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Had Regina arranged for this with Tyler? Maybe she'd anticipated him needing to do some reparation and suggested this as the best way to prove he could handle being here again. He wished she would show herself. He could handle most things if he could see her.
A glance to the left made him realize why no one had approached the cage. A red ribbon had been tied to the hook holding the keys. That meant a sub was on display only, no touching.
That should have made him feel better, but it didn't. Bad feelings continued to build, more uneasiness and a wrong sense of...helplessness. It underlined what he'd just realized. He was nothing without her. He was still that powerless kid, prey to the predator. Darkness started to rise, bringing fear.
"Exactly where you need to be."
He tuned in to see Siren standing in front of the cage, several other Mistresses arrayed in a semi-circle around him. He couldn't see Alex. Had he left the fucking room? He was there, Marius was sure of it. He wouldn't leave his post when sessions were ongoing, when he had been specifically charged to watch over a sub who couldn't get out of a cage without assistance.
Siren's eyes were fixed on him, her mouth tight. She had her hair pulled up in a severe knot, increasing the strain of her features. She was a beautiful woman, but an inner ugliness had taken hold. He was responsible for that. All he had to do was look to see the shattered confidence, the anger at what he'd done to her. She was carrying a dense veneer of righteous anger, but the hunger for revenge still bled through.
Withdrawing a folded paper from the bodice of her corset, she opened it, showing a printed news clip. She slapped it against the bars in front of his face, the writing on the page toward her so the other women could see it. Through the translucence of the paper, he got the gist of it, though.
"Murderer of Clerk Put to Death."
His stomach dropped.
"Look at the picture, taken when his daddy was put in prison. He looks like him, doesn't he?"
The women shifted, muttering and agitated. "You are him, aren't you?" Siren demanded. "Just a little psycho-in-training."
Pivoting, she looked up toward the darkened executive offices. Their vacancy didn't stop her from pointing an accusatory finger toward the space. "He never should have been here. And the owners of this club knew it. They had to have known it. He was their employee. They let this bastard be here, fuck with our heads."
"They didn't know," Marius said, fighting past a thickness in his throat. What the hell was happening? He felt like he was shrinking before their accusing eyes, shrinking back into that small boy, standing in a cold, desolate corner, watching, trying not to listen, not to hear... But he wasn't that boy. He was a man, and he wouldn't let Tyler get blamed for this. "None of them knew. I didn't tell anyone."
She turned and stared at him. "There's no way to make you suffer," she said dully. "Pain doesn't bother you. I could electrocute you, cut you, beat you, and you'd just take it all. You're not human. They should have strapped you in with your father so you two demons could go straight to Hell together."
"I'm not...him." He tried to summon the things Regina had said to him, how she'd touched him, what she'd made him feel. Siren was wrong about him and pain. He felt like he was being beaten the way his father had beaten him. His knees were weakening strangely, breath shortening, and the cell seemed three times smaller than it had a moment ago. "Alex. Fight Club." He wasn't sure how loudly he'd spoken, if the words had made it over the roaring in his ears.
He should have been able to handle this, would have, only a few weeks before. He would have leaned indolently against the bars, stared her down, told her to fuck off. Regina had taken away his shields and defenses, those bulwarks against anyone reaching him. He'd let go of them in favor of pleasing his Mistress, learning how to truly love her. But a boy cowering in a corner couldn't fight back or love anyone.
"Alex isn't here." Siren leaned in, her eyes glittering. "He had a problem he had to address in the other room. But if you scream like the little bitch you are, maybe he'll come. Eventually."
She wants the demon? Give it to her.
Those shields weren't as dormant as he'd feared. Siren had come too close. A short yelp was all she managed when he clamped his cuffed hands around her throat. The chain linking the cuffs to the bars made a harsh shriek as he yanked her against the steel. Fury and violence swamped him, despair clinging to the small sinking island of his consciousness that had hoped he could be something else.
Ot
her parts of his black soul were far louder. Regina had put them to sleep, but Siren woke them with nothing more than a clap of her hands, showing they were as strong as they had ever been.
Just do it. Crush her throat. It doesn't matter. You'll always be connected to him, just as she said. Doesn't matter if you never did what he told you to do. He always knew you were the same. Regina wanted to believe differently, but she was as stupid as you were.
He shoved all that aside. He didn't want to think about anything, now or ever again, and this was the way to do that. He constricted his fingers on Siren's throat, making it clear he was too strong to be dislodged, and bared his teeth, savagely satisfied at the sudden fear in her eyes. But it wasn't her. It was his father, both afraid and laughing at him. He'd stop the laughing forever.
Some part of him was vaguely aware of someone trying to loosen his grip, but he wouldn't be budged. "This time we will go to hell together," he snarled.
Electricity shocked through him, propelling him back, loosening his fingers. His father was yanked away, and then disappeared, replaced by a dazed and pale Siren, held in the hands of the other Mistresses, all out of range. His howl of rage and despair sent them skittering back even more. Unfriendly eyes, angry faces. He saw a male sub--one of Siren's regulars before Marius--holding the hot stick. The man looked as if he thought he should hit Marius with it again, despite his imprisoned state. Marius snarled at him, daring him to do it.
He could hear sounds, that roaring, but words only distantly. Present kept disappearing into images of the past and returning, overlapping, making him feel dizzy and nauseous.
"Who's responsible for him? Who's looking after him?"
Alex was back, shouldering through a mob of shouting people, all of them too close. The inability to breathe, the sense of being buried alive, returned. He couldn't sit down, but he slumped against the cage side, grasping the bars.
"Move, goddamn it."
His Mistress. She sounded more pissed than he'd ever heard. But she also sounded frightened. He didn't like that. Why had she done this?
