The Strip (19 page)

“Say ‘yes,’ Charlie,” he hissed in her ear, jerking her head once to emphasize his words. “Say it
now
!”

His last order was a feral growl. Charlie’s heart felt as if it would rip out of her chest, it was beating so hard. She felt as if she’d been run over by a semi. Twice.

But she felt proud, too. He’d done his best – so far. And he’d failed to get what he wanted out of her. There was some consolation in that, however miniscule it was. So Charlie continued to deny him. She said nothing.

Gabriel’s grip on her tightened and then there was a strange flare in the room, a quick burst of light like the flash of a camera. Then another one. Gabriel cocked his head to one side, his attention suddenly ripped from the woman in his arms and focused elsewhere.

Charlie stilled. She could feel it too. Something different. Not quite a sound. Not even a smell. It was a vibration. There was another flash and Charlie tried to see what was happening, but Gabriel’s hand was still fisted in her hair, holding her head firmly in place.

“The spell has fallen,” came a deep voice from somewhere to her right.

Gabriel growled. “
Who?
”

There was a pause, as if the man he was speaking to was trying to figure exactly that out. And then, in a voice that clearly relayed trepidation and surprise, the man said, “The Council. It must be.”

Gabriel seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he was swearing vehemently and Charlie grimaced as he shoved away from her, causing her to rock forward in her leather restraints. In the next instant, he was reaching up and slicing his hands across the leather straps that held her in place. They came away easily, ripped completely in half. Charlie fell to her knees.

“Warlock!” Phelan roared as he lifted Charlie by her arm and dragged her toward the other side of the room and the couches. “Get us out of here now!”

Charlie managed to steal a quick look around as Gabriel pulled her across the room. With something nearing hysterical shock, she saw that there were several large wolves in the dungeon with them. At the same time, a few of Phelan’s men were missing.

Werewolves….
The thought floated through her mind.

Phelan dragged her before two other men, both with dark hair and both radiating a strange kind of aura. The younger of the two, a man with short black hair and indigo colored eyes, nodded to Phelan and came forward. Charlie instantly reeled back, trying to get away from him. Something about him felt very wrong. He looked like he was all of twenty years old and yet he absolutely, unequivocally terrified Charlie. She didn’t want him anywhere near her.

As if he could sense her trepidation, the young man smiled. It was not a comforting smile. It was filled with dark secrets and darker promises.

Charlie’s abused back screamed at her as she renewed her struggles with Phelan. But he made short work of subduing her, quickly overpowering her with one of the many fighting techniques he and Charlie had practiced for so many years.

In a few short seconds, she was trapped in his grasp, her back once more pressed painfully against his chest, one of his thick arms wrapped threateningly around her neck. He began to squeeze ever so gently, and she stopped struggling.

“Good girl,” he hissed. “Now,” he turned his attention back to the warlock. “Use the stone.”

The young man wrapped his right hand around the lapis stone he wore around his neck and began to whisper words in a language that Charlie didn’t understand.

And then the door to the dungeon came crashing inward. It came open with such force that it ripped completely off of its hinges and soared across the room to slam against the opposite wall.

There was instant chaos in the dimly lit dungeon.

More bright flashes lit the room and, this time, Charlie was able to see what caused them. One moment, she was staring at one of Phelan’s men across the dungeon. And the next, she was staring at another massive wolf.

Gabriel shoved Charlie to a nearby couch and she stumbled, landing on her side on the black leather.

A low rumbling sound rolled through the stone floors and reverberated off of the walls, reminding Charlie of thunder. And then the firelight in the sconces went out, casting the dungeon into darkness.

Chapter Eleven,
The Cold Call

The darkness in the dungeon was absolute, but the sounds and smells came alive for Charlie as her fifth sense was deprived. Gabriel had thrown her roughly to the couch and she could smell the leather beneath her and feel its cool touch against her heated skin. She could smell the smoke from the torches that had gone out in their sconces. And she could smell blood. It had a tangy, metallic smell to it; a little like iron shavings in wet earth. She wasn’t sure how she recognized it for it for what it was, but she did.

She couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was her own. She didn’t want to think about it, but images of what her back must look like floated before her mind’s eye and she cringed inside. Scars were bad enough. But learning how to move and sit and sleep while she healed would be horribly painful.

Along with the enhanced smells came the sounds. They stole her breath away.

They were chaotic sounds. Men were bellowing orders. Some were cursing. Some were chanting. Large things around her were scraping against the stone floor. She half expected the couch she was laying on to be lifted and thrown across the room, but it didn’t move. It seemed she was at the eye of a storm, immobile in the sudden, raging tempest.

Adding to the storm illusion were the brief flashes of light that punctuated the dark entropy. They would blast through her vision, searing it with red and white streaks, and then disappear again to plunge her into a darkness even more thorough than it had been seconds before. Each time the flash came, Charlie strained to look around, to get an idea of what was happening. But it was impossible. They came too fast and the only thing they gave Charlie was a sharp, burgeoning headache.

She wanted to run. She figured that this was her chance. She had a general idea of what vicinity the door was in. But she could hear and sense that so many people were in between her and it that she was positive she would only run into several on the way.

Still, it was worth it.

Slowly, she straightened, feeling the skin around the marks on her back pull and threaten. She ignored them and, when she felt and heard that it was clear ahead, she jumped off of the couch, just catching the next flash.

But that was as far as she got before a familiar, painful grip found her upper arms and she was once more pulled against Phelan’s chest.

The next flash that came was different from the others. It was not as bright, but it lasted longer. It blinded her utterly and completely and when Gabriel let her go, this time, she fell to what felt like a thick, plush carpet.

She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. The sounds had gone, as had the darkness. And the only blood she could smell now must have surely been her own.

As she lay on the unfamiliar rug and hugged herself, waiting for her sight to return, she felt people move around her. She had no choice but to sit and listen to them.

“You left Cromwell, I see.”

“I don’t trust him. He was soon to betray me; it wouldn’t have been long.”

That second voice was David’s.
Gabriel’s
. But the first voice, Charlie didn’t recognize. It was a very deep timbre, somewhat gravelly, and sounded older.

Spots were swimming in her vision now and the edges of it were solidifying into identifiable forms. Charlie sat up and looked around. She was in some sort of sitting room. There were a few couches and love seats around her – a coffee table, it seemed. And, beyond, an open plan that led to a kitchen and a dining room. It was someone’s house. The colors were muted browns and beige’s. Simple and elegant and expensive.

“The Council intervened.” That was Gabriel again. Charlie looked up at him as she curled her knees to her chest and hugged herself. She couldn’t run now. She had no idea where she was, and she was naked.

Gabriel was pulling a cell phone from his front shirt pocket. She could see that the white suit shirt was stained with blood. She wondered whose it was. Hers? Some of it, at least. Or, had he pushed her onto the couch in the dungeon so that he could fight with someone else? The sounds had been so chaotic and angry. It was definitely possible.

She wondered just what had happened in that dungeon. And how the hell she happened to not be in it anymore.

“You were right to expect them.” This time, it was the younger man who had spoken. He stood about a foot way from Gabriel – the one that Phelan had referred to as the “warlock.” He was watching her. Their eyes met and their gazes held.

She
really
didn’t like him. It was one of those instantaneous, hard dislikes that made your top lip want to curl. There was nearly a vibration of wrongness coming off of the man; it was no different now than it had been in the dungeon.

“Yes, unfortunately, it seems I was. ” Gabriel sighed.

Charlie realized that if she were to believe that what she’d seen in that stone room were people transforming into wolves, then she had to accept that werewolves were real.

And then she had to accept that Gabriel Phelan was one. As was Malcolm Cole.

And so was she.

And if she accepted that much, then she might as well believe in magic, in general. With that final leap in faith came the recognition that it was the warlock’s magic that had brought Charlie and her captors to this living room in this unfamiliar home.

