AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She nodded, yawning. “I wish I could do the magic for you tonight—”
I stopped her. “Don’t sweat it. You’re right, we all need sleep. We’re on last gasp here.” With a quick hug, I softly closed the door and met Grieve in the hall. Chatter had already gone downstairs.
Kaylin was supposed to sleep in Heather’s old room, and as we entered, memories flooded back. I pressed my lips together, trying not to think about all the bloodshed and carnage that had gone on over the past few weeks. Grieve shed his clothes, as he always did, and I stripped off my own. Climbing under the comforter, I turned out the light and lay on my side, staring at the silent fall of snow outside the window. We didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything left to say. When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were filled with the mist and snow and ice, and the screams of Rhiannon, begging me to come rescue her.
Morning light didn’t make anything better. The guards were waiting to fill us in on the state of the Barrows—which were, for once, doing fine. Peyton, on the other hand, was quiet and withdrawn. Over breakfast, she toyed with her phone, until I finally asked her what she was thinking about.
“I’m debating on whether to call Mother. She probably doesn’t know Rex is dead. She’d probably be glad for the news.” A gloom had settled over her face, and a cloud seemed to surround her.
I kept my mouth shut. The fact was, Anadey probably would be glad to hear Rex was dead. She’d betrayed our trust, tried to kill me, tried to have Rex killed, and now I wondered if she was in league with Geoffrey and Leo, but I didn’t want to come out and say so.
But Peyton beat me to the punch. “You think she might be acting with them, don’t you? That she might be cozying up to them.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but considering what she did, I wouldn’t put it past her.”
Luna handed me a plate of eggs and bacon and set a stack of toast in the center of the table. Grieve took a piece, and so did Chatter, but neither of them was saying much. They seemed to give way to me, and I realized that—even to my love and his friend—the fact that I was now Queen took precedence over just about everything.
As we ate, one of the guards knocked on the kitchen door, then let himself in. He knelt by my side, bowing his head. “Your Majesty, a package was delivered for you. We took the liberty of opening it to make certain there wasn’t anything dangerous inside.” He held out a DVD case, but it was one that you burn yourself, not a preformatted movie.
I gingerly took it, staring at the disk. “Where’s the wrapping?”
He handed it to me. Whoever had opened it had done a good job of keeping it fairly intact, because it was easy to see the postmark—New Forest—but also easy to see there was no return address. Just Her Highness Cicely Waters, Veil House, New Forest, WA. There was no postmark, so whoever had sent it, had to have paid the messenger to deliver it.
A fluttering in my stomach told me this wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. I pushed myself back from the table and stood, heading into the living room, where there was a DVD player, the others following.
As I slid the disk into the machine and turned it on, Luna flipped on the television. I didn’t want to sit down. For some reason, I was sweating cold, and it felt like I might be better able to handle whatever was on the disk if I was standing up. Chatter joined us, and I suddenly turned to Grieve.
“Take him out. Just do it. Both of you go outside.”
“No,” Chatter said. “If this has anything to do with Rhiannon, I need to see it. And you can’t stop me, Queen or not, Cicely.” There was a finality to his words that made me shiver, and so I just shrugged and hit the Play button.
The screen flickered, and then a room came into view. It was dimly lit, with a red ambiance. Several people were in the room, but they were on their knees, staring at the floor. By the furnishings, I knew they were in a dungeon somewhere. I’d spent enough time hanging around the scene with my mother to recognize a fetish setup when I saw one, though most were run by perfectly respectable and sane people, not sadistic vampires. To the left sat a spanking bench; to the right, stocks and a bondage table. There was what looked like a metal web or netting that covered a redbrick wall.
And in the center of the film, dangling from wrist cuffs from the ceiling, was Rhiannon. I caught my breath, stiffening. This was no fetish bar. She was hurting, that much was obvious. And in most fetish clubs, actual damage didn’t play into the scene, except for some of the underground clubs and vampire setups.
Behind me, Chatter let out a low moan. Rhia was wearing a sheer red gown, with no underwear or bra beneath it. Her hair hung loose, and she was staring at the camera with a terrified expression. But then I realized it wasn’t the camera she was staring at, but something in front of the camera that was invisible to us. Or…someone.
She struggled, trying to back up. “Please, please don’t. Leo, please, stop!”
The next moment, her head snapped back and the imprint of a hand showed red against her cheek. She cried out, twisting, but she couldn’t get away from her attacker. The others in the room stayed where they were, kneeling, although I saw a couple of them look up when they seemed to think they weren’t being watched.
“I like it when you say my name, Rio. You remember your nickname, don’t you? The one you used to love me to say.” Leo’s voice echoed out from the television, and it took everything I had not to jump up, to run crazed searching for her. Chatter let out a growl and I sensed, rather than heard, Grieve, trying to calm him down.
Rhiannon said nothing, but the next moment her head went back as Leo—or one of his cronies—grabbed her hair and yanked. Her throat was exposed, and I jumped up. But he didn’t bite her. Instead, a thin red weal began under her chin and ran down to between her breasts. She tried to turn her head, but the blood trickled down her chest.
“That hurt, babe? Good. Bitch. Whore of my dreams. You’re going to hurt a lot more before I get done with you, Rio, because, my sweet, you ran away from me. Your cunt of a cousin turned you against me. Wait till Geoffrey gets hold of her—we’re going to serve her up to Crawl, watch him take her apart, inch by inch. He knows tortures I can only dream about. The great Queens of Summer and Winter will be on their knees, begging for every breath.”
My stomach lurched. Chatter cried out and I heard something crackle. Turning around, I saw flames flickering off his hands. I paused the DVD. “Don’t! You cannot destroy this house—it will do no good. As horrific as this is, we have to know if she…”
“If he kills her.” Chatter’s look terrified me. I’d thought Grieve was dangerous, but the King-Elect of Summer was about to turn into a flaming pillar and go burning the house down around our shoulders.
I turned to Grieve. “If he can’t control himself, get him outside.”
“No, I told you before.” Chatter glared at me but then slowly withdrew the flames into himself. “Leo dies. He dies a thousand deaths.”
“And every one of them will hurt. Let’s finish this so Luna can use her scrying spell to find out where the fuck they are. Then we rescue Rhiannon and take the freakshow down.”
A moment later, reassured he wasn’t going to explode, I pressed Play and the DVD started up again.
