Taken by the Beast (The Conduit Series Book 1) (17 page)

“What are you going to do then?” I asked breathlessly.

“I’m going to find that creature who’s after you, the one who chased you into this house that night, and I’m going to relieve him of his head.”

***

Abram had gone to clean up, leaving me standing in the foyer, reliving the craziness that had just unfolded around me. My mind was spinning, which might as well be its new default for all the times it had happened lately.

That was when I heard her voice.

Chaaariiiissssseeee.

It was the girl. I shook my head, remembering what Abram had said. She wasn’t a girl. That was Satina, the woman who had cursed him. The Conduit was calling to me, just like she had the other day.

I didn’t want to, but I found myself moving closer to her room. She sang my name again.

Chaaariiissseeeeeee.

It was a siren song, a call that pulled me toward it without need of my cooperation. And somehow both the room here and the room at the club called me in the same way. But how could that be? She was here.

I crossed the threshold to the room before I realized where I was. She sat on the floor, still chained to the wall.

“Are you here to help me?” she asked in the same ‘poor me’ voice she had used the first time I saw her.

Suddenly, I snapped out of my fog. “Stop,” I growled. “I know what you are.”

“Do you?” Her face dropped all pretense of innocence, and she snarled at me so viciously she barely looked human anymore. “And do you know what you are,
Supplicant
?” When she said the word, her voice dripped venomously, so much so that I stumbled a step back. “Do you really know?”

Her mouth twisted into a haunting grin, and her tongue flickered between her lips.

“Stay away from me,” I said, taking another step back, this one more determined. “
Satina
.”

“Oh, someone’s been brushing up on their ancient history, I see. Did he tell you the rest?” The Conduit arched the
dead woman’s eyebrows. “Did he tell you what happened the night I died?”

“Of course.” My back knocked into the far wall. “And if you think I’m going to listen to some idiot girl who gets herself so twisted up over a man that she throws herself off a building, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

For the first time in my life, I heard an honest-to-God cackle. It escaped her lips as she threw her head back gleefully.

“Is that what he told you?” She shook her head. “I must not be the only one who’s found herself in the throes of that man’s charms.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“If you’re willing to accept that pile of horse manure, than you’re in deeper than I imagined.” She leaned in closer, so close that the shackles pulled tight. “I didn’t throw myself, Supplicant.” She smiled again. “
I was pushed
.”

“Pushed?” I asked, crossing my arms. “That’s not what Abram said.”

“Of course it’s not,” Satina spat back. “He’s the one who pushed me! Did you expect him to offer that up?”

This was too much. I wanted—no, I
needed—
to be done with this back and forth. Abram was good. Abram was evil. The whole thing was enough to give me whiplash.

“You’re a liar,” I ground out, “and I won’t fall for it again.”

It was one thing to finally make my peace with the existence of magic, Conduits, Supplicants, enchanted beasts, and leprechauns. Okay, so I might be winging it with the last one. But it was something else altogether to put my trust in someone the way I had just done with Abram. And standing here, watching this ridiculous creature threaten the stability of that trust with some horrible lie, wasn’t something I was prepared to do.

Even if, somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wondered if it was true.

Satina sighed. “You know, I don’t see what he sees in you.” She eyed me up and down with a sneer. “You’re not his type. He’s never been with a chunky girl before.”

“Curvy,” I corrected, then I waved my arm at her. “No different than you.”

“This?” she asked, looking down at her own body. “This is nothing more than a borrowed opportunity. I was waif-like and beautiful in my time … back before your boyfriend killed me.”

“You killed yourself,” I said, finding it suddenly easy to not feel bad over the loss of her life. “I know that’s probably hard for you to deal with, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

Satina leaned back, letting her chains hang loosely in the air. The look on her borrowed face was cool and collected. She eyed me up and down as if I was a slab of beef and she was picking the choicest parts to chop off.

A shudder ran through me. This woman … well, first of all, she wasn’t a woman at all, at least not the one I was looking at. She was a creature, some sort of spirit who had slung on a poor girl’s corpse and was wearing it around the same way I’d have worn a pair of Louboutins.

