by Nya Rayne
The Emasculator. His fists started to curl of their own accord. His heart raced, his blood pulsed violently at the thought she was so close to him. What the hell is she doing here?
“Sandra, Lady LaDina needs your help up front,” Carnie said to one of the women, and then asked the other, “Has he been re-dosed since he was brought in?”
“No, he has not. He hasn’t so much as twitched in the time I’ve been watching him.”
Carnie’s voice drew closer. Donté could feel her fingers tracing over his covered shins and up to his knees as she added, “Well, the Higher Highness has requested he be flown to her in his current state. So please go get a calming syringe. We’re going to need to make sure he doesn’t wake up until he’s in her care.”
“I want the middle, too, Donté. You promised.” He heard Phia’s heartfelt words whispering through his mind, and his anger grew, devouring all logic.
They were preparing to package him off like he was some kind of a present. What were they going to do, put him in a wooden box and tie a red bow around it? Were they going to strip him naked and stand him at her front door with a pink ribbon around his neck and his dick in his hands? They could go straight to hell for all he cared. He had made a promise to Phia, and he was damn sure going to keep it or he was going to die trying.
As much as he didn’t want to, he could remember the look of anguish in her eyes when she’d realized he’d been shot, and it had broken his heart. As he lay there on the ground, unable to move while the poison paralyzed him, he’d heard her screaming his name as she tried to fight off Darius, to get to his side.
When he’d heard the tram take off, he’d been overjoyed because it meant she’d gotten away from them. But even as he felt joy, as his mind slipped into a realm filled with darkness, he hadn’t been able to fathom never seeing her, touching her, or even talking to her again.
Phia.
When he’d told her she was where his life started, he wasn’t joking or trying to be sweet. His life before her had been that of a well-behaved animal with no true future to look forward to. But Phia—she promised him everything he hadn’t even known he’d wanted: freedom, a family, and a love he’d never known was possible.
He could tell by the way she looked at him and spoke to him, it was more than his body she needed. When he spoke, her body subconsciously leaned into him as if every word which fell from his lips was important. To her, he was a person, not a tool to be used and discarded. He meant more than sex and slavery to her. He was the beginning and the end of every dream she’d ever had as a child and an adult.
No, the “Higher Hussy” would not claim him, and she would not be laying one solitary finger on Phia. If she did, he would make sure she lost that finger and the hand, too, if necessary.
His arms began to tingle as he fought once more not to fist his hands.
Carnie’s breath was warming his face, her hands trailing over his groin as she crowed, “And you thought you’d gotten away from me.” Her hands trailed up over his abdomen and dipped beneath his shirt, and it took everything in him to maintain his composure a little longer. “When I got the call you had gone rogue, I jumped at the chance to find you. You know no one can put you back in your place like I can.”
Donté had wondered what the hell was wrong with this woman. She seemed to have a sick sort of fascination that went beyond tutoring where he was concerned. He’d talked to other nurturers she tutored, and none of them relayed any stories nearly as bad as the ones he told them.
The bed he was lying on shifted, and a second later she was straddling him, the witch. She ran her hands up his arms to his shoulders and back down, and her breath was hot on his neck and the side of his face just before her lips brushed his.
“Xavier, can you hear me?” Her hips rose up as her hand slipped down into the front of his jeans. She rolled his flaccid appendage through her clammy hands.
“Yes,” he hissed, his eyes snapping open as he sat up, grabbed her around the neck and gripped her hand in one fluid motion. The look of shock and dismay on her face was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen on the woman. “You don’t have that right anymore,” he growled in her face as he yanked her hand from his pants and shoved her backward, off the bed. “I’ve found favor.”
Standing up, he swayed momentarily before regaining his balance. Donté darted to the window and peered out. He took one look at the beach at least hundred feet below and he knew he had to find another way out. “Shit.”
“You have lost your mind,” Carnie said from behind him. “Have you forgotten everything you were taught? You can’t handle me like that.”
