Текст книги "Bespelled"

Автор книги: Laura Thalassa

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

The thing is going to reanimate. Then it will hurt me, and I still cannot defend myself, and I cannot use magic. I might still be able to attack it, but I cannot move my legs.

I hear the thing behind me drag itself to its feet. Its heavy steps have me bracing. Once I see it, I’ll try to smash its arms.

Only, it never comes within my line of vision. It stops somewhere close to my back, and the momentary stillness is hellish.

The hit comes seconds later, the monster’s heavy fist driving into the side of my skull with so much force I go sprawling.

I can’t see through the pain, but then the creature is there, kicking my side.

I grunt as the air is forced out of me.

Another kick, this one sliding me into nearby debris.

It lifts its foot, the bottom of its boot aimed at my head.

“You’re not to kill her,” Lia instructs calmly from the other side of the room. “Just hurt her—badly.”

The monster crouches and takes one of my forearms into its hands, and⁠—

Snap. I scream as bones break. Almost mechanically, the monster moves its touch to my upper arm and⁠—

“No, please, no⁠—”

Snap.

I scream.

So much pain!

Selene, I am right here. Memnon sounds heartbroken. Breathe through it, my fierce queen. I am with you.

I feel anguish a split second before I realize it’s coming through the bond.

“This is just the beginning of the nightmare, Selene,” Lia says. Her clothing is still bloody and shredded from the sherds that tore through it, and that provides me some cold comfort.

The monster releases my arm and moves down to my leg.

Goddess, no…

I lock my jaw as I feel those unforgiving hands take hold of my calf. I’m not going to beg Lia to stop. Not when my pleas will only stoke her perverse enjoyment of this moment. I won’t give her that.

She must sense my resolve.

I hear the ominous click of her heels getting closer and closer.

“You think a few broken bones are torture?” she says, stopping next to me. She crouches and threads her fingers through my hair, forcing my head to face hers. “I will have you do things that will make your blood curdle in your veins. Who you sleep with is now my choice, and I will make your sex life a horror show. I will make a list of people whom you love, and I will force you to ruin their lives until they curse your name. I will learn your dreams, and I will break them. Through it all, I will make you worship me.”

Her words are punctuated by another snap, and I scream and scream, my limbs trembling and worsening the pain.

Take my power! Memnon is openly begging.

Cannot…use it.

The monster’s hands move up to my thigh, and I feel his grip tighten. I swallow my plea, though I can’t stop the tears that leak from my eyes or the way my body is shaking from fear and pain. No, no⁠—

Snap.

The agony is indescribable. I’m not a person anymore. Just raw pain shaped into a woman.

“Enough, Creature.”

The monster releases me and backs away from where I lie. I’m struggling to stay conscious through the agony. It feels like every breath is a challenge.

The chilling clicks of heels draw near. They stop right next to my face.

“Now, Selene, kiss my feet, and thank me for the pain.”

I can’t. It isn’t possible with so many broken bones.

But my body isn’t listening. I grind my teeth together so my whimpers don’t slip out as I turn my head and brush my lips against the top of Lia’s shoe.

Memnon’s voice drifts to me across epochs of time. Sarmatians are the fiercest people in the world. They are trained from birth to ride horses and wield weapons. They must fight in at least one battle before they are allowed to marry. And you are to be their queen… You will wear the riches of my empire, and you will ride astride my horse… and you will show these people that you were made to rule my horde of warriors.

I cling to the memory. I was once a queen.

“Thank…you,” I rasp out.

I fought in battles and ruled a kingdom.

“Good,” Lia says.

I gasp out several breaths, my chest heaving.

I will not let this break me.

I will not let this break me.

Spoken like a true queen of warriors, Memnon says.

I don’t know if he heard my earlier memory, but I sob now, clinging to his words like they can keep out the evil happening in this room.

The gods gave me the fiercest woman. The fiercest one. I am right here, est amage. Right here.

“Listen closely. This is important,” Lia says, as though I’m in any state to remember anything.

Tears track down my cheeks, and my jaw aches from how tightly I’m tensing it.

Stay with me, Memnon, I beg, even though he’s repeatedly promised as much. I’m afraid of what’s coming next.

I’m not leaving you, he says. I will never leave you, est vexava.

My love.

I close my eyes and swallow, trying to wrap Memnon’s words around me like a blanket.

