by E. A. Copen
When I pushed forward, though, Mara moved aside at the last second. I pushed open the door and stepped through.
The greenhouse was warm and humid. Bright lights hung from the ceiling, mimicking sunlight over long troughs of dark soil. Small drains ran down from each trough, directing a trickle of water into slanted drains on the floor. There were a dozen troughs lined up end to end, each one home to five fern-like plants. But these were no ordinary plants. Their leaves were a rainbow of colors from deep indigo to fiery red and snowy white. Each one let off a soft, humming glow.
I stepped forward and reached out to touch one of the leaves. It abruptly changed from a pleasant blue color to a deep shade of crimson. When I touched the fleshy leaf, ripples of neon-blue pulsed out from underneath my fingertips.
“What are you doing? You can’t be in here!”
Hector barged through the door behind me with Espinoza on his heels.
One of the worst things anyone can do is surprise an officer at a potential crime scene, especially when that officer is suffering from a concussion. At the sound of Hector’s voice, I pulled my nine millimeter from its holster and pointed it at him. “Stay where you are.”
Espinoza’s arm twitched, but he didn’t draw a gun.
Hector’s face hardened. “Excuse me?”
Behind him, Espinoza whistled. “It’s beautiful.” He wandered over to another plant, this one giving off pulsating ripples of violet at his touch.
“It’s rem,” I said and kept my gun pointed at Hector’s head.
He sneered at me. “This is an illegal search.”
“No, Hector.” I lowered the bag slung over my shoulder and rummaged around in it before pulling out a container of lighter fluid. “This is a crime scene.”
Hector moved to stop me, but Espinoza stopped him, drawing his gun and resting it against Hector’s back. “I wouldn’t.”
Someone else burst into the greenhouse, prompting all of us to turn our heads. It was the boy from before, the one who had been with Mara. He took in the scene, eyes dancing back and forth in panic, and then charged forward. He stopped only when Hector shouted, “Warren, don’t!”
“You can’t do this!” Warren stammered as I walked to the nearest line of plants.
I upended the container and squeezed, walking down the line of plants. The acrid smell of lighter fluid made the lining of my nose burn.
“This is more than just sacred ground you’re defiling,” the young man continued. “This is our home. These are our lives. You have no idea what you’re doing!”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.” I walked to the next line of plants and started down it.
“Since you won’t listen to reason…” Something in Warren’s voice changed, turned darker, rougher. Whatever it was, it made me turn around instead of finishing the work.
Espinoza’s eyes widened, and his hand shook. Slowly, the gun shifted away from the back of Hector’s head. Espinoza’s breath came out quick and panicked as the gun traveled to rest against his temple. His eyes met mine, filled with terror.
I opened my mouth and started to step forward, but quickly found my body refusing to obey commands from my brain. Through no effort of will on my part, my fingers tightened around the bottle of lighter fluid in my hand. My arm jerked out, then up, allowing the flammable liquid to pour over my head. When that was done, the unseen power controlling my body forced me to discard the container and draw out the lighter I’d borrowed from Sal. My jaw shook and my breathing became as ragged as Espinoza’s as my thumb rolled across the tiny metal wheel, striking the flame.
“What are you doing?” Hector snapped. “Warren, this isn’t the way.”
“Shut up! I’m sick of listening to your lies!” Warren swept out a hand, pointing two fingers at Hector.
Hector’s hand went to his throat and he fell to his knees, making a choking sound.
Holy Hell, I realized as thoughts raced through my brain. This is Warren. But how? Why?
Warren marched the few paces to tower over his father, who looked up at his son, eyes wide. “All this time, I’ve had to sit by while you took the credit for everything I’ve done, for the world I’m building.”
“War…ren…” Hector choked his name out as his face changed from beet-red to blue.
