by Sofia Daniel
I wrapped my arms around my middle and pushed aside thoughts of the followers of Radu, the progenitor of frumosi. If Captain Tanar lost this argument, vampire politics would become meaningless because I’d be dead, or worse. Opening up each chakra, I begged my body to have replenished enough magic to incapacitate Lady Mantis.
But I had no magic.
A pained breath slid from my lips. I was helpless and completely at the mercy of a vampire who wanted to kill me, and another vampire who wanted to make me his mate.
If I had accepted Captain Tanar’s offer, we would have had an entire term to learn how to combine our magic and protect us against powerful foes like Lady Mantis, but the vampire might also have murdered the Stryx brothers to keep them from spilling my secret.
“Very well,” snapped Lady Mantis. “But I want her incapacitated until Lord Dracula arrives to make his inspection.”
My stomach dropped. How on earth would I escape between now and his arrival?
Captain Tanar inclined his head. “Commander Shanks. Place Miss Stephens in my chambers.”
A relieved breath whooshed out of my nostrils. The captain wouldn’t let Dracula bond with me. I’d have to persuade him that we needed time to form a bond. To do that, he’d need to move me to another location outside the castle and claim that I had escaped.
The commander stepped forward from where he had been leaning against the wall. As usual, the vampire wore heavy, black armor. His silver-eyed gaze pierced me through the gut.
My heart thudded so hard, I felt its reverberations in my fingertips. He’d probably lock me in a cupboard just as he had the time I had burned Dante’s face with a slap.
“Not enough,” said Lady Mantis. “If this Miss Stephens is as valuable as you imply, she will be confined somewhere more secure until our Lord can inspect her value.”
“Take her to the dungeons, then,” said the captain.
I swallowed hard, hoping he was referring to the dungeon close to the exit.
Commander Shanks grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and marched me away from the head table. I kept my expression neutral. How soon would it take Dracula to arrive if Lady Mantis told him there was a frumosi that needed his inspection? Hopefully, he’d be too busy or too paranoid to leave his secure lair.
Lady Mantis raised a gloved hand. “No.”
“What, then?” the captain’s voice rumbled with irritation.
“If Miss Stephens is indeed worthy of our Lord’s interest, I expect there is no dungeon she cannot escape. Until Lord Dracula arrives, she must spend her days here as a knocker under my command.”
I fell forward onto my knees, and Commander Shanks wrapped a meaty arm around my middle and hoisted me back to my feet. The pulse between my ears thudded hard, drowning out all thoughts and leaving behind blank terror.
Lady Mantis spoke, but I couldn’t hear anything through the roar of panic through my veins Her cruel, painted mouth widened into an inhuman grin, and her tongue darted out to lick her lips.
Some of the vampire students left their seats, their faces twisting with anger. I couldn’t tell if they were on the side of Lady Mantis or outraged because the noblewoman wanted to tamper with the Stryx brothers’ property.
“No.” I turned to Captain Tanar, who stared down at me with resignation in his eyes. “What if I get stuck as a knocker?”
With his arm clamped around my middle, Captain Shanks dragged me through the dining room, gently shoving away the younger vampires. As we stepped out into the hallway, he ordered the knockers outside to shut the doors.
As soon as they thudded closed, the vampire muttered, “I knew you were trouble from the moment we had you in the back of the van.”
I clenched my teeth. What was the point in telling my abductor that I didn’t come to this shitty academy of my own free will? He’d only laugh in my face and taint my last few hours of freedom.
He released my waist and clamped a large, gloved hand on the back of my head. “You’re a bloody idiot. Every frumosi girl in here has her sights on the Stryx brothers, and what do you do when you get them? Murder another vampire.”
My lips curled with disgust. I wanted to spit the truth in his face. That the brothers had tricked me into murdering Micalla and then used my crime to blackmail me into becoming their concubine. But I held my silence. Maybe his stupid tirade was a form of reverse psychology designed for me to blurt out a confession.
