Of Scions and Men

by Courtney Sloan

  “Go!” he screamed aloud this time. His voice had become high pitched as his eyes drew together, begging me to do as he commanded. “Get out! Leave her.”

  I tried to move my legs, but my stomach seized again, and my mind clouded. From nowhere, pain shot through my back. I screamed, reaching behind me to grab my attacker but finding no one there. Then Walton laughed and kicked Devon again, this time forcing him to the ground. I mirrored his fall as my spine gave out on me in shock.

  Our bond was going to kill me. They’d poisoned the vampires, and we scions were dead because of it.

  Beside me, Nadia wretched and convulsed, vomiting blood all over both of us. I hoped it was just her body kicking out the poison and not something worse.

  A shadow fell over us, and a small hand stuck a syringe into Nadia’s throat. I tried to swat the needle away, but my muscles contracted as a shockwave of pain radiated through every cell of my body. I gagged into the floor.

  “Oh, great. Another mess to clean up,” Martha said. Her sickeningly sweet, little girl voice had switched to a level of bitch rarely heard off the south side’s street corners.

  She was killing them right in front of me, and my body was too convulsed in pain to fight back. Tears burned my eyes. Nadia stopped shaking after a few seconds, and another body fell on the other side of the room with a loud thump. Carson.

  They were down.

  Oh, God, they were gone.

  Calmly, Martha stood and strolled over the floor to the men.

  “Bitch.” I growled through gritted teeth and fought to crawl another step to the door. Every movement burned, like every muscle in my body had been shredded. Groaning, I wavered on my hands and knees, unable to drag myself to the exit.

  Get up, Rowan. Get out. Devon’s voice was weak. He filled me with all the power he could, costing him every last ounce of his energy. For all of us, I had to reach the door. Shahid was on the other side. Why couldn’t he hear us?

  Fighting the fire in my gut, I found my feet and forced them forward. Don’t let her stick you with that needle, Devon.

  Step by step, I picked up momentum, screaming through clenched teeth with each movement, then two of the “servants” blocked my path.

  The vampires from the alley.

  They smiled at me, and I grimaced back. Preparing to use my momentum to kick them out of the way, pain lanced through my head as an invisible blow sent me flying and flipping onto the ground with a hard smack.

  Staring at the vampire who’d saved my life–saved Will’s life–through my tears, I watched as Walton pull his leg back from Devon’s head.

  Walton’s gaze flicked to me. Horror filled his face. “I forgot about the pain connection. Did I hurt her?”

  “Idiot,” Martha intoned. She reached toward Devon with the syringe.

  Get up, Devon. Fight! Don’t you dare leave me! Sobs caught in my throat. Please move.

  He was as helpless as me. The needle entered his neck.

  Devon’s power drained from me. Pain and darkness were taking over. I was losing him. I reached a hand out, but couldn’t even get it off the ground.

  Devon, please. Please, Devon. Get up. Make me get up. Something. I’ll move in with you. I’ll do anything, just make them stop. Show these assholes who you are.

  He’d been so strong and always there for me. I never imagined a single needle could end it.

  Slowly, a steady numbness crept over me. Through my connection with Devon, I was going to die.

  The fate of scions.

  Will was going to lose me–he was going to lose both of us. Now, he was going to be alone with the monsters. Again.

  My breathing grew shallower. Will, I’m sorry. Devon, I’m sorry.

  Walton took steps toward me. Oh, God. He was fascinated with dead things. I dug my fingernails into the floor. I was about to be one of his toys.

  As my body let go and I gave in to the darkness, Walton picked me up and carried me against his chest.

  y sense of smell hit me before anything else. The scent was damp, moldy, with a sharp lacing of metal and musk. In other words: it stank.

  Someone was screaming. Their voice sounded miles away, then it abruptly stopped. Nothing was getting through the fog in my head. As the last memories returned to me, I didn’t think I wanted it to.

  My eyes flashed open. I was alive. Why in the name of Romaric was I still alive?

  We knew who they were, and we were the ones charged to bring them in. We’d failed so completely to be all at their mercy.

