by Nyna Queen
He shrugged, a little stiffly. “When you work with someone, it is only sensible to gain some basic understanding about their background. I’m just trying to get a better picture.”
And that was the only reason for his inquiry. And a perfectly valid reason, too.
Alex studied him from the side for a moment. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, so now you’re a mind reader as well?”
Her eyebrows arched upward. Leaning to the side, she snatched a strawberry from a plate with a smile that made the servant girl stagger two steps backward and fall into a potted plant.
She raised the strawberry to her lips and took it into her mouth. Her sensual lips closed around the fruit. Several men—even some of those who were occupied with girls on display—paused in whatever they were doing and blatantly stared.
With a delicate suck, Alex pulled the strawberry completely into her mouth and bit into it. Someone winced, but Darken’s mind was too occupied to sort him out. Alex swallowed and licked her slightly dented bottom lip.
With a casual flick of her fingers, she tossed the green away.
“Honestly? Men are not that difficult to read.”
Luckily, at that moment, they reached the end of the hall, sparing him the pains of a reply.
A wooden door in an alcove with an assortment of security locks led into a small stairwell. After the heavy opulence of the pleasure grounds, the simple flights of concrete stairs leading down seemed cold and naked and starkly austere.
Down they moved, flight after flight, their steps echoing in the silence around them.
They reached the ground floor and followed an empty corridor with steel doors on both sides. Finally, the Duke held in front of a door and turned, beckoning them forward with his snake-like smile.
“Dr. Creevy is already prepared for us.”
THE room was long and sterile and reminded Alex too much of a hospital: white tiled floor, metal shelves, slim silver objects glinting dully in the too bright overhead lights, the biting scent of disinfectant … It brought back memories of her sire’s bedroom just before he died, and she instantly felt sick to her stomach.
Dr. Creevy, a scrawny man with thinning gray hair, in a stained white lab coat, stood waiting beside a naked metal cot with leather shackles attached to all four corners. Alex felt Darken stiffen beside her and quickly put a restraining hand on his arm—just to pull back when a little shock tingled through her fingertips.
“It’s alright,” she muttered softly, although her stomach churned at the sight of the cot. “I might shape during the process and accidentally hurt someone.”
Darken’s eyes wandered from the cot to her and back, and slowly widened in understanding. “You’ve done this before.”
She nodded. And no pleasant memory was linked to the experience. But sometimes there simply was no other choice. Like right now.
He studied the cot again, and she could almost hear the blocks falling into place as he drew the right conclusions. His eyes narrowed and grew darker. Dangerously dark. “And this will hurt you.” It wasn’t really a question.
Quite quick on the uptake, aren’t we, Mr. Trueborn?
“I’m afraid, that can’t be avoided.”
Resentment flooded those cavernous brown eyes, liquid red anger churning right below the surface. “Then there has to be another way.”
Alex blinked. Just like that, huh?
He did sound like he meant it, too.
Why? she wondered. To assume that her pain would matter anything to him, would be foolish. They barely knew each other. And she hadn’t exactly done a great job endearing herself to him in the last day.
Maybe he didn’t like to be indebted. She certainly didn’t. And a debt of pain wasn’t one easily paid back.
“Well, I don’t really see another way, sugar. Do you?” Now would be a good moment to mention it.
He scowled. Yep, that’s what I thought.
His gaze went back to the cot and his lips pressed together in obvious discontent. “I don’t like this!”
She barked a short laugh. “Neither do I, sugar, but if we want this portal, someone will have to bite the bullet. Looks like that someone is going to be me. But don’t worry, it won’t kill me—and if it does”—she raised her arms and batted her lashes at him—“spares you the effort.”
His growl had something almost charming. “Very funny!”
Alex gave him a sly wink, trying to cover up the shaky feeling that was rapidly building in her chest. The procedure would do her no permanent harm if Mr. Lab Coat over there didn’t screw up. Didn’t mean it would be any pleasant either. Oh no, not pleasant at all. Tapping the gland hurt like a wicked bitch. And just thinking about it made her want to bolt.
She swallowed the rising panic. Focus on something else, something you can handle right now.
“Listen,” she said, “when my gland is siphoned, it will knock me a bit off stride. My body is used to a certain level of venom and depleting its quantity very rapidly … well, I guess you can compare it to a heroin addict going cold turkey.”
Who had ever been forced to go through an abrupt drug withdrawal would to some extent be able to understand what she would be experiencing. Only in her case, there was no shot or substituent that could ease the physical and mental craving for her special poison.
“My body will reproduce its venom level within twenty-four hours, but at the beginning, I will be a little shaky and”—ah, weak sounded too vulnerable—“unstable. I won’t be able to rely on my shaper abilities, either.”
Which meant she would be pretty much completely at his mercy. And she’d just told him all about it, too. Smart, Alex. Very smart.
The Duke appeared at her side.
“Everything is prepared.” He held out his hand as if inviting her to a dance floor. “Shall we?”
Alex took a deep breath. A prick. Nothing but a little prick.
