“Raiden.”
She woke and stared up at a ceiling hung with swathes of ornate fabric in rich gold tones, gathering towards a crystal draped chandelier in the center of the room. The fabric cloaked the walls, drawn back over windows covered by sheer curtains, blurring the view but permitting the light through.
She ached, the sort of bone deep weariness of a body harmed in too many ways and too many places for any pain for have precedence. Her skin felt as if it had been scalded, a burn that stretched uncomfortably tight from scalp to the soles of her feet, but when she raised a hand before her face, it was unmarred, not even bruised.
She lay upon a daybed, it’s back elegantly carved and painted gold, the paint flaking off in places around gouge marks that looked as if fingernails had gripped into the wood. The cushions she rested on were vivid in jewel tones. She could not think how she had come to be there, and her head was heavy, her thoughts slow, and her eyelids wanted to close and block it all out in the solace of sleep.
Did someone say a name?
“Raiden.” The name was on her lips, with the barest a croak of sound. There was comfort in the word, a familiarity, an ownership. It belonged to her as nothing else did. It mattered above everything. She had to cling to that word, to each syllable, to the curve of each letter, to each fragment of sound.
She fought her eyes open and turned her head.
There were other women in the room, sitting around a table heavy with food. They did not speak to each other, and moved mechanically, their faces vacant. The only sound was their shifting on their chairs, and the clink of the jug as they filled their glasses. They were dressed as if to go to a nightclub, hair styled and make up flawless. Jewellery winked at wrist and neck.
“Raiden,” she said her magic word, just to see if she could, a test to see if she remembered it perfectly.
The women looked her way, as astonished by the sound of her voice as she was.
“Raiden,” she tried the word out again, her voice stronger, more determined, as if the word gave her strength and power.
She sat up and looked down her body. She wore a black sequined mini dress and high heels. Her nails were painted black, with gold fakes under the edges as if she had dragged them clawed in pain through gold paint. She wasn’t sure why it surprised her, as she wasn’t sure what she had expected to see.
She stood, feeling as if she had not done so in a great length of time, and walked over to the table. There was an empty seat, and she knew it was for her. She sat and took a plate, filling it with the fruit and meat on the table.
She set the plate aside when her eyes fell on a jug of water, and she poured it into one of the cups, her hands shaking and drank, her body demanding quenching. She poured again, before abandoning the cup, and drinking directly from the jug, the water running down her face and into the bodice of her dress.
Thirst sated, she returned to eating, her eyes going around the faces of the women, and not seeing the one that she was looking for, but unsure what that face looked like.
“Raiden,” she murmured to herself, turning it over. Her mind was a vacant room, and the word echoed there making her aware of the emptiness, and that the emptiness was wrong. There was more that was meant to be in there. Something had been taken from her.
The name had come out of nowhere, but with repetition came clarity. She remembered a face, golden brown eyes, and tousle of brunette curls. Warmth, laughter, and safety. He wasn’t here, and she needed to find him again, this Raiden who was so important, who belonged to her. His lips in her mind formed a word. “Lia.” That one also belonged to her. Her name.
One of the women’s faces looked familiar. She remembered seeing it before on a piece of paper. “Charlotte,” she said the name as it came to her.
The woman started. “That is my name,” she said, bewildered. “How do you know my name?”
The women under the streetlights, Lia thought, searching for their missing daughters.
The door opened, and a man walked in. Toby. Lia remembered laying against him in a car, the streetlights flashing across his face as they moved through the streets, and him grinning, his teeth red with her blood, and feeling repulsed and frightened. She did not like the man.
“Witchy,” Toby gestured for her. “C’mon, the boss wants you.”
She set the plate aside and stood obediently despite her dislike for him, her mind and her body in conflict.
Raiden.
She stopped walking. She needed to find Raiden and she did not want to go with Toby.
Toby sighed with the weariness of someone accustomed to having to repeat himself but not happy about it. “Hello,” he leaned down to catch her eyes with his. “Vagued out on me. Come on witchy, focus. The boss wants you. Come on,” he stepped out of the door, to let her pass. “Fourth door down,” he told her.
The hallway stretched forever before her, the carpet in weaving shades of blue and green, reflecting in pastel on the white unadorned walls. There were many doors, some open, some closed. An impossible number of doors. At the end of the hall, a double door gleamed in matte silver. Elevator. Freedom, she thought, and stepped that way.
It was hard to walk in high heels when her body was so weary, and she sagged against the wall.
