“In the Heartlands, we’ve done so much worse than justmentioningher.” He giggled with the statement. “She was defiant in the beginning. Refused to break. But ruining heruntil she couldn’t stand and was bleeding from every orifice did the trick. She turned so wonderfully complacent after that. So wonderfully soft and warm to touch.”
He flashed his broken teeth at her. “You may have caught us today. You won’t next time. My King is quite tenacious. There are only few people he trusts to recapture something he holds as dear as the slave you stole, but I have served Varro for many,manyyears. I’m even allowed to sample his most angelic treasures.”
Natalya stared at the vampire. At his black eyes and cruel smile. At his teeth that had tasted the blood of a Seraphic slave.
Control was the main tenet of the Chains. Their laws were all about rising above your most basic urges. Of taming your destructive compulsions so you were in control of them rather than the other way around. But with her hand clutching the throat of this vampire—a vile being who had more than just insinuated a past riddled with cruelties—Natalya didn’twantto be in control.
She squeezed him harder, killing his outbursts. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, so choking him accomplished nothing but making him silent. But she didn’tjustchoke him. Her other hand reached around his jaw, pressing in on the bone until there was an audible creak and then asnap.
Smoke filled the room. Scarlet light illuminated the cell as demonic rage flared through her so suddenly that she couldn’t hold it back. She didn’twantto hold it back. She wanted to crush this monster’s head into fine dust and send it to Varro in a bloody envelope.
She would have done it too. She wanted nothing more than to affirm all the assumptions people had about greater fiends. That they were creatures of compulsion who reveled in destroying others. And shewouldrevel in destroying this man.
Decades of practice meant she didn’t. The weight of Chains on her shoulders kept her from setting off down a path of unholy annihilation. A surge of fright as Evie woke up from a bad dream rocked her into the present.
She backed away from the vampire. The entirety of his lower face was crushed into a mess of bloody pulp. He gurgled and groaned, unable to speak, but he could still taunt. The laughter in his eyes was apparent. One of many sets of eyes that lowered only to the King of the Heartlands.
Natalya left the cell, slamming the door behind her as she exited. She leaned against the wall, forcing down her anger and the sudden compulsive need to ruineverything.
It was all too cruel. Too familiar. What the vampire had said was too near her own memories. She knew what those experiences had been like. They were brutal enough to break a mortal mind into pieces.
Natalya closed her eyes, feeling Evie again. Her fear waned as she realized she was awake and not stuck in a nightmare. Eventually, there was just nervousness and a faint sorrow. A hint of eagerness.
It was the weekend. Evie would leave for work soon. To go teach and dance. Natalya never sensed more happiness from her than when she was at her classes. Other than when she’d woken up next to Natalya a few days before, and then Natalya had taken it away by asking her awful questions.
She maintained the connection with Evie for hours more than she should. Even after she left the cells and the taunting vampire who’d used his captivity to leave rage-inducing information in her mind. She wanted to sense Evie’s joy when she arrived at the dance studio. She needed to make sure Evie was safe.
When the classes started, Natalya felt faint ease. Adrenaline-produced excitement. Underlining it all, a shadow of sadness.Despite being at the dance studio, doing something she loved, Evie wasn’t happy.
They were emotions Natalya shouldn’t feel. Evie didn’t want her to. But with Evie not being in the high-rise and with what the Night vampire had just told her, Natalya couldn’t help herself.
If anything dangerous went near Evie, Natalya wanted to know. If something threatened her, sheneededto know. And if she caught even a hint of fear from Evie, she’d rip the source of it to bloody pieces.
Chapter 17
Evie’s class was clearing out, the final few women making small talk as they gathered up their things. It saddened her to watch them go. The weekend pole dancing classes were the highlights of her week. It was the only time she left the high-rise. The only time things felt somewhat normal.
It had Evie missing the club scene and how things used to be. She’d liked her old job. She missed the camaraderie with the other girls and the night scene of a city. It was her fear of the dark and the memory of Varro’s lingering eyes that kept her away from it.
When the final people left, Evie put on her private playlist and started practicing on her own. No one would be using the room for a few hours, and she didn’t want to go back to the high-rise just yet. The people there wanted her to remember.Natalyawanted her to remember.
She was working on a new routine, something too complex for the beginners she’d just been teaching. It required focus andused her entire body, both things that pulled her out of her head. Evie followed the music into a flow state where nothing else mattered but the feeling of spinning in the air, away from the earth. Above it all. For years, it had been her favorite place to be.
It wasn’t until she ended the routine that she noticed she was no longer alone. A woman stood by the door, nervously peeking inside in a manner that implied she didn’t want to be seen. She was in her mid twenties, with an unkempt mop of dark brown, almost black hair and icy blue eyes. She was tall, over six feet, and she was hunching to hide it. Evie didn’t recognize her.
Seeing the woman, an uneasy chill ran up Evie’s spine. She hadn’t been alone with a stranger since she got to Chicago.
“Don’t freak out, please,” the woman said quietly. The words made the chill icier. The woman lowered her eyes. “Could you… Could you move? You’re scaring it.”
The woman’s eyes were shifty, never lingering in one place for long. Save for the corner right behind the pole Evie had been using.
She turned, following the woman’s gaze, and took a startled step back. Pressed into the corner, quivering and frightened, a gray mouse stared up at Evie with small, shiny black eyes.
Not wanting to be anywhere near the animal, Evie took a few steps back. When she was at a distance, the mouse darted along the wall towards the door, aiming directly for the woman. She had crouched on the floor, holding out a disposable coffee cup littered with puncture holes. The mouse scurried inside, and she put a lid on the cup, containing the little creature.
“That’s an unusual pet,” Evie said. The stranger stood, keeping her eyes downcast.
“It’s not a pet. Someone spotted it in one of the offices yesterday. I have cleaning shifts here, some part-time work, and the owner told me to set out glue traps to catch it, and I just…”