“Your God is nothing but a fairy tale. We are the real gods. We should be worshipped. I should be worshipped! If you weren’t so pathetic, you’d see that. But you’re not worthy. All you’ve ever cared about is lining your pockets with the government’s blood money.” Warren placed a bare foot on his father’s chest and kicked him over.
Hector fell with his face toward me, eyes locked on mine. His body jerked and twitched. He clawed desperately at his throat, arching his back in a desperate attempt to be free of Warren’s magick, but it did no good. Just a few seconds after Warren kicked him over, Hector lay still, his eyes glassy.
“Don’t worry. He’s not dead. Takes more than that to kill one of us. But he will wake up with one hell of a headache.” Warren turned to me, a dark smirk on his face. “I bet you’re really confused right now, aren’t you?”
I gritted my teeth, tasting the burn of lighter fluid on my lips. “Just a little, yeah. I didn’t expect a punk like you.”
Warren threw his head back and laughed. “No one ever does, do they? Gideon Reed certainly didn’t. That spell that made him go berserk? My doing. Father might be gifted, but not like me. You see, I’m what you get if you took my father’s paltry abilities and dialed them to eleven. Not only can I not die, but with a mere thought, I can have anything I want. Women.” He held his hand out to Mara, who stood in the doorway. She stepped in to take his hand, smiling. “Drugs.” He gestured at the rem. “And I can have your life if I demand it.”
He sneered down at Hector’s still form. “My father wasted his gift making deals with your government that would make him rich. What’s the point? If I want money, all I have to do is walk into the nearest bank, and they’ll fill my pockets with a smile. All I have to do is ask.”
“Are you one of them?” I ground out. “One of these so-called immortals?”
“I’m better than an immortal!” He placed a hand proudly on his chest. “I was made to be better.”
“Made?”
Warren grinned. “That’s right. Your government made me what I am.”
Holy shit. I was looking at the living, breathing incarnation of Han’s research. Warren had to be the result. Yes, now that I was looking, I could see it. His aura was impressively bright, a blinding shade of glittering gold, but it wasn’t right. Barbed wire grew in and out of his skin at seemingly random intervals through bleeding wounds that would never heal. It circled his body from the soles of his feet to end in a crown of barbs pressing into his forehead. Dark tentacles made of shadow wriggled from the bleeding wounds, caressing his skin. The amount of metaphysical pain Warren had to be in was staggering. Someone had infected him with this darkness and then subjected him to unbearable pain to get results.
If I hadn’t been paralyzed, I would have been sick.
“Was it all you?” I asked, fighting for breath. The fumes were making me gag.
Warren laughed again, clutching Mara tighter to him. He turned her head so that he could look into her eyes. “It was easy. Father had a deal with a lord of Faerie to import these plants, which he sold at a huge profit to your government. The night your priest friend came to confront him was a very bad night for my father. You see, I was already there. I had lured him out to that abandoned house with the intent of killing him. I was to take over here. Do you know how many months I spent molding the minds of these people to my will? The rem wasn’t enough. Even addicted, some of them wanted to leave. I fixed all that. When Father found out, he wanted to undo it. I couldn’t have that. When Gideon Reed showed up, he should have made my work easier. That is, until that werewolf messed everything up.” His hand tightened around Mara’s throat and she let out a small cry.
“Let he
r go.” Espinoza’s voice was hoarse and wavered, but he was firm.
“Why? I saved her.” He loosened his fingers from around her throat, and Mara gasped for air. “She’s mine to do with as I will. She’s not the problem here. The question is, what am I going to do with you two?”
Warren discarded Mara, shoving her aside so he could stand in front of Espinoza. “I could have you shoot yourself. The stress of the job does get to you, doesn’t it?”
Espinoza spat in Warren’s face.
Warren wiped it away and shook his hand, a disgusted look on his face. “Then again, that wouldn’t be any fun.” He turned to address me, his eyes sparkling. “Is it true that you can summon shadow fire?”
