Two men moved from behind Catherine, dressed in the same garb as Charles wore, and entered the cell. The woman screamed, thrashing as she tried to break away from their hands. Catherine rushed forward to aid her, hissing at them to leave her alone, but her hands passed right through them.
“What is this?” she whispered, but no one gave an answer.
They dragged the woman from her cell and out of the room. Catherine followed, sending a red eyed glare to the man who had ordered the woman to be taken away. A man she trusted for years with the safety and protection of her family, but she could dwell on that later. The woman’s screams echoed against the corridor until they took her to another room, but this one was very different. A balcony stretched along the upper half of the room and a chain mechanism was attached to the wall nearby. A small, wooden platform hung from the ceiling and one of the men took a long pole, hooked it around the rope, and pulled it to the side.
“What’s…what’s down there?” the woman whispered quietly.
“Freedom,” the man told her sincerely, but Catherine saw the lie in his eyes.
“Truly?” she asked and peered over the edge. “It’s so dark.”
“The door to the outside is just at the bottom. All you have to do is step onto the platform and we’ll lower you down to it,” the man urged.
Catherine yelled no, but again none of them heard her or saw her. The woman eagerly stepped onto the rickety platform and sat down. The two men let it slowly glide back to the center and the woman gripped the ropes hard. Using the rope attached to the balcony, the man lowered her down as tears of joy streamed from her eyes, but Catherine knew the woman was not leaving alive. She leaned over the edge of the balcony and snarled. The heavy stench of blood hit her hard and her stomach twisted as her throat burned. So much blood covered the floor and walls down there, it was a good thing it was dark. The woman would see it and panic.
The other man waited until she was at the bottom, went to the chain mechanism, and pulled away the heavy, steel stop on the gears. One by one, metal clanked around the woman and Catherine watched her cower on the platform.
“There’s no light,” she called up, voice quaking in fear. “Where’s the door?”
The men didn’t answer and a horrid hissing filled the chamber. “Door? Oh sweet thing, there is no door.”
The woman gasped and then screamed. Catherine turned away as the first shadows darted to the center of the room and surrounded the woman. She cried out, begging for mercy, but the two men turned their backs and waited for the screams to be over. It didn’t take long. Catherine knew she would never be rid of those sounds, vampires feeding as wild animals, as if this was the only blood they’d had in days, weeks even, and for all Catherine knew it was.
When the sounds quietened, one of the men went to another chain and tugged hard on it. The ceiling opened up and bright sunlight poured down into the pit. Catherine hissed, ducking away, but when the rays touched her skin, nothing happened. She wasn’t really there and realized in a moment she was inside someone’s mind, she had to be.
“Back to your cells,” the man yelled. Hissing and angry curses met his order, but the vampires obeyed. Once they were in, the other man pulled the cell doors back into place and the sunlight was closed off again. “Right then, back to work.”
“Torrin is going through them too fast,” one man said as they exited the chamber with Catherine following. She had no way of knowing how long she would be in this memory and she was not going to waste whatever time she had to gleam some information from it. “That’s the third one this week we’ve had to dispose of.”
“He’s pushing them too hard,” the other man said. “A few showed promise that way and now he assumes they will all miraculously sprout abilities we can use.”
Catherine flinched back, shaking her head. Is this what it was all about? They were using people just as Antony was using the vampires, for their uniqueness. How could they possibly know? She’d had no idea herself until she was with Victoria.
“I don’t even believe he’s taking the right ones anymore. He’s simply recruiting whoever is desperate enough for the coin,” the first man replied, sounding weary. “No matter, you won’t be here much longer to see. You leave with Charles in the morning?”
“Antony has been sighted again and if the rumors are true then it will not be a simple hunting mission, not anymore.”
“What are the rumors?”
“Bad. He’s built an army and what’s worse, we believe we have found the shipment of new recruits that was taken,” the man said. “Torrin is not pleased that many of them were sold as slaves or worse and we still do not know who was behind their theft to begin with.”
The two men stared at each other for a long time until Catherine wanted to throttle them both for not continuing their conversation. She wanted to know as well, why she had not been taken to Rome, but after seeing what they did to their new recruits, ending up with Bastian had turned out to be a better fate indeed.
One of them spoke again, but his words were muffled, and she frowned. Her vision darkened and Catherine struggled to keep her focus, but it was too late. A hand fell on her shoulder, shaking her awake and when her vision righted, Tula stared down at her worriedly.
“You were talking in your sleep,” he whispered, and helped her sit up. “It did not sound pleasant.”
She nodded and was ready to tell him, when the tent flap opened and sunlight poured in. All three pushed to the back of the cage until the flap fell behind the man who entered. He carried three leather skins and from the scent wafting from them, they were filled with blood.
“The sun will set in about an hour and Charles wishes you to feed before we set out again,” the man said.
Catherine’s body stilled. That voice, that face! She snarled and lunged for the cage bars before he had a chance to move away, and latched onto his shirt. “You bastard! You killed that poor girl! You murdered her!”
