Savage Chains: Shattered (#3) (Men in Chains) (6 page)

His body heated up, and the cooing sounds she made let him know he could have carried her then and there back to the bed. But he feared he’d forget all about the ball and, because Sweet Dove was expecting him, he had to go.

The final act must be played out.

Drawing back slowly and reluctantly, Reyes pressed his forehead to hers. “I will miss you more than I can say.”

“I know. Same here.” She released a heavy sigh, then added, “I guess we’d better get ready for the ball.”

An hour later he flew Angelica to the Crystal Dome, a place he’d never been before, though it was legendary in Starlin circles. The cavern was magnificent and huge, a giant geode of white crystal, carved and polished for the most part, with a few crystals left upright for unique seating and decor.

The entire ceiling was a smooth dome, lit from behind, an engineering feat all by itself.

He walked her through the archway, then drew her off to the side. She wore a simple cat’s costume, adding at the last minute a pair of long black gloves, and he’d opted for a bodyguard look with a snug black T-shirt, leather pants, steel-toed boots, and a simple black mask.

The din from the ball in full swing made conversation impossible except through telepathy.

Angelica squeezed his arm.
This place is amazing and so beautiful. Too bad this group has charge of the room.

He knew what she meant. They stood just to the side of the opening against the wall. The floor sloped in an easy grade toward a low stage about thirty yards distant where the band stood in disarray, guitars on the floor.

Is everyone here drunk?
she asked.

Or high.

I would say I’m disgusted, but I need a harsher word. I just don’t think there is one. All this beauty wasted on such a useless set of people.

Just keep your eyes lowered if you can.

Will do.

Though he was once again attached to Angelica with a leash, he held her arm tightly and kept her close to him. They’d arrived at the Crystal Dome late, hoping to make an entrance, but instead found a drunken orgy in progress and not much dancing.

Half the band was engaged in either fellatio or full-on intercourse.

As though attempting to earn his keep, the drummer sustained a sultry rhythm.

Most of the slaves were naked, bruised, and cut-up.

Screams rang out here and there.

This is the finale?
Angelica glanced around, but scowled.
If anyone throws up on me, we’re outta here.

I see Engles. He’s waving to us from the left of the stage and he’s looking you over. Ah, now he’s smiling and nodding. He approves of the bruises.

Bastard! And could he have worn a larger codpiece for his Renaissance costume? I believe I now understand the concept of hatred. I detest that man.

Reyes leaned close.
Just keep the fire from your eyes.
He then kissed her ear, nibbling.
Although that fire is my favorite part of who you are.

Reyes.

Her voice, whispering his name through his mind, put a fist around his heart that squeezed hard. He would miss that as well, the woman speaking telepathically with him.

Do we have to go to Engles?
she asked.
Here’s a thought. Maybe you should just take me back to bed and keep me there for, oh, I don’t know, the next century.

Don’t tempt me.
And he was tempted, especially since she wore a short black bustier and thong, as well as long black fingerless gloves. Her black cat costume consisted of a pair of ears, a few whiskers glued to her cheeks, and a tail she kept wrapped around her arm the way she’d once wrapped up her auction scarf. He remembered her then, completely nude, her eyes flashing with rage against the audience, and yes, he was tempted.

Engles will break his arm waving that hard at us.

Reyes shifted his attention back to Engles. He’d be meeting with Sweet Dove soon.
I think we’ve been summoned.

We’ll head in his direction.

But as they began to move, Angelica squeezed his arm.
Reyes, I’m getting one of those visions again. What did you call them?

A revisiting vision. You mean about this place?

Nearby, in fact very close.

Reyes’s heart rate started to climb. Every time Angelica had experienced a vision, he’d learned something important.

Tell me which way to go. Engles will just have to wait.

Here to the left.

Reyes touched the wall, but the smooth crystal was a solid panel all the way across.
I’m not seeing a door anywhere along here.

Reyes, my head is practically spinning. Can you shift to altered flight and pass through? What I need to see is on the other side of the wall.

