Hearts of Darkness

by Kira Brady

  Grace bristled. “Fuck you, dog breath.”

  “She’s cool.” Oscar pushed Grace’s tea toward her and forced her to take a mouthful. “You’re cool, right?”

  Rudrick spotted Hart and motioned to his men. Lady be damned.

  “You know the drill. Don’t give ’em a reason to fight,” Oscar said to both Hart and Grace.

  Did the guy think Hart was going to pick a fight? Hart was good, but he wasn’t Superman. Even he couldn’t take nine Kivati sentinels. Now that Hart was a free man, there was no threat of retaliation by Norgard to halt violence against him. It was, in fact, one of the reasons he’d intended to get the hell out of Dodge. Everyone in the state who held a grudge against him had been waiting for this moment for payback.

  And now he had brought Oscar and Grace into it. Hell’s bells.

  Rudrick sauntered up and eyed the table. He focused on Grace. “A new bone so soon, mad dog? Even after Friday saved your rotten hide?”

  Hart didn’t let the fucker see him flinch. He drained his teacup and shrugged.

  Rudrick rested both hands on the table and leaned forward. “Doesn’t matter. You still owe me the terms of our little bargain. The necklace, if you please.”

  “Don’t have it,” Hart said.

  Rudrick’s nostril’s flared. “Where is it?”

  “Ask the chick. Your bargain was with her.”

  Rudrick grabbed the front of Hart’s shirt and pulled him halfway across the table.

  “Ladies,” Oscar broke in. “Ladies. Remember where we are.”

  Bouncers had noted the disturbance and taken out their cudgels. Thorsson—Norgard’s right-hand man—pushed through the crowd toward their table. He’d been looking for an excuse to execute Hart for years, and his eyes glowed in excitement.

  Hart needed a distraction for Grace and Oscar to slip away. Maybe he could start a fight between the Drekar and Kivati.

  “Talk,” Thorsson demanded, his accent thick.

  “Hart has something of mine,” Rudrick said. “A girl.”

  Thorsson snorted. “Fighting over a piece of ass? Here.” He grabbed Grace’s arm and yanked her out of the booth. “Take this one.”

  “Let go of her,” Oscar ordered as he and Hart both rose from the table.

  Hart fought hard to keep himself from clutching the table for support. His legs were weak with the moon fever. Fortunately, he was a pro at pretending nothing was wrong.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Rudrick said. He and Thorsson each grabbed one of Grace’s arms so that she was strung between the two warriors. She looked so delicate and breakable. If a tug-of-war ensued, she would come out the definite loser.

  She turned to Oscar, begging for help.

  Had anyone ever looked at Hart that way? As if she trusted him with her life? Yes, actually. Kayla. And he had betrayed her.

  “Ladies.” Oscar’s voice and manner were laid-back and friendly, as if they were discussing nothing more serious than the weather. “Let’s all settle down and discuss this like civilized folks. Hart would be happy to tell you anything you want to know, won’t you, Hart?”

  “Yeah.” It was barely more than a growl. He shifted around the table. Rudrick backed up, but didn’t let go of Grace. She wasn’t a match for two men twice her size.

  Hart couldn’t watch one more person get hurt because of him. “Let her go, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “We want to speak to Miss Friday,” Rudrick said. “Where can we find her?”

  “Norgard has her,” Hart admitted.

  Rudrick growled.

  Grace swung, twisted, and kicked. Before Hart knew what was happening, she had escaped and tackled him in the knees. He went down hard, hitting his head against the booth cushion.

  “How could you?” Grace swung at his face.

  Hart blocked her fist seconds before it smashed his nose. “What are you talking about?” Grace had never had beef with him, nor had she ever touched him willingly. Yet here she was practically straddling him while she lit into him.

  “How could you give her to Norgard?” Her voice was hoarse as if she was trying not to cry. Grace never cried. “You . . . you sodding son of a wraith!” She slugged him in the stomach.

  “Oof! Calm down, Reaper. It was a job. Just a job. You know that.” He managed to grab her slender wrists and restrain her. He didn’t want to hurt her. “What would you have me do? Huh?”

