Release In The Dark (DARK erotic romance series) (2 page)

“
Zoey, stop. Stop this.
Right now.”

I wrench my arm away, not really
seeing her. “I will not stop!” I hiss. “I will
not do nothing! Let me go. Let me go! I will find Jaxon!” I
grip her shoulders hard.

To my surprise, she doesn't push
me away. She simply stands still and studies me for a long time. As
I stare up at those steely, unmoving gray eyes, all the fight and
impotent rage leave me in a rush as the stark reality comes crashing
down on me.

“
Is he...is Jaxon...”
I whisper with a hiccuped sob.

“
We don't know. No one
knows where he is, if he is alive or dead. He just...disappeared
without a trace. No one has seen him or heard from him since he left
yesterday at dawn. No one knows if...”

“
I have to know.” I
stare up at her with burning eyes. “I have to. I will find
him!”

She arches an eyebrow.

“
Please...” The
rest of my words remain lodged in my throat. My throat and chest
feel too tight. It almost feels as if there is a fist around my
throat and heart.

I straighten up forcefully.
“I...will...find...him.”

Irin meets my hard, determined
stare. Despite the piercing ache in my heart, there are no tears in
my eyes. A muscle is working in her cheek as she frowns at me.
Finally she lets out a sigh and says quietly, “There may be a
way to try to find out...”

“
I'll do it.”

“
But...it may be difficult
for you. You were a Siren in the Palace, so this may be...”

“
I will do it.”

She looks at me long and hard.
“All right then. This might be the only way, so...” She
turns and motions for me to follow her. “Come. I'll brief
you. This will be a difficult mission...for you,” she says
pointedly. “But it may be the best place to get information.
Many of the patrons are powerful military and business leaders. It
is a dangerous position for you to be in, but you may have a chance
to find out some crucial information. Do you think you can handle
this?”

I nod, staring at her combat
boots, my mind imagining Jaxon in all sorts of dire, deadly
situations. No, no, Jaxon is resourceful and resilient, he
wouldn't...

“
Zoey, look at me,”
Irin says sternly.

I look up to see her studying me
intently. I can see the doubt and question in her gray eyes. “Are
you...ready, Zoey?”
Mentally, emotionally, physically.

“
I am, Irin. I am ready!”

Irin sighs and says in a quiet
voice, “I know that you have been a Siren in the Palace,”
she says quietly. “I'm not sure if your training and
experience as a Siren would be a hindrance or a help. Have the
horrors that you have seen and endured steeled you, or broken you?
Have they strengthened you, or damaged you?” she asks, as she
circles me slowly.

I hardly blink as images from my
time as a Siren in the Palace floods my mind and swirl all around me
like a cyclone.

I see myself stripping in Dr.
Rolin's sterile examination room while Owen watched me with his
green, predatory eyes from his corner. I see the other young girls,
Sirens, all being washed, waxed, polished and perfumed in the
Grooming Room. I see us dancing naked, with fruits and desserts
lashed to our bare bodies, in the glittering, raucous Great Hall for
the entertainment of the Emperor, the Empress and their Generals. I
see greedy, grinning mouths sucking and licking the sticky sweets off
my body. I see Owen forcing me to the marble floor of the Great
Hall, pushing himself between my legs as the Emperor, the Empress and
his drunken guests laugh and leer. I see the glass wall in the
Emperor's chambers and see the writhing, venomous snakes swarming
over the body of a tortured Siren. I see myself shackled to the
bedpost in the Emperor's chambers, being beaten and whipped.

With a violent jolt, I shake
myself free of those nightmarish images and look up at Irin fiercely.

“
These scars...” I
yank my sleeve up to show her the whip marks down my arm. There are
more on my back, my legs, all over my body. “They make me
stronger. Not weaker.”

Her eyes rake down the marks on
my arms. She meets my blazing eyes and gives me a nod.

“
I will brief you on your
mission now. We don't have much time.” She starts to type a
message on her watch as she walks away.

“
We will have to get you
into the Red Lantern—tonight.”

I freeze at her words. I
finally understand why she questioned my ability to handle this
mission, given that I was a Siren in the Palace.

But I hurry after her, even if I
almost trip over my own feet. I survived the Palace. I will survive
the Red Lantern.

Irin steps into her bunk, and
after hesitating a heartbeat, I follow her.

Her bunk is neat and sparse,
like Jaxon's, and there is a small, wooden table in the corner.
There are some papers piled haphazardly on the table, weighted down
with pens and communication devices.

“
Sit.” Irin closes
the door and motions to a stool beside the table.

I obey immediately.

I wait for her to drag the other
stool out from under the table and sit down, but she remains
standing.

“
You accept the mission?”
Irin asks again.

“
Yes. I won't let you
down.”
I won't let Jaxon down.

She exhales sharply and starts
to speak. “Your...experience as a Siren will be of assistance
to you, in this case. Hopefully.”

I wait without responding.

After a beat, she carries on,
“You will be sent to the Red Lantern tonight. Someone will
receive you and make sure that your details are entered in their
database. I will give you a communication device and you can use it
only once. We can extract you from the Red Lantern once you contact
us. While you are there, you will have to find out as much as you
can. The patrons of the Red Lantern are powerful, influential
military and business leaders. If there is news about Jaxon, there's
a chance you'll hear about it there. There will be talk, drunken
talk, pillow talk, talk we can use. Find out everything. Find out
where the Imperial Army will be launching their next attack. Where
and when. We have blown up some of their weapons factories in
various towns. They will retaliate, brutally.”

My eyes widen.

“
Weapons factories?”
I repeat.

