Nothing looked abandoned here. Electric lights gleamed through thick glass windows, and children’s playthings lay scattered in drifts of snow. I passed a snowman wearing a cheerful woolen cap and scarf. The child who had made him probably had no clue there were kids in the South District who had died from exposure because they didn’t have hats and scarves of their own.
The sun set on the third day, bringing with it a profound sense of failure. I shook from the cold, but my body felt hot and feverish. My vision swam, though I didn’t know if it was because of the lack of food, or the fever. My toes burned with the cold—so much that I couldn’t feel my feet against the sidewalk.
Outside a glowing mansion with marble stairs even the endless cold couldn’t destroy, I stumbled on an exposed curb and fell to one knee. I expected pain from the impact, but felt nothing. My gloves hit snow as I lost my balance and flung forward. I tried to stand up, but between my frozen limbs and the dizzily tilting world around me, I couldn’t find my balance. I fell to my side, my replacement bow beneath me and my hands so dysfunctional I couldn’t have used my weapon even if I tried.
How fucking dumb was this? Fifty years in this hellhole without being killed by demons, and now I would lay here and die from a fever on the street, surrounded by the richest assholes in town. Immortal didn’t mean untouchable. I could still die.
“What do we have here?”
Each word fell like snowflakes in my consciousness. I tried to open my heavy eyelids, but managed only a small glimpse before my lids collapsed. A face swam into view through the swirling snow. A scar stretched from the corner of one eye to his chin, like someone had once tried to cut off his face. Two more men came into focus behind him. All three stared at me as if I were a one-way ticket to riches.
“Too much to drink?” the scarred man asked me. The scarred side of his face didn’t move with his mouth.
I couldn’t find the strength to answer. I stopped fighting the thickness in my eyelids and let my eyes close. Snow melted beneath my cheek, no longer cold on my skin. I’d lost all sensation in my fingers. Frostbite had settled in, which meant I was well and truly fucked.
The man snapped his fingers, presumably at his two silent companions. “Get him up.”
Rough hands gripped my arms and dragged me to my feet.
When it became obvious I wouldn’t be walking away on my own accord, the man snapped, “Well, carry him, you imbeciles.”
Before my eyes closed and I drifted away on the fever, he added, “Oh, and relieve him of his weapons.”
7
Catie gave birth to our daughter on a snowy day in December.
Not just any snowy day—Christmas Eve, while candles burned in windows all over the city, and carolers spread their joy from door to door. Families lived and laughed and worshipped in homes warm with the miracle of love.
Gretchen was our miracle. She was not only proof that I’d become fully human; she was also proof that love could bring life despite the rifts between Catie’s existence and mine. A fallen angel and a human could bear a child, and love could win.
I held my daughter as if she were made of glass. In that beautiful first moment as I stared at her glowing face, I believed that God was good and love would prevail.
The vision shattered as a sharp voice asked, “Is he dead?”
I opened my eyes to a concrete wall, but couldn’t lift my head. I’d been stripped naked and chained by the wrists and ankles. Miraculously, I could feel all four of my limbs and all twenty of my farthest appendages, so no dead limbs from frostbite. Even the sharp, tingling pain of warming nerves was a welcome sensation. If I hadn’t been imprisoned in nothing but the skin God gave me, I might have wept with relief. But the gritty floor chilled my bare body, and I remained silent.
“Nah. Not dead yet,” a second, rougher voice answered. “But if we don’t get him sold off fast, he probably will be. He’s burning with fever.”
“Well, keep the idiot alive as long as you can,” the first voice remarked coldly. “Look at him. I’ve never seen a finer male specimen. The queen will pay well for a man like that. He won’t even see the Trade after she lays eyes on him.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Trade.
An urban legend in Kremlin Circle, used by exhausted parents to make children behave. “Better behave or we’ll sell you to the Trade!”
Slave trade.
