Caged Kitten

by Rhea Watson

  Seconds later, Tully shot out of my cell and went straight for his witch, those squeaky kittenish chirps making her whole face light up. While thrilled that we were all back on speaking terms, this wasn’t exactly the scenario I had in mind for a reunion. Watching her scoop up Tully and hug him tight, I wanted to do the same, to drag them both into my arms and whisper that I would never let her go.

  That I didn’t blame her for what Guthrie had done to me.

  That I would also forever possess the memory, hazy as it was, of one of my fangs plopped into a vial of acid—just so the researchers could see if it would fizzle away.

  It hadn’t.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t strong enough to say any of that. So soon after the extraction, I still battled many unwelcome feelings, struggling to come to terms with the loss. Rather traumatic for a vampire to lose his fangs; we could be a stoic bunch, steeped in tradition and ancient rites, but we had all once been human—and that never quite disappeared, even for the vamps who had gone full bloodlust. Feeling was a sickness we carried from man to creature, vampirism and emotion two diseases for which there was no cure.

  So. Basically I was still traumatized and needed a minute to process.

  But I’d rather process with her than apart.

  After all, I wasn’t the only one suffering. Katja carried her own trauma, and the thought of her trudging through all that misery alone made me ache. We needn’t talk, needn’t whisper a word through the mousehole, for us to champion the other’s path to recovery.

  “Okay, so, right…” I strolled out of my cell, mindful of the sunbeams streaking out of the ones around me, and then folded my arms. “Is there a plan, or…?”

  Or were we just making it up as we went along?

  “This little darling is going to take us out the front door,” Fintan insisted, giving his captive a jostling for good measure. The warlock shut his eyes tight and flinched away from the knife tip poking into the soft underbelly of his chin. “They have charms to open and close the ward issued exclusively for the guards.” Hooking an arm around the warlock’s neck, Fintan used the other to jerk up his black sleeve from the cuff to the elbow, revealing the ancient symbol for Mercury, the god who walked every road, on his pasty forearm. “Tattooed on their skin—keys to the ward. Clever, no?”

  While I could see the logic in that, there was still one giant, obnoxious elephant in the room.

  “And when do you intend to do all this?” I motioned to the sun cutting across the block from Katja’s cell window, the beam sprinkled with dust. “In case you haven’t realized, it’s sunny as hell today.”

  “We’re going to cover you with our jumpsuits and just go,” Katja offered, tugging at her purple lapels. “It’ll be temporary, but you’ll be fully covered… and then we can figure it out outside the ward.”

  “Touching.” It might have sounded sarcastic, but I had to bite back a genuine smile—because they had considered me and all my failings. They weren’t going to leave me behind, even if I slowed them down. Still, this plan was weak at best, and I wasn’t about to risk it—wasn’t about to risk her, my bite looking fresh as ever on her throat, the memory of it both painful and exhilarating. “But I’m not thrilled about the, er, just figure it out part.”

  “For fuck’s sake, you dark cloud,” Fintan growled. “It’s the best we’ve got, so stop moaning and just get on with it.”

  Elijah’s eyes narrowed. “Fintan.”

  “He has a right to express his concerns,” Katja said tersely, shooting the fae a glare to match her mate’s. She then looked to me, her fear spiking within the connection we shared—vampire and victim, those puncture wounds refusing to heal, tethering us together for longer than anyone who came before. Perhaps forever. In a way, we shared what she and Elijah had: a mental, possibly even spiritual link, wherein we could communicate without saying a word.

  Her expression faltered when I gritted my teeth, mild annoyance sparking on my end. “How thoughtful of you, allowing me my opinion about the thing that will kill me instantaneously—”

  “Come oooonnnnnnnnn,” Fintan droned, nodding back to the door with a long, drawn-out groan. “This is a waste of time. Someone just put a bag over his head and be done with it.”

  “Fuck you, fae.”

