by Scott, Helen
Maker, did the guy never let up?
I had no idea why I even asked myself the question when I knew the dour SOB didn’t.
Seriously, the man made an emo look warm and cuddly.
At his statement, not unsurprisingly, Elizabeth began to wail. Outright tears that sounded so desperate, that all of us, save Marcella, began to shift with discomfort. Then, when the wails got on her nerves, Marcella pressed her digits to the girl’s pressure points on her throat until Elizabeth sagged.
“It might be a kindness to keep her asleep for the time being,” she rasped around her fangs. There was a slight lisp, and it was the first time I’d heard it, but then, it was the first time I’d ever seen her fangs drop outside of when she was feeding. It meant her bloodlust was high, and that meant we really needed to get her away from the human who looked like he was inches away from jacking off.
“Raven, can you find something in her head? Something that will let us know what’s going on? Who her contacts are?” Darius asked.
“Might be best to send Keiran in now that she’s asleep.” Raven shrugged. “I can leave it until tomorrow, but you know how useful dreams can be sometimes.”
When Marcella laid the girl flat on the counter, her strength astonished the hell out of me. When had that happened? She’d always been incredible, but now she might as well be Wonder Woman. She had over a hundred pounds of deadweight in her hand and she made it look like she was hefting a gallon of milk.
When her mate stepped closer, she snarled at Darius until he stepped back.
“Remind me to cement the bond with you, cherub,” Darius remarked drily, as he ran a hand over his hair.
Marcella just groused until I headed toward her, approaching from the back so I could press my front to her, and hopefully ground her.
I reached around her, amused when she snuggled into me like a kitten—a kitten with really big frigging claws and fangs—and pressed my fingers to Elizabeth’s temple. Touch wasn’t technically necessary, but it was the easiest way to fall into her subconscious.
When I was deep inside her psyche, I almost jerked back out of the dream when I felt Marcella appear at my side.
“Warn a guy,” I grumbled.
“If you hadn’t figured I was dropping in, then you’re a…”
“Don’t want to insult me, doll?” I teased, amused when she stopped and flushed.
“Well, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. You’re not an idiot. You’re just a man. If you think I’m about to let this bitch use her wiles on you—”
“What wiles would those be?” I joked. “She’s unconscious, Marcella. That’s how we can be inside her mind.”
She huffed and folded her wispy arms across her chest, unappeased by my words. “Let’s get on with it. I want out of this bitch’s brain.”
“You don’t know she’s a bitch,” I countered, even though I was as prone to dislike her as she was. “She might just be wayward.”
“Hush,” she chided. “I can feel your dislike for her, and we both know it’s for the exact same reason. This stupid girl has parents that love her, that give a crap about her being out in the wild. Sure, they’re concerned she’ll tell Maximus secrets—”
“Which would ruin their honor.”
She conceded that with a nod. “But from what Darius has told us, I think they just downright care what happens to her. Yet here she is, fucking some creepy guy to make ends meet.”
“It’s not our place to judge.” Before she could scoff, I added, “It isn’t. I’m feeling exactly what you just said, Marcella. I am. Truly. But I can’t let that get in the way of the job. Just because I think she’s made some shitty life choices doesn’t mean I’m about to think she’s the architect of all that’s bad.”
“Neither do I,” she retorted.
“Perhaps not, but you’re overly angry.”
It took a while for her to calm down, and when she did, she cleared her throat, stating, “I didn’t appreciate Darius’s interactions with her.”
“He wasn’t behaving inappropriate in any way,” I stated, wanting to make sure that was on record with the pursang beast rattling around inside her, stronger now than before since she’d begun feeding on Darius’s blood.
“No. I know. I’m just feeling on edge,” she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck. “I’ll be happier once the bond is cemented with him and Gideon. I hate feeling this way.”
I wanted to reach out and hug her, to slide an arm over her shoulder, but there was little use in this world. She wouldn’t feel the connection, so instead I just concentrated on doing as she’d asked—getting the hell out of here.
