Wicked Weapon (Dark Hearts Book 2)

by Cari Silverwood

  All normal for here. Fucked up and normal.

  Until he began to strangle her.

  I went to speak and found Einar had a knife of his own below my Adam’s apple.

  “Shhh, remember? She’s got to die anyway. Orders from a client.”

  “You can’t,” I croaked, sure that she was dying, if slowly.

  My heart pumped violently, blurring out all except this murderous act. What the fuck could I do? My inaction clawed at me. The chain between my hands tensioned with a click as I snapped my hands apart.

  The man choked her then released her and her movements were weaker every time he let go of her throat. Her face was dark-tinged, her lips even darker. If I were closer, she’d look blue.

  “She will die anyway. Sometimes they get damaged. Sometimes a client just needs them dead after they’ve been used awhile. The guards don’t mind. Keep watching.” The knife played on my skin, the point twirling.

  “Snuff films.” I gaped. “You’re making snuff films.”

  I didn’t make a habit of crying but this had me enraged enough, saddened enough that I wanted to bawl out an ocean. Fuck these men.

  “Not just that. This is how we bind our employees to us. They won’t run to the cops once they’ve murdered and sodomized a few of them too.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck you to hell and back.”

  Kaage laughed behind me, and his quiet words were deep and precise. “No matter if you succeed in becoming a mesmer or not, this is what you will do, one day.”

  Oh no I wouldn’t. I couldn’t look away as he finished her. Someone good should watch her last moments. He cut her throat.

  She may have been already dead since there was no spurt, only a slow well of blood cascading down her neck and chest, her stomach, then her legs, to drip to the floor. Urine ran down her legs next. Her face was so dark and swollen I couldn’t tell it was the same woman. Grotesque. Horrifying. What man would want to do this, let alone want it filmed so he could watch?

  Maybe a true hero would’ve smashed down the glass with his body and died trying to save her. Me, I just stood there wanting to vomit, while I cursed endlessly in my head.

  These men would pay.

  I’d just watched a person die. Someone must have loved her. Now I knew why Mavros was so determined to get his revenge.

  If this was what being a full-blown mesmer made you do... Though Mavros wasn’t like this. There had to be leeway, variations. Not every mesmer was as villainous as these two men.

  Not me.

  The last time I’d had sex with Zorie, she’d been so spaced out I’d wondered if she was going the way of the others. Einar had trialed walking halfway across the room to see if she would come by my actions alone. She hadn’t, though he’d had her tied up every which way, for his amusement. I’d forced her to orgasm on the dining table but not since then. My desperation had lent me power.

  I was changing, but I would never be like this.

  At a subtle clicking sound from the door behind us, Kaage whispered, “Excuse me a moment. I have a situation to fix.”

  “Of course,” Einar murmured.

  The open and close of the door was barely perceived background noise. I had to figure out my true situation, before something else irrevocable and terrible happened.

  Einar and Kaage were giving me things, considerations, help, even if I still had chains on me...giving me Zorie. My nostrils flared at that thought. The allure of a susceptible woman was a hundred times worse with her. This woman who had died, I’d felt it with her, dismissed it, let it drain away. I was developing that supernormal mesmer sense.

  It came and went in tides and I could tell when it had gone, like it had now. With so many collectable women, this house simmered constantly with the promise of sex. When the power arrived, I tasted it, it invaded my head in a peppery high-energy hum.

  At those times, I could have walked down a street and known who was a collectable and which women were plain and normal. This blossoming ability was dizzying. Heady. Like someone had gifted me with the keys to an empire and I only had to reach out and take.

  Easy as buying candy.

  Collectable, susceptible, acquired. Possessive words.

  Any of those woman I wanted, I could have, provided they weren’t taken already...

  I only wanted Zorie.

  My suspicions about Einar and Kaage never went away. They gave her to me, said here, become one of us and she’s yours. What was the catch? Were they fattening me for the slaughter too?

  Or was it simpler?

  The fear I’d carried for days, reasserted itself. What if I did change, and it made me like this? Despite the glass between me and the corpse, I thought I could smell her blood.

  Chapter 20

  Mavros

  “That’s enough,” I said softly. “Clean yourself up and get dressed, Helen.” I stepped away, zipped up my fly.

  Watching her have to take a moment to steady herself, with her hands still planted on the desk, it gave me that little frisson as always. Susceptible women could come from all walks of life, and that had been a joy from day one of being a mesmer. I’d chosen carefully over the years. All the women who were still my clients at Harnover and Black were susceptible. Most were now married. Though their sex lives were joyless, they seemed to derive happiness from their partnerships, and I hadn’t forbade any of them.

  I sat on the edge of the desk. Helen swallowed and raised her head, regarding me with a wide-eyed look that nevertheless spoke of her acquaintance with power. Not a woman who would ever submit to a man in any way, yet she must to me.

  Her lips were red and glossy with lipstick, and precisely outlined. Few smudges to her makeup despite the three or four orgasms she’d just suffered through. Suffered because, of course, I’d striped her pretty ass with my belt and my cane first.

