Queen of Quarantine

by Caroline Peckham

But instead of him leaping up and wrapping me in his arms, his eyes widened in alarm at the sight of me and he shook his head.

  "You shouldn't have come!" Dad gasped, his eyes full of regret and fear.

  "It's okay," I promised him as I ran around the wooden table in the centre of the room and wrapped my arms around him. "We're here to get you out. We won't let that crazy motherfucker do anything to hurt you-"

  "No, Blake, you don't understand. He knew you'd come. He set you up. It's a-"

  The sound of a shotgun being cocked made my blood ice over in my veins and I whirled around to look back at the door where the others were still clustered.

  "The fucking clock," Saint hissed in realisation. "I should have known it wouldn't be that easy."

  "Don't do anything stupid," a male voice came from somewhere outside the room and my hand flew to the pistol at my belt. "Come on out. Do it quietly so that we don't have to open fire. The Grand Master wants to see you."

  I made a move to draw my weapon anyway and my dad's hand clamped down on my elbow to stop me.

  "Don't," he snarled in warning. "You can't beat him, son. That man is the Devil incarnate. We can't fight him and his people."

  I wholeheartedly disagreed with that, but as I looked to the door where we'd entered, I saw the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of Tatum's head as she was forced to raise her hands in surrender. Rage pulsed through my chest and the urge to declare war filling every part of my being.

  Saint caught my eye, shaking his head an infinitesimal amount. We couldn't fight our way out of this. But I swore on all I was, the motherfucker who had dared to threaten our girl would die at my hands today.

  T he group of guards dragged us upstairs after they locked up Blake’s dad again and panic rushed through me. We were taken to a long stone hall with flagstones and a huge arching window at the far end which snow was falling against.

  My heart pounded unevenly as I tried to think up a way out of this, but the assholes had disarmed us, stolen any chance we had of fighting back. Now we were being thrown to Troy Memphis like were a meal for a rabid dog. And I didn’t know what to do.

  There was a large, circular table set up at the heart of the hall between two huge fires on either side of it. It was like something out of Game of Thrones but instead of the Lannisters sitting there, it was ten douchebags in robes, at the heart of which was Troy. He rose from his seat beside a woman with a bob of blonde hair and bright blue eyes which were wide and pinned on me. The rest of them were older men with sneering faces and grey or greying hair.

  The guards released us, forming a line behind us as they held their guns ready to fire if we tried to run and my heart beat to a frantic tune. There was no way out. We were fucked.

  “You took your time,” Troy mused, a smug as shit look on his face as he clasped his hands behind his back and strode around the table to stand in front of us. His eyes moved over our clothes and his brow arched as he looked to Saint. “You came over the mountain? How positively uncivilised of you.”

  “You knew,” Saint said in an empty tone as he kept himself entirely composed in the face of danger.

  “Of course I knew you’d come. Do you seriously think I didn’t stand near the old grandfather clock on purpose when I called you?” Troy asked coldly as he strode forward, his imposing height seeming to amplify the power radiating from him.

  Saint ground his jaw and I could tell how much he was beating himself up over his father tricking him even if his eyes didn’t show it. But he was going up against a man as smart as himself. He wasn’t to blame for this. It was this evil prick standing before us.

  “Well, you’re finally here anyway,” Troy went on when Saint said nothing in response. “You must be tired after such an arduous and pointless journey, it really would have been easier to walk through the front door and gives yourselves up.”

  His robed friends tittered, and my upper lip peeled back. “What do you want?” I snarled, though I feared I already knew. Troy had taken my blood once before and after the way he’d hunted for us, it was clear what he was looking for.

  “You know what I want,” Troy said simply, and my boys shifted protectively around me.

  “Whoops, didn’t you take one of those vaccines we stole from your company?” I mocked, wanting to poke at this asshole who dared to try and cage us.

  “Unfortunately for you, no, I did not,” Troy said and the air went out of me as he sized me up like an animal for slaughter.