  “It comes from a place of love, vampire,” he purred, blowing me a kiss over the sniveling warlock’s shoulder. “Just move your ass already and we—”

  A shrill cry detonated over the cellblock, sirens of varying pitches and intensities exploding from the ceiling speaker. I clapped my hands over my ears, but that didn’t stop the horrendous noise from slicing through my skull. Elijah felt it just as severely, the intensity forcing his eyes to roll back into his head before he folded over with a snarl. Doubled in size again, Tully flung himself away from Katja and rocketed into her empty cell like a missile, leaving his mistress to suffer the assault alone. Her knees buckled, and Katja plummeted to the ground, wrists shoved against her ears, hands in her hair, eyes wide with panic.

  Xargi had so many sirens—but this was new, something of Guthrie’s design, no doubt. Something to subdue everyone, so calamitous that I felt the sound vibrations in my marrow. Fintan had even abandoned our ticket out of here, but the warlock couldn’t withstand it either, rolling around on the ground, lips moving like he was screaming for someone to make it stop. I dropped to one knee just as a cool, viscous liquid dribbled from my ears—my eardrums had burst. They stitched themselves back together, vampiric healing abilities slow but present even with this damn collar, but then they burst again, another spurt of dead blood splashing against my palms.

  When the shrieking stopped, it felt like the blitz again, my hearing muffled even with the bells ringing, ringing, ringing inside my skull. Shadowy figures darted across the remnants of the cellblock’s busted main door, and seconds later someone hurled a dark, round disc into the room. I blinked, stunned, as it clanged and bounced across the floor, wondering if this truly was wartime.

  “Grenade—”

  The flash bang exploded in a hail of light and sound, tossing me onto my back and making Katja screech. Her terror reverberated through me, brighter and more focused than anything else, and I fought hard to blink the spotlight out of my eyes. The ringing between my ears intensified, and I rolled onto my stomach and twisted forward just in time to see another grenade tossed inside, detonating before it landed in a cloud of thick, black smoke. Through the swelling darkness, I spotted it: the door repairing itself, splintered wood and jagged metal floating off the ground and zooming back into place, magic thickening in the air as the guards sealed us inside.

  The fog would either kill us or render the rest of them unconscious—and I couldn’t allow for either. Staggering to my feet, I tugged my jumpsuit over my nose and mouth, but as the black expanded, all-consuming, it sapped the energy from my limbs. I needn’t breathe, but it still wormed its way inside me all the same, turning my legs to jelly. The cellblock slid in and out of focus as I stumbled forward a few paces, then collapsed again. Beneath the smoke line, I saw them—my people. Katja on her back, head lolled to the side, eyes open but vacant. Elijah shuffling toward her, pupils like slits, his inner dragon fighting to protect him, to save his mate…

  He offered a hand to me, the beast inside recognizing a friend, a brother, and I reached back. Beside them, Fintan pushed up on wobbly arms, only for his face to go slack seconds later, and when his elbows buckled, that regal nose met the ground in a horrendous face-plant. Bone cracked noisily on impact. Elijah lilted onto his side, body sprawled over a limp Katja, dragon’s eyes on me, hand still stretching, fingers grasping…

  No. It wouldn’t end like this.

  Get them in a cell. Barricade the door. Bash open a window and hide in a shadow. Let the fresh air clear their lungs.

  Plan.

  Teeth gritted, gums aching, vision tinged red, I summoned every bit of strength left at my disposal and hauled my body forward. Silver lining: the smog had turned
so thick, so heavy, that it blotted out the sun. Even as the others faded from view, I crawled in their direction, desperate to take Elijah’s hand, to throw Katja over my shoulder, to haul Fintan along after us—

  A familiar set of locks clicked and clunked open. The darkness ruffled with the whoosh of the cellblock door. A red beam blazed through the black, a dot appearing on my shoulder.

  Whump.

  Someone fired a wooden projectile, and I hissed—bared my nonexistent fangs—when the stake buried itself into my right shoulder, slicing through flesh and bone and muscle like I was made of butter. Pain exploded through my every cell, followed by a swift and violent sedative lull that knocked the wind out of me.

  I was gone before I even hit the ground.

