by Kaia Bennett
“Perhaps,”—he stood and stared me down, despite our equal height—“you think I’m stupid. My old age has made me somewhat fuzzier, I admit that. But not so fuzzy I can’t see the sharp edges of a lie. Altani said she smelled a witch. She said the girl looked turned. Turned!”
My father sneered, and the change in his expression startled me. His fangs, long and pointed escaped his lips. When I retreated, he snaked out a hand and hauled me close. Our foreheads slammed together so hard, I flinched, when flinching was the worst thing I could do, but his iron grip wouldn’t let me go.
“The only thing worse than a witch, Jesse, is a turned witch. They’re poison. Only a fool would let their young drink drop after drop of poison without the antidote at hand. The antidote is death. We fuck them. We feed from them. Then, we kill them.”
I inhaled shallow breaths, now unable to look away from my father’s ferocious glare.
“You know this from experience, Father? Perhaps there’s some pretty poison in your past? A lovely Cree girl from Manitoba, maybe?”
For the first time in my life, I saw my father stunned silent.
Emotions I didn’t know he could feel flew across his features, rippling in his eyes like light on water.
So fast I could almost believe I’d imagined anything different he shifted to his neutral, normal, terrifying face. The bones of his forehead ground against mine.
“You’ve been spending too much time with witches, Jesse. Too much of a good thing will turn your mind soft. Let me help you. Tell me where the witch is—”
“I understand your concern, but you have nothing to worry about. You can’t take the word of some foreign pussy over your son. I’m not weak. I’m not at the mercy of a witch. I’m an Oldman and I’ve handled the witch matter. I’m insulted you felt I needed Cai’s instigation. You’re lucky I didn’t kill him, for being such a nosy bitch. To assume anything else is to assume I’m unfit. Do you think I’m unfit to be your heir, Metis?”
The best defense is a good offense.
For a long moment, he said nothing. When he lifted his head and nodded, I nodded in return. Relief, as sweet as witch blood, flooded my veins.
The second I get out of here I need to hide her, get her to a coven. I can get ahead of this witch hunting thing, make sure she’s never found.
When I stepped away, he held fast, tightening his grip. He encircled my throat in a two-hand stranglehold, lifting me into the air until my toes scraped the floor. I had only a moment to snarl and then the room canted, my entire body rising in the air and straightening into a plane. My vision blurred as the world fell past me. I stayed still, trapped in the grasp of my father, descending before I could feel the full brunt of my alarm.
I crash-landed onto the coffee table, glass shattering under me. Before I could suck in a breath and spring to my feet, my father dropped a knee to my throat. He didn’t crush my windpipe. Instead, he rested the joint in the hollow under my chin. He tilted his head to look at me while I fought to breathe through my nose and steady my fight reflex.
“I don’t think you’re unfit, Jesse. I think you’re my son. I think you’re too much like me for your own good. I’m going to help you get on the right track and remind you of some valuable lessons. First, we don’t lie. Lying is for cowards who fear what others will think. And second, we don’t mate with prey.”
She’s not prey.
Shards crunched under my back and head as my father dropped his weight by degrees. He patted down my pockets, then grabbed my jacket from out of the wreckage.
He pulled out my phone and tossed the device to Cai. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cai scroll through the screen but my passcode kept him locked out. I tried to speak, wheezed and coughed, then tried again.
“Fine.” I ground out past the bone throttling me. “You want the truth, I’ll give it to you.”
He gave an inch and I swallowed, my Adam’s apple skimming his shin bone.
“Go on.”
I smiled, a grim caricature of confidence.
My father had a point.
I was his son. We played tough, but in the end, we’d both lied. We were both cowards who’d fallen for a witch.
We were both stubborn. Both arrogant leaders who wouldn’t tolerate being questioned. I threw all my chips on the table and played my final hand.
“It’s none of your fucking business what I did with the witch. I’m your heir. One day in the near future, you’ll be dead, and this continent will be mine. I don’t owe anyone the truth. I take what I want and I do as I wish. I’m a fucking Oldman. Just like my father, and his father before him. Just like your brother. Or are you gonna kill me, too, Father? You ready to start over from scratch for some witch?”