I’ll take it slow.
Even though Engles would probably come after them, Reyes moved slowly and passed into a series of rooms, a long hallway between.
This looks like an accounting setup. Shit, Angelica, I think this is the Starlin Group’s main offices.

I think you’re right. Do you see the arched doorway at the end? We need to go there. Now.

Reyes followed Angelica’s directions, moving faster now. He felt it as well, a profound sense of urgency.

The archway led to a room with a long conference table and tall padded chairs. A wall of bookshelves opposite and a waterfall at the far left end told Reyes exactly where he was.

I’ve seen pictures of this place on the Starlin Web site. This is where the Board of Governors meets.
He remained in altered flight, hovering at the end of the table.

This was the hub of the organization, in the outer offices and here in this conference room.

Reyes, I can’t explain it, but I think we’re close to Sweet Dove’s office. I have a strong sense of her, that the vision is about her but that we need to be in her space to see it.

Just tell me which way to go.

He felt Angelica grow very still.
Pass through the waterfall.

Reyes’s heart pounded now as he put them both in motion. He approached the water, then passed through the solid rock wall behind it. When he reached the other side he knew he’d arrived at the end point of his mission.

Angelica confirmed his suspicion.
This is Sweet Dove’s office. I can feel it with every bone in my body.

He set them both down on what proved to be an antique Turkish carpet over a gray-and-cream marble floor. His eye was drawn upward first, to a long, dangerous fissure in the carved rock ceiling above. If that kind of breach in the rock had been in any of his properties, he would have brought in an engineer to look it over.

But it wasn’t the tall ceiling that held his attention. Suspended from the rock, over the center of the space, was a large metal chandelier, made up of antique swords hanging free in places and welded together in others. A large antique desk with scrolled legs sat to the side, another waterfall adjacent. To the right of the desk was a chaise longue and a pair of black leather chairs.

This was a woman’s room.

He could feel that Sweet Dove had been here, even recently.

Angelica trembled in his arms. The vision was coming to her. “Reyes,” she said softly. “Why were we able to get into this room? Wouldn’t Sweet Dove have set up all kinds of security measures to keep people from flying in here?”

“Yes, I suppose she would.” He felt uneasy suddenly.

Angelica’s sudden swift intake of breath told him the vision had arrived. As soon as it ended, he’d get her out of the office.

Then his gaze landed on the very thing he’d been after all this time.

In the center of Sweet Dove’s desk sat a large laptop. He knew with every fiber of his being that the files in this computer held the information he’d need to destroy Starlin.

Caught in the vision, Angelica saw Sweet Dove reclining on the chaise longue, fingering the curls at the top of her head. She wore a white linen dress of some kind and chatted with Engles.

He rocked the tumbler in his hand. “And all this time you were Scorpion. I’m dumbfounded, yet in a way, not surprised. You’ve always had a clever mind. But why have you told me now?”

“Because I’m drawing Reyes into my net once more, but he won’t be satisfied just being my slave. He insists on being my lover, and you were right, his ambitions are even larger than your own. You’ve done well, Engles, and I want to reward you properly.”

“Then make me a partner.”

Sweet Dove shook her head. “Not yet, but I may in time. Just keep serving me as you have been. And don’t pout. You’ll get your reward, the one you’ve been craving for three weeks now. Reyes has hardly touched her, you know. You would have loved seeing how masterful she was on my table.”

“I’ve enjoyed your retelling of the moment again and again. The images are very real in my mind.” Engles sipped his drink. “But how did you restrain yourself with Angelica? A slave, speaking to you in that manner? Addressing you as an equal?”

“I was thinking of you, of course. I wanted to kill her with my bare hands for standing up to me, but she’ll suffer infinitely worse in your care. That’s how I resisted the impulse to lay waste to her then and there.” Her small bow lips curved. “You’ll enjoy her immensely, Engles, and she will fight you to the very end, to her rasping, dying breath.”

