Reliquary (Reliquary Series Book 1) (20 page)

I took a close look at his face, the shadows under his eyes, the lines of strain that bracketed his mouth, the round red mark I could now see on his chest as his shirt fell open. “We have to go upload it soon so no one can sense it,” I said.

Asa looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek as he glanced at the relic in my hand. “That thing is bad, Mattie. And huge. Bigger than anything I’ve handled before. It is
made
of
pain
. Did you hear Keenan? If he’s right, this is the original source of that kind of magic. You don’t want it inside your body.”

I shivered at the cold sweat that had broken out across my chest and forehead. “You said I was strong.”

“You are, but you’re barely tested. We’ve only done this a few times, and I—” He cursed and slammed his hands against the ceiling of the taxi. “Should have brought fucking Lila.”

“But you said I was stronger than she is!”

“Not the point,” he shouted, making our cabdriver glance nervously over his shoulder.

“But Ben—”

“Fuck Ben,” he snapped, running his hands through his hair.

“Why didn’t you just give it to Keenan, if you don’t care about your brother?”

He glared at me, his mouth tight. “I had no clue how powerful it was when I agreed to take this job. This thing could
break
you, Mattie.”

“Can we get it back to Las Vegas without uploading it? What if we just packed it up and arranged for a flight out tomorrow?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ll call our ride out as soon as we get to a phone, but it’ll take them several hours to pull it together without Montri’s contacts at the airport noticing. And when the smoke clears on that raid, Montri will know the relic is missing, and he’ll know who took it. And that sensor, assuming he got out, will be able to find us. Especially with Montri’s network of people all over the city. We might have until dawn before they come after us, but definitely no longer than that.”

“Keenan knows you have it, too.” I was still dizzy with what I had just learned about Asa. Or at least, what I thought I’d learned. I had no idea what to think of it. In some ways it didn’t fit, but in others, it made complete sense. “Couldn’t he bring down more Headsmen on us?”

Asa looked away. “He won’t tell his people about me,” he said quietly.

We rode in silence, me clutching the key to Ben’s freedom, Asa’s fingers white-knuckled over his own thighs. I wondered if he was waiting for me to say something, to ask him about his past with Keenan, to judge him. He’d told me so many times that he didn’t give a fuck about what I thought of him, and now I was wondering if that was his armor, if he’d had to build it for himself over the years to protect whatever lay beneath.

I wondered if Ben knew. I wondered if their father had. I wondered if it was part of the reason he had been so hateful to his eldest son—Asa had said his father had called him a “perverted scumbag.” It took everything I had not to reach over and take Asa’s hand. As much as I hated to admit it, he had begun to matter to me.

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” I murmured.

“It was good. Your emotions were true, and that’s why Keenan fell for it.”

“He couldn’t sense yours?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice concealing my emotions. He’s the one who taught me.”

“So you can sense magic, resist manipulation, hide your true feelings, and withstand intense pain. Anything you can’t do?”

Asa turned to me, still looking pissed off. “Convince a stubborn woman to walk away from a situation that’ll probably get her killed?”

“Touché.” I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. “Where are we going, by the way?”

“A place where I arranged to have some supplies stashed by Brindle’s contacts here.”

“Who? Can they help us get out?”

“Not that kind of contacts. My guess is these people don’t even know they’re working for him. They just get paid to do a job for a friend of a friend of a friend.”

I slumped. “Oh.”

“We’re going to pick our stuff up and then go to our conduit.” He was radiating tension as he stared me down. “And if you’re still sure you want to do this, we’ll upload the magic.”

I frowned as I remembered Hualing. “If this magic is as big and bad and painful as you’re saying, then who . . .”

“This is a special job.” Now he gave me a smile, but it was scary as heck. “And that means we have to go to a specialist.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We arrived at a dingy self-service storage place just off Sukhumvit Road, and Asa used a code to open a tiny unit. Inside were just a few things—his black toolbox, another duffel much like the one he usually carried, and a small briefcase. He leaned over his toolbox and came up holding a first aid kit, then motioned for me to sit on the grimy concrete floor. When I obeyed, he briskly cleaned the wound on the bottom of my foot, applied some anesthetic cream, and placed a clean, waterproof bandage over it. As I rose, happy to be able to put weight on both feet again, he opened the duffel and pulled out something black and slick. He tossed it to me.