Donté stomped over to her as she scooted back away from him. “You see, Carnie, that’s the problem. I haven’t forgotten a fucking thing.” He knew he should have continued on his track out the door, but he also knew a chance like this would probably never be his again. He stopped a foot from her and sneered down at her. “What, you don’t know how to handle a man you can’t control?”
“Man? You’re not a man, and never will be. You’re a pathetic broken little toy that needs to be destroyed.”
He squatted down and reached out, gripping her neck. Pulling her close to his face, he said through clenched teeth, “You know, out of everyone at the Zoo, you’re the only one I want to kill.” His hand tightened around her neck as she scratched at his hand and kicked at the air with her feet. “All those times you chained me to that damn wall,” he said into her face, his eyes burning. “The whip, Carnie, what the hell were you teaching me when you shoved that damn…” He roared, rage boiling inside of him at the thought of the memory, “When I begged you to stop, you bitch, and you didn’t, what the hell were you trying to teach me?”
She babbled something as her eyes bulged, but his grasp only tightened. He didn’t see her as a frail woman half his size. He didn’t care that he never should have touched her like this. All he saw were the despicable things she had subjected him to. All he heard was her sadistic cackle as she had finally forced him to cry like some simpering pup.
“You’re all monsters,” he growled low. “But you, you’re the worst of them.”
The door opened, and a woman holding a syringe stopped short, her face draining to a pallid white within seconds as she took in the scene. Donté immediately understood she must have been one of the women who were watching over him as he slept.
He stood, bringing Carnie’s twitching body up with him as he went. “What the hell are you going to do with that?” he snarled.
The woman glanced down at the syringe and back at him as she shook her head and began backing out the room. Donté shot forward, snatching the syringe out of her hand and throwing her farther into the room and away from the door.
He kicked the door closed as she landed in a heap at the foot of the bed. She scrambled back away from him, her brown eyes ablaze with fear.
“You won’t get away with this, Xavier,” Carnie threatened, and Donté gripped her neck tighter.
“And you won’t be here to stop me.”
Carnie spat in his face. “You’re nothing! You’re nothing!”
“I’m a fucking man, bitch.” He plunged the syringe into her neck and tossed her limp body aside a second later. Checking the amount of serum left in the syringe, he turned to the other woman, his “babysitter.”
The woman whined and shrank back from him as he approached slowly. There were thumps and shouts from outside the door, but he ignored them for the moment. He lunged for the woman, who kicked at him, catching him in his right shoulder as she screamed for help. Shifting away from her, he grabbed a handful of her fiery red hair and yanked her closer. “Shssh, you know how this works,” he said as he plunged the syringe into the side of her neck, while the door pushed open.
He released the woman and crouched low, prepared to attack. A low, guttural snarl built up in the back of his throat. Everything they’d taught him at the Zoo that he needed to know to protect his supposed goddess came rushing ba
ck to him, and he grinned sadistically. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, he was very close to unstoppable. His power was in his punches and the unexpected speed of his movements, which most all of his sparring partners underestimated due to his size.
Donté waited as the person stepped into view, and he relaxed at once as he took in the tall, light-skinned man who had come to pick them up from the train station and had saved Phia.
He was dressed in all black, from head to toe, and had even gone as far as putting thick black makeup beneath each of his eyes. He had black combat boots on, black cargo pants and a sleeveless, black homemade t-shirt that read, “I’m a man. Hear me roar,” across the front. He had also drawn jagged, black stripes around his biceps and forearms, and had a black scarf tied around his head.
For a brief moment, Donté wanted to laugh. He wasn’t sure if it was the relief he felt at seeing another unchanged man or if it was the sheer stupidity of the man’s garments. Whatever it was, relief washed through him like water bursting free from a backed-up dam.
Darius lowered the bow he’d been holding and glanced around the room, taking in the carnage. Tossing a thick, smooth stick at Donté, he quipped, “And here I thought I was saving you.”
Donté stood and caught the stick. “I got tired of waiting?”
