Enslaved by the Others (10 page)

Then I remembered that I wasn’t exactly human anymore, and had to swallow down a sick feeling of inevitability. I didn’t want to turn into the kind of monster I’d always been afraid of, but if that’s what it took to escape, I couldn’t afford to be squeamish. I would be as careful as I could be, bearing in mind what Gideon was and what he’d done. He wasn’t just a manipulative asshole. He was a cold-blooded murderer. Letting him help me was a risk I was willing to accept if it meant escaping this place.

“We’ll get out of here,” I said, not sure if I was trying to convince Iana or myself. “Whatever it takes.”

She didn’t answer, padding away on quiet feet to leave me alone with my thoughts of curses, death, and whether I might not be letting circumstances bring out an evil in me that maybe had been there long before I started turning Other.

Chapter Eight

After the initial meeting with Fabian, Gideon, and Sara (I didn’t think zombie-Tiny or the other zombie guy counted), Max didn’t return for days. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but by the third night, it was getting hard to stay on the razor’s edge of readiness to face whatever evil might be waiting for night to fall.

There were a couple of touch-and-go moments where I nearly flipped out. One was when a trio of suited guards came in. I rolled off the bed I was lounging on and put it between us, looking for something to use as a weapon. They just stood by the door and smirked at me, sharing amused looks at my confusion and panic. A minute or two later, a couple of women in leather collars and, incongruously, neatly pressed maid’s outfits, came in with a cart of supplies to clean the rooms and change the bedding. Apparently this was something they did every two or three days.

Talk about awkward misunderstandings.

The constant, fearful jitters faded by the end of the week. Instead of jumping at every unexpected sound and intrusion of Max’s security team and cleaning crew, it became too commonplace to worry about. Aside from telling us to get off the furniture they needed to clean or to lift our feet so they could vacuum a patch of carpet, they left me and the rest of Max’s captives alone.

It was so odd to see how he had set up his private harem. We were treated relatively well, given pretty much anything we wanted, and left alone by Max’s minions. We weren’t starved, by any means. The cabana I’d noticed on my first tour of the place provided meals as well as drinks. Lots of iron-rich foods, like vegetables, nuts, shellfish, and steak, along with daily vitamin supplements, most likely to combat the frequent blood loss the others suffered from Max’s attentions.

We were supposed to return our dishes through the same slot they were provided through. It was too small to squeeze through and escape, but big enough for plates, bowls, and small glasses to be passed back and forth. I couldn’t see much of the kitchen through the slot, but it looked like the people who ran it were all collared and uniformed. Trapped like the rest of us. The forks and spoons they passed us were plastic, and all our food was already cut up, so we didn’t need knives. The design was clever but chilling in its efficiency.

My presence didn’t change the routine a bit. The other captives might have been a tad nervous around me, but even they didn’t treat my arrival as unusual for long. For the most part, the others avoided me the way they avoided Iana; not making eye contact, scooting away or getting up to move to another room if one of us got too close, keeping responses monosyllabic and hushed, like they were afraid of being punished for talking to us.

Maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth, since they figured from my conversations with Iana that I might be the one to save them. Or maybe they thought that getting too close might make Max furious with them for helping me. Whatever it was, it meant I was left alone a great deal of the time.

Basically, it was boring and claustrophobic as fuck, and never mind that my shoe box of an apartment back in New York could have fit into our prison ten times over. With no human interaction, TV, or Internet, and nothing much but a collection of books to keep myself busy, it was a wonder I didn’t go nutty from all the time I had to spend twisting myself in mental knots coming up with and discarding useless escape plans.

Being bored was infinitely preferable to being tortured, but I was also worried for Sara’s safety. The one time I got brave enough to ask one of the security guards if he knew anything, he told me to sit back down and shut up. I didn’t want to invite trouble or give Max or his people a reason to send me back to my prison in the basement, so I did as I was told.