“Let me go, demon!” the man snapped and tried to pull free, but she grabbed him harder and slammed his body against the bars. His head lolled back as pain crossed his face and the skins of blood fell from his hands.
“What are you doing?” Tula hissed behind her.
“This man, he’s part of the Order who murders those who do not pass their training!”
The man grunted as she harshly smacked his body against the bars a second time, until Tula managed to grab her hands and forced her to release him. “What madness is this?” he asked and blocked her from reaching the man again. “They are keeping us alive. Do not give them cause to change their mind!”
“They won’t,” she snapped. “They want to use us, just as Antony uses his vampires.”
Tula’s face darkened as the man behind him climbed to his feet and grimaced. “She lies,” the man grunted. “She knows nothing.”
“I saw you,” Catherine yelled, and lunged for the bars again, but Kendi held her back. “I saw you lower that poor woman into the pit to be torn apart by the vampires you hold! I saw it!”
The man’s face paled and he took a hurried step backwards. “You…you could not have. It is not possible,” he whispered, shaking his head. His mouth agape, he rushed out of the tent, leaving the skins of blood laying on the ground.
Kendi released Catherine and hurried to snatch them up as she paced back and forth in the cramped cage. “How do you know this?” Kendi asked as he passed a skin to each of them.
Catherine could barely stomach the blood after what she had witnessed in the pit, but Tula told her to drink it before the others returned and took it away. It might be days before they were fed again, after her attempt on that man’s life. She knew she shouldn’t have done it, but the woman’s screams echoed still in her mind, as well as the blank stares of the two men who watched on and allowed the woman to die in such a horrible way. There was no excuse for it, and to think Charles and his father caused it? Caused all of this pain and misery? Her world had crashed down around he
r once before, when Bastian had revealed his true nature to her and she realized humans were not alone in this world. To realize now that men she knew and trusted with her life were involved in such heinous acts against the innocent, and had taken everything she knew from her time in the village and destroyed it before her eyes, was too much.
“I saw it,” she whispered to Kendi. “I was inside his memories somehow and I saw what they did.”
“Did you now?” Charles snapped as the tent flap parted again and he stormed in with five men behind him, sword out and aimed at the cage. “My Catherine, I always knew there was something special about you.”
She hissed as he approached the bars, but Tula shook his head sternly and her feet remained planted. “Why did you never tell me?”
“Would you have believed my father or me for that matter?” he asked, strolling closer. “If we told you that all those years you worked for my father, with him, that he was merely testing you to see if you were the same as your own father?”
“My father?” Catherine sputtered. “He has nothing to do with this. He cannot, he died when I was a child.”
“Yes, but he didn’t have to die,” Charles told her. “He chose to starve to death instead of taking the aid that the Order offered, in exchange for you and him. We would have saved all of you, but he was not so keen on our methods.”
Catherine’s mind struggled to understand what he said and she staggered farther back. “No, no he would have told my mother. She would have said something,” she whispered.
“We told her not to and when hard times came on the village again, we offered you a place in our home as a test. Your brothers would have followed, but the Order was in dire need of new recruits,” Charles explained and moved around the cage.
His face twisted until Catherine no longer knew the man who stood before her; the Charles she had grown up with, had seen almost every day, the man who had been kind hearted and who cared for those under his protection. This man was a monster, more so than she, more so almost than Antony.
“The village knew we would soon come calling, but when my father spread the word of the impending visit, the villagers protested, claiming they needed the young men and women of the village for a few more years.” Charles shrugged and ran his fingers along the bars. “But the Order comes first and when our men arrived, the villagers knew the consequences of fighting back.”
“But you…you tried to stop them,” she argued.
“No, I tried to stop them from taking you,” he corrected with a sigh. “I did care for you and hated to see you so afraid, but as my father said, I did not understand my place then. I do now.”
She shook her head. “So you just accepted what happened to me?”
“I assumed you were taken to Rome,” he told her. “We did not learn until a month later what really became of your ship. I feared the worst, feared you were dead, but never did I imagine I would find you turned into one of them.” The disgust in his voice drew a growl from her, but Tula’s was louder, as was Kendi’s as they stepped to block her from view. “Horrible demons, the lot of you.”
“Do not speak to our lady in such a manner,” Tula warned.
“Lady?” Charles repeated and his eyes flitted to Catherine’s face. “Why do they call a former slave girl a lady?”
“She is the lady to our maker,” Tula replied. “We will protect her at all costs.”
Charles gagged and shook his head, backing away from the bars. “No, it’s not possible. You…you are the woman that bastard was going to wed?”
“You know of Bastian?” Catherine asked. “How?”
“We have sources scattered across the globe,” he answered quietly. “We heard of Bastian many years ago, but he was no immediate threat until we learned of his ties to Antony. The rumors of a wedding reached us, but it was to a human woman…a curse upon the sanctity of marriage.”
Catherine hissed quietly under her breath. “You will be happy to know then, we gave ourselves to each other after Bastian turned me to save my life. We married for love.”