Darius glanced down at the two prone women again. “They aren’t dead, right?”
“Nah, but I should’ve killed that one,” he said, glaring down at Carnie.
They shared a knowing look, neither saying a thing.
There were more shouts from outside, and Darius turned back to the hallway, letting loose two arrows. They pierced the eyes of the FAP that had started into the room. It staggered and dropped back against the opposite wall.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. I think they called in their entire puppet army or something. These sons of bitches are coming out of everywhere.”
“Right behind you. Is Phia with Dr. Lobush?”
Darius turned and started down the hallway in front of him in a slow trot, his bow loaded and pointed down.
A blonde FAP stepped into the hallway in front of them, cutting them off. Darius stumbled back, caught off guard, and Donté charged forward. He planted it into and through the FAP’s right eye. Pushing the machine back with his foot, he pulled the end of the stick loose, and jammed it in its other eye.
“Damn,” Darius caroled. “My wife told you about the eyes, eh?”
“Yeah, but from the moment I got my memories back I’ve wanted to do that, you know? They stare at you like you aren’t even there.”
“Yep, sure do.”
They started down another hallway, sidestepped into a stairwell, and started up the staircase to the roof. What seemed like hundreds of feet thundered up the stairs behind them.
When they burst onto the roof of the building and slammed the door behind them, Donté stopped short and turned around. Solar panels covered virtually every square inch of the roof. Nothing else was to be seen.
Donté peered over the edge of the roof. “What the hell, Darius? We can’t jump from here!”
“Just wait.” Darius jammed the bokken he’d taken from Donté upon their arrival to the roof through the two half-moon door handles, keeping them closed. It wouldn’t keep their pursuers away for long, but it would delay them long enough.
The sound of a heli-jet came out of nowhere. Donté looked up and squinted against the pebbles and dust the heli-jet’s rotors tossed in the air. “Thanks for trying, but I think they got us.”
“Have a little faith.”
The heli-jet touched down on the roof, and Darius started toward it.
Donté followed, still skeptical until he saw the pilot. He relaxed immediately and crawled into the seat beside Darius. Dr. Lobush punched a few buttons and shifted a handle, and Darius handed him a headset. The chopper took to the sky just as the door onto the roof gave way, and a mixture of FAPs and women poured out below them.
“Where the hell did you two get a heli-jet? And where’s Phia? Is she safe?”
He didn’t miss the look his two companions shared before the doctor replied through the headset, “The Higher Highness had some FAPs pick her up this morning.”
“What? Where’d they take her?”
Darius said, “Pensacola, Florida.”
“And the two of you let them?” he growled, his fist clenching as a deep and palpable rage started to stir within his belly.
“We told her not to go, but she wouldn’t listen. She said you were her companion, and what kind of companion would she be to you if she sat around doing nothing,” Dr. Lobush answered. “She said she might not be a fighter, but she had friends and she was going to do her part.”
Darius ran his hand over the wood grain of the finely-crafted heli-jet and grinned at Donté. “She sent us this. Three hours ago we got a call to go to the Palm Beach airstrip and it was sitting there with a note and the combination code for the roof access door of the hotel. I don’t know what kind of friends she has, but they’re damn sure not your everyday run-of-the-mill puppet masters.”
“What about the rumors of torture you told us about? Did you remind her?”
“I tried, but it didn’t work. All she saw was getting you back.”
“Well, my babysitters were talking about some girl, Tawny, who recently went missing. The way they were talking, I think those stories you heard are a little more than hearsay.”
“Tawny?” The doctor turned to look at him. “That’s interesting. The last missing woman report I was checking into was for a Rosetta Tawny Riles. She was working an internship with the Higher Highness’s lower court.” Dr. Lobush turned back to the heli-jet’s controls. “I’ll have to do some more checking, but I seriously doubt there were two Tawnys working under the Higher Highness at one time.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll leave you to figure that out. Only thing I’m interested in is getting to Phia.” Something soft and black landed in his lap, and Donté reached down and picked it up.