It didn’t take me long to riffle through Elizabeth’s subconscious and I easily found a recurring nightmare.
“It won’t be pretty,” I warned her.
She shrugged. “Good.” Then, she winced. “I’m sorry I’m being so horrible.”
I laughed. “At least you’re admitting it.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” she said with a scowl.
“No, it doesn’t, but you’re definitely not yourself, Marcella. One hundred percent not yourself, in fact. The pursang is right at the surface and I don’t think any of us were ready for that. But we’ll get things under control. Let’s just prove to Maximus that we’re good enough to be back on board, yeah?”
She gnawed her bottom lip. “Yes. Let’s. I don’t want Darius to be ashamed of us. I don’t want the line to think we’re only back in business because my mate is the Enforcer.”
My eyes softened as I studied her. Sometimes, she was so young that it hurt my heart.
“We’ll work toward achieving that,” I promised her, and then I dragged us both into the nightmare that I hadn’t had to set up, because it was there. Might as well have had a big, neon-flashing-light arrow hovering over it.
What we saw surprised us both though. I felt the shockwaves of Marcella’s astonishment ricochet out from her in a quake that caught me in its clasp. She, through me, sensed that this was a recurring memory. That was why I’d chosen it—it had its roots in the truth—but I’d never anticipated this.
What I’d seen was a big, black bruise on her psyche, and those stains were always something I investigated. It usually led to something juicy.
“I-I didn’t do it,” Elizabeth was sobbing. She’d covered her face with her hands. “It wasn’t me.”
She was draped on a male’s lap, face down, ass up. His face was in the shadow, but his body was big and brawny. They were in the middle of what appeared to be an office. It wasn’t fancy, more clinical in its simplicity. Nothing screamed wealth. The white walls were bare, there was a metal and glass desk, but it didn’t look expensive either. The man was seated on his desk chair, and he looked like he was wearing a shitty suit.
“Then who was it?” The words were growled out, ground out even. The man’s rage at her was strong enough to pepper the air with its power, as his words forced me out of my study of the office.
Elizabeth either couldn’t or wouldn’t reply. Instead, she sobbed, and then she screamed when the man raised the belt and brought it down on her ass.
“It was you. You stole from us, from the family.”
She raised her hands to cover her face. “I didn’t!”
“She’s lying,” I told Marcella quietly. Like she’d lied to us earlier. Addicts were the worst with telling the truth though. That came as no real shock.
“Who can blame her if she’s going to get whacked with a belt.” She winced. “It fucking stings. And if the buckle catches you? Ouch.”
I wanted to grab her, wanted to demand she tell me who the fuck had hit her with a belt, but I didn’t. Not only because I couldn’t—this time, Marcella was gossamer-like not tangible, making me wonder if her energy was running low—but because she had so many people in her past who had abused her, and I couldn’t kill them all. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
I was, however, determined to figure out a way to make them all pay. That was something my
brothers would most definitely want in on.
Just as she had, I stepped over to look at the face of the man abusing Elizabeth. It remained in the shadow, but I could make out a set of dark green eyes and a mean scowl.
“I wonder if she’d just started using here, and was selling shit to pay for more of that crap,” Marcella queried.
“Could be.” I studied the bright red, sobbing features. “She looks young. A few years younger than now.”
Marcella eyed Elizabeth’s bare ass. “Pervert. Think he’s abusing her? Sexually?”
I shook my head. “No. She’s scared of the man. She’s scared of the punishment. That’s what I read on her psyche. She isn’t scared of anything else.”
Because this was my gift, I reached out and took the belt from the man’s hand. I didn’t recognize him, even though I knew most people in the Maximus line. If he was from the squire family, then I wouldn’t know him. We ‘Stained’ did not associate with the squires who were high-ranking humans.
With the belt in hand, I whipped out and scattered the man into a million pieces. Elizabeth dropped from the lap and landed onto the seat, belly first. Though she coughed, winded from the move, she peered up at me and stared in astonishment as I stood there, wielding the belt.