Charles glared fiercely at her and gripped the bars of the cage hard. “He’s the one who turned you? Claimed you as his own? I’ll kill him for touching you!”
“You’re jealous,” she stated, surprised. “You came here hoping to save me, is that it?” When he didn’t reply right away she saw the truth spark to life on his face. “No, you didn’t want to save me. You wanted to take me back to Rome with the others, torture me.”
“What we do is not torture,” he argued hotly. “We train.”
“And when your recruits do not pass the tests you feed them to the vampires you’re holding as prisoners,” she yelled. “You’re worse than any vampire I have met! You are the same as the beast you hunt.”
Charles drew his sword from his sheath, but paused halfway, breathing heavily. Catherine waited to see what he would do as Tula and Kendi tensed before her, ready to strike if he came after her. After a few anxious moments, he shoved his sword home and brushed the strands of hair that had fallen across his face out of his eyes and glared at her.
“When the sun sets, you and I will have a very long conversation about how you will prove to me you are worth saving,” he informed her. “And how much you are willing to do to save your two…friends.” His lips lifted in a leer at his final words. He turned on his heel and left the tent, his entourage following close behind.
Catherine’s body sagged forward and Tula reached out to catch her before she fell with exhaustion to the ground. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and pushed off his chest. “I was in that man’s mind a long time, too long.”
“Did you truly see all you said?” he asked and helped right her.
“Yes, and it was monstrous, that poor girl! I saw…she was so terrified. She simply wanted to go home.” Catherine paced around the cage, her fingers trailing against the bars.
Tula and Kendi whispered behind her, but she did not listen. That girl, it could have been her. The only reason she came to be so strong was through watching her brother sold off to some strange plantation without her, and then fighting to be by his side. Standing up to the man who bought them had strengthened her more. It was not until she’d heard Bastian’s story and was kidnapped by Victoria, that her true fighting spirit emerged. If they had taken her to Rome, it could very well have been her fed to the vampires with no hope of escape, no hope of freedom. How many innocents did the Order kill over the years? And why were they holding vampires hostage as well? All she managed to gather from Antony’s memories was that he feared the Order. Was he held by them for a time? Is that what all of this was about for him?
“Catherine,” Kendi called gently and touched her shoulder. “Catherine, we need to escape tonight.”
She nodded, then paused, turning to face the other two. “No, we cannot leave. Not yet.”
“We cannot stay with them,” Tula insisted with a deep growl. “We have to get to Bastian.”
“And we will, with their help,” she whispered. “They have come for Antony and they will go straight for the fort to find him. Bastian is there.”
Tula scratched his chin, but Catherine could not read the dark look in his eyes. “You want us to help this Order attack the fort?”
She nodded. “I can tell them who is there. And you, Tula, you’ve been there before, haven’t you.” It was not a question. When they first mentioned the fort, his eyes had lit up with recognition. Sometime in his life, Tula had visited St. Augustine and she had a feeling he knew his way around the place well enough to guide them in and out without being seen.
“Once, many years ago when Bastian sent me to search for Victoria after she fled.”
Catherine stared. “He never told me that he looked for her.”
“There were rumors of a beast found by the mortals, wandering the wilds, and taken to the fort. Bastian still loved her, or believed he did so I went looking, but it was not her,” he said as a shiver passed over his body. “It was something
much, much worse. They killed it before I could even attempt to understand what lay before my eyes.”
She wanted to know what he had seen, but the haunted gaze told her that even if she asked he would not tell her. “You two are our map. If we can get in, we can find Bastian and Haddie. We can save them.”
“And what of this Master? This Antony?”
Catherine shrugged at Kendi’s question. “We let the Order take care of Order business. Or…” she said and paced to the other side of the cage.
“Or what?” Tula asked.
“Or we turn Antony’s vampires against him and use them to kill both Antony and the Order,” she whispered with a dark hiss. “We kill them all.”
Tula’s face twisted in a leer as Kendi nodded once, a solemn promise in his eyes. Killing them all was their best chance. If the Order stretched this far and as Charles said, they had eyes all across the globe, they needed to know this territory was off limits to their laws. Catherine would not see those she cared for, the only family she had left, destroyed by men claiming to be of God as they tortured and killed innocents.
The tent flaps opened and the harsh light of day was gone, replaced with the subtle glow of twilight. “You,” the guard said and knocked his sheathed blade against the bars near Catherine. “Your presence is requested. You two, step back.”
The four men behind him raised crossbows and aimed them at Tula and Kendi until they complied, pressing their backs against the rear of the cage. Catherine moved forward and as the cage door swung open, she held out her wrists willingly for the manacles. All she had to do was convince Charles they could get him and his men inside to kill their target.
Then they could sit back and watch the slaughter happen.
Chapter 4
The dull sound of scraping echoed around Bastian’s cell as he dragged his bleeding fingertips across the stones again and again, the burning in his throat unquenched. He ached for blood, craved it.
Catherine’s face hovered before him in the darkness and numbly, he reached out for it, but it faded and he howled in anguish.
SV02-06. Slave to a Vampire Page 34