Bought By The Masters

by Daniella Wright

  If only I could rip this infernal thing out. It’s mocking me: tying me to the industry I left behind. From all those whispered conversations behind my back, the sneering disdain of my colleagues, the laughter and raucous cheers when I messed up, tripped over a word in my sentence, or stated an incorrect fact during my long, endless shifts, snatching sleep where I could, until I became a fragment of a person with a fragment of life outside it all.

  Character building, they said. Toughening you up, they said.

  The fact I’m out of there means I washed out, that I’m pathetic, weak, a snowflake who didn’t have the mettle to endure.

  A failure. The words beat a rhythm into my skull, drowning out any positive reinforcement in it. Then I think of my friend.

  You weren’t failing, Alex had tried to assure me. No one should have to put up with something like that. It’s the industry and the people there who’re all wrong, not you.

  Sure, Alex. Sure.

  I continue to glare at the wall. It probably wouldn’t be wise to fall apart at the seams here. I’m already in a vulnerable position as it is. I’d just make it easier for them to push me over. I know this, but that doesn’t stop me from sinking into that swamp, of feeling all willpower and energy sap out of my skin, along with that vague sense of panic that if I don’t do something soon, stage some kind of escape attempt, I might lose all desire to do so in the near future.

  The panic rises, and I start walking from room to room, scouring every nook and cranny, hoping to find some structural weakness or secret passageway behind a bookcase – anything to get me out.

  But how far can I get in Halberg, frozen metropolis of northern Arizona, if I’m branded like this? I doubt they’d want a magical human escaping. Especially one who has healing powers, though I’m yet to know just how strong the powers will be.

  In a sudden burst of anger, I lash out at the small table by my bed, cringing from the pain radiating through my bone. The pain at least gives me distraction, so I let that conquer me for a moment.

  There has to be opportunities. I’m panicking too much, wallowing too much to see them, but they must exist. I rub at my ankle, grimacing when I consider that all of my friends have been implanted. All of them had someone dig into them, and place that magical artifact to pump secondary magic through their veins. What I don’t understand is why I’m a healer, and they have lesser abilities. Things that can already be achieved by a skillful human who practices in those professions for decades. Who have a natural talent for such thing. Or does the magic simply enhance what is already there?

  Alex did play the piano. Not well, but she loved it. Always trying to research music from games and shows she watched to play. She sang along to music and karaoke, but I wouldn’t have said she had a talent for music. It was just something she liked to do. There were plenty of other things she liked to do as well, but they didn’t give her the implant for them.

  As for Tiffany: she’d worked in a flower arrangement shop for a summer, and loved plucking daffodils from the fields come spring, and said cherry blossoms were her favorite type of blooming flower, but that again didn’t translate to her suddenly gaining green fingers. If anything, if she did have a power, it should have been more related to her swimming. Since she’d once trained hard to try and qualify for the Olympics, but it didn’t work out that way.

  My musings cut off as the door to my suite opens. I tense up instantly, reacting to the threat: Cato walking through the entrance, followed by his hulking shadow, Beron. The door closes behind them, and the two regard me for a moment, their faces blank, betraying nothing of their thoughts. I wonder if mine are all over my face. The need to escape. The hatred wafting their way. The awareness that if I openly defy them, it will not end well for me. Beron tried to explain the terms of the contract in the car, but I wasn’t really listening.

  “I’m sorry about this,” is Cato’s first words to me. “And I owe you an explanation.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re explaining,” I bite, outraged at the audacity of his statement. Because I don’t see how being sold into slavery can be justified. This is the dark underworld my family warned me against, and the skeptics yelled about in sensationalist headlines. This is the face of modern slavery in a world that still regards humans as second class citizens, or worse. And it came to me with a charming smile, a kindness in silvery eyes, hiding a monster beneath.

  Cato winced, exchanging a wary look with his bodyguard. Beron, with his brown eyes and soft tousled dark hair, gave a shrug in return.