I glanced at the little fire in my hand. One wrong move, and I’d go up in flames along with the whole greenhouse. “You want to talk? I’ll be much more inclined if I’m not fighting for my life here.”
“You think so?” Warren cocked his head to the side. “I think there’s a part of you that’s like me. Pain changes you, you know. It makes you powerful. With a little work, I think you could be worthy of serving me.”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
His thin lips spread into a wicked smile. “I didn’t say I was giving you a choice.”
He gestured to Mara, who picked up a shovel in the corner. With sluggish movements, she came to stand behind me. “Mara, you don’t have to do this. Fight him. Fight him with everything you’ve got.”
“You want to know the funny thing?” Warren strode up to me, his hands folded behind his back. The little bastard leaned in and whispered, “She didn’t fight me at all.”
The shovel struck me in the back of the head. My head jerked forward, and the world spun. Everything blurred into a jumbled mess of light and sound as I fell.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I didn’t quite lose consciousness after Mara hit me, but my memory of the next hour is very fuzzy. I remember being lifted and placed on something hard. Magick washed over me, and I thought I would be sick at the sensation of it. That lasted a while. The only thing I remember seeing were the shadows of the men with Warren, each one surrounded by a halo of light. I thought maybe Mara hitting me had done something to my brain, probably worsened the concussion that was already there, but I didn’t have enough medical knowledge to be sure.
After the nausea faded, the world spun as they lowered me to the ground somewhere else. The floor beneath my hands was flat and cool to the touch, smooth like linoleum. There was a bright light above and looking at it hurt my eyes, so I closed them tight.
My arms and legs were left unbound, but I wasn’t coordinated enough to move them after being struck in the head. It took everything I had to fight the grogginess. When they lowered me to the floor, though, they decided it was time to change that. Someone jerked my arms above my head. I screamed at the pain of having my broken arm moved before I doubled over and threw up. My captors didn’t care. They fixed something metal with sharp edges around my wrists. Whatever they used had sharp teeth on the inside that dug into my flesh enough that I felt the trickle of blood. As soon as those teeth pierced my skin and tasted blood, a new feeling settled over me. It felt like I’d suddenly stood up too fast, and all the blood rushed to the wrong place. Dizziness followed by the sensation that the bottom dropped out from under me. That lasted only a moment before an absolute and utter emptiness settled into my chest in the place I normally felt my magick. I reached for it and found nothing. It didn’t slip away from my grasp, and it wasn’t there just out of reach. There weren’t traces of it I could call on. It was just gone.
I panicked and opened my eyes, fighting for breath. I tried to wiggle my arms out of the restraints, but the metal teeth just bit in harder.
“Don’t fight. You’ll only make it worse.” Warren grabbed a handful of my shirt and ripped it away. I screamed and fought, finding that I could scoot back and curl up against the wall if I really worked at it. Even curled up, I couldn’t stop them from ripping, cutting and tearing away my clothes to leave me naked, helpless, and alone in the tiny room with the bright light.
Once he’d stripped me, Warren let me curl up against the wall again, sobbing, and he stepped back, the painful light forming a halo behind his head. “Over the next few hours, days, months, years—however long it takes to break you—you’re going to lie to yourself, Judah Black. You’re going to tell yourself that someone is coming for you. You’ll convince yourself that someone out there is coming to your rescue. They aren’t. The shackles you are wearing, this place—all of it has been designed to cut you off from everyone and everything. As far as the outside world is concerned, you no longer exist. Killed in the line of duty, your body never recovered. No one is looking for you.”
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted. “I’m not the only one who knows. There are others. They’ll stop you. Even if I die, it changes nothing!”
Warren laughed. It was a cold, bitter laugh. “You have no idea what you are, do you? What you can do?”
