No Love for the Wicked

by Powell, Megan

  But it wasn’t working. The woman behind the door was nearly drained, should have died weeks ago. In fact, he’d told Uncle Max that she was already dead. But he’d kept her alive. This one, this Marlena, he refused to let go.

  “You will forget you ever found this place,” he hissed into my face. “You will never return, never speak of it, never picture it, never think of it ever again. You think you’ve suffered? You do not know of suffering. But you will. If you so much as consider returning here, any reprieve you have ever experienced will vanish. Your life is nothing. Speak, and it will be nothing but suffering.”

  Eyes stretched wide, I nodded as best as I could with his grip so tight in my hair. I could feel blood trickle from my scalp. His face tightened. His thoughts slammed shut to me, but not before I caught one last glimpse: he was afraid his brothers would discover this secret place and the prisoner he kept here. He didn’t love her—I don’t think he was actually capable of an emotion like that—but he was obsessed with her. He wanted to keep her despite his brothers’ demands that all the supernaturals brought here be killed after he was done experimenting on them. And now I knew.

  Pain. Piercing, all-encompassing, and right in my heart. I hunched on instinct and could see the handle sticking out of my chest. He’d stabbed me with his favorite blade—the one with the special engraving on it. Now he was twisting it into my heart. I gasped. A surge of power flew out of me. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried, not with this much pain cutting through me. Dark light filled the corridor. His hair blew back from the powerful impact of energy, but he held on tight to my hair and his knife. He wouldn’t let go until the life in my eyes was completely gone.

  A soft whine came from behind the closed double doors. I closed my eyes. I would suffer now; I knew it. I would die and come back just as I’d done dozens of times before. Then my suffering would really begin. It didn’t matter what Father said, whether I spoke or thought of this corridor again. I knew his secret now. And for that, I would pay again and again.

  I took a long, slow drink of whiskey and stared out at the falling snow from the front window in the farmhouse’s great room. Secrets and power. That was the essence of my father’s existence. I could so easily remember the details of my torture sessions, the gut-wrenching anticipation of knowing I was about to be found in one of my hiding places or the humiliation of my father’s continued hatred. Those things had been so much the norm in my life that recalling them was nothing more than a matter of fact.

  But other memories remained hidden in my mind. Secrets. Like the hallway or the woman—things that I truly hadn’t thought about until tonight, when I knew in the next few days I’d be approaching another guarded door that Father didn’t want breached. What kinds of secrets would I stumble upon this time?

  I finished off my whiskey and headed to bed. Don’t think about it. Speculating wouldn’t accomplish anything. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything there anyway. Just a list of meeting minutes like Chang was hoping for.

  But something inside me knew it would be more than that. Otherwise, why would the thought of sneaking up to Father’s office make me feel the same bone-deep dread that I had felt so long ago that day in the green corridor?

  CHAPTER 21

  The golden island of my dream had grown to include trees and grasses. The bloody lake stretched farther as well, disappearing into the distance where I’d never thought to look before. I knelt down, and my twin was there, smiling up at me. I touched my fingers to the blood, and her smile widened, calming some of the uneasiness that hovered here tonight.

  I had gone to bed worrying about tomorrow’s mission and being near Father again, but now that I was here, dreaming, my thoughts turned to my dream man. Where was he?

  “Hello, Magnolia.”

  I spun around and saw him approaching from farther inland. He strolled, hands in the pockets of his slacks, eyeing me cautiously.

  “You are part of my dream,” I said quickly. “A part of me. You are in my head because my subconscious needed an image to go along with some lingering, fucked-up need to keep ties to my family. That’s all.”

  He hesitated. “As you said before, you are more than the others of your bloodline, Magnolia. You can recognize a lie when you hear it, no matter how much you want that lie to be truth.”

  The blood of the lake churned. A light breeze ruffled the trees along the shoreline.

  “Who are you?” I said, ignoring the tremble of my voice.

  The man smiled sadly. “No one who is going to hurt you, Magnolia.”