  “If you think we’re going to let you take her anywhere-” Nash started, but Troy cut over him.

  “Karen, come over here,” Troy called, ignoring Nash entirely, making my blood burn.

  The blonde woman floated up behind Troy and my eyes cut to her as she moved to stand before me, her head cocking to one side as she examined me. My throat thickened as a very real and disturbing feeling of recognition filled me. But I didn’t know her. I was sure I hadn’t met her before.

  “Tatum Rivers,” she breathed, shaking her head. “What a vile name.”

  “Excuse you?” I hissed and Troy watched me with amusement in his gaze, folding his arms as he looked from me to the blonde stranger, apparently enjoying something.

  “It has nothing on your real name,” Karen said, taking a step closer to me and my skin prickled all over. I suddenly felt the need to back up, to get as far away from this woman as possible, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing that urge in me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kyan growled beside me, but the woman ignored him, her eyes glued to me.

  “You’re Adriana Munt,” she said.

  “Um, no I’m not.” I glanced at Troy who was eyeing me with interest. “Who is this?” I demanded of him.

  “This is Karen Munt,” he said.

  “Your mother,” she added, smirking at me and my heart locked up as I refused those words with every scrap of my being. What kind of sick joke was this?

  “No,” I said calmly, keeping my expression neutral as my Night Keepers stared at me from both sides. “My mother left when I was a toddler, she abandoned us-”

  “Your father stole you and your sister from me,” Karen snarled, her eyes flaring with anger and my pulse thumped heavily in my ears as I shook my head.

  “Bullshit,” I snapped.

  “You’re not really one for drama, Father,” Saint cut in. “What is this about?”

  “It’s as she says,” Troy replied with a shrug. “She is the girl’s mother.”

  “Well, you know what?” I hissed at this bitch Karen. “I don’t give a damn who you are. If you’re standing beside that monster in those fucking robes, you’re my enemy and nothing else.” My heart pounded furiously against my ribs as I glared at her, rejecting her with everything I was. Even if what she said was true, I’d never had a care in my heart for a mother who’d walked out on me, so I wasn’t about to start caring about one who was a part of Royaume D’elite.

  Karen’s nose scrunched a little as she regarded me. “You’re not listening, Adriana-”

  “Call me that again and I’ll cut out your tongue,” I spat as Blake shifted beside me, violence pouring from his posture alone.

  “Fine,” Karen sighed. “Tatum, then. Look, let’s go and speak in private. I’ll explain everything.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I scoffed.

  “And if you try and take her from us, I’ll kill all of you,” Kyan growled dangerously.

  “And how will you manage that unarmed?” Troy asked as his creepy little friends released low laughs behind him.

  “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of.” Kyan took a step forward and I pressed a hand to his chest, giving him a firm look to hold him back.

  We were unarmed and there was no way I was going to let any of my Night Keepers die for me. The others were all tensing and grouping closer to me too and I knew they were just as desperate to protect me. But I wouldn’t see them throw their lives away. We couldn’t fight, we ha
d to wait for an opportunity to run and the only way to give us any chance of that was to stall them. Troy gave a sharp nod to the men behind us and they moved forward to restrain my boys.

  “Tell me right here,” I demanded of the woman who claimed to be my mother. “Tell me the truth.”

  She sighed and Troy checked his watch impatiently. “Five minutes, then we must move this along,” he muttered.

  Karen nodded, moving another step closer to me as she considered her words. “I have been working on projects funded by Troy and Royaume D’elite for years. Long before you or your sister were in my life. I fell for your father after we briefly worked in a lab together in Chicago. Of course, for the first few years of our marriage, he had no idea what my work really entailed, and I had no intention of telling him. He always thought of himself as so moral. He wouldn’t have understood the need for the things I was working on.”

  “Like what?” I growled, forcing myself to tolerate this conversation as I glanced around, hunting for a way out, a gun, a plan.

