Oath Bound

by Rachel Vincent

  Kenley was none of that. I couldn’t let them hurt her. But I couldn’t betray Sera, either.

  “Does Serenity have a Skill?” Julia repeated, watching me while, in the other room, Kenley squirmed in her chair and said something I couldn’t hear through the glass.

  When I didn’t answer, Julia rolled her eyes and dug something from her jacket pocket. Some kind of small remote. She pressed a button, and there was a short buzz of static, then my sister’s voice came over the tiny speaker, fuzzy with static.

  “—there? I can here you breathing. Say something!” she screeched, and if she’d looked drowsy before, she sounded terrified now.

  “Kenni!” I shouted, and Julia frowned at me.

  “She can’t hear you. Answer the question. Does Sera have a skill?”

  I couldn’t lie to Julia—a Reader—and get away with it. And I couldn’t refuse to answer without getting Kenley hurt. But I knew I’d hesitated too long when Julia picked up her remote and pressed a button, then spoke into it as if it were a handheld radio.

  “Kenley, can you hear me?”

  Through the window, Kenni’s head pivoted toward a corner of the room I couldn’t see, where—presumably—the speaker was mounted. “Fuck you, Julia!” she shouted, and I almost laughed out loud, in spite of the circumstances. She’d sounded so much like Kori!

  “Your family resemblance is showing,” Julia warned. “Speaking of family, I have your brother here—”

  “Kenni, just hang on. I’ll get you out—”

  Julia spoke over me. “And you have his stubborn streak to blame for what’s coming. Lincoln?” She released the speaker button and Lincoln nodded.

  “No!” I shouted, and Julia held the remote up, so I could see that her finger was still off the button. Lincoln couldn’t hear me.

  A blur of motion through the window caught my gaze, and Lincoln punched my baby sister in the face. Still blindfolded, Kenley never saw the blow coming. She grunted in pain, and my pulse raced so hot and fast that my vision started to blur. Kenley’s chair rocked back and forth, and for one interminable second, I was afraid it would tip over and she’d hit her head on the floor, and if that happened, there was nothing I could do for her.

  “Stop!” I strained so hard against the zip tie at my back that the plastic bit into my skin, and the sudden warmth told me I was bleeding.

  If Kenley fell unconscious, would Julia make it stop? I honestly didn’t know. Unconscious people make terrible torture victims, because they can’t feel pain, but it was my pain Julia was counting on, and I would suffer each of my sister’s blows whether or not she was conscious.

  Julia held the remote up to her mouth again and pressed the button. “Kenley? How you doing? Hangin’ in there?”

  Kenley gasped and raised her head. Tears spilled beneath her blindfold and a horrible bruise was already forming at the center of the red patch on her left cheek. She turned her head to the side and spit blood on the floor—no reason not to, since Julia already had more than enough of her blood. Then she cleared her throat and sat straighter. “Just fine. Also? Fuck you. And fuck Lincoln, whoever the hell he is. What kind of coward hits a woman while she’s blindfolded and tied to a chair?”

  Lincoln actually chuckled. “I only work here,” he said, examining his knuckles, and I wanted to rip his throat out and watch his blood drain onto the floor. “If I had my way, this would be an entirely different kind of...session.”

  Kenley bit her lip as silent tears rolled down her face, and my blood boiled. I recognized Lincoln now. He was the one who’d slit Chase Alexander Curtis’s throat.

  “Hmm...” Julia turned back to me. “Someone’s been spending a lot of time with her big brother and sister. But I don’t think she’s as tough as Kori, no matter what she wants us to believe. Do you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Tell me about Sera’s Skill, or we’ll find out just how tough your baby sister is.”

  She was now assuming Sera had a Skill, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a bluff or a conclusion she’d drawn based on the fact that I hadn’t claimed otherwise. Julia lifted the radio to her lips again and opened her mouth.

  “Yes.” I glared at her. “Sera has a Skill.” That was the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

  “Good boy,” she said, and I wanted to put my fist through her face. “And what is her Skill?”