“Who are you?” she breathed, then she peered back at the empty seat. “Where’s Gerard?”
Gerard. Well, that would be an easy name to remember.
I dropped the belt to the ground. “I think it’s time we erase this dream from your subconscious, don’t you?”
She frowned at me then, and with a gasp, tugged down her skirt and covered up her ass. Her face was bright pink when she looked back at me. “Who are you?”
“I’m here to speak with you. I need answers.”
“What kind of answers? I didn’t take the damn vase,” she gritted out.
Marcella stepped from the shadows, making Elizabeth rear back with fear. “Let’s not start things off with a lie, Elizabeth. You did take the vase. We’re not going to beat you, but we can make sure that you never have this nightmare again. That sound like a good payoff?”
The girl’s cheeks blanched before she moved off the floor and took a seat on the chair Gerard had just vacated. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you steal the vase for Kronos?”
Elizabeth swallowed thickly, then after switching her gaze between us, nodded.
“We’re visiting from 2019, Elizabeth. When is this memory taking place?”
“2016.”
“You’ve been hooked on Kronos for three years?” I knew she’d been bullshitting when she’d said nine months.
Her brow puckered as she thought about that, and as her brain reconciled the fact this was the past, while she was currently in the present.
“I wasn’t really hooked back then. Now I am.” She reached up and rubbed at her temple. “It’s weird that I know that.”
“Not weird,” I countered. “That’s part of my gift. I need to assimilate things for you, so you can grant me the answers I need, to questions you don’t want to answer while conscious.”
She licked her lips. “Did you hurt me? Is that why I’m unconscious?”
Marcella folded her arms across her chest. “You were unresponsive to our questions. You panicked and I chose the best means to calm you down.”
“Why don’t I feel reassured?” Elizabeth retorted, her tone surprisingly dry.
“You’ll wake up with a headache rather than a bloodied nose, which is where you were heading,” I informed her, my words just as dry.
She bit her lip at that, wincing. “Being off the Kronos agitates me.”
“Squires are high-ranking humans. I’d imagine it was hard to get your hands on the drug,” I started, hoping she’d carry on with my train of thought.
“A kid at school brought some in. I was in a grammar school. It was…” She blew out a breath. “It was a high-pressure environment. The kid said it was better than Adderall for getting you to focus. I took it, knew he wasn’t lying.” A shrug jostled her shoulders. “I used it through my senior year and then well into college. It was how I passed Magna cum Laude. It added to the time I had to work on things.”
Marcella’s brow pinched. “How is that possible? Did you speed up?”
Elizabeth blinked. “No. It was like my perception just widened. I could focus on more than one thing, you know? So, with my eyes, I could be taking longhand notes, writing an essay, or reading. But I could also listen to things, absorb information that way while I was eating, for example. It made multi-tasking so much easier.
“In my final year, I was so adept with the stuff that I had two different MP3 players with different tracks on them. Each had a different book I’d recorded myself. I listened to those two, was reading another, and was working on a midterm.” She shrugged. “That’s why it’s addictive. All of a sudden, you’re so much more capable, it’s like it gives you time, and with my family? They had so many expectations of me. I couldn’t let them down.”
“What went wrong?” Marcella asked softly, her tone surprising me, considering what she’d said before we’d made ourselves known to Elizabeth in her dream.
“My grandmother died.” Her smile turned sad. “She was my rock. Everything changed after she passed. What I just said? Suddenly, it wasn’t possible, so I took more and more of the stuff in the hopes that I’d get back to that level of capability, but it never worked.”
“You got into debt,” I made it a statement. Not a question.
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. “A lot of it. I’d gone from one tablet a day to three.” A shiver rushed through her.
“Who was your dealer? Human or pursang?”
Her shocked gaze caught mine. “Pursang, of course. Humans don’t deal this stuff.”
“The kid at your school was pursang?”
