War Bringer (18 page)

Fiona’s fear deepened as her captors dragged her back up the dark tunnel to the secret door in her closet. Kelan was gone without a trace, and now she knew even his team hadn’t heard from him. Had they killed him?
 

The only thing sustaining her was that she’d made contact with Max. He’d said some of the guys were nearby. Would they be able to find their way into these tunnels?

When they stepped into her closet, a smiling Mr. Edwards was there, with Ellen, whose face was red and swollen.
 

“So nice of you to join us, Princess Fiona.” The fake cheer left his face. “You’re late. It will not make your father happy.” He pushed Ellen forward. “Get her ready and downstairs in a half-hour, or there will be further consequences.”

He went out of the closet, and a minute later, she heard the door to her room shut.

Ellen came forward and took Fiona’s arm. “Please, you must do as he says,” she whispered urgently. “If you don’t, he’ll beat me again. We have to get you ready for the initiation, and we don’t have much time to do it. Please.” Ellen walked as if a herd of horses had trampled her, and Fiona had no doubt it was all because she had tried to escape.

She nodded. Ellen took her into the bathroom. It was a shambles. Blood was spattered over the walls, floor, and ceiling. The acrid scent of recent gunfire stung her nose. The bathroom door was shattered.
 

Bryn went into the bedroom, then came back with a beautiful white silk slip draped over one arm. “They’re gone.”

“Your man was here,” Ellen said in an urgent whisper.

“Kelan was here?”

Ellen nodded. Her face was tight. “They made me lie to him about where you were, then they took him to one of the holding pens.”
 

Fiona turned and looked at her. “Where? Where is he? I have to go to him.”

Ellen looked at the other girl. “Mr. Edwards said he would bring you to him when we were finished.”

“Then let’s hurry.”

“We have to bathe you.”

“There isn’t time. I showered yesterday. Please, we have to hurry.”

Ellen nodded. “Please, put this chemise on, then we’ll start.”

Fiona hurriedly stripped to her bra and panties. Ellen looked at her. “Everything must go.”

Fiona didn’t argue. She dropped her underclothes, then the girls helped her put on the tissue-thin slip. It went to just below her knees. They had her sit on a stool, then draped towels over her shoulders to keep any makeup from discoloring her slip. She felt naked. Why wouldn’t they let her put something more on?

She couldn’t help but think of last night, when she was here with Kelan, in this bathroom, getting the terrible stage makeup off. Were they going to put all of that on her again?
 

But why was it so critically important that she be perfectly groomed for this evening’s event? Why wouldn’t anyone tell her what was happening?
 

“Fiona, I think we will get to help you dress again tomorrow, but if we don’t see you before you leave, there’s something you must know.” Ellen was kneeling in front of her. “And I need you to make a promise to me.”

Fiona frowned then nodded slightly.
 

“I’ve sewn our letters into the cape you’ll be wearing tonight.”

The letters! She’d gathered them before trying to escape, then still hadn’t brought them with her. She was glad Ellen had found them.

 
“If you leave tonight, promise me that you will get them to our families in the Friendship Community. If you don’t leave tonight, pack the cape and the letters to bring with you.”

“I will. I promise.”

Ellen’s nostrils flared. The breath she took was jagged as she looked with relief to Bryn. Fiona almost started crying.
 

Max had said Kit and the guys were on their way. There was an end in sight. This wasn’t what the rest of her life would be like. She would get to see Kelan in just a few minutes. Maybe she could stall for time there with him until the guys found them.
 

It was going to be all right soon. Very soon.
 

“Don’t press your lips together like that,” Bryn said. “Stay still so I can put the liner on.”

At last, the makeover torture was finished. Fiona looked at herself. The woman looking back at her from the mirror was someone she didn’t recognize—someone beautiful, regal, poised, older than her mere twenty-one years. Twenty-one.
 

It was her birthday today.

She closed her eyes. This was the day she and Kelan had looked forward to sharing. He’d planned a special day for her, for them.
 

She stood up and moved away from the mirror, trying to keep hope alive. The team was coming for them. They would be found. Soon. Very soon. Tonight, even.

