Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

No, I had no idea how Max had stolen Mouse’s voice. He clearly gathered as much by my expression, because he leaned forward to tip my chin up to make sure I was looking into his cold, gray eyes as he told me.

“She had the voice of an angel, once. My angel. Her voice was why I made her mine. My little bird sang for me and did my bidding—until Rome, where she attempted to disobey me.”

The blood on his breath as he leaned even closer made my eyes water, but I didn’t dare blink or look away. “She grew a conscience. The opera she was performing called for the death of the male lead, but she refused to kill the boy. Not even for her art, she told me. Not even for me.

“When we returned to the Americas, I took my time with her. I’m sure you realize what a busy man I am, so you can imagine what dedication it took for me to set aside at least an hour every day to personally oversee her punishment and reprogramming. Sharp objects. Blunt ones. Silver. Cold iron. Blessed objects. Unholy relics. So many methods, so few that worked the way I desired. It took decades for me to discover a way to make the damage to her vocal chords permanent, seeing as she was already turned, but it’s a technique I perfected on her.”

Oh, God . I’d known Mouse was mute, and that Max had a hand in it, but I had no idea his sadistic streak went so deep. The guy had exhibited some unbelievably psychotic behavior when trying to wrest control of New York from Royce’s hands back when I first met him, and I had seen some horrific things since I arrived in this Motel Hell, but I had no idea he had been so cruel to mute, gentle Mouse. No wonder she always got a look like she wished she could hate him to death whenever he was mentioned.

Max was looking at me expectantly, one brow raised, like he was waiting for a reply. My throat was so constricted and dry, I had a hard time speaking. After a couple of attempts, I choked out a few words. “How could you do that to her?”

“I told you why,” he responded, voice cold as a winter night. “She is mine and she will never forget it. Not if she lives until the sun this forsaken rock circles burns out. Even when her voice returns—oh, yes, it may take another century or two, but it will come back in time—she will remember what comes of disobeying me. You’re about to learn the same lesson, my little red-headed vixen. The question is, will you do as I wish without further motivation, or will you hold out to see what else I can strip from you? Or just how much pain you can endure?”

My voice was trapped in my throat, fluttering like a wounded bird. If it escaped, I had the feeling the screams might never stop.

The hard look on his face melted away, leaving a congenial smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes in a way that might have been attractive on someone less insane.

“Very well. Shall we begin?”

I shook my head, twisting away, pain shooting up my arms as I fought the bindings. Max snapped his fingers, and a pair of men sauntered in, both of them wearing slick plastic aprons over their jeans and T-shirts. A sick little voice in the back of my head reminded me it was the sort of thing a butcher might wear to keep the gore of the slaughter off their clothes.

They each took one of my arms and hefted me up between them, the tips of my toes dragging on the cold marble as Max led the way out of the room. Though I’d seen enough of the huge mansion that I was starting to get a feel for the twists and turns of the place, I didn’t recognize the route we were taking. We went down a few flights of stairs until the unmistakable damp chill of a basement crept over my skin, the taste of wet earth and burning wood crawling over my tongue as I took a shaky breath.

This wasn’t the same place as the rooms where he had initially kept me and entertained those other vampires during that auction. This felt more unfinished, like a subterranean cave. The ceiling was rough wooden beams mostly hidden in shadow high over our heads. Somewhere above us, a heavy door slammed and the darkness became a tangible thing.

There was light ahead. Flickering. A fireplace? The brick fixture was deep, but the warmth and light from the fire had a minimal impact on the grave-like chill of the underground space.

I did my best to dig my heels in when I spotted the table covered with an array of shining tools: knives, needles, saws, scissors, and every other instrument of torture you might expect in some psycho doctor wannabe’s collection. There was a second stainless steel table next to it covered with Velcro straps. My breath was knocked out of me as I was picked up and bodily shoved facedown onto it, the cold biting into my skin through the thin robe and against my cheek.

“You know,” Max said, strolling over to the fireplace as the two men strapped me down to the table, “I do enjoy reading science fiction. There are a number of authors who come up with the most outrageous ideas. For example, have you heard of a fellow by the name of John Norman?”

I grunted, out of breath and otherwise unable to reply. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the guys who had dragged me down here make a face behind Max’s back. The same guy who came over to shove a piece of leather between my teeth and strap it around my head.

It didn’t take long to immobilize me. The short robe I was wearing was tugged up on the left side, a swipe of something cold and wet against my hip making me twitch. Judging by the sharp scent, it was rubbing alcohol. I was probably going to get a shot of some kind. Something to dull pain while he used those instruments of torture on me? Not that I wouldn’t want it if that’s what he planned, but what would be the point?

Oblivious to my squirming, Max continued speaking. The two men stepped back, waiting for something, both of them looking a bit bored, as though whatever was going on was a common occurrence. Or maybe, like me, they were getting as tired as I was of his Bond villain-style monologue.

“Norman created a series of books that explored what a world might be like if the strong ruled and the weaker were enslaved. I did not find many of his methods for dealing with intractable slaves to be very practical, but he did have some fascinating ideas.”

Max glanced at me over his shoulder, his eyes reflecting the firelight like glass as he lifted a long piece of metal that had been resting in the flames. The tip glowed the color of gray ashes, and my muscles seized at the realization that he intended to use that thing on me.

“There are less painful methods but I find the old ones work best to break a slave’s will.”

Blind panic was a term I thought I was familiar with. It evolved a whole new meaning for me in that moment.

There wasn’t anything I could do to turn my head away, flinch back, cover myself—nothing. Wide-eyed, my focus went from a dull blur to razor sharp as he moved closer, praying desperately to whoever might be listening in to make this all some kind of nightmare that I could wake up from anytime now.

Once he was close enough, he held the iron rod so I could see the pattern on the end. An intricate symbol of a pigeon or something flying inside a wreath of olive leaves. If it wasn’t on the business end of a branding iron, I might have called it pretty.

“Don’t worry, my dove. This is a memory you will never be rid of.”

As badly as I wanted to escape in that moment, I couldn’t move an inch. Closing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch what he was about to do, I whimpered around the gag, raging panic clawing at my insides.

Never in my life had I experienced pain like that before. The brand probably wasn’t pressed against me more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity of agony as the metal bit into my flesh, hissing, searing, digging deep into the skin.