War Bringer (19 page)

“Where were you?” Kelan asked Rocco.

“Jafaar left me and Selena with the guests while he and the other witnesses went to participate in some private ceremony. When you blocked the door to the restrooms, I knew shit was going down.”

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs…at a complete dead end.

Chapter
 
Seventeen

Fiona’s two guards dragged her down the stairs. She considered resisting, but where was she going to go? Mr. Edwards was in complete control of this entire place. A vision of Kelan, battered and tied to a chair, flashed through her mind.
“Do what they tell you,”
he’d said.
“I will find you.”
 

But who was going to find him? Who was going to save him? She’d only been able to cut his feet free, but hopefully that would give him the mobility he needed to fight back.

A little seed pearl fell from the set woven into her hair. It was the second one she’d lost. Maybe the string was coming undone. She reached up to feel for the rest. She pulled a string of them free and let one fall every few steps.
 

Down and down they went. Where were they going? Ellen had said they were taking her to her dress, but why hadn’t she been allowed to come with Fiona?
 

One of the guards pulled his badge and pressed it against the corner of the wall. A small panel lit up inside the doorway. It beeped when his badge was successfully read, then the whole wall moved to the right. Her guards pushed her into the dark room beyond and let the big wall slide closed behind her, leaving her alone.

She looked around the space, confused at the extreme shift in decor. Small, flickering flames danced from sconces in the stone walls. The floor she stood on was highly polished stone, inlaid with what looked like ancient patterns of scrolls and plants and…monsters? Hydras, dragons, centaurs—classical beasts that were both beautifully rendered and terrifying in their presentation.
 

She looked behind her. The sleek steel wall she’d just come through was faced on this side with heavy stone like that of an ancient castle. It was as if she were at a theme park, standing on the dividing line between two worlds.
 

A couple of women came toward her. They were wearing gray velvet capes similar to her red one. Their dark hair was also arranged into complex updos, but without the adornment that hers had.

One carried a small tray with a glass of red wine on it. “Welcome, Princess Fiona. We’ve been waiting for you. Would you care for a sip of wine? It will ease your nerves and help you relax.”

Fiona hesitated. “Where’s Ellen? She was going to help me dress.”

“She’s on her way.” The other woman smiled at her. “You’re twenty-one today. You can drink wine.”

Yes, she was, wasn’t she? Though it wasn’t at all the birthday celebration she and Kelan had planned. Fiona picked up the glass and took a long sip. The wine was dry, not sweet. It warmed her mouth and throat. She hadn’t realized how chilled she was. She took another long sip. Why had they brought her here? Why was her being here worth torturing Kelan to achieve?

“What happens to him next depends on you.”
What did that mean? What was it that she could do or not do that would impact Kelan?

She started to lift the glass for another sip, but it fell to the ground instead of coming to her lips. The figures on the floor moved.
Moved.
The dragon lapped up the translucent red liquid while the centaur laughed. She drew back in horror, then looked at the women who observed her. One nodded to the other. They took hold of her arms and guided her away from the broken glass.
 

She was glad they had a hold on her, because she was feeling a little strange. “Ymshs,” she said in an effort to thank them, but her tongue hadn’t moved. It was paralyzed, stuck to the bottom of her mouth. She asked what was happening, but those words made even less sense.

They walked into another room…or rather, one of her legs moved; the other just dragged behind her. The two women bore her entire weight. Was she having a stroke? What was happening?

Thinking was getting harder to do. Everything seemed distorted. They walked at least a mile into a huge, round room, stopping at a raised stone altar. There were little beings holding it up. Baby human monsters. With teeth. They twisted around to look at her. She tried to scream, but her mouth didn’t open. One of the women drew her cape from her. She expected a rush of chilly air, but couldn’t feel anything. Someone lifted her onto the platform, setting her down on her robe. The red velvet was the only color in the whole room. Maybe it was just brighter looking than anything else because of the stream of moonlight spilling over her.