  “Then why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  Waves started to crash against the shore. The breeze grew stronger and whipped my hair around my face. I glanced down, and my hands had shifted again. Good.

  “I’m here because I recognized your power.” He kept his hands in his pockets, his face calm. “I wanted to get to know you. Being near you, even in your dreams, it makes me feel…good. I like you.” He was making an obvious effort to be nonthreatening. I didn’t buy it.

  “You look like my father and uncles. You’re from them, aren’t you? They’ve sent you to find me. Well, you can just go to hell. Because I’ve already done my time, and there’s no way you’re taking me back.”

  My words were slurred as my teeth grew in number. I crouched down with my clawed hands ready.

  His eyes flared red like the last time. “I am not here to hurt you, Magnolia.” He spoke with precise enunciation. “I am not from your father or your uncles. They don’t have the power to be here with you. You know that.”

  “Then who are you?”

  He slowly took a step forward, his red eyes locked on mine. “You said you had the ability to trust and to be trusted. Well, prove it. You and I have shared many conversations in this dream place of yours. Never once have I tried to hurt you or manipulate you in any way. I simply want to talk to you. That’s all.”

  “You manipulated me by lying about who you really are. I thought I’d made you up.”

  “That was completely unintentional. I assumed you had realized from the beginning that I was alive outside your mind.”

  He stopped a few feet away from me. I remembered our previous encounters. He’d looked and acted so much like my family, but with an interest in me instead of hatred. Slowly I straightened. He nodded toward the bloody shoreline, where the waves had started to calm.

  “I believe she’s trying to tell you something,” he said.

  I glanced down at my reflection and saw for the first time that my twin wasn’t smiling. Instantly, I dropped to my knees. “What did you do to her?”

  “I’ve done nothing,” he insisted, still staying back several feet, giving me space. “She is a part of you, and I’ve told you, I have no desire to hurt you in any way.”

  I touched my fingertips to the blood’s surface. My claws vanished the moment I thought them away. My twin raised her hand as she always did, as if she could touch her fingertips to mine. But then she turned her hand so her palm was flat underneath the surface.

  I recognized the scar immediately. It had been branded into my own flesh time and time again for as long as I could remember. Two Xs, one over the other, with the sides linked by a curved line, making the mark seem more like a butterfly than a brand. All of Father’s older tools—the ones Grandmother had used on Father, Max, and Mallroy when they were boys—had the emblem, the maker’s mark from whomever had custom-made the torture instruments before I was even born.

  I looked at my twin as she lowered her hand again. “Did Father have you tortured before killing you?” I asked out loud. “Even as an infant?”

  A moment passed, and her serious expression faded. She smiled again, just as I always thought she should.

  I turned back to the mystery man. He was gone. I looked all around the golden landscape and out over the red lake, but he was nowhere. Turning back to my twin, I knelt down again and played my fingers back along the blood. She smiled that wide smile once more.
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  CHAPTER 22

  “Why the hell is Cordele leaving me messages about seeing a movie?”

  Heather laughed. “How many times do I have to tell you? She wants to hang out with you. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  Pacing the living room floor, I had my cell phone in one hand and my whiskey in the other. I’d tried everything to distract myself from my dream and from the gala that was only a few hours away. Replaying Cordele’s message over and over had turned into the favorite pastime of the hour. “Are you going to the movie too?”

  “I wasn’t invited,” Heather said.

  The idea of just hanging out with Cordele still didn’t sit well with me. I got that she had been trying to be friendlier since I’d returned, but she’d kept her thoughts so focused on random nonsense, it didn’t make sense. I mean, if she was sincere, she’d want me to see it in her thoughts. Right?

  “You should do it,” Heather added. “I’ve always gone to more movies with my girlfriends than I do with Jon. Even before we were ever boyfriend-girlfriend.”

  I stopped pacing. “Is that what you call him? Your boyfriend?”

