25. Fight

25

FIGHT

P eering into my eyes as his slim golden manacles are bound around my wrists, Florian Delano watches one of my eyes then the other, to make sure I’m his. The coldest, most pleased smile takes his lips as he sees me give in to his power—and that I was telling the truth about the trade of my life for my Vampires.

He gloats now as he watches me. As Florian fastens the final, slim golden torque around my neck, I don’t fight it. I feel his deepest power steal over me like a vast opium haze; shivering, my chin lifts as that incredible pleasure floods me, just as full and inundating as it ever was. Florian can make his servitude feel so very good when he wants to. Or he can make it feel wrathful, as he sends a spike of pure torture right into my groin now.

I gasp as I slam hard to one knee in the foyer.

“Not going to fight it at all, are you, Quindici?” Florian smiles with odious glee as he watches me twist. “As good as your word, right down to your noble, bleeding heart. I applaud that; indeed, some part of me even respects it. But you will soon come to love me, even though you have resisted me so much in the past. I will make sure of it, as you become my favorite toy. Come, let us head down to my new rooms. And play a little… until I tire of you for the night.”

As Florian nods for Julian to heft me to my feet, he turns and moves back into the Hotel without me. His abrupt departure makes me die a little, deep inside, because everything I am wants me to be his now—to pleasure him and please him in just the way he likes it, for the rest of my days.

Ariana’s and Lucca’s voices, Devi’s and Curio’s, and my entire Dark Fae Haven, rival it inside me now, screaming, Fight! I can feel their energies, dark like the deepest river and bright like the strongest sun, blazing through me now as I’m tempted to succumb.

Because Florian’s never held me captive when I had this much firepower bound to me. I make use of it now, knowing the game has begun. I’m going to go through hell in the next few days, until I can somehow contact all the former Revenants Ariana, Lucca, and I returned at the Bloodstone event who are still here and bound now to Florian’s command.

I have to wait until I can get them to fight for me—which was the plan, right from the start.

But first, I have to endure Florian’s torment, as I know is about to happen. Because he’s never felt me bonded to such powerful adjuvants when he held me in his thrall before. Emiliana wasn’t Dark Fae and had very few of them in her Dark Haven, only excepting me and Curio, who was a plant there to keep tabs on her for his father.

I have over a hundred Dark Fae bound to me now, however, plus Ariana, Lucca, Curio, and Devi, who are the cream of the crop. Not only that, but Arturos’ Siren energy flows through me also, alive like a riptide now in a way I’ve never felt him before. Though I’ve only ever fallen to Florian’s seductive torment before, I can resist it now—in a way that stops me from following him.

Unlike ever before.

I halt in the foyer, standing my ground now as I breathe hard. I feel my Dark Fae fire flare all around me, as seething currents of fiery black light surge through my living veins, fighting to escape Florian’s bonds. Ariana’s and Lucca’s powers flare within me; I feel Devi and Curio and all my Dark Fae bolster us now, as I hold my head high and draw a deep breath. I stare in defiance at Florian as he turns.

Shocked that I’m not coming with him.

“Quindici DaPonti… what have you been up to…?” Florian comes back to me, watching my gold and crimson fire flare all through the hall now, along with my vicious, stalwart darkness. His gaze roves me as I feel his energy dive into me, deep inside. He finds my bonds to my Dark Fae, Ariana, and Lucca. Florian’s not a Dark Fae and doesn’t have any in his Dark Haven, however. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling as he says, “Fae energy….”

Then lifts an eyebrow at me.

Impressed and pissed—all at the same time.

“Your little Dark Fae minx, isn’t it, giving you the power to resist me right now?” Florian assumes as his lips twist in disgust. “Who knew such a little thing could cause so much trouble?”

“Too bad she didn’t burn you up, along with all those other Masters on the Council the other night. Whoosh. ” I blow on my fingertips. “Like a midnight candle blown out to the burning light of day.”

