“Hit it?”
“I’m trying, remember? Let’s go before I change my mind.”
His disgruntled tone set her in motion more than his order to get her jacket and hit it. She fought to struggle into the dove-grey pea coat, and felt him come up behind her. He caressed her cheek gently before he helped pull her long braid out of the way to slip the coat on for her. “Don’t leave my side, unless I tell you to. And don’t be upset if I, well, hit someone.”
Hit someone? She nodded. Hit someone. He’d already practically sliced the head off that goth vampire.
“Ready?”
“Yep.”
He tugged her close for a hug, letting her feel his warmth and strength. She breathed him in, loving the scent of his clean soap smell mixed with spicy man. He should bottle it, but she’d never allow him to share.
When he released her, she tugged him back, but he took her hand gently and led them to the portal mostly hidden by the long, russet drapes. “We’ll use this. I want to see if this triggers any more of your memories, or skills.”
Oh. She hadn’t thought of that. “Okay.”
“Besides, it’s frowned on, shifting directly into the compound. Some do, but it’s set for them. For an unknown powerful witch? Not so much.”
She smiled. ‘Powerful witch’. She liked the sound of that. She still had her doubts, but he didn’t seem to share them. “Okay.”
He narrowed his grey eyes and zeroed them in on her face. “Sweetheart, you need to say more than that, all right?”
“Well, you being considerate, mannerly, and well, nice is so new, I’m having trouble keeping up.”
She heard him chuckle, comforting her before he said, “Damn.” Grinning he winked. “Hold on, and stay with me—”
“Unless you tell me not to, then I stay where you leave me, right?”
He didn’t answer, just lifted a dark eyebrow, and gave her that arrogant silver stare. She blew him a kiss, grabbing his arm when the room suddenly slipped away and blackness descended. Jerk. He’d done that on purpose.
A second later, the ground hit her boots. She leaned into Torque, taking his warmth deep before standing on her own. This was her first time around immortals. This would be a place packed with immortals. She feared her empathy might overload her senses around so many other people. Layering a little space between her and the outside world, she took a deep calming breath. She was going to need some time to adjust, that was all.
“You okay, sweet?”
“I’m—”
“Okay.”
She nodded, not sure what he’d got them into. Torque stood and waited, she realised, and blinked up at him. Oh. Words. Right.
“All right. Mage. You’re going to question him.”
“As soon as I get the information I need out of him, we’re storming that club. We need the details from the kid. They have immortals and humans tied up, trying to force a change on them.”
Holy shit. She stumbled, caught herself on the narrow hallway, then stopped when Torque opened a door and ushered her in. “And you want me to go back to the club with you?”
“Yeah, can you believe it?”
She didn’t answer but he motioned to the room, and she glanced around. It looked like a waiting room, sorta. Book lined the walls and computers sat on the glossy surface of the big table in the centre of the room.
“I’ll get to it and you stay here. There’s computers if you want to do research and there’s books. I’ll try to hurry. There’s drinks and—”
“I’ll be fine. Just hurry. You’re right. Every minute we take is a minute longer those people are in pain.”
Torque paused from where he was reaching for the door, turned, and met her eyes with a heated stare. “Not for much longer, Beauty. Not for much longer.”
Chapter Eleven
The Death Stalker bastard wasn’t talking. Every minute, Beauty had said, almost like she knew what it felt like being tortured. Did she realise that?
Torque took a long swig of his Aquafina spearing the guy with a stare. Not that the mage could see him through the one-way mirror. He’d tried everything he knew to get the little bastard to talk. Short of death.
“Not going to talk, is he?”
He grunted. Not surprised by Jaxon’s appraisal. He shot the other man a look, but Jaxon still slouched on the couch, legs crossed, hands folded on his stomach, looking like a very comfortable vampire. Torque knew better. He’d seen Jaxon when he’d flung open the door, breathless and looking like shit warmed over. It appeared the human-saving might not have gone as planned. And that sucked, because he had no idea what that meant. Did that mean Jaxon had changed her, given her a rebirth into the immortal world? Or not? Or had he, but left her? Impossible. Not a chance.
But when he’d drilled the guy for answers, he’d come up dry. Not a word. They’d come close to blows, the first time he’d ever been tempted to follow through with the urge to pound Jaxon’s smart mouth into the dirt.
He hadn’t. So, now they had a little truce going on. And Jaxon? Was just faking boredom.
“He’ll talk.” A dark eyebrow quirked up, but the humour didn’t reach the vampire’s blue eyes. Cold blue eyes. Torque wasn’t sure what Jaxon had done to the human, now perhaps turned vampire, and here within the sanctuary of the Immortal Questioning Hall, aka torture chamber, he wasn’t going to ask the vamp again. The place was wired. While he wanted answers and possibly Jaxon’s head on a pike if he’d harmed the human, he didn’t want to broadcast in case Jaxon was innocent.