  “I was captured that night, along with you and your friends,” Cato began, and although a part of me is determined to blot out his words, the other part’s interested enough to hear what he has to say, before a judgment call is made. Those two sides constantly war with each other, along with the throb in my ankle bone. Along with that strange, twisted desire that blooms when it should be dormant. This isn’t the time or place to feel such a thing. It’s almost as if there’s a foreign entity triggering those emotions.“The thieves wanted to target obscure places like that bar, bag as many as they could – but they didn’t expect to see me there.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, his eyes wide and earnest, as if desperately imploring me to believe him.

  “And?” He’s waiting for me to say something, and I oblige him for the moment, still disconcerted that my body’s reacting, contrary to my thoughts. At least no one can visibly see anything.

  “I’m the son of someone very powerful in the area,” Cato says. “And the leader of that little operation didn’t want any of the trouble that came with capturing such a high profile figure. So he let me free, with some conditions. And he wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to refuse, given that I had very little bargaining room. I wasn’t allowed to get you girls out – unless I bought you from the auction. And I signed a contract: a demonic contract for my freedom, and another for your services.”

  Demonic contract. Oh fuck. I’ve heard about that. We’ve had plenty of musicians, lawyers, and some suspicious celebrities who have made bargains with demons, and some types of fae that also love deals, but usually come with a horrible side effect.

  I’m still not sure about Cato, but some of my previous hostility is dissipating. And now I have to ask. “What were the terms of the contract?”

  “That I don’t tell the public about the location of the demon’s operations. That I won’t attempt to get any of them arrested. Or...” his voice trails off, before he says, “that I allow you three to be free with your magic, and to tell the world what happened to you. Any of these terms get broken, we’re all in trouble.”

  I glare at him for a moment, all too aware of these conditions. “You should have found another way.” The statement sounds bratty when said out loud, but right now, I’m acting too stubborn for anything else.

  “There’s more,” he says in a rather miserable tone. “My father’s not happy about this.”

  Feeling rather faint, I sit down on the bed, elbows on my knees, cradling my head. “You don’t say?”

  “Like I told you: he’s currently trying to push through legislation to make slavery illegal in this district. If it’s found out there’s three contracted human slaves with unethical implants in them in his own household, it might fuck up his entire campaign. And he’d rather avoid the public risk by keeping you three out of sight.”

  The headache worsens as I listen, and a sick churning fills up my stomach until it’s difficult to breathe. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that you might be kept here a while. And unless I find a way to change the terms of the contract,” he says, looking extremely doubtful in his own words, “then this might be a permanent fixture for you and your friends.”

  “No,” I gasp. “You can’t do this. This can’t be forever.”

  “I can,” he says, his mouth now a thin line. “And this situation is my fault. I believed that I should save you three. I made that judgment call. And I’m sorry that it couldn’t hav
e been better for you.”

  Without another word, he gets up and leaves with his bodyguard, and I’m left screaming murder and thumping my fists against the door, tears spluttering down my cheeks like salty drops, until all the vented emotion leaves me exhausted, and I fall into bed numbly. Thoughts and emotions swirl in me as a chaotic wind. Sleep claims me soon after.

  They bring me food, and attempt to exchange pleasantries each time, but I’m not in the mood for any. I want to see my friends, if nothing else, and although I’m also tempted not to eat the food, it’s ultimately a fruitless means of defiance.

  I know I should be grateful on a level that Cato did save my friends and keep us together, but the method in which he achieves this “saving” results in the same thing as being bought by someone else entails: I’m a prisoner, not allowed contact with my own family, and hidden out of sight while he figures out what to do with me. The magic continues to lick inside me, always whispering for release, and it’s frustrating I can’t use it. It’s as if I’m constantly horny, but I’m not allowed to do anything about it. Not the end of the world, but not exactly pleasant, either.

