Dark Burn: Fated & Forbidden

by Decadent Kane

  "Oh I'm keeping her alive just for you. See, I know you are a shade and I have been just dying to get one of your kind in my lab for a while now. I've saved her special just to help you feed. I want to know what makes something like you tick. How does your magic work? Oh I have so many questions and all the time in the world to find the answer."

  "You put that poor creature in the tank and mixed it with a human?" Why would anyone try to crossbreed a firebird and a human? Why would he even think Doulzen would feed on such a being? He glanced back at the woman in the glass tank, shuddered, and returned his gaze to Nicholas's.

  The man paused as if registering what Doulzen had said and then laughter bubbled out of his mouth until he was doubled over, tears streaming down his face. Though what the man thought was funny about this abomination of a mix, Doulzen had no idea. He glared until Nicholas finally managed to recover himself.

  "You think . . ." He wiped his eyes. "You think I created the firebird? Are you on something? Were you so sheltered as a shade? I thought you knew. Oh this is just priceless." He rubbed his stomach and shook his head. "Firebirds are human shape-shifters. How could you not know? Don't you hunt them?" Nicholas nearly bounced up to the cage.

  "I hunt birds that catch fire and bring them to my clan elders. The birds provide the nourishment we need. I have never brought a human back." His eyes hardened on Nicholas. The man had to be fucking with his mind, wanting him to believe that firebirds were not birds. Doulzen looked over at the female who was part creature, part human. They couldn't be shifters, could they? The elders would have told him. They would never devour humans . . . Doulzen's head started to pound. His chest constricted, but he cleared his throat, trying to ignore the sensation. He'd never taken a human, not once. He'd never seen them shift, ever. They were birds. Had to be birds.

  "There is so much I can teach you, so much to learn. What a brilliant tactic to get away clean with murder, having the younger generation do it for you. I'd love to meet these elders of yours. Just brilliant. Keep the masses believing in something they can easily wrap their heads around while behind the curtain . . . Reality is never as easy." Nicholas spread his arms and turned in a circle. "Welcome to reality."

  Doulzen took long, slow breaths, keeping the dizzy, overbearing thoughts away. They weren't humans. "I would have known if I had been bringing back humans. Or shifters, or whatever you'd like to call them. I swear I've only captured birds. They never shifted. Never." His voice cracked on the last never.

  Chapter 14

  Priya leaned against her cage, not wanting to look at the woman in the tank. The woman's eyes kept haunting her, pleading to be set free. She internally promised the firebird that she would, promised with every ounce of her being that Priya wouldn't leave without the female. Priya would do everything within her power to free them both.

  Her thoughts wandered to Doulzen. What had he done after Nicholas had taken her? She pictured the sturdy, silent man silhouetted against the sun, his hat shadowing his features. His long coat billowing around him as he walked. Even the thought of him gave her a sense of comfort she hadn't expected. Though she couldn't figure out why he would be any kind of real comfort to her. He wouldn't be rescuing her, he'd made that perfectly clear. She had to help herself.

  Looking around the room, Priya reconsidered her surroundings, trying to find anything that might be useful when she escaped these damn bars. If he came near her with something like a scalpel, maybe she could get it from him. She nearly laughed. With her hands behind her back? Gads, she needed them free first. Priya scooted along the floor of her cage. If she kept her back against the bars, maybe she could find a catch, something to help scratch at the ties, help her actually break them away. As she slowly crawled around her cramped cage, which wasn't even tall enough to stand in, she touched every single bar, only to find nothing but smooth metal.

  She looked at the bottom of her cage, her feet feeling around for anything, a crack, a little sliver of something, but again, all was smooth. Her heart picked up speed again as panic threatened to take hold of her. She huffed, gasping slowly for breath, trying to keep her control. She couldn't lose it. She needed to stay sharp, needed to be ready if an opportunity arose.

  Kind of like him walking out of the room.

  She should be working harder to get her hands free.

