by Lola Gabriel
Kiefer laughed along with Ellery’s story.
“What about him?” she said, nodding to a man who was passing by.
He was an older man, in his fifties, carrying a briefcase and decked out in an expensive-looking suit. He was holding a cell phone to his ear, jabbering into it, angry-looking.
“Well,” Kiefer said, “he was an accountant at a top firm, and then one day, he made an error that cost the company millions of dollars. They sacked him three months ago, but he hasn’t dared to tell his wife yet. He walks the streets dressed like that every day.”
Ellery watched Kiefer out of the corner of her eye as he talked. There was something about him that seemed familiar and she tried to place him. She dismissed the idea. She didn’t know anyone here, and she thought she would have remembered Kiefer if she’d seen him around in the last few days.
It must be the way his hands move when he talks, she thought to herself. It kind of reminds me of my ex-boyfriend. Satisfied that was the case, Ellery let it go and tuned back into Kiefer’s story.
“His briefcase is empty except for a sad little tuna sandwich. And that phone call? That’s his father who knows the situation. He’s trying to convince him to tell his wife, but he won’t. Not until he finds another job, but the chances of that are slim as everyone knows how badly he fucked up at his last place.”
“Aw, I kind of feel bad for him,” Ellery smiled.
“Don’t. He’ll be okay. Guys like him always are,” Kiefer said. “So what do you do for a living, Ellery?”
“I’m job hunting at the moment. I worked in the womenswear department in a large department store before I came here, and I have an interview lined up tomorrow for a retail position, so fingers crossed,” she replied.
“You’ll be fine,” Kiefer smiled.
“I hope so,” Ellery said. “What about you?”
“I work in sales,” Kiefer said. “I won’t bore you with the details.”
Ellery didn’t think it would be boring to hear about Kiefer’s job, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it and she didn’t push it.
“Are you married?” Ellery asked.
Kiefer shook his head.
“No. You?”
“No,” Ellery said.
“Sometimes I think marriage is an outdated concept,” Kiefer said. He grinned at Ellery. “And other times, I acknowledge that’s just something I tell myself because I haven’t met Miss Right yet.”
Ellery laughed softly.
“I feel you on that one,” she said.
“There’s plenty of time before you have to worry about settling down,” Kiefer said. “You’re what? Twenty-one, twenty-two?”
“I’m twenty-four, but thanks,” Ellery smiled.
She finished up the last of her coffee.
“Well, I’d best get going. I don’t want to keep you,” Ellery said, standing up. “This was fun.”
“Yeah, it was. We should do it again sometime. If I ever find a place that’ll do my laundry for me, that is. Otherwise, I’ll be all out of clothes soon,” Kiefer grinned.
He stood up too and gestured for Ellery to lead the way. They stepped out onto the street. The air conditioning in the café had lulled Ellery into a false sense of security and the heat hit her like a wave as she stepped outside. She moaned quietly.
“What’s wrong?” Kiefer asked.
“This heat,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad and it’s going to get a lot worse,” he said.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, and then Kiefer spoke again.
“Let me give you a ride home, get you back into somewhere with air conditioning,” he offered.
“Oh no, it’s fine. I’m not far from here,” Ellery said.
“I’m parked round here,” Kiefer said as though Ellery hadn’t spoken.
He started to walk in the direction he had indicated. Ellery opened her mouth to repeat her protest, but no words came out. She felt her feet start to follow Kiefer against her will. What the fuck? she thought to herself.
She tried in vain to stop walking, but her feet kept going. She tried to speak, but no sound came out. Panic started to set in as she realized that somehow, she was no longer in control of her body.
“Relax, Ellery. You are under my control now. Don’t try to fight it. I’ve heard that people who do end up breaking their minds and we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Kiefer said.
Ellery realized with growing horror that Kiefer hadn’t spoken out loud. She could hear his voice inside of her head. That’s it. I’ve officially lost my mind, she thought to herself.
“Not at all, Ellery. I’m a warlock and mind control is kind of my specialty,” Kiefer said in her head.
She tried to reply, but she still couldn’t speak. She realized Kiefer had answered her last thought, so a little self-consciously, she thought at him, “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because it’s the only way I could get you to come with me without causing a scene. And I do hate a scene, don’t you?” He paused for a moment, and when his voice came again, Ellery could hear the amusement in it. “I wonder how many people in these windows are playing our little game. I wonder what stories they’ve created for us. Definitely not this one, I’m betting.”
Ellery’s panic was gripping her like a fist now. She still thought on a rational level that she had to have cracked up. It wouldn’t have surprised her after everything she had been through, but if she was having a breakdown, then surely she wouldn’t be using logic to think this through. Her panic must have been showing on her face, because a man stepped into her path with a look of concern on his face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Ellery opened her mouth to tell him no, she was definitely not okay, praying that her words didn’t fail her. They didn’t. They came out loud and clear, but they were Kiefer’s words said in her voice.
“I’m fine, thanks,” she smiled. “I’ve just got a bit of a migraine coming on. It’s this damned heat.”
