Born in Chains (Men in Chains) (2 page)

But this time the feeling of knowing became more and more specific until the space in front of her shifted, moving fast all around the edges. A vision emerged as the women brought one of the prisoners from his individual space, an open cell separated from other cells with walls of stacked stones. She recognized him from the dossiers she had on each vampire. He was the one called Adrien, the one she’d be taking with her.

He was naked, the state all the men were kept in, and his dark hair, not quite black, hung in lank, filthy strands almost to his shoulders.

He stared from beneath tight brows as he walked forward, a kind of soft light illuminating her vision. The chains between his manacled feet dragged against the stone, making a scraping sound she wouldn’t soon forget. Male guards stood nearby with Tasers, one of the most effective weapons against vampires. Something about the vampire metabolism made them susceptible to electricity.

Adrien was tall, six-six according to the file on him, and much paler than the resident Indian counterparts, clearly descended from European stock. Despite the length of his captivity, he was well muscled, and in this vision he didn’t have a single wound or scar on him. He was incredibly handsome, his cheekbones strong, a shallow indentation in his chin, his lips full, his brows straight. She had seen pictures of him, but she hadn’t been exactly prepared for the breadth of his shoulders or the flexing of his powerful thighs as he moved.

She was drawn to him, something she didn’t want to be feeling at all given that he was what she despised most: a vampire.

Now she sensed the time sequence. Two hours ago. He’d been tortured only two hours ago.

The vision continued as the guards threatened to use the Tasers unless Adrien did as he was told. He obeyed, backing up to the wall. The guards slipped the loose chains from each manacled wrist over hooks on the wall.

When the whipping began, Lily closed her eyes, but the vision didn’t care and showed her everything anyway, straight into her head, each strike on Adrien’s flesh, each cry from his lips, blood flowing from wound after wound until his flesh peeled away from his body in a hundred different places.

The women took turns flaying him, eyes glittering, nostrils flaring, sweat flowing from the work it took to wield the whip and make the cuts as deep as possible.

Not until Adrien passed out did the vision begin to fade.

“Hey, human, you in some kinda trance?”

Lily blinked and her eyesight returned; her sense of smell as well. Somehow in watching the vision, she’d taken the washcloth from her nose. She returned it now and only with tremendous effort kept from vomiting.

“Take me to Adrien,” she mumbled behind the terry cloth.

“You’re in luck. He’s still hanging from the obedience hooks.” The woman laughed once more. “These prisoners never learn.”

Lily wasn’t far from Adrien now. She could
feel
him, as though she already knew him, but the sensation rankled. Adrien, and all his kind, deserved to disappear from the face of the earth, so why should she care about his pain? He was a vampire, like the ones who had destroyed her family and her neighbors.

As she turned the corner of one of the high walls made of flat stones stacked neatly on top of one another, there Adrien was, just like in the vision, cut up and beaten. But because two hours had passed, he was well on his way to healing. Like the rest of his kind, he had a powerful ability to recover from the most severe wounds within hours.

He rested his head on the chains, but with his eyes closed, he held himself upright, feet planted over a foot apart.

She set the lantern on the floor. “Where does he go after a whipping?”

“Back to his stall, not much different from this. Smaller.”

With the damp cloth still pressed to her face, Lily glanced at the stone floor at his feet. He stood in a pool of dark blood, his blood, and what she assumed were layers of dried blood beneath.

She tore her gaze away and lifted her chin. The chain-based visions wanted to return, sweeping over her, but she pressed them back. She had seen enough for now.

“Leave this cave,” she said to the woman.

“What?”

“You heard me. I want to be alone with the prisoner.”

The woman opened and closed her mouth, then shrugged. She slapped her whip against her hand and muttered something about human bitches that needed to be drained dry.

When she was gone, Lily drew close to Adrien, standing only four feet away. She continued to breathe through her mouth and held the washcloth close. Even with half-healed cuts all over his body, he was magnificent, like something sculpted from marble. His brows, however, were pulled into a tight knot.