“You will tell no one that you are bonded to me, nor will you give any hints that you work for me,” Lia says. “Even when you are with your family and friends, you will keep my interests in the forefront of your mind. You will do my work discreetly and absolutely.”

She continues, “You will find me other witches to bond with. You will look for lonely ones and ones who do not have good family relations. Those who seem promising you will befriend. You will be subtle about this, and you will not let them know about me or my intentions.”

My stomach twists at the orders, and I grimace, opening my eyes. This is how Kasey picked me out, and now I’m being forced to perpetuate the cycle.

“You will call me once a week and keep me informed of potential witches as well as what’s going on in the coven,” Lia says. “I will call you from time to time, and if I do, you will answer. If you see a missed call from me, you will call me back as soon as you can. Once a month, we will have in-person meetings, which will take place either here in the city or in the tunnels beneath the coven. Those meetings will be followed by spell circles—you remember how that goes—and I will expect you to recruit at least one witch per circle.”

I want to hurl all over again.

“If at any point I need something from you,” she says, “you are to immediately—and discreetly—stop what you’re doing and come to me. Got it?”

I don’t have the energy to glare at her. I barely have the energy to listen over the pain.

“And,” Lia continues, “if you hear anyone asking questions about the recent murders, I want to know about⁠—”

BOOM!

A wave of magic ripples across the room, shaking the walls, toppling boxes, and causing more debris to fall from the ruined ceiling. Lia staggers, and my vision darkens as my injuries are jostled. The whole building quakes from the distant explosion.

“What the fuck is happening now?” Lia says.

Despite my pain, I smile.

It’s not what but who.

Memnon has arrived.

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CHAPTER 35

I begin to laugh, though it sounds a bit like a sob. I sound like I’ve lost it, which maybe I have.

Lia’s eyes find mine. “You think this is funny?” She steps on one of my legs, causing me to scream all over again.

From the other end of the bond, Memnon’s warmth has iced over, and I feel his cold-blooded wrath.

There are no more words between us. It’s more primal than that. All that’s left is pain, rage, and vengeance, and it swirls together until I’m not sure what’s mine and what’s his.

BOOM!

The door to the room blows clear off its hinges, flying across the space and crashing into the pile of boxes.

Filling up the open doorway is my mate.

Memnon’s eyes are glowing like hot coals, and his hair has lifted from his shoulders, rippling like he’s swimming underwater.

I want to sob at the sight of him. As it is, my heart leaps, and Goddess, the things I’ll forgive this man for simply because he showed up.

His eyes immediately find mine, and even distant as they get when his power takes over, I swear they burn brighter.

“Selene.” He growls my name possessively.

His gaze scans my broken body, and that rage that whispered down our bond now consumes him. Memnon’s power burgeons around him, sparks of it lighting up the indigo plumes like it’s all a miniature storm cloud.

A split second later, his power is there, slipping down my throat and into me, reaching for my injuries and attempting to heal them from a distance. But because healing usually requires pressing hands to flesh, his magic doesn’t do much besides setting my broken bones. The action causes me to scream through my teeth.

I’m sorry, love. His voice has an otherworldly edge to it as his magic rides him. Memnon begins striding toward me, likely to finish healing me.

“Don’t come any closer,” Lia warns.

Memnon pauses, his gaze flicking to the woman.

As soon as he sees her, he stills. “Juliana.”

Juliana?

I glance up at who I thought was Lia. Seven hells.

It all comes together fast. Lia must be a nickname. As in Ju-lia-na.

This isn’t just some random witch gone rogue. This is a sorceress and one of the heirs of Ensanguine Enterprises.

Juliana Fortuna.

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CHAPTER 36

I stare at Juliana Fortuna with new eyes as she takes in Memnon, whose power is crackling off him. I can practically hear the gears in her head grinding together as she tries to piece together the situation from her end.

“Put your magic away,” she finally commands.

I’m sure she’s expecting him to do as she says. She believes he’s bonded to her after all.

Instead, Memnon continues to stare at her, his expression growing colder and colder as his power gathers.

“You touched my mate.”

“Mate?” I hear the surprise in Juliana’s voice. “You’re her bond?”

She glances down at me, reassessing, before returning her gaze to Memnon. I can’t move with my injuries, but I imagine she’s taking in his glowing eyes and rustling hair.

“Who are you really?” she asks. She must realize she’s been played.