Taking his hand, she let him lead her over to the cot. As ironic as it might seem, jabbing her own teeth into someone else’s body didn’t pose a quirk, but when it came to something pricking her own skin … especially if that something was needles … uhhh! Suddenly it seemed awfully hot in the room.
Dr. Creevy unfolded himself from the table he’d bent over and turned with a syringe in his hand.
Mother’s mercy and Jester’s grace! Alex winced. That was even bigger than she remembered. Goosebumps ran up and down her arms and nausea almost made her dizzy. She grabbed the metal edge of the cot for support. To mask the movement, she slowly hoisted herself up, glad for the cold surface below her. Couldn’t fall that deep when you were sitting. Her fingers gingerly touched the nape of her neck, where the tingling feeling of anticipation was becoming an almost painful buzz.
“On your belly please, Miss, if you will.” The doctor had an annoyingly monotone, slightly nasally voice. She was pretty sure he would have shown the same enthusiasm for a lab rat. “And the sweater.”
Obligingly, she stripped off her sweater and stretched out on the cot on her stomach, turning her face to the wall. Hands started strapping down her wrists and ankles and she clenched her teeth to keep from biting anybody.
She hated to be restrained. Great Mother, how she hated it. That helpless feeling was almost worse than the pain. The spider rose from her core, her true skin fighting to break through, but she kept a tight leash on it. There wasn’t any excuse for a slip yet.
Dr. Creepy-Creevy dangled a piece of wood in front of her nose. “I strongly advise you to bite on that.”
“No sedatives?” Darken’s deep, angry voice sounded close. Too close. The heat of his anger washed over her exposed skin and she didn’t have to see his eyes to know that they were on fire.
Alex pressed her lids shut and gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her like this, but the fact was, there was nothing she could do about it.
“They are burned away by my immune defense too quickly,” she said to the wall, trying t
o sound as calm as she could. “Also, it might interfere with the composition of my venom. I’ll have to bite on my teeth.” Literally.
She could still feel the waves of his anger, teasing the bare skin of her arms and neck, but he didn’t say anything more. Good.
“Ready?” the doctor asked.
Alex exhaled. No. “Yes.”
Biting on the stick, she closed her eyes. Gloved hands pulled up her hair, exposing her neck. The cold bite of an antiseptic pledget sent a shudder down her back. She tensed.
It will hurt less if you relax. Well, knowing and doing weren’t always the same pair of shoes.
A movement stirred the hairs at her neck.
Breathe, she told herself. Just don’t stop breathing.
Cold metal pricked her skin.
Pain burned her body from the neck down into her toes and ripped every thought from her mind.
Alex screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DARKEN watched with growing revulsion as they fastened Alex to the sterile medical cot. His magic churned inside him like a burning river chafing off its banks.
Tethered down like a wild beast!
The bitterness of the thought was only partly for Alex’s sake. He knew how it felt to be restrained, to be strapped down like a rabid mutt. Oh, he knew.
It was a common form of punishment at the Order, used as an educational means for those too nosy or too truculent for the handlers’ tastes. They also used it to subdue them, when one of them was slipping out of control and got too dangerous to handle. They would chain them inside a small, dark, warded room and simply wait it out until they were too spent from the rage to fight back and could be controlled again.
It could be hours. Sometimes it would be days.
Patience was on their side and the darkness was a brittle mind’s enemy. They could wait. It was something he and his kind could not always afford.
His longest had been five days, his only crime being to ask what their current torture subject had done to deserve ending up as their pitiable practice object.
They didn’t answer. Instead, they tasered him, whipped him, and then threw him into the hole.
A forfeit wasn’t supposed to questions. They were supposed to serve and obey. No doubts. No hesitation. Nothing but blind loyalty.
Five days.
Five days of being chained, nakedly on the cold floor in a tiny cell, allowed only minimal freedom of moment.
Five days without food and only three small cups of water each day, while during daytime sweat burned in the lash wounds and at night the cold stone bit into hard, sore muscles.
Five days in complete darkness with nothing for company but his own hoarse screams.
They had known that he needed to feed. He hadn’t been out in the field for more than a week at that time and his craving had already reached the state of physical discomfort.
While at the chapters, his kind would maintain a strict regime of tough exercise and sexual release to keep the edge of them for as long as possible, but in the end, only one thing could satiate this growing, mind-tearing hunger that would eventually consume them. The kill was as necessary for them as the air to breathe and kept hungry they became more and more unstable.
Sometimes, before an important mission, the handlers would keep them overdue on their feeding schedule for a day or two, just like putting hunting dogs on short rations before taking them out on a hunt. It certainly served its purpose, but usually sent the casualties into heady heights.
So yes, they had known. They had known, and they had locked him in anyway. Letting him face the agony of starvation that went so much deeper than the hunger for food, than the growing craving for water. The agony that came when the red mist flooded his mind and the burning pressure crested and crested inside him with no vent to release it.
Five days they watched him writhe in pain, listened to his screams and shouts and tears until it reached the point where he begged them for whatever release they would grant him.
None came. Instead, they would gag him for hours at a time, allowing him not even the tiny outlet of his own screams.