  A soundproofed office was essential to a psychologist. I always made sure my clients were well satisfied. I cured them of their frantic need for fucking, temporarily, and I kept them on a string, ready to be used again – sexually or otherwise.

  I had one for every scenario – medical, political, scientific, laboratory, and even legal and espionage. Scotland Yard was as transparent to me as MI5. I was careful not to overstep. If anyone suspected, I could be followed and investigated, even without the evidence of my treasured fucktoys.

  “Helen?”

  She blinked and straightened, then went to pull up the bodice of her black dress.

  “Stop. Come here. Bring those pretty breasts with you and present yourself with your hands behind your back.” I beckoned.

  “Yes, Sir.” Breathless but obedient. Just how I liked my women.

  I smiled as she dutifully shuffled around the desk with her panties at knee-level, and arrived before me, in disarray.

  Such beautiful red nipples and bite marks. “These breasts make my mouth water and yet I just came inside you. Should I punish you for teasing me?”

  “Yes?” Oh the hope in that voice.

  “You like my pain, don’t you, Helen?”

  “Yes.” She’d strayed with her focus and was staring at my hands as they weighed each breast.

  As I took a nipple in each finger and thumb and squeezed, I felt around my eyes crinkle with my amusement. Helen gasped but stayed still, her hands at her back, her breasts pushing forward into my fingers.

  “I might need you in days to come, Helen. Will you be ready?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  She thought sexual. I knew it might be otherwise.

  “No words? Am I making you want to come again?” I knew I was. That she wriggled on the spot, in her impeccable couture dress with her three-hundred-dollar panties around her knees –exquisite. I loved the smell of a half-naked, cum-filled woman in the morning, and the sound of her coming again.

  I released one breast and placed my hand at the level of her sex. One fingertip toyed with her clitoris, barely nudging it, pressing in. After a while, after I saw how much she was dying for
more, I brought three of my fingers into a cone shape, tips together. I stroked them along her slit then rested them at her entrance.

  “Should a woman like you, of the highest echelons of society, be begging me to let you come?”

  “No.” Oh the plaintive sounds in that one word.

  “But you’re going to?”

  “Mmm.” She whined. “Please?”

  “Sit on my fingers, ride them, fuck yourself on them, and I’ll let you come.”

  I was going to have to clean up, a lot, before I had my morning coffee and croissant.

  Watching her fuck herself, moaning, pushing that slick, lubricated cunt up and down on my fingers while I crushed her nipple repeatedly and bit her other breast, damn, it was worth the mess.

  When she came, with all her shudders and squeals and trembling, with the crush of her cunt walls on my fingers, perfect moment.

  J’adore.

  I kissed her while she was recovering and weak of knee – I kissed her with one hand crunched into her carefully tossed-together blonde bun, while I kept my fingers inside her. One of the advantages of her being an early conquest was that she’d already been through the mesmer-induced bratty times. It’d been her reaction that’d led to me discovering the effects of my kisses.

  I gave her tissues for the mess and helped her pull up her panties and pantyhose, then I kissed her goodbye and told my receptionist, Meg, that I’d be going out for coffee.

  An encrypted text had come through. I read it, grinning.

  Jackpot. They’d taken the bait.

  As I pulled on my coat, I wondered where Zorie was and what she and Grimm were up to. Grimm mightn’t have survived but he was a lesser priority. My tracking device had not registered at all after all these days. She must be being held somewhere remote.

  Now perhaps, it mattered less. I had another lead. They’d responded to my order.

  One red-headed bitch called Zorie. She could be mine for a price, but I’d have to wait while she was trained, unless I wanted her in a lesser state.

  There was one way to qualify for that. One way they could release her to me early.

  Of course, I would say yes. The sooner the better. I hadn’t known they did this, but it was safe. It was me. I’d up the number I was willing to pay to make certain no one else would get to her first.

  If they said no, I’d buy her after training. I could catch them then too. Three to four more weeks for that. Either way, I had my lead. It made me unhappy to imagine leaving her with them any longer than I had to.

  Affirmative. I love those. Never seen a real one. Make me a snuff film featuring her, but I have to be present for it. Front row seat.

  Jesus. These men were sick.

  Chapter 21

  Zorie

  Waking up with the sheet tucked beneath my chin, all snug and warm was the creepiest ever feeling. I jerked awake. My eyelids were shut one moment, then open.

  The light was on.

  A bug flew about the light, tapping at the glass as it tried to get in. A bug. How had it entered my room?

  Where was the greenhouse? I sat upright, sobbing twice before I caught myself. The steel door – I’d been opening it. How did I get here?

  I dug the knuckles of my hands into my temples and strained to remember, hurting myself with the pressure.

  Nothing. A blank. I’d lost memories, again.

  I could go all night doing this, questioning.

  Okay. Take stock.

  Something about the house let me know when others were sleeping. I trusted that instinct since so far it’d been right.

  Three in the morning or thereabouts?

  What the hell was I doing in bed? Sleeping might prove the death of me. I needed to try to do something for every second that trying was feasible.

  Fear or not. I must do. To stay on the bed scared and moping, that’d eventually get me sold as a sex slave to some asshole millionaire.