Footsteps faded away, and a second pair shuffled closer to me. I closed my eyes, too weak for a confrontation. I sure as shit didn’t have my bow anywhere about my naked person, and beneath the heavy veil of a fever, I was less than useless.
Just give me time, I thought. Time to get better, time to die, whichever came first and quickest.
Callused hands tilted my chin. I let my jaw slacken, my lips parting as if in sleep. I imagined I could feel the man’s appraisal; his raspy breath smelled rancid. Suddenly, cold water splashed into my mouth.
I sputtered, choking on the sudden torrent. Liquid slid down the wrong passage, and I gasped for air, coughing water out of my nose.
In my shock, my eyes shot open. A mean, craggy face glared at me in disgust, as if it were my fault he had half drowned me. The man held a mug in one hand. It was unclear whether he had meant to give me fluids or suffocate me. He made a disgusted noise, and let my head fall back—hard—to the concrete floor.
Blinding pain sent a burst of brilliant light through my vision, and I felt no more.
“Everything is okay,” Catie said the moment I picked up the phone.
I paused over the tomato plants, my cell pressed to my ear. Sweat made tracks all over my body beneath the late spring sun, but the sheer joy my wife got from our thriving garden made me enjoy the hard work. “When you have to start a conversation like that, everything is obviously not fine.”
“We’re at the hospital.”
I straightened, already headed toward the house as I asked, “Why? I’m on my way.”
“See, this is why I have to start the conversation like that.” Catie sighed. “Everything is fine, Gad. Gretchen slipped on the playground and split her chin open. We’re waiting on the ER doctor to come stitch her up.”
“I’m still on my way.”
“Sweetheart, I’ve got this. You don’t always have to be the hero.”
Before Catie finished speaking, a small, watery voice spoke up in the background. “Is that Daddy? Is he coming?”
“I’m on my way,” I repeated and hung up the phone before Catie could convince me otherwise. Nothing, not a blizzard nor the apocalypse, would keep me from my little girl when she needed me.
Three years old and getting stitches. My little girl. The thought made my insides clench. Way too young for that much pain.
“Wake up, asshole.”
The sting of a palm against my face pulled me from dreams. Vicious hands manhandled me into a sitting position until my bare back rested against the cold wall. Despite the brace behind me, the world dipped and danced as if I’d had too much vodka with dinner.
“What…” I tried to speak, to ask what was wrong with me, even though some deep part of me knew it was fever. But another thought occurred to me, too—what if they were drugging me?
The craggy-faced man pressed a mug to my lips, metal clanking my teeth as he forced me to drink.
I choked, sending half the liquid down my chest. I slapped his hands away and lunged for his throat through bleary eyes. I only got as far as the shackles on my wrists and ankles allowed, and then my body jerked to a halt. I collapsed to my knees, leaning into the chains.
The man had stumbled away from my hands, quicker than a roach and much lighter on his feet than his pear-shaped bulk suggested. He threw the mug at me. “Fucking die, then.”
The cup ricocheted off my eyebrow painfully and skittered away. The door slammed shut behind him.
I sank to the floor as warm blood trickled into my eye. By the time I dragged my beaten, exhausted body back to the wall, releasing pressure on
my limbs from the chains, salty blood had reached my lips.
My stomach gnawed with hunger and my mouth felt like dry wool. I didn’t know if they’d medicated the water or not to keep me groggy, so why take the chance?
Plus, why let them help me live only to be paraded in front of Belias as a possible future member of her harem? There were ten kinds of problems with that idea, none of which I felt up to dealing with at that particular moment.
I slid down the wall, tired of holding myself up. The room where they held me was small and dark—no windows, no furniture, no carpet on the bare concrete floor. Just me and the chains draped from the wall.
Despite my state of bare-assed nudity, I felt hot. My face burned, but I shivered with a chill.
The dude was right. I probably would fucking die.
“Gadreel!”
In the years I’d been blessed to have Catie in my arms and in my heart, I had never heard such abject terror in her voice. She was solid as a rock, my little Irish girl, made of steel and mettle and insolent bravery.
