Darkmore Penitentiary (Supernatural Prison for Dark Fae Book 1)

by Caroline Peckham

  It only took another moment before a warm hand landed on my shoulder and I looked up as I felt magic sweeping over my skin. The water in my clothes was drawn out until it hung suspended in a bubble before us which he dispersed along the corridor in a cloud of fine mist.

  I turned towards Hastings suddenly, wrapping my arms around his waist as I nuzzled into his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I breathed, before releasing him just as quickly.

  I looked up at him from beneath my lashes, biting on my bottom lip as I gave him an awkward smile.

  His hand had shifted to his baton at the contact but he hadn’t drawn it and after a moment, his posture relaxed and he gave me a firm nod.

  “It’s my job to look after the inmates under my supervision,” he replied tersely, like he was trying to reaffirm some boundaries between us and I nodded seriously as I shifted back. “Do you…ah…want to tell me what happened with the Incubus?” he asked, glancing at the door behind us where Cain was still scrutinising the security tapes. No doubt with his Vampire ears he’d be listening in on us, but I was happy enough to give him a show too.

  “I‘m a little embarrassed,” I replied, dropping my gaze to my feet.

  “It’s okay, you can tell me,” Hastings said, sounding so damn noble that for a moment I felt a little bad about manipulating him. But life’s a bitch and all that and it wasn’t like I was going to be making him do anything against the law…yet.

  “When Officer Cain left me there, he didn’t shut the hatch properly on Sin’s door,” I said in a low voice. “And when it fell open, I…well, I think I must have fallen under his spell when I looked into his eyes…”

  “Eighty Eight can’t use his Order gifts any more than you can while he’s down in the main prison,” Hastings replied with a frown.

  “I know that. But his aura is so strong…” I shrugged and he nodded.

  “I have heard a few of the staff saying they felt a pull towards him, so perhaps you’re right,” he conceded.

  I nodded eagerly. “Then I was just talking to him about nothing in particular, and he mentioned how hungry he was and I’d saved my pudding from lunch to have later so I gave that to him.”

  “And what happened to your neck?” Hastings asked, eyeing the marks Sin’s fingers had put on my flesh.

  I bit my lip and shrugged, not saying a word. Snitches got stitches and all that, but it was pretty obvious what had happened, not to mention the fact that Cain would see it on the CCTV tape anyway. I glanced along the empty corridor nervously and shifted an inch closer to Hastings, hoping that this part of my plan would work and that Cain really was the nosey asshole I imagined him to be. Because I needed him to hear what I was going to say next. I needed him to think I was terrified of going back down into the isolation block, because I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to resist putting me back down there as soon and as often as possible if he did.

  “Please don’t send me back down there,” I breathed, looking up into Hastings’ eyes and trying to convey as much fear as I could muster.

  Hastings swallowed thickly and reached out to place two fingers on my throat, sending healing magic into my flesh to remove the signs of Sin’s hands being on me. “I’ll have a word with Officer Cain about your work detail,” he promised.

  “Grazie, ragazzo del coro,” I murmured with half a smile. Thank you, choir boy.

  The door burst open behind us and Hastings cleared his throat as he took a step away from me.

  Cain’s narrowed eyes fell on me and he damn near bared his teeth at me as he strode out of the CCTV surveillance room.

  “Giving a pudding to an inmate in the hole is a crime in itself,” he snarled, focusing on the part of my interaction with Sin that he could most easily punish me for. “But as I’m the one who failed to secure Eighty Eight’s hatch, I’ve decided to go easy on you.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” I said with a sweet smile even though I could tell he wasn’t done there at all.

  Cain’s eyes glimmered darkly as he went on. “So I’m going to let you choose your own punishment. You can have a night in the hole yourself, or you can take a hit from my shock baton.” He loosened the baton as he said that, his muscles tensing with the desire to use it, though I could tell he thought I’d pick option A.

