Shadowdance(54)

Holly looked away, not knowing who this man was, but rather fearing he’d be in for trouble should the woman escape, because the way she uttered his name was not kind. Those eyes were insane and made Holly feel as though her soul would be sucked away should she gaze upon them for too long.

Refusing to cry, she began to rest her head upon her raised knees, but stopped and flinched. Her face was on fire with pain, her jaw and cheek throbbing where the female guard had punched her. At the very least she had refrained from blackening Holly’s eyes.

“She needs to properly see,” her cohort had said, another woman with beautiful light-green eyes. Dead eyes. “Her hands are not to be harmed either.”

Oh, but her stomach? Her legs? They could be pummeled.

Clutching herself tighter, she rocked a little, trying to create some warmth. There were others down here. She could hear them moaning. And smell the stench of their uncollected waste.

At the sound of clattering keys, her heart leapt in terror. The lock of the far-off cellar door turned with a groan, and everyone went alarmingly silent. Footsteps rang out, a slow, horrific click, click. Holly dug her nails into her palms. She would not beg; she would not scream.

But the shadowy shape of a man grew closer. And then he was there before her. Watching. Waiting.

Holly lifted her head, for she knew it would only get worse if she did not acknowledge him. A shock jolted through her body. The man before her was Jack Talent. She’d heard many stories about Talent—that he was mad, soulless, a killer—but she hadn’t wanted to believe them. They stared at each other, and his eyes began to glow with a manic light.

“It is time to go to work, little girl.” Talent’s voice was not his usual one, but cold and flat.

“You’ll have to kill me, for I won’t help you.” Brave words, for even now her stomach revolted with a hard lurch that she barely kept down. She rather doubted she could withstand the torture that would inevitably come before said killing.

Talent’s teeth flashed in the light as a disjointed laugh broke from him. Then he shifted, growing and becoming a thing of nightmares, his jaw elongating, fur erupting over his skin, claws and fangs shining in the low light. A lycan. His words came out oddly muffled as he talked with that long snout. “Properly terrifying?”

Mutely she shook her head, not to disagree but in terror.

He laughed again. “Not to worry. I won’t hurt you.” He turned his misshapen head in the direction of the other cells. “I’ll just let you watch as I tear them apart. Perhaps I’ll start with the proud Lord Darby.” He gestured to the shifter who had been brought in the morning after she’d arrived in this hell. The poor golden-haired fellow strained against the iron chains punched through his shoulders and looped around his body. Embedded deep in the stone wall, those chains held fast no matter how much he struggled. Blood poured through the shifter’s open wounds, and Talent leaned down to lap one rivulet up with his tongue as the shifter roared behind the gag in his mouth.

This time she could not restrain herself. Holly turned and retched, the acrid burn of vomit scorching her throat and nostrils as Talent laughed. “Ever had a taste of shifter blood? No? It is quite delicious. And potent.” He paused, his brow furrowing as if he pondered the effect. Then his frown grew. “But not as powerful as this, I think.”

In his hand he held a glass vial filled with blood. It ought to have repulsed her, but there was a glow to the deep-ruby liquid, a richness of color that held her in thrall until she blinked hard. Talent turned to address one of the thugs in the room with them. “Help yourself to Darby, and then take his place quickly.” He laughed. “We shall need to keep the SOS distracted for a while yet. Then you may do what you want to the agents guarding him.

“As for you, Miss Evernight,” he said to her. “We’ll get you cleaned up and ready to work.”

Holly’s limbs trembled as she rose. God forgive her, because she was going to do as she was told.

Spying on a supernatural was a tricky business. In general, most could not see a GIM in spirit form. Save for the lycans. The wolf in them could see spirits. However, strengths and weaknesses were as varied as people. Mary knew of some lycans so out of touch with their inner wolf that her spirit could dance naked in front of them and they wouldn’t bat an eye. Demons, on the whole, were too obsessed with the flesh to see the spirit, and elementals were too human, which meant they didn’t trust what was not corporeal. Then there were the shifters. Despite what many believed, shifters were not animals hiding in human skins. True, they might shift into an animal, but that was through force of will. It was not setting an animal free, as lycans did. No, shifters were more demon than anything else. Thus trailing a shifter ought to be an easy business. But Jack Talent was an unknown threat. Because getting caught by him would not only be disastrous and humiliating; if certain facts were to be believed, it could get her killed.