“What now?” she asked the girls. They passed a worried look among themselves.
 

“We have to do your nails.”

Fiona watched as they fixed long, ruby red false nails on her. Then Ellen led her into the dressing room. She selected a diamond and pearl necklace that hung low beneath the collar of her slip. She retrieved a pair of matching earrings and put them on Fiona.
 

“Where’s my dress?”

“Fetch her cape,” Ellen instructed Bryn.

Fiona pushed them away. “No. I’m not going out like this.”

“Your dress is kept in a special location. We’ll take you to it. But first, shoes.”
 

The girls helped her into a pair of red evening pumps that added three inches to her height.
 

“I have never been to an initiation ceremony, but I understand you’ll be given to your husband during it.”

“I’m not getting married.”

Ellen looked at her and blinked her bruised eyes. “I am not able to change your destiny.”

Fiona nodded. “I will change it.”

“Remember your promise about the letters.”

“I will.”

* * *

Kelan was led back to the stairs and through a door on the landing. This led to another staircase and to tunnels painted a utilitarian gray. A couple long corridors later, they were at their destination—a series of holding pens. Ten in all.

He tried to see if the other cells were occupied, but couldn’t make anything out through the narrow slit in the door. He heard at least two other inmates banging in their cells, so he knew he wasn’t alone down there.

Pen 9 had an interesting design. There was a four-foot-wide ledge rimming a sunken floor in the middle of the room. A steel cabinet stood to one side of the room near the door on the upper deck. The gray cinderblock walls were austere. There were a couple sets of chains with cuffs on one side of the wall.
 

One of the guards grabbed a chair from the ledge and set it in the sunken area of the room. The light overhead was housed in a metal cage. There were no windows. The only egress was the door he’d come through. So far, he hadn’t seen anything he couldn’t get out of.

They zip-tied his ankles to the legs of the chair and his wrists to the arms. The blond man consulted with one of the guards, who then removed a tray of metal implements from a tall steel cabinet and placed it on a folding TV table next to Kelan’s chair.

Kelan was biding his time, waiting for the right moment to break free. He hoped he would get to see Fiona first.

“Make him bleed,” the blond guy from Fiona’s room ordered. “There’s no reason he should be sitting in comfort here.”

One of the guards came over and planted a fist in Kelan’s jaw, slicing his lip on his teeth. A few more punches made Kelan rethink his plan to wait it out for Fiona.
 

“Where’s the rest of your team?” the blond man asked.

“How would I know? I’ve been out of contact since before I got here.”

“You telling me you didn’t call when you took out my men at the garage?”

“I called. Got voice mail.”

The man nodded at the guard, who landed a few more punches. Blood pooled in Kelan’s mouth. He spat it out on the floor. He kept one thought in his mind:
Fiona
.

“Try again.”

“Try what again?” Kelan asked.

The man chuckled. “Not very smart, are you?”

He shrugged. “I parted ways with my team. It’s why they wouldn’t take my call. They don’t approve of me and Fiona.”

That gave the blond guy pause. “Nor do I. Nor does King. But after tonight, it’ll all be over.”

Dread for what Fiona was going through started a hum in his head. He was going to have to make a move. But just as he decided that, a knock sounded on the door. There was some rustling of clothes, then a vision came into his line of sight, one so stunning Kelan had to blink a few times to be sure he was seeing what he was seeing.
 

Fiona stood at the steps to the ledge, covered toe to neck in a red velvet cape trimmed in white fur. Only her forearms and head showed, both so pale against the red as to be striking. They’d done her makeup again, but this time softer, more regal and less stagy. Her hair was arranged in a tangle of braids above her head, threaded with pearls. Her nails were long and red. Her lips as red as her cape.

Even in pain, his body quickened at the sight of her. She pulled free of the guard holding her and raced down the steps and over to him, spilling her cape on the floor as she knelt before him. So anxious was she to hold him that her cape accidentally toppled the stand with the tools on it.
 

Kelan bowed his head, helpless to do more to comfort her.
 

“Kelan!” She sobbed against his thighs.