“Are you taking me to the dungeon?” I asked.
He snorted. “Straight to the kitchen cells, where you’ll eat enough knocker porridge to make you lose your mind.”
“What if I’m allergic to oats?” I asked.
Commander Shanks stopped walking. He twisted my head around, forcing me to look into eyes the color of moonlight. “Are you allergic to porridge oats?”
Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard. Vampires could smell lies. Whatever I said next needed to be the truth, so the vampires would have to work out an alternative to the porridge. “It’s going to make me sick.”
He snorted. “Your temporary mistress will have to command you to stay well until the arrival of Lord Dracula.”
My shoulders slumped, and we continued toward a stairwell. The commander’s heavy boots echoed through the hallway, their thuds ringing in my ears like a death knell. Each step toward my doom became heavier and heavier until my legs trembled so much, they collapsed under me, and I fell on my ass.
Commander Shanks slung me over his shoulder, opened up a door, and descended a stairwell lit by flickering wall sconces.
The scent of burning gas filled my nostrils, making them twitch. Tears filled my eyes and blurred my vision. Would Dante and Raphael recover from their injuries? Those weapons had appeared devastating.
A fist clutched at my heart, and I gasped out a sob. They’d been so brave to have fought against stronger, more numerous opponents. All the frumosi I knew at the academy would have stepped aside to save their own hides.
“Open the door,” said the captain. “I have someone for processing.”
A loud scrape of wood on stone made me raise my head. A large knocker pulled open a heavy-looking door that led to a darkened room.
The commander flung me onto a hard chair covered in sticky leather. Before I could rush forward, he wrapped leather straps around my middle and buckled them around my back.
The large knocker walked in, holding a flaming torch. With the squeaking turn of some metal bolts, he lit a gaslight whose flame danced and flickered across the wall. My attention turned back to the vampire, securing me to what appeared to be a bondage device.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked.
“Preparing you for the feeding.”
I thrashed out my legs and kicked him in his crotch, but my foot met some kind of hard casing. Pain shot through my toes, and I cried out.
Ignoring my outburst, the commander knelt at my feet and secured my ankles with straps attached to the chair legs. Once he had fastened the buckles, he shoved my wrists onto the chair arms and strapped me into place.
“You don’t have to do this.” I stared at his black helmet.
He snorted. “You’ll thank me if Lord Dracula decides you’re worthy of his attention.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
He squeezed my jaw and shoved a foul-tasting metal bar between my teeth that reminded me of a horse’s bit. “That’s up to Lady Mantis.”
“What’s going to happen now?” The metal distorted my words.
Commander Shanks pointed at the bit between my teeth. “We’ll put you to sleep first. Then a knocker will turn the crank and force your mouth open while another will pour a gruel containing the blood of Lady Mantis until you’re set.”
“S-set?”
He raised a large shoulder. “Until the magic in her blood takes control of your free will. After that, the next thing you’ll know is when they wake you for Lord Dracula’s inspection.”
I swallowed hard, hoping the onion woman would either come and untie me
or sabotage the knocker porridge so I could become like her. Able to turn on and off that glassy-eyed stare.
The large knocker’s clomping footsteps echoed through the room as he left, and the commander followed him out.
At the doorway, he paused to glance over his shoulder. “It will be interesting to see how your story plays out. We had to kill more humans than usual to obtain you. I wonder if you were worth the effort.”
“You make it sound like I asked you to murder a whole nightclub,” I snarled.
The commander stepped through the door, and it scraped shut.
“Shit!” I tried to snarl but couldn’t quite make the ‘sh’ sound with the metal in my mouth.
Somehow, I’d managed to make my situation worse. I tried shaking my head, but the leather around the bit held me into place against the backrest.
Desperation dried my mouth, tightened my chest, and my gaze darted around the room. Two leather bondage chairs sat on my left and three on my right, indicating that the academy was well versed in the mass production of knockers.
What were my options?
