“And,” Talia added, “he didn’t appear for a summons from the 10 Club a few weeks ago.”
Again I shrugged, hiding my escalating nervousness. Because I guessed that like King, she didn’t do anything if there wasn’t a purpose to it. That meant she wasn’t simply there to deliver a letter from the twisted, cut-throat billionaire club she and King belonged to. The sole purpose of that club, by the way, was to help its members obtain things that money couldn’t buy. At least, not legally. People, power, rare objects…nothing was off the table.
“I’m sure you know by now that King does what he likes when he likes,” I said coolly.
Talia laughed and took another drag of her cigarette, then tossed it onto the floor. “Yeah, well, even King has to come when 10 Club calls. Read the rules. You’re his toy, so I’m sure you can find them and sneak a peek.”
I had no clue where to find the rules, and I hated that she called me his toy, but I suspected that’s why she’d said it.
She turned to leave but then stopped. “Oh, and by the way, Mia, I’d pay special attention to rule five. It clearly states that any member who does not uphold their end of a deal with another member forfeits their property to the Club as compensation to the damaged party.”
Crap. I swallowed, unable to hide my emotions. I was King’s property—their rules, not mine. That was the bomb she’d come to deliver.
Talia flashed a lopsided grin, knowing she’d gotten under my skin. “I hear that Vaughn is looking forward to getting his hands on you. Something about…wanting to hear you scream in agony?” She shook her head, laughing. “Gotta love the man. He’s a sick fucker.”
No, I didn’t “gotta.” And yes, yes, he was. The man, a slimy, sadistic billionaire—like the rest of the 10 Club members—enjoyed collecting unique and beautiful women just to torture and kill them. He was also 10 Club’s president, which gave a solid understanding of the sort of people they were. It also explained why the thought of becoming his nearly made my knees buckle.
“I’ll let King know you came by,” I said with a sugary-sweet voice.
Talia narrowed her dark, mascara-caked eyes. “King has twenty-four hours to deliver on all pending deals, or he will be deemed a forfeiter. His property, all of it, will be confiscated.”
She strolled out of the warehouse with a victory swagger and shut the entrance door behind her.
Holy shit. This can’t be happening. I glanced at my watch. It was almost seven p.m.
I groaned and sank onto the step, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Crap.” I let out a slow, dread-filled breath. “King, where the hell are you?”
This was bad. So, so bad. And here, stupid me had been worried about King’s wellbeing, completely unaware that my own life was about to get run over and turned into a horrific nightmare.
Why was I surprised? Since the day I’d met King, my life kept getting scarier, weirder, and insanely complicated. But dammit, King, why didn’t you tell me about any of this? Likely because he told me only what I needed to know in order to get me to do his bidding. After all, in his eyes, I wasn’t his equal, but his property. His to control, his to use, his to play with.
And now your survival depends on him. If I tried to disappear, not only would it destroy my mother—whose health was extremely fragile after a recent stroke—but I guessed that the Club would find me. They had their ways.
Damn. I needed to find King. Quickly. But it wasn’t as if the man was on vacation. Something bad had happened. I felt it in my gut.
I dug into my jeans pocket for my phone and dialed my brother, Justin. He’d been the last person to speak with King that I knew of.
Justin’s phone rang, but it went to voice mail. “Justin, it’s Mia. We need to talk about that night again. I need to find King.” I sighed. “Dammit. Call me back. I’m in deep shit.”
I looked at the time again and felt my stomach turn into a vicious knot. The clock was ticking. I hope to God, King, that you brought me here for a reason. And that the reason was to help me find him.
CHAPTER TWO
Armed with a broom handle I’d found inside a small closet on the first floor, I made my way through the dimly lit second story of King’s warehouse. It looked very much like the first floor—shelves crammed with an odd assortment of items that reached the ceiling—however, not long after, I understood why the atmosphere was so foreboding: this floor contained King’s arsenal of objects with special powers. I knew because the bad energy practically jumped off the stuff and pounded me in the face.
There were more books and statues, bottles of strange liquids, including some that looked like blood, and horrific-looking weapons—battleaxes, maces, and spears. Yeah, this time I think I did see Excalibur (the sword, not the car).
Then there were the two heads in giant jars. Men’s heads. One with red hair and the other blond, both with wide-open eyes and mouths frozen in screams. Red lights, lights only I could see, oozed from the tops of the jars into a puddle on the floor.
Why the hell does King have heads? I glanced down and saw red all over my chest. I jumped. Holy Christ! But it was just my red sweater.
Reminder: don’t wear red anymore. Bad idea.
I stepped away from the puddles and then yelped again. No. No…Their eyes seemed to follow me, but that couldn’t be possible.
I stumbled back, falling flat on my ass. I sprang to my feet, but my head immediately began to pound and swirl. Ugh. Not now, Mia. Not now…
King had told me it was the effect of my brain struggling to reconcile conflicting realities. My old reality was the normal one most of us grow up with: a fair, just world with laws to protect us, and where people didn’t put other people’s heads in jars. My new world was the opposite. The new one scared the hell out of me.
