Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

The sparks whirling around Arnold’s hands were gaining speed and size. The need to find Max spurred me to move before he might do something we would all regret later.

I dashed forward and grabbed Arnold’s arm before he could cast whatever it was he was on the verge of hurling at Gideon. Arnold might have had the power of the cosmos at his fingertips, but his physical strength paled against mine, even before I was infected. He struggled a bit, then harder when Gideon started humming the strains of a song I recognized from all those times Arnold made me and Sara sit through it on game nights at his place. It was “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar.”

Sara spoke up, her voice hoarse and cracking with strain. “Don’t, Gideon. Please.”

The necromancer kept his gaze on Arnold for a long, strained moment. His focus flicked to Sara, following the line of her shoulder and arm, noting the way her fingers caught in Arnold’s jacket. Gideon rolled his shoulders and tilted his head back, his soft laughter making my skin crawl.

“I know, I know,” he said, throwing his arm across his eyes in an overly dramatic gesture I had seen him make before. “I’m why we can’t have nice things. What a world.”

“You promised you’d get us out of here,” I hissed.

Gideon looked at me, frowned, then started patting down his pockets with a faraway, thoughtful expression. After a moment of this, he shoved a hand in a back pocket of his jeans, groped a bit, then pulled it out. His face lit up as he triumphantly held up the invisible whatever it was pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“Look at that! I found exactly one fuck to give. It is my gift to you.”

Arnold tugged against my grip again. This time I didn’t stop him. He went chest to chest with the much taller necromancer, glaring up at him. “Let her go!”

“I’ll think about it. Don’t worry. I have no intention of hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Not tonight.”

Iana hissed. “Enough. I taste your lies. Cease your foolishness and use that magic of yours. Find him.”

Gideon gave her a raspberry, then turned away from the two, snapping his fingers. The vampire turned to follow him, glazed eyes focused on his back. Iana stalked after them, her anger a palpable thing.

Arnold and Sara were slower to follow. He waved me off when I tried to help, and I flinched under the accusatory look he leveled at me. I wanted to protest that none of this mess was my fault, but a teeny, tiny, hateful voice in the back of my head was giving a gleeful singsong rundown of all the reasons it was because of me .

It didn’t help that Iana and Gideon were moving at a much faster clip, not bothering to see if we were behind them. They’d outpace us and leave us alone, lost in this den of monsters to fend for ourselves if we didn’t hurry.

Then it occurred to me that if Gideon faced Max without me, Iana certainly wouldn’t do anything to keep the duplicitous little shit from becoming a smear on the wall. If he was hurt or killed, I didn’t even want to think about what that would mean for Sara’s health.

Fighting the creeping terror that thought inspired, I started to run to catch up with Gideon.

“Hey, wait up!”

Gideon led the way, Iana and his enchanted vampire minion following up the rear from either side. Though I was sure Iana would rather tear Gideon’s head off and play kickball with it, the effect made it look like he was in charge. I wondered how Max would view this situation, and how the hell I would keep him from killing Gideon out of hand.

At some point, Arnold and Sara fell too far behind for me to see them. The mage had said he could find us wherever we went, but I wasn’t sure if he just wanted to get me out of his sight or if he really meant it.

I was tempted to give in to panic and despair, but that wouldn’t help anybody, least of all Sara.

Iana stopped in her tracks so abruptly that I ran into her, sending us both stumbling forward a couple of steps. Her fingers closed around my upper arm so tight that it hurt. Gideon paused, glancing over his shoulder.

“Weapons,” she said.

“All I’ve got is the one gun. They wouldn’t let me have anything else,” I said, apologetic.

“No.” She shook her head. “We need to arm ourselves. I don’t have the strength to shift yet, and you need more than a pistol. Come, he has an armory on display.”

Couldn’t argue with that. Gideon opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but closed it with a snap once Iana got moving at a much faster clip. She led us through a room full of paintings and sculptures, an echoing, empty ballroom with at least a dozen crystal chandeliers reflecting the moonlight into a thousand tiny stars on the polished floor, and an indoor arboretum full of exotic flowers and ferns arranged in a labyrinthine maze. There were small lights here and there, but most of the place was dark, and I was afraid the shadows might be hiding more than just a couple of ornamental rosebushes.

We didn’t run into anybody along the way. I spotted security cameras here and there, tiny red lights or the sheen of a lens giving them away. Either everyone in Max’s employ was otherwise occupied, or Max didn’t care that we were running around unchecked. Neither option boded well for us.

We must have run half the length of the building before Iana led us into a room that looked like something out of an exhibit I had once seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The arms and armory display there had been full of swords, daggers, shields, helmets, and other kinds of armor. Max’s collection was similar, but rather than sticking with a particular theme or time period or even culture, he had a little bit of everything. Spears with bronze, iron, and stone tips, armor made of leather and metal and other materials I couldn’t immediately identify, knives with handles of stone, bone, and wood.

The difference between what I saw here and what I had seen in the museum was that each piece on display here still looked just as serviceable and dangerous as it must have been the day it was made. None of it was hidden behind display cases, either. All of the armor looked to be about the same size. Made for a man of Max’s proportions.

As I took a breath, aside from the scent of dust and metal and leather and oil, I could taste the old blood in the air. Long dried, long dead, and so much remembered violence radiated from these pieces that I could have choked on it if I breathed too deep. These weapons weren’t the purchases of a collector. They were trophies, retired reminders of a life of violence and a river of bloodshed. Lifetimes of it.

Iana viewed the place with distaste, her lip curled in a sneer as though she’d gotten a whiff of something rotten. I had the feeling she was sensing the same thing I was. Maybe more than I, considering she was a far stronger Other than whatever I was turning out to be. Her senses were likely more attuned to these things in a way I would never experience.

Something told me that there was a history behind each and every piece in this room, and that if I held it long enough and breathed it in, the blood soaked into the material would tell me the story. My connection to the one who had worn and wielded these instruments of torture and murder would be enough to let it unfold like a grisly picture book in my head.

Never had I felt so ill at having a piece of Max inside me.

Iana studied the collection on the wall before selecting a short, double-bladed sword with some kind of raised line running down the flat of the blade. It was old. Ancient. Cast bronze, now myriad shades of green, but not so pitted or oxidized that the metal couldn’t hold an edge. The pommel was far newer than the rest of it, but even still, the leather around the grip was cracked and so faded that I couldn’t tell what the original color must have been.