“Oh, he drained you well, didn’t he?” Toby muttered with a hint of sympathy. “Probably had to, in order to control you. Witches simply don’t make good blood slaves, anyone could have told him that, but no, he had to have you, despite the werewolves having prior claim, and despite it being f-king difficult to get you. Well, he has you now,” he sighed heavily. “And he will probably kill you within a week. Alright, I will give you a lift.” He scooped her up and carried her down to the door, like a child, before setting her to the ground.
She looked up at him with loathing. “Toby.”
“What did you say?” He was startled.
“That is your name. Toby.” Four names, she possessed now, rattling around in the empty space of her mind. Raiden, Lia, Charlotte and Toby. The last she wanted to crush and destroy, the first was precious. Raiden, she thought, picturing his face. I will find you.
“That is what I thought you said,” Toby frowned in puzzlement.
She looked back at him, thinking that if she could remember the word for fire, she would make him burn.
“Lucian f-ked up with you, didn’t he?” He suddenly realized with alarm reading the expression in her eyes. “You are not as far gone as he normally makes his slaves.” He reached out and caught her jaw with his hand, pulling her back against his chest, and opening the door with his free hand.
A group of men were gathered about a table, and Lucian stood as he caught sight of Toby, his long white-blonde hair a stark contrast to the dark suit he wore, and his beauty striking. A kaleidoscope of images filled her mind, of Lucian naked, his hair, his skin, blood and pain. His beauty hid the rot of his soul, she realized with a chill. The man was dangerous, and she needed to escape him and find Raiden.
“Is there a problem, Toby?” He arched a brow.
“She is a little more coherent than I like,” Toby told him.
“Impossible,” Lucian smiled as he said it, delighting in the impossibility. He walked around the table and met her eyes. “And yet, so it is,” he murmured, his smile warming his bright blue eyes. Oh god, she thought, her mind becoming confused. His voice telling her that she loved and adored him, over and over, and she wondered which feeling was true – her revulsion and fear, or the love and adoration. “Fascinating. Release her. Hello,” he drew her towards him the moment Toby’s grip eased, his hold on her firm. “You remember me, don’t you?”
“Lucian,” she replied uncertainly. You love and adore me, he had told her, his blue eyes holding hers fast. How can I love and adore him, she wondered, when the sight of him brings such fear?
“Yes, that is right, Lucian, your lover,” he stroked his hand over her hair. “She is alright, Toby,” he looked at the other vampire. “Just a memory surfacing. Come on, my dear,” he took her by the hand and led her around the table. She went, her body obedient and her might whirling with contradictions. “My newest pet,” he said resuming his seat and pulling Lia onto his knee.
“Very nice,” a dark-haired man replied with open disinterest.
“She is somewhat special,” Lucian agreed. “Lia, this is Robere. Say hello Robere.”
“Hello Robere,” she barely breathed it.
“Robere has an issue with the truth, Lia,” Lucian whispered into her ear. “I am sure you can help him out with that.”
“Veritatem dicere, Robere,” the words appeared in her mouth as she uttered them, her mind remaining empty. Where had they come from? Unless… Unless her mind was not as empty as if felt, but rather what was held within hidden behind a veil, a glamour, a magic. Magic. She remembered a room with a stained-glass window and a book open on a table. Grimoire not a book. Her grimoire.
“She has an atrocious accent,” Robere sneered.
“That is because she is not speaking Latin,” Lucian replied stroking his thumb over Lia’s thigh. “The language she is speaking is the origin of Latin. It is the language of the ancients, the ones that came first, the old gods.”
“Fairy tales,” Robere laughed, looking around the table at the other Vampires. “There is no one old enough to remember the language of the old gods.”
“No, but Lia has a very nice book, in a magic place she cannot tell me the location of, that is written in the ancient tongue. A grimoire, isn’t that right, my pet?” He looked up at her with his bluer than blue eyes.
She looked down at him. She vaguely remembered having a conversation with him to that effect, but the memory disturbed her. She shouldn’t have told him any of that, she thought. He wasn’t meant to know about that. She remembered his hair falling over her face, and his body against hers, his cool skin and touch unwelcome and his voice whispering in her ear over and over…
“Yes.”
“Robere,” Lucian did not look away from her. “You are plotting to betray me to Elior, are you not?”
“Yes,” Robere replied, and then looked startled, starting to rise.
