War of Hearts

by S. Young

  He was the first human she’d ever killed.

  Ashforth had cleaned up the mess like it was no big deal. He’d given her a fatherly smile and praised her strength. It had horrified Amanda and Devon and he’d promised nothing like that would ever happen again.

  But they’d allowed it to happen by letting Ashforth keep her here. A prisoner. A science experiment.

  A torture victim.

  For four fucking years.

  She turned her head away from Devon, unable to bear looking at him.

  The night before, Thea had escaped. Again. It took a lot of strength, most of which was zapped by the room, but she was determined to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the last two times she’d tried she hadn’t even gotten out of the house before someone shot her in the back with a dart. It contained that black substance Ashforth used to weaken her whenever she was out of the room.

  “Dad’s furious, Thea.” She could hear Devon pulling a seat over to the bed.

  Yeah, she kind of guessed that when he hit her.

  She’d escaped the house the previous night. But a vampire tackled her on the tennis court and injected her. The last thing she remembered before she blacked out was Ashforth’s enraged expression as he punched her in the gut.

  “I’m worried about you. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

  She scoffed and turned to look at her adoptive brother’s handsome face. “If you were really worried about me, you would have gotten me out of here a long time ago.”

  Remorse darkened his expression. “He has too many men. He’s too powerful.”

  Yes, Jasper Ashforth had used his money to surround himself with supernatural guards at his island estate. He’d bought the small island on the Lawrence River, just off Lake Ontario, a few years ago. It was far enough from the other islands that dotted the river to afford complete privacy. He’d converted the house for his purposes and as far as Thea knew, he invited no one but family onto the island. For example, none of his wealthy business acquaintances or friends knew he’d kept his ward in the basement of his island house for the last four years.

  “I saved you,” she whispered.

  Devon nodded, eyes bright. “I know. You don’t know how much I wish I could return the favor. But I’m not strong enough to fight him. I’m sorry.”

  Thea’s mind flew back to those first days after the plane crash. After what she’d experienced, the terrifying plummet out of the sky, the screams of terror she could still hear in her head, the horror in her parents’ eyes when they looked at her for the last time …

  And the crash itself. She remembered the noise, pain, and burning all over her body. She could remember the awful smells, but she couldn’t remember getting out of the wreckage. One minute they’d crashed, there was darkness, and the next Thea was on the ground outside the wrecked plane.

  Her therapist said it was a saving grace, and Thea agreed. There were some images a person didn’t need in her head.

  The Ashforths had been worried she wasn’t talking and so they’d taken her to the therapist, but she refused to speak at first there too. It wasn’t until a week later when Devon, only a year older, found her sitting alone in the gardens. He sat down and talked to her about this video game he was playing. Thea had listened to him chatter away, and it was the first time she’d felt a modicum of normality. When he’d eventually asked her if she wanted an ice cream, she’d opened her mouth and said yes.

  Devon had taken her hand and led her into the house.

  The years between twelve and fifteen hadn’t been easy. But she believed she was protected. Ashforth kept the media frenzy at bay. Everyone wanted to know about the miracle child who’d survived a plane crash. But she also later discovered the government had come knocking, wanting to look at the little girl who walked away from a plane crash almost unscathed, and Ashforth used every ounce of his influence and connections to keep them away. There were overzealous religious people who wanted to get near her because they believed God had touched her.

  He kept them all away.

  And she’d been grateful.

  Thea had been secretly terrified of anyone finding out she was different. Her parents had been so careful to protect her secret.

  Kids at her new private school were distant at first, but Devon was popular there and he forged a path for her. She made friends; she did well at school, and every week she visited a therapist to make sure she was dealing with the trauma of losing her parents the way she had. Except for being careful not to show her true strength, her healing abilities, or any of the weird things she could do that her parents had taught her to control and hide, Thea was as happy as a girl who’d lost her parents could be.

  There had been moments of near misses with the Ashforths. Cuts that healed immediately. A broken leg on a skiing trip that miraculously was no longer broken by the time they got her back up the hill.

  Still, she thought she’d gotten away with it.

  Two years later, on her fourteenth birthday, Ashforth tried to get her on a private plane for the first time for a family holiday to Italy. Thea had lost control in front of the family who sat in the limo waiting for her to get out onto the tarmac. During the struggle, she remembered the air crackling and the Ashforths staring at her in horror, asking her what was wrong with her eyes, and then …

  Thea remembered the explosion of glass

  To this day, she still didn’t know how she’d done it … how she’d caused the front windshield of the plane to shatter … but she had. She was grateful the pilot and flight attendant hadn’t been hurt.

  However, everything changed in that moment. Ashforth realized what it all meant. Her surviving the crash, her broken leg healing, and so, like the naïve idiot she was, she’d told the Ashforth family about the abilities she’d had as long as she could remember. That her mom and dad had protected her, helped her hide them.

  “And they didn’t know what you are?” Ashforth had sounded exasperated. “You’re extraordinary, Thea, and they didn’t want to know why?”

  “I’m their daughter. They were human. How could I be anything else?”

