Chapter 15
Kiera
Kiera paced the whole of the hour. They left her in the white room again, the holding cell. Certainly she was safe there, unless they were worried about her losing her mind. Then, not so much, she thought.
For the whole of the hour, which alternately dragged and raced by, she tried every angle and every height she could reach, trying for cell reception.
Either the very thing that made the room safe – no windows, padded walls – blocked cell calls or the building itself did.
Since the Vampyren had come, dead zones were once again a thing.
No message to her friends or family. Nothing to distract herself with and only the horror of what Loren insisted on taking for her to anticipate.
Her pacing became faster until she was running back and forth across the room, diagonally to give herself the ultimate amount of steps and still it was only ten across and ten back.
"This is what insanity must feel like," she finally said aloud, at exactly the moment the door opened.
She was too grateful to be getting out of there to care about having been overheard. She rushed the door, not caring who was on the other side, and nearly ran down the matron. Marybeth put a hand on her arm.
"You may not want to be in quite such a hurry to get where you're headed."
Kiera opened her mouth, an automatic refusal of that sentiment on her lips. But she closed her mouth again.
"You're probably right. You've heard what happened?"
There was a look she'd never expected to see in the older woman's eyes. Sympathy. "I understand what happened. But you need to understand what you're racing in to see."
"It wouldn't matter," Kiera said. "I'd have to be there no matter what it was." You should be as well, she found herself thinking. If the matrons around here gave us anything to do or rules to follow, maybe Sydney would never have come after me.
But she didn't care enough about Marybeth to say it, and Marybeth witnessing would in no way mitigate it.
She just passed the other woman and ran.
They were gathered in an auditorium where the hotel had once held paid sessions by modern-day gurus, speaking on TED Talk –like events, on getting your life together or selling in some new way, on eating right or working out or writing your life story or listening to theirs.
Seats ringed a pit like a lecture hall at University, and down at the bottom, reflected onto a screen as well, instead of some boring professor doing a 101 level class: Loren.
He wore a pair of white tights, silky as running shorts Kiera had once owned. His feet were bare, toes long and tapered, the nails more like talons. She had a hard time looking away from them because they were among the least human things about him.
And because she didn't want to meet his eyes.
Finally she blinked rather than sliding her gaze up the bunched quads and hamstrings of his thickly muscled legs, or along the impressive abdominals that allowed him to move so strangely, or along his arms. She just blinked, one minute looking at his face.
The next looking into his eyes.
She thought she might be in love with him. If that was Stockholm Syndrome, so what? It would fade, then, when whatever finally occurred to free Earth from the tyranny of the invaders.
Something would happen because something always happened. That's how things worked for mankind. She'd know, then, depending on what happened when she was free to make her own choices.
In the meantime, he had chosen to stand in for her to receive a punishment neither of them deserved.
In the meantime, he hadn't hurt her any of the times he could have, and with impunity.
In the meantime, the way he looked at her now it was as if she were the only thing in the world.
Kiera couldn't take her eyes from him. Even when her parents were led in across the auditorium, held by men with guns, her father held upright by more guards, his chair nowhere in evidence, her mother instantly in tears, reaching for her, Kiera barely looked away long enough to acknowledge them.
Her father, weirdly, was getting help and because it made it simpler for the Vampyren doing the research, her mother was with him.
She couldn't think past Loren.
In her horrified, pacing-filled hour she'd imagined scenarios from B movies and weird old seafaring pirate flicks from Hollywood's golden era. There'd be chains hanging from something like a Maypole, or a stocks set up, or whatever it was called that trapped the person's head and hands.
There was none of that. There was Loren, in white.
There was the pit of stage, where once the rich and blustering had stalked.
There was a Vampyren coming through the door at the bottom of the auditorium and she caught her breath, gagging.
The vampire with the whip was Sav.
It began without warning. There was no ceremony. Whatever Loren had been told to go and do to prepare in that hour, it was past.
There were no stocks, no whipping post, nothing to hold on to, nowhere for him to go and contrarily, nothing to restrain him.
Nothing but the pride of the race. Loren stood, facing outward, and when Sav delivered the first blow, putting his whole body into it so he shook and shuddered, Loren took one deep breath and looked hard at Kiera, as if telling her something.
Then he looked away. He focused somewhere on something she couldn't see and kept his eyes open, his expression neutral.
And Sav began to beat him.
It took no more than five minutes, or several lifetimes. Afterward she had no way to be sure. One minute Loren had been standing, his arms straight out to the side as he had been ordered, the dark blood of the Vampyren staining the white of his tights.
The next he had collapsed to his knees and Sav had instantly stilled the whip.
Above Kiera, where she hadn't seen them come in, the Council members instantly gave voice. "You were not told to stop!" the leader shouted.
Sav looked up at them and Kiera held her breath. How deep was the hatred between the brothers?
Sav took the whip in both hands and she cringed, but he merely held it between them, down across his thighs. "Not until he stands."
"You were told to continue!" The shriek of a council member echoed through the room.
"Not until he stands."
On the floor, Loren trembled, one foot planted, knee bent, forearm across it bleeding into the tights.
"Stay down," she whispered. "Please. For everything, for you. For me. Stay down."
He looked up at her, as if he could have heard her, and with tremendous effort, shoved himself to his feet.
Instantly Sav delivered a blow that snapped against his back. Blood flew and this time, Loren fell.
And this time, he stayed down.
Sav looked up at the council members, his eyes burning with hatred, and threw down the whip. He did not take his eyes from the Council leader as he did so.
"You were not told to stop!" The leader was on his feet.
"Would you kill a prince?" Sav's voice carried easily.
"You were not told to stop!" Spittle flew. The man was apocalyptic. He shook, pointing with a finger that could barely pick out Loren. "Keep! Going!"
"Mahn," one of the other council members said quietly, so coldly that Kiera twisted round in her seat to see him standing behind the leader, his face calm. He was the right hand man, she realized, vice leader or whatever they called him. "It is time for you to step down."
The leader spun, hissing, hands tensed into claws. He lunged at the second.
Who caught him easily and opened his neck with a single, savage bite, shredding ancient flesh and spilling foul blood.
He looked down to where Sav stood over his brother, chest heaving. "Put them in a cell."
Sav hesitated for only an instant. "Together?"
The second – now the leader – looked back coldly. "Together."