“Insolent cur.” Florian’s tone is terrible now as he stalks towards me, daggers of the pain he’s about to give me burning in his bright green eyes. He whips his hand, and agony like I’ve rarely known skewers me to the ground, so hard I’m unable to breathe as I twist, writhe, and scald deep inside.

His treatment of me only makes my defiance burn brighter, though. Hotter, it sears like a hundred falling suns as I stare up at Florian from the floor with true hate, seething from my eyes. He sees it and startles in surprise.

Before he masters himself and leans in, whispering by my ear.

“You want to play games, Quinn?” True menace drips from his every word now as his power twists me deep inside. “I can play games. Deep, dark games, for days upon weeks, upon years, until you succumb to me. You shall be my especial pet, I think, with your willful resistance. It does nothing more than make me exceedingly hot for the day I will break you. And take you… and make you do everything you ever despised while under my control. Hating yourself deeper all the way, until you finally die. Your true death, I think. Rather than your Vampire’s one.”

In that moment, even though Florian twists me with the worst sensation I could ever imagine deep inside, like running me through again and again with scalding hot pokers, I know for certain he does not know I’m Dark Fae. If anyone on the Council suspects what I am, they’ve not told Florian yet; and just like that, I know I can endure his pain, for however long he gives it.

Though my hours and days are going to be hell, I know I have something Florian doesn’t have; I have Light in my magic. And as that beautiful Light burns inside me now, searing brighter than a thousand blazing suns, I fall into it rather than feel Florian’s grotesque torture anymore.

I pass out.

I wake in a dark room with manacles on my wrists. Not just Florian’s golden jewelry, but true manacles now, cold iron binding my wrists above my head. As I come to, my eyelashes flickering open, I see I’m bound in my original rooms on the ground floor, right beside one fireplace, low-burning in the deep midnight hour.

Someone has stripped me naked; as I hang with my wrists hoisted over my head on sigil-worked chains that were never there before, I wince to feel not one but six golden stiletto knives stabbed into my body. Two are in my abdomen, two in my thighs; the last two are in my biceps so that even the tiniest movement in my manacles is burning agony. I try to stay as still as I can, hanging from my chains. I sink into a dark place within my Night magic to keep the pain at bay.

Even as I register someone stepping to my side—their whispering fingers perusing those vicious little knives.

Working to take them out.

“Don’t,” I croak, as I realize whoever has come to me is trying to free me. “If you release me, Florian will only torture my other Vampires out of wrath, to spite me. I must remain in these bonds. And weather it.”

“So noble…” The presence alone with me in Florian’s rooms—because I don’t sense him or his guards nearby, Florian probably having gotten bored with skewering me while I was unconscious—peers at me curiously now as she steps into my line of sight.

A tiny thing, she’s barely five feet tall if she’s an inch. Dark eyes shine up from a strangely beautiful face, framed by long dark hair twisted into ornate braids. She wears a plain, dark grey linen shift, despite all the opulent garments found at the Red Letter Hotel Florence. She looks like an ancient British Isles Pict.

As I recognize her as one of the returned Revenants from the Bloodstone event.

“How did you get in here?” I croak-whisper now, keeping my voice low just in case Florian has any modern surveillance equipment on me, though that’s not his style.

“The guards on the doors are weak of mind,” she whispers, something cunning coming into her plain face and tiny smile, as her big dark eyes twinkle. “They were easy to incapacitate momentarily for me to slip inside. They don’t know anything is amiss. Until we want to slip back out again, together.”

“I cannot.” I shake my head the slightest bit, even though it jostles my wounds and makes me wince. “Florian needs to think I can’t get away, or he’ll harm others even worse.”

“So what do we do?” she asks. A perplexed look is on her face; she thought she was rescuing me, only to find I want to stay here.

“My power returned you from your Revenant state at the Bloodstone ceremony, didn’t it?” I ask in haste now, not knowing when anyone is coming back, and not wanting her to be discovered here.

“It did,” she says, cocking her head at me .

“And you feel compelled to help me now, though you don’t know why you feel it?” I press, needing to know if she feels the same way Luliana did.