  She chuckled again. “I guess so. I mean, I’m thirty-one years old, so saying I have a boyfriend feels a little stupid, but it’s the easiest way to describe our relationship to people. I suppose I could say significant other, but that’s kind of a mouthful.”

  Hmm. I started pacing again. “So this Cordele movie thing—you really think I should do it?”

  “I told you she wanted to get to know you better. It could be fun.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Are you ready for tonight?” Her voice grew softer. My stomach clenched.

  “I still have a few hours before I have to get ready.”

  “Well, I better get going. I don’t have a fancy dress to wear or anything, and I still have to get the surveillance stuff together. Try to get some rest this afternoon, OK? Tonight is going to be fine. Jon’s confident, and so is Thirteen. I’ll call you tomorrow, regular time.”

  After we hung up, I stared at the clock in the kitchen. Six more hours until the gala. I think I had enough whiskey to make it that long. Maybe.

  Just breathe.

  The dress was a last-season’s John Richmond bought on sale, not a custom design fit to my every curve. There was no stylist pouring me into it, pinching and primping as they sweated with fear. The shoes were from some store and matched as well as could be expected when not made especially for the dress. The earrings were mine—one-carat diamonds I’d been wearing the day I’d escaped.

  Just keep breathing.

  My hand shook, and eyeliner smeared across my lid. Again. I grabbed some more toilet paper and wiped off the black smudge. Maybe I could get by with just the foggy eye shadow and mascara—those looked somewhat decent. No. I could do this. I looked at myself in the mirror again. This was a Network mission. Not one of Father’s estate parties. I would not be bound and gagged as soon as the last guest left. I would not have to run and hide when the servers started clearing the buffet, hoping that maybe this time Father wouldn’t come searching for me. This dress would not be ripped to shreds by tools tearing into my skin, searching for the most painful organ to penetrate. I would not be left in a cold anteroom somewhere away from the main house, where my screams wouldn’t be heard as I bled out on a filthy floor.

  The eyeliner pencil in my hand melted over my fingers as power sizzled inside me. Damn it! That was the second pencil I’d ruined like that. The packet came with only three of them. OK, let’s try this one more time.

  I’d gotten a halfway straight line over my left eyelid when the quiet beep of the alarm made me jump. I stretched my neck to see the clock in my bedroom: 7:50 p.m. Crap. I was late.

  The need to rush steadied my hand, and I managed to get the rest of the liner on in one quick swoop. There. I was as party-ready as I was going to get. I’d moved to the kitchen to fill my flask when Jon knocked briskly on the front door, then strolled right in.

  “Almost ready,” I said over my shoulder. “Thirteen texted me to say that he, Heather, and Charles are all set in the surveillance van.” I grabbed my thick silk wrap. The black-and-gray-print dress clung tightly to my bust and bodice, then flared at the hips in a soft flow to just below my ankles. The satin heels kept the hemline from brushing the floor. My hair was up in a loose twist with wispy tendrils around my face and neck. It was a look I’d worn on several occasions when Father especially wanted my neckline visible. The rabbit-fur lining of the wrap would keep my bare shoulders warm. I shrugged it on, thinking, What the hell, Jon? Help a lady with her coat much?

  Clutch in hand, I gave him a quick once-over. “You look nice.” His tux was off-the-rack but fit him well. Lean in the hips, no tails. He’d gone with a silver ascot that accented my dress rather than the standard tie. His hair was slicked back, emphasizing his strong jawline. I was about to compliment his choice of accessories when I noticed—oh shit, he’s gone glassy-eyed. His mind had turned numb with lust as he stood frozen in the doorway, ogling me.

  “God damn it!” I tried to pull back my aura more, but I was already forcing down my sensuality as far as I could get it. I pulled out my cell phone. His hand shot out and grabbed my phone before I could dial Thirteen’s number.

  “No,” he said, blinking quickly. “I’m good. I’ve got it.” He swallowed a couple of times. “It was just…a surprise, that’s all.” I gave him a measuring look. “For real,” he insisted. “I’m fine.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “You might be, but what about everyone else at the party? Damn it, I told Thirteen this might happen.”