If he could do that, what else could he do?

Charlie stared up into his deep, deep blue eyes and felt stone-cold.

Suddenly, a very soft blanket was being draped over her shoulders. She turned to face the man who had covered her; the third and last man in the room. He was an older gentleman, dressed in an impeccable suit. His eyes shone a bright amber-gold.

Another werewolf.

“The Council’s interference was bound to happen eventually,” Gabriel continued. “I’ve been expecting it for years.” He flipped open his phone and pressed several buttons. “This is a loss I will feel more deeply than others.” He pressed the talk button.

An explosion sounded from somewhere in the not-too-far distance and Charlie’s eyes widened in shock as the rumble reverberated off of the walls and the floor beneath her. “What - what was that?” She somehow found the will and the breath to speak. There was a sinking feeling in her gut. She was certainly still in pain and she was definitely exhausted and she was more than a little dizzy and even a touch nauseated with the toll that the last several hours had taken on her body. But she wasn’t unconscious, and she wasn’t stupid. She knew that something pretty damned big had just gone
boom
. And she feared that she knew what it was.

“That was The August,” Gabriel answered, calmly. “A nice addition to my family of real estate, but one that had to go, I’m afraid.”

Charlie’s head swam. She stared up at him as he turned his attention from his phone to her and trapped her in his sapphire gaze. She started to see spots again.

Roman. Mary Jane. Kevin…

“Sweetheart, you’re white as a ghost,” he said slowly, calmly. He was watching her with ardent interest, his head cocked a little to one side, his gaze narrowed slightly in keen observation.

Charlie couldn’t breathe. Immediately, she curled in on herself, dropping forward on the carpet to tuck her head between her hands and knees and close her eyes. The world was spinning away and expanding lungs were no longer a part of it.

So many people…. There had been so many people in that hotel. Children?

No… oh, God, no….

The sound of Gabriel swearing softly reached her ears. But it was muted, as if traveling through cotton tunnels, and she no longer cared. Oblivion was finally –
finally
– hurrying toward her. She welcomed it with silent, dark, open arms.

And then Gabriel was jerking her up by her arms; the blanket slid to the floor. He quickly spun her around and then laid her back down, pressing her against the leather of another nondescript couch. She blinked languidly as more pain sliced through her body. Some from his touch. Some from the whip marks on her back, now shoved so ruthlessly into the cold, hard material of the sofa.

She could smell his cologne and feel him move above her. But shock was riding her hard, spreading throughout her body like a cold, numbing fire. She knew she was shaking, trembling violently, but only because she could hear her teeth chattering against each other – again, from far away.

“We can’t continue our session if you aren’t going to be awake for it, sweetheart.”

She closed her eyes as the smell of fresh blood wafted to her nose, reaching her senses in that subdued and muffled state. Something hard and wet was placed to her lips, covering them completely.

“Drink.”

The command and the touch came with more pain, this time worse than before. It was more urgent and insistent and, somehow, she got the vague impression that the mark on her arm didn’t want her to drink whatever it was he had pressed to her mouth.

But she was drowning and it didn’t matter, anyway. She would probably just choke on it and die. And death would be okay.

She parted her lips and warm, salty liquor burned over her tongue. The power of the alcohol – was it alcohol? – was so strong, it caused her to buck against the couch. The darkness in her vision began to recede and her senses of smell and sound came into sharp focus once more.

Charlie swallowed and the fire raced down her throat and burned her esophagus… her stomach…. She moaned low and long and tried to shove the offending liquid away, but a strong arm stayed it at her lips.

“One more, sweetheart.” It was Gabriel urging her to drink. His voice sounded more guttural now. Deeper. There was a touch of raw animal instinct lacing his tone.

Gabriel wanted her to drink. Gabriel the killer, her parents’ murderer, the man who had mercilessly tortured her and blown up an entire hotel filled with people, including his own men. He was the epitome of ruthlessness. The embodiment of evil.