  Priya concentrated on moving her wrists. The pain came again as she strained against her bonds, a burning as she twisted. But the rope seemed to loosen just a touch more. If she could just pull one hand free, her binding would come apart easily. She grunted as she pulled at the material, pushing out with her wrists until her skin broke. She felt hot liquid run down her palms and knew it was her blood. She rubbed her skin in it, trying to get it up toward the rope before it dried too sticky to be useful. Just a little more . . . She held her breath and pulled one hand up and the other down. Suddenly, her thumb popped free. The burning and tearing of her skin nearly had her in tears, but at least her hand was free.

  Priya fell back against the bars, watching the side of the room Nicholas had left through, and waited for him to come back into the room. It didn't look like there was much of a way out, but all she could see was white. Finally something had gone her way. She slipped her hands in front of her, letting the rope fall into her lap. She rubbed her wrists; the small amount of blood had already dried on her skin and on the rope, turning a dark brownish red. Such an ugly color. Copper tainted the air but she ignored the smell. After moving her fingers around and stretching her arms out, she began retying the rope. All she needed was to make it seem like she was still tied up. Then she would have the advantage.

  Her back ached as she reworked the rope, making it into a loose slip knot, something she could easily manage behind her back—and quickly enough to catch Nicholas when she needed to. She had a feeling his hands would be reaching inside her bars as much as he could manage. He wanted to touch her . . . wanted her in general. Once he made the mistake of getting too close, she was going to slam his face into the bars by yanking as hard as she could. She smiled at the thought.

  Priya reached into her pocket, looking for her grandmother's feather, but Nicholas had taken it. Antsy, she put the rope behind her back and waited with bated breath for her captor to walk back into the room.

  As the minutes ticked by, doubt began to enter her thoughts. What if he didn't try to pet her through the bars again? What if he didn't even get close enough for her to grab him? She shook her head. No, she needed to stay positive. He would, eventually. He had to. And if it turned out he didn't . . . then she would find a way to make him. Priya glanced down at her shirt and yanked it lower to show just a touch more cleavage. One way or another, he would be slipping his hands between those bars.

  She heard his footfalls before she actually saw him. Priya's heart raced beneath her ribs, pounding with both excitement and fear. She flung her arms behind her back, winding them around the slipknot's tail, and stared at the side of the room. Nicholas walked out of what seemed to be thin air. He had just come from the empty side of the room, but she hadn't seen him there. Shit, had he been watching her? Did he know she'd slipped her rope? His cheeks were flushed, his amber eyes bright and shiny, as if he were having the time of his life. Priya glared. Whatever he'd been doing, she wished it hadn't brought him any satisfaction.

  She curled her upper lip and stared at him as he walked back over to his monitor. He didn't say anything about her hands being free, so maybe he hadn't seen anything. She heard the tappity tap of keys. Then he pulled out a box from under the desk. Another monitor came out of it. Nicholas cleared off a section of the desktop, hooked the gadget up to the second monitor by stripping some wires and crossing them with a spark, and then turned it on. What the hell was he doing now?

  "Hey. I'm tired. Would it be so bad if you got me that pillow and blanket now?" Priya asked. She didn't want to wait around and find out what he planned to do next. She just wanted out.

  Nicholas turned back to her.
"Of course. Sorry, I got all caught up in what I was doing." He stepped around the tank with the firebird in it, shuffled something, and then popped back around with a white pillow and a sheet. He tucked them under his arm as he stalked over.

  He pulled up next to her cage and shoved the pillow between the bars so it fell beside her. His eyes bulged as he looked down her shirt, and she didn't try to cover herself. She arched, inviting his gaze. He slipped the sheet between the bars and when his wrist was inside the cage, she grabbed ahold of it, pulling back with her feet and her entire body weight. Nicholas slammed into the bars with a satisfying thud.

  Chapter 15

  Priya's hands nearly slipped as Nicholas pulled back. Surprise etched his wide eyes. She planted her feet against the bars and yanked again, slamming him back into the bars a second time. She wrapped her legs around his arm, keeping it in place, and reached for the rope. It didn't take her long to pull the slipknot over one wrist. He tried to resist, pushing with his other arm, but he was in an odd position, bent nearly in half over the cage with very little leverage on his end. She tied the other end of the rope around the bar and cinched it tight. He wouldn't be going far now.