I braced myself on the shelf to my side while the sensation passed. As my headache cleared, I noticed the sound of gnawing, like a dog chewing a bone. I looked up, and on the shelf were several tiny potted flowers that seemed to be reaching for my hand.
“Shit!” I snapped my hand back. What the fuck? My head started to spin again. Being near these items was not only freaking me the hell out, but it was taxing my body and mind. The items were just too powerful. Which was also why I couldn’t understand how King left this stuff out. There was only one lock on the front door. That was it. No security system. No guard dogs. Yet there was a ton of stuff he wouldn’t want people to steal. Stuff like a jewel-encrusted gold crown that sat in a small, unlocked, glass display case. It was exquisite with several large aquamarine-colored gems, beautiful red garnets, and several nice-sized diamonds, including one that looked to be several carats and seemed to radiate its own light.
“Wow. I want a diamond like that,” I mumbled aloud and reached for the case, wanting to get a better look.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you. There are traps all over the place,” said a deep, familiar male voice.
Startled, I snapped back my hand. It took a moment to recognize the man in front of me because he’d covered up his blond hair with a Giants baseball cap and wore a gray hoodie. Not his usual look.
“Mack! Oh my God!” I ran and threw my arms around his neck. “Where have you been?”
My weight knocked him off balance, and he stumbled back a few steps. “Errr…nice to see you, too?” He peeled me off.
“Where have you been?”
“Laying low and keeping an eye on this place for King.” He flashed that easygoing, boyish grin I appreciated in moments like these. I appreciated it almost as much as his ability to make me feel safe or fly a jet with zero turbulence. Mack was an ex-military-pilot-something with a shady past who ended up working for King after getting mixed up with a sadistic woman in 10 Club. In Mack’s own words, “I knew I needed to get away, so King helped me.” I still didn’t know exactly what had been done to Mack, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“What the hell happened to King?” I asked frantically.
Mack shook his
head toward the floor and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “I wish I knew.”
“So do I.” I thrust the letter at him, and he read it quickly. Unlike me, he knew exactly what it all meant.
“Fuck.”
“That was pretty much my reaction, too,” I said. “Talia delivered it.”
His baby blues lit up. “Talia? This is bad. She was one of King’s biggest allies. Fucking Vaughn.”
“Is that who’s behind this?” Not that I felt surprised. Vaughn was, hands down, King’s biggest adversary as well as the Club’s president.
“Who else would be insane enough, and pissed off enough, to try to take King down?”
I’d have to trust Mack on that because, frankly, I didn’t know the other club members, although I’d seen them at the annual party I attended a few weeks back. There were congressmen, famous actors, and CEOs of large companies. It was shocking how many people had ten billion plus in the bank and a yearning for evil. Both were requirements to belong.
“Mack, I know it’s none of my business, but are you considered part of the inventory like I am?” I waved my hands through the air at all of the stuff crammed on the shelves.
Mack smirked. “King didn’t brand me, nor would he ever, if that’s what you’re asking. But I am under his employ, so to speak, and if the vultures move in, I’m fair game. So is Arno.” Arno was King’s chauffeur and the world’s quietest man.
“So the Club will take you guys, too?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Oh no. So now we’d gone from King being missing to my life going down the tubes, to Arno and Mack coming along for the ride. The shit kept piling on.
Okay. Stay calm. You can figure this out. And luckily, Mack was now there with me. He knew way more about this secret world than I did.
“Talia mentioned the rules. Do you know what they are?” I asked.
Mack scratched his jaw covered in golden-brown stubble. “I read them a few years ago, when…” he hesitated, “when Miranda first inducted me.”
Miranda was the psycho woman he’d belonged to at one point. I only knew that because he’d mentioned her name once, and I’d never forget the look in his eyes when he had. He hated her. He hated thinking about her, talking about her, and I’m sure he never wanted to see her again. Whatever she’d done to him had to have been pretty bad.
“And the rules I remember aren’t going to help us.” Mack began rattling off the policies pertaining to the Club members’ secrecy obligations. Members were also not permitted to kill other members, nor could they attempt to acquire another member’s possession if marked off-limits. And by “possession,” I assumed they meant “person.” Mack had told me that was the reason King had tattooed me with a “K.” He didn’t want anyone making a play for me, a disturbing fact that triggered feelings of both relief and outrage. Because while the concept of being someone else’s property is archaic and belittling, “belonging” to a man like King was like being the property of a god. An evil god, but powerful nonetheless. And a part of me felt a little bit safer knowing I couldn’t be traded away, willy-nilly, to some psycho like Vaughn.
Not that I accepted being King’s property. Because I didn’t. And I never would.
Mack continued on about some other random stuff having to do with membership fees.
“How much are the dues?” I asked.
“A billion dollars,” he replied. “Roughly.”
Oh my Lord. “That’s steep. What’s the money used for?”
Mack shrugged. “I can only assume for bribes. The purpose of the Club is to support the members’ pursuits, most of which are illegal. I’m sure the money also pays for the other privileges they enjoy—expediting border crossings to just about any country with no questions asked, immunity from the IRS, body disposal, etc.”
“Lovely. So the Club basically gives them diplomatic immunity—completely above the law.”