Five days. And even then, they had only let him out because his brother, made suspicious by his absence at Josepha’s second birthday, came to check on him and then almost twisted off a couple of heads in his fit of rage when he found out about their little “disciplining measure.”
Not that they had to fear any particular consequences. His caste was beyond the common limitations of laws and regulations, and the Order’s handlers were allowed to treat them in whichever way they saw fit to contain their dangerousness.
When they finally let him out of his cage, his sanity was hanging by a brittle thread. To this day Darken was convinced that they had secretly hoped, that he, starved beyond reason and in his desperate need for release, would kill his brother, whom they sent into the cell to open the chains that had scrubbed his skin bloody as he fought against them in his pain-crazed rage. So clean. So easy. Two birds with one stone. With the eldest son of the Dubois-family dead, his official execution papers would have been signed in a hurry. Finally, rid of the troublesome Dubois-brothers.
Ah, they were so stupid in their arrogance. What they failed to understand was that there were loyalties that went deeper than that, which could be bought by the pain of the whip. And exactly that was their mistake. He probably would have killed anybody else they could have sent into that cell that day. But not Steph. Not his brother. Although refraining from it had been one of the hardest things in his entire life.
Recognizing the glazed, twisted look in his eyes, Steph had loaded his behind into his coach and had driven him out into the White Stag Reserve. That’s where he’d had finally succumbed to the bloody mist.
When he had woken hours later, he’d found himself in the center of a wild, savage carnage, his body slick with blood. Unable to remember what had happened, for a second, a bleak, pain-filled second, he thought that he must have killed his brother, unable to tell from the bloody remains around him what had been slaughtered by his hands. Worst five minutes of his life.
It was then that Stephane walked out for the trees, looking wary and, for the first time in their lives, slightly afraid of his younger brother. It broke something inside Darken. He’d looked at the bloodbath, at what had once been a proud herd of stags, does, and little fawns, and cried. He cried for the victims of a rage they had neither provoked nor understood. He cried for all the innocents he had killed in the name of the Order. And he cried for his own soul, which the Order had finally managed to violate so much that even his brother had trouble looking him in the eye. That day the Order had lost what little deference he’d had left for them.
They had wanted to teach him? Darken smiled, but it had a sharp, bitter flavor. Well, taught him they had. Just not the lesson they had intended for him.
Now, staring at the spider’s body stretched out on the cot, he felt well-known ripples of heat travel through his body. He knew the feeling of impotence and utter helplessness that came with being restrained. He knew.
But so did Alex.
It was there, in the haunted look in her eyes, when she glanced at the table, a mixture of anticipation and memory stitched together by anxiety.
It had to be even worse for her, Darken reflected. As a shaper, driven by a feral nature, allowing someone to tie her down must be against her every instinct.
And yet she had agreed to it, to help his niece and nephew whom she owed nothing.
No lies. No deceptions.
Ah, Alex, what a sweet, delightful riddle. Crude and prickly and oddly sincere at the same time. It was a rough kind of honesty that reminded him of a blooming thistle; she made no secret of her armor of thorns, but she only stabbed if you tried to grab her too tightly.
What would he find if he managed to pry that thorny shell open? His mouth twitched a little. A kick in the balls, most likely.
“What are they doing, Uncle Darken?” Max tugged at his sleeve, hi
s brown eyes big and alarmed, as they swiveled over Alex’s stiff form.
Darken suppressed a sigh. He wished he could send them from the room, but letting them out of sight in this place, even for a moment, was out of the question.
With a gentle but firm hand, he guided him and his sister over to the farthest corner of the room. As far away from Alex as possible.
“Listen,” he said softly, “Alex promised to give the Duke some of her venom in payment for a portal that will bring us home. They need to extract it from her body and the treatment may provoke the spider in her to surface, that’s why they have to tie her down. Just as a precaution,” he added reassuringly, although everything inside him was revolting against the idea. “She said she has done this before and not to worry.”
It wasn’t exactly what she had said, but he didn’t want for the children to worry or feel guilty. They had enough to deal with already.
“It will be alright, okay?” Just who are you trying to reassure, old son?
Max nodded haltingly. “Oookay.”
Josepha didn’t say anything. Her eyes darted around the room, snagging on the walls, the cots, the instruments and she paled, her hands knotting together so tightly her delicate bones were showing through the skin.
Darken wondered if this place revealed something to the healer in her that remained hidden for the rest of them. What did these walls tell her, that he and the others couldn’t hear? What gruesome stories were written into the metal scratches on the cots, invisible for them but plainly visible for a healer’s mental eye?
The doctor said something and Darken raised his head in time to see the wispy man picking up a small wooden wedge and bending over Alex, holding it in front of her face. Without hearing the exact words, he knew what it meant. Rage exploded inside him and his feet crossed the room by their own accord.
“No sedatives?” he growled. The least those bastards could do was ease the pain Alex had told him would accompany the procedure.
The doctor turned a little, blinking his rheumy eyes like an owl in the sunlight, but it was Alex who answered, her voice carefully monotonous as she explained him the effects of sedatives on her body and her venom.