Bought By The Masters

by Daniella Wright

  “When my father get something in his head, he assumes everyone will say yes. Even if they don’t. And he never really bothers to sit down long enough to check in with them, either.”

  I know a few people like that. Including colleagues from the hospital I worked at. The problem is, I feel like I can’t refuse someone like Cato’s father. Not if I want to find myself sold back to Gentleman at the price he’s been asking. Not if any signs of disobedience means that he might decide I’m a little too unreliable to keep around.

  God forbid he aggravate Alex, who already has heavily negative connotations with the history of slavery, or he check in on The Morrigan and realize that she’s stuck in a twenty-something year old’s body.

  “I’ll make up for this. I promise,” Cato says to me. I stare silently at my office, at my perky new assistant who also looks suspiciously like some kind of pixie, with the reminder on the computer screen that I have a client to see in less than an hour. Is this is an attempt to make me too busy to leave?

  It seems that cynical.

  “He also...” Cato swallows, and swallows again. Now he can’t look at me in the eyes, and Beron has a soft growl rumbling in his throat, “told me to command you to work here.”

  I let back a soft hiss. “And will you do that? Will you force me to work this?” They’re forcing me anyway, but if he makes it a command, then disobeying means pain.

  “I won’t. I command you instead to do what you think is best,” he says, and I breathe a small sigh of relief. For a moment, I thought he was planning to. I see how important it is for him to remain in his father’s good books.

  When there’s no one around and looking, Cato quickly pulls me to him, and gathers me up into a firm but tender kiss. His thumbs rest on either side of my face, and I take comfort in the gesture. Beron closes in, too, and I accept his embrace. Where Cato is soft, Beron is solid and big, and my fingers dig into his arm muscles.

  “You’ll be okay. And I’m still going to keep a secret eye out for Gentleman. Okay?”

  I nod, a lump in my throat. A moment later, The Morrigan saunters in, and gives me a cool, appraising expression. “Such a tiny fraction of my power that you happen to wield now, human. Don’t embarrass me with it, will you?”

  “I’ll try not to,” I reply. “But I have a question for you. Are you planning to do anything with this new life of yours, since you have, uh, since you’re alive?” I almost said “have a body,” but that feels remarkably callous in light of everything that’s happened. It’s not just any body, after all. But I suppose The Morrigan probably has a bucket list of things she wants to do, now she’s walking once more.

  “Naturally,” The Morrigan says. “I want to see my descendants in Ireland, see how things have changed there since I last breathed. Travel the world a little, recover my bones so they can’t be used.” She stares at her borrowed hands for a moment. “Though being placed in this body also gives me the same limitations as it. The slave contract. So I’m thinking I’d like to do something about that.”

  “Can you? Do you have the power?”

  “Once. Now I am fragmented. I have the power to see through mirrors, still. Parlor tricks, mostly.” She smiles, then. “I’ve been looking for Gentleman’s mirrors. Still haven’t found them yet.”

  “Won’t he notice you looking?” I say, also wondering if The Morrigan would be looking with Tiffany’s face, or the one I saw in the mirror previously.

  “Not if I don’t want him to.” She twists her lips into a smile that’s nothing like Tiffany’s. It’s colder, harsher, somehow. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be working on a way to break out of these chains, too.”

  And flee, I think, but don’t say as such. I simply thank her, then check up on Alex. Alex is listening to a song by herself, mimicking the chords she hears. Her singing is impressive, resonant, and she’s also plucking her way through a newly bought keyboard, and I have to listen for a moment, before congratulating her. The moment she realizes she’s being observed, she flushes darker and stops.

  “Figured I might as well put these new talents to use,” she says. “Just wondering what to do with them. Make my own songs? Copy other people’s songs like I see everyone do?”

  “Something that stands out,” I say to her. “Something both with your voice and keyboard, I’m sure.”

  She nods. “If I can start making myself some money here… I can prepare for when I eventually leave. And if I get successful, then why not?” She grins, and for the first time, I see there’s an eagerness, a hope in her. An acceptance of what’s happened, and a determination to move on.

  I’m so damn proud of her. Though I do miss her talking about her serial killer documentaries. She’s not done that for a while. Probably too stressed from the current situation to think about them. Hopefully she’ll be back to talking about them soon.

  Less than an hour later, my first client arrives. I feel like a complete fraudster, and incredibly uncomfortable when I find out that my client is a “Baron Velonis,” who apparently is a multi-millionaire wolf shifter who has been having some issues with headaches. An important client who takes one sniff at me and curls his lips in distaste.

  “Humans with implants… what on earth is the old boy up to?” Baron Velonis glares at me, until I do my precursory examination. From my medical training, I know there are several reasons for headaches, ranging from tension based to chronic to sometimes the hint of a hidden disease, or just an overuse of certain drugs, such as caffeine. When I touch him with my magic, however, which constantly keeps raging through my blood and asking for the chance to be used… I see that there’s something else there. Merged in his body, I can feel the turn of his blood, the crackling static of his thoughts and the impossible speed that the brain processes information at – and I also detect a small, malign tumor within his head that will kill him in roughly seven months, werewolf healing be damned. I tell him as such, and his eyes bug out in surprise.