“Your executioner.” He says it without malice, as though it were simply a fact, and that makes the words truly ominous.

The sorceress murmurs under her breath, drawing her magic in her hands, then she throws a spell at my mate, the thick mass of it streaked through with oily black lines.

Dark magic.

Memnon lifts a hand and catches the curse. I’ve never seen that done. I can hear it sizzling against his flesh as he closes his fist around it. With a final hiss, it snuffs out like a blown candle.

“Creature, attack him!”

The clay monstrosity charges toward Memnon, and its clay lips peel back, revealing sharpened gray canines.

Right as it’s nearly on Memnon, my mate reaches out and rubs away a portion of the Hebrew word truth from the creature’s forehead.

All at once, the creature’s form stiffens, losing its animation. It falls to the ground, shattering apart, the sound like a clay pot smashing. I stare at what remains of the thing’s head. On its forehead, I can just make out what remains of the Hebrew word, which is now missing one letter. What remains reads as a different word entirely.

Death.

“Creature, repair yourself!” Juliana commands.

I wait for the bits of dried clay to cobble themselves back together, but they remain where they fell, still and lifeless.

Memnon returns his attention to the sorceress, his magic rapidly folding inward, toward his form.

For the first time, I see a flicker of misgiving in Juliana’s eyes, even as they begin to glow⁠—

BOOM!

Memnon’s magic explodes out of him, ripping through the room and throwing Juliana and everything else back. The only thing Memnon’s magic doesn’t touch is me. The hair on my head doesn’t so much as stir.

The sorceress coughs as debris falls and dust kicks up. Through the haze, I see a set of glowing eyes as Memnon strides forward.

“There is one thing I hold holy in all this gods-forsaken world,” Memnon says, closing in on Juliana. Goose bumps break out along my skin. His voice still has that unsettling otherness to it. “And you hurt her.”

The sorceress sits up enough to lob a curse at Memnon. He bats it away like it’s a fly, but when it hits the wall behind him, it melts a section of drywall.

She throws another and another. He doesn’t bother knocking them all away, and he doesn’t react at all, even when the curses eat away at his clothes, and bits of his flesh smoke.

“You cannot hurt me,” Juliana insists. “I bonded you to me. I remember.”

He doesn’t respond, but when he bends down and grasps her by the neck, it’s clear he can in fact hurt her. His magic closes in on her, the indigo swathes of it stained with dark, oily streaks.

Juliana begins to writhe and scream.

“Selene,” she gasps out between cries, “kill him.”

I suck in a sharp breath as my broken limbs tense at her command. She had ordered something similar of me earlier⁠—

Your first true task once I release you tonight will be to sever each of those bonds.

That command hadn’t taken root because she hadn’t released me, but now, now her insidious magic is pressing in on me, forcing my body to move.

I cry out as my broken bones are jostled.

Est amage!

In response, Juliana’s screams intensify, like Memnon worsened the curse he struck her with.

My body is still trying to pick itself up, broken bones and all. Beyond the pain, there is a different sort of anguish. Horror crawls along my skin at the thought of killing Memnon. I have loathed the man and wished for his demise more than once, but…but somewhere along the way, things between us have changed.

No. I fight the compulsion. I will not do this.

Sweat begins to bead on my brow as I battle the magic.

I will not harm my soul mate.

Just when I’m sure I’ll be forced to comply anyway, the command’s power over me dissipates, washing away like blood in the rain.

I breathe hard as I lie there on the ground, sweat dripping down my face. Or maybe they’re tears.

Some bonds are stronger than others. Not even a forced bond can overpower a fated one.

I stare up at the ceiling. “That foolish woman doesn’t know who we are,” I say in Sarmatian, my voice shaky. King, queen. Husband, wife. Ancient lovers, recent enemies. Soul mates.

Beneath his rage, I feel Memnon’s violent pleasure at this acknowledgment.

He reels the writhing sorceress in close. “You made enemies of the wrong people, sorceress.” I see his grip visibly tighten.

Juliana’s screams have turned into choked sobs. “Please, please,” she says hoarsely. She doesn’t say what she’s begging for. Mercy of some sort. I think she knows she’s not going to get it. Not given the circumstances of the evening.

With his free hand, Memnon withdraws his dagger. “I made a promise to my mate,” he says softly, “that the moment I found who had hurt her, I would make their deaths slow.”