“Yes. It’s a mixed background school. They don’t care what color your blood is so long as your name matches their needs.” Her bitterness was evident.
I caught Marcella’s eye, wanting to see her reaction to the woman’s reply. “What’s happening with the bank robberies, Elizabeth?”
She bit her bottom lip. “My boyfriend is a pursang. H-He’s my dealer too. He’s only small in the infrastructure, but about four months ago, he was mugged after picking up his allotted drugs from the guy above him in rank. He lost them all. Over four million dollars’ worth of the stuff.” Her voice turned hoarse. “He had five months’ worth of gear. They produce small quantities and distribute infrequently to drive up the price,” she explained, running a hand through her hair. “Anyway, next month, he’ll need to go to his supplier.”
“And he’ll need to hand over four million dollars,” Marcella stated bluntly.
Elizabeth covered her face and began crying. “Yes.”
Reaching up, I rubbed at the back of my neck. The kid was mixed up with some bad people, and shit had gone sour really fast.
“You killed someone during one of the robberies,” Marcella stated simply, watching as Elizabeth’s tears turned into sobs. “Did you know?”
“N-No. None of us did until after. In the news.”
After clearing my throat, I asked, “What’s the name of your boyfriend and his supplier, Elizabeth?”
“J-Jasper Laraby and the supplier is Martin Kempt.”
“They’re pursangs, so they have to know who you are,” Marcella insisted.
Elizabeth dipped her chin. “But I have nothing to tell them. My father kept us all in the dark about the day to day running of the line.”
Why didn’t I feel reassured?
“You mentioned something about a book?”
That made her fidget on the seat, and as it was on wheels, they squeaked as she moved. When we both stared at her, unfeeling, she whispered, “When it’s written, when it’s complete, I’m going to kill myself. That’s one way out of this, but my book will live on forever, while letting me find my own peace.”
With a look at Ma
rcella, I grabbed a hold of her spirit and yanked her out of the dream.
We’d retrieved what we came for.
20
Gideon
There she goes again, off with one of my brothers. Maybe I wouldn't feel so fucking useless if Darius hadn't shown up and also been her mate, but he had and I did. The man was ancient and powerful beyond anything I could understand, although I was starting to, thanks to Marcella.
I was the driver, the fixer, the guardian, but I'd yet to be her lover, and part of me was starting to wonder if that was for a reason. Maker, I sounded pathetic, even to myself, but I couldn't help it. Watching her seal the bond, one after the other with my brothers, and barely sparing a glance for me was like a sucker punch to the gut as my Vampire side started to churn with a rage that seemed to be enhanced by the presence of two pursangs in my life.
Now, she'd gone off with Keir again, while I'd been left guarding the back door of the biggest, and yet also the shittiest, pawn store I'd ever seen. Eventually, I'd given up and joined everyone else in the back room. I wasn't a delicate flower by any means, but the stink in there made my nose wrinkle. I wasn't sure how Barclay was coping, considering how much stronger his senses were.
I called up one of my runes, and felt the tingle and warmth of it coming to life on my skin. It was a suppression rune. Not one I used often, since it dulled the senses and I liked to stay sharp, but in this instance I was willing to make the exception, especially since we didn't know how long Keir and Marcella were going to be in the dreamscape.
Marcella's form was still in a way that only a pursang can be, like the very breath in their lungs was frozen in time. Keir at least looked alive, but his face was strained as though whatever dream he'd found himself in was a particularly uncomfortable one. I tried to let my jealousy go, knowing that the dream was unpleasant, but the fact that Marcella had a special relationship with all of my brothers and my Enforcer was wearing on me.
As soon as my senses were dulled, I felt as though I could breathe deeply again without fighting the urge to vomit. It also helped lessen the bite of jealousy I was feeling toward my brothers, which was good because now was not the time to be focused on that. My Vampire was strong, too strong sometimes, and struggling against his power wasn’t always easy, but with the suppression rune in full force, I felt a little more like me again.