Revived (The Lucidites Book 3) (38 page)

“Yes, your way.” My mind startles at the sound of my voice.

“Good girl,” he purrs, taking a step closer to me. He eyes me with a deliberate focus. “Oh, yes, I believe this is a match made by the gods. You have a mind that’s equal to mine in many respects.” His eyes shift over me, but I sense he’s not looking at my physical body. “Oh, and a quick read of your emotions tells me you’ve been extremely disloyal to me, loving another. Tsk tsk tsk. You will be punished for this, but not now.” He leans into me, his cold breath biting my skin. “Now it’s time to see if the woman to be my wife can comply with my demands. Let’s see how well you respond, shall we?”

I want to move. To take the blade in my waistband and plunge it into him, but I don’t budge. My muscles don’t respond to the orders from my brain. My heart. Both are locked behind bars. Imprisoned.

“Roya,” Chase says, his voice filled with amusement, “take off your clothes.”

Almost before he finishes his sentence, my hands grip the hem of my shirt, tugging it over my head in one swift movement, and I hand it to Chase.
No!
I scream in my mind.
What are you doing?

“Stop this,” Trey begs, clenching his eyes shut.

“Look at how well she minds. Her brain so beautifully constructed and easy to control.” He tosses my shirt into the flames in the display case. It ignites immediately. “You can wait to take off the rest of your clothes when we return home.” Snatching my hand, Chase glides a diamond ring I didn’t see until now onto my finger. It fits perfectly, like it’s made for me. A large pear-shaped diamond sits in the center, a row of small diamonds accenting the band. “You will marry me. Tonight. I cannot wait a moment longer to conceive our children.”

Chase eyes the ring, triumph delighting his facial features. “It looks perfect on you. It was my mother’s. She’ll die when she learns I have it. Literally.” He drops my hand and leans into me, grazing his lips against mine. Bile rises in my throat, but my hands don’t care. They grab the sides of his face and yank him into me, my mouth kissing him hungrily. I hike my leg up and wrap it around him. It feels grotesquely wrong, which doesn’t explain why I turn my head and make eye contact with Trey. A gratified smile unfurls on my face, while Chase trails kisses down my throat. I need to stop this but my hands aren’t my own. My lips make satisfied expressions that I don’t feel. I’m locked inside my heart unable to do anything, only watch myself operate like a stupid robot.

Chase withdraws from me, a heat in his electric blue eyes. “Oh, and Trey,” he says, keeping his gaze on me. I pant, stupidly. “Please don’t worry about your daughter. I won’t hurt her. Not until the day I kill her, the day after she delivers me my third child. You’ll know when that is, because I’ll ship you her body.”

“No!” Trey yells so loudly it rings in my ears. I want to look at him. To witness the pain in his eyes, but Chase keeps my gaze pinned on his beautiful frame.

“Don’t, Roya! This isn’t you. Fight this,” Joseph begs.

I’m trying,
I want to tell him.
Every part of my being is battling Chase. And losing.

“Hmmm…” Chase says, sounding pleased. “Does it make you feel better to know she’s trying to fight me? She’s actually quite the fighter, but she’s still losing. Oh, what’s happening to her is really brutal,” he says, almost laughing with glee. “She can’t stand this,” he says, wiping his finger up and down my arm.

“Stop it!” Trey says, his voice straining.

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. I have so much more to say on this matter,” Chase says, sounding almost rehearsed. “You see, your daughter is going to fulfill my demands, giving me the pureblooded children I ask for. Then she’s going to pay for her parents’ transgressions. How does that all sound,
mon amour
?” Chase says, looking at me directly, like he’s sincerely interested in my answer.

“Lovely,” I reply.

“No!” Trey yells, a raw ache in the one word. “Don’t do this to her! Just punish me!”

“Don’t you see,” Chase says with a sickly smile. “This is your punishment. The worst I could envision for you.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” I say in a voice that sounds too childish to be mine. “I deserve this. You deserve this. Chase has made me see that. It’s really so just,” I say, stroking my fingers up and down his lapels.

“You’re going to make a fine wife. I might even miss you after I kill you. But I’ll have my children. My power. My vengeance. And that will keep me warm once you’re cold in the ground. And just so you know, Trey, until the day your daughter dies she will suffer.” His cool breath wisps against my cheeks. With whirlwind speed he yanks the knife out from behind my back. “She will suffer for trying to betray me today. For thinking that was even a possibility. She suffers now, locked in her mind with a sickening aversion to me. You did an extraordinary job making her hate me, and it’s worked in my favor because your daughter is so repulsed by me that I know the things I’m going to do to her and make her do to me will torture her consciousness. For example…” He runs his lips over the contours of my jaw. Tremble inside. “She hates every single minute of this. It’s completely tearing her apart inside, which is actually turning me on,” he says, biting at my jaw.

