Cloak of Deceit: An Alex Moore Novel (26 page)

I smiled.
Three cheers for the wild card!

I climbed to my feet and stood over Leo’s prone figure. Aided by the collective, it was easy to keep him pinned there. I rummaged through his pockets, glancing at his face every few seconds as he watched me.

“Sorry, Leo.” I jangled the keys in the air. “But you did fall for the oldest trick in the book.”

His eyes went so wide with anger I could see the yellow-tinged whites of them.

“I know exactly how you feel.” I tried several keys in the cuffs. I had enough rage pent up from the Lex Press to crush him flat.

I sighed as the right key finally slid home in the lock, and pondered what to do with Leo as I massaged my wrists. With the collective guiding me, we reached into Leo’s mind. We covered his consciousness with our veil of inky darkness until it didn’t even know itself.

Ask it the question
, they whispered.

Without words, I did. We sifted through Leo’s mind like looking through a flipbook of his memories. While part of my psyche was reaching as far as it could to form an external link with the collective so they could pinpoint my location, the part still inside the building wanted out. I needed an escape route, and Leo was my map.

My concentration broke when I felt another presence cross one of my psychic tendrils. The presence was close and mightily pissed off.

“Derek,” I said under my breath. My connection to the collective disengaged, like someone had just turned off a lamp.
Snap!
Gone.

Leo lunged for me.

I toppled over the nearest chair, and we rolled to the ground together, but he ended up on top. I tried to use my power as we struggled, but I was too distracted by the giant ball of fury I could feel just beyond the walls. I was too panicked, too afraid, and still too damn weak.

“You idiot, Harper! I told you to put the collar on her!” Derek roared, bursting through the door.

Leo pinned my wrists to the ground as Derek’s monstrous black boots strode towards us.

I pinched my eyes shut as he closed in, but I heard the click of a gun.

“Goodnight Miss Moore.”

Then…nothing.

Chapter Seventeen

P
ain.

What I felt can’t be put into words, except to say that pain is a place, a state of being, and I lived there. Even the act of acknowledging the pain was agony. When you’re suffering like that, every second lasts an eternity. Just when I thought I would go mad from it, it would lessen just enough to let me go on. I would sink into misery again, and then slight relief would find me. On and on the cycle went.

Very slowly, I clawed my way up from the seventieth layer of hell. The Lex Press was a spa day in comparison. When my brain had recovered enough to start reaching into my surroundings for information, sound came first. I still couldn’t feel my body, or clear the dried blood from my throat, or even stare at the backs of my own eyelids. But I could hear.

I caught voices at regular intervals, at least two of them: one low and gritty, one faint and soft. Trying to make out what they were saying was just too exhausting. I faded into the white fog of pain.

Voices again. No, just one voice. Loud and angry, rising in irregular intervals.
On the phone?
I knew it was Derek by the heavy tread of his boots as he paced the floor. And I knew I was lying on a floor too. I could feel something cold and hard and flat beneath me.

The thirst finally woke me. The inferno in my stomach faded to an ache in my muscles and a tingling of my nerve endings. When I listened, I heard no voices, but the gentle hum of a motor behind the wall. Somewhere, a sink was dripping, taunting me.

Drip, drip, splash. Drip, drip, splash
.

I opened my eyes.

Yep, concrete floor. I lay against the back wall of an unlit room, about the same square footage as the Lex Press. A shudder ran through me. I tried to roll to my back, but couldn’t. As the numbness in my body wore off, I realized why. One arm twisted behind me, yanked up at an unnatural angle by heavy manacles, blatantly dislocated from the socket at the shoulder. The other arm was tucked underneath me, also chained. My muscle control returned slowly, and along with it, more pain. Still nothing compared to the torture I’d endured as my brain pieced itself back together.

That bastard shot me in the head.

I wanted to scream with rage, but it came out a pathetic, “Ungh.”

The lights overhead buzzed before shooting on in a blinding flash.

I rattled my chains, but each movement pulled on my disjointed arm, sending shocks of lightning reverberating down my body, so I held still. I heard the jangle of keys, and then a metal door across from me opened. I blinked, forcing my eyes to adjust to the light, ignoring the squeezing feeling in my head.

Derek’s dark outline filled the doorway. I would have known those linebacker shoulders anywhere. I was trying to come up with an appropriately hateful insult when he reached over and flipped a switch on the wall.

My words mutated into a grunt as the chain attached to my arm went slack. The arm swung down and slapped the cement beside me like a dead fish. I groaned and sat up, but then Derek hit another button and both chains yanked up and out. I had no choice but to stand, though my legs were wobbly at best.

“Welcome back, Miss Moore. How was your nap?”

I managed enough gusto to lift my head and glare at him. All three of him.

Derek flashed me a morbid grin, evidently very pleased with himself. “I don’t think we’ll be having anymore slip-ups like that, so don’t worry, I shouldn’t have to shoot you again.”

“That’s comforting,” I rasped. Using my voice made my head feel like it was in a vise.

“I want you to be comfortable.”

“What else do you want?” Another thing about pain — it renders you incapable of bullshit.

He laughed, a sharp cold burst, and then his mouth clapped shut. “I want to discuss my plans for you, if you’re ready to listen.”

“Do I have a choice?”

Derek inclined his head, a menacing line to his thin lips. He held up a syringe. “Your options are limited at the moment. Harper is spending some time in your former containment cell.” He tapped his foot on the floor.

“That’s too bad.” I wouldn’t wish the Lex Press on anyone, but at least it wasn’t me.

“Isn’t it? Did you enjoy your stay? I designed it. Along with this part of the room.” He gestured to the chains holding me up.