  27

  Katja

  Everything hurt when I came to, but for once, my wrists were standouts—in a league all their own. The pain there remained sharp and constant, bitter and cruel, even as the rest of the world dripped back into focus on the other side of my heavy eyelids. Sore shoulders—the right had taken the brunt of that fall when the flash-bang grenade went off—and an aching lower back. This wasn’t the first time I’d woken up in Xargi strapped to a chair, but as I moaned and shifted about, trying to get the circulation flowing again, I prayed it would be the last.

  A cloud of herbal cigarette smoke whooshed across my face. Heart sinking, knowing exactly where I was, I clenched my eyes tighter, bracing against the sting of tears.

  I didn’t want to—couldn’t do this. Wanted to fold in on myself and pretend today hadn’t happened—pretend I hadn’t gotten my hopes up about an escape, about using that guard and riding him all the way through the ward with all my guys and Tully in tow.

  But we had failed. Miserably. No telling where they were, but in the darkness, I knew I was in the place I despised most of all.

  Mahogany and varnish. Furniture polish. Old books. A rarely used fireplace, all for show. Lloyd’s cologne, more pungent than usual, and his rich aftershave. No. No, no, no, no.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  He sounded so much closer today, and I gritted my teeth, slowly peeling my eyes open and bracing for what I’d find. At least I didn’t flinch when I found him sitting on this side of his desk, less than a foot away, leaning back with a smoldering cigarette in one hand, the other braced on the mahogany. My heavy gaze dipped down to my shackled wrists, bound to the chair’s armrests with the same punishing cuffs from the first day, my original prison accessories. They glowed a faint blue, enchanted this time to do… well, I had no clue, but I lacked the strength to test their limits. The source of all the sharp pain was obvious: the metal had worn my wrists raw, stripped back the outer layer of skin and left red rings in its place all the way around.

  Wonderful.

  Taking a deep breath, I lifted my head with some difficulty, my neck sore, muscles strained after however many minutes—hours—my head had been hanging like this. A quick glance out the huge windows to my right showed that the sun had only just set, the sky splashed with amber and a rosy pink, darkness closing in.

  “Did you feel so very tough today, kitten?” Lloyd murmured with a flick of his cigarette, the ashy end sprinkling onto the floor. “Brandishing a gun of all things—like a little human. How very brave… and stupid.”

  “You think any of us want to be here?” I cleared my too-dry throat, wincing at yet another flash of pain. “You’re surprised today happened? I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. You’re illegally detaining—”

  “Oh, spare me the theatrics,” he snapped, clomping one foot onto the leg of my chair. The jostling made my heart skip a beat, then race furiously, adrenaline soaring. “I’m tired, kitten. Tired of waiting for you.”

  “Maybe we should just cut ties, then,” I said, enough steel in my spine to meet those dangerous greys, just for a moment. I arched an eyebrow. “I mean, this is doomed to fail, me and you. We’ll never be happy with each other, so—”

  “Enough.” He shoved at my chair and shot to his feet. I muffled a whimper, lips tight together, instinct begging me to run. My magic curdled deep inside, overflowing and compounding, promising disaster I didn’t let off some of the steam. For the first time since I’d found this damn collar around my neck, my magic turned its wrath on me, scalding up my windpipe like a case of severe heartburn, desperate to get out.

  “Please just—”

  “No, kitten.” Lloyd swooped in and grabbed me by the chin, fingertips biting into my cheeks and forcing my jaw apart. His greying lashes fluttered as his eyes dropped to my lips, and when I let out a stuttering breath, pulse throbbing between my ears, his other hand latched onto my throat and squeezed. “No, now is the time to listen.”

  I sucked down a gulp of air while I still had the chance, my panicked gaze darting around—spurring him on. Lloyd zeroed in on my windpipe, crushing it slowly, and I flailed, chair rustling, but all the restraints held firm. They did their job, cuffs slicing deeper into my wrists, ankle bonds tough as steel.

  Even the collar that had slowly become a part of me, an appendage I wanted to cut out and discard, dug into my skin after months of just existing, normally uncomfortable but largely ignorable. As Lloyd went from gripping to strangling, electricity suddenly hummed through the leather—like the charms thought I was trying to take it off. A squeal clawed up my crushed windpipe when the next bolt zapped at my skin, sharper this time.