It might have saved me some pain, but it still left me in the dark. Where had Gideon taken Sara? What else had they done to her? It wasn’t like I could do anything about it, or about my own predicament, but I couldn’t stop worrying about her.

I was also worried about Devon, my hunter friend who was probably still in Fabian’s hands, but Sara was like the sister I never had. The woman had more money than God, and yet she had taught me that it didn’t take money to live a rich life. She was the one who took me on adventures to see plays and improv shows I never would have gone to alone, to view artwork in galleries I wouldn’t have known existed, to attend readings by authors I never would have thought to look up, and to see bands I’d never heard of in dives I wouldn’t have set foot in if I didn’t trust her so much.

That was what killed me the most about her being taken. Devon chose this life of tangling with vampires. He knew the dangers involved and had decided to take the risk. Sara was only in trouble because she was my friend.

Not knowing if she was badly hurt, or if she was even still alive, gnawed at me like a dog worrying a bone. Worse, I was afraid Royce was unaware that I had fallen into Max’s hands. The last time we spoke, he knew about Clyde’s trouble, and that a necromancer was involved. I hadn’t a clue, at that time, that Max might have had anything to do with it.

Though I also had a thread of a blood bond remaining to Royce, just as I did to Max, I didn’t think he could still feel what I was feeling like he had when I was in New York. He’d mentioned once that proximity strengthened the bond. It was a one way street for vampires—they could feel and exert some control over their bonded human servants, but for the most part it wasn’t supposed to go the other way around. I couldn’t be sure what he knew or felt about me or my predicament. Considering I must be at least a few hundred miles away, he might not even be able to tell if I was alive. Did he feel my fear? Did he know how scared I was, not just for myself, but for Sara? Did he know how much I missed him? I couldn’t let it go even though I knew it wasn’t helping to linger on questions no one would answer.

After a week of sitting and stewing in mystery, I could almost believe Max had forgotten I existed. A couple of the girls had loosened up enough to say more than two or three words at a time to me, and I knew all of their names now, but not much else. We weren’t buddies by a long shot and, while they might have been comfortable with each other, I was clearly still too much of an outsider—too Other—for them to want to get chummy.

A good portion of my time was spent working out nervous energy in the pool or reading books. The library had a fairly extensive collection of classics and some recent literary fiction, though I couldn’t help but wonder if he had books like
Memoirs of a Geisha,
Stoker’s
Dracula
and
The Handmaid’s Tale
stocked for his captives because he had a sick sense of humor or if the irony went right over his head. Whatever the reason, the reading material was about the only thing that kept me from going completely bonkers. This was like some weird vacation, except I wasn’t staying in a hotel I could check out of whenever I wanted, and I was more worried about vampire infestation than bedbugs.

When Max did show up, I nearly had a heart attack. With my nose buried in a book, and after getting so used to the comings and goings of his security and maintenance people, I didn’t even notice his entrance. It was his voice that made my heart seize up in terror, except he wasn’t talking to me, or paying me much attention at all.

“Did you miss me, sweet?”

My fingers tightened abruptly around the paperback copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, tearing a page in the process. I peered over the top of the book, otherwise going still. Sick relief that he was talking to someone else didn’t unravel the knots in my stomach. I didn’t want to give him a reason to look my way or to notice me.

Halfway across the room, Max was sitting on a divan beside Vivian, one of the girls who made it a point to avoid talking to me. It was late, dark, with only a few lamps casting pools of light to hold back the shadows. Everyone else had cleared out when I wasn’t looking.

Vivian was staring down at her hands clenched together in her lap, nodding a little too emphatically in response to Max’s question. He smiled and held out a hand, palm up. Though hers shook, she untangled her fingers and placed a hand in his. He lifted her wrist to his mouth and bit down, his gaze flicking in my direction. Too awkward to leave the room, too late to hide behind the book—I focused on Vivian’s face instead, heat burning my cheeks. Though she didn’t make a sound, her breathing had sped up, her mouth slack, her eyes closed.

