The girl lying half-conscious on the velvet couch next to the giant metal cage in the wall was not Adrianna. It wasn’t the blonde hair that gave her away. It was the feathers.
“What–?”
An arm wrapped around my waist at the same time the cloth smothered my nose and mouth. I was out in seconds.
10
CAGED
Sounds of laughter. Men were laughing. I struggled to pry apart my eyelids. Soft fiber brushed my fingers, smothered my face. I slid my legs across it, slow and sluggish, and though it burned my skin, I still couldn’t figure out what it was or where I was. My muscles ached.
“What? You’re not having fun?”
Were they talking to me?
Somewhere there was a frail whimper. Female. Young. Scared.
Open your eyes, I commanded myself, to no avail. My lashes were practically glued shut.
“What about her, guys?”
I felt a hand running up my legs, tugging at the hem of my shorts. If I could have died just then to escape the slick of that sweaty, grimy hand, I would have. I wanted to run instead, but it wasn’t an option. My muscles weren’t responding fast enough.
“No, not yet.” Youthful voices: college-going, polo-playing, upstanding-young-man-chatting-with-you-at-a-bus-stop voices. The kind you didn’t think twice about.
Somehow, I managed to slowly drag myself across the floor far enough to free myself from his grip, though he probably just let go on his own accord. That was all I could manage. I lay flat against the ground with my heart pounding in my ears.
What happened? What happened? Think, think, think Deanna! Each breath nicked my chest from the inside.
That cloth… the fabric against my lips, the sweet scent, a lung full of it.
They’d drugged me.
What did they give me? Why were they doing this to me?
What were they going to do to me?
The girl screamed. That was the shot I needed to finally pry my eyes apart. I saw the red nylon first. It was a rug. It was too dark. A wooden leg of a table. A set of car keys on the floor. A single leather pump.
Rasping for air, I flopped onto my back. I could see them now, all three men. Young, like their voices. Well-built. Well-dressed too: a trio of spoiled bastards. One of them winked at me.
“All right, Joe, it’s my turn. Get back.”
Two of them crowded around a girl who sat on a velvet couch as black as her underwear. Black panda eyes upturned to the ceiling, she blew strands of blonde hair off her face, wet from her saliva, with each scrape of breath she exhaled. Pale, thick fingers tangled themselves in the feathers draping her back.
“No, stop.” I’d slurred the words so badly, they came out nonsense. “Leave her alone.” Too weak, this time. They didn’t hear me. Or maybe they didn’t care.
The girl was crying as she boosted herself onto her knees. She had lacerations all up her arms, shallow cuts, fresh wounds. And yet she still looked healthy enough to stand up, maybe even run. Why wasn’t she? Why did she simply sit there, haggard, bloody, but obedient?
The tallest of the men, a redhead, sidled up to her and lifted her chin with a finger. The look she returned was not loving, not even civil. Just hollow. Ready. My stomach heaved.
Oh God. Tears trickled down the side of my face and down my ears, sinking between the carpet fibers. Ade… Dad… Ericka…
He draped her feather robe across his shoulder. She didn’t complain when he started kissing her, but I could see it on her face: a suffocating hollowness. It was etched into her body, her movements. The way she put a hand almost dutifully on his arm, the way her back arched almost as if it knew it should. It was a perfect mimicry of a girl kissing her lover, except the details were all wrong. Everything was wrong. She didn’t have a choice.
I wouldn’t have a choice either.
I turned away when his hands started to move down her stomach, but I needn’t have. One of the boys blocked them from my view. He knelt next to me.
“Don’t worry, baby.” His dark, slicked-back hair was almost as greasy as the smile he gave me as he knelt. “She isn’t doing anything we haven’t paid her to do.” If only the sound of my heart thudding against my brain was loud enough to shut out the moaning. Slick Hair turned to the others. “I don’t get it though. Why her? She looks harmless enough.” He paused. “Payback?”