  The noise seemed to bring Lloyd back to the moment, the storm clouds lifting in his eyes, and he eased off as I coughed and gasped, breathing a little harder himself. Slowly, he peeled each finger from my face, my throat, and then righted himself, sweeping a hand through his tousled salt-and-pepper waves, then smoothing it down his matching black, grey, and white suit combo. Pristine as always, so put together…

  And now sporting a very obvious erection.

  Tears burned again, threatening to spill over if I so much as blinked, and I looked up and away, head tipped back just enough to rein them in.

  “You’re going to be such fun, kitten,” he remarked softly, striking out and catching the one traitorous droplet that slipped free. He let it dangle off his fingertip, then flicked it away like he’d done with his cigarette, which now sat in cinders on the floor, abandoned. One vice replaced with another.

  “No more terms.” Lloyd perched on the edge of his enormous desk and fidgeted with his tie, righting it, tightening it, eyes never once leaving mine. “Here’s what’s going to happen. If you don’t leave with me tonight, I’m going to take those urchins you spend all your time with and destroy them. Elijah Greystone, Fintan of the fucking Midnight Court, and my personal favorite—Rafe O’Dwyer.”

  While I knew I shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of seeing me panic, I did. Again. I gave him my horror with my slightly parted lips, my eyes wide like saucers, the blood draining from my cheeks.

  And I hated myself for it.

  Why couldn’t I be stronger?

  Why couldn’t I be the fucking heroine ever?

  Outside, I was an independent witch who ran a successful business all by myself. In here, I was cuffed and chained and powerless…

  Fuck him. Fuck him for putting me in this position, for making me feel so small.

  Fuck me for letting him.

  “You think all I can do to the vampire is remove his fangs?” Lloyd said casually. A beat later, his tone dropped and darkened. “Watch me. I’ll rip them all apart, one piece at a time, and you, kitten, can have a front-row seat to the carnage.” He sniffed, ticking each of my boys off on his fingers. “I’ll peel the flesh from that fucking fae’s bones and feed it to the wolves. I’ll lob off the vampire’s limbs and toss them into the sun so you can watch them fry—have us a bonfire. And the dragon…” He cocked his head to the side, staring so hard at me like he could see clear through to my soul, to my heart and all its desires. “I’ll pull out the dragon’s teeth, rip out his nails, pluck every hair from his head. We’ll see how deep w
e need to dig to find his scales. They go for quite a bit on the black market, dragon scales… Better than any armor out there. They even repel magic—did you know that? His hide is worth a fucking fortune.”

  Heart racing, I swallowed hard at the churn of an anxiety puke, which was dangerously close to mingling with my pissed-off magic and choking me. This was why I had tried to separate from them, but Fintan had been right: it was too late for that now.

  I’d damned them all.

  “I…” Think quick, Katja. These weren’t empty threats; Lloyd would do everything he said and more to my guys if I didn’t respond correctly. Tough as it was to wade through the brain fog, I stitched together a slapdash plan that just might work—if I had the leverage over this creepy asshole that I hoped I did. If not, we were all screwed. “I have some conditions.”

  Amusement flickered across his features. “Oh, is that so?”

  With a deep breath, I sat up straighter, businesslike, as if I were dealing with a particularly douchey vendor. Warmth dribbled down my wrists, blood plopping onto the floor from the fresh cuts, but I blocked it out—tried not to count how many seconds stretched between each drop.

  Fifteen.

  Fifteen seconds and then plop.

  “The collar comes off,” I said evenly. “My magic is turning foul the longer it just sits there. It’s making me feel ill, and I…” No need to give him further ammunition. “It has to come off.”

  Lloyd considered it for a moment—plop—and then nodded. “Agreed. Can’t have you rotting from the inside, but no wand.”

  “Sure.” Like I even needed a wand at this point. As soon as the leather disappeared, I’d probably go off like a bomb. As a warlock, surely he expected that. Every super and shifter in here was suffering with pent-up magic in one form or another.