  “The tumor is pressing directly on one part of your brain, hence why you’re getting that constant, dull headache. You should have gone for a doctor before when you felt this. You had it more than twice a week, yes?”

  “All the time,” Baron Velonis says, suddenly humble, rather than boastful. “I just took those painkillers to help. People get headaches all the time.”

  “They do,” I concede, “and usually they’re nothing to worry about. But it’s always worth a check if you’re feeling it’s persistent. Lots of people like to dismiss their problems as not really problems. So let me heal this for you.”

  I feel strong. Comfortable. And it surprised me just how easily I slot into the role that’s been forced upon me. I gently target the tumor until it’s gone, and probe his body for any other potential problems, either existing or might occur in some years time. “You have a high chance of developing Alzheimer’s in your sixties,” I inform the baron. “I can offset the patterns in your body that will lead to them. If you wish.”

  Baron Valonis isn’t about to refuse such an offer. And at the end, he’s all smiles and gratefulness.

  My second client is someone else who seems to have a significantly important background. She sells perfumes and branded clothes in Halberg, and there’s nothing really wrong with her, aside from the fact her monthly cycles cause her a lot of pain, so I simply adjust the dial on that so she won’t feel pain when it reaches that time. My third and last for the day is a baby boy, born to a couple who again have influence, this time in logistics for providing supermarkets over Halberg with food. The boy was born with Tay-Sachs disease, and the symptoms became obvious when he was around four months old. It’s a nasty, degenerative disease, an inherited autosomal recessive condition. It targets the nervous system, and is usually fatal.

  Unless you have healing powers, like I do. I cure the little boy, and it takes almost all of my energy to do so, because the disease follows a riddle of other defects within the infant as well, including his heart, his lungs, and a potential kidney p
roblem. The healing of something genetic is harder to do than healing something that’s been inflicted. I actually rearrange the DNA and clamp down certain genes that aren’t benefiting the host at all. It’s fascinating. So much power at my fingertips.

  So much potential to help. It lights a fire in me, seeing the couple weep with happiness, cradle their little boy and thank me, over and over again. I sit there in my office afterwards, feeling as if I’m drifting, floating, all the puzzle pieces of my life trying to slot into place.

  Like I’ve just remembered why I wanted to become a doctor in the first place. Because I wanted to help people. I could handle a bit of blood, of digging into someone to solve their problems.

  What I couldn’t handle was being treated like shit, day in and day out when trying to do my job. People under stress are more likely to make faulty decisions, and that’s no good when people’s lives are under stake. Maybe there are people out there who can work ninety hours a week no matter how much stress they’re under, but I’m pretty sure those people fizzle out and forget what it is to live.

  And I suppose no one talks about the high suicide rate of people in the medical profession. Not that far off the suicide rate of those abandoned veterans. We go through our own horrors every day. Someone shot by their son in a freak archery accident through the head and yet survives. Someone who bumped their head on a windowsill and the next day, they’re dead. People with suspicious objects in their backsides, all claiming they have no idea how they ended up there.

  People in horrific road accidents or shootings, begging us to save their lives, panicking, rebelling in horror of facing their own mortality, or perhaps their hospital bills. Even those who are critically wounded trying to tell us they need to go back home, they can’t afford this.

  All of these people turned up at some point.

  But now I can heal them. Without qualms, without years and years of medical training needed. I can save all of them.

  I grin to myself.

  Sure feels good to be reminded.

  It soon becomes blatant that Cato’s father is trying to rein in bribes. Or get himself good with higher society. He’s plucking out people who have a problem of a sort, whether it’s something manageable like diabetes, or something fatal like cancer. Apparently, healers like me are exceedingly rare and ludicrously expensive, to the point where I wonder why I was ever auctioned at all. Maybe my worth was underestimated. Maybe they expected the allergy to the implant to kick in and kill me.

  Either way, I’m ensconced in this property, now, servicing high end clients with their numerous health issues.

  All of them thank me profusely, and some ask me questions about how I ended up working here. I had been specifically asked to answer a certain way, which wasn’t quite a command, but enough to put some considerable pressure on the way I phrased myself.

  I tell them I was kidnapped on a visit. I tell them I was rescued by Cato and Beron. That I wanted to put my powers to good use, and they kindly provided me the opportunity to do so. It felt like the complete opposite of how we started out, locking me away to keep potential trouble low. It’s as if they switched their strategies. As if they needed to, because something changed.

  Maybe they want to make it harder for Gentleman to secure me by making me a known figure to higher society.

  Alex is asked to perform for these clients as well, and she does so, with reluctance, but grace in her voice. The Morrigan uses the implant in her borrowed body to cultivate the garden, usually muttering something about how undignified it is for someone like her to be reduced to peasant’s work. Ordering around an ancient Irish queen is probably not the best way to endear her to anyone, but since she’s trapped in that body, she has no choice. And she seems unwilling to leave it. Unwilling might not be the best turn of phrase. I’m not entirely sure if she can.

