“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I said.
Glaring up at me, her eyes sparked with suppressed rage and power. “Don’t give me that shit. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about anyone but yourself and we both know it.”
“You asked me to come here. If it was just so you could take your frustrations out on me, then I’m leaving.” I moved as though I really planned on leaving and Lily lifted her hands in panic.
“No, not yet, I’m not done yet….” She paused and I watched as she tried to cram her rage back down inside her, forcing it down until she was little more than a blank shell once more. “I’m sorry, it’s just stressful in here…. I’m not used to being so confined. I was taught to abhor weakness and, well…” She shrugged. “they keep me weak, keep pushing in the hopes that they will break me soon,” she finished.
“I’ll talk to them, talk to Jason—none of this is right….” I felt ashamed of the words as they spilled from my lips. I wasn’t lying; none of it was right, but I was pretty certain my talking to any of the guards or Jason would make absolutely no difference.
I cast my mind back to when I’d visited Graham’s daughter Jessica. She’d had her fair share of marks, but I hadn’t even thought to ask…. Guilt swarmed in my guts. I hadn’t wanted to ask, subconsciously afraid of the answer because, yet again, I was far more of a coward than anything else.
“Jason is nice, isn’t he?” she said, her voice drifting a little, and I watched as her eyes grew more unfocussed. “The power he has, it’s extraordinary. I really want to see him really lose it; I can imagine it would be a sight to behold.” Her eyes snapped open once more and fell on my face. “What happened to you?”
“What?”
“You’re hurt; I can feel it, I can feel it in your blood….” She trailed off and leaned toward me. “They think my magic is void in here but I still have a few tricks up my sleeves,” she whispered and winked theatrically at me.
The more time I spent in her company, the more I was beginning to believe she’d lost her mind. That they weren’t trying to break her anymore because she was already broken.
“They have a white witch working for them, and they used her to build the wards on this place. They are nothing but hypocrites, Amber, you cannot forget that.”
I took the information on board and filed it away for later. I’d always known their methods were hypocritical but to keep a white witch on board just so they could better control their prisoners, who in some cases were also witches, well, it smacked of hypocrisy of the highest order.
Her hand whipped out faster than lightening and wrapped around the wrist where the Heart Hound had sunk its teeth into me. Something sparked between us and I felt her draw whatever magic existed within the Heart Hound’s venom out and into her own body.
My back arched as she tugged it free, my breath whooshing out of my body. I didn’t even have the chance to fight against her. Images filtered into my head but they were so garbled that I found it impossible to latch onto them in any real, concrete way.
Sounds filtered through and arms that felt more like tree trunks wrapped around my chest, jerking me back from Lily and breaking her grip on my arm.
“He wants you, Amber. He’s not going to stop until he wins you over, and when he does, then the real fun will begin!” she shouted after me as I was dragged back out of the room and dumped unceremoniously on the floor.
Guards flooded into the room and Lily screamed in rage, power sparking to life and illuminating the white walls as she tried to fight them off. But they’d weakened her, she hadn’t lied about that, and I pushed onto my feet as one of the guards caught her across the back of her neck with the base of his baton.
Surging forward, I followed them into the room, but someone grabbed my arm and jerked me back into the hall as Lily’s howls of pain and terror set the other prisoners off. Her screams were joined by the howls and mournful cries of the other inmates.
“Get off! You can’t do this to her, she wasn’t trying to hurt me!” I said, fighting to shake free of Jason’s grip.
Bringing my fist up, I caught him across his jaw, but the blow seemed to bother only me and pain flared across my knuckles. His hold tightened and he swung me around so my back slammed into one of the white walls behind us. Stars exploded behind my eyes and the white gleam off my surroundings did nothing to help the situation.
“Stop fighting, you’re only making it worse,” he said, gritting his words out between his clenched teeth—it was then I glanced up into his clouded white eyes.
“You can’t let them treat her like this. You can’t let them treat any of them like this. It’s wrong, we both know it is.”
Jason shook his head and cast a quick glance over his shoulder into the room behind him. Lily screamed again, pain contorting her voice into something inhuman.
“They’re monsters,” he said simply, and his words hit me like a blow to the stomach. And then Nic’s words rang again in my head. He likes you. If it were true, then perhaps I could manipulate him, make him feel differently.
“No, they’re not, they’ve still got rights like you and me and she doesn’t deserve this … please…” I said. The words tasted like ash on my tongue but I poured as much pleading into my tone as I could muster. The urge to force my way past him and destroy everyone in the room beyond was almost unbearable but all that would serve to do was to get me caught, too.
Jason swayed for a second and then turned away from me with a groan. He strode into the room and I shifted away from the wall, my head and back throbbing as I shuffled forward to the doorway.
In the time we’d been in the hall, the guards had managed to get Lily pinned on the floor, her face pressed into the white floor. But she’d managed to do a little damage of her own and several of the guards lay scattered around the cell like broken rag dolls. From their moans, I could tell she hadn’t killed them, but there were definitely bones broken.
