As though attempting to earn his keep, the drummer sustained a sultry rhythm.
Most of the slaves were naked, bruised, and cut-up.
Screams rang out here and there.
This is the finale? Angelica glanced around, but scowled. If anyone throws up on me, we’re outta here.
I see Engles. He’s waving to us from the left of the stage and he’s looking you over. Ah, now he’s smiling and nodding. He approves of the bruises.
Bastard! And could he have worn a larger codpiece for his Renaissance costume? I believe I now understand the concept of hatred. I detest that man.
Reyes leaned close. Just keep the fire from your eyes. He then kissed her ear, nibbling. Although that fire is my favorite part of who you are.
Reyes.
Her voice, whispering his name through his mind, put a fist around his heart that squeezed hard. He would miss that as well, the woman speaking telepathically with him.
Do we have to go to Engles? she asked. Here’s a thought. Maybe you should just take me back to bed and keep me there for, oh, I don’t know, the next century.
Don’t tempt me. And he was tempted, especially since she wore a short black bustier and thong, as well as long black fingerless gloves. Her black cat costume consisted of a pair of ears, a few whiskers glued to her cheeks, and a tail she kept wrapped around her arm the way she’d once wrapped up her auction scarf. He remembered her then, completely nude, her eyes flashing with rage against the audience, and yes, he was tempted.
Engles will break his arm waving that hard at us.
Reyes shifted his attention back to Engles. He’d be meeting with Sweet Dove soon. I think we’ve been summoned.
We’ll head in his direction.
But as they began to move, Angelica squeezed his arm. Reyes, I’m getting one of those visions again. What did you call them?
A revisiting vision. You mean about this place?
Nearby, in fact very close.
Reyes’s heart rate started to climb. Every time Angelica had experienced a vision, he’d learned something important.
Tell me which way to go. Engles will just have to wait.
Here to the left.
Reyes touched the wall, but the smooth crystal was a solid panel all the way across. I’m not seeing a door anywhere along here.
Reyes, my head is practically spinning. Can you shift to altered flight and pass through? What I need to see is on the other side of the wall.
I’ll take it slow. Even though Engles would probably come after them, Reyes moved slowly and passed into a series of rooms, a long hallway between. This looks like an accounting setup. Shit, Angelica, I think this is the Starlin Group’s main offices.
I think you’re right. Do you see the arched doorway at the end? We need to go there. Now.
Reyes followed Angelica’s directions, moving faster now. He felt it as well, a profound sense of urgency.
The archway led to a room with a long conference table and tall padded chairs. A wall of bookshelves opposite and a waterfall at the far left end told Reyes exactly where he was.
I’ve seen pictures of this place on the Starlin Web site. This is where the Board of Governors meets. He remained in altered flight, hovering at the end of the table.
This was the hub of the organization, in the outer offices and here in this conference room.
Reyes, I can’t explain it, but I think we’re close to Sweet Dove’s office. I have a strong sense of her, that the vision is about her but that we need to be in her space to see it.
Just tell me which way to go.
He felt Angelica grow very still. Pass through the waterfall.
Reyes’s heart pounded now as he put them both in motion. He approached the water, then passed through the solid rock wall behind it. When he reached the other side he knew he’d arrived at the end point of his mission.
Angelica confirmed his suspicion. This is Sweet Dove’s office. I can feel it with every bone in my body.
He set them both down on what proved to be an antique Turkish carpet over a gray-and-cream marble floor. His eye was drawn upward first, to a long, dangerous fissure in the carved rock ceiling above. If that kind of breach in the rock had been in any of his properties, he would have brought in an engineer to look it over.
But it wasn’t the tall ceiling that held his attention. Suspended from the rock, over the center of the space, was a large metal chandelier, made up of antique swords hanging free in places and welded together in others. A large antique desk with scrolled legs sat to the side, another waterfall adjacent. To the right of the desk was a chaise longue and a pair of black leather chairs.
This was a woman’s room.
He could feel that Sweet Dove had been here, even recently.
Angelica trembled in his arms. The vision was coming to her. “Reyes,” she said softly. “Why were we able to get into this room? Wouldn’t Sweet Dove have set up all kinds of security measures to keep people from flying in here?”
“Yes, I suppose she would.” He felt uneasy suddenly.
Angelica’s sudden swift intake of breath told him the vision had arrived. As soon as it ended, he’d get her out of the office.
Then his gaze landed on the very thing he’d been after all this time.
In the center of Sweet Dove’s desk sat a large laptop. He knew with every fiber of his being that the files in this computer held the information he’d need to destroy Starlin.
Chapter Three
Caught in the vision, Angelica saw Sweet Dove reclining on the chaise longue, fingering the curls at the top of her head. She wore a white linen dress of some kind and chatted with Engles.
He rocked the tumbler in his hand. “And all this time you were Scorpion. I’m dumbfounded, yet in a way, not surprised. You’ve always had a clever mind. But why have you told me now?”
