Iniquitous (The Marked #3)(4)

“Do not bother,” warned Engel, catching my roaming eyes. “I have guards posted at every possible exit.”

“Good for you.” I tried to cross my arms in defiance but couldn't shake my arms free from the two leeches beside me. Exhaling loudly, I focused back on Engel. “As much of a blast as this is, I’d really like to get this moving along.”

“As would I.”

“Good. So…” I exaggerated another glance around the room. “Where are they? When's the big reveal?”

“Where is who?” He looked around at his men again, a smile wrinkling the corners of his beady eyes.

“The Dark Legion.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The. Dark. Legion,” I repeated ridiculously slow as if to insult his intelligence. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? They put a contract on my head and you’re the lucky gopher who won the prize, right?”

His lip twitched at my insult. “As a matter of fact, the Dark Legion and I have decided to part ways.”

I blinked fast, trying to process his words and the ramifications of what he was saying. Wait. Isn’t that what Dominic had been warning me about that night in the woods? That Engel wasn't working with the Dark Legion anymore? I tried to recall the conversation but couldn’t piece enough of it together to make any sense.

“As it turns out, we no longer have a shared interest in you.”

“Meaning what?” I swallowed the cotton ball in my throat and tried to keep my shoulders squared. I was starting to panic a little, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.

“Well,” he smiled, straightening his back in his chair as a breeze swept in through the windows, flapping the tattered curtains behind him. “Quite simply, it means they want you alive, and I wish you otherwise.”

The blood drained from my face.

“Regrettably,” he went on, “That ancient trinket around your neck is making things rather complicated for me, and as such, I’ve had to get a little…how do you say it?” His eyes lit up like two flares. “Creative.”

“Creative?” I really didn’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

Ignoring my question, he nodded to the two men beside me. “Bring her to me.”

I immediately dug my heels into the ground and tried to pull away from them. I didn’t want to be anywhere near that decrepit, bloodsucking monster. Unfortunately, I barely had enough strength to swat a flea away let alone to power off two very large, well-fed vampires. Still, I tried. I tried my ass off and wasn’t about to make this easy on them.

Less than twenty seconds later, they had me kneeling before his chair. A clawed hand dug into the back of my neck, forcing me to bow down to Engel as though he were my master.

“Get the hell off me, you bloodsucking carcass!” I tried to push up, but it only made Deep Throat dig his claws deeper into my skin. He was the next one on my hit list.

“Silence!” boomed Engel as he bent forward and wrapped his cold fingers around my neck.

I gasped as he tightened his hold on my throat and then forced me to look him in the eye. A strange, sickening feeling came over me. I'd never felt anything like it before but it was throwing alarm bells all through my body.

“You will learn to revere me, Princess.”

“Actually, I’d sooner die.” I looked him dead in the eye and then hawked my pasty spit at his face.

There was an audible gasp from the peanut gallery. I imagined Dominic's mouth was hanging wide open, but I didn't dare break eye contact with Engel to check; not even when he tightened his grip around my neck and cut off all airflow to my lungs. I wasn't the same scared little girl he met that night in the church, and I was going to make damn sure that he knew it. Besides, what the hell else did I have to lose? I’d already lost everything that mattered to me, including my freedom.

“Yes, all in due time,” he said as his pale, boney finger came up and swiped my spit from his face. His lips pulled back over his teeth as he brought his finger to his mouth and licked it.

My stomach heaved at the sight of it.

“By the time I am done with you, you will be begging me for your death,” he promised and then clicked out his fangs.

In the next blurred moment, his face was fastened against my neck as his teeth tore into my flesh like a well-trained beast. The pain came immediately, as it always did, and I flinched back from it, but it was quickly erased by that bittersweet feeling of euphoria that always accompanied a Revenant’s bite. Regrettably, I sank into him as time drifted away from me in immeasurable seconds.

And then, nothing.





3. A DEADLY GAME


I awoke sometime later, back in my cell and curled up in the fetal position on the dirty mattress. My head was pounding hard and my brain was hazy, confused about whether I’d actually been out of my cell earlier or if I’d dreamt the whole thing. I pushed off from the contaminated bed and crawled back onto the floor where I felt better—safer. Fragmented pieces of Engel’s face against my neck returned to me and I lifted my hand to the spot, slow and measured as though afraid of what I might find there. I grazed my fingers along my skin, looking for that all-too-familiar wound.

And there I found it.

Two puncture marks.