  But I’d figured out her game. “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” She was testing me.

  “I have my suspicions. She’s a Jammer, isn’t she?”

  “Just like her father. Your brother.”

  Julia nodded. She had known. But I was sure she didn’t know about Sera’s other Skill. No one did, other than the residents of our hideout house. And Julia couldn’t make me give her information she didn’t know she was missing.

  “Sera didn’t know, did she?” Julia sat straighter, and her eyes lost focus with the thought. “She was telling the truth when she said she didn’t have a Skill, and the only way that’s possible is if she didn’t know she was Skilled. Which makes sense for a Jammer—there’s no intent required for her Skill.”

  I shrugged. I was afraid to say anything, one way or another—Sera had obviously been blocking Julia’s Skill when she needed to get away with a lie, just like she’d done with Anne.

  “It’s too bad, really, because I could use another Jammer—if she weren’t trying to usurp my position.”

  “Sera doesn’t give a damn about your position, your money or your power. She didn’t ask to inherit the mafia, and she has no desire whatsoever to run it.”

  Julia frowned at me. “You actually mean that. She spoke to you, didn’t she? She confided in you.” She frowned and glanced at the floor without waiting for my answer. “Why would she do that?” When she looked up, I saw comprehension written all over her coldly attractive features. “You’re not just trying to keep her for her Skill. You actually like her. Or is it more than that? Am I making you choose between your sister and your lover?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Julia laughed again. “Oh, you Daniels siblings. You’re all guns, and knives, and flying fists on the surface, but on the inside there’s nothing but mush. Gooey touchy-feely pulp, rotting you from the inside out. Your emotional fragility is what makes you so easy to manipulate. So let’s try another question. What’s Sera’s other Skill?”

  For a moment, I could only blink at her. How the hell had she known?

  “What other Skill? No one has two Skills.”

  Julia stared at me with both brows arched high, as if she was waiting for me to take it back. But I couldn’t tell her. The only advantage Sera would have, surrounded by Skilled mafia members who wanted her dead was the ability to negate their Skills.

  When I said nothing, Julia pressed the button on her radio/remote again and said, “Again, Lincoln. Somewhere else this time.”

  “Wait!” I shouted, but Julia didn’t wait. Neither did Lincoln. He pulled his fist back, and Kenley braced herself for the blow, and I hated myself for the fact that she had to do that. But I hated Julia more.

  Lincoln punched my sister in the gut and she hunched over in agony, as far as her bindings would allow. For one long moment, her mouth hung open, silent, because she couldn’t suck in enough air to scream. So I shouted for her.

  “You cold-hearted sadistic bitch! She can’t defend herself. She can’t even move. She can’t even fucking see! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. In fact, like my late brother, I am blissfully unencumbered by traits like sympathy and pity, which keep people like you from doing what needs to be done. The only reason I haven’t killed you is that I need to know what Sera’s capable of. The only reason I haven’t killed Kenley is that I need her until I finish transferring the bindin
gs. But I don’t need her unbruised. I don’t even need her conscious. And I certainly don’t need her...untouched.”

  I could feel the blood drain from my face. “Don’t.”

  “Name Sera’s second Skill, or I’ll tell Lincoln he can do whatever he wants with your sister, as long as her heart keeps beating.”

  “Why?” This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. “Why would you do that to another woman?”

  Julia frowned, as though my logic confused her. “You seem to be under the impression that my ovaries came with a lifetime supply of empathy and compassion. I assure you that is not the case. Start talking.”

  “Sera’s your niece.” Time was the only resource I had, distraction my only weapon. I had to keep her talking, even if that meant pissing her off. So long as she only took that anger out on me. “She shares your blood, and you tried to have her killed. You had her whole family slaughtered. And her baby... What kind of psychotic bitch has a baby murdered in its mother’s stomach?”