He releases Juliana’s throat, and the sorceress falls to her knees. No sooner is she kneeling than Memnon grabs her hair, tilts her head back, and drags his blade across the sorceress’s throat.

A line of blood blooms like a crimson necklace, and I startle at the sudden violence.

Juliana cries out, her power flaring, but Memnon’s own power snaps out in response, forcing hers back into her body.

She’s not dying, I realize. The cut, though it looked wicked, was simply a flesh wound.

Memnon releases her hair and brings the tip of the dagger to his other hand. Swiftly he draws it down his palm. My stomach bottoms out when I begin to suspect what he intends.

He wraps his bloody hand around the sorceress’s wounded neck.

“With blood I bind⁠—”

“No!” she screams. “No, no! Selene Bowers, I command you to stop him.”

I clench my teeth as another compulsion takes root and I have to fight it off all over again.

“With bone I break.” Memnon begins to smile now, unholy menace in his glowing eyes. “Only through death shall I at last forsake.”

What Memnon is doing shouldn’t be possible. The amount of magic needed for a forced bond is so massive it requires a spell circle. That’s why Lia called in those supernaturals earlier when she bonded me, and it’s why she hosted spell circles beneath Henbane Coven. But I can sense the sorcerer’s magic relentlessly building anyway.

“What I command, you shall obey. Your will is mine till your dying day.”

She screams again, only this time, it’s more out of anguish than physical pain.

Holy Goddess. Memnon did it. He bound Juliana’s will to his own.

“You will not give Selene Bowers another order, ever,” he says. “You will not hurt Selene ever again. You will not hurt me ever. You will not use magic ever. You will stay here on your knees, and you won’t speak, and you won’t move. You will wait patiently for me.” Roughly, he releases the sorceress.

Memnon crosses the room to me, his hair stirring and his eyes burning. His power billows about him as he crunches over the remains of the sorceress’s creature. If I were anyone else, I would be terrified.

When he gets to me, he kneels. So much of him is consumed by his power at the moment. I can’t see any softness to him. But then his hand presses to my cheek.

Beneath Memnon’s touch, his power floods my body, reaching for my broken bones. The healing spell warms me as it moves through my system and mends my injuries.

His thumb strokes my cheek as he gazes down at me.

I’m sorry, he says. For your pain. For not healing you sooner. For coming so late.

I don’t know how I have any more tears in me, but a few more squeeze out.

I lean into his hand. You came. That’s all I can seem to say.

I will always come, he vows.

Gradually, my pain ebbs away. I sense it the moment I’m fully healed.

With a sob, I lunge for Memnon, wrapping my arms around him and burying my face in his shoulder. My whole body is shaking violently. Even though my body is healed, it still has some memory of all that’s been done to it.

I still sense Memnon’s otherness—he’s more magic than man at the moment—but his arms close around me, and he holds me tight to him.

Fierce queen, enduring mate, I’ve got you. I am yours, forever.

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CHAPTER 37

“You don’t understand,” Juliana says angrily once Memnon has returned to her and allowed the sorceress to speak once more. “I am the daughter of Luca Fortuna. He will make you pay for what you’ve done.”

I sit amid the rubble, my body weary, my clothes in tatters, my mind aching to leave this room where so many horrors have happened.

My mate stares down at Juliana where she still kneels, studying her with those burning eyes.

“I felt it when you snapped Selene’s bones one by one,” he says. “I felt her pain, and I heard her screams. They will haunt me for all my days. I am not a nice man. I am an evil one—even more so than you and your siblings. Even more than your father. You think you understand pain? Torture? I want you to know that I can be even more creative than you. If you fail to cooperate with me, I will make you break your own bones, one by one.”

She looks afraid now.

He crouches in front of her. “Do you want to hear the rest of what I’ll do to you? How I will order you to skin yourself alive, how I will make you draw out your own intestines⁠—”

“Stop! Stop!”

“Then you will truthfully tell me everything you know about the murders of witches.”

“I don’t know much about the murders,” Juliana begins. “I didn’t kill them.” She pauses, like that’s enough to fulfill Memnon’s magical command.

However, after a couple tense seconds, her throat works and more spills out.

“My father and my brother are the ones who know more. I don’t know if they killed the witches themselves or why. I don’t want to know so I’ve never asked.”

She stops again, and I see the muscles in her throat strain as Memnon’s command still rides her.

