Cloak of Deceit: An Alex Moore Novel (27 page)

Monique was the unknown variable. He still trusted her, as far as I knew. Could she convince him not to go after me? Would she try, or would she just set him up for execution? My headache had eased, but my thoughts were a confusing stew of scenarios, seasoned with a dash of panic. On top of that, my thirst threatened to eclipse all logic.

One thing cut through it all: Julian.

I had to get out, not just for me, but for everyone that mattered to me. I had to save Julian, and find a way to protect the others. They were in danger because of me. I owed them that much. I at least had to try. I scanned the dark room: the floor, the chains, the rails and gears operating my restraints, and the control panel on the wall. The collar was really the only problem. If I could get it off, I could break free. My crash course with the collective had given me a glimpse of what I was capable of. It was only a matter of focus.

Unfortunately, focus was in short supply too.

Derek’s next visit was perfectly timed. Either he kept me under tight surveillance, or the drug he gave me had a set metabolism rate. I wasn’t sure how either of those could help me, but I made a note of it. It felt good to be doing
something
, even if it wasn’t much. My choices were to give-up, or to try to find a way out.

I am a lot of things, but a quitter isn’t one of them.

I flinched when the overhead lights came on, but growled softly when my captor settled his bulk against the far wall, crossing his arms to evaluate me from afar. I hadn’t known I could make that sort of sound, as if the internal fury of my stomach was making itself known through my mouth.

“Thirsty?” he asked conversationally.

I didn’t answer.

“Of course you are.” Derek came towards me, and the growl deepened, rumbling my throat. He reached into an inner pocket of his oversized leather coat and produced a blood bag — the type they use for transfusions.

Just the thought of it was enough to double me over, which, since I was hanging, meant I just tucked my knees up to my chest and hung there, heaving and drooling like a rabid animal.

He made a show out of pulling a long tube from another pocket and snapping it onto the bag. He held the other end out to me. I bared my teeth, just shy of a snarl. I had no control over my actions, too fixated on the blood.

“Try anything, and you’ll go without. Don’t make this too difficult, Miss Moore. I will break you, eventually. How painful I make it is your choice.” He never took his pale, dead gaze from mine as he inserted the tube between my flaky lips. He flipped open a pocketknife and stabbed a hole in the bag. I sucked, and the blood snaked down the clear tube into my mouth.

It coated like a soothing balm on my physical body, and calmed me, made me feel less like a ravenous beast and more like myself. Derek crumpled the bag in his fist and tossed it to the floor after I’d drained it.

I stared at him, trying to keep my face as blank as possible.

He was much better at it. “Have you decided to be reasonable?”

I said nothing.

He took my silence as acquiescence and walked over to the control panel on the wall. “Good.”

I clenched my teeth. This could be it, my one shot.

“There’s been a change in plans.” Derek read the panel like someone would a menu in a fine restaurant. The grim satisfaction on his face worried me. Was it too late? Was Julian dead? Maybe this wasn’t my chance. Maybe he was just going to play with me.

“It seems you’re not as dear to your Rogue as I thought you were.”

“I’m not.”
I’m not?
My heart sank. He wasn’t coming, then.

But that was good, right?

“I thought he would charge in here after you. What a disappointment. He doesn’t live up to his reputation.” He scratched behind his ear, then hit a button on the panel. My chains loosened a few inches, allowing my feet to touch the floor. Thanks to the blood, I even had the strength to stand on them.

The chains yanked forward and together, keeping my hands stretched up above me, the manacles chafing my skin, which had healed, and then chafed again, over and over. Another press of a button and the whole pulley contraption started to inch towards the center of the room. I followed, dragging my feet as my muscles remembered how to work.

What now? Nothing could be much worse than recovering from being shot in the head.

Another chain unraveled from the ceiling. A sharp-pointed meat hook glinted on the end.

I changed my mind — there could be worse things. I swallowed, looking back at Derek with wide eyes. His were as cold as ever, except for a tiny spark of pleasure that made me nauseous.

Think fast, Alex.
The longer he was talking, the longer he wasn’t torturing me. I’d seen enough of Derek to know he had an ego. Since I didn’t know any of his other weak points, I took a stab at it. “You can’t find him.”

“
I’m
not looking for him.” He glared at me as he took off his coat and dropped it to the floor.

I shook my head. “He’s too smart for you. He’s not going to take the bait.”

Don’t come for me, Julian.

“He will.” He sounded certain. “We’ll just have to use something more valuable to him.”

Andreas
.

Derek smiled as if I’d said it out loud, circling me.

“That’s a little risky, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice quavering. “I mean, won’t the Cloak be suspicious. First I get reported, then Julian and I both disappear. You don’t think they’ll ask questions when you try to get access to one of their prisoners?”

He smirked.

Shit
.

“Maybe they would,
if
you had ever been reported.”

“But Julian…”

“Is a Rogue serving a sentence, not a true Knight,” he spat. “He has no real connections to the organization. We hold the real power, and his other resources are…easily swayed.”

If I ever saw Monique again, I was going break her perfect little French nose
.
The whole time we’d been running, I had trusted Julian with my safety, and he’d been operating under false pretenses. We’d flown right into Derek’s net. A net larger and more intricate than Julian possibly could have guessed.

At least he was still free.

I bowed my head, praying he had the sense to stay that way, knowing it was in vain. Maybe he would leave me there, but he wouldn’t give up Andreas without a fight. I knew it, and so did the Cabal.

Derek rattled the chains in front of me. I narrowed a gaze on him, wishing it could inflict physical pain. I could, if it weren’t for the collar. “So, what now?”