“Dude, who cares? When a piece of ass falls into your lap, you don’t whine about it, bro,” said one I couldn’t see. He was behind me. “Just do what you were paid to do.”
Oh God. I raised my right arm, but it wasn’t mine anymore, not really. The drug was starting to wear off, but not fast enough. A sloppy, random swing drove my hand into the side of the table. Slick Hair grabbed it, crushing it as if it weren’t already searing in pain. He yanked me onto my stomach.
“No, no…” My tongue tasted the nylon carpet as I coughed out the words. I clenched everything, pressing my forehead against the floor, hoping the pain would dull everything. But I still felt my shirt sliding up my back, still screamed when the blade slid across it. It was a sharp, shallow cut, and apparently, for me, that was all it took. Feathers shifted just beneath the skin, unfolding and unraveling, before breaking through, slipping down from my shoulder blades, cascading down my back. They grew like weeds; thin, prickly. I didn’t smell blood this time, but it was no less excruciating. My feathers were out. The young man stroked them. I shuddered. I wriggled and writhed to get his fingers off me and failed.
It was going to happen to me. That awful thing they only talked about in hushed voices. It was going to happen to me. His hand pressed against the small of my back and I prayed he’d simply kill me instead.
Somebody…
The door opened. Silence.
“Hey,” said Slick Hair, but he was cut off.
“Get out.”
It was Anton. Anton?
“I said, get out. This is my room now.” There was a cool chill in Anton’s voice as he strode inside clad in the three-button charcoal suit and black tie he’d probably worn to the cover party. “You’re done,” he said. “Leave the keys on the table.”
The three muttering boys packed out of the room, one of them tossing a pair of keys onto the table next to me before slamming the door behind him. It clattered against the glass surface.
Anton stepped around my feet over to the couch and gave the blonde girl her feathers. It was incredible. The second she touched her feather robe again, the second she held it against her chest it fell apart. Feathers burst into a pile on the ground, a stream of down. And then the light returned to her eyes. She was herself again.
“Anton?” I coughed.
“She’s fine,” Anton said. “Once you get your feathers back, you’re your own boss again. They won’t go back in. But swans’ll always grow more.” He turned to the girl. “You can go now.”
She grabbed her lost shoe and left. She was her own boss, but she obeyed him anyway. It didn’t make sense. She was here because she’d been paid. But this was a burlesque club.
Unless it wasn’t.
“Swan… parlor?” I whispered, tucking my hands under me, hoping I had enough energy to boost myself up.
“Yeah, that’s right,” replied Anton, as the swan closed the door behind her. “Stylo’s one of a few in New York.”
He was too calm. How did he know I was here? Where was Ade? As soon as I started my struggle to sit up, Anton knelt beside me and helped me the rest of the way.
“What’s going on?” I gazed at him sideways, but that was mostly because my head was still throbbing. “Those guys–”
“Drugged you,” answered Anton, simply.
My blood ran cold.
“Go on,” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear. “Ask me why.”
My fingers grasped for the table. I was almost on my knees when Anton picked me up by the stomach and flopped me onto his shoulders. I screamed, screamed so loud it could have torn my larynx to shreds. No one came. I k
new no one would. Anton slipped Ade’s phone out of his jacket pocket with one hand and waved it in my face. The men. The bartender too. Anton had paid them all.
Slipping the phone back into his pocket, he swiped the keys off the table and strode over to the cage in the wall. My prison. He tossed me inside and shut the metal door in my face.
“What are you doing?” I clung to the iron bars, shaking and shrieking. “What are you doing? Let me out!”
Anton took a seat over by the couch and, with his foot, brushed aside the pile of feathers left behind by the swan. “I will.” He crossed his legs. “But not yet.”
I swallowed tears with each gasp. “Why? What are you going to do to me? How did you even get my sister’s phone?”
“It’s easy enough to have someone followed.” My fingers curled as Anton took out Ade’s phone and turned it around in his hand, considering it like a work of art. “You know, I couldn’t believe it when I saw you leave my loft. That feather you left behind.”
