Sebastian (Bowen Boys, #5)(46)
She felt the air stir and had just enough time to back away when her boss stepped into the room. The thing she’d had in the room with her disappeared. She thought that he’d kill them, but the small scream still made her wince. She’d have to go and create more of them now. Always a time-consuming job. She bowed before him.
“My lord.” She waited for him to give her leave to lift her head, but he only stood in front of her. After several minutes she began to think he was testing her, and stood as still as she could. Winning tiny battles with him was always a huge victory for her.
“You’ve been lazy.” Her head shot up, then back down. “What have you done about the counts I told you I wanted doubled by the end of the period? I can tell you, nothing. There has even been a small decrease in counts.”
Her mind scrambled and she could come up with nothing. She tried to think who was slacking, and no one was. All her subjects’ numbers were up over last quarter by three percent. She was trying to think of a way to tell him this when he started to speak again.
“Wanera’s numbers are the best so far. He had an overall increase by nearly ten percent. While your numbers have dropped almost double that over the past two quarters alone.” She felt her hatred of Wanera boil over. “Maybe I should put him in charge and give you his realm. I know that you’d hate it as much as he does.”
“He does, too. And he’s named his things. I was there a few days ago and he’s put name tags on them as if they were real. And he’s not found a bride. Nor has he tried to find himself a replacement for when I have to kill him.”
Her heart began to pain deep inside of her chest and she put her hands over the area, only to wrap them around the unseen hand around her throat. Then she felt herself being lifted from the floor. She closed her eyes when her face was level with his, his eyes blazing red and hot. She whimpered when he shook her.
“Look at me,” he commanded, and she opened her eyes. “You think you’re in charge now? You think you decide when one of my subjects would die? What gives you the right, nay the power, to think that you of all people would have the say in anything?”
He tossed her away and then stomped to her. Darkness curled in the corner around the broken desk and paperwork. He lifted her this time with his hand, higher than before as he tightened the grip he had on her heart. He was going to kill her; now he was going to simply kill her.
This time when he tossed her across the room, she went through a wall and hit the fireplace beyond it. Her body was broken in so many places that she doubted she’d be able to crawl from him, much less walk. When this time he picked her up, he did so by her leg and threw her harder against the stone of the fireplace. She lay there bleeding.
His finger came out and ran along her face. The searing pain ripped through her, but she could only whimper again. He’d broken her jaw and she knew that speaking was going to be out of the question until she had time to heal herself. When he stared down at her, she knew that he’d marked her as one that could not be trusted. The long line of a scar would never heal over, and her face, her lovely face, would be ruined.
“When I say something to you, you’ll do as I say, not as you want. Understand me?” She simply looked at him, unable to do more. “Starting tomorrow you’ll be replaced. I’m sick of your ways. And if Wanera names his beings and gets the results that he has, then perhaps all my subjects will need to follow his example. He gets the things I asked of him; you, however, do not. You are lazy and of no more use to me.”
He stood up. His arms spread out and his dark wings fluttered slightly. But it was enough. The room’s contents were suddenly aflame and all her things, all her dresses and boots, her hats and bags, all the things that she’d loved, were burning brightly. She watched as her silk sheets melted off the fiery bedframe. The television burst and the contents spilled onto the charred carpet beneath it. She would bet that everything in the other rooms was getting the same treatment. When the fires began to die down, he knelt down to her again.
“One day; you have twenty-four hours to get out of my sight and to the lower pits to work the coals, or I will do to you what you’ve threatened Wanera with.” He smiled at her. “I hope you don’t make the time, Darkness. The thought of peeling your skin off you an inch at a time, hearing you scream, begging me to end you, makes me hard as stone.”
When he stood this time, he disappeared as quickly as he’d come to her. She lay there waiting for her body to mend itself, for all her bones to come together after being shattered and crushed, for her bloodied body to become whole again, the ragged cuts and tears to become seamless. She touched the open wound on her face.
“This is his fault. Wanera went to him and told him what I’d done.” She sat up, still sore but healing much quicker now that the major injuries were healing. “I will not be put to work like a common whore. I will not serve this way, even if I have to throw myself into one of the hottest pits to avoid it.”
It took her two hours to heal to where she could walk, and another three before she felt she could take on Wanera. The entire time she planned and worked out how she was going to take him down, thought gleefully on how he was going to scream and beg her for mercy. Her lips curled into what she hoped was a terrifying smile, and she thought about what she was going to do to that thing. The one that had dared all those decades ago to not acknowledge her when she’d walked into a room. He was going to be her first victim. That thing was going to regret the day that he’d ever met her. Both him and his master.