  "How do I get out of the cage?" Her eyes locked with his.

  "You can't escape." His face had turned a dark shade of red as he struggled. The vein on his forehead pulsed. "Let me go and I might forget this happened."

  Priya tsked at him and shook her head. "The hard way it is." With his arm pulled straight and tight across the cage, she braced her legs against the bend in his elbow—only she wasn't on the side that bent. She slowly started pushing. Bile rose at the back of her throat. She really didn't want to do this. Fast was better, slow would be more painful, but all she really needed was for him to know she meant business. Priya swallowed and tried to ignore the snap as she slammed her feet into the back of his elbow and it went forward in the wrong direction.

  He screamed, spit dribbling from his mouth, and fell to the bottom of the cage.

  "That was for your own good." She threw his words back in his face. "Please don't make me hurt you again. I just want out."

  "My . . . my pocket. Here." He shifted a very small amount, barely enough to indicate his left side. The same side pushed up against the bars. His breathing came out in gasps and he didn't look at his arm.

  Priya carefully avoided getting too close. She removed the hard, rectangular object from inside his pocket, and it fell to the floor of the cage. "This won't hurt me?" She eyed her captor.

  "No. No. It will let the cage open from the side." He tilted his head toward the side of the cage that faced the desk.

  "If it hurts me, when I come to, I will do worse to you. We clear?" She almost didn't want to press the button. He could jolt her with electricity again or some other horrific thing. He didn't want her dead, so she was far more worried about torture.

  "I swear." Spittle again flung from his mouth and dropped to the floor.

  Priya clenched her jaw and avoided looking at his arm as she slipped by it. Part of her couldn't believe how quickly she'd done it, or that she had followed through with it. She couldn't think about that though. She needed to get free.

  Priya took a deep breath and pressed the button. There was a soft click and the cage came open on one side, the door swinging to the right. Hope fueled her as she moved from under the bars. She flung the button to the floor and headed for the next cage, the glass one.

  The woman still stared out of her cage, now seeming to look at Nicholas instead of her. "How do I get her out?"

  "You are going to ruin all my work." He whimpered as if he'd hurt himself.

  "How do I get her out, Nicholas?" Priya turned back. He had been watching her with tears sliding down his face, probably because even the slightest movement amplified the pain from his arm. Veins had popped out on his hands, and his fingers were swelling. The rope looked as if it might actually be chafing his skin.

  She hated that she enjoyed the sight.

  He remained silent, unwilling to help. But instead of hurting him more, she walked over to the monitor. She read over the little levers and buttons, looking for a release of some kind, but didn't find any. Too afraid to just start pressing buttons, lest she make the woman hurt more, Priya looked around for a way to break the glass.

  She spied a metal chair. It didn't look comfortable, more like the kind of chair a security guard might sit on, the fold-out kind. Priya picked it up and swung as hard as she could at the glass. It barely cracked, but she made progress with the next swing and the next until it shattered and with a whoosh, water flowed out of the glass container. The woman slipped out with it.

  Wires were hooked up to her back, stuck on with some kind of suction-cup devices. Priya hoped removing them didn't cause permanent damage as she yanked all of them off the female's bare skin. In seconds, the woman began gasping and coughing up water, or whatever that liquid actually was. Priya dropped beside her. "Can you change?"

  The woman's eyes blinked as if trying to understand what Priya had said, and then slowly the bottom half of her body turned human. She shivered, and a wet orange feather stuck to Priya's pants, reminding her that Nicholas still had her grandmother's. Priya looked around for some kind of material to cover her, but found only a filthy white lab coat. It would have to do for now. She ran over, grabbed it off the wall hook, and then looped it around the woman's shoulders. "My name's Priya. We are going to find a way out of here. Give me a moment."

