Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (30 page)

“Let everyone else go and you can find out.”

His mouth tilted up at the corner. “And who are you Julian LeVeq? Chevalier? Redavi? An ally? An enemy? A friend? Maybe someone much simpler. A reject. A failure cast aside by his mother, rejected by the ondine he loves.”

Julian’s lip curled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Bastien turned. “Cam Martin. A friend, a fighter. Who are you when there is nothing left to fight against? Who are you when everything you believe in about the world falls apart?”

A muscle in Cam’s jaw ticked. He was about to lose it.

“Where are you getting the nix blood?” I asked.

“My initial supplier, unfortunately, ran out of his supply.” Bastien shrugged. “Now I’m using Mr. MacAllister’s blood. I’ve stored quite a bit of it.”

Relief trickled down my spine. Ian was still alive.

“Where is he?” Julian demanded.

“All in good time, Chevalier LeVeq.” Bastien glanced at me. “I’m surprised you chose these two to accompany you. Perhaps disappointed might be a better word.”

“Oh?”

“I thought you’d bring stronger allies.”

Cam couldn’t hold back any longer. “Fuck you.”

Bastien walked over and yanked his immobile arm back. A slight pop as his shoulder dislocated.

Cam grunted.

Bastien coldly kicked his knee with enough force to bring him to the ground.

“No!”

Julian and I lunged. Two more Aquidae entered the room, iron arms quickly locking me in a steel vise grip.

The other demon pressed his forearm against Julian’s neck and pinned him to the wall.
 

Bastien’s eyes brightened with delight.

I stilled.

He liked seeing me suffer. The more reaction I gave, the more he’d hurt my friends.

Bastien kept his eyes on me and kicked Cam in the back again.
 

Cam cried out, his body curling into a defensive, fetal position.

I schooled my expression to show nothing.

Bastien’s eyes narrowed. “Get up.”

Cam slowly pulled himself off the ground, torso slightly bent, face white with pain. His knee wasn’t broken but his right arm hung oddly, rendered incapable.
 

“You’ll get your turn, Cam Martin. But when I say so and not a moment before.”

Hate and pain burned in Cam’s eyes and for once, I willed him to hold back.

We needed to get Ian.

We needed to keep whatever small amount of control we had left and play this out for a little longer.

Rage-filled eyes met mine and for a moment, I thought he’d ignore the plea reflected in them.
 

His mouth tightened. He dropped his eyes.

Something twisted inside me. I knew what it’d cost him to do that.

Satisfied, Bastien lifted his hand and gestured. “Let’s visit your friend, Mr. MacAllister, shall we?”

He grabbed Cam’s good arm and yanked him away from the wall. Cam staggered but managed to stay upright.
 

The Aquidae holding me and Julian also pulled us forward and we followed Bastien into the hallway.

The GrandView Hotel’s general state was as run down as the ballroom. A few fissures appeared in the vaulted ceiling and stains crawled across the wall.
 

Over the years, vandals had spray painted nonsensical phrases and tags, adding their own marks to the cracks spidering across the building.

tannin was here

icdj34 eva

Bastien led us down a dilapidated staircase. Dust motes danced in the fading sunlight pouring through a tall window overlooking the lake. We were nearing dusk.

“Daddy, these stairs are big!”

His laughter was like a secondary support to the hand gently holding mine.

He carefully guided me down another step.

“Be careful, sweetheart. You don’t want to trip.”

The memories were everywhere, ghostly images attached to a bannister. A corner.
 

A black and white photograph hung at the bottom of the stairs. A thin, middle-aged man in a suit and tie stiffly posed for the camera.

I squinted. “His mouth has hair.”

“That’s called a mustache.”

“It looks funny.”

“Should I grow one like him?”

Giggles bubbled up my throat. “Yes!”

I looked away. The Aquidae behind me grunted. “Keep moving.”

I felt Julian’s gaze on me but couldn’t face him. He’d see more than I was willing to show.

Bastien stopped before a swinging door next to the main counter in the lobby. The faded sign on it read “Employees Only.”

“Do you remember, Kendra?” Bastien suddenly gave a formal bow, his arm tucked in front of him. “May I help you with anything?” he asked politely.

I blinked. A torrent of images from the past juxtaposed over the present.

“I want to stay!”

“Ansel, you know how I feel. The dreams —“

“Please, Daddy!” I tugged on his hand then reached for her hand with my other. “Please, Mommy!”

He smiled down at me, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners.
 

“It’s just one day, Naida,” he murmured. “And then we’ll leave.”

“It’s getting stronger.” Her voice tightened. “We should leave today.”

The door beside the main desk swung open and he stepped out.

Young and handsome, wearing the white polo shirt and khaki uniform of the hotel staff.
 

Mommy and Daddy told me I could trust people with that uniform.
 

I ran to the man and tugged his arm.

“Kendra!”

The man smiled. He bowed as if I were an adult and asked, “May I help you with anything?”

I nodded. “I want to stay here until tomorrow.”

Daddy laughed and picked me up. “Sorry about that. She’s really enjoying our stay here.”

“Not a problem, sir.” The young man straightened. “I can help you with arrangements if you’d like.”

Daddy looked at her. “Naida.”

Her brow furrowed, eyes dark with something I didn’t understand.
 

She glanced at me. A small smile softened her eyes.
 

I loved her face when she smiled.

“All right,” she said. “All right.”

I kept my gaze cold and steady, my face blank.

This was about power and control. It was why he’d chosen this location, these memories.

I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.
 

He pushed open the swinging door, his eyes laughing at me.

Numbness spread across my chest.

He knew I remembered.
 

We continued down a narrow corridor dimly illuminated by a single portable lamp.
 

Bastien opened a door marked “Security”. He shoved Cam against the wall, then closed and locked the door.