Blood drained from my face. So he’d noticed.
“It was yours. Who else’s could it have been? The look on your face pretty much said it all.”
He dropped the phone back into his pocket. The iron bars slid against my sweaty palms.
“Swans.” He laughed, shaking his head. “To some people they’re irresistible. Ralph Hedley caught one. New York has cages of them working in the shadows, just like every other city in the world. From the brothels to the streets. Been that way for as long as swans have existed.” Anton turned to the wall opposite me. It was carved into dark, interweaving boxes, dimly lit by little candles enclosed in amber glass. He was too busy admiring the flickering flames to acknowledge my screaming. “Do you have any idea why?”
I rattled the cage. “Please let me out! Let me out!”
Anton sighed. “Regular girls’ll give you what you need, whether it’s your garden variety sex, or something darker.”
That’s when he finally looked at me, his blue eyes sanding my skin.
“But swans are different. It’s the helplessness, the fact that once you have their feathers, you are in complete control of them.” When he licked his bottom lip, I knew he was speaking from experience. “It’s not a Simon Says type of deal, of course. ‘Stand up, sit down,’ no, it’s not as if they’ll obey my every command. But that’s not what I want from them. It’s the loyalty. Pure and absolute. It’s not just that you own them, but that they understand themselves only as being owned by you. Once you take a swan’s feathers, they belong to you completely and they know it. After that there’s nothing the swan can do except give you all of them. Power, Deanna. Swan parlors, brothels and everything in between. Power is what they sell.”
“So if it’s power you want, why not come over here and get it, you asshole.”
Not the smartest taunt, I know. My brain might have been completely fried by now, but I knew that I couldn’t let him keep me in this cage.
Wait till he opens it. I repeated the words like a mantra, my grip like a vice on the bars. Once he opened the door, I could knock him out and take off. My body was still sluggish, but I didn’t need to be on top form. Just one blind swing – or I could scratch his face. Put out an eye, blind him, then tackle him. Anything, anything. Just open the cage…
“Come on, Deanna, don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want your feathers.” Once again, Anton laughed. “I already own you.”
“W-what?”
He got off the couch and sat on the table, facing me. “Most swans will do whatever it takes to keep their identities hidden. They know the cost of a leaked secret. I take it you’re the same. I know you’re a swan. I can do a lot with that information.”
My throat closed up as he leaned over.
“There are plenty of brothels that would love a pretty girl like you. Lovely skin. Hair that curls around your fingers. I’d earn a shitload of cash selling you to traffickers.”
Somehow I was on my feet. My muscles were working overtime, but they kept me upright. My back pressed against the brick wall behind me as I struggled to keep my balance.
“Hey, human trafficking is a worldwide multi-billion dollar business, you know. But when they find swans like you… boy, it’s like winning the jackpot, isn’t it?”
Tears blurred my vision, but I could tell he was walking towards me. I pressed my back harder against the wall, and one insane part of me actually believed that if I tried hard enough, I could go through it and fly away.
“Do you know what they’ll do to you, Deanna?” His fingers curled around the bars, his eyes gray with an almost gleeful malice. “They’ll drug you. Rape you. They’ll pass your feathers around, force you to have sex with fifty men a day, maybe more. They’ll put you in cages smaller than this and take turns.”
“Stop it!” I huddled in a corner, my stomach clenched, my arms tight around my knees. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be. “Stop it! Please, please just shut up! Let me go, oh God let me go! Please!”
“Did you like how it felt? When those guys drugged you? When they had their hands on you? Did you like the feel of it, Deanna? The way they touched your back, your feathers?”
“Please…” I shook my head. “My dad…my sister…they’ll be worried about me…please, please…”
“Oh, right. You want to go back home?” Anton leaned against the cage. “You don’t want that kind of life, do you? No, you’re too sweet for that. Right?”
Biting my lip, I forced myself to look at him, to look him square in the eyes. I hated every molecule of him. “What do you want from me?”