  But a night in the hole didn’t sound like much fun to me and I’d been wondering whether or not my practice with Dante’s lightning strikes had paid off. This could be the perfect time to test my resistance to the guards’ batons.

  “I’ll take the strike,” I said casually and Hastings shifted uncomfortably beside me.

  “Sir, are you sure she can withstand a hit from that thing?” he asked in an undertone, his eyes on Cain. “She’s barely a hundred pounds and they’re designed to put down a Dragon Shifter-”

  “She can take it,” Cain growled darkly, pulling his baton from his hip and flicking the magical gauge on the end of it to activate the electrical current. Sparks of white energy zipped and crackled across its surface and I moved to stand before him in the centre of the corridor, rolling my shoulders back.

  “Last chance to change your mind,” Cain growled, his eyes alight with a primal hunger.

  “A morte e riterno,” I replied simply, quoting my family motto and half smirking at him. To death and back.

  Cain’s dark eyes flared with excitement, his beautifully deadly features coming alive for a moment before he thrust the baton straight towards me.

  I refused to even flinch and it slammed into my stomach with the force of a tsunami. Electricity crashed through my body in a wave so intense I was blinded by it. And holy mother of fuck did it hurt!

  I barely even registered my back colliding with the stone floor as I was knocked from my feet by the blast and a scream tore from my lips as agony raced through my body.

  But I didn’t pass out. In fact, I was already able to move my limbs and I rolled over with a gasp of pain, dragging down a lungful of air before pushing myself up onto my hands and knees.

  I held myself back at that point, but I knew I could have done more than that. I could have gotten to my feet. I could have run. I even could have turned to fight back. And that was all I’d been wanting to know.

  I was broken and reborn in pain and suffering as a pup at the hands of my mamma and then my papà in turn. Nothing could break my resolve. Not even a weapon designed to be debilitating.

  A crazed laugh spilled from my lips just as strong hands wrapped around my arms and I was hauled to my feet.

  Cain shoved me back against the wall of the corridor, looking into my eyes with a wild kind of longing written across his features.

  I’d been knocked several meters down the corridor by the blast and Hastings hung back by the CCTV surveillance room with a startled look on his innocent face.

  “Good girl,” Cain said in a low voice which failed to hide how much he was getting off on what he’d just done. “Maybe you and me will find a way to get along after all.”

  I panted in his arms, my limbs still twitching a little from the assault of electricity as I tipped my head back against the wall and his eyes trailed down to my throat with a surge of longing in them.

  I hid my smirk away for later and held my tongue, letting him think he was bringing me to heel.

  A dark smile broke across Cain’s face, lighting up his features in a way I’d never seen before and making my heart leap in the process. He may have been a psychotic asshole, but I had to admit that there was something about the darkness in him which called to me, challenged me, begged me to rise up and meet it with some shadows of my own.

  He leaned a little closer, reaching out to grasp my jaw before pressing healing magic beneath my skin at the point of contact.

  A soft moan escaped my lips as the pain in my body washed away and Cain released me as suddenly as he’d grabbed me.

  “Take her up to join the rest of the prisoners in the Magic Compound,” Cain directed Hastings. “I need to go and deal with Eight
y Eight.”

  “Yes sir.” Hastings hurried forward to comply and Cain gave me one last, assessing look before shooting away from us with his Vampire speed.

  Hastings looked half tempted to ask if I was okay and I flashed him a sweet smile as we started walking for the elevator. My stomach growled pathetically at the fact that I’d missed lunch and I guessed that was precisely why Cain had taken so damn long to assess the CCTV footage so I refused to mention it.

  I could feel Hastings watching me as we waited for the elevator to arrive and as the doors slid open, we stepped inside.

  “I’ve never seen a Fae take a hit like that and try to get up right after it,” he muttered as the doors closed again. “Hell, most Fae are knocked clean out by it.”

  “Well, I’m not most Fae,” I replied, looking up at him with a shrug.