My father’s tremor traveled through his leg and into me. His eyes wavered and fear glazed his human eyes.
That’s it, Father. Trust me. Listen to me.
My mate’s life depends on it.
“Cai, you and the guards escort Jesse to a cell. I have some phone calls to make, and then we need to get back on schedule.”
I sighed. Closed my eyes, and for one pathetic moment, tried to will Evie to hear me screaming for her to run. The knee on my throat lifted and two guards me dragged to my feet, hauling me to the elevator.
24
Seven. Six. Five.
The elevator descended, headed for the basement. As usual, the bastard’s number two man adopted a more congenial face than my father.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me the passcode to your phone.” Cai wiggled the phone, the light pinging off the screen. “That’s what I thought, you insist on doing this the hard way. I was hoping to save us some time.”
“Us?”
Cai winked. “Thanks to the legendary Oldman stubbornness, you and I are going on a fact-finding mission.”
Each ding became subtle and constant reminder of time moving forward. Time running out.
“Couldn’t just kill me quick, huh? Had to overstay your welcome, right to the very end.”
Cai chuckled. “You pissed the old man off. I thought he might kill you, but never underestimate his ambition. You have a dossier to put to good use and a queen to impregnate. No rest for the wicked royal. So, for now at least, you’re mine.”
Three. Two. One.
Cai leaned close to me and whispered, “Gotta say, I’m glad he didn’t tell me to kill you just yet. I’m looking forward to this. I’m incredibly curious about the witch—and your tolerance for pain.”
We exited the elevator and walked down a long corridor full of rooms that looked similar to the basement in Austin. Only, this basement would be better stocked and made for torturing my kind, instead of prey.
The lights flickered on, and the stark white fluorescence of torture greeted me. A metal rack loomed in the center of the room. Walls lined with everything, from pliers to saws and everything in between, were methodically organized by size and severity and held in place magnetically. The floor had vents that dipped slightly into the center of the room under the rack. All the blood would pool and disappear through those open slats.
“Secure him to the rack, gentlemen. Nice and tight. Then leave.” Cai perused the instruments as he took off his suit jacket. He hung the black fabric on a hook and rolled his shirt sleeves past the elbow. The guards lifted my arms and secured them to the rack. The metal strap around my neck shoved my skull into the unyielding torture device. My ankles were last. I didn’t fight purely as an act of defiance, a matter of dignity.
I won’t give this fucker the satisfaction.
Cai turned with a simple knife in hand to find me fuming. I wouldn’t have been surprised if steam came out of my ears. He smiled in response.
“You know when I get out of here, I’m going to kill you, right?” I raised an eyebrow. “Slowly. I’m gonna carve you into little pieces for every cut and every smug grin on your stupid, lap dog face.”
“I know you’ll try, yeah. I don’t know if you noticed this, but you a
ct as if you don’t like me very much. I’m not offended, though. I think your dislike will make for a very effective session.”
I returned his icy smile, crunching imaginary glass between my teeth.
Cai searched my eyes, his face close enough to kiss, as he cut down the center of my shirt like tissue paper. The fucker left nicks to my skin along the way on purpose. No one as methodical as him made accidents with a knife.
“Why turn her?” He sliced off my jeans. With a few sharp tugs, he tossed the remnants of my clothes behind me. “You had to know you’d get caught eventually.”
I stared up toward the ceiling and took steady breaths, just as I’d been taught as a child, when I’d learned all the ways my kind could be hurt. Pain, the kind we used for torture rather than foreplay, is weakness leaving the body, my father always said. Breathe in the blows, breathe out the agony. I’d taken a beating. I knew enough to know what would hurt. I’d never been on the rack, though. I’d never been taken to the limits of my mind and body.