Lucian moved so swiftly that he had set Lia to the side and ripped Robere’s head off his shoulders before her hair settled back into place. A spray of blood struck the wall as Robere’s body slid from the chair and hit the floor.
Lucian set the head onto the tabletop, red puddling around its base as it drained from the brain. Robere’s expression was startled, and his eyes still held the red flare of Other. Not dead, Lia noted, merely incapacitated, but dying, slowly dying.
Lucian returned to his seat and drew her back onto his knee. “I believe I will tear Robere’s body into quarters, and put each quarter into a cage,” he informed the other vampires around the table.
They were shocked, she noted, and wary, watching Lucian through narrowed eyes as if he were behaving unpredictably and she wondered if they were as surprised by his speed as she had been. One of the vampires had gouged furrows into the tabletop with his nails as he had pushed back in his chair recoiling from the violence in reflex.
“And sink each quarter into the sea. He will have a long time in which to think upon the error of his ways as the fish pick his bones clean and his brain dehydrates. His head, I will keep here, a trophy and a reminder,” Lucian’s voice grew cold. “That I will not tolerate treachery.”
“Robere’s family,” the man to Lucian’s left murmured. “They will want retribution for this, Lucian. Elior will -”
“The old ways are done,” Lucian snarled interrupting him. “The bloodlines grow weak. It is time for a new order of vampire. The weak will fall, and the strong rule. Elior is nothing, nothing,” he growled it. “If he could do anything against me, he would have done it by now. He hides his weakness well, but he is weak, make no mistake about that.”
“Lucian,” one of the other men protested. “You cannot mean to declare war against the ruling families.”
“I do mean,” Lucian inclined his chin, the Other vivid in his eyes, eclipsing the blue. “This war has been brewing for centuries. It is time to have it out. I will no longer kowtow to weaker vampires, like Elior, just because he was born of a royal line. The gods created vampires for their strength, not their family allegiances.”
Elior. Lia remembered the name and had an image of a smouldering handsome dark-haired man with grey eyes in a noisy place. Paris, she thought. The club, and Paris had brought her there for work. It was where she had met Raiden. Elior was her boss… Her vampire boss.
Lucian stood, setting Lia to the ground. “You are either with me, or against me,” he rested his hand on Robere’s head. “My pet, I want the truth from those in the room.”
“Veritatem dicere,” she commanded distractedly obedient whilst she pushed back the edges of the veil that kept her that way. Raiden, she thought, I have to find Raiden, my wolf, my mate. He had been injured. She remembered the whimper of a werewolf. Lucian had stolen her from him, and he had been injured fighting for her.
Lucian’s grin was vulpine. “I think a blood oath of loyalty is appropriate.”
Once the vampires filed out of the room, Lucian caught Lia’s face between the palms of his hands and kissed her hard enough to split her lip against her teeth. His tongue found the cut and soothed it as he deepened the kiss and pulled her against him so that she could feel that he was hard.
Oh god, she thought, please no…
He lifted her onto the table and stepped between her knees, drawing his nail across his neck. “Drink up, pet,” he cradled her head, bringing her lips to the wound. She didn’t want to drink it, knew that doing so would place her further in his power and kept her lips closed. He laughed. “Still fighting me?”
There was a knock at the door. He sighed heavily, resting his forehead against hers for a moment before lifting. “What is it?” He demanded.
“Lucian,” the voice was familiar, and Lia turned and met Elior’s eyes as he opened the door. She saw a muscle in the corner of his jaw stand out. “What is this?” He demanded, shoving the door open and striding into the room to grab Robere’s head off the table by the hair, spraying blood across the table, carpet and wall like the off cast of a paint brush.
“Robere confessed to disloyalty to you,” Lucian lied so easily she knew that it was second nature to him. Don’t believe him Elior, she pleaded with the grey eyed vampire wordlessly. Don’t believe him. Free me. Help me. “I dealt with it.”
“This will bring the wrath of his family down on this region, of which I am in charge,” Elior shook Robere’s head in fury. “It is bad enough that you have stolen a mate from the Grenmeyer Clan and injured two of their alphas in the struggle, but now you do this! You will bring war to us from all quarters.”
“Not a mate yet,” Lucian tilted his head with a smirk. “So, also not an issue.”
“You grow arrogant,” Elior set the head onto the table, and Lia saw a change in his posture as his voice chilled. “I told you not to touch the girl. She was in my employ, and Raiden Grenmeyer had scent marked her.”