  He pushed a hand through his beach blonde hair and looked away from me with a frown. But if he was trying to figure me out then I was willing to bet he’d be at it for a while.

  We reached the Magic Compound on level three and the doors slid open smoothly to admit us.

  Hastings escorted me to the security doors which led out to the Compound and I approached the glass containment cubicle with excitement.

  The guard inside looked up as I approached, her gaze sliding past me and landing on Hastings as a faint blush lined her cheeks.

  “Afternoon, Jack,” she said brightly, paying me little attention as the first door slid closed behind me and I placed my manacled wrists through the hole in the screen dividing us so that she could free my magic from its confinement.

  My gaze dropped to take in her name. Officer Lucius. She was blonde, pretty and had a helluva big smile for Hastings.

  “How are you, Jess?” he asked as she placed her cuff key into my restraints one after the other and gave the key a half turn in each.

  A sigh of ecstasy escaped my lips as I felt my magic rushing to my fingertips and I pulled my hands back, moving closer to the door which led out to the yard.

  Officer Lucius took her sweet time buzzing me through, but I finally strode out into the yard as they continued to flirt and I filed away that little nugget of information on them in case I ever needed it.

  The first person I noticed in the yard was Ethan Shadowbrook. He was playing with his Wolf pack, throwing a spray of water up around them as the female members of his pack ran through it in nothing but their white tank tops and black panties. Their shirts were turning transparent as they were soaked and a growl rumbled in the back of my throat as I watched them bounding about, trying to catch his eye. Though as my attention fixed on him, I realised he wasn’t even bothering to watch the show, he was more interested in a conversation he was having with his Beta, Harper. He continued to toss jets of water from his palms at the giggling girls as he spoke with her, but his gaze never strayed to them.

  I smirked to myself as I walked straight past his pack, aiming for the furthest end of the yard beyond the wall which divided it.

  My pack yipped and howled excitedly as they spotted me and they swarmed closer, nuzzling against me and brushing their fingers over my arms and back in greeting. I smiled at them and returned their affection, seeking out Amira in the group as she hung back.

  “Have you decided on pack positions yet?” she demanded as I finally found her. She held her chin high and the defiance in her gaze brought a growl to my lips.

  I flexed my fingers, exerting my power so that my earth magic rumbled through the concrete beneath her feet, knocking her back onto her ass. Vines whipped up and tangled around her arms as she raised a hand to fight back and I snarled as I stalked closer to stand over her.

  “I don’t take kindly to people questioning the way I run my pack,” I snarled and the rest of the Wolves circled close behind me as I felt eyes on me from all over the yard. This was a test just as much as going up against the Dragon asshole, Two Hundred, had been on my first day. I had to make sure my rule over my pack was iron clad. No gaps could ever show through. “And I was going to hold off on allocating the role of Beta until we had a chance to run as a pack again. But if you insist on hearing it from my lips now, then fine. You dug your own grave.”

  I turned away from Amira dismissively, letting the vines fall from her body as if she was no threat to me at all. Which she wasn’t. I didn’t need to beat her down again to gain the loyalty of my pack. I could see it shining in their eyes already. Alphas like her were ten a penny; Fae who were strong and determined enough to stake a claim on their power. And that was all well and good. But I was of another breed. People did what I wanted because they could sense the strength in my veins and the force of my will before I even parted my lips. They wanted to follow me. They didn’t just have to because I’d beaten them into submission. And you couldn’t buy loyalty like that. But I could sure as hell prove I deserved it.

  My gaze scoured the crowd until it settled on a guy who stood a head taller than most of the Fae around him. He had deep brown skin and eyes that sparkled knowingly as he waited for my answer.

  I pointed at him, beckoning him closer. I hadn’t seen the ruddy brown Wolf in his Fae form when we’d met in the Order Yard, but my inner animal had recognised him easily as soon as I’d seen him at breakfast the next morning. I’d been watching him surreptitiously ever since, assessing whether or not my gut instincts about him could be trusted and I was pretty darn sure they could. The bond between an Alpha and Beta ran soul deep and the connection we’d formed together as we ran beneath the moon had been nothing short of true harmony.