“Get off her, she doesn’t need to be pinned,” Jason ordered and the guards reluctantly released their hold on her as he crouched next to her.
A woman kneeled next to Lily’s head, her hands moving in time with her lips as she wove an incantation. One of the guards who had been holding Lily pulled a syringe and a small bottle of clear liquid from the one of the many pockets covering his body armour.
“Please don’t let them put me to sleep, I’m afraid of the things they do when I’m asleep!” Lily pleaded, her words striking a chord within me and stirring me forward.
The white witch working over Lily paused mid-sentence and lifted her face to mine, recognition flashing in her eyes as soon as my foot crossed the threshold. It had never occurred to me that other witches would be capable of sensing what I was, but it made perfect sense. I watched as she opened her mouth to speak, but the pause was all Lily needed.
Lifting her face barely a millimetre off the floor, Lily jerked her now-free hand to the left and the white witch’s neck snapped to the side as the guard slammed the needle into Lily’s arm.
Lily’s eyes glazed over as whatever had been in the syringe took immediate effect. The other witch made a small, pathetic sound in the back of her throat, but it was more of an involuntary reaction than anything else. She was dead before her body even hit the white floor, her brown eyes wide and staring as death stole her.
The smile on Lily’s face was nothing short of beatific as the cocktail she’d been injected with worked through her system. The moment he was certain she was out for the count, Jason lifted his accusatory gaze in my direction.
“What did you say about her not being a monster?” he said, the rage in his voice barely held in check.
It was my fault; I’d asked him to interject, but more than that, Lily had killed the witch to protect me. She’d been about to spill my secret to the world; I’d felt the truth ready to rip through the air like a knife but Lily had stopped her.
Granted, her methods were not my own, but my secret was still safe for now and
it was all thanks to Lily.
Chapter 11
“What did she tell you?” Jason demanded as soon as we were clear of Lily’s cell.
“She told me what the guards are doing to her,” I said, anger making my voice razor sharp.
Jason’s snort of derision only drove my anger on and I turned on him with an angry growl. “You don’t believe it?” I asked.
“I believe I’ve seen her cause them to restrain her. I know she’s a dangerous prisoner, and if anything proves that, it’s today. Even you must see that?” he said.
I couldn’t argue with him on that point; she was dangerous prisoner but that didn’t alter the fact that it wasn’t their place to teach her lessons. They weren’t trying to rehabilitate her—really all they were doing was holding her here until a judgement could be passed down on her.
“She’s genuinely afraid, and you said it yourself, she gave you one interview and that was it, nothing else. Don’t you think it’s possible that part of the reason for that is due to what’s going on here?” I gestured to my surroundings. “Have you seen her neck?” I asked.
“Her neck?” he parroted the words back to me.
“She’s covered in bite marks. How can she possibly have had contact with a vampire? I thought they were all kept separate for their own safety.”
Jason ducked his head and for the first time since I’d met him, he had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Someone made a mistake and let her out for her exercise at the same time as one of the other prisoners….”
“You mean they let her out with a vampire….” The words hung in the air between us. “What the hell is going on in here, Jason? That sounds a little too close to an attempt at population control for me.”
“Mistakes are made. The guard responsible has been dealt with,” he said firmly, his tone brooking no argument. But there was no way I was going to let it go. How could I?
“She could have been killed,” I said, “or turned….”
Jason’s head snapped up and his angry gaze met mine. “Don’t you think I know this?”
“I’m sorry, it’s just I didn’t know it was like this, that it was this bad…. She claims the guards are….” I trailed off, suddenly unsure if I could even get the words out correctly. She hadn’t actually said anything in words but she’d certainly implied it—what if this wasn’t something she wanted me to share with Jason? Swallowing back my doubts, I said, “She says some of the guards force her to do things, sexual things. Her exact words were, ‘no makes them mean’.”
The colour drained from Jason’s face and I couldn’t help but feel a small spark of relief ignite in my chest. He clearly wasn’t a part of the abuse or he wouldn’t look so shocked and disgusted.
“I don’t believe it, they wouldn’t….” He cut off, and I knew that whatever he’d thought of had suddenly caused him to have a change of heart.
“So what can we do about it? Lily is guilty of the crimes she’s committed, but it’s not up to the guards to meet out justice to her,” I said, chewing on my lip.
Now I was beginning to feel like a hypocrite. Why did I care what happened to her? She’d killed people—hell, I’d just watched her kill someone else, and yet here I was trying to work out a plan to keep her safe from the very people tasked with keeping the rest of the world safe from her.
My head was beginning to ache and nothing was really making sense anymore.
“Leave it with me, I’ll fix this,” Jason said gruffly as he escorted me back to the main doors. Lifting my gun and badge from the collection box, I settled my clothes, a stalling tactic to stop me from having to look up into his face.
“She really didn’t say anything else to you?” he asked hopefully.
Shaking my head, I bit down on my tongue. “Nope, I think she was just looking for someone to appeal to,” I said.