None. My entire fate depended on the onion woman knowing of my capture or on Raphael being stealthy enough to sneak in and rescue me behind the other vampires’ backs.
My shoulders sagged with defeat. He’d only just bounced back from a near-death experience and would probably need time to recover. Now that he and his brothers were vulnerable, anyone with a grudge—or seeking an opportunity to get rid of them—might attack them in their weakened state.
I blew out a frustrated breath. Maybe paranoia had reduced my mind to wild speculations, and the boys currently lay in the safe hands of Dr. Grannus. Perhaps now that Raphael had a soul, he’d be able to sneak about during the day. I shoved my false hope aside and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
My stomach growled, and the membranes of my mouth and throat shriveled with thirst. Was anyone going to feed me? The stone of this basement dungeon’s walls were too thick for the gongs to penetrate, so I couldn’t even get a sense of the passage of time.
As the gaslight’s hypnotic flickers lulled my already tired mind into a stupor, exhaustion gnawed at the fibers of my muscles, and an ache spread across the back of my throat.
It might have been my imagination, but mist swirled around my bare feet. The scent of dirty socks filled my nostrils, and I wrinkled my nose. I tried to shake my head, but the straps held me in place.
My eyelids pulled closed, and a weary breath heaved from my lungs.
Moments later, I fell asleep.
Chapter 21
Cool, pine-scented wind blew through my hair, and strong arms cradled me to a naked and very manly chest. The pungent scents and tastes of onions and garlic burned my throat and nostrils, making me gag.
It was a struggle to open my eyes, as sleep had caked them shut, but from the man’s body hair and warmer body temperature, and from the sun shining through my eyelids, I could tell he was a werewolf.
“Gates?” I said.
“Shhh!” he hissed into my ear. “Stay quiet. Voices carry in the wind.”
“What are you doing?” I whispered as low as I could.
“Escaping.”
I rubbed my eyes and cracked them open. We were moving through the woods at a rapid pace that blurred the trees on our left and right. All my energy slammed back into my heart, which made an excited backflip. The rare streams of sunlight through the canopy reflected on Gates’ amber eyes, making them glow like headlamps.
I swallowed hard, wondering if that hurt, and asked, “Where are the Stryx brothers?”
“In a cell,” he whispered back. “Some bigwig decided you couldn’t have killed that vampire and that the brothers must have done it for you.”
Panic spiked through my heart, and I wriggled in his tight grip. Had that been Captain Tanar’s attempt to rid himself of the boys and secure me as his mate? “We have to go back and—”
“No,” he growled. “The day after the alpha took me for punishment, that redheaded bloodsucker untied me and said I had to find you.”
My eyes widened. Was Raphael free? “Where is he?”
“Caught, probably. I haven’t seen him for days.”
“What?” My gaze dropped down to my body. Someone had clothed me in the black dress of a knocker, complete with a white apron. A shudder of revulsion ran down my spine at the thought of consuming the blood of Lady Mantis.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It took ages to find you. Then some strange woman hid us in a pigsty for two days and made you eat raw onions and garlic until she said you’d be alright.”
My head spun with questions. From what I could piece together, I’d been turned into a knocker. Raphael had recruited Gates to smuggle me out of the academy, and the onion woman had intercepted us and woken me with bulb vegetables.
I squeezed my eyes shut. That couldn’t be right. The woman had been in the academy for ages. Why hadn’t she awoken any of the other knockers?
Gates leaped into the air, over a bubbling stream, making my stomach lurch. I clenched my teeth as he landed and continued running down the forest’s slope. Traces of sunlight pierced the thick canopy of trees, illuminating our way. I clung tight to his neck and hoped no werewolves would find us this time.
“Nearly there,” he whispered.
A thicker growth of trees made up the edge of the forest. Mostly tall saplings that stretched up to the heavens, too sparse to form any kind of canopy. I peered over Gates’ shoulder for signs of chasing werewolves, but there were none. A few feet ahead stood the iridescent dome that made up the academy’s wards.