  “What’s your name?” I asked as I tilted my head back to look up at him.

  “Sonny Tribera,” he said with a smirk.

  The Triberas were a sister branch of the Oscura family; three brothers had married some of my grandpa’s sisters a few generations back and their name was pretty damn common in my family. We were probably third or fourth cousins or something like that, but it was hard to keep track in a family as big as the Oscuras. Aunt Maribella would know. I might even write her a letter with the names of all of my new pack mates in it and find out just how many of them were relations of mine in one way or another. She had a family tree the size of a bus painted on the wall of her dining hall and she loved tracking down all the tiny connections between our kin.

  She’d even had the great joy of turning up at my cousin Marcella’s wedding and leaping up in front of the congregation to announce that the bride and groom were already related. But as they turned out to be fifth cousins once removed, they’d decided to go ahead with the union anyway. I still found it funny as fuck to tease them about being siblings whenever I was invited to their house though…not that they’d asked me over for a few years now… Maybe they didn’t find that funny after all.

  I pushed aside all thoughts of Marcella and her inbred children and fixed my attention on Sonny.

  He was probably in his mid thirties and a big fucker, but the strength I could see in him shone out from the inside. It ran soul deep. I’d always had a gift for seeing the truth in people and I could tell I wouldn’t regret this decision.

  “You’re my Beta,” I said, holding his eye. It wasn’t a request, it was an order and he dipped his head with a cocky smile which said he’d already known he would be. I had to admit that made me like him even more.

  “Thank you, Alpha,” Sonny said, stepping forward to wrap his arms around me.

  The rest of the pack started barking and howling with excitement and I spent a little while bathing in their attention before extricating myself from the group. As much as I loved my pack leader role, I couldn’t afford to be too distracted by it. That was why I had no intention of switching cell blocks to join them in B either. Sonny could lead them well enough when I wasn’t around and it also meant I had more time to concentrate on what I was really here for.

  I crossed the yard with a swagger in my step and my head high as I made a beeline for Roary Night. He was leaning back against the wall at the far end of the yard, talk
ing to a group of huge guys who I guessed were some of his Shades. I could never tell exactly how many followers he had due to the fact that they never hung out all at once like most of the gangs did. It was a clever tactic though, because it meant most of his Shades could go undetected, no doubt gathering him intel on the other gangs as easily as ghosts. Plus you never knew when one of them might be sitting right beside you, ready to slip a shank between your ribs if you acted out against him.

  One of them noticed me coming and nudged Roary to let him know.

  He turned his golden eyes on me and I fought against the prickle of excitement that I got whenever I managed to snare his attention.

  With a word from Roary, the Fae surrounding him slipped away and he smiled mockingly as he waited for me to join him.

  “What have I done to earn myself a visit from the great Moon Alpha?” he teased as I came to stand before him.

  “Moon Alpha?” I asked, raising a brow.

  “You’re causing enough of a stir around here to be earning yourself nicknames,” he replied. “And I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere reporting back to me.”

  “That must be handy,” I replied, twisting my fingers through my hair as I moved to lean against the wall beside him and we looked out across the Magic Compound at the rest of the inmates.

  “You have no idea.”

  A wild shriek sounded across the Compound and I glanced up, spotting a convict pulling her tank off and scratching at her skin.

  “Ants! Oh my stars – can you see those ants?!” She grabbed hold of another inmate by the collar, rubbing her tank into his face. I wrinkled my nose, wondering what the hell was up with the weirdo.

  “What’s her problem?” I murmured to Roary.

  He looked at me with a frown. “Sometimes people lose their shit in here.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised.” I glanced around at the fences and the guards glaring in at us. There wasn’t a pop of colour in the place to make it remotely interesting, and I imagined days after days stuck in these walls was plenty of reason to go insane.