“
Yes. Cut off the enemy's
supplies.” She narrows her eyes as though squinting at some
distant target. “We'll be targeting some of the main railways
and roads...”

I run a hand across my forehead.
Before I was captured by the Emperor, I worked in a dilapidated
factory with hundreds of women. We were made to assemble weapons for
the Imperial Army, while the men in the town were dragged to the
mines and mountains to be worked to death. The factory was overseen
by a retired soldier, Officer Goddot, who was none too pleased about
his premature retirement. He took his frustration out on us often.
Some of the women in the factory shared the same dormitory as me. We
slept and worked together, whispering our fears and secrets to one
another before we fell into an exhausted, unhappy sleep each night.

Did they blown up the factory in
my town? The one where I worked? What about all the women who
worked in the factory? What happened to them?

“
Irin,” I interrupt
her in a hoarse voice.

“
Yes?”

“
W-what happened to the
women?”

“
Women?”

“
The women who worked in
the factories.” I clear my throat. “You said you blew
up some weapons factories. Were the workers in the factories
when...?” I trail off, swallowing painfully.

“
We blew up the factories
at night. There were no workers inside. Just weapons.”

I let out a small sigh of
relief. “But the Imperial Army will retaliate against the
town,” I mumble almost to myself. “They'll be made to
pay.”

My eyes are on the floor, and I
see Irin's boots appear in front of me. “Make them pay, Zoey.
Make the Emperor and his Imperial Army pay. Find out everything
about them, their plans, their weaknesses, anything. Make them pay.”
She grips my shoulder. “Can you do that, Zoey?”

I look up at her and see my own
fervor and determination reflected in her gray eyes. “Yes,”
I tell her firmly.

“
Good. You don't have
much time. You will be dropped off at the Red Lantern at midnight.
Someone will receive you with a question. These are your responses
and questions.” She hands me a small piece of paper.
“Memorize them now.”

I take the slip of paper from
her and frown at the series of meaningless, seemingly nonsensical
questions and answers scribbled on it. They make no sense to me
whatsoever but I dutifully memorize every line of the gibberish text
and return the piece of paper to Irin.

She flips a lighter and burns
the paper to ashes. Grinding the ashes beneath her boot, she cocks
an eyebrow at me and asks, “Do you know what goes on in the Red
Lantern? Do you know...what you have to do?”

I gulp. “Yes. I know.”

When I don't say anything more,
Irin takes pains to spell it out for me, making sure I do know what
is expected of me. “The Red Lantern is part of the Lantern
chain of novelty brothels run by the State,” she intones.
“There is the Red Lantern, the Lavender Lantern, the Golden
Lantern, and a host of other Lantern branches. The Wardens
dispatched to the Lantern brothels are soldiers from the Imperial
Army. They are rotated every week or so. For security reasons.
The Red Lantern is the closest from where we are. It is built to
resemble a medieval castle, right at the very top of a cliff,
catering to the rich, the powerful, the well-connected, people who
can make anyone they wish disappear with a snap of their fingers.”

She snaps her own fingers to
emphasize her point.

“
What you may be made to
do there might be...highly traumatizing for you. But you can find
out information, important information that few would be privy too.”

I take a shuddering breath. I
can do this. I know that Irin wants me to do this for the
resistance. But I am only doing this for Jaxon.

“
I will make sure I get
the information,” I answer.

Information about Jaxon
.

She goes to her messy desk and
pulls out a box from under all those papers. Extracting what looks
like a small black stud from the box, she holds out the stud to me
and says, “Wear this. When you press it, it will record your
message, encode it and transmit it to us. But you can use it only
once.”

I take the stud from her and
hold it up to examine it closely. It is designed to look like a
small earring, almost like the one I am wearing on my right earlobe.
The one Jaxon had kept with him for ten years. My mother's earring.

Carefully, I thread the black
stud through my other ear, and fasten the clutch behind my earlobe.
Hopefully no one notices my mismatched earrings, but heck, mismatched
accessories seem to be all the rage right now.

“
As a Siren, you've been
groomed, by the Matrons in the Palace,” Irin begins slowly.
“But now, you have to groom yourself. Before you go to the Red
Lantern, you'll have to...”

“
I understand,” I
say quickly. “I know what to do. If you'll let me have a
razor blade, I'll make sure I'm thoroughly groomed in an hour. Or
less.” I shrug.

In the Palace, all the girls
were made to stand on platforms while the Matrons, who had once upon
a time been Sirens themselves but who were now maimed or disfigured,
painstakingly made sure that the Sirens were all groomed to hairless,
polished perfection. When I first laid eyes on the Matrons, I'd felt
as though I was staring directly at my fate and my future. This was
how Sirens were used and abused. This was how I would end up.
Missing an eye, ear, some fingers, with scars twisting down my arms
and legs. It was horrifying, tragic, and so sad. The Matrons always
shuffled around with their head lowered and eyes averted. Many of
them were young, in their twenties or thirties at most. But all the
life had been tortured out of them.

I had been groomed with care by
a gentle, soft-spoken Matron. I still think of Gwin, and I wonder
how she is. Will she have a chance to escape? Will Mam Mallisa help
the rest of the girls? Nothing is for certain, and everyone is in
danger. Right now, I can only think of Jaxon. And the danger he is
in.

I look up to see Irin staring at
me with an odd, unreadable expression on her face. I can't tell if
it is pity or admiration, or just morbid curiosity. There are only
four members in this underground cell and all of them know that I was
a Siren in the Palace before Jaxon rescued me, but no one has ever
asked me about my experience in the Palace. Maybe they had been
warned by Jaxon. Maybe they don't really want to know all the ugly,
sordid details about what goes on behind the gleaming Palace walls.