“Unless. Don’t tell me you didn’t plan to turn her.” Cai laughed. I breathed. “She really did get under your skin, and she’s somewhere in the city as we speak. Why? Why did you turn her, just to bring her to her death?” He slid a hand into his pocket and waited for an answer, the very picture of rabid curiosity.
“I was trying to fix it. If my father hadn’t insisted on meeting before my free run ended, neither of you would’ve been the wiser. Timing is everything, I guess.”
“Hmm. It is. Timing is everything and patience is a virtue. One our kind doesn’t usually possess, ironically enough.” The other man kneeled before me, and untied my boots before slipping them off. He tossed them into the far corner behind him. They landed with a heart-jarring thud. “I’m quite the exception to that rule, Jesse, if I do say so myself. I have the patience of a saint.”
He glanced at the knife in is palm, spinning the bone handle through his fingers to test the weight. The cold glint of steel drew my eye to the razor thin edge.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“So, let’s get that vat full.”
The vat under my feet would catch all my blood. Another teaser for the torture to come. He poised the knife in front of my face. “Or, you can skip the pain and just give me the answers I need. Better you tell me and I go get the girl myself. The alternative might be less savory. For you. Metis doesn’t always employ men with my patience. Maybe they’ll sneak a taste of the witch before they turn her over?”
The tip of the knife bit into the hollow of my throat and sliced down to my bellybutton. I breathed through the sting.
Bastard. He made the cut shallow on purpose, forcing me to waste my healing abilities on foreplay.
“I can see you care about her. I wonder if she cares as much for you? If she were here, would she endure torture for the man who murdered her?”
He sliced an identical trail down the centerline of my body, a slight margin deeper. He added cuts along my chest now, like he’d open a cadaver.
“Flaying, Cai?” I sneered through gritted teeth. “Cute. Very Torture 101.”
“I think warm-ups are important. Don’t want to rush in and blow my load too soon.”
Breathe… in.
He added cuts along my chest now, like he’d open a cadaver. Like fileting salmon, he slid the knife just under the skin at the edge of my shoulder and drew a bloody line across my chest to my sternum. Then he stopped and lovingly repeated the motion on the left side of my body while I healed.
I forgot to breathe out, remembered, and struggled to push air through my teeth. He sliced deeper, slicing into the skin at the center of my chest. Baby flaps of skin were separated from the meat of my body with the skill of a surgeon. Blood rained down my chest. My fangs slid out at the threat. If only the neck strap weren’t keeping me in place. I’d tear chunks of Cai’s face off, bite through the front of his neck, and sever his spinal cord with my teeth.
“Where’s the girl, Jesse?”
A slice. The itch of skin and flesh stitching together resembled the sting of a thousand pathetic bees. Each time he dug deeper, cut further, until the knife toyed with the edge of each nipple, all the way down to my ribs.
He asked again. And again. And again. Every time he asked and I didn’t answer, he retread the pathways of his blade and flayed me deeper.
“The sooner you tell me, the sooner her suffering, and yours, will be over.”
Breathe out, breathe out, breathe in breathe in… b-breathe….
“You have so much to look forward to. So much waiting for you. A gorgeous queen. An heir of your own. This is the dawn of a new and powerful age for our kind, and you’ll be at the wheel. Why give that up for some half-breed? An accident, a freak of nature?”
I imagined Evie’s heat instead of the warm rain of blood down my body. I imagined her mouth on mine, sucking breath from my lungs. She’d forced me to breathe when I wanted to hold everything in.
“Why suffer for prey, Jesse?”
“She’s not prey.”
I swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in my mouth, the leeching effect of healing without fresh blood to aid me.
I should’ve fed more before coming here. I should’ve fucked that stupid cunt Altani into the floorboards. Why didn’t I just fuck her?
“If she’s not prey, tell me where she is. A predator can protect herself. Maybe we’ll find a use for her, if she proves herself worthy.”
“Maybe you can suck my dick.”
Cai laughed, the edges of his eyes crinkling with mirth. He gave his voice a singsong lilt. “Patience. Time enough to toy with your dick. Your ass, too, if I’m feeling frisky. Time and tools.”
