Unholy Promises (17 page)

God, I am sick. This was such a bad idea. I should have sat on his bed and waited for him. In my enthusiasm, I really screwed up. I cannot vomit! That would be too humiliating.

“Master?” I whisper, knowing my voice will carry easily across the span of the warehouse. “Please answer me.” In answer, the room swells with voices—someone, not Master, and at least two others, talking, grumbling, laughing—the combination racking confusion on my brain. Tired, my legs and arms ache, and in my heart, I know that something was truly, terribly wrong.

“Master?” I call out loudly this time. “Please answer me!”

Searing red light glowing through the black silk blindfold is my answer. Heat radiates over my face, neck and shoulders. Likewise, heat radiates over my bare back and buttocks. So much blinding light and for what purpose? My brain answers with intelligence but the pictures that come to mind aren’t welcome. The worst case scenario suddenly playing in my mind scares the shit out of me. Footsteps fall behind me and I know all of the answers to my questions are imminent.

“Master?” My voice shakes and I hate the evidence of my fear. True fear was never a part of our relationship before; and it is an unwelcome element now.

A soft kiss on my shoulder startles me.

“No, Eva, but you’ve waited very patiently for your lover, haven’t you?”

“Liam?”

“Aye, it’s Liam. Are you surprised?”

Blood surges to my brain and my heart explodes with a surge of adrenaline that, were I not bound, would save my life. As it is, I’m royally fucked.

“Let me out of this contraption,” I demand, trying to regain the upper hand.

“Not possible, love. I have gone to a lot of trouble to make this a memorable night for many people,” he answers, then screams at one of the others in the room, “Is that damn satellite feed ready yet?”

“Satellite ready,” is the reply from an unknown male voice.

“All right, love, the question is are you ready?” Liam asks softly, leaning close enough for his breath to fall over my shoulder. I cringe when his hand slides around my waist, feeling honestly afraid.

How could things go so horribly wrong when I finally had the answer to six years of prayers. Master is alive, and before this night is over, I will be too dead to enjoy him. The icy cold of truth shooting up my spine is the final straw. I vomit. Not a nice and tidy vomit, but spewing, projectile vomiting. Liam’s reaction is to laugh. “I hope you’re getting this on the live feed!”

“Internet connection is up, four-second delay, oh God, is that vomit?”

Liam laughs.

“How does it feel to have your fifteen minutes of fame, Eva?”

Trying to breathe, I force air out of my nose to clear my airway. Liam’s hand slides lower, cupping my buttocks, before abruptly pushing his fingers inside me. I buck, trying to escape. There is no escape; there will be no escape. Laughter fills the room, great echoes of laughter.

His fingers withdraw and I am so greatly relieved that I cry out.

“So wet,” he declares, moving to stand in front of me, his fingers drawing moisture over my lips. I choke on my own scent, trying to not vomit again.

“Do you feel that, Eva? Adrenaline,” Liam sighs the words across my cheek, explaining, “It’s racing through your system at sonic speed. Biologically, it’s the main ingredient in your fight or flight response system, but poor you—you can’t fight or flee—

and the wondrous beauty of adrenaline is its adaptability.”

Liam rubs his stubble-roughened cheek over the side of my shoulder and laughs when my body spasms with a chill of repulsion.

“Since you are unable to run, your adrenaline surge is going to make your body very, very accommodating.” He rubs his hands from my bound wrists to my waist in a long smooth stroke, rounding over breasts and ribcage with a known intimacy. “Your body begs for my domination, Eva. It’s just too bad that you never let me know your preference for…” he pauses, bringing his mouth over mine, whispering each word as its own sentence over my mouth, “Pain. Bondage. Humiliation. While we were dating.”

Unwisely, I spit in his face.

His laugh is icy just before he hits me, hard, across the jaw.

The right side of my face is numb, I’m almost certain that is not a good sign, I can’t even tell if my jaw is open or shut and the room seems oddly tilted to the side.

“It is going to be so easy to make you come—before you die.” Liam strokes my cheek, but I don’t really feel his touch until he grabs my face in vice-grip fingers. “Shade, zoom in, hell yeah, get this on close-up!”

“Shit, I think you dislocated her jaw, man. Killer visual effect.”

