Secret Worlds (17 page)

“You have every right to be upset,” he said, “but not at your father. He only wanted to keep you out of harm’s way.” He folded his arms over his hulking chest. “Part of my curse, a piece of what Satina did to me, was penance. She had found me lacking in life, heartless, and without even the slightest compassion for humanity. To that end, she compelled me to help people who were in need. I doubt she had in mind that I would be protecting Supplicants, but I made that my mission. And that is how I came to know your father. The people who came after him, looking to use his blood to power horrible spells, they were vicious. We both knew they would stop at nothing to drain every drop of blood from his body. And, because you were like him, from your body, too.”

“Bullshit,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Blood replenishes. Why kill a never ending source?”

Abram stepped in closer, intimidating in his stature. His face hard, his eyebrows lifted as though to question me challenging him. My heart skipped a beat, and my body betrayed me with the complete wrong reaction—arousal.

I swallowed around the tightness in my thought. “Well?” I asked, the confidence in my tone wilting. “Explain that.”

Abram’s nostrils flared. “Greed. Not only do these … creatures … lack self-control, but the bigger the spell, the more blood they need to perform it.
Fresh
blood, Charisse. And yes, they will bleed you dry and take your life for
one
spell. They’ll take a dozen lives for one spell if they need to. Then they’ll move on to the next Supplicant—which is why your father left you. They had found him, and though they hadn’t tracked him back to his home yet, it was only a matter of time. He had hoped to take them out and return to you when everything was said and done.”

I shook my head, not understanding.

“He left you to keep you safe, Charisse. To stop them. To attempt to accomplish what I could not.” He paused, his jaw tensing and his hands balling into large fists at his side. “Had I done my job—had I been able to keep both of you safe …” His hands splayed out widely at his sides. “If you’re looking to blame someone for the way your life turned out, for all that you’re lacking, look no farther than the man who stands before you.”

I wanted to scream, to rear back and slap him. How dare he rob me of this? My father left me, and now I was just supposed to forgive him? Now I was just supposed to place the blame on this man—this man who I couldn’t have hated no matter how hard I tried?

My whole body was trembling now in my effort to resist the emotional hurt ravaging my body, but I steeled myself against the tears. “So what? They got him before he could get them? They used my dad’s blood, and that’s all he was good for? They ran out, and now they want me?”

Abram shook his head. “Yes, and no. Yes, Conduits do use people for their blood. That’s all they care about, that is all the value a Supplicant has to them. But no, they are not after you because your father’s blood ran out. They have always wanted you. They just don’t know it yet.”

“What does that even mean?”

Abram sighed. “A while ago, rumors began in our world about a Supplicant girl—one who was an extremely potent being of magical origin. They didn’t know it was you, though if they knew you were a Supplicant at all they would have gone after you anyway. But now they are hunting you specifically.”

“Something must have changed, then,” I mused under my breath.

Abram nodded. “It was not long before you returned here that the rumors took shape. A location—this town. A woman—fitting your description.”

“And that’s why those women were killed,” I answered. “Monsters want to bleed me out to make a voodoo cocktail. But couldn’t they tell those girls weren’t Supplicants?”

Abram titled his head back slowly. “That is the ever-concerning mystery. Whoever is after them … they aren’t a true Conduit. If they were, they would have known those women were not Supplicants.”

I shuddered hard. “Those poor girls.”

“More people I couldn’t save,” Abram said. His voice had dropped to a bitter growl. “But I won’t make that mistake with you. I’m here
because
of you, to keep you safe. I made a promise to your father, and I intend to keep it.”

“What are you going to do then?” I asked breathlessly.

“I’m going to find that creature who’s after you, the one who chased you into this house that night, and I’m going to relieve him of his head.”

***

Abram had gone to clean up, leaving me standing in the foyer, reliving the craziness that had just unfolded around me. My mind was spinning, which might as well be its new default for all the times it had happened lately.

That was when I heard her voice.

Chaaariiiissssseeee.