But as she stared up at him the chains hummed, and she knew a deeper truth about the vampire: He was trying to figure out not how to escape, but how to murder someone. She felt his determination as though it released in his sweat.

*   *   *

Adrien returned to consciousness, but he didn’t know why. He was only partially healed, and his body throbbed with pain. Usually he’d sleep for hours to complete his healing process as quickly as possible.

Yet something had awakened him, but what?

Above the usual filth of the cavern, he smelled a scent different from the vampires who usually took shifts—a human smell, one that filled him with rage.

He despised the world of humans, always taking what they wanted no matter who got hurt, or robbed, or dispossessed; the way they traded, for a few miserable dollars, the flesh of their kind into the forbidden sex-slave rings of his world, never to be seen again. And the way they illegally purchased the mineral rights of the caves Daniel Briggs stole from his fellow vampires.

And now a human was here, a woman, in the Himalayan prison.

Small sparks flew through his mind, as though part of him registered what was happening though the other part stayed sunk in denial. The muscles of his arms reacted, flexing in deep pulls then relaxing as if displaying his biceps. His abs knotted up in the same way.

With his eyes still closed, he lifted his head, leaning forward, straining against his manacles, pulling at the chains that bound him. Strength flowed into his arms, and a profound need swept through him to get out of his restraints. He needed to be free to protect his brothers from the enemy, from the human.

He groaned.

“What’s brewing, Adrien?” Lucian called to him.

“The enemy is here.” His voice sounded raspy again. He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see very well. He’d taken a lot of blows to the head and face this time.

“You mean the human? We can smell her, too.”

He blinked several times and there she was, staring at him from a pair of large hazel eyes.

He breathed in and yes, she was very human, a stench more heinous to him than the putrid smells of the cavern. She had a lantern near her feet but he could see her easily as he adjusted his vampire vision.

The moment she came fully into view, however, he stalled out. His rage left him, flowing backward, and something else rushed toward the woman, something he didn’t want to feel. It was her, the woman in his vision.

A strange combination of desire and need boiled within him. He felt as though he knew her on some level he couldn’t explain.

Then the anger returned, at her kind, for their greed.

“What do you want?” he called out.

“Adrien, what the hell is going on?” Lucian’s voice, louder this time, more urgent, bounced off the jagged stone ceiling.

Adrien couldn’t respond, partly because he didn’t know what the hell was happening and partly because time had just drawn to a hard standstill.

His brothers called to him, but he couldn’t quite hear them. He watched the woman’s lips move, so she must have been speaking as well, but his ears had shut down.

He saw her as though sunshine cascaded over her long, light brown hair. What would her hair look like pulled up high on her head? Did she own a burgundy gown dotted with gold crystals? He wanted her. He needed her. But he couldn’t be feeling this way, not about a human.

His thigh muscles contracted and his knees bent. He tilted his head back and shouted into the heights of the cave, a sound that roared in his ears. His brothers shouted as well, joining him.

When he looked back at the woman, she’d covered her ears with her hands, her face twisted in pain, which caused him a certain amount of pleasure. She should hurt, this short-lived mortal, a representative of a race he abhorred.

He struggled harder against the chains and manacles, bruising and cutting his wrists and ankles as he tried to get to the woman, wanting her to pay.

She moved toward him, tears now running down her cheeks. Why was she weeping? His arms flailed and the chains clanked as he reached toward her. Her expression looked windblown, and he knew he needed to stop all the shouting, but he couldn’t quiet his voice, not until her hands landed on his chest.

His back arched and he cried out one last time. He took short puffs of air into his lungs, but he began to calm down.

Only then, with the touch of her hands easing him, did he realize he was in a full state of arousal.

What the hell was this human doing to him?