  Priya dashed over to Nicholas and searched his pockets. The man squinted, in visible pain. She found Gran's feather in his back pocket, the dirty thief. His good hand was gripping the bar so tightly he didn't even notice her taking the feather back. Priya rushed through the puddles on the floor back to the woman. She had finally stopped shaking and had buttoned up the front of the lab coat.

  "Capri. My name is Capri."

  Priya smiled and helped Capri to her shaky feet. "Glad to meet you. Let's find our way out of here." Priya walked the other woman over to the desk so she could use it to hold herself up while Priya tried to figure out how to get them out. Feathers were magical, and he'd said only magic in or out. But she didn't know an escape spell for feathers or how to use them to get out.

  She slammed a palm on the desk, startling Capri. "Sorry. Frustrated," she soothed.

  Priya looked up at the second monitor Nicholas had just installed.

  There on the screen was Doulzen, trapped in a . . . cage? Pulling on gold bars. Screaming her name.

  Chapter 16

  Doulzen had watched his mate rescue herself. His mind could hardly believe such a naive little thing had actually broken her captor's arm.

  After Nicholas had headed back over to Priya, he'd shaken the bars over and over again, trying to find a weak point. He couldn't deal with firebirds being human, so instead, he'd focused on freeing himself. He'd watched in both awe and horror as Priya had found her own escape. When she'd freed the firebird, he'd known he had to start making some noise, to get her attention somehow. She'd looked toward him so many times, and each time he'd yelled her name. He'd continued screaming for her and rattling the cage, unable to do anything else. Finally, she'd stopped, looked at some kind of screen, and froze.

  Priya turned and yelled, "Doulzen?"

  "I'm here! I swear." His voice had grown a little hoarse from the yelling. She seemed to be looking around, actively seeking him. Could she hear him? She turned to Nicholas.

  "Where is he?"

  "Who?" The word came out strained from Nicholas's mouth.

  "You know damn well who. How do I get to him?" Her voice had taken on a hard tone. Would she do the man harm again? She slammed a hand down on the desk and one of the lights fizzed above Doulzen's cage.

  When she'd snapped his arm, Doulzen had wanted to break the other one too, his body aching to give a little payback. But without his shadow powers, he was just a man in a cage.

  The thought rattled him to his core. The woman from his dream came back,
her words haunting him as he remembered what she would do if he did not win favor with his mate, create a bond. He shuddered. All of his powers, everything, would be gone. Would his clan survive the process . . . becoming only human? Would he survive it?

  He leaned over the bars and hunched down. There had to be some way out . . .

  He caught the bare hint of a shadow—mostly just dulled light from the bulb fizzling out, but it was there. He didn't waste any time. He gathered it. He wasn't quite sure how to use it, as escaping a cage hadn't been on the syllabus in shade school. He pushed the shadow toward the bar at the bottom; if he pushed using his magic, perhaps there would be enough give to break the bar. The shadow slid to the bottom of the bar and seemed to hover. Doulzen slammed his shoulder into the bar repeatedly until he heard a snap. He slid back and kicked with all his might. The shadow had disappeared into the light again, but it had helped enough. He was sure if he just bent the bar back . . .

  The bar twisted and groaned under his incessant force, enough that if he turned his body sideways and slid out, he'd be free. Doulzen took off his trench and rolled it into a ball, fascinated by how odd it looked without shadows hiding under it. This place gave off the oddest light, where shadows couldn't seem to break through. He threw the trench past the bent bar and it landed with a thud on the floor.

  Doulzen barely registered the conversation between Nicholas and Priya. His main objective: getting his body through the bars. Slipping his head through with his right arm, he pushed himself into the floor, trying to make himself both skinny and small, which would be much easier in the darkness. He bent his legs and pushed up as his hand reached out, pulling. His pants snagged on the bottom. Each time he tried to push or pull, the waist tightened. He took a deep breath in, trying not to let this small task frustrate him. She'd gotten out of her own cage, and for some odd reason, he needed to free himself too. He didn't want her to find him like this.