  The look in her eyes was pure hate. “I thought you were different.”

  “Yeah? Well, you thought wrong.” He didn’t need this crap. Different? Sure he was different. He was a hell-spawned werewolf, for the Lady’s sake. He had no scruples, no morals.

  He had no choice either. With those slave bracelets he was forced to serve Norgard, and Norgard ordered him to deliver Kayla. If the woman had done what he’d told her—packed up immediately and driven hell-for-leather out of Seattle—she would have been safe.

  “I tried,” he muttered.

  “Trying isn’t good enough.”

  An argument broke out between the Kivati and Drekar, but Hart ignored it. He pulled Grace up and muscled her through the crowd and out the back door. Oscar followed. They broke out into Post Alley. The salt wind was a relief after the stuffy air of the opium parlor.

  “What would you have me do, Reaper?” he asked, purposefully using the name Grace hated.

  She glared up at him. “Go get her, blockhead.”

  “I can’t—”

  “You’re free now. You did what Norgard wanted and handed her over, so your job,” she emphasized the word disparagingly, “is done. Now you can do whatever you want. She freed you, so you can now free her.”

  Hart paused. Rain misted over his skin, a cool freshness that washed away his anguish. And suddenly his way was clear. Grace was right. For the first time in his life he had the wisdom to recognize the right thing and the freedom to do it.

  Kayla already hated him. He couldn’t run off into the sunset and abandon her here, because despite what he tried so hard to tell himself, he did have a conscience. He would remember her face in his dreams for the rest of his miserable life.

  Grace wheeled around and backed away from him when he released her arm.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, hating that she was afraid of him, but knowing that she had a right to be. He was a bastard.

  “Please?” Grace—angry, defiant, prickly Grace—had her heart in her eyes. “You’re better than this.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll succeed, but I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I ask for.”

  “I’m not doing it for you,” he told her.

  “I know.” She gave him a short salute, which was all the good-bye he needed.

  Hart broke into a run. He needed more weapons if he was going to attempt an assault on the chocolate factory. The Drekar laboratories were housed belowground, which meant entry and exit points would be severely limited.

  It was a suicide mission, but his life was worth shit. Kayla, on the other hand, was a ray of light. She had dedicated her life to healing. He’d only known her for a short time, but he knew the world would be a worse place without her in it.

  Kayla watched the sun bleed from the sky in harsh streaks of red and purple from her prison beneath the chocolate factory. The elegant room held a brass-knobbed bed, a Victorian, rose-painted vanity, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Puget Sound, but it was still a prison. The floor was covered in another of those barbaric fur rugs. She waited on the vanity’s matching stool and watched stars bloom across the heavens. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but a dim glow on the western horizon heralded its coming dawn.

  Two of Norgard’s slave girls attended her, as if she were some gothic romance heroine preparing to be sacrificed. The redhead brushed Kayla’s hair, while the blonde rubbed perfumed oil into her skin. Passive as a china doll, she allowed them to dress her in a red silk robe and sat again facing the windo
w. It didn’t break—she had already tried. Inside, she steamed. Damn Hart. Damn Norgard. Damn Desi for getting into this mess.

  The devil himself entered. She didn’t need to turn around; his smell was enough to identify him—iron, with a hint of cinnamon. The women left and shut the door.

  “Your sister loved this room.” Norgard circled in front of Kayla and leaned against the windowpane, studying her. The light of the candles carved deep shadows on his face. “She named it the Queen’s Room. Such a fanciful imagination she had. She used to sit here, just as you are, and point out shapes in the clouds. Never saw anything mundane. No, Desiree only saw dragons and mythic beasts—”

  “Don’t talk about my sister.”

  “She wasn’t yours to keep. She was mine—”

  Kayla stared at him. “Because of you she’s dead.”

  Norgard’s smile slid from his face. If she had been fanciful, she might have seen sorrow flicker in his eyes.

  “Mine,” he said. His hand clenched against his side.