Tell me everything, he said.

“Each month on the night of the new moon, my sister and I deliver one or two of our bonded supernaturals to my dad and my brother. They’re the ones that die.”

I don’t know what is more shocking: that all the murder victims were previously bonded or that we now know exactly who the killers are.

“This happens every new moon?”

Juliana clenches her jaw, then nods. “At midnight sharp.”

“And your father and brother are the only ones who would know what happens to these supernaturals?”

She hesitates. “No,” she eventually admits.

“Explain yourself—again, truthfully,” Memnon says.

“My father and brother—they get paid for the… the deaths. Whoever pays them probably also knows what’s going on.”

“Yet you don’t?” Memnon says, looking unconvinced.

“It’s the truth,” she hisses out.

“How do I get into the Equinox on the night of the new moon?” Memnon asks.

Juliana laughs. I think she’s about to tell Memnon that getting in is impossible, but then her throat works.

“You need to be invited as a guest to the midnight auction—we hold those on the new moon as well.” After she speaks, she spits at Memnon.

The spittle hits his shirt. “Do that again, and I cut off a finger.”

Juliana grimaces. “I hate you.”

She begins to turn toward where I’m resting when Memnon catches her face.

“This is between you and me,” Memnon says. “You will not look at Selene. You will not speak to her unless spoken to. Or else I get creative and I make you answer my questions.”

My heart beats faster as Juliana glares at him.

“Now, tell me about this auction,” Memnon says. “Is it connected to the murders?”

“No,” she says.

“Then what is it for?” he asks.

Juliana fights this answer in particular. Eventually it’s ripped from her. “We auction off bonds to supernaturals.”

Goddess.

That sounds like a living nightmare.

It could’ve easily been my fate as well.

“The girls I bond—not all of them go to my father and brother,” Juliana continues. “Most of them are sold, either privately or at these monthly auctions.”

For a second, I cannot draw in air. Then, then⁠—

I lean over and gag. There’s nothing left to purge from my stomach, but I cannot stop the visceral reaction.

It was horrifying enough when I knew Juliana was forcibly binding witches, but to realize these same women—women I went to school with, women I was friends with—were then being sold off to other supernaturals…

Memnon’s magic is unspooling out of him, and through our bond, I sense his rage deepening.

“Do the”—Memnon’s lip curls into a grimace—“buyers know these supernaturals are already bonded?”

Juliana’s gaze has drifted to Memnon’s magic, but now she brings her attention back to him.

“My clients believe their intended bonds are willing.”

“But they’re not,” Memnon says flatly.

“Some are.” Juliana has the gall to sound defensive. “Some are excited for their new lives.”

“No one is fucking excited to be trafficked, Juliana,” I say to her.

Juliana twitches, like she’s about to turn to me, but Memnon’s previous command stops her.

“How does the exchange happen?” Memnon says.

She glares at him. “The buyers pay the money, and we officiate a bond. Once it’s complete, my own bond dissolves away, and the new pair move on with their life.”

My mind catches on one detail—her bond dissolves away. Some of these binding spells, like the one she forced on me, are for life, while others must end the moment a new bond is created.

“Who sets the terms of this auctioned bond—you or the buyer?” Memnon asks.

I don’t want to know. This is all so sick.

Juliana hesitates again. “The buyer,” she eventually admits.

The terms of that forged bond could be anything, anything at all. Even the fabled deals with the devil are technically forged bonds, despite favoring one side over the other. Just like those bonds, these buyers could have some terrible stipulations, and it wouldn’t matter. Juliana could make her bonded victims agree to it while they were still under her control.

It’s not lost on me that not even the devil does forced bonds. That’s how dark this shit has gotten.

I must make some noise. I feel nauseous again. It’s too much. Too much pain, too much violence, too much sick, twisted perversion. I have many questions I still want answered, but I don’t think I can stomach them tonight.

Memnon glances over at me, his power still consuming him. His eyes look merciless as he takes me in.

“Juliana,” my mate says, “you will stay here kneeling, and you will not speak. If you displease me in any way, I will make you remove an appendage.”

The sorceress glares at him, but already, the magic has silenced her.

Memnon strides over to me, his blue magic shrouding him.

He kneels next to me and cups my cheek. I will take care of this. You are safe now, I vow it.

He presses his palm more firmly against my skin. “Sleep.”

Darkness swallows me up.

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