When Jaxon merely stared at him blankly, Torque grunted and shifted his attention back to the Death Stalker where it belonged. The bastard on the other side of the glass was in worse shape than Jaxon. Torque had used his fists when his spells weren’t prying t
he answers from the male. He’d broken the guy’s nose, busted an eye socket, and probably cracked a few ribs. The spells binding the youngling were strong enough to flatten his use of power, but Torque wished the guy would go for it, so he could then kill the little bastard. Oh, my bad. Did I kill him?
“Have you tried persuasion? Like verbal?”
No. He had no leverage. What made the mage tick? He had no clue. What drove a man to forsake ancient vows to protect, to use his skill to aid human and immortal kind, for the dark oaths?
“Think. What happened when I left?”
“You mean when you—” He broke off with a snarl. He wasn’t going to rat Jaxon out.
“Well, if you saw him, was he alone?”
“No,” he barked, ready to give him hell, but Jaxon’s words registered and he shut the hell up. The female. A vampire, but—turning back to the mage, he wondered. Had the mage broken into the room looking for her? “There was a female. Vampire. Young, turned.” And he’d nearly slit her throat. She’d be dead by now if no one had aided her.
“Stay here.”
“Uh, dude. I wasn’t going with you. I doubt you need a helping hand.”
“You’re a tool, you know that?”
Jaxon sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
He shot the vampire a glance, regretting being so hard on the guy. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you?” Face set in firm, angry lines, the vampire speared him with cold blue eyes.
Irritation back on, Torque turned away. It was what he did. Found answers. Protected.
The mage hadn’t moved. Not that Torque would have thought he would. Stepping towards the one-way glass, he watched the man’s chest rise and fall. Was there a way to turn a man away from the darkness? If there was a way to turn them in the first place, there had to exist the opposite.
The answers weren’t going to come to him standing around. He headed out, opening the door to the interrogation room without more than a nod to the young wolf guarding the door.
“So, how’s the eye? Hurt a bit?”
“Fuck you.” Or he tried to say. It came out more like, ‘uck you’.
“Yeah, I don’t swing that way. But tell me, did that little vampire dish swing your way?”
The dude’s head jerked up as if he’d grabbed him by the hair. Bingo. Oh, man, he was good. He let the slow grin spread over his face, knowing his smile was sometimes more frightening than his glare.
The mage’s eye that would open opened wide enough to reveal the whites. “If you touch her—”
He cut in with a laugh. “Actually, I nearly took her head. But you know what? I’m feeling all generous today. I mean love is in the air, you know? You tell me what is going on in the club, what your numbers are, who leads the pack, and how and where to break in? And I’ll not only make it my mission to find your female, but I’ll hand-deliver her with her neck very much attached.” Maybe.
The mage panted, so upset now blood bubbled from his nose and mouth.
“Come on, lover boy.”
The door behind him opened, but he didn’t turn. The kid’s eyes said it was one of his own, and within a heartbeat, he sensed Jaxon standing near him.
“Vampire, huh? And you’re a mage. Interesting. That kind of thing is frowned on, you know? Like human-immortal bonding. Maybe we can’t promise that, you know, Torque?”
Interesting point, since the smart ass would know best.
If the blood bubbles meant anything, the man was getting a little hot under the collar. His jaw bulged and he fought the bonds. With a low grunt, he fisted his hands until his knuckles stood out stark white. The chair shook. Impressive, but not gonna do much good.
He must have thought the same, because he stopped and jerked back. No doubt he had tried to test their spell.
“How’d that go for ya?” Jaxon asked, popping his gum, and grinning.
“Just tell us what we want. I would hate to have Jaxon hunt her down. He can be very persuasive. You know the vampire thing.”
Jaxon laughed low. A rough sound that had the guy flipping. The mage renewed his struggles, but when Jaxon moved in closer, he froze.
“Ah, the scent of her is small, but”—breathing deeply near the man’s neck, Jaxon chuckled—“enough to find her in the middle of Bangkok, man.” Suddenly the vampire gripped the mage by the face and got right up close and personal. “Tell the dude what he wants to know. I’m sick of this shit.”
Jaxon dropped his hands and stalked to the wall, turning to pin the mage with a glare. Who said Jaxon couldn’t interrogate? Hell, the dude was meaner than he was. One look at the mage and he had to grin. Well. That about did it.
The mage nodded, his eye blinked rapidly and he opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out. The purple and red bruises covered half his face darkened. He looked scared. And young.