  Ashforth was in awe. Even as a fourteen-year-old kid, she knew for him it was all about power. He’d amassed a lot of it over the years, but Thea had her own kind of power. A power he coveted. Ashforth became obsessed with understanding it.

  The first year of the family knowing wasn’t too bad. Amanda worried about her and insisted she continue to hide her abilities, scolding Devon when he goaded Thea into a sprint race he had no hope in hell of winning. He just wanted to see her move like a blur. Devon had the typical attitude of a fifteen-year-old boy who found himself living with the equivalent of a superhero sister. He thought it was awesome.

  Thea knew Ashforth had begun researching her. He came to her with his findings and opened her eyes to the world of the supernatural. Werewolves, vampires, and witches were real. And yet, Thea wasn’t any of those things. So, he kept researching.

  And as the months passed, Devon grew ill.

  Leukemia.

  “My son is dying, Thea.” Ashforth had stormed into her bedroom one night, a manic wreck. He fell at her bedside. “You have to help.”

  “How?” she whispered, terrified of losing another person she loved.

  “Your blood. I’ve tried vampire blood. I’ve tried werewolf blood. They heal quickly but their blood doesn’t do the same for humans.”

  He’d fed creepy paranormal blood to Devon? She’d been shocked.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I had to try. And you have to let me try yours.”

  An ugly knot formed in her gut, a strange foreboding, but she nodded her agreement.

  It had worked.

  It saved Devon.

  But Thea’s life changed.

  She’d known the very next day because the warning burn she’d felt on the back of her neck the day her parents died, the inexplicable racing of her heart, the feeling of dread, she’d experienced it all as Ashforth walked i
nto the kitchen that morning.

  At first, he just wanted to take more blood. He had people he could trust analyzing it. But Thea soon started to realize that he’d learned more about her than he’d let on.

  “I want to test the limits of your capabilities.”

  He’d made her train to fight werewolves and vampires he’d hired. Supernatural men and women whom he then kept on at the estate. He said they were her trainers, her bodyguards, but Thea knew they were prison guards. As he’d hoped, she soon surpassed them in their fight sessions until it became less about training and more about testing her speed and strength against the strongest supernaturals he could find.

  She no longer went to school and was homeschooled by Amanda because Ashforth refused to allow a tutor onto the island. Thea overheard arguments between Ashforth and Amanda about his treatment of her, but he promised his wife he’d never hurt Thea.

  Thea knew it was a lie.

  The burn up the back of her nape told her so.

  Her suspicions were proven true the first time Ashforth allowed a vampire to break her neck. The evidence was insurmountable when a wolf took a knife to her gut. It became a sick kind of torture when a marksman shot at her while she ran an obstacle course.

  As Thea plotted her escape, stealing money from the house where she could and keeping it hidden under her mattress, she was unaware that Ashforth had discovered something important about her.

  One day he killed any affection she’d had for him when he came to her with a blade made of a metal the color of mercury. She’d braced herself but nothing could have prepared her for the agony that tore through her lower gut when he plunged it into her.

  The whole time he’d studied her reaction like she was a science experiment.

  Thea had laid stunned on the floor, having never experienced such pain before. Not even the burns from the plane crash had hurt like this. And it took much longer for the wound to heal.

  Amanda had walked into the room unawares.

  Thea could still hear her screaming in horror at Ashforth. Amanda thought he’d killed her.

  There were so many times she’d cursed herself for waiting to run. In the time she’d procrastinated, her so-called guardian had the basement converted. He’d lined it with the same metal as the blade he’d stabbed her with.

  Over the years, he’d developed a drug that weakened her and weapons from that he never used but lorded over her to force her submission. All pretense was over. Ashforth wanted to be like her. The transfusion of blood didn’t change his DNA, it merely healed, but he’d lost all reasoning in his obsession for power. He would keep her locked up until he found a way to become what she was.

  Four years she’d been a prisoner in that basement while he stockpiled her blood and experimented on it, searching for her source of power, searching for a way to become like her. He was like some fucking fantastical villain from a comic book.

  No one would believe this shit even if she did escape.

  “You can’t try to escape again, Thea,” Devon pleaded. “I’m afraid of what he’ll do to you.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Like he could do anything worse to me.”

  The words had barely left her mouth when the door opened. Lifting her head off the pillow, that burn scored down her neck and her pulse escalated.

  Ashforth strolled in, his face blank, calm. At his side was a vampire called Morton. He’d worked for Ashforth for almost three years and was built like a werewolf, big and bruising. But Morton had the speed and reflexes of a vamp.

  In other words, he was deadly.

  And in his hands was a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  The special kind.

  The strips of the whip weren’t leather. They were strips of familiar silver-gray metal.

  True fear filled Thea’s mouth.

  “Dad, what are you doing?” Devon stood up from the chair, blocking her view. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Son, get out of my way.”

  To her surprise, Devon got into a fight with his father—he even threw a punch—but the werewolf guarding the door easily wrestled him out of the room. His horrified gaze locked with Thea’s before he was expelled.

