He couldn’t believe he was doing this, that he was kissing her for the second time. When her lips parted, he slid his tongue inside and couldn’t repress the groan that followed.
* * *
Shayna could hardly breathe as Marius kissed her. She clung to him as though kissing him had become air to her starved lungs. She didn’t understand her drive toward him at all, except for the obvious—she was painfully attracted to him.
He smelled so good, like summery grasses. Each drag of air had made her want him more, a sensation she’d tried to repress.
When he’d taken a step toward her just now, her feet had moved almost on their own. Now she was in his arms, her body pulsing with desire, the chain vibrating around her hand, saying, “Yes, yes, yes.”
She knew the chain had done this, at least in part. She only wished that she’d met him at a Seattle bar and not under these difficult and bizarre circumstances.
When he began to pull back to end the moment, she withdrew as well, though her breathing had become erratic. He held her gaze and for a long moment, just looked at her. She couldn’t imagine his thoughts, but she sensed he felt bemused, like he didn’t know what to do with her.
She stood very still, waiting. He turned away from her and she felt his thoughts slide and his emotions grow dark. She’d felt this from him before, a powerful wash of guilt that led to feelings of unworthiness. Something tormented Marius, something so horrible that he couldn’t even feel right about kissing her.
In this moment she felt her age. She was far too young to be dealing well with a four-hundred-year-old vampire who seemed to be filled with remorse.
Instead of saying anything, she drew inward as well, tapping into what life experience she had, the things she’d studied, the classes she’d taken in psychology. But nothing came to mind, no special synthesized wisdom that she could use to get Marius from where he was to a place where he might be willing to take her back in his arms.
Time to shift gears. “Is the Dark Cave system far from here?”
He made a half turn so that he met her gaze over his shoulder. He gestured with a toss of his hand. “We’re already here. This is just a distant cave from Daniel’s primary improved caverns.” He glanced at the floor of the cave, then back to her. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry for that.”
“You don’t have to apologize. You gave me what I wanted, that’s all. And I loved it.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his expression now grim. “The blood-chains are already creating a connection between us, can you feel it?”
She nodded. “I can. It’s such a strange experience.”
“It is that. And it’s raw and magnificent and hard as hell to withstand.”
“I would agree. It’s amazing.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
“No, should I be?”
“I don’t know. I would never want to hurt you, Shayna, but I’m afraid you’ll get hurt.”
She figured something out and moved close to him, putting her hand on his arm. “Until right this moment it didn’t occur to me that what we’re experiencing would be new ground for you as well. But it is, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never worn a blood-chain before.”
“And you’re worried about me.”
He released a heavy sigh. “Yes, I am. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Okay.” She nodded briskly several times. She analyzed the situation and decided it would be best to forget about this moment and move on.
She’d told Marius she would do this, to look at what she understood to be Daniel’s sex-slavery operation, involving human women, but she’d already made the decision that she needed to return to Seattle. This was not for her on any level. She was in no way trained to be part of what seemed to be a war within Marius’s world or to deal with him personally. “Then how about we shift our attention back to making a trip through Daniel’s operation.”
He turned toward her and held out his arm once more. “Good idea.”
But suddenly Shayna didn’t want to see what it was that Daniel did to women from her world. She’d read enough articles about human trafficking to know that if it came close to any of what she’d learned, the images would probably never leave her mind.
It was one thing to be tucked up in Marius’s bed with a fire burning in his fireplace and hearing about how vampires in his world steal human women and make sex slaves out of them. But it was another to travel halfway around the world and see it in person.
She crossed her arms over her stomach. “Actually, maybe you should just take me home right now. I don’t plan on staying despite how horrible this reality is.”
Marius lowered his chin. “It’s the only thing I’m asking, then I’ll take you home. But I need you to see how bad this is and why, against every principle, I would have brought you here in the first place. I’m asking you to have courage, most likely more than you’ve ever had in your life, and to see beyond your own life and plans.”
She felt sick to her stomach. Why had it suddenly become her job to solve either problem, the war in his world or the issue of trafficking? “Marius, please don’t make me do this. I just want to go home and resume my life.”
Only then, when she lost heart, did he come to her, planting his hands on her arms. “You can do this, Shayna, and I need someone from your people to see what’s being done to innocent humans. We’ve lived a secret life apart from your human world, but maybe that needs to change in order to protect women just like you.”
Taking the ball out of the vampire court and lobbing it into her very human one calmed her down. She knew in her gut she had to do this thing. Maybe he was right. Maybe if she saw what was happening, she could report back to the US authorities and get the kind of help that was really needed to resolve the issue. She could still help, just not in the intense, chain-bound role she was currently assigned.
“Okay. Fine. I’m ready, but I’m really hoping that we’ll do this fast. Get in, get out.”
He nodded, then drew close, offering his booted foot once more.