He glanced over at a grinning Darius and groaned, knowing he wanted him to put it on. “Yeah, ah, thanks for coming after me, but I’m not wearing this.”
Darius ran his hand down his chest and grinned. “Ah, put it on. It’s not like I have anyone else I can give it to. Besides, I made it specifically for you when Sweetness told me you’d gotten your memories back.”
The heli-jet rose and soared north as Donté again read the lime green, artfully hand-painted letters ran across and down the front of the shirt he was holding, “I wear the balls in this relationship.” As if that weren’t gaudy enough, there were two dried-up-looking cherries painted below the collar.
He glanced between Darius and the offending item, his frown deepening, and then, against his better judgment, reached down and tugged his own shirt off. Maybe Phia would get a laugh out of it.
As he pulled the t-shirt the remainder of the way over his head and heard Darius shout in a horrendous Spanish accent, “It’s time to start a revolution,” he was more than certain there wasn’t just a little wrong with the man.
Chapter Twenty-One
Phia rubbed her sweaty palms against her slacks and took a slow breath to calm her racing heart. She shouldn’t be nervous. Whatever the outcome, this had been her decision. When the FAPs had showed up to take her away earlier in the day, Dr. Lobush and Darius had begged her not to go. “I’ll be fine. Just wait here. I promise, I’ll be in touch in an hour or so,” she’d said blithely. What the hell had she been thinking?
She had listened to Darius’s idea for getting Donté back, but Phia knew in her heart the probability of their storming up to one of the Zoos and busting the doors down was about the same as that of time’s moving backward. Darius and Donté would be killed on sight, and if the stories Dr. Lobush heard had any truth to them, she and the doctor would be captured and tortured. No, this was the only way to make sure everyone involved was safe.
Sighing, she glanced around the office for the fift
h time since she’d been shown into the room. The furniture was elegant, yet contemporary. Behind the desk she was sure the Higher Highness would take, two large windows stretched from ceiling to floor. They were wrapped in ostentatious yellow drapes with an intricate pearl pattern which ran the length and back. She glanced down at her c-pod, her fingers itching to call the doctor to verify Donté’s whereabouts. But she couldn’t. If she did and they had gotten Donté out, he would try to talk her out of what she was going to do. And this needed to be done regardless of whether he was safe or not. Phia rubbed her hands together and prayed the other things she’d asked her mother to do were done.
The night before, after her talk with the doctor and Darius, she had called her mother to explain what had occurred. At first, it definitely seemed like Varonda was about to accuse her of lying. However, when Phia reminded her of how Donté had behaved at dinner and again on the telelink with her, she seemed to at least want to hear more. It had taken more than a few “pleases,” but Varonda eventually gave in and asked, “What do you need me to do?”
Phia was certain her mother’s willingness to help had absolutely nothing to do with Varonda’s belief in her. No, her mother was seeing one and only one thing. If the Higher Highness and the other Elites in office were truly guilty of the things Phia told her of, and she, Varonda Zen, Baroness of the Carolinas helped bring them down, then she was a shoo-in for the paramount seat at the round table or at the very least one close to the paramount seat. She was probably sitting at home right now, preparing her acceptance speech.
Regardless of her mother’s reasons for helping, Phia was thankful. She immediately requested a heli-jet be delivered to the Palm Beach airstrip, and then for the entrance code to the hotel where Donté was being held, and finally, a meeting with the Higher Highness.
So far so good; please let this work, she prayed as the door to the room swung open allowing the Higher Highness of Serenity entrance, her head held high, and her shoulders back in an arrogant display. Phia took in the long, flowing white strapless dress the woman wore. The material was glorious, if such a term could be used to describe fabric. It bunched around a gold band which sat below her breasts, pushing them up higher, so her cleavage left nothing to the imagination. She understood for the first time this was what Ice must have fantasized about. The woman was beautiful, in a wicked-witch sort of way, with her deep-set brown eyes, her high cheekbones and her long, elegant neck.