Being stuck there period sucked pretty bad, but the creep factor jumped considerably knowing a torture chamber from Derek’s demented mind held me captive. I trembled and felt nauseous, but kept my gaze locked on him. He faded in and out of my sight when my shoulder popped back into place, searing me with a white-hot jolt. I hissed and yanked at my chains, to no avail. My next thought was to focus on pulling the hooks out of the wall with my powers.

Then it hit me like an anvil from the sky:
Collar
. He’d said collar, right before he blew my brains out. I swallowed and noticed the all too familiar scratching against my neck. I was wearing the fucking inhibitor collar. The only one of its kind. There was only one place in the world he could have gotten it.

“Monique.”

“Just putting that together?” Derek grimaced. “She’s been working with us for some time on a way to neutralize the Grigori, though I never thought she would prove quite so useful.”

My mind raced ahead of me. She’d been working with Derek. That meant Monique had taken us in under false pretenses. She’d welcomed an excuse to put a collar on me, planned it that way. She’d taunted me in the chamber. Maybe she’d even intended for me run to away…

Where Derek had been waiting for me. It all made perfect sense. And I was a perfect idiot. Only, she’d duped Julian worse.

Oh, damn it, Julian!

“Why?” I licked my cracked lips. Why would Monique betray him so badly if she loved him? Why would she help Derek and the Cabal? And why was I so important to them? Why wasn’t I
really
dead already?

Derek ignored my question and squinted at me. “You know, the only thing I hate more than Rogues is psychics. And you’re both.”

“What do you want from me?” A funnel of exhaustion, pain, and outrage whirled on the inside, but my tone came out defeated. Hopeless.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he spat. “You are nothing. Only a tool to serve a larger purpose. You disgust me.”

“The feeling is mutual.” My stomach burned furiously, but the aches and pains were lessening enough to allow me to focus on Derek. If I had been in better mental shape, I could have focused on pushing his buttons, or finding a way out of there. But that was too much for me. My thoughts still fuzzy, it was hard enough not to be reeling at all the new information crashing in on my previous assumptions. I shook my head and clamped my eyes shut. The room sloshed about. “Why am I here?”

“Your situation is unique. Not only are you an Undead, but you are a psychic we could reach before they had the chance to assimilate you into the collective.”

Too late
, I thought. But I didn’t say it. I wasn’t
that
stupid. “So?”

“We want you to infiltrate the Grigori on our behalf.”

“Because we’re such good friends?” I chuckled, and then coughed.

Derek closed the distance between us in two strides. He lifted me by the throat and pinned me against the wall. My chains yanked tight, and my feet danged uselessly. His grip tightened on my neck as he bared his teeth. “Because if you don’t agree, I will devise a new way for you to experience pain every day, until you’re so lost in it, you’ll beg for more.”

His voice was low, almost intimate, like he hoped I would take him up on that. I wasn’t planning to. He dropped me, and I sagged between the chains by my wrists. I wouldn’t suffocate from being held like that, but it still hurt like a bitch.

“And because,” Derek continued, taking the cap off of his syringe and flicking it, “if you don’t cooperate, I will not only hurt you, but everyone you care about. Your mother is a fine example. Julian. Oh yes, and your precious blood donor.”

My chest froze into a solid block at those words. Tears threatened, but I choked them back. That’s exactly what he wanted. I couldn’t show him how much they meant to me, how much he could hurt me. Instead, I latched on to the way he’d said
blood donor
and decided to rely on the old movie fall-back for when someone has you shackled in a torture chamber: I stalled for time.

“What’s the matter? Jealous?”

Derek sneered. “I would never violate the Code.”

Which was a lie, and I knew it. I had studied the Code a little bit. Bringing my family into things was already breaking it. I doubted Derek would see it that way. Faith is blind, so they say. Or is that love? Either way, he was delusional. You can’t reason with a crazy person. You can, however, insult them. “Maybe if you loosened up some, you wouldn’t be such an asshole.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think of me. This is the beginning of a new era, where the Code is honored and truly enforced, where the threats against us are neutralized, and we can live our immortal lives in peace. You will help us bring down the Grigori, and then you will help us hunt down the Rogues. But for now…”

He lumbered towards me with the needle and unsnapped my collar. I had two brief seconds to reach out, to try and focus, but it wasn’t enough time. The needle sank into my neck before I could tell him where he could shove his precious Code. My muscles went slack and heavy. Even the roiling inferno in my stomach faded to a mild ache.

“While you consider my offer, I have some things to take care of. Namely, your filthy Rogue boyfriend. I have something special planned for when he comes looking for you.”

Derek’s laughter rang out around me like the distant tormenting caw of vultures.

Julian
…

Julian. His image had burned into my retinas, the first thing that filled my mind when I came around again. Julian, who had put
everything
on the line for me. Julian, who had put up with my fits, my episodes, and my doubt in him. Just to have me turn my back and run out. Julian, who was going to die because of me.

No, not just me. My knuckles cracked from squeezing my fists so tight. Monique was just as blame-worthy. That’s what I couldn’t figure out: if she loved him, how could she do it? Was it really as simple as “if I can’t have him, no one can”? She didn’t seem that psychotic, but then, I obviously wasn’t the best judge of character. I never should have doubted Julian.

There I was, dangling from my chains like bait on a hook. I had never thought I would wish for telepathy so badly.

Don’t come for me
.

I repeated it over and over, knowing it did no good, even though a part of me did want to be rescued. Or at least, I wanted to believe he would come to rescue me. Derek had seemed confident he would. I wasn’t so sure. After everything that had passed between us, I would have cut losses and left me there. But Julian wasn’t me. He had a hero complex.