Tobias (A CURSED BOYS NOVEL Book 1) (13 page)

  “Stop! What are you doing to him! Please, stop. I’ll do anything you want just stop!” Willow pleaded as she fought against her chains.

  “Baby, no!” I spat out through gritted teeth which was only rewarded with another three sprays to the back.

  “You’re telling me that you would do anything to protect him even though he’s a monster who has killed hundreds of people?”

  “He’s not a monster, you are!”

  Alexander walked straight over to her and held the spray bottle in front of her face.

  “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to thank you for the compliment or take it as an insult. So let’s just pretend it was a compliment.”

  Willow kept her mouth shut and nodded her head slowly without taking her eyes off the spray bottle. My burns would heal and fade; but, if he sprayed her, she would be scarred for life.

  “Now, where were we?” Alexander asked and stood up again, pulling the bottle away from her face.

  “Protecting Tobias.” She whispered.

  “Oh yeah, you were willing to give up anything to save your little vampire play thing.”

  Willow looked to me and I shook my head no trying to plead with her not to; whatever he had planned for her would hurt me worse than his acid water ever could.

  “So tell me sweetheart, are you willing to give up your life to save his?”

  “Yes.”

  “No!” I tried to run to her but the minion held tight against my attempt. 

  “Shut up Tobias. This is between little blue here and me. Another word out of you and I’ll have to do this.”

  Alexander held up the bottle behind Willow and pulled the trigger slowly so that only a few drops fell from the nozzle and landed on her shoulder where she was stabbed.

  Willow cried out in agony and I had to bite down on my lip to the point that I was drawing blood. There were so many things I wanted to say to him and I wanted nothing more than to skin him alive, but I couldn’t risk hurting her even more.

  I dropped to my knees in defeat and Alexander looked all too smug about it. Willow continued to sob silently and Alexander waved to one of his minions to drag her away. I watched them drag her from the room and I was filled with dread and horror at the thought of what they could be doing to her when she wasn’t here with me.

  “If I didn’t know any better mate, I’d say she was in love with you. Why else would she be willing to give up her life to save someone who can’t die?”

  It felt like someone dropped a ton of bricks on my chest. I couldn’t breathe at his words. Willow loved me? Surly he was mistaken. I didn’t know if I was elated or terrified.

  Alexander walked away to put the spray bottle down, but came back with the tray from earlier with the remaining syringes and began pumping the liquids into me one at a time as he beamed triumphantly. The look in his eyes grounded me even though his face made me sick to my stomach; I swore to myself I would get Willow out of here alive.

  If there was any possibility of Willow loving me there’s no doubt that it was all but gone now, but if there was even a sliver of hope that Willow could still have feelings for me after all of this, I would have to survive this at all costs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WILLOW

              I stared at the wall as I dragged my hand cuffs up and down creating a small groove in the brick. I marked down one for each day we were held captive. We’ve been here nearly three weeks all together, but I only started keeping track after Alexander had stabbed me in the shoulder.

  For the past two weeks I’ve been dragged back and forth to watch Tobias being tortured because Alexander refused to accept any offer given to him. I swear he enjoys watching both of us suffer. If it isn’t Tobias being tortured it’s me; all because he’s hell bent on getting Tobias to kill me.

  Amelia hasn’t really been touched since we got here. She’s just been held captive and on occasion Alexander likes to come in and talk to her about someone named Anna-Sophia. I don’t know who she is but Amelia refuses to talk to me about it. I’ve asked her at least a dozen times and every time she just shuts down and stays silent like she’s disappeared somewhere in her head.

  Finally satisfied with the marking on the wall I sat back down with my back pressed to the cold bricks. I’m pretty sure my shoulder is getting infected and isn’t healing all that well. I wasn’t even offered a bandage, let alone a first aid kit to properly clean the wound.

  Sometimes I wonder if Alexander and his men remember that I’m not immortal like Tobias and Amelia; not that it would make much of a difference. If anything, Alexander was probably hoping that I’d get a bad enough infection that he’d get the pleasure of cutting my arm off himself.

  “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” I asked out loud; it was more of a rhetorical question.

  “Well, you might, but I’ll be stuck with these assholes for all of eternity.”

  I never really knew if Alexander was immortal like everyone else, but the way Amelia said she’d be stuck with him for eternity suggested that he definitely wasn’t human.

  Amelia drifted off to la la land like she has been doing quite often lately. I was beginning to think that being caged up was starting to mess with her sanity.

  I closed my eyes and started humming to myself while waiting for Alexander’s return. It was only a matter of time until he came back; he
always
came back.

  I heard the usual clicking of the door and I closed my eyes remaining still. It pretty much became routine. Wake up, mark the wall, get dragged off to be tortured, go to sleep, and repeat.

  Two men came into the room that I haven’t seen before. They didn’t fit the usual henchman criteria that I’ve grown used to, which kind of threw me off a bit. Alexander’s men reminded me of empty drones, almost as if they were in a trance or something; these two were anything but.

  The shorter one stood by the door; he seemed way too young to be a part of all this. If I had to guess I’d say he was about twenty. The taller one looked a few years older and if I didn’t know any better I’d say the two were related. I know I haven’t seen them before, but something about them seemed oddly familiar.

  “Amelia!” The man who came in rushed to her cell as soon as he caught sight of her.

  He didn’t even need a key to open her steel door; he just tore it right off the hinges. The concern on his face and the fact that he knew her name told me that he definitely wasn’t working for Alexander.

  “Hey, talk to me. Amelia focus, I’m right here!”

