Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Briar
“ Y ou are cheating ,” I teased Richard coquettishly.
“I told you, Briar. I don’t cheat , I’m a magician,” he said.
Richard was handsome. Charming. The kind of man who got away with murder. And rape. And cruelty. The most dangerous kind of man and one I’d worked my way into the circle of over the course of several months. He was like a venus fly trap, luring girls in with sweet words and presents and false promises before crushing them between his too-straight teeth.
“Oh, here we go again,” I said with the tone of a long-suffering lover. “The only sorcery you have is the uncanny ability to talk yourself out of a beating from the bouncers.”
“Oh, is that all? You really think so?” he asked.
“I know so,” I said, pretending to sip from the brandy he’d bought me.
“What if I can prove to you that I have other powers?” he asked. “Will you concede?”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“What do I get if I prove it?”
“Bragging rights, naturally,” I said, not liking where the line of conversation was headed.
“Come, Briar,” he said with a tut of his tongue. “You know that I prefer a game with stakes. That’s why I hang on your every word–in the hopes that one day they will be an invitation to your bed.”
Feeling grateful for my poker face, I threw two chips onto the pile at the center of the table. If I’d been as green as I was the first day, I’m sure my face would have contorted with disgust.
“You don’t need an invitation, you’ve paid for my time, just like the rest of my clients,” I told him. “Simply take what you paid for.”
“And give up on the challenge of wooing you properly? No, the time I pay you for is like a buy-in for the greatest game I’ve ever played.” He picked up a stack of his chips and set them firmly down in front of the dealer as if in demonstration. “Come on. Name the prize.”
“I’ll give you the rest of my chips for the night,” I said.
“Please, don’t insult me. I bought your chips in the first place, and you know I hardly have need of money,” he said.
My skin crawled. I’d never opened my legs for a mark and I wasn’t about to start. With how this conversation was going though, I guessed he might ask for it. If he did, the game would be up. I would have to get messy. And that would delay me more than I wanted.
I’d encountered so many terrible men in this town, some easier to correct than others. A few hissed words while their small cocks went soft underneath the blade of my knife and I would get a promise that they’d leave town and never be seen again.
But men like Richard…I found them irredeemable. I saw them as depraved monsters who deserved to have their throats sliced open. I acted as judge, jury and executioner. An unwilling witness to his many crimes. As much as I relished the thought of his eyes going glassy beneath my blade, as much as I longed to do it, I knew that if I had to kill him today, it would get messy and I’d have to slow down. Lay low for a while.
The longer I had to wait, the more women would get hurt.
I gave him a stony look and he heaved his own long-suffering sigh.
“Briar, what kind of man do you take me for?” he asked. “I’m a gentleman. I only want a kiss on the cheek.”
I doubted that.
“Really?” I said. “Just a kiss on the cheek? Doesn’t seem your speed.” I hoped the derision in my words remained suitably hidden.
“With you, a kiss on the cheek will be like being touched by a woman for the first time all over again.”
Disgusting. He always acted so crass.
“Well fine. A kiss on the cheek, then. But I don’t know what you could do to prove this so-called magic of yours.” I picked up the cards that slid across the table to me, checking my hand and setting it face down on the table again before throwing another handful of chips on the pile. “You better not try to pull a coin out from behind my ear.”
“Oh no, my magic trick is much more impressive,” he said, his smile sharpening. “It’s a sort of…hmm…clairvoyance, or perhaps a clairsentience. An innate knowing. ”
The other gamblers at the table called their hands and left the table as I looked at Richard. “Well,” I prompted. “Go on. What do you know?”
His smile faded and his eyes went flinty. “I know that you’re the only high-end whore with her maidenhead still intact,” he said.
I froze. I’d not expected that answer. Not at all. My poker face fell and my stomach clenched with nausea and my head pounded.
“Well, Briar?” he said as he drew closer. “Where the fuck is my kiss?”
I woke up with a start, disoriented.
I had no recollection of falling asleep, and falling headfirst into a vivid memory while I slept was doing nothing for my clarity. I still held Cassandre to my breast, only we both leaned back against the stone wall of the cave we’d been locked up in.
Groaning with discomfort, I shifted my shoulders slightly. The slight movement made my leg explode with the sensation of pins and needles.
“Cassie,” I said, jostling her gently. “I need to move.”
She didn’t rouse. She didn’t even move. I almost panicked, thinking she’d caught her death from the cold, but her body warmth enveloped me as she breathed slowly, steadily.
In fact, the entire cave was near silent except for the steady breaths of the other slumbering captives.
Had we all been drugged again? Had we been moved?
My eyes were no more adjusted to the darkness than they were before, but I strained them anyway, trying to see anything; an outline, a slice of dim lighting. Something coalesced as I watched, a sort of darkness.
