9. Is That a Mace in Your Pocket,Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Is That a Mace in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Isla
A knock on my door stirs me out of the strange half-slumber I've been in all night, once again dreaming about my too-close encounter with Eamon a few days—weeks? ago, I don't know; it's impossible to keep track down here.
Part of me is thrilled at the easy way I can rile him up. It's so fun watching his eyes bleed red from the corners and his teeth grind together.
But he's also a terrifying beast of a man, even in his mortal form. He's been nice enough not to go all demonic in my presence since we first met, but remembering the monster beneath his tan skin is enough to make my mouth dry out. With fear. Definitely just fear, not some other feeling I'm trying to avoid.
Wait, why am I awake right now?
The knock sounds again, and I shout an undignified, "What?"
His quiet chuckle travels through the door before he responds, "Get up. I have something to show you."
Curiosity and exhaustion war within me. But I've done nothing but sleep and work for the past however many weeks since we arrived, and if Eamon has something to show me, there's a good chance it's more interesting than the inside of my eyelids.
"I'm coming," I groan, rolling out of bed and throwing a robe on over my pajamas.
When the door swings open between us, the first thing I notice is the steaming hot cup of coffee. The second is the wall of man holding it.
I've tried and tried not to notice how hot he is, but it's fucking impossible. And I hate it.
But there he is in all his glory, gray joggers and a t-shirt that is definitely a size too small, threatening to rip across his chest and shoulders. And his biceps. Those stupid, giant biceps. His big green eyes glitter down at me, a smile pulling at one side of his lips, giving him the air of an overexcited boy, not a monster waiting in the dark to harm or kidnap someone.
"Coffee?" I raise a brow. "I've been drinking that nonstop since I got here."
With a roll of his eyes, he laughs. "No. Follow me."
Since I called him a coward whenever that was, there's been a very delicate sort of truce between us. He doesn't come into my room and piss me off, and I don't call him names. And neither of us rubs body parts against the other, purposefully or inadvertently.
I'm being a very cooperative abductee, eating my rations and staying out of his way other than the times I absolutely have to leave the sanctuary I've created in my room. I have a system, so my showers never take longer than the absolutely necessary 10 minutes.
I follow behind him, going in theopposite direction I usually do in this hideaway. Further down the hallway, away from the kitchen and living area, until we reach a set of stairs leading down. Once again, the pitch black awaits, and even though I think I've gotten used to a lack of sunlight, nothing prepares you for that kind of darkness.
He goes down the stairs first, his steps measured and sure. When he reaches what must be the bottom, light reaches up to me from below, the motion sensors picking up movement. "Come on," he calls. You can't stay trapped in your room forever.
"Not forever," I mutter as I descend the stairs, the cold steel seeping through my socks. "I'll only live another like 70 years at the most."
Discomfort fills his face briefly before he shakes it off and rolls his eyes, "You're not going to be here for the rest of your life, Isla. Don't be so dramatic."
"How long, then?" I ask the question that's been my only solace on late nights when I wonder if ending it now would be better than spending the rest of my life locked away from the sun. He can't plan on keeping me here indefinitely; surely there's an expiration date on all this.
As he turns and walks down a hallway that mirrors the one above us, he shrugs, "That I don't know. Hopefully within the next year or two, the Sanctum will stop looking for you. They've given up on getting their hands on your friend and her demons after they proved to be far more trouble than they're worth."
"But not me?"
"Not you," he sighs. "They've picked through your apartment several times since you've been out of it, searching for anything, scrambling to figure out where you and all your shit went."
Chills skate down my spine at their insistence on finding me. Now that I know what kind of power my parents have behind them, their ability to track me down after every move, every phone number change, every new email makes perfect sense. I thought they were just crazy, but the depth of their madness goes further than I could ever have imagined.
"And I'm important because of my blood," I repeat what little he told me when he scolded me for being reckless.
"Yes and your uterus."
A brief laugh forces its way out, and I smack him across the shoulder, "Gross."
He chuckles, looking down at me with a look that might almost be fondness but definitely seems closer to pity, making my skin crawl. He sadly smiles, "In hunter families, when they have a boy, they know to send them off to training very young. 18 or 19 usually. They'll do their duty, and be assigned a wife to pop out more babies while they do so." A sick feeling fills my stomach thinking of the poor wives forced to live this life, but he must know what I'm thinking because he continues, "The wives are treated very well. They have money, community, status, everything their hearts could desire, honestly. And all the while, they're brought into the fold slowly, indoctrinating them to their religious extremism while not sharing with them the exact nature of the evil they face. So when they have more boys, they don't bat an eye at sending them off to repeat the cycle. It's very cut and dry, right?"
"Okay…?"
"But, when they have daughters, it's a bit different. Daughters carry the bloodline, but they don't train in the sense that boys do. They are taught from the very beginning to be wives and mothers. That's it for them."
I remember the teachings of my parents and our leaders as a child. I had an overwhelming sense that the most important, in fact, the only important thing I could do in this life was to have children and raise them in our ways. "Are they treated well, like those that come from the outside?"