I caught it and held it up. “Um. Is this a corset?”

“Yup. There’s a dress code where we’re going.” He yanked out a pair of stiletto-heeled, shiny black boots, then chucked another scrap of fabric at me.

“Latex hot pants? Are you kidding me?”

Asa shot to his feet and was on me with a snarl. “Listen to me, little girl,” he said as he backed me against the wall. He caged me in, just like he had the first night we met, placing his hands on either side of my head. “I gave you an out. I’m only going to say it to you one more time: it’s your choice. You don’t want to do this, we drop the relic and head home. It’s too hot to carry out, so we have two options.”

Why did he seem so angry at me all of a sudden? “We agreed to this job. You chose me to be your reliquary. And we’re doing this for Ben.”

His eyes were dark, maybe with rage, maybe with hurt, maybe with something else entirely. I couldn’t tell, but I could feel the heat. “And you don’t give a fuck what happens to you in the process,” he said. “That when I get you back to Ben, you might not be in any shape to recognize him, let alone go back to your happy little life together.”

“But if we go home empty-handed, they’ll kill him, won’t they?”

“If they don’t, it would signal that Brindle is weak.”

That was it, then. I may not have taken any vows yet, but the night Ben had slid that diamond onto my finger, I’d known I was ready to. For better or worse. And this . . . hopefully this was the worst, and I was strong enough to take it. Because it was me or Ben, and I wasn’t the kind of person who could walk away from that. “I have to do this, Asa.”

“Fine.” He leaned closer. “And can you do it without me?”

I thought about that. “Well . . . no. Probably not.”

“
Probably
not? If I walked away and left you here right now, would you have a single fucking clue of what to do next?”

“Well, I—”

“Could you find a conduit, any conduit, let alone one who could help you? Would you know how to set it up? Would you have any idea whether the transaction was complete or not?” His words echoed sharply in the little metal room, making me cringe.

“No,” I muttered.

“Then you’re completely dependent on me.” Our eyes met, and I glared at him, but it only made him edge closer, emanating danger. “Say it, Mattie. You’re completely dependent on
me
.”

I gritted my teeth. My hands were fisted at my sides.

“Say. It. Say it or we’re done.” He gave me a few more seconds, then shoved off the wall and turned his back, kneeling to zip the duffel. “Good luck, honey. You’re gonna need it.” He stood up and looped the duffel strap over his shoulder, then headed for the door, leaving the relic lying on the ground next to the corset I’d dropped.

His hand was on the doorknob when I crumbled. “I’m completely dependent on you,” I said quietly, my cheeks hot.

He stilled, facing the door. “Say it again. Louder.”

I cleared my throat and drew a long breath through my nose. “I’m completely dependent on you.”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “Now say, ‘I’m completely dependent on you,
sir
.’”

I blinked at him. “What?”

He turned the doorknob, and I put my hands up. “Fine! I’m completely dependent on you, sir! What kind of weird game is this?”

Asa let go of the door and turned around. “This is no game.” He slid the duffel from his arm and let it fall to the ground. “Until I say otherwise, you will do exactly as I say. You will remember that your life and Ben’s are in my hands. Now that you’ve decided you want to go through with this, you don’t get any more choices unless I allow it. You don’t get to fucking speak unless I ask you a question. You are handing yourself over to me, and trusting me to get you through it. That’s the only way we do this. You got it?”

Handing myself over to him? My tongue trembled with the urge to tell him to go jump in the river, but he had me—Ben’s life was at stake. “Yes.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes, what?” he barked.

“Yes . . . sir? You want me to salute?”

He reached into his bag and pulled out something small and black, then rose and approached me again. He lifted it up in the dim overhead light. It was a collar. “No saluting,” he said in a low voice. “But you will show respect. Lift your hair.”

“Is that Gracie’s?”

“Does it fucking look like Gracie’s?” He held it right in front of my face. It was much smaller than something that could have fit around the pit bull’s thick neck. “Lift your hair and don’t question me again.”