  Julia stood, and I’d never seen her more pissed off. “Flattery won’t work, mostly because you’re giving me way too much credit.” She stalked closer, until she towered over me, staring straight into my eyes from inches away, and I itched to take her down. To put my hands around her throat and squeeze until her skin turned purple and her eyes popped out of her skull. “I had nothing to do with what happened to her family, but I can’t say I’m sad about the dead fetus. That’s one less Tower in line for my inheritance.”

  “Would you call that irony when a truth-reader lies through her teeth? I know you had them killed. Sera knows you had them killed. And even if you pulled out a gun and shot me through the forehead in the next thirty seconds, I’d die satisfied with the knowledge that when she finds you, Sera is going to rip your heart right out of your chest. And if she’s not fast enough, Kori and Ian will fight her for the honor.”

  “Dramatic. Nice imagery. You have the heart of a poet.” She crossed both arms over her suit jacket, the small remote secure in her right hand, and stared calmly into my eyes. “But none of that changes the fact that your sister is in a very small room with a very big man, about to suffer what is no doubt her worst nightmare. Start talking, or I swear on the entire Tower syndicate that I will give the order and we’ll both listen to her scream.”

  “The resemblance to your brother is beyond creepy,” a new voice said, and though it was familiar, I couldn’t place the owner, and I didn’t even try. Julia turned, surprised, and all I could think about was that whatever this distraction was, it had bought me time. She’d pocketed the remote, and Kenley was still tied to her chair, her clothing intact.

  Then I saw Mitch standing behind Julia with one hand on the doorknob, the other holding his shoes. His shirt was on backward, his pants were unbuttoned and his socks were mismatched.

  “That was fast.” Julia’s heels clicked on the concrete as she crossed the warehouse toward him, and I had to divide my attention between what they were saying, and what I was planning—some way out of this mess, for both me and Kenley. “Well?”

  “They bought it.” Mitch’s grin was obscene, in size alone. “I have to say, my acting was superb, but the real clincher was your text. They wouldn’t have believed I had legitimate information for them if I hadn’t had yours to point out as false.”

  “That’s why I do the thinking, and you do what you’re told.”

  Mitch’s grin faltered, but then he rallied with a more intimate smile and reached for her waist. “I’m already half-dressed. Why don’t you tell me to do something else?”

  Nausea churned in my stomach at the thought of them together. Of Julia intimately involved with anyone. I preferred to think of her as asexual. Which went along with the fact that she was also amoral.

  She slapped his hand away. “If you ever touch me without permission again, I’ll have you skinned alive and rolled in salt.”

  Mitch looked hurt for a moment, not by her threat, but by her rejection, and with sudden insight, I understood why he’d come back—he didn’t know how to be free. He’d tried to warn us. He’d tried everything he could think of to remain in Sera’s employ, and when she’d turned him down—when I’d run him off—he’d obviously come back to Julia. But...

  “You told her about Sera? About her second Skill? How?” It shouldn’t have been possible. The one caveat to his freedom was that he couldn’t tell anyone about where we’d been that day or that Sera had a second Skill.

  Mitch glanced at me, then at Julia, obviously asking silent permission for something. She waved one hand at me in a “be my guest” gesture and Mitch dropped his shoes on the floor and zipped his pants, then padded across the concrete toward me in sock feet.

  “Your baby sister has no idea what a help she was on that front. I ‘snuck’ in to see her and begged her to break my binding. To free me. She has no idea Sera even exists, and once she’d broken my binding to Jake Tower’s bastard, I was free to renew my vows to the true heir.” He glanced back at Julia, evidently expecting to be rewarded with a smile or a word of gratitude, but as far as I knew, Julia was unfamiliar with both concepts. I also knew that the fact that he’d had information for her was the only reason she’d taken him back instead of killing him.

  “Mitch, do you have a knife?”

  “Not on me.” He banished disappointment from his face with visible effort. “I thought Kori and Ian would be less likely to shoot me on sight if I was unarmed.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You were afraid to take a knife to a gunfight.” Julia rolled her eyes, then held her hand out to one of the two guards standing against the wall. He pulled a serrated hunting knife from its sheath at his side, then gave it to her, handle first.