It was the girl. I shook my head, remembering what Abram had said. She wasn’t a girl. That was Satina, the woman who had cursed him. The Conduit was calling to me, just like she had the other day.

I didn’t want to, but I found myself moving closer to her room. She sang my name again.

Chaaariiissseeeeeee.

It was a siren song, a call that pulled me toward it without need of my cooperation. And somehow both the room here and the room at the club called me in the same way. But how could that be? She was here.

I crossed the threshold to the room before I realized where I was. She sat on the floor, still chained to the wall.

“Are you here to help me?” she asked in the same ‘poor me’ voice she had used the first time I saw her.

Suddenly, I snapped out of my fog. “Stop,” I growled. “I know what you are.”

“Do you?” Her face dropped all pretense of innocence, and she snarled at me so viciously she barely looked human anymore. “And do you know what you are,
Supplicant
?” When she said the word, her voice dripped venomously, so much so that I stumbled a step back. “Do you really know?”

Her mouth twisted into a haunting grin, and her tongue flickered between her lips.

“Stay away from me,” I said, taking another step back, this one more determined. “
Satina
.”

“Oh, someone’s been brushing up on their ancient history, I see. Did he tell you the rest?” The Conduit arched the
dead woman’s eyebrows. “Did he tell you what happened the night I died?”

“Of course.” My back knocked into the far wall. “And if you think I’m going to listen to some idiot girl who gets herself so twisted up over a man that she throws herself off a building, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

For the first time in my life, I heard an honest-to-God cackle. It escaped her lips as she threw her head back gleefully.

“Is that what he told you?” She shook her head. “I must not be the only one who’s found herself in the throes of that man’s charms.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“If you’re willing to accept that pile of horse manure, than you’re in deeper than I imagined.” She leaned in closer, so close that the shackles pulled tight. “I didn’t throw myself, Supplicant.” She smiled again. “
I was pushed
.”

“Pushed?” I asked, crossing my arms. “That’s not what Abram said.”

“Of course it’s not,” Satina spat back. “He’s the one who pushed me! Did you expect him to offer that up?”

This was too much. I wanted—no, I
needed—
to be done with this back and forth. Abram was good. Abram was evil. The whole thing was enough to give me whiplash.

“You’re a liar,” I ground out, “and I won’t fall for it again.”

It was one thing to finally make my peace with the existence of magic, Conduits, Supplicants, enchanted beasts, and leprechauns. Okay, so I might be winging it with the last one. But it was something else altogether to put my trust in someone the way I had just done with Abram. And standing here, watching this ridiculous creature threaten the stability of that trust with some horrible lie, wasn’t something I was prepared to do.

Even if, somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wondered if it was true.

Satina sighed. “You know, I don’t see what he sees in you.” She eyed me up and down with a sneer. “You’re not his type. He’s never been with a chunky girl before.”

“Curvy,” I corrected, then I waved my arm at her. “No different than you.”

“This?” she asked, looking down at her own body. “This is nothing more than a borrowed opportunity. I was waif-like and beautiful in my time … back before your boyfriend killed me.”

“You killed yourself,” I said, finding it suddenly easy to not feel bad over the loss of her life. “I know that’s probably hard for you to deal with, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

Satina leaned back, letting her chains hang loosely in the air. The look on her borrowed face was cool and collected. She eyed me up and down as if I was a slab of beef and she was picking the choicest parts to chop off.

A shudder ran through me. This woman … well, first of all, she wasn’t a woman at all, at least not the one I was looking at. She was a creature, some sort of spirit who had slung on a poor girl’s corpse and was wearing it around the same way I’d have worn a pair of Louboutins.

She was a walking obituary. Or more aptly, a sitting, chained-up obituary. And she wanted something from me.

“You better hope you’re right, Supplicant. Otherwise, I think it’s safe to say that you’re in over your pretty little head.” A disgusting smile parted her dry, cracked lips. “He was good, wasn’t he?” She rolled her eyes, seeming to relish some unspoken memory. “He was amazing back then. Not good enough to make up for the murder, mind you, but I can only imagine what a dozen decades of experience has brought to the table. Let me ask you, is he still a moaner?”

