Katie sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I love all my boys. You know I do.” It was true. She was the most maternal person Noa had ever met, and the boys loved her too—in their own unique ways. “But there’s so many of them now, I’m struggling to cope with this alone.” She frowned. “And some of them are different. They like pain and …” Katie breathed deeply. “I’m not scared of them, but with some of the things they do, the dark things they say … I’m scared for them.” Sadness engulfed her face. “I think what has been done to them by those men has changed them, made them have preferences for the darker side of life.”
Noa looked back at the man in the van. She thought of the way he had killed the priest, how violently. How savagely he had knocked out Dinah, and how Noa had seen death in his blue eyes as he smiled and squeezed her throat.
Then her mind drifted to thoughts of Priscilla, the Coven’s seventh sister. Something sinister lived in her soul. Some kind of darkness that Noa knew she had inside herself too. But where Noa had fought to turn from it, to keep it locked away, Priscilla relished in it, bathed in its heaviness.
Noa recalled Katie’s words: I think what has been done to them by those men has changed them, made them have preferences for the darker side of life … That was Priscilla. That perfectly described her wayward sister.
“We’ll think of something,” Dinah said, pulling Noa from her chaotic thoughts, and hugged Katie. “I promise. We’ll save these boys. You know we will. We’ll never let those sadistic bastards win. We’ll find a way to help you all.”
Chapter 6
Noa sat opposite the cage on a wooden chair. Her hair, damp from her shower, hung down her back, and she was dressed in an oversized white button-down shirt and leggings. She stared at the man in the cage. The low sizzle from the collar around his neck filled the cave that housed the cage built by the War of Independence soldiers years ago for their prisoners.
Noa handled the remote in her hand, feeling nothing but guilt about the now-live collar around the man’s neck. When they’d arrived back at the tunnels, Noa had gotten Jo to take a look at it. Her sister, being a genius with anything mechanical and technical, had quickly fashioned Noa a makeshift remote of sorts. Naomi, their healer, had taken one look at the scars around the man’s neck, underneath his collar, and found clear evidence of past trauma. She explained that the redness came from excessive low-grade electrocution.
The collar controlled the man somehow. As Noa thought back to him killing the priest and attacking her and Dinah, she didn’t have to wonder too hard about why his collar was necessary. So, Jo had made her a remote that could temporarily control the collar. And then Noa waited. She had been waiting for him to sleep off the drug she had injected him with and wake up for quite some time.
An hour later, a shift of his fingers was the first indication that the man was waking. Noa held her breath when his hand moved. A low groan slipped from between his teeth, and his jean-clad legs shifted on the damp cave floor.
Seconds felt like hours as he moved his head and began lifting his torso, bracing his large body on his hands. Then he lifted his head. Blue eyes roved their gaze around the cave, finally landing on Noa.
It was like witnessing the flick of a switch. A mere second for his lethargic body to spring into action and charge at the cage bars like a man possessed. His body slammed into the side of the cage, his shoulder immediately reddening as he flung his body against the iron bars to try and break them down. The collar around his neck crackled, then, with a vicious roar, he dropped to the ground, lips thinned and jaw tensed as the collar sent electricity bolting through his body.
Noa shifted on the wooden seat, watching him fight the pain. But then he snapped his head up, and as fury flashed across his face, he charged at her again. Just as his hands reached the bars, wrapping around the iron, he dropped to his knees, holding his breath. His body jerked and his muscles strained underneath his reddening skin. His neck was corded and strained and his teeth clenched together. The collar’s electrical bite was clearly agonizing.
But even through it all, he kept his murderous blue gaze on Noa, promising all the hurt his hands could possibly inflict.
Then he closed his eyes and started to breathe, like there was some part of him that was rational, that was somehow talking him down. Noa watched, fascinated, as he seemed to calm himself. His breathing went from harsh pants to smooth rises and heavy falls of his broad chest. After several seconds, he opened his eyes, and Noa saw something else in their depths. A flash of something that wasn’t monstrous.
A flicker of humanity.
Noa sat forward on her seat, remote in one hand, knife in the other. The man’s nostrils flared as he watched her back, a duel of wills. “Come closer,” he said, with a soft hooking of his lip that looked beyond enticing on his stunning face. Noa couldn’t believe how a simple smile could make him that much more attractive.
She sat back in her chair, crossing her right leg over her left. “I think I’ll stay here, thanks.”
His head repeatedly twitched, and his beautiful smile widened to an uncomfortable grin. “I want to meet you properly.” Noa felt like she was talking to the demon controlling the man and not the actual man himself. When she didn’t move, he gripped the bars harder, the only indication of his ire. The bars groaned under his grasp, and Noa had a flash of fear that, due to their age, they might not hold.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“What’s yours?” he replied, a growl to his tone.
“Noa.” She searched his body. The light was low in the cave, but she found scar upon scar on his skin. And faint scars circling his wrists. She stilled as she suddenly felt her own wrists burn.
The man must have seen her attention was on his wrist scars, as he said, “Ever been on a rack?” He smiled wide, teeth showing, but the sight wasn’t comforting. He asked the question as though it were a threat.
Noa got to her feet and approached him. His eyes tracked her the entire way. She stopped just out of reach of the bars and rolled back the cuffs of her shirt. She held up her wrists, and the white scars shone silver in the path of the lamp. The man’s head canted to the side, like a predator trying to work out exactly what kind of creature its prey was.
Noa reached down to her leggings and pulled the legs up. The scars on her ankles were visible too. She turned her attention back to the man, whose gaze snapped from her ankles to her face. “Yeah. I’ve been on a rack.”
“Who are you?” he snarled, the iron bars groaning under the pressure of his grip.
“Who are you?”
He smiled again. The cold look on his face sent chills to Noa’s spine. “Your worst fucking nightmare.”
This time Noa smiled back, and something lit in the man’s eyes. His smile turned from taunting to what could be deemed impressed in a split second. Noa crouched down to his level. She held up her knife and the makeshift remote. “Actually, it seems like I’m yours.”
“Let me out and we’ll see,” the man said smoothly.
Noa felt that stirring in her chest that she had pushed back years ago. She felt it curling inside of her at the sound of this man’s voice. Intrigued by his aura of pitch-darkness, the constant threat in his every move. “You killed that priest,” Noa said, waiting for his reaction.