She was a walking obituary. Or more aptly, a sitting, chained-up obituary. And she wanted something from me.

“You better hope you’re right, Supplicant. Otherwise, I think it’s safe to say that you’re in over your pretty little head.” A disgusting smile parted her dry, cracked lips. “He was good, wasn’t he?” She rolled her eyes, seeming to relish some unspoken memory. “He was amazing back then. Not good enough to make up for the murder, mind you, but I can only imagine what a dozen decades of experience has brought to the table. Let me ask you, is he still a moaner?”

I shuddered again, thoughts of Abram and I in the Castle, thoughts of Satina and Abram all those years ago.

God, he
was
a moaner.

“Shut up! He didn’t murder you!” I yelled. “He’s not that kind of person.”

The smile fell from her face, replaced with hard lines that the girl Satina inhabited hadn’t lived long enough to earn. “Are you willing to bet your life on that, Supplicant? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.” Her eyes flickered to the door and then back to me. “I was just like you back then. A little less thick around the waist, but we shared other qualities. I, too, was kind and naïve. I gave people more credit than they were due, and lent my trust to the wrong men.”

“Sweetie, you don’t know anything about me.” Now I stepped closer to her, a little bit of my hard-earned edge creeping in. “I cut my teeth on the mean streets of New York City. And I realize that, since you’re about as relevant as socks with sandals, that doesn’t mean much to you. But suffice it to say, it chews up and spits out scarier people than you on a daily basis.” I sneered at her, leaning in even closer to her. “But it didn’t get me, and you won’t either. You see, you might have been some stupid little girl who couldn’t get past the fact that the guy who screwed you didn’t love you, but that’s not me. I’m a grown ass woman, bitch, and you don’t scare me.”

She lunged at me with a growl, the chains clanking as she pulled at them to get her face closer to mine, but I held steady, not letting my body or expression reveal my lingering fear.

When I didn’t flinch, she flopped back against the wall, sighing. “I’m tired of this.”

Good
.
So am I
.

But I was wrong to think she was done trying to intimidate me.

She pulled against her chains again, this time so hard that one of them snapped. Before I could react, she flicked her hand, throwing the loose chain at me. It struck me, wrapping around my neck like a noose. I grappled at it, but she jerked with more strength than I’d have ever imagined that body to be capable of.

I fell to the ground as she pulled me closer. I tried to scream, but the chain cut off my airway. I couldn’t breathe. Panic shot through me, electric and terrifying. My heart thundered in my chest as I struggled against the witch.

Clawing at the floor, I tried to slow my journey toward Satina, but it was no use. She jerked the chain again, and with each pull, the chain got tighter around my neck. Pressure pounded in my head. I could feel the blood settling there, all my brain cells dying. Spots started to ping at my field of vision, and the edges of the world blurred. Somehow, from the corner of my eye, I spied a shard of something.

A piece of glass from the broken picture frame. Abram hadn’t cleaned it up yet.

Using a tiny bit of my quickly dwindling energy, I swiped it up, hiding it inside my clenched fist. Now all I had to do was wait until she pulled me toward her, and I would slash the bitch.

If I didn’t suffocate first.

I felt her behind me, pulling up the last bit of the chain's slack. I sprung (or rather, inched) into action. Opening my hand, I drove the shard toward her neck.

She grabbed my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I wasn’t giving up now. Since she had to use one hand to grab me, that meant she let go of her vice grip on the chain.

Instinctively, I whipped the chain off my neck, gasping as a rush of cool air replenished my dry and sore throat.

The relief was short lived. I was still in danger. Looking up, I saw Satina had swiped the shard from my hand. I looked at my feet. Stupid shoes. If I had been wearing my heels, I could have flicked one off and drove a red-heeled point into this witch’s ugly eye.

My agent was right. Women shouldn’t wear sneakers. And to think I had thought he was just being sexist. However, he also said that no woman who cared about proper nail care should ever throw a punch. Unfortunately, I was going to have to prove him wrong on that one.

