“I have it under control,” Brickmore barked. I could hear the blood pooling in his mouth. By the sound of his voice, he wanted to do more than just control me.
“Why isn’t she collared?” the mystery man asked.
A nervous pause filled the room like an ill wind. “It—it looked weak,” Howes said, “It only had those eyes… no magic, no memories. It barely even put up a fight.”
“She should have been properly processed before being brought for interrogation, or have we already forgotten what happened the last time your people didn’t follow procedures?”
Another pause. It was like they were worried to even speak in front of this man. “We… we haven’t forgotten, boss. But this isn’t like last time. No one’s coming to break it out of here.”
“Give me another minute with that fiend bitch,” Brickmore said, “I’ll get it squawking.”
“The arrogance of man never ceases to amaze me. You’re both pathetic,” the mystery man said. “Get out of my sight, both of you. If I have to so much as look at you tonight again—”
He didn’t finish the threat, but he didn’t have to. Brickmore and Howes tried to leave the room so fast, they were stumbling into each other at the door to get out. Eventually, they did, and the door slammed shut, leaving me alone with the man who had done… this to me. Whatever this was.
Had he stunned me?
I wanted to move my hands, my legs. I wanted to get up and fight, or at least speak, but I couldn’t do any of those things. I could only think, and even that was difficult. The man I’d been left alone with started to approach, sending my heartbeat into a frenzy. While it was good to know my heart was still working, the fact that I couldn’t see his face—only his muscular abdomen, his belt, his pants—was too much for me.
He was doing something to me, though I couldn’t be sure exactly what. I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing. All I could do was wait, and seethe, and fantasize about killing all three of these men with my bare hands.
Finally, I felt something. A single touch of his hand against one of my wings. His hand was warm, his touch soft, and a moment later, a kind of strange heat moved through me, coursing through my body and relaxing my tightened nerves. Slowly, I flexed my fingers, curled my toes, licked my lips. I could move again.
“Sit down,” he said, stepping away from me.
I thought about attacking him, I wanted to attack him, but he’d manipulated my body in a way I wasn’t used to, and I didn’t want that to happen again. I needed to bide my time, so I did as he asked, crawling over the table until I could sit down again. Then I realized what he’d done. He’d pinned my wings together with iron manacles.
I tried rolling my shoulders, but they wouldn’t move.
“Uncomfortable?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I snapped, looking up at him.
He was tall, broad shouldered, with a barreled chest that was almost too muscular to fit into the black uniform he was wearing. A mane of black hair hung about his shoulders, framing a strangely beautiful face, with a set of light brown eyes flecked with gold and green. It wasn’t at all the kind of face I’d expected to see on a man who struck such fear into other men.
It made me lose my breath.
He scanned me with his eyes, then touched his lower lip with a black gloved thumb. “You truly don’t know who you are?” he asked.
“I don’t,” I said, searching for a nametag on him but finding none. “I don’t know who I am, who you are, why I’m here, or where here even is.”
“Do you remember how we found you?”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed like he was trying to peer into me to find the lies in my words. “We found you with a dead man at your feet, his blood all over you.” He was so soft spoken, so quiet, but there was power in his voice. Hiding, lurking underneath it like a wild animal. “You were arrested and brought here, where you’ll spend the rest of your days for murdering a citizen of the Coalition on the streets of Devil Falls.”
“Devil Falls? I’ve never heard of that place.”
“You deny coming here?”
“I deny everything,” I hissed, “You can’t accuse me of a crime I didn’t commit, and you can’t imprison me for it.”
“We can. And we have. Confessing to the crime will help you live with a clean conscience, but if a clean conscience isn’t important to you, feel free to keep your silence. It isn’t important to us, either. Regardless, you’ll spend the rest of your days here.”
I still didn’t know where in the world here was.
My mind continued to race, my heart now slamming against my chest. I wanted to tear this man’s throat open with my teeth. The urge to kill him was just as strong as it had been with the other two, if not stronger, despite the fact he’d treated me with more dignity than the others had. But remembering how easily he’d stunned me, and how easily he’d fixed me, gave me a reason to hold back, to wait, to think.
This couldn’t be right. I didn’t belong here. How could I have killed someone and then have no memory of it? And where had my memories even gone? I was being set up, but hell if I knew by who, or even why. I needed to figure it out, but one thing at a time, I supposed.
“You’re not keeping me here,” I said.
He studied me carefully, his eyes roaming, exploring, and pausing just below my neck. “No?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “No, and I’d appreciate it if you could talk to me without staring at my tits.”
Half a smile crossed his lips. He walked around the table, took hold of the shackles binding me to it, and undid them with a thought. The chains fell to the table with a metal clang, but before I could even think about striking at him with my newly freed hands, he had a new set of cuffs slapped against my wrists.
He was fast and strong—impossibly so. His scent wrapped itself around me as he moved me from the desk to the door. Oakwood in the spring, with a hint of something primal, animal, and wild. That scent struck a chord somewhere deep inside of me. It wasn’t quite a memory, or a feeling. I wasn’t sure what it was. Then again, I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to analyze it.
He opened a door that led into a well-lit, dull-looking corridor and handed me over to a fresh-faced guard who had been waiting for us outside.
“Get her to processing, then instruct the guard to send her to the hole,” he said, his voice distant and disinterested. “One night spent in there should teach her not to attack the guards at Harrowgate Prison.”
“Yes, Horseman,” the guard said, offering a quick salute and grabbing me by the manacles. “Move, fiend,” he barked, the word like a final nail in the coffin.
Those nails had been getting hammered in all night.
Fiend.
Murder.
Prison.
Horseman?
It was real. This was real. I had no idea who I was, who I’d killed, or what this place was, but I was here, and as I was marched down the corridor, I was starting to feel like I really never would see the light of day again.
CHAPTER TWO
The Horseman