Elemental Omen (Paranormal Public Book 10) (9 page)

“Have you fed him?” Spark demanded. The Bounty Hunter opened one eye, looked at him, and closed it again. I didn’t move, I just watched Spark. We were running out of time.

“I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about selling me?” I asked dryly. Spark rubbed his hands together, still looking gleeful.

“Let’s go,” he said, “the Appraiser is ready to see you now.”

“It looks like the Appraiser’s coming to you,” I said. From the makeshift buildings where Spark had apparently spent the night there now came a short, beefy man. His hair was long and thick and he wore several layers of fancy and expensive-looking robes. He was trailed by a long entourage.

One of the guards moved to let me out of the prison, but the Appraiser waved his hand and the guard stopped moving. I had already started to shift so I could stand up, but now I went still again. This was the moment of truth. Would this man know who I was? I couldn’t see how he would fail to realize it. Any Appraiser worth his salt would know.

“What is your name?” the Appraiser asked me. He held a clipboard, which I assumed must contain the list of sought-after paranormals. I tried to relax my features, releasing my teeth from clenching and forcing my forehead to stop frowning. I probably looked crazy, but that seemed better than the alternative.

When I didn’t answer right away the Appraiser got right up close to me. He held a pen in his right hand that he twirled next to his hip, but his eyes held onto mine and at first he looked more excited than eager. I kept eye contact with him, hoping that if I could just keep looking at him, maybe I could get away with it.

Then the pen stopped moving. The Appraiser stopped shifting and became very, very still. His eyes were locked on mine, and for the first time his lips tilted up in the tiniest of smiles.

“He’s nothing special! A dream giver, perhaps!” he cried, turning around so suddenly that I rocked backwards on my heels.

“Take him to the EXECUTIONER,” the Appraiser roared. These guys didn’t use names, because anonymity made them harder to track down, but at that moment it struck me as particularly ridiculous that the Appraiser was giving me to the Executioner to sell me as a dream giver. I mean, really.

After that they left me in the pen for hours. I was hungry, I was hot, and I was getting angry. More and more paranormals kept streaming in. For the most part the boats that arrived were crappy and old, more like kindling than something you should be floating down a river on. The constant stream of dilapidated boats was punctuated occasionally by a very nice ship indeed, and I figured that these must be bringing the buyers. In fact, as I watched the paranormals disembarking from these well-kept boats, I realized that many weren’t even the buyers themselves, but just their representatives. The buyers must be so rich and so secretive that they didn’t even need to come themselves. There were plenty of magical devices that would allow the power brokers to see what was happening from a distance, but I had a feeling that they weren’t allowed in person at the Black Market. Hence the agents.

After what seemed like hours, the lights started to flicker and the paranormals were starting to grow restless, many of them wandering over to my cage and peering in at me, trying to see if I was anything interesting. It had been a long time since I had seen any of the clan members who had brought me to the market. For all I knew, they had all been killed.

“Alright, let’s go,” said the guard, who appeared suddenly from behind the cage. Before he unlocked the bars he said, “No funny business. You’ll regret it.” I held up my hands as if to say there was no way I’d be funny. He glared at me, but he also released the cage.

“Out,” he ordered. I walked out slowly on legs stiffened from inactivity. All day I had been trying to figure out a way to escape, but no inspiration had come to me. The Appraiser had obviously known who I was; it wasn’t as if I was able to cloak my magic or pretend to be someone else. At least the problem of how to get out of this mess meant that I hadn’t lost myself in useless grief about Greta; I was too busy worrying about dying myself. It seemed more than likely that this was my last chance to get away, and I had no bright ideas whatsoever about how to accomplish that feat. If I were sold and taken to one of the many paranormal strongholds held by the underground, I would never escape, but I could see no way out of it at this point.

My feet sank into mud that was nearly black, and I wondered idly what was in the soil to make it so dark. The damp air hung thick and oppressive, and I desperately wanted to wipe the sweat off the back of my neck, but I didn’t dare call extra attention to myself by so much as a gesture.

In front of me as I stumbled along was a grim-looking woman and her three grimy children, all of them sipping from one ice cream cone. The kids were clamoring for a lick of the sweet stuff while the long-suffering mother tried dole it out evenly. Suddenly, in this crazy place from which I expected shortly to be sent into a life of hideous misery, I wondered if they were happy. I was amazed to think that anyone here might be happy because of a simple thing like ice cream, which even to these kids in their miserable circumstances was a sweet and wonderful summer dessert.