  My temper surged when she started across the floor toward me, wielding the knife like a conspicuous threat. “What do you know about Kristopher Daniels?” she said, and I realized she was talking to Mitch.

  He shrugged. “Only what I’ve heard. He’s a Traveler, like Kori. Better with a gun than she is, but less experienced with knives. No word yet on his hand-to-hand.”

  Julia stopped two feet in front of me, feet spread in her scary stilettos, hip cocked to the left, knife held ready at her side. “Is he worth keeping, if he could be persuaded to join the cause?”

  Persuaded? She meant bound. And the only Binder in the city strong enough to make a nonconsensual binding stick was my little sister.

  “It does seem like a shame to waste the resource, if you don’t have to.” Mitch pulled his shirt off and turned it right side in. “He’ll be useful for dealing with his sister, like Kori was. He’ll fight you, though.”

  “Oh, good.” Julia held the knife up, and the serrated blade gleamed in the bright lights from overhead. “I love it when they struggle.” She turned to Mitch again and gestured with her knife. Your stuff’s over there on the table. Bring me a sheet of paper.”

  I wanted to see what his “stuff”—presumably the weapons he hadn’t worn for fear of Kori and Ian—but I knew better than to look away from a psychotic bitch with a knife in her hand.

  Something clattered on my left, and a minute later Mitch padded back into sight sliding a gun into his shoulder holster, a blank sheet of paper in one hand. He gave Julia the paper, and she knelt in her pencil skirt and heels to set it on the floor at my feet.

  “She won’t do it,” I said, fighting chills as she ran the tip of the knife lightly down the left side of my neck without breaking my skin. “Kenley won’t bind me to you.”

  “Oh, I think she will, if the alternative is your prolonged death and her own long-term suffering. She’ll bind you because she knows that as long as you’re alive, there’s still a tiny chance you could rescue her, or vice versa.” She pressed harder with her knife and my jaw clenched when the point bit into my skin. “Hope is more dangerous than any weapon ever wielded, Kristopher Daniels.�
� My name sounded like profanity, falling from her lips, and I wanted to tear her tongue out as warm blood dripped down my neck. “False hope, even more so. Your sister is going to bind you into a simple servitude contract composed of too few words to form loopholes, because the alternative is nothing she wants to think about.” She drew her left index finger up my neck, and it slid too easily over my skin, slick with blood, the key to any man’s undoing. “In fact, I think you’re going to tell her to bind you, because the alternative is something you won’t want to see or hear. Something you won’t want to know you caused.”

  “I will tear your throat out the first chance I get.”

  “There won’t be a chance.” Julia set down her knife and picked up the paper, then made a show of stamping her fingerfull of my blood at the bottom of the page, where my signature would go, if I were to sign the document that would precede it.

  But I wouldn’t sign.

  And that wouldn’t matter—not with Kenley sealing the binding.

  Julia wiped the blade of the knife on her dark skirt, then handed it back to her guard. Then she pulled a pen from the purse she’d left on her chair and held the blank sheet of paper against the wall, so she could write on it. She scribbled for mere seconds. Only two lines.

  My heart thumped so hard I could practically hear it. I was too far away to read the lines, but I could tell from the brevity that she was right—there weren’t enough words to form a decent loophole. It probably said something like, “Kristopher Daniels will protect me with his every breath and obey my every order, whether stated or implied.”

  Julia Tower was every bit as much of a monster as the one she’d replaced.

  “Watch him,” she said to Mitch, who now sat in her chair, putting his shoes on. Then she disappeared through the door, into the short hall that would lead her to the room where my sister was being held.

  “You saw my family?” I said the minute the door closed behind Julia.

  Mitch tightened the knot in his shoelaces, then set his foot on the floor and rested his elbows on his knees. “Just Kori. But her boyfriend and your girlfriend were with her.”