*   *   *

Lily’s heart pounded so hard that she’d grown deaf from the sound of the rhythmic rush through her ears. Her fingers felt the split of skin beneath her hands and even wetness from Adrien’s open wounds, but it just didn’t matter. All that mattered was quieting the vampire so that her ears would stop feeling like knives were slicing them up.

He thrashed in his chains, hurting himself even more. His wrists and ankles now bled in long red rivulets. His eyes had a red hue and he’d bared his fangs. She could feel his hatred of her as much from the chain around her neck as the power emanating from his body.

He looked like a madman, his body gyrating, his muscles from stem to stern flexing and rippling as he tried to pull away from the wall to get to her.

And yet he was aroused, which told her the other part of the story, that he had a powerful drive toward her he didn’t want to have. This had all the makings of a nightmare.

She ignored that his erection pressed against her stomach. He didn’t even seem to notice his sexual state. Instead, his eyes bored into hers, and as she kept her hands flat against his chest, he finally grew still, though his nostrils moved like bellows with each breath.

The other vampires in the cavern grew quiet as well, as though sensing Adrien’s growing calm. The three men were half-brothers, though she knew little else about them except that they served as a type of policing force for their kind.

As she stared up at him, chills raced over her shoulders and down her arms. Her chest tightened as a strange sensation gripped her deep in her stomach, something that emanated from the chain around her neck. Kiernan had told her it would recognize Adrien since the specialist—something called an Ancestral in the vampire world—had used Adrien’s blood to create the chain.

She opened her mouth to tell him about her current mission and what she needed him to do, but all she could seem to focus on was the shade of his eyes, an exquisite shade somewhere between blue and green, almost a teal but quieter, softened with faint brown flecks.

She realized that she could see really well in the dark, another result of the blood-chain. Essentially, once connected, she’d be siphoning more and more power from the chain and from Adrien himself after she’d bound him with the matching chain. In the meantime, she could already feel the chain at work on her. The vision alone had told her that much.

She looked at his lips, full and sensual. He strained toward her, leaning into her. “You’re my enemy,” he hissed.

“And yet you desire me.”

“I want you on your back, human, then I’ll make you feel just how weak you are compared with my kind.”

“You speak of my weakness, but I’m not the one hanging from massive chains in a prison. You are. How did you get here, vampire? What brought you to this cavern?”

“Treachery,” he muttered.

“Of course. Your kind always has an excuse. But at least we seem to understand each other, I hate your kind and you despise mine. We ought to at least be on an equal footing when I take charge of you.”

“What does that mean?”

She backed away slowly, and as her hands left his chest his gaze fell to the chain at her neck. His eyes narrowed.

“I’ll be taking you out of here.”

“You’ve got a blood-chain.”

“I do.”

“And you’ve got the matching one?”

She nodded. “I was hired by a private individual to take you into my custody and make use of your powers.”

He scowled. “Daniel would never allow that unless he’d sanctioned the release.”

“Who exactly is Daniel?”

Adrien snorted. “Daniel Briggs, the vampire in charge of everything right now, including this lovely prison.”

“I report to Harris Kiernan, no one else.”

The vampire hissed. “He and Daniel work together, a little married couple.”

“I’ve been told to explain a few things to you. First, you’ll be bound to me and we’ll be unable to get more than a few feet apart at any given time. Second, for either of us to remove the chain will mean death to both. Finally, you’ll have to do as I say. And just to be clear, I’m more determined than you can imagine to see my mission through. I’ve got a lot at stake and I will get what I’ve come here for. Or die trying.” She lowered her chin. “Do you understand?”

“You’re saying you’re putting your life on the line for your mission.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you considered that once bound, I might decide to do the same? That I might find living in this state a worthless venture?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve made the decision to bind myself to you and if death follows, so be it.”

He nodded slowly. “All right, I believe you. So what’s your mission?” His eyes flared suddenly. “Wait, I can sense something from you,
about you.
You’re a locator, aren’t you?”

“That’s what I’ve been told. That’s why I’m here.”

“And if we form this bond, you’ll be able to find things, is that it?”