The women who’d helped her come in here disappeared into the shadows. It was sick how they left. They didn’t walk out backward; they just got smaller and smaller then were gone. She couldn’t move well enough to look around the whole room, but she realized she wasn’t alone. There were alcoves spread about the space with statues in them. Some of the statues wore black robes, some white. As she watched, they stepped out of their cubbies and came closer. No, that wasn’t right. They didn’t move—they got
bigger
.

A man came to the side of the altar. She recognized him but couldn’t quite place who he was. Where did she know him from? As she studied his face, it morphed from handsome, Nordic features to those of a leering, horned satyr. He leaned over her and ripped her slip apart, baring her before all the statues. He ran his hand down her body, over a breast, her ribs, her pubic mound, then down one leg, which he lifted and resettled in the channel at the corner of the dais.

Moving to the other side of her, he repeated the process with the strokes and lifted her other leg into its place, leaving her open and helpless. She couldn’t fight, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do any of the things Angel had trained her to do.

Her only defense was to close her eyes. She couldn’t even feel the tears she knew she wept.

* * *

“She came this way,” Kelan growled as he paced the length of the wall. “She dropped those pearls for us so we could track her. She didn’t disappear into thin air.” He and Rocco began to pat the steel wall where the stairs dead-ended, trying to see where it opened. Kelan’s hand touched something that lit up. An access panel. “Rocco! I’ve got it!”
 

Kelan lifted the badge he’d taken from one of the mechanics above ground, and tapped it against the panel. The door slid to the side. The room inside was dark, lit only by a few candles. Two women stood guard. They each carried a tray with a single glass of red wine on it.

“Welcome,” they said in unison.
 

Kelan could hear a hum coming from the area behind the women, a circular area with Moorish arches in two rings. He couldn’t see into the room from where he stood, but these women were definitely meant to keep them out.
 

“Would you care to refresh yourselves before joining the others?” one of the women asked as they pushed their trays toward him and Rocco. Both he and Rocco swiped the trays off their hands, an action that opened them to the daggers the women thrust up toward their chins. Kelan caught the woman’s upward-thrusting hand in both of his, using her forward momentum against her as he turned the blade to her throat and sliced the side of her neck. Rocco stabbed the other woman, shoving her blade into her chest. They both dropped to the ground at about the same moment.
 

Kelan and Rocco stepped into the outer ring of the rotunda. What he saw chilled his insides. Fiona was laid out on a stone table, nude. Her eyes moved, but her body didn’t. A man was touching her…a man he knew. He was the fourth contender in the arena fight.

Kelan looked around the room, where caped men and women hummed and swayed. Their hoods were down, but in the dim light, Kelan couldn’t quite make out their faces. All of them stood except for one man, almost directly opposite him, who sat in a huge, golden, throne-like chair.

“Is that King?” Rocco asked in a whisper.

“Probably.”

“Jafaar’s here.”

Kelan looked at Rocco. Before he could speak, an alarm went off. The people in the room started to buzz around, uncertain where to go to get out. Kelan looked back at the women they’d dropped; one of them had crawled over to a rope pull and was still clinging to it even slumped back against the wall as she was.

“I’m going for Fiona,” Kelan told Rocco. “Wait a minute, then go in for Jafaar. Perhaps he’ll think the alarm sounded above the stairs, too. See if you can find another exit and get him out.” He met Rocco’s eyes briefly, knowing it went without saying that if his cover was blown, Rocco was going to have to take out Jafaar. His death could be absorbed into the mayhem that was shortly about to break loose, while Khalid’s cover could remain in place.
 

Kelan walked into the rapidly emptying rotunda. The blond guy was climbing up onto Fiona’s table. He was naked. His erection hung low between his legs. Kelan thought about a dozen different ways of ending him, but knew he had to get the guy away from Fiona first. He walked up to the guy and punched him in the ear, toppling him off the other side of the tall marble altar. Kelan grabbed the edge of the red fabric under Fiona and pulled it up over her. When he looked up, he could see King in the distance getting up off his throne.
 

Kelan slipped his knife from the sheath at his waist and sent it flying across the room. It caught in King’s cape, but Kelan couldn’t do more than that because Fiona’s assailant had regained his footing and was coming at him.