“She…” Swallowing, he started again. “She’s my sister. Her name is Sydney. I’ll tell you anything you need to know. Just get her out of there.”
If she lived from his sword stroke. Sister. Huh.
“How long have you been under the vows?”
Jaxon sent him a questioning look. He ignored him.
“Six, six months.”
“Fuck.” Jaxon kicked into gear, pacing the place like a caged animal. “Does not matter, Torque, just get the intel, then let’s hit it.”
‘Just get the intel’. The mage was young. He’d probably not even reached his maturity, certainly not older than seventy, possibly younger. Six months. Why had he taken the vow? What had he hoped to gain?
“They had Sydney, turned her, I had to.”
Had he asked that aloud? It seemed so.
“Fine. Give us the details, and we go in, clean the shit up, and bring you your sister.”
Jaxon shot him a look again, but Torque ignored him. How long could he ignore his gut, though? Something was not right, not right at all. Aeros was right. The Death Stalkers sought many for their number, but not usually the young and stupid. Maybe the mage was strong, or had potential, or maybe his sister would be used to further the line. Whatever, it made no sense to turn a young immortal. Not unless you were gearing up for something massive, like a strike.
“What was going on in the rooms? The rooms on the television monitors?”
Swallowing audibly, the guy shivered. “They were turning…people.”
“Turning people? You mean, forcing immortals to take the vows?”
The kid swivelled his attention between the two of them frantically before he spilled. “Humans, immortals, didn’t matter, I think. They turned them, or they forced them into beasts they collared and used to patrol the other wards.”
Jaxon gave him a ‘fuck me’ look. All the colour had drained from the vampire’s face. Pale was a vampire’s natural skin tone, but Jaxon had a natural tint that lent him a more human appearance. Now he looked like death warmed over. No doubt, he did as well.
“They turned humans?”
“Other wards?” Jaxon asked right over the top of Torque’s own demand.
Doing the head-turning thing again between him and Jaxon, the kid nodded, clearly ready to spill his guts. “Humans. And immortals. They were tortured for days. Men would come and they did experiments on them, some didn’t live, but if they died, another took their place, like they had an endless supply of…people.”
“Men? You mean the higher-ups, kid?” Jaxon asked.
“Yeah.”
“We got to call in the troops and fumigate that place.”
Torque nodded, agreeing with Jaxon. But they needed to do more than fumigate. They needed to discover where these other wards were. “Where are the other wards you mentioned?”
“My sister—”
“We’ll get her out, and every other immortal and human they have. Where were the other wards?”
The mage jerked a fast nod. “I don’t know. I only worked at Rafters. I never went off site.”
Off site? That was an odd way of saying it. The guy
still had a strong Cockney flavour to his words. Modern, but still there.
“Where though? You had to have heard of where the other sites were.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Maybe Sydney does. I don’t.”
He sounded sincere, but this was a Death Stalker, young or not, he took vows for a reason, whether it was because of his sister, or not, he’d still turned his back on the life and beliefs he once had.
Torque rubbed his goatee, considering. He could find out more later. The guy wasn’t going anywhere. And once his sister was here? They’d have more leverage, or they’d know whether the youngling was full of shit.
“Sydney hasn’t taken the last vow. She can still be free, you know? If you kill her master, he’s gotta know more. He could give you the deal. He’s a black-haired vampire, tall, thin, with long hair.”
Well, hell, that sounded like half the population of the world.
“His name is Drean.”
“Drean?” Jaxon demanded, nearly jumping off the wall he’d been holding up.
Torque shot Jaxon a look. The vampire didn’t seem to see him. His blue eyes had flooded black. His fangs slipped out past his bottom lip and he backed up, panting. Obviously Jaxon knew and, he was guessing, didn’t like the guy.
“I think my friend might have that covered.”
Settling down, Jaxon shook his head. “Shit. Fuck. We need some help here, Torque. I can’t kill him, but I know a man who will gladly.”
“Wait, you can’t?”
Jaxon grimaced. “I can’t, if I do, Sydney, as a turned vampire, will look to me. I have enough shit on my plate.”
Ah. Interesting he’d not known that.
“Damn it, Torque, now is the not the time for a lesson. Get your shit together. I have to go. See that you get the information we need. I’ll be back in a few.”
“Wait. What about the other girl?” he asked. Hell, he had to.
Jaxon gave him an irritated growl, then said, “She’s fine. Trying something with her to help.”
“Something?”
“Yeah, transfusions. I’ll let you know, okay?” Jaxon snapped, then when Torque merely quirked an eyebrow, Jaxon shifted out of the room.