  Yet, here I was, alive. If I was still here, Devon was too, or the bond would have taken me with him.

  I pushed myself into a seated position and checked my surroundings. The damp, moldy smell was coming from the dark carpet below me. Bars surrounded me.

  Bars.

  I was in a cage.

  I tried to get my bearings. Blurred people moved around the room without giving me a second glance. I was in a cell, maybe six by eight feet, with steel beams from floor to ceiling, on three sides around me, and shelving in the stone wall behind me. There was a bucket in the corner I hoped to God I’d never have to use, but, from the smell, someone had. Identical cages stood on either side of me, taking up the narrow end of what had to be a basement. A basement with no windows. We were underground; that would account for the dank smell.

  I worked to control my breathing as I realized I was no longer wearing my cocktail dress. Instead, they’d dressed me in a hospital gown, tied closed on the side. Who the hell had changed me? That crazy vampire bastard.

  A rasping breath came from beneath a pile of blankets in the cage to my right. A ping of excitement lanced through me as I crouched in the closest corner to their cell without drawing attention.

  “Hey, who’s under there?” I whispered in my lowest voice. “Carson, is that you?” Please let him still be alive, too.

  Mocha skin and large, sunken, brown eyes peeked from below the smelly coverings. Okay, not Carson. A woman slowly emerged from her shelter of bedding, also wearing the hospital wannabe-gown. She put a shaking finger to her lips and glanced around us. My stomach tightened as I spotted bruises and needle marks up and down her trembling arms.

  I kept my voice low and my eyes on her, trying to lend her strength I didn’t have to spare. “Hannah?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. We’re here to, uh, save you.” I tried to keep the irony and question out of my voice.

  It didn’t work. She rolled her eyes at me and moved to re-cover herself in the blankets.

  “We’ll get out of this; just give me time to figure this out.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the reassembled barricade of fabric or myself. There had to be a way. Where was everyone else?

  Scanning the room, I noticed each of our cages had identical built-in shelving with nothing on them. Strange additions to prison cells. Looking closer, I realized there was something weird about our prison as a whole.

  For a room with cages, it was nicely decorated—gothic haute couture, one might say. There was dark wood wainscoting all around. The room itself was cavernous, though filled with vampires and hell right now. In the middle stood a very nice, four-poster bed with velvet draping. Four cots sat around it. Very army surplus. All sorts of hanging lights were arranged as if they’d been adjusted to illuminate specific areas.

  We were in a vampire’s sleeping chamber. No wonder we couldn’t find it.

  Most of the beauty, though, was blocked by people, tables covered in equipment, and computers. None of them fit with the gothic harem chic of the basement room. Monitors on the tables to my right cycled through a series of cameras. They showed the front gate, the front door, the entry room, and a bunch of places I didn’t recognize. We were still at Walton’s. Was this his bedroom?

  All of this had been right under our feet. We’d just walked right in. Frustration burned through me.

  On my left, the hospital equipment I’d asked Martha about before everything had gone to hell mocked me. I
had no idea what most of the gadgets did, but from this side of the bars, it all of them looked menacing. At the far end of the table, Martha stared intently down a microscope’s tubed lens, making notes next to a computer.

  Then the screaming started again. Two screams blended into a horrific harmony, accompanied by a series of pops and hisses. My head pounded, and my breath caught. I bit my tongue near to the point of bleeding, aching to call out with them. The lights flickered momentarily in time with them. Yep, that certainly completed the horror movie set motif. Pressure in my body built with my panting breath. I was in hell, and no one was looking for us.

  I swung my head to the area beyond the beds and peered at a hard angle. Barely in my vision, Nadia and Devon hung from the wall, Carson on his knees before them. Walton stood cattycornered to Nadia, applying long sticks to her body. I couldn’t see his face, but at regular intervals, Walton would apply the batons to her, and Nadia and Carson would both scream as electricity coursed through their flesh. He was torturing them. My blood boiled and heart broke for my friends.

  Desperate, I scanned my cell for anything I could use to help them. I groaned when the contents of my cage literally consisted of me and a bucket of piss.

