Fae (10 page)

The girls all repeated it, raising their glasses, and then everyone drank. The Oblivion didn’t taste like anything, it was like drinking water, but the second it hit the stomach it grew warm like a shot of alcohol. The drug had been designed by someone with intimate knowledge of
special
beings along with two others – Dreamland and Torment. Oblivion was the only one that mortals could tolerate though, and once the slave trade had got their hands on it, it had spread like wild fire. It was a twisted kindness, because it would make anyone feel a little invincible, a little brave, a little wild. At low levels it would make them hot, and the heat would spread out to their limbs and made their mind fuzzy. When they built them up, or when Fae took a dose as large as she’d just drank, it was much stronger. It made you want to laugh, and dance, and after a while it made you want to climb into bed with the nearest option as the heat focused between your thighs and became a pounding need.
“Good luck tonight.” Ebere had stepped up right behind Fae, and she snapped her head up from looking into the empty glass, waiting for the heat to wash over her.

“You too, Eb, keep yourself safe.” Fae smiled and Ebere gripped her hand.

“How about you focus on keeping yourself safe tonight, eh?” She grinned before letting go and turning around to face Butler who had stepped back into the kitchen. Just as he clapped his hands together and held the door open for them, heat blossomed in Fae’s belly and spiraled up her back.

It was time for the party.

Chapter Six

Ráj Manor, Caledon, Ontario

Walking across the cold tile of the foyer felt good on Fae’s feet. Her skin was flushed from the Oblivion and the heat made her contemplate what laying down in the foot of snow outside would feel like. There was music coming from the closed doors to the parlor, mostly instrumental with a heavy bass line that could be felt through the floor. As the group of slaves got closer to the doors, Butler opened one side and hypnotic wordless vocals could be heard intermingled with the music.

The parlor was a huge room with a wall of windows along the front of the house, and fire reflected in the windows from the large fireplace. It was all dark wood and expensive leather chairs and couches. Thick curtains hung by the windows, but they were pulled away so that the snow could be seen outside. Most of the guests had removed their jackets and were lounging around the room in their button-downs. Some had already rolled their sleeves up to adjust to the warmth of the room, but for those high on Oblivion the heat was dizzying. Fae’s blood flushed in her cheeks as the guests turned like wolves catching the scent of sheep.

She took deep, steadying breaths to try and counter the early effects of the Oblivion. Her skin was breaking out in a sheen of sweat, her pulse was pounding just under her skin, and even the brush of the dress against her body had her tingling like static rushing over her.

Dim lamps had been placed around the room, but they allowed for plenty of dark corners. The pool table in one corner was being set up for a game and cigars were being passed out to the guests.

Caridee found her favorite place behind the bar in the corner, swaying to the beat as the Oblivion took its hold. She was already leaning across the bar to smile at the guest in front of her before she made his drink. The best way to get the night over was to dive in, so Fae walked forward until one of the men at the pool table waved her over. She let the false smile slip over her lips, letting her hips roll as she walked towards him.

“Hello.” She tilted her head as she stopped next to him. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and smiled. He was a larger man with curly dark hair and Fae didn’t resist the urge to return the favor, reaching forward to run her hand through his hair. The brief contact was already sending static-like tingles across her skin.

“Want to help us play?” he asked and Fae smiled. “I’ll take that smile as a yes. Rack it up!”

Fae grabbed a pool cue and watched as the other man set up the game. For a moment she considered breaking the cue and killing the four men standing around the table, way before Nikola could stop her with a direct command. It would be exhilarating to do it, to feel the rush of battle again, but it would be a short-lived victory followed by so much pain – and it was the exact opposite of what Ebere had asked her to do. So, Fae pushed the temptation away and she soon found herself swaying to the beat in the music, humming along to the melody. The curly haired man snaked his arm around her waist and the Oblivion made it so the touch sent a flush through her skin, overriding her normal instinct to pull away. He spoke softly, “What’s your name?”

“Fae, sir,” she replied with a bit of a slur to her words, and it made her laugh.

He grinned and ran his thumb across her cheek. “I like how you look when you laugh. You’re beautiful.” His touch was too gentle, and his words were too kind. Her stomach twisted as his hand ran down her back, and she lifted the pool cue in her hands. The Oblivion hadn’t progressed enough yet, and she wanted to put him off until the drug was raging in her system.

