Chapter 8
EIGHT
Z
L upe ran his hand over the book reverently, his brows furrowed in concentration. His glasses slipped farther down his nose, but he used his middle finger to push the frames back into place.
Then, in a low, lyrical voice, he began to speak.
I wouldn’t be able to repeat what he said. I knew for certain that he wasn’t speaking English, but what language he actually spoke eluded me. Latin? Wasn’t that what Davia said? The vowels flowed together in a way that was almost…musical.
Goose pimples pebbled on my skin, and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood upright. My stomach muscles tightened in a way that was almost painful.
When Lupe finally finished reading, he sat back in the chair, the crease between his brows even more pronounced. He absently scratched at the back of his neck as he surveyed all of us.
“Nothing happened,” Davia interjected.
“We don’t know that,” B said pointedly. “No one has ever?—”
The world turned dark. The floor beneath my feet dropped away, and it felt like I was spinning. Falling. Tumbling head over heels with no way to differentiate up from down, left from right. A strange wind blew at my blonde tresses as I fell, fell, fell…
Once, when I was young, I stumbled upon an old book from the before time. The cover depicted a fair-haired girl falling down a rabbit hole, clocks and bunnies and teacups and hats whirling past her. I certainly felt like Alice.
Falling, falling, falling…
And when I landed, it wasn’t with two feet planted firmly on the ground.
Oh no. That would be too easy.
Something twined around my wrists, holding them together and above my head. I hung suspended from the ceiling, the tips of my toes just barely brushing the ground, as the world came back into focus.
What the fuck?
What the ever-loving fuck ?
Panic pressed in on me from all directions as I took in my surroundings.
I appeared to be in a cell, maybe a room of some sort, though there was no door that I could see. There was nothing but four gray walls that smelled vaguely of blood and mildew. I couldn’t see what was behind me, but directly in front of me sat a metal rolling table with a collection of folded clothes on top of it.
Where the fuck was I?
“Lupe? Ryland? Killian? Bash? Dair? Jax? Dev?” I called, my body wiggling like a damn worm as I tried to free myself from the constraints.
It appeared as if my hands were tied together and looped around a low-hanging beam.
What. The. Fuck?
“Z?” a familiar voice questioned from the opposite side of the wall, directly in front of me.
“Bash?” I struggled again, but my efforts proved futile.
The rope was simply too strong to break through sheer force.
A dry, sardonic chuckle greeted me, slightly muffled. “The one and only.” A pause and then, “Are you tied up too? Trying to decide if this is super kinky or super disturbing.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. Trust Bash to lighten the mood when I was mere seconds from freaking the fuck out.
“I’m tied to the ceiling,” I confirmed. “And…” Something chafed against my neck, and alarm propelled through me. “And I have a collar around my neck.”
There was a beat of silence, then Bash’s dry voice said, “Kinky.”
“This isn’t fucking funny.” The metal of the collar dug into my skin.
I knew that it would leave behind mottled red lines. Maybe even blood.
Motherfucker.
Though maybe I should say fatherfucker, since my mother was the one behind this.
“I know it’s not funny. This is actually really fucking disturbing.” Bash paused, and I imagined he was assessing the situation. “But I can get us out of here. Give me a second.”
I held myself perfectly still as I waited for Bash to use his powers.
And then…pain.
Pain everywhere.
A scream lodged in my throat, and another wave of despair pushed it free. I couldn’t stop the cries that escaped me.
It felt like electricity was being injected straight into my bloodstream. It seemed to be emanating from the collar clamped tight around my throat. It burned. Oh god, it burned. Was my skin on fire? Was I dying?
Tears pricked my eyes as Bash’s frantic voice reached me.
“Z! Z! Answer me, dammit! What the fuck is going on?”
Slowly, the all-consuming, incandescent pain receded, and it felt like I could breathe again. My throat felt raw. I was terrified to even think about what it would look like beneath the collar.
“Z!” Bash barked.
“I think… I think it’s your magic,” I managed to pant out, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor.
“My magic?”
“When you started to use it, the pain started.” It still felt like I couldn’t take a full breath. Fatherfucker. “But I’ll be fine. Just do it quickly and?—”
“Fuck no!” Bash sounded horrified. “I’m not going to use my magic if it caused you to scream like that.”
“Bash—”
“Don’t Bash me.” He grumbled something too low for me to hear and then snapped out, “We’ll just escape the old-fashioned way.”
“And what way is that?”
Another pause. “I’m still thinking.”
My head lolled against my chest, even as a dark chuckle escaped me. “So do you think this is Lilith’s first task?”
“Either it’s Lilith’s first task or we have the worst fucking luck known to man,” Bash proclaimed. “What do you have in your room? Anything we can use to remove the handcuffs?”
I frowned and slowly lifted my head. It hurt like a bitch to do so. Was everything still connected? Was it possible for your muscles to disjoin from the bone? That was certainly what it felt like.
“Handcuffs? You’re held up by handcuffs?” I asked, my voice a guttural croak.
“Yeah?” That one word came out sounding like a question. “What the fuck are you held up by?”
“You swear a lot,” I pointed out.