  My gaze caught on a line of empty chairs hugging the far side wall by the door. That wasn’t an accident. Who were they for? Where was the peanut gallery?

  Glancing away from the chairs, I realized Devon was staring at me. He knew I was awake. When I made eye contact, he closed his eyes again and acted unconscious.

  Devon?

  Don’t make a sound. Don’t draw their attention or let them know that you’re awake.

  Just break through. Hannah’s here. We need to get out.

  The manacles are rune-inscribed. I can’t get through. It’s blocking any force I try to exert on it.

  Dammit, they were like my cuffs–the ones I used to bring in a vampire. These nutcases were prepared. We were fucked.

  How are we–

  The lights flickered again.

  “Dammit!” exclaimed Martha. Remaining frozen, I switched my gaze to her. She threw a pen at the table and turned to Walton and the others. “Do you mind, Tom?”

  The large man hesitated then turned around to her. “I’m having fun. What’s wrong now?”

  “It’s very hard to count ley residual enzymes when you blink out my screen every few seconds!”

  “We wouldn’t need your counts if you’d just let me zap the procedure out of them. I mean, if it was done surgically, we’d have it by now.”

  Ley residual enzymes? She meant scion blood.

  My blood.

  My gaze shot to my arms, my stomach in my throat. Small puncture wounds lined my arms. They’d taken my blood when I’d been unconscious. Bastards.

  “And your way may cost us the scions’ minds,” Martha said to Tom. “We want those intact, if you remember. Or do you want your little prize over there a dribbling mess from the torture you inflict on her previous master?”

  They both shifted their eyes to me. I eyed both of them and gave them a single wave. Too late for pretend. So much for not being noticed.

  In unison, they both turned their gazes to Devon. His shoulders sighed, and he stared into their eyes with a murderous glare.

  “I thought you said you gave him enough to keep them out for hours,” Walton accused Martha.

  “They should have been.”

  Devon inhaled deeply, taking energy I hadn’t realized he’d been feeding from me. I sank to my knees as he stood taller, acting as if he was not cuffed to some wall of a basement in Bellwood.

  He leveled his gaze, first onto Martha, who took a step back from the scrutiny, then on Walton. “Have you two lost your minds? Playing doctor and upsetting the balance for what? Because you’re hurt you were denied scions? Pathetic.” He nearly spat the last at them. I envied the strength in his voice.

  Walton took a step forward.

  Prepare yourself, Devon warned. I can’t stop him. This is going to hurt.

  Like I didn’t know that. I stayed on the floor and grasped the bars to brace myself. How the hell did Devon appear so calm?

  “You don’t understand anything,” Walton said to him. “We did everything right. We had good makers. We played party ball and served where we were deemed most useful. We covered up when necessary. When it was our turn, when we came of age, nothing. We got nothing!”

  “We don’t give pets to irresponsible children. We take care of our things.”

  In a flash, Walton’s hands shot out to Devon, and pain wove through me to the point I thought it would strangle me like a boa constrictor. For what seemed like minutes, my spine arched, twisting in pain, then nothing, not even breathing, worked as my body fought for release from the invisible attack that pushed on.

  Everything dimmed to darkness. I had to hold on. We had to get out of here. Will was waiting. Will needed us. He didn’t even know where we were. I pictured his face drawn up in worry, peering out his school window waiting for me. Waiting for me to come get him. I promised I always would. I wasn’t going to break that promise now, whatever they did.

  I fought the urge to close my eyes. Hang on, Devon. We have to beat them.

  His resolve strengthened mine through our bond, and we held on for each other. Then Walton pulled the electric rod away from Devon’s torso, and I collapsed onto the ground, staring at the ceiling. I panted loudly through my still-clenched teeth. How much of this had Carson already taken? Was he okay?

  Devon spat and continued speaking. “Then you went like mewling infants to outsiders to cry foul. Betraying everyone who’d ever cared for you.”

  Fire erupted from inside me again. Distantly, I heard someone screaming and realized it was me. I tried to count, just to make my mind work, but gave up after saying “six” for the fifth time.

  Seconds later, I was able to draw in long breaths of air. Somehow, they seemed much sweeter than they had ten minutes ago.