Raiden. She saw the shards of glass spray, the blood welling on Raiden’s back and cheek as they cut him, and his shift into his wolf. She remembered the wolf crumpled by the Ute, and the yelp of the other as Alex carried her to the 4WD. She had flashes of Raiden in bed, on his motorcycle, in a garden. They memories filled the blank spaces and pushed back the veil.
She remembered the grey box of a room and the filthy mattress upon which Lucian had raped her, and felt her heartbeat increase with fear and rage. She had to get free of Lucian and find Raiden. Both vampires turned to look at her, picking up the change in her heartbeat and breathing. Lucian sighed and started around the table.
“You are upsetting my slave,” he reprimanded Elior, coming to Lia’s side and stroking his hand over her hair as he brought his wrist to his teeth and bit. He gripped the back of her neck and pressed his wrist to her mouth, forcing the blood into her mouth.
“You are getting too cocky, Lucian,” Elior replied as he picked up Robere’s body in one hand and his head in the other. “You are lucky that Raiden Grenmeyer and the other wolf survived the attack, or we would be facing war from their pack. If my father and your father were not friends, I would have destroyed you by now for the trouble you have caused me and just because I don’t like you.”
Lucian released Lia and licked his wrist. “You are hurting my feelings, Elior.”
“Raiden,” Lia said, fighting against the blood, determined not to lose ground. “Elior. Raiden. Help.”
Both vampires looked at her in surprise.
Elior raised an eyebrow. “Your blood is not strong enough to restrain her. She is aware.”
“My blood is fine,” Lucian hissed in irritation at the insult. “She is just… unusual.”
“Perhaps the bond with the werewolf is interfering with the blood bond.”
“I just need to spend more time with her,” Lucian decided stroking her hair. “That is no hardship.”
“Why are you so determined to have her?” Elior watched him with narrowed eyes. “You have a harem of slaves, why go to so much effort for this one?”
“Have you never seen a human and just known they are meant to belong to you?” Lucian replied, drawing Lia against him. “I have had it happen three times during my lifetime. The first time, I was young and foolish, and drank her dry. The second time, I turned her. This time, I am older and wiser. This one, I will keep bound to me.”
Elior did not reply but left with the two pieces of the vampire, his grey eyes meeting Lia’s fleetingly as he did so. There would be no help for her there, she thought. The vampire did not like the situation, but he did not intend to change it.
Lucian sighed heavily. “Well, that will complicate things. No doubt he will put Robere back together, and I will have to find another way to destroy him. Come along, my pet,” he lifted her from the tabletop, and took her by the hand, leading her down the hallway to an elevator. He hit the call button and wrapped his arms around her as he waited impatiently.
Raiden, Lia thought, had survived the attack. The relief was profound. Her wolf had survived. She just had to do likewise and fight her way free to return to him.
The elevator doors opened, and Lucian selected the penthouse. “Thanks to Elior’s untimely arrival, I have some things I need to take care of,” he said conversationally. “But that will not take long, and then we will spend some quality time together, my dear.”
The doors opened into a luxurious apartment with a breath-taking wall of windows overlooking the city. She could see the academy on the streets below. She knew this building, had seen it as part of the city landscape without ever having been within it.
He led her past a kitchen, a seating area, and a dining table, to a double door which he opened, revealing a large bedroom with two walls of glass, and an oversized bed set against the third wall, behind which she could see a walk-in-robe and glossy en suite.
“Right,” he said. “Use the bathroom and then undress and lay on the bed.”
The blood had enough hold that she moved automatically to fulfill his commands. Fight it, Lia, she told herself. You need to fight it and get back to Raiden.
There were chains from each corner of the bed attached to cuffs. Lucian chained people to his bed often enough to have chains ready, she thought with horror, as she lay naked upon the sheets. He attached the cuffs with deft movements.
“Now, because of your magic tongue,” he grinned down at her, “open wide.”
She opened her mouth and he gagged her with a tie.
“Good,” he purred, and drew the bed sheets around her tucking them around her body in between caresses. “And that is because I am fond of you, and know that you are prone to chill,” he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Have a sleep until I return.”
She closed her eyes and listened to him leave.
Raiden was alive, she repeated herself, a galvanizing mantra. She needed to escape. She remembered the woman, Charlotte. She needed to get free of this bed, free the other women of the harem, and escape to Raiden.
But first she needed to wake up. Wake up, Lia.
She opened her eyes.