  Out of magic for the day, I sit in my comfortable armchair, looking at the former medical records of my last client, who had a nasty degenerative disease waiting to kick off in his last thirties. I’m just sipping at my water when the door opens, and Cato and Beron sidle in, smiling gravely.

  “Hey,” I say, with a slight edge to my tone. Not entirely sure if I have the energy and willpower to deal with them at the moment.

  “Hey,” Cato replies. “Good job with the last client, by the way. He’ll be a solid ally to my father.”

  “I don’t really care about treating all these rich, influential people,” I reply. “When am I going to get patients who actually need me? The ones who can’t afford all of these things?”

  “I don’t know,” Cato admits, his silver eyes wide as if pleading for forgiveness. “I’m afraid that my father might have you booked up for a while. But it is intended for your protection.”

  Rage simmers through me, and I feel my blood heating up. I’m deceiving my parents for this person, chafing against the limitations of the contract.

  “Charity cases,” I say stiffly, “might very well help your father’s reputation. I’m sure the locals will be most satisfied to know they have someone looking out for them.”

  “Yes, but the security will be harder. More chance we might get someone we don’t want to get if we start admitting the poorer public.”

  “I don’t care,” I reply. “I just don’t. Make it happen. So I don’t feel like I’m helping the kind of people who don’t deserve it.”

  Beron nods, and after a moment, Cato nods as well.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told my father about you. That the implant you had was valuable to Gentleman.”

  “It did sound like you had no choice,” I point out, softening. “At least this isn’t abuse, and I’m rediscovering what I liked about being in a position to help others. I can’t deny I’m benefiting from this, too.”

  “In more ways than one,” Beron growls, and a rush of heat accumulates instead between my thighs, and I wonder if maybe I have more energy than I previously thought. “We should take you out again. Find a nice restaurant, maybe do some activity like ice skating or...”

  “I can’t skate well,” I say, but I think immediately that it would be nice. Although the views here are expansive and lovely, they’re also limited. I want to do more with my life, even under the terms of the contract. I want to feel as free as possible, to forget for a moment that taking one wrong step results in the burning of my soul.

  “But Gentleman’s watching us,” Cato says, then shuts up when I glare at him. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I’m not too good at deciding what the best course of action is when it comes to that, however.” He places a hand at the back of his head, looking awkward but adorable at the same time. “Really, I just want things to be normal.”

  Normal. Yes, so do I. But we’re pretty far from it right now. I ditch my desk to advance to Cato and Beron, allowing myself to be wrapped up in their embraces one at a time. For a moment, I’m sad, because I want things to be better between us. Without the heavy burden of a demon contract looming above our heads, of Gentleman waiting in the wings to snatch me back and rip out the bone, of the mysterious stranger who tried to buy me, the woman in my friend’s body, and healing people who don’t need it.

  But I know they’re trying their best. None of us asked for this situation, but we do what we can anyway.

  And maybe I like the two of them more than expected. Big, strong, dependable Beron, with those scars upon his chest, and his determination to protect. Cato, polite mannered and immaculate, trying to keep up his charm, but failing and giving into the other side – the side that genuinely wants to help others, and feel responsible for them.

  I look at these two individuals, the bear and dragon shifters respectively, wondering about my attraction to them. Wondering what our future might hold. If we might fall apart screaming, or if we find a way to function together.

  I picture myself in a house, without that father of Cato’s breathing down our necks. Some place with a garden, access to shops, and my own pri
vate clinic like this one, where I’m booked up with appointments from all over the world. Helping those who need it.

  Though, of course, I’d need an income. As much as I’d like to heal people completely for free, there’s rent to pay and mouths to feed. But I’d make my charges manageable. Part payments. People who might pay tens of thousands for treating, not including their insurance and other taxes would be elated to have treatment for a fraction of those prices. I could do it.

  Live in a house with these men. Forge my career, and perhaps my heart as well.

  We just have the tiny little problem of Gentleman.

  Later that night, Cato produces some flowers to place upon my desk, and Beron gets one of those bobble-head bears as a gift, for me to poke my finger at if I should start getting fidgety. I fall asleep happy and content, determined to make the next day a good day. Alex is happier now than I’ve seen her. The Morrigan, aside from her occasional mutterings, does seem content to allow me to use her Great Wish to revive my friend. Cato also seems willing, though sometimes I wonder if he is thinking something otherwise. The problem is making sure his father doesn’t know, because that’s a man of ambition if I’ve ever seen one.

  We take each other that night, under the cover of darkness. Furiously and with passion, the clothes fly off, and we consume each other body, mind and soul. It’s less of an act and more of a need, as if we need to confirm again that we want this. That both of them mean something to me, and I mean something to them. We each offer something different when it boils down to our hard, writhing passion, and I wish I could explain to them how important this is. I don’t feel like a prisoner at all. I feel free. I feel like me.

  Collapsing into slumber afterwards has never been so sweet. I was dressed back in my day clothes, sprawled on the sofa, rather than the bed. It was too hot and sticky to share between three people for long. But I fell asleep with utter contentment.