My heart skipped a beat. He looked completely serious. I lifted my hair, and Asa fastened the collar around my neck. He toyed with the ring that hung from the front. “Good girl,” he said quietly, and I relaxed a little, glad that the edge in his voice had dulled for the moment. “Now take off your clothes, and put on the outfit I chose for you.”

He must have seen my eyes flare with alarm, because he stepped away from me. “I’m going to allow you some privacy.”

Allow me. Like it was his to offer. And right now, I supposed it was. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, what?”

I closed my eyes and swallowed, trying to push down the angry defiance swirling inside me. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll be right outside.” He grabbed his duffel and headed out the door.

I sagged against the metal, my heart hammering. What the hell was going on? Shaking, I slipped off my ruined dress and examined the hot pants. They were so short that it was clear I was meant to wear nothing underneath, with a little zipper down the front that would make them fall open. “What the hell kind of dress code is this?” I muttered as I stepped out of my white lacy boy shorts and yanked the skintight latex up my legs. They fit perfectly, like a swimsuit might, but thicker and tighter. Next I eyed the corset. There was a zipper on the front, which would connect two stiff panels that were held together at the back by crisscrossed laces. I pulled the thing around my torso and zipped it up, but it was really loose. Holding it around me so it covered my breasts, I went to the door. “Asa? The corset doesn’t fit.”

The door opened and Asa stepped into the room. He’d changed.
Really
changed. Dressed in motorcycle boots, black leather pants molded to his thighs and lean hips, a studded black belt, and a short-sleeved black latex shirt zipped halfway down his chest, which showed off every sculpted cut of his lean muscles. “It’ll fit. Turn and face the wall.” His voice was flat but quiet.

I obeyed, and tensed as I felt him behind me. He briskly tightened the laces, first at the top, then at the bottom, pulling them so tight that I gasped.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” I said faintly.

“Hands on the wall, then.”

I put my palms on the wall, squeezing my eyes shut at the edge that had returned to his voice. There was something about it that made me want to scream and kick, but I knew he was out the door if I did.

Asa pulled the laces even tighter, and when I winced and whimpered, he stopped. “Can you breathe all right?” His breath fanned across my bare shoulder and raised goose bumps.

“Yeah. Mostly.”

He tied the strings from the corset in a bow, leaving the tails hanging down. “Then turn around.”

I did, to find him kneeling at my feet, the high-heeled boots next to him. “Foot,” he said, wiggling his fingers impatiently. I offered my foot and he slid the boot on. Once again, it fit perfectly, and it made me wonder when he’d taken note of my shoe size. He put the other boot on, grabbed the relic and put it in his toolbox, then rose again and moved back, taking me in. “You look good.”

I did my own assessment. The boots hugged my calves. My thighs were bare, and I was wearing pants that fit more like panties. And the corset had cinched in my waist, making it look tiny between the swells of my hips and breasts, which had been pushed up to create some serious cleavage. “I have to go out in public like this?”

“You’ll go out in public any way I want you to. Now shut the fuck up and follow me.” He slung the duffel over his shoulder, picked up his toolbox and briefcase, and walked out of the storage unit.

I followed him, wondering if I was leaving more than just my white dress and panties behind.

“Oh my God,” I whispered as I looked up at the flashing neon sign. “Mistress,” it said in jagged letters. We were on a side street, more like an alley, tucked into a maze of dilapidated buildings and new construction way off the main road. The door in front of us was metal, with a slot in it. Asa kicked at it, and the slot slid open, revealing a pair of dark, heavily lined eyes.

“Here to see Rose,” he said.

“Have an appointment?” a feminine voice asked.

“Booked it an hour ago.”

“Ah,” said the woman. “Mr. Riordan. She said you bringing something very special for her.” She closed the slot and opened the door, revealing a dark, cramped entryway and a set of stairs leading upward into more darkness. Bass thumped above our heads, but that was the only noise.

“I am Mistress D,” she said, giving us a little bow. “Welcome to my lair.” She had on skintight black leather leggings and a black bustier, and her nails were long, black, and filed to sharp points. Some kind of whip hung from the left side of her hip. She glanced at my face, then my collar, and quickly looked away as Asa took a half step in front of me.

“She ready to roll?” he asked.

“Waiting in the dungeon.”

“Good,” said Asa. “Take us up.”