  “Biological weapons mostly,” she said lightly like it was nothing and my attention was snared, a violent jolt running through my chest.

  “Like the Hades Virus?” Nash gritted out and she cast him a fleeting glance before turning back to me.

  “Yes, eventually I created it. Though not before I had my daughters. It was never meant to be used in this country, not initially anyway. But then your father discovered what I was doing. He broke into my lab, God only knows how long he’d suspected what I was up to. And when he found out the truth, he couldn’t stomach it. He didn’t understand the need for the bioweapons which my people and I made and sold on the black market. It was too much for him to handle apparently.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust and mine did too but for completely opposite reasons. “For a man who seemed strong in so many ways, it turned out he was weak.”

  “He wasn’t weak,” I snapped, acid bleeding through my veins. “Morals aren’t weak.”

  She raised a finger, pointing it at me as rage pinched her features and I hated how I suddenly saw some of myself in her face. “Morals are a concept created by the government, by religion and by people who want to control you. The only things that truly count in this world are money and power – and you can’t have one without the other.”

  “Coming from a bitch who’s a member of a disgusting club like Royaume D’élite,” I growled. “Where people are controlled, chained and treated like less than animals. Like they mean nothing. Like they are nothing.”

  Karen started laughing. “A member?” she scoffed. “I am not a mere member, Tatum. I am one of the Grand Masters. As all ten of us are.” She gestured to Troy and the creeps behind her and my jaw clenched at that revelation. Now they were all marked to die, because the club could be reborn through any of them. And we couldn’t let that happen.

  “If you’re so against being controlled, then why do you do it to others?” Blake asked in a voice full of disgust.

  “Because there are different classes of people,” Troy answered coldly, and Karen nodded. “The powerful and the weak. We feed the weak to the powerful. We keep order. We define order.”

  I glowered at Troy before fixing my so-called mother in my stare. “So my father found out what a monster he’d married, took his children and ran?” I guessed and she bristled.

  “He stole you both because he couldn’t hack the real truth of this world. That there is no good and evil. That there is only power or the lack of it. And if you do not claim it, then you will be a slave to society and rules which were placed upon you without your consent! In this country, your life is decided for you before you’re even born. I didn’t want that for my daughters. I was building a new world for us. And your father ruined everything.” Her lower lip trembled with fury and I could see she really believed the bullshit spewing from her mouth.

  “Good,” I snarled, hatred burning in my heart. “I’m glad he took us. I’m glad he kept us from you.”

  She had the audacity to look hurt by my words before straightening her spine.

  “Your five minutes are up,” Troy announced as he checked his watch once more.

  Karen turned to him, raising her chin. “I wish to have a conversation with my daughter in private before we move her to the lab.”

  My heart splintered with fear at the word ‘lab’ and I looked to my Night Keepers in alarm, having no idea what to do. We were out of time and our fate was closing in on all sides.

  Troy nodded to one of the guards behind me, his eyes void of all emotion as he wielded all the power in the room against us. And I knew we were going to be torn apart before he even opened his mouth. “Take her away.”

  K aren grabbed hold of Tatum's arm, her pointed fingernails digging into the flesh hard enough to draw a hiss of pain from our girl's lips. She hauled her towards a door in the far corner of the room, a guard shoving her along from behind too and holding his gun ready to fire.

  "Where are you taking her?" Blake demanded, moving a step forward and causing my father's goons to raise their weapons in our direction again.

  "I'd be more concerned with your own fate if I were you," Father snarled, his lip curled back in distaste as Tatum cursed, trying to rip her arm back out of her mother's hold.

  "Let her go!" I commanded, my voice cutting and firm enough to make the bitch pause as she looked my way, but only for half a heartbeat.

  As Tatum tried to lurch out of her grip, the armed man behind her backhanded her hard enough to knock her from her feet.

  A roar of rage escaped my lips as I lurched forward a step, but it was nothing compared to the animalistic bellow that escaped Kyan.