“Close-up on the drool, Shade.” Liam presses his forehead against mine. “Are you afraid yet, Eva? Because I do want you afraid, it makes the film so much more interesting when our subjects show fear.”

Then must you strive to be worthy of her love. Be brave and pure, fearless to the strong and humble to the weak; and so, whether this love prosper or no, you will have fitted yourself to be honored by a maiden’s love, which is, in sooth, the highest guerdon which a true knight can hope for.

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company

I am pissed as hell and sitting in stony discomfort; my four guards are well aware of the fact. Plastic fasteners loop around my wrists, immobilizing my hands behind my back. I was so close; and yet at this turn of events, I couldn’t be farther from Eva. The industrial caged clock high on the institutional green wall reports the time as two minutes before Eva’s ETA. I have no doubt that she is arriving at the warehouse. She is always punctual. Usually, I am punctual; at least when I’m not handcuffed and guarded. I watch the ticking second hand as time drags, each click agony.

Henri is supposedly en route and I hope he arrives soon. I need one last favor.

He enters with my thought and I turn toward the door, standing and demanding, “It took an armed unit to bring me in? You could have just called.”

Henri jerks, seeming stunned awake from some deep daydream, and replies, “I want you on the next plane to the United States.” He looks at me, his lips tightly pressed together and I wonder what urgency is so damning that he is this stressed out. Henri is always the cool, immobile rock. My internal systems all go on alert and, for the first time since my arrival, I really want my wrists free.

An ashen-faced intern pops his face around the edge of the door, insisting in French,

“Sir? A moment?”

My heart stops in my chest, knowing that whatever has happened involves Eva. I should have never allowed her to leave the church with him. I should have…

Frantic whispering pulls my attention fully to the doorway. Henri dismisses his assistant and turns back into the room, a full shade paler. I prepare myself for the news that Eva is dead.

“Thomas, perhaps you should sit down.”

It is a command I don’t take well, refusing to sit. Henri shrugs and walks to his desk.

Retrieving a universal remote, he presses a sequence of buttons, lights dim, a wall-size plasma screen descends from the ceiling, and then a frozen image on the screen. Eva.

I sit.

Eva’s face in close up consumes most of the wall, mascara-stained tears dripping over her cheeks, no sound, but her gagged mouth wide, as if she is screaming, or trying to. Her left eye is swollen shut.

“She’s alive?”

“It’s a live feed. You’ll see it as it happens, as will we all.”

My understanding is immediate and devastating. She is the star of King Cobra’s latest snuff film. Normally, with a WODC agent as his victim, he guarantees a huge viewing audience and, at over a fifty thousand pounds per Internet hit, it doesn’t take him long to secure a small fortune. With his headline reading Eva Lindquist, Swedish Heiress, Exposed WODC Agent, the counter box in the corner already registers in the six digits. I close my eyes, swallowing the vomit in the back of my throat, outraged that the wealthy choose death as their latest sex fix.

“Sound?” I ask, though I’m not sure why, knowing hearing the action really isn’t necessary, but am glad I can hear what is being said when a man’s voice fills the room.

“Your boyfriend isn’t coming to save you. Luka, wasn’t it? Did you know that he used to be an agent? Whatever happened to him? Burnout? Fear? Is that why he let you believe he was dead?”

I try to deny the doubt I see building in her eyes, “How close is the team?”

“We haven’t deployed a team.”

Henri’s answer stuns me until he adds, “We have no idea where this feed is coming from. They could be anywhere in the world.”

“What?” Seeing red, I bellow, then I am out of my seat—pacing, heart pounding. I look at the screen knowing how this film was staged to end. Eva is going to die.

“We’re tracking the feed; however, they’re routing and rerouting.” He shrugs. “It could be hours…”

“Eva doesn’t have hours,” I seethe. No one has to tell me the level of King Cobra’s depravity; I’ve witnessed his handiwork up close, being the first on the scene six years ago, his victims, all agents, were bound, gagged, mutilated, and begging for death.

Review of the video tape revealed just how sick a mind we were dealing with. The man, King Cobra, granted their wish mid-rape, finding his own pleasure at the moment of their last breath. Bastard! Sick, fucking bastard!