The man smiled and nodded, although he didn’t look convinced. He started to walk away, but he kept glancing back at her. She tried to move her feet the way she wanted them to go, tried to scream, but it was no use. All it did was give her a sharp pain in the center of her head.
“Here we are,” Kiefer said.
She stopped abruptly at the back doors to a white van. Kiefer pulled a set of keys from his pocket and opened the doors.
“In you go,” he said.
Against her will, Ellery climbed into the back of the van.
“Where are you taking me?” she thought at Kiefer.
Kiefer closed the doors with a loud slam, but she still heard him in her head.
“Don’t worry, it’s not too far away. And once I start the engine, you’ll have your precious air conditioning.”
That wasn’t Ellery’s worry, but she knew Kiefer wasn’t going to tell her anything until he was good and ready to. She heard him opening the driver’s door of the van and she felt the van dip slightly as he got in. She tried to move, but she was frozen in place. All she could move was her eyes.
She looked around the van as the air conditioning sprang into life and a dull light came on. Her eyes landed on a scraggly-looking blond wig, and her panic doubled as realization hit her; that’s why Kiefer had looked familiar to her.
Back in Jacksonville, Ellery had been convinced she was being stalked by a man with straggly blond hair. She had noticed him several times following her over the last few weeks before she left Jacksonville and she had seen him running from her street the day she had gone home and found her parents’ house on fire. It hadn’t registered with her at the time; there was too much other stuff taking up space in her head. But now she saw it clearly and she knew instinctively she had been right. That fire had been no accident. Kiefer had started the fire. If that was even his real name.
“It is,” his voice said in her head.
“Why were you following me?” she thought
at him.
“I was just learning your routine. You were never in any danger from me. At least not then.”
“Did you burn down my parents’ house?”
“Yes. And I bought the department store you worked in and closed it down. You see, I had to make you want a fresh start so you would move somewhere where you didn’t know anyone. It made my life so much easier. And look how it turned out; it worked.”
“What do you want from me?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
He sounded a little bit irritated and Ellery changed the subject quickly. She needed to learn as much as she could about what was happening here.
“Why did you kill my parents? What had they ever done to you?”
“Them having to die was unfortunate, I’ll admit that. Collateral damage, I suppose you would say. But it was necessary, because I couldn’t leave loose ends. People who would notice you were missing.”
“You bastard!”
Ellery felt hot tears flooding her eyes. She sniffed hard, biting back the tears, not wanting to seem weak in front of Kiefer.
“So what happens to me now?” she thought at him.
“Now you get to be quiet. I’m fed up with your questions.”
Ellery didn’t get a chance to respond. She felt her eyes closing of their own accord and then everything went black.
2
Ellery opened her eyes and closed them again when a sharp pain sliced through her head. What the fuck was I drinking yesterday? she asked herself, reaching up to rub her temples.
She realized she wasn’t lying on a bed. The surface beneath her was hard and unrelenting and it was making her hip hurt. She rolled onto her back, aware of a clanking sound as she moved and tension on her right ankle.
She sat up and opened her eyes again. She looked around her. She was in what looked like a warehouse. The place was big with a high ceiling and hard floors. It was mostly bare. A couple of shelving units lined one wall, but they appeared to be empty.
Slowly, Ellery’s memory of what had happened came back to her. That can’t be real, she thought to herself. I must have been in an accident or something and I have a concussion. Maybe I’m even in a coma.
The idea that none of this was real soon went away when Ellery looked down and saw her right ankle had a metal cuff around it. The cuff was attached to a metal chain which was clipped into a ring in the ground.
“Are you alright?” a voice said from behind Ellery.
She spun around and saw for the first time that she wasn’t alone. Two other women were in the warehouse with her. Both had their ankles chained up in the same way as hers.
“No. I’m not alright. I’m far from alright. What’s going on? What the fuck is this place?” Ellery demanded.
“Calm down and…” one of the women started.
She looked a little bit older than Ellery and she had hair which might once have been blonde but now looked a dirty brown color. Her cardigan, blouse, and jeans hung off her in tattered rags, and Ellery noticed the smell of unwashed bodies in the air for the first time.
“Calm down? You’re kidding, right?” Ellery questioned loudly.
“No,” the woman said. “Panicking isn’t going to help you. Once you get over the initial shock, we’ll tell you everything we know.”
Ellery made a real effort to swallow down the panic inside of herself. The woman was right. Panicking wasn’t going to help her. She needed her wits about her. And while her situation was far from ideal, at least she could speak for herself again.
When she felt a little calmer, she opened her mouth to ask a question, but she had so many questions swirling around in her head, that she didn’t know which one to ask first. She had never been in any situation that even remotely resembled this one, and all of her questions felt important. She didn’t know which ones she should prioritize.
“I’m Ellery,” she said eventually, not sure what else to say.
“I’m Ava,” the woman with the dirty blonde hair replied. “And this is Lisa.”
Lisa, who hadn’t spoken so far, had jet-black hair and although she, too, looked dirty, her clothes weren’t quite as tattered as Ava’s. She was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a tank top. One strap of the tank top hung loose, but otherwise, her clothes were intact.