  Leaving Thea alone with Ashforth and the vampire and the weapon.

  “You shouldn’t run, Thea,” he said calmly, like they were discussing the weather. “I never wanted it to come to this, but you need to know what the consequences are if you try to run again.”

  The werewolf returned to the room with a friend to help secure her. She fought through the fatigue the room cast over her, but she wasn’t strong enough. She refused to scream though. She clenched her teeth and struggled with all her might, knowing it was futile as they held her between them. Their hands locked tight on her arms, splaying them out like a cross, and they tore her shirt down the back. The fabric fell away, exposing her skin.

  It was pain unlike anything she could have imagined.

  Tears streamed down her face as she stuffed her screams deep inside. Thea tried to keep on her feet as the biting lash ripped into her flesh, tearing and tearing until there couldn’t possibly be anything left.

  To her despair, the fog of agony descended, her knees buckled, and she slipped in the blood and bits of flesh beneath her.

  But then hope lingered in the dark. Hope that perhaps this was the end. Ashforth had told her he suspected her invincibility meant she was immortal.

  She’d never die.

  That’s why he was so obsessed with the idea of being like her. He didn’t want to be a vampire whose immortality came with compromises. Where death came too easily.

  He wanted to be like Thea.

  A true immortal.

  God, she hoped he was wrong. She hoped the darkness descending over her was the end and somehow a hand would reach out for her and she’d finally be with her mom and dad again.

  “I’m so sorry, my darling girl,” a voice whispered through the dark, through the burning pain. “I’m going to get you out. I promise. I won’t let this happen again.”

  “Mom?” she croaked.

  A sob sounded in her ear. “No, darling, it’s Amanda.”

  The pain intensified and Thea could feel her body, could feel her eyelids. She pushed them open, and her blurred vision came into focus.

  Amanda Ashforth’s tear-streaked face filled it as she bent over Thea.

  “Alive?”

  Amanda’s face crumpled, and she nodded.

  “No.” Thea shuddered, the movement hurting her back. “No.” The tears came before she could stop them and her adoptive mother took her hand, holding it in comfort as Thea sobbed out all the pain of the last seven years.

  When finally she stopped, she was exhausted. The taste of salt from her tears filled her mouth.

  “Your back is healing slowly.” Amanda looked green. “But I don’t know if the scarring will fade.”

  It wouldn’t. Thea still had a scar from where Ashforth had plunged the knife into her gut all those years ago.

  The door creaked open behind her.

  “Time’s up,” a female voice Thea recognized as one of the vamps cut through the room.

  Amanda glared in the door’s direction. “Time is up when I say it is up.”

  “Time’s up when Mr. Ashforth says it’s up. He said fifteen minutes with Miss Quinn and no more.”

  “I’m coming.” Amanda raised an eyebrow. “You can leave.”

  The door shut and Amanda bent down to Thea. She felt her adoptive mother’s lips on her ear. “I will get you out.”

  That awful hope glittered inside Thea’s darkest hiding place. Amanda had often apologized for her husband’s behavior, but she’d never dared to promise Thea an escape. And although Thea didn’t know how it could be possible, the hope that someone might care enough to save her still existed.

  Two weeks later

  * * *

  Staring at her back, Thea felt foolish for the shallow worries that filled her head. When she finally had sex, what would t
he guy think about those awful scars? Would he see the scars as she did … as a failing? As a weakness? As proof she wasn’t strong enough to protect herself? Would they repulse him?

  Maybe she could have sex without removing her top?

  She scoffed at herself as she pulled on a shirt. She couldn’t wear a bra yet because her back was still too tender. Going braless was a nightmare. She was too full in the chest to go without a bra and she hated the way some guards watched her like she was a piece of meat.

  Guards, she reminded herself.

  In her prison.

  Where she was unlikely to ever meet someone she was attracted to in order to lose her virginity.

  God, would she die a virgin?

  Oh, right … possible immortality.

  If that was true, she just had to survive this nightmare until Jasper Ashforth died. Unless he became like her.

  Thea felt rage churn in her gut at the thought. No way was she staying stuck down here for another fifty fucking years. Or worse, forever.

  Right on cue, the door to the room opened and Amanda walked in with a human guard (armed with a dart gun) at her back. She smiled sadly at Thea. “I’ve been granted permission to walk with you around the grounds for an hour.”

  That tickle of intuition, of hope, bloomed in Thea and she nodded carefully before pulling on a pair of sneakers to follow Amanda out.

  To her surprise, the human guard and a werewolf, who Amanda called Sarah and Jack respectively, trailed them. No others. They kept a polite distance as Amanda led Thea down the basement corridor; right led up to the house and left led out into the gardens.

  Another guard opened the exit and Thea blinked against the natural daylight as she walked up concrete steps to the outside. The sun felt amazing on her face after spending weeks in a windowless room.

  The large house was surrounded by the island’s forest, which acted as a natural perimeter on three sides. The grounds also housed a tennis court, indoor and outdoor pools, a guest cottage, and perfect lawns that led down to their beach.