Engles’s hand trembled and the ice cubes rattled.

It was hard for Angelica to stay connected to the vision when one of the principal players lusted to torture and kill her and the other clearly wanted her dead. But she stayed put, knowing that she would learn something vital.

Engles’s nostrils flared. “So you intend to make him your partner in Starlin, don’t you?”

“We’ll be partners in everything … eventually.”

Engles glanced at the desk. “I can’t believe you leave your laptop just sitting there.”

“No one can get into my office without my allowing it.”

“But it contains everything about our organization.”

Sweet Dove smiled. “Every particle of space surrounding my office is preternaturally charged. I repeat, no one can get in unless I will it so.”

Angelica didn’t understand. She knew that Sweet Dove had tremendous Ancestral power, and that if she said the space was secured through her power, then it was.

So how had Reyes managed to invade this room?

Then it all made sense:
the revisiting vision had become the trap.

At that moment Sweet Dove turned in Angelica’s direction, confirming her suspicion. Angelica felt a stream of power aimed toward her, and the next thing she knew she made actual eye contact with Sweet Dove, from the past.

She had to warn Reyes, had to get him out of there. Sweet Dove had used Angelica to lure Reyes to her offices through her revisiting vision power.

At that moment the vision terminated so abruptly that Angelica’s neck snapped back. When she returned to herself, she was lying on the floor on top of Reyes. He had a blank look on his face, and she couldn’t reach him telepathically.

The trap had been sprung.

She smelled something sickly sweet in the air, the same thing she’d smelled when she’d been abducted outside the Ocean Club.

She only had one trick left. As her consciousness began to fade, she reached inside her left glove, pulled out one of the Ancestral double blood-chains, and shoved it down Reyes’s T-shirt.

Hands grabbed her shoulders, pulling her away from him.

She heard Engles’s voice from behind her. “You’re mine now, sweetheart. Everything is as it should be. And if you’re good, you’ll know pleasure.”

Her vision began to blur, then fade, and suddenly she was falling.

* * *

Reyes awoke with a burning sensation at his waist he couldn’t pinpoint. His mind felt fuzzy, like it had been messed with, an all-too-familiar sensation from decades ago.

He couldn’t even open his eyes.

He forced himself to concentrate, to gain a sense of where he was. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. One moment he’d had his arm around Angelica, and the next he’d fallen to the carpet in Sweet Dove’s office.

So where was Angelica?

Adrenaline spiked and finally he could open his eyes. Sweet Dove’s preternatural charge flowed through him once more, keeping him chained to the same platform he’d escaped a couple of weeks ago. The smell of old blood and sex returned to him.

He still wore his clothes, though the strange pain at his waist grew stronger, as though something was burning a hole in his skin.

He rolled his head from side to side, trying to force his mind to clear, especially in the face of the reality that the woman he loathed had captured him again.

He had to escape. He had to find Angelica.

Where was she?

He glanced around the room, but she wasn’t there.

He tried to contact her telepathically, but nothing returned.

Then he understood two things: Sweet Dove had removed their single-bonding blood-chains, and she’d given Angelica to Engles.

* * *

Angelica awoke slowly. Her head was killing her, and she felt ready to hurl. She’d felt like this more than once when she’d traveled with altered flight, which meant she’d been moved swiftly from Sweet Dove’s office to her present location.

She lay facedown on something relatively soft, but her left arm was bent at an uncomfortable angle.

“Good, you’re waking up. Are you done vomiting?”

She knew the voice and rubbed her forehead. “Master Engles?”

“Of course.”

He came into view and had a glass in his hand. “Here, drink this. You’ll feel better. Much better.”

She lifted herself up as the glass appeared beneath her nose.

“Drink up, sweetheart. You’ll need this because we’re just about to get started.”

She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “What is it?”

“Something that will enhance the experience.”

Sudden rage flowed through Angelica. Engles had dogged her heels from the first, always after her, always hurting and killing women. She took a sip, rose up, and spat in his face.