Ellery instinctively pulled her jacket tighter around her, dreading the day she would look as beaten down as these two women. It won’t happen. I’m getting out of here, she told herself. She thought it with conviction, but she still didn’t really believe it.
“How much do you remember?” Lisa asked.
Ellery thought for a moment. She was pretty sure she remembered everything, but she didn’t know these two women and she wondered how much she should tell them. She told herself off for being paranoid. Whatever this was, the three of them were in it together now, and what harm could it do to tell them what she knew?
“I moved to Miami almost two weeks ago. I lost my job back home and then my parents were killed in a fire which destroyed their house, the house I was living in at the time. Earlier today, I met a man. I was a little wary of him at first, but he seemed nice enough, and when he told me he was new to the city as well, I agreed to go for a coffee with him. Long story short, he abducted me and I realized he had been stalking me back home. He admitted to killing my parents. He knocked me out and I ended up here. God, why didn’t I say no to that coffee?”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Lisa said. “It was Kiefer, right?”
Ellery nodded, surprised and yet not surprised at the same time to learn that Lisa knew Kiefer.
“I met him in a bar. He asked if he could buy me a drink. I said no and went to leave—something about him seemed off, somehow—but he took control of my mind and forced me into his van.”
Ellery felt herself relaxing slightly. She wasn’t crazy. Somehow, Kiefer was able to control other people’s minds. He’d said he was a warlock, but Ellery doubted that. She felt sure he had somehow drugged her.
“He did that mind control thing to me too. I was trying to run away, trying to scream for help, but my feet didn’t respond. A man stopped me, asked me if I was okay. I think he saw the fear in my eyes. I tried to say no, but Kiefer controlled my mouth, speaking through me.”
“That’s what he does,” Lisa confirmed.
“He’s a real piece of work,” Ava added.
“Did he kill your family too?” Ellery asked.
Ava nodded, and for a second, her eyes filled with tears but she blinked them back.
“I was living with my fiancé. My soulmate. I went home and found him hanging from the bannister. I knew he would never commit suicide, but the police wouldn’t listen. I grieved and then I started trying to move on. I met Kiefer one day in the park. We got talking and he asked me on a date and I said yes. Now when I think of him, I feel nothing but revulsion, but then, I thought he was handsome and charming. I later found out that Kiefer had killed my fiancé.”
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” Ellery said automatically. Ava shrugged. She had accepted her fate. Ellery turned to Lisa. “What’s your story?”
“Similar. My parents were already gone and I wasn’t married or anything. But I had friends. Lots of them. Slowly, things started to happen to them. Car accidents. Fires. I moved away eventually, unable to face my old hometown. I moved to the Florida Keys for a new start and two days later, I met Kiefer at a bar and, well, you know the rest.”
“But what does he want from us? Is it a sex thing?” Ellery asked.
“Not exactly,” Ava said. “You’re going to have to keep an open mind for this next part, okay?”
Ellery nodded her head.
“Have you ever heard of wolf shifters?”
“You mean werewolves? Sure,” Ellery said.
“Right. Werewolves. Except the real-life version of them call themselves shifters,” Ava said.
Ellery raised an eyebrow. The real-life version of them? What the fuck? She had promised t
o keep an open mind, though, and as crazy as this sounded, she didn’t want to alienate the two women who it seemed would be sharing her prison.
“There’s a couple of shifter packs here, and one of the alphas is looking for mates. He’s not satisfied with one. He wants a whole fucking harem of women. And that’s where we come in.”
“Assuming I believe that, why us? What’s so special about us?”
“We have a protein in our blood called Sanmere. It means we can be turned into shifters. Without the protein, if a human tries to become a shifter, they die.”
“So let me get this straight,” Ellery said. “You expect me to believe there’s a pack of werewolves, or shifters or whatever the hell you want to call them, living in Florida and no one knows about them? And their leader wants to turn a series of women into wolves so he can have multiple wives?”
“That’s about the gist of it,” Lisa agreed. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.”
Ellery sat in silence for a moment, digesting the information. It did sound crazy. But was it any crazier than Kiefer being able to control her mind and telling her he was a warlock?
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Ellery said.
“I know. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening,” Ava shrugged.
“So how does Kiefer fit into all of this? Did he lie when he claimed to be a warlock?”
“No,” Ava said. “He’s a Matchmaker. That’s the word for someone in the shifter world who finds women with the Sanmere protein in their blood and sells them to the highest bidder. Shifters purchase these women to be their mates.”
Ellery’s blood ran cold at that. It made sense. Kiefer had said he was in sales and then clammed up. Of course he didn’t want her asking questions about the kind of things he sold if those things were human women.
“So how did Kiefer know I have this protein in my blood? I didn’t even know. I’ve never even heard of it,” Ellery said.
“We’re not entirely sure,” Lisa said. “But we suspect that Kiefer has contacts in hospitals and labs where blood is tested. Everyone we’ve spoken to here has had blood tests done within a year of being brought here.”