As she stepped on top of his foot, he slid his arm around her waist and pulled her close. Despite the tension in the air, her proximity to Marius got to her all over again; honestly it was all she could do not to bury her nose in his neck and just take a whiff. Did all vampires smell this good?
Ready?
That he could breach her mind so easily once more sent another layer of sensation flowing through her.
I’m ready.
Still, she flinched as Marius shifted to altered flight and immediately spun them in a circle and headed not up but down. She had that nauseous, roller-coaster feeling You’re traveling fast.
Have to. The speed keeps us invisible, but this will be a short trip.
She put her chained-up hand against his neck anyway. This time she felt a quick surge of power that seemed to set a block in place, preventing the pain. It was wonderful.
The next moment he slowed but didn’t leave altered flight. They hung suspended at the end of a long hallway.
A large, muscled vampire walked away from them, down what appeared to be a central aisle. Minimal lighting was strung along the ceiling in twenty-foot increments of bare, sixty-watt bulbs.
Can he see us? she asked.
No. I have us cloaked in a heavy disguise. Only Daniel would be able to see through this, or maybe Quill and Lev, my half brothers who serve him.
Shayna was hardly listening. She could hear moaning as well as a sound she hadn’t been able to place until she realized it was a cacophony of women weeping. What is this place?
An initial holding cell. The women are incarcerated here first, for a few hours. Most of them are raped at this point, a few kept pure for other harsher experiences down the line.
He started moving down the two rows of cells in which there were anywhere from one to three women on a cot, most of them huddled together, faces grimy, bodies bloodstai
ned, eyes swollen from crying.
Screams erupted twenty yards away.
The guard stopped at what was an open cell door and smiled.
As Marius drew near, Shayna heard the guards laughing first, then some heavy grunting and more screams. She caught a glimpse inside and her stomach turned. Several of the guards were taking turns raping the two women in the cell.
I’m sorry you have to see this.
Shayna hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place, but Marius was right. These women were human captives, and every nationality appeared to be represented. If she turned away without even observing, she was part of the problem. To not acknowledge their suffering and torture was to dishonor each and every one of them. Isn’t there something we can do?
I’m afraid not. If we stopped and disrupted this crime, we’d be hunted down by the thousands of guards in this system. I’d probably be killed and you’d be put in one of these cells.
Shayna shuddered at this bald description and said nothing more.
The hallway ended, turned at a right angle—and Shayna gasped, for another hall extended farther than she could see. There were more guards and as Marius moved past the end of yet another long, double row of cells, and another, and another, the same scenario repeated: more weeping and screams from the women, laughter and grunting from the men.
Her own tears started to flow and she couldn’t make them stop. Marius, how many rows are there of just these initial holding cells?
Can you see the horizon? He kept moving.
Shayna turned to look but it went on and on. Oh, God.
Marius’s voice sounded distressed inside her head. Shayna, thousands are brought here every week. Thousands die. Try if you can to process that number.
I don’t know how much more I can take.
Marius suddenly shifted course and flew straight up. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she knew he held her in the middle of solid rock. Shayna, this is the tip of the iceberg. Don’t you understand? I showed you this part to help get you used to what the rest of this operation will look like.
Oh, God.
But I will give you a choice. If you don’t think you can see the rest, I’ll take you away right now. She heard the compassion in his voice and knew he’d be as good as his word.
She grew very still, processing. What she’d seen so far made her want to throw up. Yet somehow, she couldn’t speak the words ordering him to get her the hell out of here.
Do I want to leave? Yes. But, God help me, I’ll stay. She swallowed really hard, brushing away her tears. Though she hated speaking the words that followed, she had to say them. Show me everything you intended to earlier. Don’t hold anything back because you’re right; I need to see this for so many reasons. I live in my clean, simple, protected university world, but this is reality. I have to do this.
* * *
It was at this moment, feeling Shayna tremble and knowing through the blood-chains that she was suffering, that Marius knew his relationship with this woman would never be simple. What he had just put her through, no woman should ever have to watch, the violation of her own gender.
And now she’d agreed to see the rest.
She showed tremendous courage when she should have been out of her mind, hysterical, even enraged that he would dare to disrupt her life and her worldview in this way. She should have demanded that he take her home.
Instead she’d faced up to the situation and chosen the harder path.
He barely knew her, but what he sensed through the chains, what he’d examined online about her life, and now her decision to see the rest of Daniel’s operation spoke of her character and her abilities. He approved of her and his damn heart swelled.
I promise you that I’ll make this quick for your sake.
He shut his emotions down, knowing that he was about to put Shayna through an unimaginable hell. In his own mind, he set up the course he’d take, traveling at the fringes of Daniel’s immense operation in order to avoid detection. At the same time, he’d layer the level of atrocity and sexual violations she’d have to witness, beginning with the mildest first. There were a couple of venues, involving animals, he’d avoid altogether.
But she’d be witness to the rest.
Let’s go.