His footsteps echoed through the room as he came closer. Warm hands touched my face and held it, even when I flinched away. “You’re like me. I can see it in your mind. There’s a part of you that’s been sealed away, a part they don’t want you to find, the part that makes you strong. I’m going to help you open the doorway to that part of you, Judah. I’m going to break your mind, take everything away from you, hurt you until there is nothing left but raw, unfiltered power. And then when I am done, I’m going to use you. You will be my champion in this new world.”
“You won’t break me,” I shouted, glaring at him. “Better men than you have tried and failed.”
Warren just smiled. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
He turned his back on me, gestured to the ceiling, and folded his hands behind his back. The bright light finally died and I relaxed a little as Warren’s footsteps echoed away from me. His figure hung in the door a long moment before stepping out and closing it behind him, leaving me in complete darkness.
For a long time, I sat in silence, listening, trying to learn what I could about the room I was in. Then, when I could hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing against the darkness, I started to think about what Warren had said. It wasn’t true. Ed knew where I was. He must have seen everything.
Espinoza, was he alive or dead? Maybe they’d found Ed, too and held him captive. My heart jumped into my throat at the thought. No, I reasoned. Ed is smart. Maybe he’d done the smart thing and turned to run away. If so, he could tell Sal and the others where I was. He would tell them everything. The pack and my few friends in the Kings would come and tear the compound apart looking for me. But even with all that manpower, could any of them stand against Warren’s powers?
My heart sank as I realized I was on my own, helpless against whatever Warren planned to do to me.
I thought of Mara and how I had failed her again. I should have taken her out of there the first night I saw her. Warren had her completely under his control. Inside, she was probably screaming for help and I had walked away, leaving her behind enemy lines all alone.
Hunter and Mia, what would they do when I didn’t come back? I shed my first tears in that place, imagining their reaction to the news that I was missing and presumed dead. Tindall would go with Abe personally to deliver the news. Over and over in my mind, I watched as Tindall tried to be delicate, as Sal lost his temper and Mia burst into tears. Hunter stood by, angry and numb.
My shoulders shook with cold and sobs. I tried to tell myself that I’d been in worse situations, but I couldn’t think of anything. At least when I’d been down in the pit when LeDuc held me captive, I had Ed. I had help. He’d left me my arms and legs and the glimmer of hope that someone might find me. I could die alone in that room, and no one but Warren and his people would ever know.
At some point, the crying turned into screaming. I stood back up and set myself to trying to pull my arms free. I’d cut my own hands and feet off before I let t
hat bastard get his satisfaction. The metal teeth cut in deeper with searing pain until my arms and chest were wet with blood. I shivered even harder from the blood loss, but I didn’t give up, not until I was too weak to keep going.
Defeated, I slumped and fought the quiver of my jaw. I couldn’t cry, not again. I didn’t have the fluids to waste. Exhaustion threatened to force my eyes closed, and if it hadn’t been hovering near freezing in that room, I might have fallen asleep. But it was just cold enough that getting comfortable was impossible. Instead, I hung there, fighting fatigue, waiting for something, anything to happen to me.
Light flooded the room after what felt like many hours. It was as blinding and painful as fire. I flinched away from it, my head down between my knees, suddenly torn from my groggy state. I shifted my arms up over my head and curled into a tiny ball as best I could, pressing myself against the wall to make myself as small as possible. Every inch of me hurt. My brain wanted to associate the strange new pain with the light, but I knew better. Light doesn’t hurt. Heavy footsteps came into the center of the room, followed by a clang and something very wet-sounding. “Supper time,” said a harsh woman’s voice. “Eat up.”
“I’d rather die than eat whatever poison you’ve brought me,” I spat.
The woman grabbed me by the hair and jerked my head up. “Leave her,” called another woman from the doorway. “She’ll eat. They always do.” I finally recognized Amanda’s voice. Hector’s wife.
“I won’t,” I said, fighting the chattering in my teeth.
“Maybe not today or tomorrow, but by the end of the week, you’ll eat. Come now, Pam. We have more to do.”
The second woman let me go and turned to join Amanda at the door.