  “Magnolia, it’s fine. Thirteen expected something like this. We’re arriving late, so we’ll just slide right into position for the slide show. You won’t even see half of the people there. Those you do see will be too distracted by your cleavage to notice the small group of agents sneaking into the executive levels. It’s the perfect way to use your powers without actually using your powers.”

  I should have known Thirteen had planned for something like this.

  “It is going to work, Magnolia,” he said. “We’ll make it work. We have to get in to that PC, and this is the best chance we have. Do you want to have to turn invisible again? You want to sneak into your father’s office like you did with your uncle last year, when Theo and I had to clear the building to get you out?”

  “Of course not. But I can’t do this if I draw the attention of every man in the place.”

  “You’re not even going to see every man in the place.” He looked me up and down, shrugged. “Maybe you could just keep the shawl thing on. That helps.”

  I gave him a look. He sighed. “Look, Magnolia, you’re beautiful. Not because of your powers or your…aura or whatever. You’re going to be noticed by the people around you. But that’s OK. As long as your father isn’t one of the men around you.” He turned serious. “You know, we’ve been over every contingency possible, including your father discovering you before we’re done. It all works great on paper, but I need to know, are you sure you’re ready for that?”

  Thirteen had asked me the same thing when he’d cornered me in Jon and Heather’s driveway after Thursday night’s meeting. After all, the man thought I was dead. It would be far from a happy reunion. I’d assured him I’d be fine. Father would be in his office until it was time for his speech, then onstage and in view of the crowd the entire time we were there. If everything went to plan, I would be in and out and never be anywhere near the man.

  Of course, as Colin’s mission proved, things rarely went to plan.

  I took a swig from the whiskey bottle still on the table. “If I run into him, I’ll deal with it. It won’t change my responsibility to the team.”

  He measured me a moment longer. “OK, then, let’s go.”

  I checked my handbag: whiskey-filled flask, lipstick, tissues, fake ID, ticket for the gala. Yep, I was ready. I locked the door behind me and was surprised to
see Jon standing by his sedan, holding open the door.

  “Er, thanks,” I said and crawled in, careful not to snag my gown. He shut the door and walked around to his side. As he turned over the engine, he gave me a sideways glance.

  “I was instructed to treat you as if this was a real date. With the respect afforded a real lady.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I bet Heather gave you a nice little talking-to before you headed out tonight.”

  His jaw tightened. “The talking-to wasn’t from Heather.”

  My lower tummy tingled. This time, I turned to face out the window as I allowed myself another smile.

  CHAPTER 23

  Father had developed his company’s newest complex on a large stretch of used-to-be farmland in one of the budding suburbs north of the city. There were other office towers and outlets on the wending drive, but the manicured industrial road dead-ended at Kelch Inc. Very fitting, if you asked me. I mean, everything that crossed Father’s path eventually dead-ended, right?

  “That’s the Capital One Tower,” Jon pointed out as we passed a tall building on our left. The glass windows lit up like a broken checkerboard reaching to the night sky. “Thirteen and the others are in the parking garage in the back. It was the closest we could get without actually being on the Kelch compound. You know where the rendezvous location is, right? Off Washington Street? It should be a pretty smooth exit as long as we stagger our departures.”

  I nodded absently. My stomach was in knots. I appreciated him letting me know the whatnots of the operation, but right now I didn’t care. I needed to focus.

  “Here we go,” he murmured. We drove up to a stationed guard post. The compound was surrounded by a gleaming ten-foot chain-link fence—not as fancy as the brick wall that circled the downtown headquarters but still pretty intimidating. My mind flashed to the white-and-black stone barricade that lined my family’s estate. Cameras watched every inch of the grounds, secured to trees, hidden in the foliage. I’d had to turn completely invisible to get past the wall when I escaped. Here the cameras sat in plain view, zooming in on every guest. I ducked my head automatically and rummaged through my purse for my fake ID.