Kelan blocked a right hook, then a left hook. He twisted his arms around the guy’s arms and yanked him in for a headbutt. He stumbled back, dazed. Part of Kelan wanted to draw out the fight, break every bone in his body. Twice. But he noticed other guards coming into the rotunda, and knew he couldn’t risk the danger to Fiona. When he came forward again, Kelan kicked his knee out, then swung his MP5 forward and put a bullet in his heart.

He turned to face the guards, but realized he wasn’t the only one fighting anymore. Kit, Angel, and Selena had taken care of the six that had rushed into the room after the alarm. Kelan looked through the arches to the entranceway to make sure no more were coming.
 

There weren’t any at the moment.

The noise ringing in his head settled down to silence. He looked at Kit, then wiped the sweat from his face as he glanced around the room. Angel and Selena were clearing the space. Kelan turned his attention to Fiona. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. He forced himself to smile at her as he checked her pulse, even though she probably couldn’t see him. He could feel the faint beat of her heart against the tips of his fingers.
 

“I got you, Mahasani. You’re safe now. We’re all safe. The team’s here. I don’t know what they did to you, but we’ll get it sorted out at the hospital.” He eased his hands over her face, lowered her eyelids, then wrapped her up in the thick velvet robe and lifted her off the altar.

“Kit,” Kelan said, thrusting his chin toward the big throne that King or someone representing him had sat in. “See if my knife nicked whoever was sitting there. It might have been King.”

Kit nodded, then looked at Fiona. Kelan knew what he was thinking; that King had been in the room as a witness to his own daughter’s rape. What a sick bunch of bastards these were. Even after what happened to Blade and to Hope, Kelan was shocked by their depravity.

Kelan carried Fiona out of the rotunda to the entrance he and Rocco had come through. Selena and Angel came back. “It’s clear. Everyone’s gone,” Selena said as Angel went to move the dead woman away from the wall panel.
 

“Where’s Rocco?” Kit asked.

“He went with Jafaar out of here,” Kelan told him.

“Jafaar was in here while this was happening?”

“Yeah,” Selena said. “He was a ‘witness,’ whatever that is. Rocco and I were left upstairs with the other guests.” She brushed a bit of Fiona’s hair from her face. “She gonna be okay?”
 

Kelan nodded. “They drugged her, but she’s breathing. I don’t know if she’s been raped. I only saw one guy with her, and I think I terminated him in time.”

Angel pulled the lever that opened the wall panel from this side. They went up the stairs, Angel taking point, Kit and Selena covering the rear. At the main level with the ballroom, it was a madhouse. Armed FBI agents were directing people out of the event center via stairs that went up to the ground level.
 

When they got outside, the field was swarming with people. Tents were being set up to process everyone and to collect evidence. Floodlights had already been deployed, brightening the field like daylight. Order was swiftly banishing chaos.

Several police vans, cars, and canine units were spread around the garage, with cops setting up a perimeter. People were shouting, crying, claiming diplomatic immunity.
 

Kit led Kelan over to an ambulance. The medics brought a gurney over. He gently settled Fiona on it. The medic opened Fiona’s red cape, revealing her naked body. He sent Kelan a narrow-eyed look. The other medic quickly pulled a blanket over her. They lifted her into the back of the ambulance and began working on her.

Kelan felt tears on his face as he looked at his woman being tended to by the EMTs. It shouldn’t have come to this. He should have been able to take better care of her. His negligence had let this happen.

Kit put a hand on his shoulder. It was good he didn’t start peppering him with questions. He was out of words.
 

“Angel—go find a store that’s still open and buy a pair of sweats for Fiona to wear home. Then clear out our motel room and meet us at the hospital. I’ll text you which one we’re going to.”

“On it.” Angel jogged off toward their SUVs.

“I want you to go back and see if you can find any trace of King or Rocco,” Kit ordered Val, Blade, and Selena. They took off for the garage and the stairs down to King’s opulent hideaway.