  Will you please just shut up? I screamed at Devon.

  No. I have to draw out the others. Anyway, Nadia and Carson need a break. Just breathe. You are stronger than them, cherie. I could almost feel him caress my cheek in my mind.

  Remind me later to kick your ass for the pet comment.

  That’s my girl.

  Walton growled in frustration again. “Stop it. You’re doing it again. She is no longer yours to talk to. She is mine just as soon as I figure out how to bind her.”

  “You’re stealing scraps from your betters while you let the enemy in from the backdoor. They were right to deny you,” Devon said.

  An animalistic roar emanated from Walton, and the prods came down again. This time, it went on for much longer. No longer could I keep from screaming ‘til my throat turned raw. No longer could I keep the tears inside.

  No longer did I want to survive.

  I dug my nails into the concrete floor and begged Walton to slip up, to kill Devon and take me, too.

  From somewhere deep inside, Devon’s weak voice screamed to me. He wants you. Call to him.

  I struggled to speak several times before using the pain to scream one word: “Thomas!”

  Instantly, the pain stopped. I collapsed, gasping for air, the iron bars knocking into my temple. Somehow, I’d squirmed my way to the side of my cage. I breathed deeply, not even bothering to wipe away the tears running down my cheeks.

  A shadow fell over me, and I glanced up into Walton’s disgustingly concerned face.

  Play it up. Give us some time, Devon said.

  Strangling my desire to slam Walton’s head into the bars, I gazed at him with the largest eyes I could muster. There would be time for ass kicking later. Staying on the ground I whispered low, knowing he could hear, “Please stop. I can’t…”

  He crouched, petting my head and making soothing sounds. “Of course, my sweet girl. I would never hurt you. Devon is the one making me. If he would just cooperate, this could be all over, and we could get you settled and comfortabl
e.”

  My skin crawled away from his touch. Desperation oozed from him, and the feel of it on me made me crave a shower. He wanted to be bound to me? No way in hell.

  “Tom,” Martha snapped, “don’t be a fool.”

  “She needs a break,” he whined back, still petting me.

  Martha sauntered up behind him and jerked him back from the cage. “Oh, but it’s fine for you to stick it to mine for the better part of an hour?”

  Oh, God. That’s why Carson was still alive–she wanted him as her scion.

  “She’s more delicate. Look at her. Anyway, you should be happy you’re getting a strong guy. It’s what you need.”

  Martha’s face turned an ugly shade of purple.

  “Enough!” a voice barked. One of the South American vampires stepped into the room, followed closely by two lackeys. He wasn’t the one who’d taken a chunk from me just a few nights before. How many were there?

  “Devon was right,” he continued. “You children. She plays you, and you crawl. My Master does not reward children fights. He rewards only results. So what results have you now?”

  Both Martha and Walton straightened, murder still on their faces.

  Martha answered first. “I’m mapping some interestingly distinct patterns in their ley markers. It may be the key to forcing a sustaining bond. I’m having trouble finding a true count on these latest slides for obvious reasons” –she glanced at Walton–“but from my readings, Carson’s levels crest at over a three-to-one ration to Hannah’s. And Walton’s whore houses almost five times Carson’s level. Their DNA ley markers must contribute to how the Basement finds suitable scions from the populace, but I cannot figure out how the cell counts actually link to creating the bond.”

  Walton stood his full bulky height and took a step away from her. “For the first time, we have real assets: two vampires who have been brought into the inner circle and have been a part of the Ceremony. If they tell us how to do it, all this microscope divination will have been unnecessary.”

  The Brazilian vampire motioned to Devon. “It is risk. They are known to Romaric. They will be missed.”

  Walton waved his hand and toddled up, stopping just two steps behind him. “They’ve been put on this assignment. We have time because everyone knows they’ve been running around like crazy people all over town. I’ve heard down the chain: Romaric is ready to take their heads off anyway for being so inept at finding us. Worse comes to worse, we just make it appear like a quick packing job, make one of his cars disappear, and everyone will think they took off because they didn’t want to face Romaric’s displeasure at failing.”