“Because I’m drawing Reyes into my net once more, but he won’t be satisfied just being my slave. He insists on being my lover, and you were right, his ambitions are even larger than your own. You’ve done well, Engles, and I want to reward you properly.”
“Then make me a partner.”
Sweet Dove shook her head. “Not yet, but I may in time. Just keep serving me as you have been. And don’t pout. You’ll get your reward, the one you’ve been craving for three weeks now. Reyes has hardly touched her, you know. You would have loved seeing how masterful she was on my table.”
“I’ve enjoyed your retelling of the moment again and again. The images are very real in my mind.” Engles sipped his drink. “But how did you restrain yourself with Angelica? A slave, speaking to you in that manner? Addressing you as an equal?”
“I was thinking of you, of course. I wanted to kill her with my bare hands for standing up to me, but she’ll suffer infinitely worse in your care. That’s how I resisted the impulse to lay waste to her then and there.” Her small bow lips curved. “You’ll enjoy her immensely, Engles, and she will fight you to the very end, to her rasping, dying breath.”
Engles’s hand trembled and the ice cubes rattled.
It was hard for Angelica to stay connected to the vision when one of the principal players lusted to torture and kill her and the other clearly wanted her dead. But she stayed put, knowing that she would learn something vital.
Engles’s nostrils flared. “So you intend to make him your partner in Starlin, don’t you?”
“We’ll be partners in everything … eventually.”
Engles glanced at the desk. “I can’t believe you leave your laptop just sitting there.”
“No one can get into my office without my allowing it.”
“But it contains everything about our organization.”
Sweet Dove smiled. “Every particle of space surrounding my office is preternaturally charged. I repeat, no one can get in unless I will it so.”
Angelica didn’t understand. She knew that Sweet Dove had tremendous Ancestral power, and that if she said the space was secured through her power, then it was.
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So how had Reyes managed to invade this room?
Then it all made sense: the revisiting vision had become the trap.
At that moment Sweet Dove turned in Angelica’s direction, confirming her suspicion. Angelica felt a stream of power aimed toward her, and the next thing she knew she made actual eye contact with Sweet Dove, from the past.
She had to warn Reyes, had to get him out of there. Sweet Dove had used Angelica to lure Reyes to her offices through her revisiting vision power.
At that moment the vision terminated so abruptly that Angelica’s neck snapped back. When she returned to herself, she was lying on the floor on top of Reyes. He had a blank look on his face, and she couldn’t reach him telepathically.
The trap had been sprung.
She smelled something sickly sweet in the air, the same thing she’d smelled when she’d been abducted outside the Ocean Club.
She only had one trick left. As her consciousness began to fade, she reached inside her left glove, pulled out one of the Ancestral double blood-chains, and shoved it down Reyes’s T-shirt.
Hands grabbed her shoulders, pulling her away from him.
She heard Engles’s voice from behind her. “You’re mine now, sweetheart. Everything is as it should be. And if you’re good, you’ll know pleasure.”
Her vision began to blur, then fade, and suddenly she was falling.
* * *
Reyes awoke with a burning sensation at his waist he couldn’t pinpoint. His mind felt fuzzy, like it had been messed with, an all-too-familiar sensation from decades ago.
He couldn’t even open his eyes.
He forced himself to concentrate, to gain a sense of where he was. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. One moment he’d had his arm around Angelica, and the next he’d fallen to the carpet in Sweet Dove’s office.
So where was Angelica?
Adrenaline spiked and finally he could open his eyes. Sweet Dove’s preternatural charge flowed through him once more, keeping him chained to the same platform he’d escaped a couple of weeks ago. The smell of old blood and sex returned to him.
He still wore his clothes, though the strange pain at his waist grew stronger, as though something was burning a hole in his skin.
He rolled his head from side to side, trying to force his mind to clear, especially in the face of the reality that the woman he loathed had captured him again.
He had to escape. He had to find Angelica.
Where was she?
He glanced around the room, but she wasn’t there.
He tried to contact her telepathically, but nothing returned.
Then he understood two things: Sweet Dove had removed their single-bonding blood-chains, and she’d given Angelica to Engles.
* * *
Angelica awoke slowly. Her head was killing her, and she felt ready to hurl. She’d felt like this more than once when she’d traveled with altered flight, which meant she’d been moved swiftly from Sweet Dove’s office to her present location.
She lay facedown on something relatively soft, but her left arm was bent at an uncomfortable angle.
“Good, you’re waking up. Are you done vomiting?”
She knew the voice and rubbed her forehead. “Master Engles?”
“Of course.”
He came into view and had a glass in his hand. “Here, drink this. You’ll feel better. Much better.”
She lifted herself up as the glass appeared beneath her nose.
“Drink up, sweetheart. You’ll need this because we’re just about to get started.”
She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “What is it?”
“Something that will enhance the experience.”
Sudden rage flowed through Angelica. Engles had dogged her heels from the first, always after her, always hurting and killing women. She took a sip, rose up, and spat in his face.
He stood up, his eyelids fluttering.
His hands seemed to float away from his body as he pivoted slowly in her direction.