I clutched Gretchen to my side and raced to join my wife on the porch. The ground shook so violently I stumbled with every leap, Gretchen remaining in my arms under her own willpower. Catie stood firm on the concrete stoop, her legs spread and balanced like the ballerina she once was, as the world pitched like the ocean beneath us.
I vaulted onto the porch, stopping just short of careening into the cabin.
“What’s happening?” Catie asked, clutching my arm in one hand while the other searched Gretchen for injuries.
“Something bad.” I had to bellow over the roar of the earth shaking. I yanked her into the cabin and slammed the door behind us. “We need to get low. The fireplace, maybe? Somewhere sturdy.”
Catie grabbed my arms with hard, unyielding hands. This part veered from the memory, going completely offtrack from the reality I remembered.
Gretchen disappeared from my arms. The cabin faded away until it was only me and Catie alone in a universe of white. Her hands locked painfully to my wrists, and her nails dug into my skin.
“Gad. Listen to me.” She glanced around, as if checking for eavesdroppers on our empty island of light. “You have to fight this. You have to wake up. You are the only hope for Kremlin Circle.”
Her words hit me with the ferocity of a wrecking ball. I stumbled away from her, my arms flailing, my feet struggling to find purchase on ground I could no longer see. Catie had never known Kremlin Circle. She’d died before Belias took over and madness infected the city. She couldn’t know the name.
Catie glanced behind her, her gaze searching the whiteout as if she could see clearly. Then she rushed forward and threw her arms around my neck. My suspicion faded in the achingly familiar sensation of her body against mine: soft curves and hard edges and skin like velvet at midnight. Her lips slanted over mine in an urgent, desperate kiss that felt too real to be a dream.
“I love you,” Catie whispered, her lips brushing over my jawline, my neck, my collarbone until my body felt like a live wire in her hands. “Live, Gad. Live for me.”
My wife’s green-eyed gaze stayed with me as I opened my eyes to darkness.
I lay on my back, staring up at a ceiling I couldn’t see. I ached all over, from my joints to my half-frostbitten fingers to the gnawing in my gut. The tacky feeling in my mouth choked me, a ridiculous irritation considering I’d been too fucking stubborn to accept the water they’d tried to force on me.
As I lay there holding tightly to Catie’s memory and wishing I could pluck her from my dreams, I came to recognize the familiar drip drip drip of water somewhere in the room. I sat up on my elbows and fought a wave of exhaustion to keep myself upright. I listened, tracking the sound with only my hearing.
The leak was close. I groaned with the effort of turning over to my hands and knees, then fell silent again, straining for the sound of water to get my bearings. I slid forward, each drip leading me closer, until my hands splashed into a puddle on the hard floor.
I sat on my haunches and lifted a hand to my nose. No smell, and extremely cold—like runoff from melting snow. I put my fingers to my tongue.
Water. Just water.
I cupped my hands beneath the leak and waited. A hundred years could have passed as I sat there, letting my hands fill and drinking, over and over, until my thirst was quenched.
I leaned forward, so the water could drip onto the burning skin of my forehead. I had no way of knowing how long they would keep me here. I didn’t know what I had contracted: a cold, a virus, something that would pass on its own, or something that would kill me.
But it didn’t really matter. Lying naked and chained on an unfamiliar floor had a way of sucking all the optimism out of a man. That door would open again, and they would come for me. They would transport me to market and present me before the slave trade and the demon queen. They thought she would want me for her harem, because I was muscular and nice to look at.
What they didn’t know was that Belias and I went way back. Back before the curse; back before my fall.
And I knew, without a doubt, if this fever didn’t kill me, Belias would.
8
My fever broke sometime during the night amidst dreams of heaven and hell.
When the dour-faced bald man returned with a cup of water and a crust of stale bread, I didn’t turn away either. The bread tasted like a four-course meal, and the water went down easily enough. Considering a vast majority of poisons were odorless and tasteless, I figured I’d know soon enough whether I was drugged or not.