  “Did you rape her?”

  He recovered his composure and straightened. His lips drew back in a sneer. “Desiree was quite willing. Only the good die young, so they say. And your sister,” he said, coming close and brushing his lips along her cheekbone, “was very, very good.”

  “You bastard.” She tried to kick him, but he clamped his hands down on her knees.

  “Now, now,” Norgard clucked. “Name calling doesn’t become you. My parents were married. Though I don’t suppose my mother had much choice in the matter. Like father, like son.” He laughed. “My father was a berserker. He had quite a few wives. Pale Irish lasses. Dark Russian women. A lusty French wench or two. A dragon’s treasure is his most prized possession. We have centuries at our disposal to discern the best of the best.”

  She spit at him, but missed.

  “If you insist.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it in her mouth. His hands clasped her biceps hard enough to bruise, and lifted her up. “We might have been civilized, but oh, no. You Americans and your foul mouths. Such a waste when there are so many preferable uses for them.”

  Her arms ached as he carried her to the bed. Pulling manacles from behind the headboard, he locked her wrists and ankles in cold, hard iron, spread-eagle on the dainty flowered bedspread. He removed the handkerchief from her mouth, stepped back and surveyed his handiwork.

  “Mr. Nils,” he called out as he twisted the ring on his finger three times. “Please come welcome our guest and alert Dr. Roy that his assistance is required.”

  No one answered.

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  “Don’t be tedious.”

  A little man in a white lab coat and round glasses walked in. An old-fashioned stethoscope hung from his thick neck. He carried a carpetbag with a half-circle bone handle, out of which he pulled bottles and a syringe. His eyes were glassy.

  “Doctor Roy, I believe our patient may need to relax a bit more.”

  “Don’t do this,” Kayla pleaded with the doctor, but the man didn’t even glance in her direction. “What about the Hippocratic Oath? Do no harm?”

  “So naive.” Norgard brushed her hair away from her face, and she tried to bite him. “So innocent. What a refreshing change of pace.”

  The doctor pushed up her sleeve and wrapped a rubber band around her upper arm. He tapped her inner elbow, looking for a vein from which to take her blood.

  “Immortality is, as you would say, a bitch.” Norgard shrugged elegantly. “You should know about my kind, since you are to bear my child.”

  “Fuck that—”

  “First of all,” he said, speaking over her, “I will not tolerate that kind of language. You will reform your behavior. And if you survive the birth, I may let you see the child from time to time. The Drekar will rule the world one day soon, make no mistake. You should consider yourself lucky to be on the winning side.” He reached down his shirtfront and pulled out a familiar jade necklace.

  Kayla caught her breath.

  “Yes, your furry little friend returned to me what is mine.”

  Hart had said he would keep it safe. Hah. She was naive. Stupid. He knew she had promised it to the Kivati. He knew Rudrick would come after her if she didn’t deliver. Did he care? Another betrayal. Why should it hurt any more than the first?

  The doctor finished taking her blood and measuring her blood pressure. He released the rubber band and secured a cotton ball on the puncture wound with a cloth tie. His movements were efficient, impersonal, robotic—almost like no one was home. He didn’t meet her eyes, but from the few glances Kayla got from him, they were dead.

  He stuck her in the neck with a syringe.

  The world started to spin. All her muscles relaxed as a warm heat infused them. It was the same giddy feeling she’d had before, but twice as strong. Her body sunk into the thick feather mattress. Her thighs fell open. “What . . . what did you give me?”

  “Only more of what you took willingly,” Norgard said. The pupil of his left eye lengthened, so that only a thin line of blue remained of the oval iris. “A drug based on oxytocin, the chemical responsible for human bonding, trust, and love. I have simply given you a larger dose directly into your vein. The chocolate recipe should have the same effect, but it isn’t quite right yet. As you might remember.”

  She remembered all right. The chocolate at Butterworth’s. The alley afterward wasn’t quite so clear. “You drugged a minor,” she said.

