Chapter 2
I was in a cage.
Again.
When the coven first found me, I had just done something awful.
Something terrible and dreadful and something that would haunt me forever.
In my defense, it was an accident. But still.
I’d only survived because I’d suppressed that memory so deep into the back of my mind that it allowed me to wake up each day and repay the coven for covering it up.
My punishment was to work for them to pay my debt.
Do whatever they asked of me for seven years.
Those were the terms and last night, I was supposed to complete my final job.
Now I was in a strange place, in a windowless room, and sitting on a platform surrounded by iron bars.
Like the night I woke up in the basement at the coven’s estate.
Panic seized my heart as the memories flooded back.
The witches hadn’t been kind to me at first. They didn’t hurt me, but they kept taking a lot of blood samples and saying very little each time I had a visitor.
I never knew exactly how many days had passed when they dropped off food or changed my chamber pot.
But they’d left me in there for months before offering me a deal.
And even after that, it took years before I was allowed to roam the city on my own.
I squeezed my eyes shut to rid my head of the memories.
The feeling of the cold floor on my bare feet.
The nightmares where I lived that fateful moment over and over.
My throat so hoarse from screaming that I could barely open my mouth without being in pain.
And the smell. That damp, moist scent in the air that always had a hint of fresh dirt, stagnant water, and decay trailing through it.
The darkness blanketed me every day as I tried to hide from my deadly secrets and from the witches who wanted to learn more.
A darkness much like the place I was in now.
A windowless room in an oversized dog kennel.
Dog kennel!
Grim!
I jumped to my feet, surprised that nothing hurt.
I had no recollection of what happened to me between the time that vampire compelled me to sleep and right now.
A flash of a fight outside of the performing arts center had my breath catching in my throat as panic took hold again.
Grim had been fighting with something. Something named…
ah…the fog…Dorian! He fought with Dorian.
Who was Dorian? What was Dorian?
Shaking my head, I tried to get my brain to focus again.
Dorian didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that I needed to make sure Grim was alive.
I tried to reach out to him through my mind, but everything was black.
Like the fog in my head prevented me from accessing my psychic bond with my dog.
Damn that stupid vampire.
I felt so worthless trapped here in this cage with no way to find out if my best friend in the world was alive and well.
Grim and I had been through so much together.
He’d shown up on my doorstep the morning of my eighteenth birthday and exactly twelve hours before that fateful event that put me in the coven’s grasp.
Even still, he stuck with me for the last seven years as we fortified our bond and learned how to best work with it.
Grim had been the only companion in my life.
And I mean the only one. Sure, there were a few witches who were cordial enough with me, but I had no family, went on zero dates, and decided when I was eighteen that I was destined to be alone.
I didn’t think I could survive this world without Grim in it.
He was all I had. My heart was breaking just thinking about the possibility that I’d lost him forever.
Tears fell down my cheeks as I pressed my forehead against two of the cold, iron bars.
The lump in my throat caught my breath, and I shuddered with emotion as the sobs took hold.
We had almost been free of the Crescent Coven.
Almost.
The tears wouldn’t stop. But then, a noise from across the room suddenly gave me hope.
Wiping my cheeks, I squinted into the shadows.
There was only one light on in this room and it was directly above my cage.
The rest of the area faded into black, giving me very little idea of exactly how big this space was.
Another scuffing sound from the far corner had me snapping my head in that direction. An image in my brain started to take hold, and I fell to my knees in joy when I got a glance of myself in the cage.
“Grim!” I shouted toward the corner. “Grim, come here.”
Slowly, my big black dog emerged from the shadows. His eyes were glowing red, something they seemed to do only when he was in pain. He limped forward, favoring his front right leg and his head hanging a little lower than normal. That fight must have been bad.
Reaching through the iron bars, I held out my hand and smiled in relief when I felt his warm nose rub against me. Pushing the weight of his head into my palm, our psychic connection came flooding back and all of the love we had for each other passed between us once more.
“Oh, Grim,” I whispered through my tears as he pushed his body up against the cage. “What did they do to you?”
He huffed a sigh as a way to tell me he was all right. And as I studied his body, looking for any signs of injury, I quickly realized he was telling me the truth. His leg had been broken in the fight, but it was already healing and he assured me, through our bond, that he was fine.
“What were you fighting?” I asked as I rubbed my hand down his back. He quickly opened our connection again and showed me the large, white wolf that had given him some trouble. “Dorian was a wolf?”
Grim nodded and pressed his other side against the cage so I could scratch behind his ear.
“Jesus, they sent a wolf after us?” I’d assumed the coven must have been behind this.
Like they set us up for…well, for some reason.
Who else would have known where we were and what we were doing?
I was a professional. I didn’t make mistakes that would get us caught.
I could feel Grim running through various possibilities in his head as well when a beeping sound from our left had us both looking in that direction. Six quick beeps and one long buzz…and then a door opened, and a flood of bright, fluorescent lights filled the room.
Grim and I both squeezed our eyes shut as the brightness assaulted us.
I had no idea how long I’d been trapped in this cage, but it was like I hadn't seen the sun for days with the way the light burned at my eyelids.
I groaned in pain, Grim doing the same. And whoever had just walked inside, chuckled quietly to himself.
It took at least a minute before I could fully focus again. And when I did, the man was standing in the corner near the door behind a desk full of monitors. He smiled and gave me a little wave when he saw me watching.
“Sorry about that,” he said sincerely. “I forgot they were keeping you in here.” Grim growled, a low warning rumble letting the guy know he wasn’t happy. “And I apologize to you, too, big guy. No harm intended.”
There was a slight accent to his words. Some kind of Eastern European or maybe even Russian.
He was tall and skinny and wore his brown hair cropped short.
His glasses were thick but they somehow looked right on his more prominent nose.
A bit of stubble decorated his chin, which he wiped clean after taking a sip out of his giant coffee mug.
He was focused on the numerous monitors on the oversized desk, clicking on his keyboard and moving his gaze from screen to screen.
Like the men from the other night, this guy also went with the casual look of jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie.
A professional who dressed like he was still in college.
The man kept on clicking and watching and clicking and watching—completely ignoring the fact that I was sitting in a cage and an extra-large dog wasn’t.
Wait, why was I the one in the cage? As though hearing me, Grim looked over with a question in his mind.
Seriously, why had they locked me up and not Grim?
A wave of smugness washed over me, and I glared at my dog for thinking that he was better because he wasn’t trapped.
In fact, now that computer-man had opened the door, Grim could walk on out of the room if he wanted.
As much as I hated to admit Grim was right, he was.
We had an opportunity and he was going to take advantage of it.
As soon as we could distract our new visitor.
Clearing my throat, I walked to the side of the cage closest to the man and pressed my face between two of the bars. “Where are we?” I asked.
He looked up from his work, like he’d already forgotten we were here. With pinched brows, he studied Grim and me for several long moments before answering. “No one has told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Where you are?” he said slowly, as though he didn’t trust that I was telling the truth.
“You’re the first person we’ve seen since they brought us here.”
“Huh.” Scratching his jaw, the man pursed his lips and contemplated something. “Really? No one’s been in here at all.”
“No!” I shouted. “Why would I lie to you?”
He stepped out from behind his desk and held up his hands. “No need to shout. I’m just surprised, is all.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, not wanting to hurt this man’s feelings for some reason.
Maybe it was because I could sense compassion in him.
Or maybe that was coming from Grim. He had a much better sense of smell when it came to judging and assessing strangers.
“So, where are we?” I asked again, accompanying my question with a slight smile.
He crossed his arms and tapped his finger against his elbow. “You are in the House of Shadows.”