Even here in this dark place, there was ice cream.

I must have had heat stroke.

In the center of this makeshift little town compounded of equal parts lying, greed, and law-breaking, a large wooden contraption dominated the scene. It reminded me of an executioner’s platform, which seemed fitting given the situation. Along the side of the structure was a ladder, and next to that was another holding pen. Several paranormals were locked inside it, none of them wearing rings and most of them looking even more bedraggled than I felt, although that wasn’t saying anything notable. A few had clearly never eaten a good meal, and their gauntness made my stomach tighten.

The Nocturn war was over.

Yeah, right.

The auction began, but to little fanfare. Very few of the attendees were even paying attention; most of them were busy looking at the artifacts set up on display or the trinkets for sale on tables spaced around the square. My eye was drawn to one particular item, on a table in a far corner, that glinted gold in what was left of the daylight. It looked like a little chariot, or some kind of box, but I couldn’t make out what it was before the shifting crowd blocked my view. Surprisingly, there were many children in the crowd, and their presence, and the apparent lack of interest in the auction, sparked a bit of hope in my heart. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

As I reached the second pen I sensed someone looking at me. I turned to see Spark, his eyes boring into my chest, and if I hadn’t known better I would have thought he looked a little crazed. But I forgot about Spark as one paranormal after another was called up to the block and sold. The crowd still showed very little interest in the proceedings, and there were even a few paranormals who had not been purchased. The hunters who had brought them to the Black Market were furious, and the paranormals themselves were upset. I didn’t know what they had heard about what happened to you if you weren’t purchased, but apparently being purchased, even by the nastiest of owners, was preferable to the alternative. The unsold paranormals were led away. I tried not to think about where they were going. I tried not to think about where
I
was going. I was about to be sold.

When I was the only paranormal left in the pen, something strange started happening. All the paranormals in the square, even the ones who had seemed totally occupied with children or artifacts or trinkets, started to walk toward the makeshift stage. Until that moment I would have said that not more than a handful had paid attention to any single auction, and most of the bidders looked bored or had gone to get food.

Not now. Now twenty-odd bidders were paying close attention, all hard-looking paranormals, some vampires, some pixies, some I couldn’t tell. They all wore gloves, which I assumed was a first step in hiding who they truly were.

As I was hustled up the ladder onto the platform, the press of the crowd made me increasingly uneasy. I tried not to look at any one paranormal - after all, every one of them was happily standing around while I was about to be sold into slavery - but then a movement caught my eye and I couldn’t help but focus on the paranormal who had attracted my attention. Making his way to the front was a man with gray-streaked hair and a black goatee. He looked like what my sister would call a tool, but a very powerful tool. He was dressed entirely in black, with silver buttons and cuffs. He wore a black cape and he was flanked by two cronies. He was clearly a vampire, and not trying to hide it. He was the only bidder making no attempt to hide, and he didn’t have to try very hard to force his way to the front, because all the others made room for him to pass.

His eyes burned into me. I shifted, still watching him. Something about him gave me an involuntary shiver, and something about him felt familiar, but I told myself that maybe it was just that my body recognized evil. I shivered again, but I didn’t look away. At my defiance he smiled a little, and that was even creepier. At the other end of the front of the platform was the Appraiser, and I had the feeling that they were trying to keep their distance from each other.

Now everyone at the Black Market was watching me.

“Darkness calls to darkness! Darkness calls to darkness! Embrace the darkness! We are the night! We are the forever black!”

I listened to the chants as the bonds around my wrists started to chafe. No matter how hard I struggled against them, they stayed tightly fastened. My ring was gone and so was my hope; without it I didn’t have enough power to escape. I knew that I should fight what was happening, but I felt like it was useless. Even if I did manage to get off the platform, there was nowhere for me to go. Maybe if I had stayed where my friends and family had expected me to, enrolled in college like other paranormals my own age . . . but I hadn’t. I had run away and now I was paying the price. For a split second I glanced up at the sky and thought of my sister and her friends. I wondered if anyone would come for me, but my furious insistence that I be left alone was probably answer enough. No one was coming. I was not going to be saved, and I didn’t have the strength or power to save myself. Silently, I whispered an apology to those I had loved, or, as I was thinking of them in this moment, those I had let down.