  I’d lost memories. This house was fucking with my head. Given time and enough of those episodes of amnesia, I might lose who I was. My stomach twisted up tight while I thought about that.

  Stomach ulcers, brain embolisms, whatever wanted to get me, I didn’t give a shit.

  I fumbled for and found my hairpin under my pillow and I rose and went to my door, barefoot again. Shoes seemed wrong. Like maybe I could feel the dangers through the concrete beneath my feet, before they came around the corner.

  I was going outside again. I gulped. Someone had brought me back here. Or I had. Then I’d just tucked myself in.

  I pictured some stranger doing it and shuddered.

  Shut up, imagination.

  Grimm had told me not to explore the house. Least, I think he had? He didn’t understand how much this called to me. It was the one, big advantage we had.

  I needed to know.

  As I opened the door, the hinges creaked mildly. I blinked at the feeble light on the ceiling then along the empty corridor to the left and the right. Dare I try to find that room again?

  I would leave it to luck. I wasn’t really sure how to get there.

  As I passed the second door, one that held another female captive, I recognized something and swung my head toward the grille. Even before I looked in, I could tell it was Peta. By...feel.

  Strange, how I knew that – as strange as knowing she’d been in the army before she told me.

  Before I could think it through, I pulled opened the door, stepped in, and walked to her.

  She lay asleep in bed, as everyone should be this early in the morning.

  While I checked her out, I took a second to contemplate the possibilities. Peta was gently snoring. Would she still be a zombie, like she’d been at the table? I poked her upper arm with the hairpin.

  As she sprang awake, sitting upright like some switched-on mannequin, I slipped backward.

  “Hey. It’s okay. It’s just me, Zorie, from the breakfast table, remember?”

  I prayed she still had such a thing as memories.

  For a long while she sat there, pillow clutched to her chest, regarding me.

  I could tell she was worried and that single emotion gave me hope. Any response would do. Anything except zombie-isms.

  “Peta!” I whispered. “Do you know me?”

  The light streaming in through the grille showed me her startled face.

  “You. Oh yes. I know you. Zorie. You’re back. Did you want more lessons?

  I gaped at her. What the fuck was she talking about?

  “What?”

  “Like before. You asked me for lessons.”

  “I did?”

  “Training. You asked me to show you how to kill with that.” She gestured at the hairpin in my hand.

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck. I stared at her.

  “I’ve been here before?”

  “Yes. Three nights.”

  How was that possible?

  Her focus slipped lower. “You’re hurt?”

  “What?” She must mean my hand. I held it up, ready to dismiss the hairpin wound, only to see three holes in the webbing between finger and thumb.

  I had been busy. How long had I been here? What else had I done that I couldn’t recall? For a blurred second, my hand shook. The room shook, rumbled.

  Fuck.

  I grabbed my wrist, held it until all was quiet.

  “Make room.” When she’d shifted across the bed, I sat down. “What else did we speak about, and...”

  I glanced across at her. She still seemed startled, her eyes a little too wide, but maybe that was the whole mesmer thing affecting her? She’d wedged the pillow at her back. Her white, shift nightie, her pixie-cut, blond hair, it made me think of Wendy from Peter Pan. Here I was, arriving in the middle of the night, with my magic to set her free.

  “And?” Her forehead furrowed.

  “Was I a good student?”

  “I think so, though I can’t really be sure you can use it properly. I only had combat training with a knife. A hairpin might
work to disable, but the eyes would be a better target than the eardrum, where you asked about. Even stabbing in the throat might not put a man down.”

  God damn. I remembered it now. I did. Not everything, but I could see myself here. I touched the places she’d recommended, remembered practicing on her, in a fake way, then on her pillow, stabbing it over and over.

  Her little speech had been said in a matter-of-fact tone. This Wendy would scare Peter Pan.

  The hairpin looked as innocent as her.

  “You need to practice putting it in your hair, if you want to carry it about.” Peta slipped off the sheet and sat up on her knees to come behind me.

  Her hands playing in my hair as she created a bun, felt so comforting, so human, after days of being treated as an object. My eyelids drifted down for a few seconds. Being at the hairdressers had often hypnotized me.

  I could feel her behind me. Her mind. Female. A naturally active and excitable woman but a little dulled, like a flame on a stove set to low. How could this be?

  When I’d entered the room, I’d done something. I’d reached out and touched her mind, her aura. Mavros had kissed me to give me the mesmer bug. It had to be that. What if...

  “Kiss my hand, Peta.” I held it high, next to my neck and felt her shift then her lips embraced my skin.

  I snatched my hand away, heart pounding. Crap.

  This was not at all what I’d expected. I had done that. An elation consumed me until horror quenched it.

  “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” I screwed my head around and saw the worry on her face. “I won’t ever do that again.”

  Being a mesmer let you do sexual things. I could control her. This was just fucked up. Completely.

  “Okay. I’m okay.” She tugged at her lip with her teeth. “They do worse.”

  Double crap. Tears were brimming on her lower lids.

  “They do.”

  “Mmm.”

  I turned away. “You remember.”

  “Some. It’s blurry.” She sniffed then began to arrange my hair again. “I want to get out of here but I can’t. Worst of all, I never know what is happening until you come in.”