  Every time I see Cato come into the suite, he always carefully avoids eye contact, as if he’s aware this shouldn’t be happening, but doesn’t quite know how to address it. He tells me that he’s working with his father, and he doesn’t want us together just for now in case it causes more harm than good.

  Naturally, I disagree with him on that fact. Beron’s more prone to keep eye contact with me, and he even attempts smiles on occasion. Beron has the kind of face that needs to be seen in motion to appear handsome. When still, it’s rather plain, and likely bad for the photographers trying to capture a perfect shot, but when it’s animated, he has an almost graceful charm. I observe this objectively, because at this point I’m sat here in my luxurious prison twiddling my thumbs and biting my nails to the quick, haunted by thoughts of my friends, family, future and past.

  When I see my friends, it’s only for brief periods of time, in a room at the end of the long hallway outside. With people watching us, it means our conversation is cautious, and we’re not saying what we really want to say to one another. I’m not sure what they’re watching us for. Cato said that he helped me, but this is all very cloak and dagger, when surely it’d make more sense just for me to be with my friends.

  As for the men... to think I’d been attracted to the both of them. That thoughts about their bodies, their mannerisms, and curiosity just as to how they might be sexually were happily floating through my mind. That when I forget to be angry and resentful, sometimes I drift straight back into that internal process, until I snap out of it and remind myself that it’s stupid. That clearly, all the pent up frustrations of the past few months are driving me to a sort of temporary insanity on top of everything else.

  Since it seems, no matter the situation, I can’t always control initial impulses. Visceral responses. It’d be cool if I didn’t have them, thanks.

  Oh, and also, my first attempt at disobeying an order didn’t end well.

  When Cato gave me a command, to stand up from the chair I was sitting in, I stubbornly refused. My instant defiance came with a heavy, painful cost. Within seconds, a creeping pain wrought through me, until it felt like every inch of me was on fire, as if I was experiencing every slice of pain possible that the world had to offer, before I stood up, and it vanished, leaving my body tingling from the memory of that agony.

  “I’m sorry,” Cato was saying after that. “I’m so sorry. But you had to understand what defiance costs. What this contract means.”

  He left me then to dwell on the awful situation, and the twisting knots in my heart as I realized that my free will was taken from me. Even if Cato tried to avoid giving me orders, he was contractually bound to make at least one a week. And if he slips and ends up pushing me around further, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. My freedom is a joke, and I am at the mercy of someone else.

  Tiffany and Alex must be steaming. I wish I could see them. But Cato has to “sort things out” for our security, apparently, and make sure we have little to no risk of being discovered by prying eyes.

  Cato and Beron drop in on me, offering small conversation. The more they drop in, the more I sense that they truly are remorseful, that this situation is not what they wanted, or intended, but the spiteful part within me wants to deny all their apologies anyway. Since, remorse or not, I’m still in this situation, with a bone stuck within me, with magic itching to be used, and no one to use it upon. It also seems that lack of magic builds upon sexual arousal, too, and I hate it. I hate that I feel aroused at all, since sometimes it bleeds into my thoughts, leading to wildly inappropriate notions about Cato and Beron.

  It’d be nice if I could control my own reactions. If I could reach into myself and yank out this implant, but I know that if I do so, I will surely die.

  The days trickle into one another. I might have been here one week, or two. All without seeing my friends, without budging from this room which is more my prison. Cato says something about “arranging” things with his father, to enable me more freedom to do what I want to do, once his father is certain we’re not going to storm out of the place and bleat that we were enslaved.

  Which is tempting, to say the least. I’d probably want to do that.

  It’s not until the day after Cato explained about his father, which probably is nearing the end of the second week, that Beron bursts into my room without anyone else to watch, startling me out of a doze. “Roze!” he shouts, his voice ringing in my ears like a klaxon wail. “You need to come with me! Your friend is hurt!”