No. That wasn’t right. We sat in darkness. This was…nothing, the void, the abyss. Not so much darkness as the embodiment of absence.
“Cassie, Cassie–wake up.” My heart pounded against my sternum so hard it surprised me when it didn’t wake the girl sleeping against me. “Diana. Atreya. Bella!” Each call that went unanswered became louder, more panicked.
“They will not wake,” the nothing said.
“What did you do to them,” I asked.
“They slumber. They rest.”
It sounded like…like me. Was I talking to myself? Was I going mad?
I stretched my neck and shook my head. Unease flooded me at hearing this voice disembodied. Not that it was strange to hear the voice without seeing a face to go with it; more like it was strange to hear this voice outside of myself. Even in the chamber, the sound of it didn’t reverberate off the stone the way mine did. It sounded both within me and outside of me; simultaneously the sound of my voice and not.
“Are you what took us?” I asked.
“You know that I am not,” it said.
Its voice changed; the timbre dipping deeper, the smoothness fraying into a rumble.
“What are you?” I asked.
“A guardian,” it–he–said. “You know this as well.”
That void came closer and it shrank. I almost had the feeling it–he–knelt before me. My heart was still pounding, but the rhythm remained stable. It didn’t fumble or falter. It was the same steady thrum I felt when my marks were under my knife. A sort of intrepid purpose that steadied my hand while the men beneath me wept and soiled their trousers.
I’d always assumed it was my resolve. My intuition.
“My sweet carver, my blessed render of flesh, my priestess of carrion. Are you ready to become?” he asked. A hand curled around my still-numb leg. It was too large to be human, wrapping itself fully around the lower half of my calf. A single pointed nail on his thumb drew a line up my stocking. I heard the sharpness of it catch the delicate fabric and tear; felt a popped thread run all the way up my inner thigh to where the clip of my garter kept it in place.
An unfamiliar heat built in my lower belly. “What are you talking about?”
Another hand, large and warm, cupped the side of my face. No, not just my face. My entire head. One large finger curled a lock of my hair around its sharp talon of a nail. It made the skin on my scalp tingle. I leaned into the touch, finding it strangely comforting even though I knew I should be afraid.
Shouldn’t I have been afraid?
“Too long they have ripped and shredded with greedy claws. Too long have they bound, beaten, and berated when they were created to protect and cherish .”
He said the last word with the tenderness of a doting lover, his large thumb brushing the side of my cheek with covetous sweetness. “They have forgotten that they spring from very well they are poisoning.”
“That’s a lot of poetry and I’m a simple girl,” I said.
I could almost hear the grin in his voice. “The men ,” he said. “They stole your shiny Penny, but first they shattered her, didn’t they, sweet carver?”
Shiny Penny? I hadn’t heard that nickname in… years. I’d had no reason to speak it. “How do you know about my sister?” I sneered through gritted teeth.
“You cried for me then,” he cooed. “Called out for a bargain, asked to bring her back. She was so pretty. You always told her so. That she was prettier than you even though you wore the same face–shared the same womb.”
His large thumb brushed away the hot tears that ran down my face.
“I’m sorry. I was sorry then, too. I could not give you what you wanted. I could not mend the broken threads of a life cut short. I could only give you the means to avenge it. For that is Her dominion. Retribution, wrath.”
I knew he didn’t mean Penny. I could hear the reverence in his voice.
I blinked in the darkness as that large hand settled at the base of my throat. His palm covered my decollete with the weight of a jewel encrusted bib necklace.
“What are you, exactly?”
“A servant to Her,” he said. “The Forgotten One.”
“The Forgotten One?” I balked, recognizing the name that was shared with a cult making headlines lately. “The Forgotten One is a man . And one whose followers think they can help themselves to whatever bride or body they please.”
I could hear his smile again as the weight of his hand slowly faded from my shoulders. Panic rose as I realized he was vanishing . The nothingness in front of me faded before my eyes. “That is what they think, isn’t it?” he asked.
The growl of stone dragging against stone tore through the tiny chamber and light spilled into it, blinding me and waking the other women. There was a chorus of panicked chattering and whimpers. Cassandre’s limp body went rigid and she clawed at my dress as if she were a child fleeing to her mother.
I faced our host and forced my eyes to focus, taking in the figure rimmed in golden light that bounced off the damp walls of the cavern and lit the planes of his face ghoulishly. He looked a phantom in garish cultist robes that would have been funny if the situation wasn’t so dire.
“Ladies, ladies,” the familiar voice said, his smile ominous as his eyes fell on me. “No need to be upset, girls. In a few short hours you will know the peace of submission, the cradle of obedience. ”
Richard’s smile went feral as it spread with zealous glee on his face. “And of course, the pleasure in fear.”
The creature’s voice echoed in my mind.
That is what they think, isn’t it?