“Mind if I play?” she asked. He stepped back from her and gestured towards the table with a grin watching as she leaned over to line up a shot. He didn’t seem to mind after several rounds of play that Fae was beating him badly, he was drinking glasses of brandy and making sure he got the best view whenever she bent over to hit the cue ball. After she missed a shot she laughed and stepped back to let him play.

“I was beginning to think you were going to clear the table. Glad I didn’t put money down on this game.” He winked at her as he lined up a shot, and she grinned at him. Then Caridee made her jump when she appeared next to her with a glass of wine held out.

Fae arched an eyebrow at the girl who had never been her biggest fan, but Caridee sighed. “It’ll make it all the more fuzzy, and who doesn’t love wine? What other time do you get to drink some?” Caridee hissed and pushed the glass into her hand. It was a deep red and with one taste she knew it was expensive. When Fae took a sip Caridee smiled at her and danced her way back to the bar. It made Fae grin that it was Nikola’s wine and he couldn’t keep her from drinking it tonight without causing a scene, and it seemed to be an olive branch from Caridee. Maybe they could be friends too, or at least friendlier than they had been.

“I am definitely not as good as you are with a cue.” The man’s hands returned and rested on her hips as his lips moved against her neck. She rolled her eyes at the double entendre, but she was focused on checking on the girls around the room. Everyone seemed fine because the guests were playing nice - for now.

A thin thread of panic rose up inside her as the guy pulled her back to a chair and into his lap, but finishing the glass of wine burned it away and she settled against him.

“I’m Andrew, by the way,” he whispered in her ear. She really didn’t care about his name, or about him in general, but she smiled anyway and set the wine glass on the floor by the chair. Of the choices in the room for the night, he seemed nice.

“Hi, Andrew.” She looked into his eyes, a soft brown that were watery from how much he’d had to drink. He traced his thumb over her bottom lip and then gently kissed her, the sweet taste of brandy lingering on his lips as she kissed him back. Even with the Oblivion in her system there was no heat to the kiss, but her body responded.

Her pussy clenched as he pulled her tighter against him, and she contemplated straddling him to get a little friction to feed the liquid heat growing inside her. His hand trailed down her arm until his fingertips were resting inside the bands of light, and he suddenly broke the kiss and looked down at the skin of her wrist where the bands glowed.

“It’s weird, I can actually feel this humming in my fingers. Do you feel that?” he asked with boyish excitement, and she smiled even though it was an incredibly stupid question since the bands were
on
her wrists.

“Yes, I feel it.” She watched as he was mesmerized by the light suspended in a wide band around her wrist, moving his fingertips in and out of the light. ”Are they always there?”

“Only when Master is near, or if he gives me a command,” Fae answered and his hand stilled and he looked away from her, taking another drink from his glass. Drinking wasn’t going to suddenly make it okay that he had accepted Nikola’s invitation, or that he had tracked down one of the two non-mortals in the house. No matter what he felt, his curiosity would likely get the best of him and overrule any moral ideas he thought he had – this guy wasn’t a knight in shining armor.

“I’m sor-” Andrew looked penitent, but his eyes were still staring at her lips when there was a harsh tap on her shoulder and Fae turned to find Irena with her violet eyes wide. Fae knew that look, and knew that Irena was moments from an all-out scene.

Fae turned back to Andrew with a smile. “Let me get you a drink refill?”

He gave a lopsided smile and handed her his glass, sighing as Fae slipped off his lap to talk to Irena. Moving towards the nearest corner Irena gripped Fae’s arm tightly, her pupils were dilated from the Oblivion, and her pale blue skin was coated in sweat.

“Fae, you need to do something, I know you can do something.” Irena was out of it, the Oblivion was a big dose for a tiny pixie and she was babbling and talking fast. “Alec said – Alec, he said that he heard Juliet fighting them in the guards’ quarters. He said he could hear her screaming!”

Way to be helpful, Alec, like Irena needed to know that
.

“What do you want me to do, Irena?” Fae was trying to think straight through her own mental haze. It’s not like she could just walk out of the parlor and grab Juliet from the guards with a ‘please and thank you’.

“Please, Fae. Help her? You’re much stronger than her, I know you can do it. Promise me, promise me you’ll help, promise you’ll keep her safe.” Irena was out of her mind, and definitely not thinking straight, but she was begging and people were starting to stare. It was the inverse of what Ebere had pleaded with her over that morning. Fae tried to take a steadying breath, tried to push back the heat inside her, and tried to
think
.