“Fiona,” he choked out. “Fiona. I love you.” He became aware that she wasn’t holding him beneath the cover of her cape. Instead her hands were busy at his ankles with a knife she’d swiped from the spilled tray. She was clipping the zip ties holding him.
God. Damn.
The girl could think on her feet.
 

“Give us a minute,” Kelan ordered the blond man.

He nodded toward one of the guards, who came forward and yanked Fiona to her feet. The motion opened her heavy cape, exposing her sheer slip, the only thing she wore.

 
“You’ve had your minute,” the blond man said, stopping Fiona before she could be taken from the room. “Look at your lover. What happens to him next depends on you. Surrender yourself to your future, and we’ll let him go—after your wedding. Continue to fight, he dies tonight.”

Fiona met Kelan’s eyes. Hers were full of fear and sorrow and anger. And something else. Determination. To live, to fight, he didn’t know.

“Fiona, do what they ask you to do. I will find you.”
 

The guard nearest him backhanded him in the face. “Shut up.”

Tears sparkled on her face, but didn’t disturb the makeup she wore. Maybe it was stage makeup after all. They took her from the room.
 

The blond man exchanged words with the guard nearest him, then left the room. Water had begun to spill across the sunken floor, slowly pooling around Kelan’s feet.
 

It was now or never. Kelan pushed up from the floor and swung the chair legs against the man standing next to him. He went down. Kelan grabbed one of the knives from the table and stabbed him in the throat. One of the other men jumped down into the sunken area with him. Kelan held the chair he was still bound to, jumped down on it, and landed hard in the seat, shattering the chair just as the man reached him.
 

Kelan rolled over backward and came up with a sharp spike that had been a chair leg. He drove it into his eye. The guard’s Kevlar vest made any other target in a fast-moving fight too difficult to hit successfully.
 

There was now only one man left, and he had his hand on a lever to send electricity through the water. Without thought, Kelan flipped to a handstand using the remnants of the arms of his wooden chair as stilts just as the lever dropped. He walked on the wooden spikes across the electric field and flipped over to stand on the ledge surrounding the sunken, deadly pool.
 

The man rushed toward the door. Kelan helped him get there, smashing him against the steel panel. “Where’s the rotunda?” The guy only gurgled. Kelan banged him against the door again. “Where is it?”

“I will die before I tell you.”

Kelan tilted his head. “So be it.” He pushed the guard into the electric pool and watched him convulse then go still. He shut the electricity off, then took up his weapons, which had been deposited on a shelf. He reloaded his half-empty clip, then took the pistol he’d claimed from one of the guys above ground and holstered it. He holstered the KA-BARs and slung the MP5 over his shoulder.
 

In the steel cabinet of torture implements, there was a stack of zip ties. He grabbed a bunch and stuffed them into one of his cargo pockets.
 

As much as he hoped to end the blond man if he ran into him, Kit and Lobo would probably rather he didn’t. Didn’t mean the bastard wouldn’t need a stay in the hospital before being turned over to them, however.

Kelan went out of the narrow hall that fronted the various pens and into the larger room outside them. A guard who had been sitting at the desk jumped to his feet. Kelan pointed his MP5 at him. “Do you want to die?” The guy was young. He shook his head vigorously. “Then disarm yourself.”

The kid did as asked. Kelan took him over to the stairwell and zip-tied him to the railing.

Someone was hurrying down the stairs. Kelan pointed his MP5 at the tuxedoed guy, recognizing him a split second before shooting.

“Need help?” Rocco asked.
 

Kelan grinned. “Not gonna say no.” He looked at the guard he’d disarmed. “Where do they have Fiona?” he asked, doubting what the girl in Fiona’s suite had told him.
 

“Who?” the guard asked.

“She’s in the rotunda,” Rocco said. “I know where it is.”

They went down some corridors, then into another stairwell. Kelan’s boot crunched on something small. A bead. No, a pearl. Fiona had been wearing pearls in her hair. He looked around, wondering if she’d been manhandled out here before being taken to the rotunda. His eyes caught another pearl on the stairs going down. He nodded at Rocco, then they hurried down the stairs. Every few steps was another bead or clip or something from Fiona’s costume.