“Simple. I want you to destroy Hyde Hedley.”
An awful, sour taste slopped down my throat as I swallowed hard. “What?”
“Today, the new head of Hedley Publications fired my father. But that’s not all.” He gritted his teeth. “That asshole has something on my dad. Something that could ruin him. He hinted as much at my party. He hasn’t told anyone yet. Maybe he’s still working on getting the proof, but I can’t guarantee he’ll keep his mouth shut once he does. I’m not old money, Deanna. If my dad loses his job, we could lose everything.” As if by instinct, he clutched his suit like a security blanket. “I don’t know what the hell he has against my father, or what he’s trying to get, but I don’t have the luxury to care. And you: you’re an old friend of his, aren’t you? He said it himself at my party. He cares about you.”
The flowers, the Mariachi Band. The thousands of messages he left on my cell phone needing to know that I was OK. “No, that was…that was years ago. I don’t even know him, now. Hyde isn’t my… I’m just… I’m just–”
“Close enough to Hyde to sabotage him.” Anton smiled. “Ralph Hedley may have given his son the reins of his company, but the board still has the option to replace him with his legal guardian, which if I’m not mistaken is presently his uncle – my father. They’re already a little insecure about Hedley giving his legacy to a nineteen year-old. But it’s in his will. Not to mention they’re all well aware of how smart that bastard is.” For a moment, Anton looked a little jealous. He shook it off. “But the one thing the board doesn’t need right now is a scandal. Not while they’re desperately trying to keep the Colemans from bolting.”
“C-Colemans?”
“The Coleman family. Come on, you know, Colemans? ‘Family starts at the home’ Colemans?”
I recognized the slogan, but only because it came at the end of countless tacky commercials with smiling white nuclear families hanging out on their new patio sets or watching a movie on their new entertainment system – all courtesy of Colemans Department Store.
“The Coleman image is all about family values and wholesomeness and all that other bullshit they peddle to fatties in the Heartland. Ralph Hedley almost lost them once, what with all the rumors about his wife, but he managed to keep them on board by pretending he had a family of his own.”
Hyde.
“But Hedley’s funeral brought those rumors b
ack to the fore, thanks to that swan. The Colemans might ditch after all. That’s a lot of money gone poof.”
I swallowed carefully, my throat dry from screaming. “So?”
“Hyde doesn’t trust me enough to let me manipulate him, but you? He’ll let his guard down around you. All you need to do is set him up for the mother of all falls. Something publically humiliating. Something that’ll give the Colemans the incentive to finally leave for good. Then the board’ll see just what a waste of skin he is; what a goddamned liability he is.”
Me? Sabotage Hyde? I could feel the feathers crushed between my back and the wall and for a moment I wondered what it would feel like to have countless hands ripping them off me. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to be back in my bed again, to have a normal life. Hyde didn’t need some stupid company. What did it matter if he lost control of it or not? Me or Hyde. When I really thought about it, there was no contest.
So then why did my chest ache at the thought of it?
Whenever we were kids, Hyde’s eyes would light up at the sight of me. They still did.
“When I asked him at the party, he told me you wanted nothing to do with him anymore. He also told me he was more than happy to oblige, but I think we both know that isn’t true.” Anton flashed a devil grin. “Get close to him. Real close. Then ruin him. Simple as that.”
“We don’t need to do this.” I heard myself say the words I couldn’t quite believe were mine. “If you just talk to Hyde… make him see reason – I could help you do it. Maybe he’ll give your dad his job back.”
Anton went deathly silent. “Oh. Oh. Just make him see reason. Right! That’ll solve everything! You think so? You fucking think so?” Anton pushed off the cage and started pacing before kicking it with his leather shoe. “God, you know what? Maybe I should sell you right now. Right this fucking second. Would you like that? Huh?”
“No.” I shuddered violently.
“When they’re done with you they’ll throw your broken goddamn body in a gutter like trash. Do you want that? Huh?”
ARC: Feather Bound Page 8