It felt like walking in on people having sex who were a little too involved to bother stopping on their voyeur’s account. The reminder of why the other girls were here was enough to turn the blood to ice water in my veins.

The reminder that this might be why I was here as well paralyzed me with fear.

Max pulled away from Vivian before long, his tongue scraping over the place he’d bitten. Even from this distance, I could see the slick coat of red staining his fangs and tongue, like he’d been sucking on a cheap, too red lollipop. Her trembling increased marginally, but she didn’t pull away or do anything to fight as Max licked at the punctures. I had to wonder if he was making such a point of it for my benefit or hers.

He pressed a light kiss to the bite, set her hand back down in her lap, then reached over to tilt her head so he could press another to her brow. It might have been sweet if she hadn’t so obviously been making an effort to keep from bolting in terror at his touch. Considering how cavalier he was with human life, it was no wonder she was afraid. Any bite from him could be her last.

His gaze briefly slid back to me before he rose and stalked back to the exit on quiet feet. He glanced at me once more over his shoulder, then to the book in my hands.

“You might find something like
The Picture of Dorian Gray
more enlightening.”

I nodded mutely, staring back at him as he slid out of the room like a shadow, the door lock engaging with a click. Just before the door shut, I almost called after him to ask if Sara was still here and alive, but the thought of having his attention on me again for any reason filled me with sick dread. What if he decided to feed on me next?

And exactly what kind of object lesson did he think I might learn from
Dorian Gray
? It wasn’t like I was about to sell my soul to Max for the sake of beauty or wealth. Unless he wanted me to read and reflect on my relationship with Royce, which was already borderline Faustian. Or had been, before he sent me away from what might have been a very long and decadent life together. He had stashed me in Los Angeles while he dealt with whatever troubles were threatening me in New York. Royce never had been quite clear on what I was hiding from, aside from the police, though I trusted his judgment enough to accept it was serious business.

Whatever the reason, I had to keep in mind it was Max Carlyle making the suggestion. Who knew what he might be thinking? The guy was crazier than a shithouse rat.

Once I was sure he was gone, I put my book down, clearing my throat. Vivian didn’t look up, her attention fixed on her hands, once again clenched in her lap. I moved to her side. She shrank away when I sat down next to her, like she thought I might hurt her, too. I held out a hand in offering as a lump formed in my throat, too big to talk around. She tilted her head to look, biting her lip, I supposed either too afraid to move or speak. Knowing what that felt like, I kept my mouth shut, leaving my hand where it was.

After a very long moment, she slipped her hand into mine. I gave her cold fingers a light, and what I hoped was reassuring, squeeze. Her trembling didn’t let up in the slightest but her bunched shoulders did come down a bit. Long, wavy strands of dark brown hair clung to the perspiration on her skin.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

Every tear that slid down her pale cheek was like another knife in my heart. Once again, all I had done was sit back and watch as Max assaulted someone. Some part of me was too cowardly to interfere. All I could offer her was a bit of empty comfort, a human touch to remind her that she wasn’t alone.

Chapter Nine

It was odd, but it stung my pride as the days passed to see Max come and go, drinking from the girls or from Na’man, the one guy he kept locked in here with us. He left the others shaking, emotional wrecks in his wake—while completely ignoring me.

He occasionally took one of them out with him, then returned them a few hours later as pale shadows of themselves. I did my best not to think too hard about what he might have done to them during those little excursions. I could guess by the traumatized looks and empty gazes, the way they shivered and cried once he was gone.

Those were the times I was thankful he seemed to have lost his interest in me. And hated myself more for being too afraid to try to stop him from hurting them, and for being grateful it wasn’t me.

It was even worse when I finally worked up the courage to ask him—from safely across the room during a rare daytime visit—if Sara was okay. He looked at me with such a flat, emotionless expression, his gray eyes washed out to the point of appearing nearly colorless in the dim sunlight, that I couldn’t find it in myself to say anything else. I had to turn my gaze away. He didn’t stay long after that, taking blood from Iana and then leaving without a word. It was disheartening, to say the least.