  He lunged forward, ripping his arms from the grip of the man who had been restraining him and slamming his fist into the face of the asshole who stood pointing a gun at him.

  "No!" I yelled as I tried to grab his arm, my fingers barely brushing against his sleeve as he leapt forward, his eyes set on Tatum as she screamed out a warning which came far too late.

  The echoing bang of the gunshot blasted through the room and I swear that noise ricocheted right through my soul as Kyan was thrown from his feet, blood blossoming from the wound in his side, the bullet finding a home in his body and my world caving in around me as he fell.

  Nash roared something incomprehensible as he lunged forward, reaching for our brother's hand as Kyan fell back to the floor, his head hitting the flagstones with a sickening crack.

  Blake was screaming profanities as movement drew my gaze from Kyan to Tatum and the asshole who’d hit her wrenched her into his arms and dragged her out of sight while she screamed Kyan’s name.

  For a moment I was frozen, locked between the need to chase after her and the need to help my brother.

  Kyan's blood spread out onto the floor as he lay there unmoving and as I lurched towards him, hands grasped the back of my shirt, clamping around my arms and heaving me away again.

  He wasn't moving. Not a flicker of anything in his expression or powerful body to say that he was still with us, but my heart thundered in panic at the idea of such an unthinkable thing.

  He wasn't dead. I refused it. I wouldn't allow the world to keep turning without Kyan Roscoe in it.

  The world was a blur of motion as the remaining Night Keepers fought to get to him and the guards struggled to contain us. My foot slipped in blood as I managed to lunge between them for a moment.

  I reached for him, my fingers grasping his and closing tight around them as an arm looped across my chest and tried to haul me back.

  "Get up!" I yelled, my grip tightening as I yanked on his hand. "Your wife needs you! Kyan!"

  He didn't respond in any way, not so much as a flicker of anything as his fingers stayed slack in my grip.

  I was yanked back so hard that I lost my hold on him, a fist slamming into my side and forcing me to whirl on the men who were trying to restrain me.

  The others were fighting too, Nash descending into little more than a beast while Bla
ke hollered Kyan's name so loudly that it echoed around the room. But he still didn't move an inch.

  "Let me go!" I roared as the rest of the guards converged on Blake and Nash and I lost sight of Kyan between the crush of fighting bodies, more and more hands grabbing me and forcing me away from the others.

  "Get the body out of here," Father snapped, like Kyan was nothing more than an inconvenience to him. Some trash that needed to be discarded as soon as possible.

  The pounding in my head was loud enough to tear me apart as I thought of that. Of my brother being gone and the hole he would leave in this world. It wasn’t true. I wouldn’t accept it. I’d chase him into hell and drag his ass back here if I had to.

  I ripped my arms away from the men trying to hold me, losing all sense of myself as I fought with all the brutality of the man I loved who lay there on that floor, needing me more than he ever had. Bones crunched beneath my knuckles and blood flew, but as I was slammed back against a wall, I was overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

  The men holding me were strong and even as I fought against their grip on me with all my strength, they refused to loosen their hold.

  I was dragged from the room, pulled through a different doorway to the one where they'd taken Tatum and as I was wheeled around, I found my father's sneering face looking back at me with contempt.

  "I tried my hardest to mould you into the man you need to be in a civilised way while you were a boy," he growled as the men hauled me after him down the cold hallway and I continued to kick and fight them.

  "Let me go," I warned him in my most arctic tone while my heart raced in panic more potent than I'd ever experienced in my entire life. "This is your only warning."

  "Says the man who has been outsmarted and restrained with little to no effort," Father scoffed as he opened a door and I was forced through it. "I think I'll take my chances."

  My eyes widened as I was shoved into a room which was decked out like a fucking sex dungeon, though I seriously doubted I was here because anyone wanted to fuck me.

  A black four poster bed hung with chains and manacles sat in the centre of the space and I fought harder as the men dragged me towards it.