Her head felt like it was full of cotton, and Irena’s panicked whimpering was too distracting. Others were looking, and soon Butler or Nikola would notice and that would be worse.

“Listen, I’ll do what I can. I’ll do something.”
Sure. Something
. “But you have to stay safe, don’t do anything stupid.” Fae whispered and Irena nodded, and her bottom lip quivered like she was about to cry. Fae shook her head. “Go on, I promise it will be okay.”

It was foolish to promise something she couldn’t guarantee, but she couldn’t say no to Irena. She hadn’t been able to ignore the pixie in the Suyhay Market, and it had been a futile effort to try since.

Turning away, Fae headed to the bar to get more brandy for Andrew. Why couldn’t tonight have gone smoothly? Everything would have worked out fine if Nikola hadn’t sent Juliet to the guards. The guilt at betraying Ebere’s tentative friendship on the very day she’d told the girl she’d try to do better was gnawing at her, turning her stomach. Even worse, she really had no idea what to do.

Fae asked Caridee for more brandy, and as she was waiting her eyes landed on a large glass decanter of wine on the bar top. When they had told her not to do anything stupid, they had probably meant exactly what she was thinking. Which is exactly why it would probably work.

Fuck it.

“Here goes nothing…” Fae whispered to herself.

Taking the brandy from Caridee in one hand she grabbed the decanter by its narrow neck with the other. Turning to walk back to Andrew she watched him smile at her from across the room. He seemed so nice, he would have made the evening easy, but she had to try and keep at least one promise tonight.
Sorry, Ebere
.

She smiled back at Andrew before tripping herself against a thick carpet on the floor. The glass decanter slammed into the ground and shattered into slivers of glass, the dark red of the wine seeping into the carpet. That was probably a very expensive ‘accident’ because the carpet likely wouldn’t recover. It took a second for Fae to realize that the sharp pain in her hand was a sliver of the glass. She sat up and pressed on the edge of the cut so she could pull the glass out, hissing as it slid from her skin.

The music was still playing, but other than a few random giggles from the girls around the room it had gone eerily quiet.

Fae gasped as her hair was suddenly wrenched up and back, and she brought her hands up to ease the pull as she met Nikola’s eyes. His face was calm but his eyes were furious, and Fae’s stomach dropped to her toes.
Shit
. The group finally reacted and several of the men cheered, calling out to Nikola in their drunken excitement at the show that was about to commence.

“Nikola! Look at your rug!” One of the guests sitting on a couch, with Mei-Li in his lap, was laughing loudly. “What are you going to do about that?”

“I’m sure Nikola knows how to keep these girls in line. Don’t you Nikola?” another of them called out and he was cheered on by a few others. They were Romans calling for blood.
Entertainment
. His fist tightened in her hair and she lifted herself onto her toes trying to relax his hold. The men were laughing and hooting, their cries filling her ears. Nikola pushed her forward and she stepped onto a piece of glass and screamed at the sudden pain.

He leaned his head down by her ear and spoke quietly through his teeth. “I told you not to embarrass me, Fae, and if you thought this little incident was going to get you to Juliet you were
wrong
.” She was standing on her left foot, barely on her toes on her right to avoid pressing the glass in further, as his grip in her hair made her wobble. The comments and suggestions from the guests were growing into a loud roar, and then Andrew’s face came into view in front of Nikola.

He spoke quietly so the other guests couldn’t hear. “Hey, Nikola, I’m sorry, that’s my fault. I asked her for the wine. I should have guessed she was too drunk to carry it all.”

Oh, Andrew, you’re not helping
.

Nikola pulled Fae’s head back towards him, which shifted her more off balance and she whimpered at the strain.

“Don’t let her fool you, Andrew.  Gods don’t make their pets clumsy.” He pulled her back further and her right foot came down, pressing the glass in sharply. She yelped and he spoke directly into her ear, “Isn’t that right?”

Fae clenched her jaw against the urge to respond, or beg, or scream. There was a cheer from the guests and random applause, and Andrew was still trying to talk but he couldn’t be heard over the group and Nikola wasn’t listening anyway. Nikola pulled Fae to the side again and she stumbled trying to keep her foot up. He moved her to the middle of the ruined rug and raised his voice so everyone could hear him as he issued the command. “Down.”