She didn’t say anything but her arm tightened around his neck. In turn, he held her more firmly at her waist. All the while, she continued to stream his power.
He flew deeper still and showed her a vast holding pen in an enormous cavern. The whole place was kept filthy in order to continue demoralizing the women, all of whom were naked and chained at the neck, and at the wrists and ankles. Hundreds milled around feeding troughs, or open latrines. Fights broke out. Groups of guards armed with Tasers raped or beat the women at will.
Daniel makes them live like animals to break them. He starves them and gives the guards license to do whatever they want. The women are sorted here as well. Those who show spirit, who aren’t broken, are usually sent to auctions and go to the highest bidders. Those vampires who buy at auction tend to be the worst sadists, the ones who want women who will hold on to their humanity as long as they can while being brutalized in calculated stages.
The women who become dominant, who will hurt other women to survive, are put in sex shows and orgies. Some work in the cavern system for as long as two years. But Shayna, very few live beyond the two-year point. This is a death sentence. Sometimes it happens quickly. At least two percent won’t leave this holding area.
She was very quiet, and he sensed she was shut down in order to handle what he was showing her.
Next, he took her to the adjoining bathing rooms where guards oversaw the cleanup of women ready to be moved through the system. Even here, the women were slapped or beaten, forced to become docile or risk being hurt again.
He flew up this time at a shallow angle to an open sex club with a ring of private booths and a large pit in which male vampires brutalized more women. A few slaves served drinks, but sex acts were rampant everywhere, as was the use of drugs. Vampires liked opiates.
It’s the screaming. Shayna’s voice sounded small and wounded within his head.
Unfortunately, the screams are part of the thrill.
She was trembling now and couldn’t seem to stop. But she didn’t say anything more. He pressed on, even though there was worse to come.
He took her through several private suites, slowing his pace only long enough for her to see and to understand. The individual woman, or sometimes several women, were being bitten, cut, and hung in chains, or laid out on tables, bound, and held spread-eagled, sometimes on their backs, sometimes on their stomachs. More than one died as he moved her from room to room. The floors were mostly made of cement with drains, the easiest ways to keep a slavery situation free of debris once a session was over.
Shayna’s body stiffened next to his. He knew what was coming. Again, couldn’t be helped.
Marius, I’m gonna throw up.
As before, he drifted into solid rock. Just let it go.
She heaved repeatedly. Does it get worse than this?
No, not worse, just more. I’ll breeze you through the rest only to give you a feel for the volume of this setup.
Okay, because I really can’t take much more.
I know. We’re almost done.
She wept now and as she slid her arm around his neck, she kept wiping at her face. I can’t stop crying.
I know. It’s okay. He realized tears of his own had started leaking from his eyes. He’d lived with this a long time, but experiencing everything fresh through Shayna’s eyes just plain hurt. The blood-chain let him experience all that she felt.
For the next several minutes he moved swiftly, passing through club after club, each with a slightly different theme, but always with women, and a few male humans, being raped and often tortured.
Finally, he wanted her to see where Daniel had held him captive, trying one last time to strip away Marius’s determination to hold on
to his view of what their world should be.
Shayna, this last place I’ll be taking you is where Daniel recently tortured me. I need you to see, to understand what he did, so that you can also understand where I’m coming from.
Okay. Again, her voice had shrunk down.
But when he arrived, passing through a long stretch of solid rock, he was horrified to discover that a number of the bodies hadn’t been removed. These were the corpses of the women that Daniel had killed in front of Marius in an attempt to force his hand.
I don’t understand. What is this?
Shayna, I’m sorry. I thought this space would have been cleared by now. Let’s get out of here.
No. Wait. You brought me here for a reason, so let’s finish this. Why were so many women killed here and what did it have to do with you?
Marius stayed in altered flight. He’d intended to set down, but not now. He felt the horror return, and for a moment was back in chains forced to watch each death.
Marius, tell me. I need to know.
He gestured in a forward motion. I was strung up against that far wall. Daniel used a whip on me and a dagger at times for deep puncture wounds. He used the pain to try to force me to join him. Each time I refused, he tortured and killed another woman.
Oh, God. She took more deep breaths. Is this why you feel so guilty?
One of many reasons, I’m afraid.
Marius, something is wrong. I’m feeling something strange. I think you need to get us out of here now.
He didn’t know what she meant by that. But the next moment he heard a voice behind him. Hello, son. Have you returned to me at last?
As soon as Marius heard his father’s voice, he reacted on instinct, refusing to turn to face him. Instead he gripped Shayna harder still and a split second later shot straight up through the cavern system, into the air, hurling them both in the direction of The Erotic Passage.
He opened a telepathic channel to Rumy. Daniel found us. We’re coming to you.
Aw, shit. I can’t let you in by either the front or the back door because Daniel left some of his men here in case you came back. Looks like he’s determined to take you down this time.