When he opened his round brown eyes to stare at her, he bore a familiar predatory expression.
He rubbed a hand through his thick wavy hair and smiled. “You ready for a fight?”
Angelica’s heart pounded heavily against her rib cage. The man was a sadistic killer and she was caught in his snare with no way to escape.
She had only one hope. She had to somehow contact Reyes, but she had no idea if he was next door or on another continent. She realized as well that Sweet Dove had removed the single-bonding chains. She was no longer connected to Reyes.
She felt the double-chain at her wrist, hidden inside the long black glove. It seemed to be burning as well, maybe because the chains were separated and were never meant to be. Blood-chains always came with a proximity issue.
Engles reached a trembling hand toward her and one by one plucked the cat whiskers from her face. The removal of each stung a little, the barest hint of things to come if Engles had his way with her. Somehow she had to escape, but how?
Suddenly he picked her up, levitated, then began moving swiftly from room to room. When she reached the chamber with the shallow pool and the platform, she knew exactly where she was. This was the place Reyes had tied her down with scarves, where Scorpion had watched her having sex with Reyes, and later where Reyes had attacked Engles when he’d tried to insinuate himself into their sex performance.
Engles took her to the table.
“I wanted you here.” His voice was low and hoarse, full of need.
She had only one whisper of a chance to escape.
When he dumped her onto the table, she whisked the double-chain from her glove, then slipped it over her head.
The sudden power that struck her made her scream in agony. Engles jumped away from her, his eyes wide with horror.
She put her hand to her throat and once more the preternatural sensation shot through her, burning every part of her body as though tearing her apart and rebuilding her at the same time.
“Where the hell did you get that? Stupid woman! It’ll kill you.”
“See if I care, you bastard.”
* * *
Pain suddenly shot through Reyes like nothing he’d ever experienced before, not even at Sweet Dove’s hands. He shouted, and the burning sensation at his waist beneath his shirt intensified.
Something was wrong because his captor hadn’t even gotten started with her usual means of torture.
The next moment a wave of anguish flowed through him, something outside himself and it had the flavor of Angelica.
Angelica? He reached for her through the thick rock walls of the torture room.
I’m here. I just put on the Ancestral chain. Engles says it will kill me, but I don’t care. I’d rather die this way.
Despite the fact that he was in physical agony, Reyes fell to a place of vampire stillness. Angelica was going to die within the next few minutes. She’d done the worst thing she could have done: she’d donned one of the double-chains apart from him. But where was the companion chain? Then he knew. He was in pain because the second chain resided inside his shirt at his waist, and Angelica had put it there. But how could he reach it shackled as he was?
His own agony formed a wall around him. Sweet Dove jumped up on the table and shouted at him, but he could barely hear her. She seemed to be asking what was wrong.
“You have to let me go,” he shouted.
“Never. And this time you won’t be able to get away. You’ll die here in this chamber before I ever release you.”
So it was all a ruse, her e-mails suggesting a relationship with him.
She left the table and opened the cabinet on the wall to his left. Her tools. She wasn’t going to wait. She intended to resume their prior relationship right now.
This couldn’t be the end. He had work to do, an organization to bring down, and mostly he had Angelica to save.
Suddenly his mind grew sharp and focused. Only one thought mattered right now: to
save Angelica no matter the cost. His own life didn’t matter. Only she did, because he loved her.
His thoughts thinned out, his focus turning inward.
He loved her.
He loved Angelica.
Some of the pain lessened at this thought, and his heart grew full. Tears burned his eyes. He’d never believed he could love, not after all he’d been through. But right now, knowing that she’d had the foresight to bring the double-chains along took him the distance.
He loved her.
He saw it all now, how from the beginning she’d given him hope that his life could truly be different. Each step of the way, as she laid her dignity in the dirt and accepted the role of his slave, as she performed sexually in public when it was the last thing she would have ever done, as she stood up to Sweet Dove in order to keep his former captor away from him, all these things had given him hope.
And he loved her with every broken fiber of his being.
But was it too late?
Was there anything he could do?
Sweet Dove had him shackled and held in place with her preternatural power.
The only thing he knew for certain in this completely hopeless situation was that he had to tell Angelica how he felt.
Angelica?
I’m here. She sounded very faint.
Are you in pain? Dumb question.
Immeasurably.
Reyes’s chest hurt, inside and out. I can hardly hear you.
It won’t be long now.
Angelica, I was a fool. I love you. I need you to know that.
You love me?
With all my heart, I just didn’t think it was possible for me.
I love you, too. Even within his head, her voice caught.
You love me?
I’m crazy about you, Reyes.
He didn’t understand. But you never said anything. I felt sure you wanted to go home, to resume your life, to be with your mom.
That’s partly true, especially about my mom. But the rest was about my fears. Until this moment, I was afraid of staying in your world, but right now all I want is you, at any price. Reyes, I don’t know why I thought I could leave you. I know now that I belong here. But Reyes, aren’t you able to put on the chain?
Sweet Dove has me shackled. I can’t reach it.