Blind Salvage: A Rylee Adamson Novel(71)

“Remove all your weapons. I’m not so easily fooled. I know you, Rylee.” He lifted his eyes to mine as he took a deep drink from his cup. “I do realize you will take any chance you get to try and kill me, so from now on, you drop your weapons when you are close to me unless otherwise directed.”
“Fuck you. That wasn’t part of the oath.” To prove my point, I raised my sword and pulled my second sword from my back. “My oath was to find the Blood you seek, and kill the Child Empress. Nothing in there about not slicing your head in half.”
He let out a sigh and his shoulders slumped. “I realize this is the only way to do things with you, but I’d really prefer to be civil. After all, I’ve done my best to keep you, and your little pack, alive. But, be that as it may, we can do this the hard way. And you will learn to do what I say, when I say it, like the well-trained bitch you will become for me.”
With a flash of movement, he was gone. “The bastard jumped the veil. Where the hell does he think he’s going?” I muttered, as I lowered my swords.
“Alex wants to go.” He limped toward me and tugged on the end of my shirt. “Really wants to go.”
“Yeah, I agree.” I walked to where the long black curtains hung closed and jerked them open. A blank, grey cement wall stared back at me. Of course, there wouldn’t be an actual window. What was I thinking? I snorted to myself. Faris would go to extremes to keep himself safe. The old tales of sunlight killing vampires was more than true, but most of them were so savvy they would never allow themselves to be caught off guard by daylight.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I muttered, as I strode toward the only other exit, a simple black door with a tarnished silver knob that turned smoothly in my hand. At least it was unlocked.
I opened it and found myself staring at a cement-fucking-wall. I swallowed hard, the realization settling over me as heavy as the four walls and roof I had no doubt were also cement.
Faris had put me in a box of his making, one that didn’t require doors, or windows or a way out, because the bastard could jump the veil and leave whenever he damn well pleased.
Alex poked at the wall with the tip of his claw. “Hmm. Tough shit.”
I stepped back from the wall, unable to take my eyes from it. That was one way of putting it.
 


Searching the room proved Faris was savvy, indeed. There was no alternate exit, nothing I could use to break out. The walls were thick enough that wherever we were, there was no way I was getting through them. But it was Alex who coined it best.
“Coffin.”
I turned and looked at him, his lips trembling as he said it again.
“Alex is in a coffin.”
Fuck it all, he was right, we were in a giant coffin. Which meant we were, most likely, underground. My stomach flopped and sweat popped out on my forehead. I wouldn’t have said I was claustrophobic before, but I’d never been somewhere where there wasn’t even a possibility of escape. I dug my hands into my hair, as the air around us shifted and I spun to see Faris slip through the veil, a squirming sack in his hands.
His blue eyes were cold, and they bored into mine. “I do not think you believe me or my threats. In that, I have done you a disservice. I won’t kill you; we both know that, so I need to make this very clear. You will do as I say, when I say, or your people will begin to die off. I’d use Alex as an example, except I think your friends might notice if he goes missing. But this one, no one except you will notice his loss.”
From the bag came a muffled, “Yous be taking yours hands off the lassie.”
Charlie!
I made a move toward them and Faris lifted the bag high, twisted the veil, and I could see through the opening into a bubbling, spitting pit of lava.
“Faris, don’t do this.” I held my hands open to him, dropping my sword to the heavy carpet at my feet. There was no choice here. “I get it, you’re the boss; you don’t need to prove the point.” A whiff of sulfur curled through the veil, and a vision of the red ogre going under the rushing lava rose to the front of my mind.
Faris tipped his head to one side. “Since you activated this particular volcano, I think this is fitting.” He paused and shifted his stance so he stood sideways to me, his hand that held Charlie dipping ever so slightly. “Do you understand me now? I own you, Rylee. You will do what I say, when I say it. There will be no questions; there will be nothing you do unless I will it until your two oaths are completed. At anytime I can snatch one of your loved ones and destroy them. Up until now I have been … gracious.”
Bile rose in my throat and I forced it back down, counting in my head the thousands of ways I would chop Faris up and feed him to the fishes, how I would make him regret this day.