“Yes. The only laws that matter are the Club rules, and they’ll even break those if they can get away with it.”
I gave that a moment of thought. It was the strange thing about 10 Club; they were a secret society of some of the most influential, wealthy, and cut-throat people. They bartered with each other, creating a network of sorts to support their illicit fetishes, quests for power, or whatever things they wanted or needed that couldn’t be obtained through traditional channels. And from what I saw, they had no scruples or objections to breaking laws, including killing people. However, they seemed to be afraid of pissing off the Club. I supposed it made sense to not want a bunch of psychos after you.
You would know, wouldn’t you?
“What about the crap in this letter?” I pointed to the paper still in Mack’s hand.
“I only know that agreements between members, verbal or written, are considered binding. And failure to meet one’s obligations is grounds for immediate expulsion from the Club. All assets of the forfeiting member become property of 10 Club.”
That was a pretty large deterrent for welshers, but unfortunately, those rules only reconfirmed the heap of shit we were in. “Are there more rules?” I asked.
“Yes, but I don’t remember them.”
“Where does King keep his copy?” I asked.
Mack’s eyes floated up.
“Upstairs?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but the third floor is his private chamber. It’s got traps and spells and—”
“Did you just say ‘spells,’ as in magic?”
“Yes. Why?” Mack asked.
“I called all of this crazy stuff magic, but King insists it’s not.”
He shrugged. “You can call a duck anything you like, but it’s still a duck.”
True.
“Just like the crazy crap you do,” he added. “It reeks of quacking.”
“I’m not a duck,” I argued. “I just have a weird gift.”
Mack looked at me as if he were questioning the ever-loving difference.
Fine, whatever. “I’m going upstairs.”
“No. You need to stay the hell away from there.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me back.
“Mack, in twenty-four hours, those psycho bastards from the Club are going to come and stake their flags in our asses. I think at this point, I’ll take the risk of going upstairs.”
Mack rested one hand on his waist and stared at the floor. “We’ll go upstairs, but don’t do anything stupid. Just—just follow me.”
“Have you been up there before?” I asked.
“No. No one goes up there. Unless they have a death wish.”
“Well, check that box.” I marched off toward the stairs.
“Are you out of your mind?” Mack pulled me back again. “I’m not letting you go first. If anything happens to you, King would kill me. Let me go first.”
I didn’t want him getting hurt, either, but he wasn’t really asking. Mack stepped around me, leaving me staring at his broad back as we ascended cautiously. I wanted to poke him in that nice rear of his to make him move faster. Tick tock, buddy!
“So,” he said, his eyes cautiously scanning each stair we stepped on, “what do you think happened to King?”
My guess was the same as his; Vaughn had taken him. Ironically, the bastard was also the reason I’d gotten mixed up in this shame-of-a-fucking-mess to begin with. My brother had, for unknown reasons, gone to Vaughn for funding to support his archaeology pursuits. In exchange, Vaughn wanted first rights to anything Justin unearthed. When that object became the Artifact, my brother instantly knew it was something powerful, perhaps dangerous in the wrong hands, and ran. That’s when I got sucked in.
“The last time I saw King was at the hospital,” I whispered. “He said he was going to meet with my brother, get the Artifact, and then answer a summons from 10 Club. According to Talia, he never showed up to the summons. And according to my brother, King never showed up to meet him either.”
Two more steps.
“Why are you whispering?” Mack asked.
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when approaching something dangerous?” I whispered again.
Another step.
“This isn’t Scooby Doo. So, do you believe him? Your brother?” Mack asked in his regular voice.
The air became thick and heavy, like it was filled with rotting souls and toxic vapors from hell. Why in the world would King want to live in a place like this?
“Justin has no reason to lie to me,” I replied quietly. “If he says that King called and told him to leave the Artifact in an empty apartment, that’s what happened.”
Two more steps.
“What do you think happened to King?” I whispered.
“Stop whispering; it’s making me nervous. And like I said, I think Vaughn happened. No one else is crazy enough to go after King.”
If true, I could only imagine what sorts of horrific things Vaughn might be doing to him. Because the last time the two had seen each other was at that stupid party I keep referring to, when King ripped off Vaughn’s arm for touching me. Yes, he’d touched me in a bad way. No, I didn’t feel bad about the arm; the lunatic had it coming.
We got to the small landing, where the stairs turned in the opposite direction, giving us a partial view of the third floor.
“It’s completely dark,” Mack said. It was the first time I’d ever seen him anxious. Mack, who served in Iraq doing a “special assignment” and made it clear he was a deadly sort of guy, was not one to scare easily. The fact his brow was covered with a light sheen of sweat only amplified my own fear.
I began to hum “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles.
Mack looked at me and ran his hand through his messy, short, blond hair. “Why do you always hum Beatles songs when you’re nervous?”
“How did you know that?” To my knowledge, this was the first time I’d done it in front of him.
Mack shrugged. “King told me about it. Said he thought it was cute.”
I blinked a few times. King had been talking about me to Mack? And said something I did was cute?
“In a very annoying, childish sort of way,” Mack added.
King for a Day Page 2