I think of all my cousins that I love. Tia, whose birthday is coming up in April, who always wanted to be an astronaut. Mia, her baby sister, late August birthday, dreamed of singing on Broadway. I haven't been in touch with a single one of them since I left, but I think of them constantly, wondering if they worry about me the way I do them or if their thoughts of me have been poisoned by our family and their beliefs.
With a heavy shrug, he stops before a door and faces me, "Not as well. They're already so deep in their beliefs that they think it's normal. They eat, sleep, and breathe the life, so there's hardly a need to convince them with monetary things and comfort."
"So if I went home, that would be my life."
"No, Isla. You wouldn't be allowed such comfort," he hands me the coffee, opening the door. "Which is why you're here."
The lights flick on, a torture chamber coming to life right in front of my eyes.
"What the fuck is this?" I ask, taking a step inside. My eyes don't know where to focus; weapons of every kind sit on each available surface. Some modern, some decidedly not. "Is that a mace?"
I unceremoniously drop the coffee on the first table I can find, all thoughts empty in my head except getting my hands on all the sick weaponry around me. Half of them are guns of all shapes and sizes, a few swords, beautiful daggers, but what I'm really interested in are all the things I don't recognize.
Eamon almost completely forgotten, I gently pick up the mace. The weight takes me by surprise, but it's so gorgeous that I can't help but hold it and run my fingers along the spiked ball.
"I knew you'd like this," he chuckles, coming up behind me.
"The mace?" I ask, still mesmerized by it.
"All of it," humor fills his voice. "Whether you like it or not, you are a hunter. There are advantages to it. You'll have more natural strength than most mortals, better instincts and reaction time. You can run faster, fight harder."
"That sounds fantastic," I breathe, eyes wandering to the plethora of man-killing toys around the room.
From the corner of my eye, I see Eamon nod, "If the hunters were smart, they'd take advantage of the women in their midst. But fortunately for me, they're not."
"But you're going to teach me?" The first glimmer of hope burns in my chest. Something to focus on outside of my misery sounds like heaven right now.
He takes the mace from me, directing me to a dummy in the middle of the room that's definitely seen better days. The neck has several puncture wounds, the face covered in deep gouges, and proof of countless punches thrown against it. "I'm going to teach you to defend yourself. Like I said, if they get their hands on you, the comfortable life of other women in the Sanctum will be a pipedream."
"What would happen to me?" He had said something about blood, but I haven't been brave enough to ask him for specifics yet.
He stares at the dummy, not looking at me, "You are lucky because their orders will be to bring you in alive and unharmed. So they'll be pulling their punches, so to speak."
"Eamon."
"But you can't do that. You can train all day every day on this stupid thing, but if the time comes, none of it will matter if you're not willing to do what has to be done. You have to be willing to kill someone to survive, do you understand?"
"I've killed before," I remind him.
His eyes finally meet mine, "You were willing to kill for someone else. I need you to be willing to kill for yourself . You have to decide that your life is just as important as someone else's. Can you do that?"
For some stupid reason, his statement creates pressure behind my eyes. I have to blink away the urge to let tears gather. You have to decide your life is just as important as someone else's.
I'm not ready to examine why those words put such a weight on my chest, so I redirect to my other question. "What will happen to me if they catch me?"
"I broke into a compound once. Decades ago." Eamon tells me. "I didn't know what they did in there, since there were no weapons going in and out, only blood bags and babies. I had been watching it for a few years, trying to figure out what the fuck was happening in there, and when they dragged what was clearly a body out, throwing it into the dumpster like trash, I snapped."
My stomach churns.
"When my team finally managed to break through their defenses, we got inside in the middle of the night." His eyes start to water, the first real emotion I've seen from him before he physically wipes it away with a palm down his face. "No less than 30 women and girls, aging anywhere from teenagers to 80 year olds, were in there, living like an army squad in bunkbeds. Except instead of doing any kind of training, they were strapped to chairs and bled dry, almost to the point of death, at least once a month."
Jesus Christ.
"I guess after 40 years, her heart couldn't give anymore. So we broke every one of those left out, killing every motherfucker in our way. Then I burned that place to the ground." He sniffles before adding, "A handful of the women were pregnant with no clue how they got that way. They didn't even know that having sex with their guards would lead to babies. Sexual education has come a long way in half a century."
"I don't even know what to say," I stammer. "At least you got them out, right?"
A sad huff of a laugh leaves his mouth, "They all died or disappeared within the next two years. Freak accidents, suicides, you name it. No matter where they went, the Sanctum found them and kept them from telling their stories, one way or another. I haven't been able to track one of those compounds down again. Technology has gotten a lot more advanced since then, they could be hiding their breeding grounds anywhere."
"Why do they drain their blood?" I ask, apparently missing that part of the story before.
"If you're unlucky enough to be the firstborn and a female, your blood feeds the magic in their weapons. It has to be replenished every generation, the weaponry bathed and blessed in it."