He deposited me on the warm ground and knelt by my side, holding a backpack. “They say you know how to make a hole in the wards.”
I nodded and hoped my time as a knocker had replenished my magic. Closing my eyes, I held my palms to the wards and created a hole double the size of a dinner plate—twice the size of the one I had made while I had freed Zarah.
A low growl sounded in Gates’ throat. He snapped up his head and moved it from side to side the way I’d seen dogs sniff the air. “Someone’s coming.” He shoved me through the hole.
I crawled through into the sun-drenched meadow and turned around to wait for him to follow. With my improved powers, I’d repair the hole in the wards—
Gates gave me a hard shove that sent me rolling down the shallow incline. “Run!”
With a jolt of shock, I broke into a sprint and headed for the road. It was a wide unmarked stretch of tarmac, bordered by hedgerows on its other side. The engine of a large vehicle tumbled in the near distance, and I changed direction and ran to the source of the sound. About five-hundred feet away, black smoke billowed from a green tractor’s exhaust stack.
Never had so much warmth filled my heart at the sign of environmental pollution. I picked up my pace and ran toward the tractor, hoping Gates would evade whoever was approaching and catch up.
The tractor trundled toward me, rapidly closing the distance. I ran faster, ignoring the burn of my leg muscles and the sweat breaking across my brow. If I didn’t board the tractor, there was no telling when the next vehicle would arrive, or who would follow me through the meadow.
Twenty feet away from the vehicle, I pushed all the magic I could muster into my legs and sprinted hard. The tractor passed, and I gave chase. Moments later, I ran level with the vehicle and leaped onto the first step of the driver’s cab.
I crawled up the remaining steps, flung the door open, and climbed inside.
The driver, a middle-aged man with a bulbous, red nose, flinched. “What are you doing?”
“Please,” I said through panting breaths. “I need a ride to the nearest town.”
He clapped a meaty hand on his chest and blew out a breath. “You bloody scared the life out of me.”
“Sorry.” I twisted around, looking out into the meadow for signs of Gates, but there were none. Only an impossibly large d
ome surrounding a forested hill.
My heart sank. I couldn’t even see the hole I’d made in the ward. Last term, he had mentioned trying to escape and getting caught by guards in black uniforms. What if those were the knockers guarding the wards?
“Where have you come from, then?” The farmer’s gaze raked my outfit. “Looks like you’re a runaway maid.”
“I was a maid, but the working conditions weren’t the best, and quitting wasn’t an option.”
He gave me a sage nod, as though he knew all about shitty employers. I rubbed my sweaty palms on my dress and blew out a relieved breath. Hopefully, Raphael had given Gates some money, so I could make my way to an anonymous big city, where I could work out my next steps.
“There’s a few nutcases around these parts. Every so often, we find someone wandering the fields raving about kidnappings. An eccentric guy pays a pretty penny to meet these people.”
“Oh?” I tried to keep the tremble out of my voice.
“Of course, we’d have to wait until after dark. He’s one of those night owl-types. Doesn’t hurt to send a text message, though.”
“What do you mean?” An image of Professor Proust popped into my mind. Maybe the vampires told the locals to watch out for runaways.
Before I could ask what he meant again, the farmer’s fist landed on the side of my face, making everything go black.
By the time I awoke, some wretched soul had tied enough ropes around my body to disguise me as a spool of giant thread. I rolled from side to side in the bed of a pickup truck as the vehicle traveled along the winding roads leading to the academy.
“Fucking hell,” I growled. Now the vampires would demand to know how I’d broken free of being a knocker. I doubted that Captain Tanar would be able to save me from this mess.
I tried sitting up but rolled hard and hit my head against a steel keg.
“Shit!” I snarled.
The vehicle’s movements flung me from side to side, giving me glimpses of the sun hanging low in an overcast sky, casting a salmon-pink hue under the steel-gray clouds. It reminded me of diluted blood. Blood that would probably be spilled when the vampires dissected me for my secrets.