She had said something else to me, she’d spoken about “Him”, whoever he was. Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if she’d known more than she’d been letting on about the case I was working on. It didn’t seem possible that she could know about it, but then where Lily was concerned, I’d come to expect the impossible or at the very least the improbable.
“The car is waiting for you. Graham called and said he was trying to contact you, that it was important.”
Nodding, I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and stared helplessly down at the no signal bar.
“Amber,” Jason caught my arm and I jumped, his touch sending an uncomfortable jolt of electricity up my arms. Not the kind they spoke of in romance novels or fairy tales, but the kind that told me to be wary; that fear, where Jason was concerned, would be my friend.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he continued on as though the jolt had affected only me. “If I’d known, I would have done something sooner, but she won’t talk to me,” he said, his voice pained.
It seemed at odds, considering what he was. He was the very thing Shadow Sorcerers were supposed to fear and yet he honestly felt bad for not being able to protect Lily. He’d called her a monster….
“How can I believe that when I heard you yourself call her a monster?” I asked.
With a sigh, he pushed his hand back up through his hair, a total Nic move. “She is a monster. I’m not going to deny it, but then I won’t deny that I, too, am a monster….”
His declaration surprised me and I felt my mouth drop open.
“Don’t look so surprised; you’ve seen what I am, you’ve seen what I become. I can barely control it—it’s this destructive, all-consuming creature living inside me and I can’t get rid of it, and I’m barely holding on by my fingertips….”
“You’re not a monster, Jason,” I said, without thinking.
He hadn’t chosen his life; it had chosen him in the same way mine had chosen me. There wasn’t anything we could do about it but we needed to deal with it as best as possible. In my case, that involved learning as much as I could about what I was, about what I was capable of. For him, it seemed holding on to whatever made him human was vitally important.
Was that why he’d come back?
“Nic will forgive you, but he needs time. You hurt him … hurt all of them,” I said.
Jason shook his head and a bitter smile slid across his face. “You don’t know my brother as well as I do. He won’t forgive me, especially now that he knows how I feel—” Jason cut off and sucked in a deep breath. “My father knew where I was, he knew the truth. It was all a pretence and one I’d prefer Nic continue to believe.”
“Wait, your father knew?” I asked, pushing aside the nervous butterflies that danced in my stomach over what he’d almost said. Nic couldn’t be right; I wouldn’t let him be.
“Yeah, we come from a long line of Saga Venatione. Nic was supposed to join too, but…” Jason said with a shrug. “Your car is here.”
“Why didn’t Nic join?” I asked, my stomach slowly beginning to sink.
“I really don’t know. I guess he just wasn’t in the right place at the right time for it to happen. Although from where I’m standing, I’d much rather be in his shoes and not have what I am fighting against me at every turn.”
“I better go,” I said, turning for the door and swallowing down the bitter bile that crept up the back of my throat.
Nic was supposed to be a Saga Venatione. I’d certainly suspected it; the thought had occurred to me more than once and Graham had mentioned something in passing about Nic’s father, but I hadn’t paid enough attention to it.
What would happen if he did become what Jason was? Would he still love me? Or—and this was the thought that bothered me most—did Nic like me only because of his potential as a Saga Venatione? What if everything was nothing more than an elaborate spell set in motion millennia before?
I practically raced out to the car and hopped into the back seat before Jason could say or ask me anything else. What I needed now was time to think and I wasn’t going to get it here.
Chapter 12
&n
bsp; As soon as we were out of range of the prison, my phone buzzed to life, the messages pouring in until my inbox was practically full. From the looks of it, they all seemed to be from Graham.
Reading one of the messages, my stomach clenched. There was another crime scene and Graham’s suggestion for me to bring sensible shoes didn’t fill me with joy.
“Can you drop me at National Park instead of the address you picked me up from?” I asked the driver, catching his eye in the mirror. He nodded but didn’t speak as the car swung off the road and started back toward King City from a slightly altered direction.
The drive back did nothing for my crazy thoughts and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the worry that Nic was only interested in me because of what he’d read about in one of his books. But how could I confront him about it—what if he didn’t know that he had been destined to be a Saga Venation just like his brother?
The more I thought about it all, the crazier it sounded, and as the car pulled into the parking lot of the National Park, I pushed it aside in favour of focussing on the scene laid out before me.
Thanking the driver, I climbed from the car and was instantly greeted with a wave of reporters. Their shouts and demands to know what exactly was causing such slaughter in King City did nothing for the migraine that was beginning to creep into my head.
Crossing the gravel parking lot as quickly as I could, I ducked beneath the crime scene tape and out of the reach of the reporters. The only good thing was that at least the crime scene was hidden from view by a thick wall of fir trees. I followed one of the tech crews up through a practically invisible path in the centre of them.
The reason for Graham’s suggestion that I bring sensible shoes became all too apparent the moment I felt the ground slope up ahead of me. Glancing up the side of the hill, I searched for any signs of the crime scene I was about to stumble into, but there was nothing but trees to see.
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