I wasn’t back to one hundred percent, but at least I was no longer a drunken, hallucinatory idiot, either. I could probably throw a punch, if the situation warranted.
After I drained the mug, the man tossed a pair of heavy linen pants and a long-sleeved shirt at me. “Dress. We’re leaving.”
I held up my shackled hands. “How do you propose I do that?”
The man shrugged and gave me a pleased grin. “Make it work.”
“Where’s my bow?” I asked his retreating back.
No response but the slamming door behind him.
I couldn’t get dressed with the chains on my wrists and ankles. So I sat there dumbly, the clothes in a pile on my lap, and waited for someone to come for me.
I had no bow. No arrows. And I was still somewhat weak from the fading illness. I knew it wouldn’t be safe to attempt to fight my way out in an unfamiliar building. But if they were taking me to Kremlin Watchtower, they were taking me into my territory. I could flee and easily find somewhere to hide. I just had to wait for the right moment.
Another man entered sometime later. He heaved up his sagging pants and gave me a side-eye, somewhat hindered by the patch hiding one of them. “You’re not dressed.”
“Your compatriot failed to understand the physics of clothes and manacles.” I shook my wrists to punctuate my statement.
A brief look of confusion crossed his haggard face, but he shrugged and pulled a key from his pocket.
The dude was halfway to ancient, with crevices the size of canyons around his visible eye and eyebrows whiter than snow. I could have taken him out with one hand behind my back on a good day.
But this was not a good day.
I slipped into the pants and shirt, thankful for the warmth and the cover. I didn’t mind nudity, but being nude and vulnerable in a dangerous place wasn’t my idea of a good time.
I looked around the small cell. “Shoes?”
“We have boots for you at the door.”
I allowed the old man to reshackle me, despite my intense urge to pummel him and run, then followed him out of my cell.
Color me surprised to find we weren’t in the bowels of some prison or warehouse, surrounded by torture devices and chains. A nondescript hallway, carpeted in lush, red Berber, led us to a staircase and up into a gilded mansion.
Gray daylight filtered in through sheer white curtains. Real hardwood floors gleamed beneath my bare feet, cleaner
than any floor I’d ever seen. Artwork hung on wallpaper—portraits, landscapes, views of the city we were before Belias. For normal people, harboring that kind of art would bring a death sentence.
“North District mansion,” I remarked to the old man. “Smart. Nobody would dare to think you ran black market slave trade out of the North District. Belias set you up here?”
The man shot me an irritated one-eyed gaze. “Hold your tongue before I take it from you.”
“Just this side of death and still sassy. I can dig it.”
The old man huffed and pointed to a pair of boots waiting in the foyer.
Boots with more chains, actually. Thick, heavy links dragged from the heels, connecting left to right and weighing down my steps as we ventured out into an impressively bright morning. The sky had the washed-out white look that resulted from the thin atmosphere and cold air. I squinted through watery eyes as I joined a dozen other prisoners waiting in the alley behind the house. Under the watchful gazes of a half-dozen dour-faced traders, we began our march to the Square.
As far as I could tell, I had been correct—we were still in the North District. A narrow, dark alley fed between two rows of connected mansions, all with shuttered windows and high wooden fences around their backyards.
Smart to operate out of this area, when I really thought about it. Catch your slaves in the other districts, take them where no one would ever guess you’d hold them, and promise your North District neighbors immunity for their silence and blind eyes.
I didn’t find much reason to step off the beaten paths. Food, toiletries, clothing—I gathered my basic necessities at the market in the Square. Anything I couldn’t make or grow myself, I’d find it for a price.
But I also knew there were other darker parts of the market: the blood tithe, of course, and black magic booths where you could pay a fortune for a love spell or a tincture to hide your beauty. Booths run by the demons and therefore not exactly kosher materials.
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 22