  “The Kivati princess knew what she was getting into when she stepped foot inside my parlor. She delighted in the risk, the taste of danger. Naughtily rebelling against her lord and master. If she had stayed, I would’ve fulfilled all her fantasies.”

  “She’s only a little girl.”

  Norgard scoffed. “Spare me your cultural prejudices. In my time girls became wives and mothers at puberty. Besides, her own people intend to see her wed in a few short weeks.”

  He bent over Kayla, bracing himself with one hand on either side of her head, and kissed her. She didn’t kiss him back. She tried to keep her lips firmly closed and unyielding. He didn’t care. He just barged right in with his tongue and ravished her mouth.

  Her body betrayed her. The drugs made her hot and sluggish, made her nipples hard against his chest, made her wet and wanting. That was almost worse than being restrained in the first place. That this psycho could call forth such a response—it was a rape. She hated him.

  Norgard covered her lips completely, suctioning them together like he was doing mouth-to-mouth breathing. He began to suck.

  There was no other word for it. He sucked in, and she felt herself moving. Not her body, but something that was tangibly her—Kayla Friday, her sense of self, her emotions, her life force. Tingles shot up every nerve ending. Electricity jolted through her system. Her body felt both too hot and too cold at the same time. Everything inside her was moving toward his mouth.

  He was sucking the soul out of her body.

  God help her.

  Panic made her seize up, but she knew what she had to do. With sheer force of will, she managed to pull back. A tug-of-war over her soul ensued. She would win. She had to.

  She couldn’t talk, but she screamed at him inside her head, Get your fucking hands off me!

  Norgard broke off. He fell back, breathing rapidly. “Tiamat incarnate,” he wheezed, “That was . . . You are . . . quite impressive.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yes, well,” He straightened his jacket and dabbed his mouth with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Perhaps the drug doesn’t work quite as well as a good, old-fashioned fucking. Next time we’ll try it instead.”

  “Never—”

  “Oh, you will. I’m very impressed with your strength. Very.” He had an eager grin on his face like a little boy at Christmas. “You’ll do quite nicely for breeding.” He tucked the handkerchief into his vest pocket and patted it.

  The doctor stepped forward and began poking an
d prodding her again.

  “Get away from me.” The room revolved lazily around her. Sometimes she saw two doctors interposed on top of one another: the little man in a lab coat, and a taller, rail thin man in a bowler hat and striped three-piece suit. When she blinked, there was only one again.

  “Mr. Nils is currently possessing Dr. Roy, an excellent obstetrician. We lured him away from the most prominent medical research facility.” Norgard accepted some sort of report from the doctor and skimmed over it. “It was so kind of you to have the preliminary test results done at Norse Hospital.”

  Anger rolled through her. Did he own everyone in this city? The “doctor” stuck her with a needle and gave her another shot.

  “What are you giving me now?” she asked.

  “Something to strengthen your eggs and make you more fertile. I thought you were a nurse. What were you expecting?”

  “You’re rich. You’re handsome. You could have women falling at your feet. Why are you doing this?”

  “Ah, here’s the crux of the matter. Drekar bodies can live forever, untouched by disease or old age, though we can be killed by an old-fashioned beheading.” Norgard drew one thin finger across his neck to demonstrate, and Kayla wished fervently she had a knife to complete the action. “But children are terribly hard to come by. Conception rates are very low, while miscarriage rates and birth fatalities are very high. Desiree stole something very precious. Two things, really. She was eight months pregnant. My child might have survived if she hadn’t run off in the middle of a storm and been attacked by wraiths. You will repay me what was lost. I dearly hope strong eggs and a robust constitution run in your family. You’ll need it to survive.”

  Had Desi wanted the baby? Sadness curled in Kayla’s belly for what might have been. Desi would have been a wonderful mother, but she had died trying to protect the world from Norgard. She was a hero, though no one would ever know. Kayla had to carry on her memory, and to do that she had to escape.

  “In all my years upon this earth,” Norgard said, “I have yet to have a single child survive to maturity. My father, damn him, had two.” His pleasant smile hid a deeper pain. The muscle in his jaw clenched.