“Now we begin your conditioning.” His eyes flared with sadistic fervor. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees as those words clung to the air. My skin erupted in goose flesh. I shivered. I may have been chained, and wearing an inhibitor collar, but there was nothing wrong with my Undead senses. In his own twisted way, Derek was hunting me.

A new flood of instincts trampled through me, making my hands shake.

Escape. Flee.

I sucked in a breath and held it. Everything slowed down. For a stretched out second, Derek seemed frozen in place, except for in my mind. I saw the briefest flash of what he was going to do, I blinked, and he was doing it. He wrapped his hand around the base of the hook and swung it towards my belly. I was just that extra millisecond too fast.

I yanked back just as he came up with the hook. He caught the hem of my shirt, but faltered when the hook didn’t hit a fleshy target. He stumbled into me with the hook held out in front of him.

I only had one chance, so I went for it. If I missed, I would be in a whole new world of pain, but I had to try.

Escape!

I leaned into Derek’s swipe as the hook whizzed past my face. One of the barbed ends scored a nasty line along my jaw, and a chunk of my hair ripped out at the root. But something else had gone with it.

Derek let go, and the hook swung away, my collar dangling from the end.

He jerked back, drawing his gun.

Our gazes locked.

Then I threw him against the wall.

And the floor.

And the wall again.

Until he dropped the gun.

He fought against me, struggling to move as I wrapped my thoughts around him like invisible rope. He was strong and enraged, but I was fighting for my life. And for Julian’s. I held him there, and breaking my mind into different fragments, I reached out for the collective at the same time.

With a thought, I yanked the steel pulley off the wall, and the gear contraption from the ceiling. It left a small crater in the cement, but gave me enough movement to reach Derek and take his keys. No victory dance this time — I wouldn’t get cocky. For one thing, I couldn’t feel any connection to the collective. I was on my own. This was my chance to prove I really could take care of myself, that I really was the tough girl Julian thought I was.

Sweat poured off of Derek, oozing his pungent, oily scent into the air. His aura was a red cloud of fury as I calmly unchained my wrists. I thought his bloodshot eyes would pop out of his head. I stood there for a second, contemplating what to do with him. The answer was lying in the far corner of the room. I picked up the gun and turned it over in my hands, looking for the safety. I couldn’t find one, so I just pointed it at his head.

Julian would slice it off, I thought, staring into Derek’s bulging, colorless eyes. I would save that pleasure for him.

“For the record, you’re a sick fuck,” I said, and shot him between the eyes.

Chapter Eighteen

I
slinked away from my cell, peering around corners, listening intently before I made each move. Only the buzz of the lights and the hum of the motor in the wall cut the silence. I pulled the steel door closed behind me and locked it with Derek’s keys. With no idea how long it would take him to wake up, the more I slowed him down, the better.

“Guess it’s door number one.” I tiptoed across the dim outer room. I held the gun loosely against my outer thigh. I wanted it with me, but I didn’t trust it not to go off in my hand. I had no clue what I was doing, but I also didn’t know who or what I would run into along the way.

The answer was one hundred pounds of black fur and teeth.

The Rottweiler issued a low growl of warning from my right just as I slid around a corner, intent on going the other way.

I froze.

He growled again.

My hand tightened on the gun, but who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to shoot a dog. He —it had to be a he by the pissed of face he was making— stood up from his haunches, coupling a snarl with the growl.

I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. If I’d had a second more to contemplate, I probably could have thrust him away, but I panicked and just turned and ran the other direction as fast as my death-enhanced muscles would carry me.

The dog skittered behind me, making all sorts of ruckus.

So much for stealth. I made two un-planned turns, just out of panic. Fido stayed hot on my heels. If I slowed down half a stride, he’d sink his fangs into my calf. I flew through a set of swinging double doors into a storage room lined with racks of boxes. I careened down the nearest aisle, and the dog lost his footing on the slick linoleum, buying me another half-second. I spotted the door at the other end of the room, and yanked it open with my powers before we reached it.

As I dove through, I caught the frame and whipped myself around. Fido couldn’t stop as quickly. He started to slide, and I gave him a nudge with my powers, sending him into the nearest rack, where some empty boxes tumbled on top of him. I whirled back out of the room and pulled the door closed behind me. The barking and snarling continued from the slit under the door.

I had to backtrack and make a turn off-track to avoid an Undead guard. I sensed him coming, his thoughts edgy, but luckily, not that alert. I ducked into an unlocked room, then stood there in the dark and listened as he walked past, praying that he couldn’t smell the dried blood all over me. I pressed my forehead to the door, trying to remember which way to go. Had I taken two rights, or just one?

Come on, Alex — think!

Some escape I’d hatched. At this rate it would take me longer to get out of there than they would have held me. What if they had more dogs? Time was ticking by, and if they didn’t know what was going on yet, they would soon enough. Then the guards wouldn’t just amble past me anymore. I spared one extra minute to reach out for the collective, dedicating every ounce of focus. Still nothing. Maybe I’d been impressed too easily. They weren’t doing me a lot of good now.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath, my hand poised on the door handle.
Get it together. You can do this. You’re tough.

Julian needed me. I thought about him,
really
thought about him for the first time since I’d left Monique’s. I pictured the way the shadows played on his face, his crescent-shaped scar, his voice wrapping around me like a cocoon of safety and comfort. I thought about the heat in his eyes when he looked at me, the quirk of a smile he always had ready for me. I thought about sharing my blood and my body with him, becoming his. I recalled the possession in the way he said the words
make you mine
. I had been so wrong, because I was scared of how I felt for him. I wanted to tell him, to prove I had learned my lesson. To prove I deserved him. I had to see him again.