  Hurt? What did they do to her? I’ve no time to ponder if this is some elaborate deception or not. If Alex or Tiffany are hurt, I have to help them. I fall into step behind Beron, rubbing my eyes furiously against the lethargy in my bones, and the grit crusting my eyelids together. Dizzy with worry, imagination going through all sorts of awful scenarios, I have to hiss at myself to pay attention to the surroundings. There’s several doors on each side, with a wide, colorful carpet stretched out like a python under our feet. When he walks into the fourth door to the left, I hurry into the newly revealed suite room, so similar to the one I’m trapped in, and into the tiled bathroom.

  It takes a moment to register the sight. A full bathtub. Water and liquid splashed everywhere. Tiffany, draped in full clothes upon the floor, sodden wet, blue in the lips, while Cato performs CPR on her, but he’s not putting the correct pressure upon her sternum.

  “Out of the way!” I screech, barging past Beron, a nervous looking butler, and causing Cato, dripping and wretched looking to stop his activity. My automatic impulse is to take over the CPR, letting my medical training kick into action, but my magical impulse locks my palm upon her cheek, like a seed rooting into soil, and the magic funnels out of me, emptying itself into Tiffany’s frail (lifeless) body.

  I swallow all my emotions, everything that might make me freeze, to delay giving Tiffany the care she needs in time. I bat away the stray thoughts, ignore the sick churning in my guts as best as able, and feed her my magic, which spreads through her body like a spidery web.

  I can see the path of my magic, map out her veins, her muscles, as if in my mind’s eye, I’m staring at a picture of the inside of a human, looking out. The water in her lungs is forced out with my magic, dribbling from the corners of her mouth like some grotesque human fountain, fixing the rupture in her lungs, the damaged blood vessels and connections, oxygenating her brain, and also in the process, plucking at a strange mass which in my limited knowledge of medicine, will eventually trigger some sort of aneurysm at an indeterminable point in the future.

  I’m chasing every little flaw I can feel from inside her, lost in the complex infrastructure of her internal body, feeling everything that makes up her: all 206 – no – 208 of her bones, with the little sesamoids no one includes in the final bone count.

  Just as I’m probing at the potential onset of t
ype 1 diabetes in her in a few years, my magic runs out.

  And I snap away from her, hitting the floor hard, no strength left in my body. Pain radiates in my chin from where I hit the hard floor with it, and I’m pretty sure I chipped a part of my back molar. “Shit,” I say, and it’s all I can muster, as Tiffany coughs, eyes opening, and stares around in that dizzy, disoriented haze.

  My sluggish thoughts group together as Beron takes me in his huge arms, far gentler than his bulk has a right to be, and Cato helps prop Tiffany into a sitting position. All my thoughts reach one conclusion.

  My friend just tried to kill herself.

  Why?

  Chapter 5

  Cato

  For better convenience, and because frankly, I can’t see a good enough reason to keep the women away from each other, no matter what my father says about making sure they don’t “plot things together”, I’ve placed all three in my own suite in the subterranean levels. Reserved for dragons who especially like the dark, and the more traditional cavern features our ancestors appreciated. Four bedrooms, far too much space that I never use anyway, along with gothic styled chandeliers, everburning candles gifted from the Irish fae that live in Halberg, and a slumber chamber if I want to rest in dragon form. Which I rarely do, because dragon sleep tends to last longer than human sleep. Humans only need about eight hours of recovery, a dragon needs double that amount, and has bursts of energy for only six hours or so at a time.

  If the friends want to talk escape with one another, to seek comfort in one another, I won’t deny them this right any longer.

  “I’m not suicidal,” Tiffany says, sank into the big leather sofa (dragon wing leather – we don’t like our dead to go to waste), hemmed in by Alex and Roze. She still wears the same dazed expression of shock from a few hours before, horrified at the concept she’d just tried to drown herself in the bath. “I swear to god, that’s not me at all.” She seems puzzled, detached. The words come after a lot of fussing, hugging, and Roze staring at me as if she wishes I’m in the fires of hell, burning in agony. Her face is sinister in the flickering shadows of the candlelights that surround the sofa.