We were in a bare, square-shaped space, no larger than a medium sized storage closet. A rectangular glass window looked into an interrogation room.

I froze. Julian inhaled sharply.

Two chains dangled from the ceiling, manacles locked around emaciated wrists.

Ian.

Unconscious, he slouched against the wall, arms constrained above his head and keeping him upright.
 

His shirt had been removed and his pants were torn and ragged, stained with urine, dirt, and blood.
 

He was filthy, terrifyingly thin, and badly beaten. His left wrist was twice the size of his right. His hair was matted with blood, eyes so swollen they seemed like nothing but pummeled purple-black flesh.
 

The way he breathed, shallow and uneven, indicated something was wrong with his ribs.

All had been carefully inflicted to cause maximum pain while minimizing the risk of loss of life.

They were the wounds of torture.

“Hotel security used this space to hold and question people,” Bastien explained as if the room was more interesting than Ian. “To find out the truth.”
 

“Why is he here?”
 

Bastien leaned in. “Because we’re about to discover Ian’s truth.”

The interrogation room opened and Scabbard walked in.
 

This close, I could clearly see he had no Origin scar on his neck.

But there was something wrong with him.

Violence defined Aquidae, their urge to kill tempered only by the iron control with which Bastien ran his organization.
 

Scabbard’s eyes were completely empty as if he didn’t occupy this reality. They were devoid of everything: humanity, violence, life, death.

There was simply nothing.

Ice snaked through me. “Let him go.”

“But this is the best part.”

My control snapped. “Ian!”

He couldn’t hear me.

Helpless, I watched Scabbard approach Ian’s prone body. The nix carefully removed a syringe from his coat pocket.

Thick, black sludge filled the tube, wriggling against the plastic.
 

Scabbard inserted the needle into Ian’s forearm and depressed the plunger, injecting the fluid until the tube was empty.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Bastien walked over to the intercom and pressed a small green button. “Don’t want to miss out on the best part.”

Scabbard removed the needle. Near the injection point, a lump swelled beneath Ian’s skin. It pulsed and shifted like a living heartbeat.

Nausea rolled through me.

The pulsating ball traveled up his arm, over his shoulder, down to his stomach. Skin stretched and bulged, accommodating its passage.
 

Ian shuddered. His mouth gaped wide. A terrible scream escaped his lips, a heart-wrenching cry of agony and utter despair.
 

I couldn’t breathe. My arms and legs shook. I trembled with so much helpless rage it threatened to rip my guts open.
 

Ian screams didn’t stop. They reverberated through the intercom, echoing again and again through our tiny monitoring space.
 

I felt Bastien’s gaze, his pleasure as I watched.

“What are you doing to him?” I said flatly.

He turned back to the window and studied Ian with detached calculation as if he were nothing more than a science experiment.

“Freeing him.”

I gripped the sill so hard my bones ached.
 

“You have a strange definition of it,” Julian’s voice was strained. “He’s locked up.”

“Freedom has nothing to do with physical restraints, Chevalier LeVeq.”

Cam joined me at the window.
 

“What is it?” he asked, his voice subdued.

“It frees him from the inside. You see,
sondaleur
, the true test is who we are when everything else is gone.”

Fear, deep and vast, carved into me.

This was the real danger of the Shadow. It wasn’t his corrupt magic. It wasn’t his narcissism, rage, or violence.

It was that he would never stop.

He would keep going until every living being, every ounce of humanity on this earth was annihilated.

How do you stop the unstoppable?

I finally looked away from Ian’s spasming body.

“Did you do the same thing to Oliver Moreaux?”

He shot me a pitying look. “You still don’t understand, Kendra. Each piece has a different purpose and path. Oliver has his own destiny to fulfill and it has nothing to do with you.”

He gestured.

Struggling was useless. Ian’s blood had removed our strength.

The Aquidae easily dragged us down two flights of stairs to the hotel’s boiler room.

Absolute darkness closed in.
 

Shackles locked us into place, the cold clang of metal echoing with calculated finality.

EIGHTEEN

Ian once said no one was ever really free and he was right.

It was the first lesson deprivation taught me.

Without food or water, without light or mortal contact, the mind struggled to understand how we fit into our bodies and this world.
 

We processed and understood our lives through connections.

Even the basic, most primitive urges - hunger, thirst, air, sleep - grounded us, tied us to this earth by reminding us of the boundaries necessary for life.

Eat. Drink. Breathe. Survive.

The others were held in different corners, chained to one of the thick pipes running through the boiler room.

I was imprisoned with my hands above me. Steel cuffs, perfectly sized, shackled my wrists. A foot of chain linked the cuffs, allowing me to spread my arms shoulder length apart. The chain was caught on a hook with a secure clasp, high enough that only the tips of my toes touched the ground.

At first, it was uncomfortable. As the hours passed, the discomfort transformed into terrible cramps burning though my legs and arms, an excruciating pain that eventually settled into numbness.

Time became elusive, a shadowy concept as impenetrable as the darkness surrounding us. Only the sliver of illumination that slipped through a small ventilation grate near the ceiling marked its passage.

Once a day, sunlight cast a narrow, triangular patch across the center of the floor.

Once a day, a click resounded through the dark as an unseen door opened.

Someone with rough hands would yank me off the hook, smearing something wet and sticky against my skin.

During those moments, I was glad for the darkness so I couldn’t see how much of Ian they’d cut and bled.

Then came the words.

They were different for each of us, and yet they were the same.

Words meant to strip and break.

You are nothing.
 

Your life is not your own.

You are less than nothing.

And the reactions were the same.

First, defiant anger. Then evasion, an attempt to ignore and flee their poison.

And finally silence, because stopping those words from seeping into us like dirt and heat, sweat and blood, took every ounce of energy we had left.