I shuddered again, thoughts of Abram and I in the Castle, thoughts of Satina and Abram all those years ago.

God, he
was
a moaner.

“Shut up! He didn’t murder you!” I yelled. “He’s not that kind of person.”

The smile fell from her face, replaced with hard lines that the girl Satina inhabited hadn’t lived long enough to earn. “Are you willing to bet your life on that, Supplicant? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.” Her eyes flickered to the door and then back to me. “I was just like you back then. A little less thick around the waist, but we shared other qualities. I, too, was kind and naïve. I gave people more credit than they were due, and lent my trust to the wrong men.”

“Sweetie, you don’t know anything about me.” Now I stepped closer to her, a little bit of my hard-earned edge creeping in. “I cut my teeth on the mean streets of New York City. And I realize that, since you’re about as relevant as socks with sandals, that doesn’t mean much to you. But suffice it to say, it chews up and spits out scarier people than you on a daily basis.” I sneered at her, leaning in even closer to her. “But it didn’t get me, and you won’t either. You see, you might have been some stupid little girl who couldn’t get past the fact that the guy who screwed you didn’t love you, but that’s not me. I’m a grown ass woman, bitch, and you don’t scare me.”

She lunged at me with a growl, the chains clanking as she pulled at them to get her face closer to mine, but I held steady, not letting my body or expression reveal my lingering fear.

When I didn’t flinch, she flopped back against the wall, sighing. “I’m tired of this.”

Good
.
So am I
.

But I was wrong to think she was done trying to intimidate me.

She pulled against her chains again, this time so hard that one of them snapped. Before I could react, she flicked her hand, throwing the loose chain at me. It struck me, wrapping around my neck like a noose. I grappled at it, but she jerked with more strength than I’d have ever imagined that body to be capable of.

I fell to the ground as she pulled me closer. I tried to scream, but the chain cut off my airway. I couldn’t breathe. Panic shot through me, electric and terrifying. My heart thundered in my chest as I struggled against the witch.

Clawing at the floor, I tried to slow my journey toward Satina, but it was no use. She jerked the chain again, and with each pull, the chain got tighter around my neck. Pressure pounded in my head. I could feel the blood settling there, all my brain cells dying. Spots started to ping at my field of vision, and the edges of the world blurred. Somehow, from the corner of my eye, I spied a shard of something.

A piece of glass from the broken picture frame. Abram hadn’t cleaned it up yet.

Using a tiny bit of my quickly dwindling energy, I swiped it up, hiding it inside my clenched fist. Now all I had to do was wait until she pulled me toward her, and I would slash the bitch.

If I didn’t suffocate first.

I felt her behind me, pulling up the last bit of the chain's slack. I sprung (or rather, inched) into action. Opening my hand, I drove the shard toward her neck.

She grabbed my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I wasn’t giving up now. Since she had to use one hand to grab me, that meant she let go of her vice grip on the chain.

Instinctively, I whipped the chain off my neck, gasping as a rush of cool air replenished my dry and sore throat.

The relief was short lived. I was still in danger. Looking up, I saw Satina had swiped the shard from my hand. I looked at my feet. Stupid shoes. If I had been wearing my heels, I could have flicked one off and drove a red-heeled point into this witch’s ugly eye.

My agent was right. Women shouldn’t wear sneakers. And to think I had thought he was just being sexist. However, he also said that no woman who cared about proper nail care should ever throw a punch. Unfortunately, I was going to have to prove him wrong on that one.

I swung at her. A bit of me felt guilty and squicked out as I realized it was a dead girl’s head I was connecting with. She pulled back as I clocked her across the face, but she didn’t let go of my hand.

“You stupid cow!” she spit out. “I’m just trying to show you the truth.”

She sliced the shard down my arm, breaking the skin. My eyes widened as a thick red mark appeared along my forearm.

Abram’s words rang out in my head.

There’s magic in your blood.

Uh-oh.

“Abram!” I screamed as the Conduit ran her finger along my arm, soaking up the blood.