Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

“I don’t know! I didn’t even know he was working with Weres! Please, I don’t know anything about it!”

He shook me again until I was grabbing at his shirt to stay steady. That conveniently made it easier for him to draw my head to his shoulder, that much closer to the seeping wound. He tilted his head, his lips brushing against my ear as he spoke in those low, silken tones, the promise of my death in his voice.

“Listen to me, little girl, and listen well. I have limited time, and even less patience. You will obey me, and you will tell me everything that you know. Binding you to me means that, after I wring information from you, you will become useless to me. If I cannot sell you to another and must resort to force to get what I ask, I will keep you by my side until time ends. I will make every day you live a waking nightmare. I will sire you if only to have the eternal pleasure of making you experience exquisite agony from dusk till dawn.”

Tears sprang into my eyes as he yanked my head back again. I wished I knew what to say to make him stop, to leave me alone, but no words could escape past my fear-closed throat.

“The only way you will ever be free of me is to submit, and once you do, you will be sold to someone who will most likely bind you to them for what remains of your pathetic, insignificant life. Choose your path, my pet—the hard road of servitude or eternal pain. Your choice.”

Though I wish I could say I was brave in the face of danger, this was like nothing I’d ever faced before. Royce wasn’t here to protect me. I was too far away for him to “feel” my location, so no one knew where I was. I didn’t have the chance of a fart in a windstorm of finding a way out of here. Max cutting himself removed any doubts of my coming out of this predicament intact. Before, I might have been able to pray and hope and lie to myself that everything would be okay. I’d outwit Max and escape somehow, or Royce would figure out where I was and save me. That I was so close to being turned into a mindless puppet again drove home just how unutterably screwed I was.

“Tick-tock, pet. Make your choice before I must choose for you.”

A life of indentured slavery with the unknown looked a shade better than an unlife devoted to torture. Heart heavy, I choked out a few words, my stomach twisted with sickness and a bitter taste on my tongue at my own weakness.

“No, the werewolves with him aren’t Sunstrikers. I don’t know of any alliance between the Sunstrikers and any vampires. The ones who helped in the battle against you were there because my ex-boyfriend was their leader, and he asked them to come. They were there for my sake, not for Royce.”

He stilled, and I discovered I had a whole new reason to be afraid. Something about what I’d said was important. Important enough that he flung me aside—with enough care that I landed on a nearby couch, thankfully not breaking anything in the process—and stormed off without another word.

What the hell had I just done?

Max left me alone for a while. Long enough for the other donors or prisoners or whatever they were to creep back into the room, though they all avoided me like the plague. There were just shy of a dozen of them, all trapped in here with me.

Well, all of them except for the Other with glowing green eyes, so like the Los Angeles necromancer’s that the sudden reminder of that backstabbing little shit made me shiver.

She sat down next to me on the couch, that borderline-rotting peaches scent wafting from her like perfume. Her skin showed no sign of the damage that Max’s touch had done to her earlier, save for two tiny puncture wounds that were wreathed with red rings of what probably passed on her for infection. Her blood had dried into twin lines of pale golden film, staining the collar of her robe. She didn’t appear to care about that, or that the thin material was gaping open.

“One day,” she said, voice low and oddly calm, “I will kill him.”

“If you have any ideas how to go about it, I’m all ears.”

Her eyes glowed—literally glowed—when she turned to me, one hand curled around her collar. “If I had an answer to that, I would have done it by now.”

I scooted away, putting more space between us.

The glow dimmed, her features twisting into a rueful, far more human smile. “My apologies. The others have no heart to defend themselves. I thought you ...”

The way she trailed off made me worry about hearing her complete the thought. Whatever she might think, I wasn’t crazy enough to attack Max Carlyle without a hell of a weapon and an army at my back. Hell, if I had the option, I’d nuke him from orbit. Just to be sure.

“Your name is Shiarra?”

At my nod, she removed the hand from her collar to place over her heart. I couldn’t help but notice as she shifted her hand that her palm and fingers looked burned, like she’d left it on a hot stove. “I prefer the name Iana.”

I nodded again, not feeling particularly chatty.

“Is it true? Did he successfully depose Clyde Seabreeze?”

Frowning down at my fists clenched in my lap, I thought about not answering. It probably wasn’t in my best interests to alienate this woman, but this wasn’t a safe topic for casual conversation. Tone curt, I hoped she got the hint that I wasn’t going to give any details. “Yes, I guess he did. Fabian is running Los Angeles now.”

Her tone became urgent, demanding. “You must not tell him how to reach your wolves. He will use them to speed his plans to take New York away from Rhathos of Thessaly. Ian Taft barely clings to Boston. Too many bow to his whims, or turn a blind eye to his machinations. New York cannot fall. There will be no one left on this continent to keep him in check if that happens.”

“I’m doing my best,” I muttered, embarrassed for no reason I could readily put my finger on. “What do you mean, anyway? Who is Ian Taft?”

“The Master of Boston. The one who replaced Euphron of Sicyon as commander of the northern colonies after Rhathos drove him out. Euphron will take this land. All of it, if he’s not stopped. If I could only get rid of this”—she tugged at the collar again, grimacing—“I could lay waste to this gods’-forsaken place.”

“Don’t start that again,” one of the others hissed from across the room. “If he finds out, he’ll get mad and hurt the rest of us. You know he will.”

Iana quieted, hands clenching into fists. Though I wasn’t totally comfortable making direct contact, I liked the idea of her being able to do something to destroy this place. Whatever she was, it must have been something powerful if Max kept her in a collar that suppressed magic or shapeshifting. If he couldn’t face her as she was, maybe finding a way to free her could be my ticket out of this hellhole. Light, careful, I touched her shoulder, flinching a little from the intensity of the gaze she leveled on me.

“Why can’t you take it off ?”

Her expression turned sardonic. Heat bloomed in my cheeks. “Sorry, just asking. I’m not exactly familiar with mage-work like that.”

Even as I said it, I realized that wasn’t true. Maybe the collar she was wearing was something like the collars on Christoph and Ashi, Royce’s unwilling “guests” back in New York. They were werewolves, but because they had attacked him on his own turf, Royce had chosen to hire a mage to find a way to prevent them from using their supernatural strength or shapeshifting powers. Thanks to the collars they wore, they were, for all intents and purposes, human.

Better than being dead, I supposed, though Ashi might have disagreed with me.

“I require a mage to remove it,” Iana said. “Max will never do it of his own accord.”