Cai went through several silent, methodical iterations of flaying until he could swipe a large hand down the blood and fatty meat just under my skin. That shit stung, especially where his manicured nails pricked the tissue.
He strode away, finally, when I couldn’t suppress a growl of frustration. I watched him with a heaving, healing chest as he pressed the intercom button by the door.
“Send me a girl. Black, curly hair if available. Clothed. And leave the blindfold on.”
No!
Cai tasted the blood on the knife, ignoring the cut to his own tongue as he licked the blade clean, like a mixing spoon in those human baking commercials.
“I know you had a big breakfast—”
“I’ll fucking kill you.”
“—but I bet you’re hungry now. Since you only have a taste for the witch, I thought, why not give you a stand-in? Like in the movies.”
I’m not gonna be able to get through this if he doesn’t shut up. Cut me, break me, you’ll do that anyway. But for fuck’s sake, shut the fuck up.
Cai tossed the knife at me with such ease, the blade impaled me before I could register the throw. The knife was so well-balanced—so impossibly sharp—that it buried itself to the hilt in my stomach. I fought the urge to puke. Not from the pain, but from the tiny vibration singing through the blade, suggesting the tip struck the unyielding metal behind me. Not to say the shit didn’t hurt, because I roared from the pain, breathing shallowly as my body tried and failed, failed and tried again, to heal the through-and-through wound in my guts.
Cai had already unbuttoned his shirt when the intercom buzzed. He sauntered to the door with all the blood-soaked elitism of a true born ruler. Not for the first time, I wished Cai had been born in my place.
He can have this shit show, the rules, the games, the true born politics. I only ever wanted to be free to fuck and feed.
He escorted the blindfolded girl into the room and shut the door behind him. I heard the automatic lock—and so did she. Drinking in her form made my eyes shudder with hyper-vision. Saliva dripped from my fangs and my cock leaped in hunger. I could smell her heartbeat, I could taste life rushing in her veins.
“She’s pretty, isn’t she? She’s no empath of course, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
At the sound of hi
s voice, she flinched from his hold, but didn’t speak. She knew enough to keep quiet and leave her blindfold in place, even though her hands were free. How long had she been kept in the bowels off this building? How many humans were tucked away, just waiting for my father and his employees to sink needle-sharp fangs into their supple flesh? How many had they already fucked?
No… raped. That’s what Evie would call the act. Like me, strung up on this rack against my will. Who’d have thought I’d end up relating to a witch?
“Did you want a bite?”
He knew damn well I needed a bite. I glared and he laughed. The sound sent a violent shudder through the girl’s body. Shudders graduated to screams when Cai tore her shirt from her breasts.
“No! They said if I was good—Ah!”
Cai dragged her toward me by a fist buried in her curly hair. I growled at her approach. The pulse in her throat made my mouth water.
My nemesis pried her fingers open and placed her cold palm on my blood-soaked cock. She recoiled with a shriek, but he held firm.
“Get a nice, tight grip. That’s a good girl. They said if you were good, you’d survive, didn’t they?”
He gave the artery thumping in her throat a carnal lick that made her sob. Still she wrung my cock in her hand. A survivor this one. When her hand grew sticky and clung to my flesh, she inhaled deep and stilled. The second she realized the sickly sweet smell in the air meant blood she retreated. With nowhere to go, her spine pressed against Cai’s immobile frame.
“They lied, sweetheart, but you won’t die in vain. You’ll die so our next ruler can finally get his shit together. Quite an honor, isn’t it?”
She howled and tried to escape, but Cai still gripped the curly length of hair. He gave me a droll look, then shrugged.
“I guess she disagrees.”
“Just kill her already. Let’s see what’s behind torture door number three, okay?”
Cai narrowed his eyes, looking between my determined gaze and my hungry cock with an unanswered question lingering in the air between us.
“I wonder if you’d say the same if this were Evie in my arms? Your pretty little witch. You weren’t so keen on putting her out of her misery.”