Fear squeezed my heart and sweat broke out on my brow. I fought for air, but it was as if a massive hand was pressing into my chest and constricting my windpipe. The Executioner, as he was affectionately called, could see that I was starting to despair; through the black hood of his mask I saw him smile. Fear now overwhelmed me, and for a second I couldn’t even see out of my open eyes. My vision blurred and an unsettling strangeness filled the air as the massive crowd writhed and started to grow out of control. Heat pulsed through the air and I was instantly drenched.

As the hulking, hooded figure of the Executioner trundled toward me I tried to push myself away, but I had nowhere to go. When he was almost near enough to touch, the crowd surged. From one heartbeat to the next they had escaped the bonds of control.

At the same moment, the massive paranormal grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. I gasped. Air escaped my lungs and my head felt like it was going to explode.

“Let’s start the bidding at three pixies,” he yelled out. The crowd stopped its restless motion in stunned silence. All the other paranormals had been for sale with monetary prices, but not me. I was so important, I was so valuable, that the price on me was expressed as some number of living breathing paranormals. And they had tagged me as a dream giver, a move that I couldn’t make sense of from any angle.

I looked at the cloaked vampire again. His eyebrows were delicately raised, and a smirk bloomed on his face as he looked at me thoughtfully. In that moment the realization slammed into my chest and I knew one thing with a certainty beyond all certainty:

He knew who I really was. And he had come for me.

Had he been there yesterday when Greta died? I had no evidence, but I would have bet anything on it. Did he know the paranormal who had killed my friend?

Could I find a way, prisoner as I was, to get my hands around his throat and squeeze? I wished I could. Just give me one minute alone with him and preferably give me my ring, and I would make him pay.

Unfortunately, as the bidding got under way it quickly became clear that the cloaked man was intent on not screwing this up
.
He didn’t even bother to participate in the bidding at first, and I had the sense that he was waiting and watching, and when all the others were tapped out he would say whatever he needed to in order to outbid everyone else.

What was worse, I knew that if he won I would never be seen alive again. The Appraiser seemed to have the same idea, except that the would throw in the occasional bid, until after a while it had gotten up to eight pixies.

“You don’t have EIGHT pixies, Reginold,” bellowed the Appraiser when a scrappy-looking paranormal raised his hand, “So I don’t see how you could bid TEN of them!” The paranormal called Reginold gave a response I couldn’t hear, but it made the Appraiser’s face bulge.

Just then, as the Appraiser was still fuming over Reginold’s bid, the vampire stepped forward with his hands folded calmly in front of him. He was still looking at me curiously, but then he turned to address the Appraiser.

“Are you sure he’s a dream giver?” he asked lightly. But he glanced at the sky as he said it, as if he was suddenly uneasy.

“Are you sure you’re a vampire?” the Appraiser responded roughly.

“Course I’m sure.” The vampire nodded once. He didn’t believe the Appraiser, and now he had planted a seed of doubt in the minds of all the bidders as well. The crowd pressed forward eagerly, but they also knew enough to stay quiet.

“Yeah, what is he, really?” demanded another bidder. “If I’m going to give you the shirt off my back I have a right to know!”

The vampire actually smiled now, showing perfectly white teeth. The Appraiser was glaring at him as if in warning, while I felt sick to my stomach.

I gave one last hopeless tug, and suddenly everything changed. I felt the rope holding my hands behind me slip and fall away. I staggered away from the pole, quickly bringing my hands forward and crouching low as I looked back to see who had freed me. There was no one and nothing there. I could have sworn I’d felt a pair of hands letting me loose, but there was no sign of my helper.

The crowd was going insane. In the chaos, they had forgotten about me and the exorbitant prices they were expected to pay for the most basic goods, and they had turned on each other. I slipped off the podium and started to make my way through the crowd, keeping my head down but looking back now and then to make sure no one was following me. Eventually, still moving forward without watching very carefully where I was going, I slammed hard into something in front of me. My eyes started to water as my nose came into violent contact with something hard and metallic, and it was with a sinking feeling that I looked up into the eyes of the Executioner. In very tight formation behind him were two of his guards.

I looked up into the night sky as the stars were closed out by black clouds. Realization made me dizzy. Darkness had come.