The woman bowed her head. She didn’t look at me again. In fact, she seemed to intentionally not be looking at me. Somehow, despite my insane outfit, or maybe because of it, I’d become invisible.

Asa marched up the stairs, lugging his toolbox and briefcase, clearly expecting me to follow. I did, though my mouth had gone dry. We were obviously in some kind of weird, kinky club, and the mention of a dungeon had set my teeth on edge. That was where his special conduit hung out?

Mistress D opened a door at the top of the steps, revealing a long room lit with deep-purple lights. Along one wall was a set of cages and shackles. A thin woman wearing nothing more than a thong was cuffed to a rack, her bottom exposed as a man slapped her backside. Another young woman was dancing in one of the cages, wearing leather straps wrapped around her torso and nothing else, except for her sky-high stiletto boots. Compared to theirs, my outfit was pretty modest. The dancers shot us sly smiles as we passed by their cages, where they danced for a few men dressed in black lounging in chairs nearby.

We entered a hallway lined with doors. “These our playrooms,” she said as we passed one, which contained what looked like a doctor’s exam room. Many of the doors were closed, but I caught a glimpse of a red-painted bedroom with a large metal cage at the foot of the lush bed. My heart was kicking against my ribs, especially when Mistress D came to a stop at a room at the very end of the hallway. “And this
your
playroom,” she said, pulling aside another metal slot and peering inside. “I leave you alone. But there is intercom in every room. I come to you quick.”

“Good. Rose will need you after we’re through,” said Asa. He reached into his duffel and handed Mistress D a thick stack of Thai baht. “I won’t be able to stick around, but I want to make sure she’s got someone.”

Mistress D smiled as she accepted the cash. “I know how take care my girls.” She turned and sauntered down the hall.

Asa slipped his finger into the ring connected to my collar and drew me closer. “I’m going to explain this once,” he said quietly. “Our conduit has particular needs, and she only takes jobs where her needs are going to be met.”

“And she likes pain,” I guessed. Of course. Why else would we be meeting her in a place like this? Don had said he would never take a Strikon job. It must be hard to find conduits willing to endure it. But a conduit who enjoyed pain? Who sought it out? She’d be perfect.

Asa tapped the tip of his nose. “And I am going to meet her needs. Got it?”

I looked into his eyes, a warm color that froze me with its intensity. “Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“And when we go in there, you will keep calling me that. Call me by my name and there will be consequences.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, sir.”

“Good girl.” He gave my collar a little tug. “Just for that, I’m going to give you one more choice tonight. Choose a name.”

“Can’t you just call me by my actual name?” God, this was scary enough. I was in a strange, scary place with strange, scary people. I had little idea what was about to happen—except that it involved a huge amount of pain that might drive me out of my mind—and it seemed like it would be comforting to hear my own name, especially because Asa was acting like such a stranger.

He shook his head. “You’re going to trust me on this, and you’re going to be grateful when it’s done. Choose a name.”

“Um . . .”

“Do it or I’ll choose one for you.”

I flinched at the sharpness in his voice. “Okay. Uh . . . Eve?” I’d always kind of liked the name.

Asa’s gaze traced my face. “Eve it is.” He let go of the collar and opened the door without bothering to knock first.

It swung open to reveal a simple room, not the medieval dungeon I’d been picturing. Still, what was in there scared me nearly as much. There was a metal four-poster bed with horizontal steel bars in place of a headboard. The mattress wasn’t covered in sheets, but in smooth black leather, along with a few black leather pillows. It was higher than a normal bed, waist level. Like an operating table or something. And there was a metal table next to it. Apart from a few hooks arrayed in a row on the gray-painted walls, the room was empty, the floor made of smooth linoleum. In front of the bed stood a fine-boned woman, maybe in her late thirties, her long black hair pulled up in a slick high ponytail, wearing lace panties and a garter belt, fishnet stockings, and superhigh heels. Her leather bra didn’t actually cover her small breasts, but rather just supported them, pushing them up and leaving them on full display. When she saw Asa, her down-turned eyes lit up for a moment and a shy smile pulled at her full red lips. She pressed her palms together and dropped her head forward, touching her thumbs to her forehead. “Welcome . . .”