“Fuck you. Now answer the fucking question.”
I tilted my head back once more and focused on the rope. “Rope.”
“Rope?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“Someone’s feeling sassy today.”
“Stabby, actually,” I corrected, “but close.” I shifted slightly, the muscles in my shoulders screaming in protest, when my gaze caught on something on the tiny table in front of me, poking out from beneath one of the white shirts. “Bash?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I see a key.”
“A key?” Disbelief caused his voice to hitch.
“Gimme a second.”
How the fuck was I supposed to grab it? It wasn’t as if I had use of my hands…
An idea came to me, and I thanked every god in existence that I spent most of my life working out and training. I’d honed my body into a lethal weapon, and just then, I was incredibly grateful for that.
Wincing slightly, I tilted backwards—ignoring the strain the movement put on my aching shoulders—and allowed my feet to lift.
If the world was what it was like centuries ago, before the nightmares took over, I could've been a gymnast. I was certainly capable of bending my body in strange and unusual ways.
Made me popular in the bedroom.
“What’s going on over there, Z?” Bash asked, unable to hide his alarm.
“One second,” I said, my voice nothing but a pant of air.
Fortunately, I was still dressed in a pair of sandals I’d found in my tent. If I could just loosen them, I’d be able to slip them off.
“Motherfucker,” I grumbled as I shifted my head forward so I could bite down on the strap of the sandal on my right foot.
I tried not to think of everyone who had probably used these sandals before I did. Had they even been cleaned? Fuck. Not thinking of that.
Muscles pulled in my neck and shoulders, but I forced myself to work through the pain. I had to do this. There wasn’t any other option.
Finally, my sandal was loose enough for me to slide off. I dropped my feet back down with an audible sigh of relief and then kicked my leg until the shoe flew across the room.
“Z! What the fuck was that noise?” Bash demanded.
“My cry of ecstasy as I just gave myself the best orgasm known to man,” I deadpanned, already rocking my body forward in order to swing like a pendulum.
“I really shouldn’t find your sarcasm as sexy as I do.”
“You find everything I do sexy,” I retorted as I began to swing. Pain erupted from my shoulders—I wondered if I’d dislocated one—but I didn’t allow it to stop me. “You’re a walking horn dog. I mean, I literally met you when you were attempting an orgy.”
Bash snorted. “Attempting makes me sound incompetent.”
“You were incompetent,” I pointed out.
When a mage met his mate, he was unable to get…um…erect unless he was in her presence.
Bash muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “I’ll show you incompetent,” but I tuned him out.
My feet finally caught on the edges of the table, and I used my ankles to force it closer to me. The wheels grated against the stone flooring in a way that made me wince. Finally, I was able to hug it with my thighs and position it until it sat directly beneath my swaying form. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and a wayward drop cascaded into my eye. I shook my head from side to side in order to flick it away.
“Z?” Bash questioned.
“Almost done,” I told him as I carefully removed the shirt with my foot.
And…there! Glimmering in the candlelight was a golden key, the color beginning to rust with age.
“Careful, Z,” I told myself as I attempted to hook it between my toes.
“You talking to yourself again?”
“Bite me, Bash.”
“That an offer?”
I ignored him and slowly used my toes to bring the key up. When it was close enough, I clamped down on the key with my teeth and then dropped my legs back down. The relief on my shoulders was instantaneous.
“Did you get it?” Bash asked.
With the key in my mouth, held loosely between my teeth, I couldn’t offer an articulate response, so I simply muttered something that sounded like “Mmm-hmmh.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Bash paused, and I could practically hear the frown in his voice when he spoke next. “Now how the fuck are you supposed to give it to me?”
“Mmm-hmm-mh.” I squinted in the direction of the wall separating me from Bash.
There had to be a reason I was facing that direction. I dipped my gaze down, noting every protruding stone and droplet of blood and?—
There!
Where the rolling table once sat, I spotted a tiny hole, only half the size of my fist.
Now, how to get the key to that hole…
Motherfucker.
With another grunt, I tilted my body back and brought my legs back up. I was almost one hundred percent certain that something was broken. Probably my shoulder. Or my neck. Or my arms. Or my legs.
As quickly as I could, I used my toes once more to remove the key from my mouth.
“I’m going to try something that might be very, very stupid,” I warned Bash as I began to swing once more.
“Well, that sounds promising,” Bash drawled.
“If it works, you should get the key in your cell in a few seconds.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” Bash asked.
“Then we’re fucked and should expect to die here.”
“Fun.”
My body swung back and forth, back and forth. I used every muscle I possessed, my abs tightening, my heart galloping, my shoulders aching.
One.
Two.
Three.
I released the key as hard as I could just as my body swayed backwards. My aim was slightly off, but it still managed to make its way through the diminutive hole. A clattering noise sounded, and then Bash released a breath of relief.
“It worked! It fucking worked! I see the key. Now…how the fuck am I supposed to free myself?”
My body stopped swaying, and I allowed my head to roll forward, desperate to ease some of my strained muscles.
A slightly hysterical laugh escaped me. “Well, let me ask one question. How flexible are you?”
“Oh…fuck me.”