“How does that feel, Roya?”

Revolting. Horrid. Unbearably awful.
“Like heaven,” I say, gripping his jacket.

His cold hand grips my shoulder. He squeezes so tight I wince, physically and inside. His fingers press into the wound on my shoulder, opening it back up. “Never wrinkle my suits. Is that clear?” he says, a look of cold contempt in his eyes.

“Yes,” the robot in me answers.

He pulls his hand away, blood from my reopened wound on it. Dragging a handkerchief from his pocket he nonchalantly wipes off my blood from his hand. “I guess we have more work to do finessing the controls on her,” Chase says, rolling his eyes and looking at Trey like I’m a defective piece of equipment. “This mistake was my fault, but your daughter will pay the price for my mistakes as well as yo––” His voice turns into a hoarse scream. Horror rips through Chase’s eyes. He clenches them shut like an unsightly pain is tearing him into pieces. His hands seize my forearms, fingernails pierce my skin. A yell of distress tears out of his mouth. I want to search the space for what’s causing this reaction, but he has me frozen, only allowed to stare into his sharp eyes, raked with pain. Fear splits through me, capturing my breath, abducting all peace within my being. My arms scream from the force he’s pressing into them.

Chase shoves me away haphazardly, pushing me so hard I trip and land on my backside. Then I see what I tripped over. Urgently I shuffle back, my chest caving in with sharp breaths. I scramble to my feet, my calf screaming from the many altercations, blood dripping down, sprinkling the pit of snakes that tangle my feet. They swarm around my legs and hands. The snakes are all headed in one direction. To Chase. There has to be a hundred of them.

Still stumbling, crushing the rubbery creatures under my feet, I move backwards. The snakes hiss, but don’t strike at me. However, attached to various places on Chase’s legs are snakes with their fangs stuck sharply through his pants and into his flesh. Violently he strikes at them, deflecting the snakes. He rips them off and throws them across the room. Kicks them away from him. Chase staggers, almost falling to the ground. He recovers just as his attention darts to Trey, who’s hunched against the wall, half alive. “And to think I was going to let you live. Now you’re dead,” he says through winded breaths. Trey’s face arranges itself into a sea of pain as he stands, the effort looking like enough to kill him. Slow, arduous steps take him to the knife lying on the ground. My knife with the poison-tipped blade. He reaches for it, every action not his own.

No!
I scream in my mind, but the words stay trapped inside me. And then I flex my fingers. Feel the ability to control my body awaken inside my being. It’s minuscule, but starting to stir.

The hilt of the knife is against Trey’s throat. All my efforts work to move my muscles, to take back what belongs to me. To stop Trey from killing himself.

Fire from the display case shoots through the air like it’s riding on an arrow and lands on Chase’s back. It snakes up to his shoulder, but it’s slow to spread. Shock and anger blare across his eyes. He slaps at the flames. Slams his back up against the wall. And like a lock unbolting an urge inside me unlatches. It stirs with the greatest intensity. A lifesaving one. The wind surges with tiny puffs, encouraging the flames on him to grow. My wind. From across the smoky room, Joseph almost vibrates with redemption. “That’s it, Roya!” he screams, a raw need in his voice. “Help me!”

And just like that I almost break through. And then I’m also still Chase’s puppet, one that reaches to him, even though he’s coated in fire. My body lunges, intent on smothering the flames.

“NO!” Joseph dives at me, pulling me away from Chase. He tugs me backward, and Chase continues to erupt in a blanket of flames and venom. I’m half charging toward him and half urging Joseph’s arms around me, protecting me.

And then a cold, delicate metal wraps around my wrist. Shuman’s eyes are in my face, pleading for me to stop resisting. Pleading for me to stay still. And all at once I wither until I hear the click and slip back into the person I used to be.

Exhausted and completely skewed by my experience, I slip into another consciousness where I watch everything from a different realm. And still the currents of wind are my constructions. They encourage the flames that burn the dying man. Winds from inside me whisper against Joseph’s flames, stoking them until Chase is covered completely in orange and black fire.