  “It’s no use. She’ll be like that for at least another hour or two.”

  “What did they do to her?”

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you. But it has something to do with someone named Anna-Sophia.”

  I heard him cuss under his breath before he picked Amelia up in his arms. He took her over to the guy at the door and handed her off before coming back for me.

  Once the bars came free, he picked me up in his arms as easily as he would a child. Instinctively I started to fight him off, but he crushed my body against him so I was unable to move.

  “Whoa, Willow chill!”

  I gave up fighting him as pain shot through my shoulder. I wanted to cry, but I’ve run out of tears over the past few days.

  “Colton, let’s go.”

 
Colton?
I know that name, he must be Tobias’s brother; the fire starter he told me about.

  “What about Tristan?”

  “He said not to wait for him; he will meet us at the house.”

  “We can’t just leave him here.” Colton argued.

  “Just start moving your ass before I kick you in it!”

  Colton glared at the man holding me, who I assumed must be another one of his brothers, before he took off down the hall with Amelia.

  “I can walk, you know.” I said but he completely ignored me as he took off after Colton.

  I was beginning to think we were lost. Colton had led us down so many different hallways that I wasn’t even sure there was an exit to this place. It wasn’t until I noticed the bodies on the ground that I realized they were following a trail they left behind on the way to find us.

  There were a lot more people on the ground than I thought there were. Turns out this place was crawling with people working for Alexander and Calliope.

  “Shit!” Colton cursed as we reached a dead end.

  We stood in front of a door that had been bolted shut from the other side.

  “I got it.”

   Colton stepped away from the door as his brother put me down. I steadied myself against the wall but nearly fell on my ass when I watched him walk through the door.

  I recall Tobias mentioning that one of his brothers was a ghost, but I never expected this; he literally just walked through a steel door like it wasn’t even there. I jumped when I heard the
ping
sound of metal bouncing off of metal. The sound didn’t last long, but I still had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Not even a minute later the door swung open and there he stood, covered in blood with at least six bodies lying at his feet.

  “I guess this means they know we’re here.”

  Colton said that nonchalantly like we were discussing the weather or something. I’ll never understand these boys or how they manage to keep so calm while facing things that would make a normal person bat-shit crazy.

  “Are they dead?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

  “Would you prefer them alive? I don’t know about you but I don’t enjoy being used for target practice.”

  He had a good point. It wasn’t like any of these dead men had done me any favors or wanted to let me out. Everyone here knew that Alexander was torturing people and none of them did a thing to stop it. They might not have done it themselves, but standing idly by made them just as guilty.

  Even so, I couldn’t help but feel bad about the trail of bodies left behind us, and I hated myself for it.

  “Let’s go princess! We don’t have all day.”

  Colton’s voice brought my attention back to reality. His brother had already taken Amelia from him and took off while he stood there waiting to see if I was able to move on my own. He started towards me as if he was going to toss me over his shoulder in a typical Tobias fashion, but I brushed past him and headed down the hall while trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder.

  Colton passed me easily, as one of his steps was the equivalent to two of mine. I sped up a little to try to keep up with him despite my entire body protesting.

  “Fuck!”

  Colton’s scream was the only warning I had before he dropped to the ground. Someone had managed to shoot him in the shoulder. I couldn’t see his brother or Amelia anywhere, and Colton’s eyes lit up like there was literally a fire burning in them.

  I’ve come to recognize when the curse was taking over Tobias, and I’ve caught a glimpse of what happens when the curse was taking over Tristan. The sudden change in Colton’s eyes was pretty much a dead giveaway to duck for cover.

  I couldn’t find anywhere to run or hide so instead I dropped to the ground and tried to conceal myself with the dead bodies that were littering the floor.

  Colton’s screams were all I could hear before the pounding of my own heart drowned everything out. I tried to take a peek at what was happening, but one by one the lights that lined the hallway went out making it pitch black.

  The beating of my heart echoed in my head and I tried to call out for Colton in the dark. I couldn’t hear myself, but within seconds I was face to face with a pair of fire glowing eyes. Fear struck me to my very core. Tobias told me that Colton was the one having the hardest time controlling the curse, which meant there was a very good chance my life was in danger.

  A deafening bang broke through the silence and just like that the glowing eyes were gone. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but I knew we definitely weren’t alone.

  “Tell Alexander we got them.”

  A voice was barely audible through the ringing in my ears, but his words made me even more terrified that Colton was dead. I felt hands gripping on to my arms and pulling me up from the ground. There was still no light, so Alexander’s henchmen must be wearing some kind of night vision goggles.

  I was so close to freedom and it was taken away from me all over again. I was beginning to wish for death when the hallway suddenly burst into light.

  Colton stood in front of us holding a ball of flames in each hand. The light from the flames showed the four silhouettes of the men who had captured me.

  Colton’s eyes were still lit up and there was no doubt in my mind he was going to kill every last one of them. His features no longer looked like a young kid, but rather a rugged young man who lived and breathed danger.

  My arms were released as the four men scrambled for their weapons. I wasn’t stupid enough to sit around and wait to find out what was going to happen; I already knew. I turned and ran the opposite way as fast as I could, leaving the light from Colton behind me.

  My foot slipped out from under me as light came flying down the hallway and an invisible force propelled me forward. Pain exploded through my body as I connected with the ground and everything around me seemed to go dark as I lost consciousness.

  I woke up to the sound of my own scream as I was thrashing around trying to lash out at the closest person to me. I wasn’t sure if I would find Colton, or more henchman, but at this point I didn’t care; everyone was a threat.