My eyes go to the screen. She is alive.

“Do you want to know what really happened to Luka, beautiful Eva?” The voice is just a voice, there is no face to go with the voice, just a close-up of her face. A man’s lips enter the shot and I watch as he kisses her temple and am gladdened when she jerks her head away, but in the end, that action lands her a hard slap across her face. The unseen man, who I know must be King Cobra, continues talking, stroking her shoulders, her arms, her breasts, as he speaks, “He used you. He planned the whole thing, dying in an alley … you were there for that though, weren’t you? And then, when you were sobbing over his grave, he was flying into anonymity—safe from his enemies. It was your belief in the love you shared that made it real enough for his enemies to believe the lie.”

Eva’s eyes fill with emotion; she believes him.

Blinking, I recognize the leather wrist cuffs restraining her because I created them.

Fuck, I summoned her. She walked into this at my bidding. This time he doesn’t win. “I know where she is.”

Watching the flickering, screen will be my death. This is killing me, watching, waiting for her to be rescued, wanting to be the one who is there, not because my ego needs to be the knight in shining armor, but because of what I want to do to Cobra.

Ripping his larynx out with my bare hands is a visual image that occupies my mind. A secondary feed plays on a second screen. Controlled by the rescue team, it reveals the uppermost windows of the warehouse as a glaring blur. The feed controlled by Cobra’s people shows a lull in the action, Eva sagging, but alive. He splashes a glass of clear liquid in her face. She swings her head in a wild arc, sending a water spray across the room. Something is being said, but it is too soft, barely a whisper.

“Can someone please turn up the volume?” I demand, feeling like I recognize that voice.

Liam’s voice suddenly fills the room as my request is granted. “I want you to meet someone, darling.”

“Fuck! That English bastard you tried to marry her to is King Cobra?” I turn on Henri. “You knew this?”

“It was the reason for the wedding, if we could just get her tied to him closely enough so that she could tell us his every move—we’ve had no proof. Not until now.”

“If she dies—” I leave the threat unfinished.

“The team leader just called five minutes to intercept,” Henri tries to reassure me with the announcement, trying to soothe me, but there is no soothing the level of guilt I feel … guilt for sending calla lilies instead of going for her in person, guilt for letting her leave me at the bridge, for not fighting for her then and there.

“Join us? Don’t be shy, love,” The man still has no face, at least not one on camera, but every person in the room is convinced it is the agent known as Liam Dubh. The voice speaks to someone off camera before whispering to Eva, “He’s a bit camera shy.”

I watch the screen with a sinking stomach and disbelief as a man comes into the shot.

Liam calls him Daniel, but I wouldn’t have recognized him … at least not until the close-up of his eyes. Dear God, Nikkos.

“I know you won’t mind if I leave you in Daniel’s care for a moment? I think you will find him rather … entertaining. I like to think of him as my … Executioner.” Liam lifts his hand to the man’s face, the man I still cannot believe is my brother, and strokes his cheek lovingly. “The inquisitors of the Middle Ages were genius. Did you know that they could keep a man, or a woman for that matter, alive and conscious while they were completely disemboweled, Eva?”

Daniel moves to a small table and picks up a scalpel. The camera moves to a close-up of just the scalpel, following the path of the sharp blade as it moves over the pale skin just above her belly button. No blood surfaces and I breathe a sigh of relief. I have no doubt he would disembowel her.

“They could completely remove the heart of the accused and he would live long enough to watch it beating in the inquisitor’s hand. Would you like to live that particular horror, Eva?”

The camera moves to her face.

She is ashen, barely alive, but strong enough to shake her head. Seeing her condition, my concern level rises exponentially. I pray the team will move in before she takes her last breath. I feel so fucking helpless.

The camera zooms out, revealing Daniel, the blade, and the track of red where the scalpel slices her open from sternum to mid-abdomen. Eva’s scream fills the room, so loud after turning up the volume to hear the whispers. I close my eyes, listening, thankful for her screams, because if she is screaming, she is alive.

Her screams stop and I jerk my head up, fearing the worst, but see her eyes wide and terrified on the screen. She is panting with fear and I pray for the camera to zoom back out to see what new terror she faces. “Where in the fuck is that team?”