Gripping my copper- and silver-encased wrist I feel the balance return to my soul and watch as Chase burns to his death. He clutches his body as the poison robs his organs of the ability to work properly. The fire licks at his gorgeous face. It’s difficult to watch him burn and drip until he’s just bits of flesh and bone, but after my first battle with Zhuang I have to know my enemy is truly dead. So I watch until every part of him that’s alive burns and the only part that makes it bearable is they’re all watching beside me.

Chapter Forty-Seven

A
iden barrels down the hallway as we approach the elevators. His eyes fix on me, revolving down to my bare chest covered by only a lacy, white bra. Silent fury leaks out of his eyes. Racing to me, he pulls off his lab coat and slips it over my shivering shoulders. “Here,” he says. Then he takes Trey’s other arm and hitches it over his shoulder. Between us we carry the mostly-passed-out man, blood oozing from multiple lacerations, his head lulled to the side, resting on my shoulder. Behind me, Joseph has one of Ren’s arms draped over his shoulder, helping him down the corridor. Shuman brings up the rear, limping and face already swelling.

“The elevators are working again?” I ask, wheezing as I lug my father.

Aiden nods, looking at me like I’m suddenly a different species.

“Thank God,” I say with instant relief. “He needs attention immediately. I hope Mae is in the infirmary.”

“She will be,” Aiden assures me.

Once we’re in the elevator Ren pushes Joseph off him, preferring to hold himself up in the corner. Joseph shrugs and takes my position holding Trey up. I slip into the lab coat, buttoning it up all the way. Only once I’m fully covered does Joseph look directly at me, relief and anguish partner emotions on his face. “Damn, that was the most F’d up thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, shaking his head at me.

“I...” I say, the tears swelling up in my throat. “I tried to fight him…that wasn’t m-m-m…” My teeth chatter, making it impossible to talk.

“I know,” Joseph says, choking on his own torment.

The elevator is sluggish, inching downward at half its normal speed. And with each level we pass I retreat inside myself, unable to process the events shuffling through my mind in haphazard disarray.

Someone reaches down and grabs my hand. Reflexively I jerk back, disoriented. My eyes come up to find Aiden standing in front of me, a tremulous look in his eyes. “It’s okay,” he says cautiously, reaching for my hand again. “I was just going to relieve you of this.” He slips Chase’s ring off my finger. Seeing the ring brings a torrent of punishing memories to the front of my mind. In an effort not to shatter right here I stare forward. Recede into myself.

“Are you all right?” Aiden says, searching my eyes which stare at nothing.

“What do you think, Livingston?” Joseph says, repositioning Trey, whose breaths sound like air coming through a broken fan. “She was just molested both mentally and physically by a psychopath.”

“I saw,” Aiden says, his eyes scanning me for injuries.

“I…” I say, slowly sinking farther away, unable to construct words or form unfractured thoughts in my head. “I did…”

“You did what you had to do,” Aiden says, still trying to locate me in my lost eyes.

“What she did was absolutely the foulest thing ever,” Ren says, sucking in a ragged breath, his eyes pinned on the floor. “And also what she did is the only reason we’re alive to congregate in this tiny a space. What the hell is wrong with this damn elevator?”

“The generators aren’t fully charged,” Aiden answers flatly, his worried eyes still watching me.

When the doors open everyone empties out. I remain frozen. Not seeing. Content with sliding up against the walls of the elevator. Sinking into a safe place inside a dark room in my subconscious. Instead, I remain still, watching fuzzy figures lumber away. The smell of burning flesh is stuck in my nose. A violent shiver reaches into my being cutting parts of me. The silver doors are almost closed, trapping me inside the box alone. And still I can’t move. Can hardly will oxygen into my lungs. A hand grabs the door pressing it back. His eyes reach out to me, trying to capture my attention and I swim in a sea of blue.

“Come on, Roya,” Aiden says, his voice gentle. He tugs the sleeve of the white coat I’m wearing, careful not to touch me, coaxing me out of the elevator. Like a dog on a leash I allow him to lead me a few feet. And then a force crashes down on me so violently that inside and outside I crumble. My emotions and mind feel like they’ve finally unloaded the strain of holding up a boulder. And the only option is to collapse. Against my every effort my legs sag and I almost fall to the ground. Aiden catches me, scooping me into his arms, cradling me against him. My head slumps beside his shoulder as he carries me down the silver hallway. His heartbeat assures me life still exists in the world. And his words assure that maybe life still exists within me. “It’s all right, Roya. Everything’s over. You’re safe. So safe.”