My whole body goes cold, goosebumps rising on my flesh, "So that… that would be me. I'd be stuck in one of those camps."
He nods, sad eyes locked on mine, imploring, "That's why you're here. In Alaska, and in this room."
The sincerity in his gaze leaves me shaken, willing to do whatever he asks of me to avoid that horrible fate. "Alright. Let's get started."
"Slow down, little hunter," he chuckles. "I know you're excited to get to hit something that's not bigger and stronger than you." I glare at him, but there's no malice behind it, which scares me even more. "But you need to eat first, then you need real shoes. And clothes."
I look down at my feet and wiggle my toes, having completely forgotten that I'm only in pajamas and patterned socks.
"Fine. What's for breakfast, lieutenant?" The sarcastic honorific rolls off my tongue, and I swear for a second that Eamon's eyes heat at it before he raises his brows with a laugh.
"Eggs, chicken sausage, and red potatoes," he urges me toward the exit. I follow dutifully behind, already counting down the minutes until I can return and let all my aggression out on something that can't hit back or pin me against the wall until I behave.
"Come on, Isla. Get up. You're not finished," he taunts.
Laying flat on my back and staring at the ceiling, I barely manage to argue, "I absolutely am finished. I can't breathe. We've been at this for hours. "
I've been punching and kicking and running for at least six hours now .
With a huff of a laugh, he corrects me, "You've been down here for exactly one hour. And I'm only letting you stop now because I know you have a meeting in 30 minutes. I expect you down here for at least this long every morning before work, whether I'm here to coach you or not. Got it?"
My non-response is to flip him the bird, but he chooses to ignore it. I couldn't do anything if he decided to make me pay for it anyway. Not after the torture he's put me through.
After my breakfast, he had handed me a little skin-tight combat outfit and a pair of sneakers, ordering me to change with a wordless gesture of his hand toward the hall. The only thing more difficult than forcing down all that food was then trying to squeeze my body into the glorified jumpsuit.
When I first put them on, the sneakers were perfectly comfortable, but now they're burning holes into the sides of my feet.
I've continued through the aches in my arms and shoulders, the pain in my side, and even the burning in my thighs. But I physically cannot move anymore; my body will not let me, my lungs are fighting for every bit of oxygen in the air, and sweat is dripping between my tits like a goddamn flood.
Eamon's humorously pleased face appears in my vision, blocking out the light from above. "Is that really all you've got, Isla?"
"Yes, fucker, it is."
A full, booming laugh escapes him and he throws his head to the sky, his massive paw of a hand landing on his chest as he chuckles at my expense.
"You're lucky I'm exhausted, or you'd be next."
"After seeing what you're capable of, I'm really not that scared," he chuckles again, reaching down to help me stand. I slap it away, attempting to get up on my own.
I barely manage to get onto my knees, pathetically scraping at the ground and trying to stand while still heaving in huge breaths. Instead of watching me struggle, Eamon slides both hands under my armpits, lifting me onto my feet like I weigh nothing at all.
Even with both feet under me, my legs shake with every half-step. I'm going to be stuck down here. "Just bring me my computer, I'll get through my workday from right here on the floor." I start to sink back down, ready to accept my fate.
"So dramatic ," he laughs again, holding me up with two massive hands on my shoulders. "I thought you worked out.
"I do pilates . Which is very difficult, but it uses a completely different set of muscles than all this. " God, I want to cry. Everything hurts. "And I haven't been to a class in weeks now."
"Right." He watches me, humor dancing in his eyes as he debates his next move. "Well, I guess I'll just have to carry you upstairs."
"No." I take a step back, barely stopping my legs from wobbling. "You're not carrying me."
"Don't let me catch you then," he taunts, raising one brow as he steps forward to close the gap between us.
I take another step back, and he follows, the challenge lighting a fire in his eyes as he watches me like a predator lying in wait. I raise a hand between us, trying to create distance with another, larger step toward the door.
Perfectly in time with me, he comes closer, his hard, hot chest coming in contact with my palm. I pull my hand away as if he's burned me, needing more space between us, not less. Every second of this makes him look more feral, more monstrous. The risk of running is that he is definitely faster than me, even on my best day. He can catch me the second I turn away from him.
But this eye contact and proximity are doing silly things to my head. I need to get out of here right now.
Instead of giving it another thought, I turn and bolt out the door, running as quickly as I can toward the stairs, even while my legs scream at me to stop. His footsteps pound behind me, just a few feet behind, as I run harder than I ever have. Every step up the stairs makes my heart pound and my body plead for mercy.
Reaching the top step, I see my finish line. Luckily, my bedroom door is wide open, and I sprint towards it, throwing myself inside and onto the floor just in time for Eamon to reach the threshold.
He looks down at me with triumph and humor in his expression, "Good job, Isla. Next time, I won't go so easy on you."
"Fuck you," I pant from the floor, closing my eyes and letting my head hit the ground beneath me.
His chuckle follows him as he turns and walks away, leaving me fighting for every breath on the cold ground, wondering what would happen if I let him catch me.