I swung at her. A bit of me felt guilty and squicked out as I realized it was a dead girl’s head I was connecting with. She pulled back as I clocked her across the face, but she didn’t let go of my hand.

“You stupid cow!” she spit out. “I’m just trying to show you the truth.”

She sliced the shard down my arm, breaking the skin. My eyes widened as a thick red mark appeared along my forearm.

Abram’s words rang out in my head.

There’s magic in your blood.

Uh-oh.

“Abram!” I screamed as the Conduit ran her finger along my arm, soaking up the blood.

She shuddered as a faint golden glimmer danced its way through her eyes.

“You truly are special.” She sighed. “Now sit back and enjoy the show.”

She slapped her palm hard against my forehead. I shook as I felt it—sparks and electricity running through my body. I tried to scream again, but my voice was gone. Then my eyes were gone.

Then everything was gone.

Suddenly, I wasn’t lying on the floor in Abram’s upstairs dungeon anymore. I was in a different house, standing in the corner of a bedroom lit by candles and hanging lanterns.

It was dark outside, and as I tried to move toward the open window to better gauge my new surroundings, I realized I couldn’t move. I was, once again, not in control of my body.

How refreshing.

A giggle shot through the orange-hazed room, followed by a fuller chuckle and then a shushing sound. Without my consent, my gaze flashed to the direction of the noise. A couple moved through the doorway, tangled up in each other and kissing.

The blonde woman was thin and unassuming. Her milky white skin was almost completely covered by a plain navy burlap sack of a dress, save for her arms and neck.

The man, wasting no time, was already halfway out of his shirt, whipping the puffy white fabric off and letting it fall to the floor. He had a hat on, swooping and bulky. As he pulled it off, letting dark curls fall down his shoulders, I instinctively knew a few things to be true.

First, I was in the past. That much was clear from the lantern light and ridiculously dated clothing.

Second, the man I was looking at was Abram. I knew that sculpted chest. I knew those strong arms.

And Abram, given the tremble in the girl’s voice, was clearly about to get lucky.

But why was Satina showing me this? I knew Abram had a past. He told me he was a cad (or whatever grandpa language he used to let me know he used to sleep around). Did this stupid witch really think that giving me front row tickets to a time Abram made a girl regret her choice of bed buddy would be enough to make me turn on him?

“What if Father hears us?” The girl gasped as Abram slipped the dress off of her shoulders. It fell the way you would expect something large enough to hide every curve might—completely and all at once.

The girl was left standing in only a white slip, which was still more clothing than you would see in Milan this season. But I could tell that, for her, this was a line she had never crossed before.

“Father should be the furthest thing from your mind right now,” he said, kissing her neck. He moved down her untouched skin, his lips wrapping around the softness of where her shoulder met her neck.

His fingers, as skillful as a surgeon’s, pulled at the lace of her slip, loosening the fabric.

The girl shook all over as her breasts were exposed. Her eyes filled, and instantly I recognized something in them. I had been a girl who had never been naked in front of a man once. And the feeling that overtakes you when you finally are, that mix of regret and excitement, is something you never forget.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble we’ll get into if—”

Her words stopped as Abram’s moved down to her breasts, his mouth circling her nipples. She bit her lip, feeling the warmth overtake one of her most sensitive areas.

And then I bit my lip.

Oh God,
I
could feel it. I could feel everything he was doing to her, every sensation and emotion coursing through Satina’s body.

I felt his lips on me, his tongue flicking at and hardening my nipples. Satina wasn’t satisfied to make me a voyeur to whatever was about to happen. She wanted me to be an inactive participant as well.

His hand ran up her back, and I shuddered. His palm, steadying her back, steadying her insecurities. It was more than just the physical sensation I was indulging in. I felt all of her anxiety, all her excitement. All the trembling, worry, regret, fear, longing, and connection; it all belonged to me too somehow.

It felt—it felt like the first time all over again.

“Father will—”

With his free hand, Abram ripped the rest of her slip away, revealing the entirety of her supple body to the open air. She was cool and trembling, afraid of what he was about to do, and desperate for him to continue.