“I do.” She simmers darker then, before her black eyes gaze at me with awe. “I feel no bond inside me from you. And yet, when I felt you pulled in here, felt your twisting darkness and terrible pain… I could not stay away. I want to help. Let me free you?—”

“No,” I insist, even though I can’t pull away from her tiny hands and deft touch. She respects my wishes, however, lowering her quick fingers as she cocks her head and frowns at me.

“Then… what can I do?” she asks, confused.

“Bring the others here,” I say quickly because I hear footsteps outside the doors. “When Florian is finished with me for the night, or even just for an hour, bring the other returned Revenants here. Let them feel me, and understand the predicament I am in. And when the time is right… we shall make our move. To take back this place, forever.”

“Dark Fae Master.” Her voice is reverent now, as she inclines her head—knowing what I am. “I will do as you ask because something in you and your people lights a beacon inside me. I find I do not want to turn away from it… but brighten it, in any way that you require. I will return. Wait for me. Remain strong.”

With that, she’s ducking back into the shadows—blending away as someone comes in through the main door of the suite. I assume she got away as Florian comes in, though I didn’t hear, feel, or see her leave. It’s clear she has some tremendous power of disguise to her Night magic; as Florian strolls in, beaming with a terrible smile to see I’m awake, he has no idea she’s been here, either.

I only hope I can stay strong to the things I see brimming in his eyes.

Until she gathers me the power I seek.

“Well, well. The cur is awake.” Florian comes before me now, gazing at me with a mixture of cunning and admiration, and utter hate as his gaze roves my naked body .

And all the runnels of blood pouring down it, from his knives embedded in me.

“You look like the Night version of Jesus on the cross,” he says with sacrilegious glee now as his green eyes burn in the firelight. “Too bad you’ve never been a holy man. Or I’d relish doing this to you even more.”

“Do to me what you like. I’m not breaking to you.” An ever deeper hate burns in my heart for this man standing before me, second only to Emiliana. “Not back when I was hers, not now that I am mine, and not ever, though your terrible bonds may twist me.”

“Oh, they will. I’ll make sure of that,” Florian says with a horrid promise burning in his eyes. “Until then, I thought it might be fun to play twenty questions. And find out just who Quinn is bonded to that gives him such power? And where I might ferret them out.”

“I’ll never give up my sources.” I stay defiant, still understanding that Florian has no idea I’m Dark Fae, since he thinks my Light power only comes from others I’m bound to. “Torture me until I scream and writhe, and gibber nonsense for you, but you’re never finding out.”

“Oh, the torture is coming. Of that, you can be sure.” A hard glint is in his eyes now. I can tell it’s bothering him that someone he’s taken under his thrall still has this much power to resist him. As I feel him push a deeper surge of his opium-dark magic inside me, I reel, but not from pain anymore. It’s from pleasure now, as Florian makes everything sing inside me.

Trying sweets, rather than wrathful spice.

I reel in my chains, lightheaded as everything goes molten and gooey inside me. I’m fully erect now when I wasn’t even close before, my scalding pain from Florian’s knives keeping me from that.

But as Florian kneels with a wicked look and places his hands on my thighs, not touching the knives but giving me a thrill of sex, he runs his lips over the skin of my upper, inner thigh.

Teasing me with what I know he can do next.

“Do you want me to pleasure you, Master?” he asks in an affront to all consensual dominant-submissive play, whispering his lips over my thigh and tempting my groin with his breath. “Because you know how well I can do it for you… the pleasure you know I can give, to your Master’s ways.”

“Your ways aren’t a Master or a submissive’s pleasure, Florian. Your pleasure is a perversion of that sacred contract, without consent.” I resist him now, though everything in my body is thrilling for a nice, long suck.

And a fuck—for however long it takes, even with him.

“Too bad,” Florian says wickedly near my groin. He runs his soft lips gently over my cock, along the shaft. “I can feel how much you’re thrilling for me, deep inside, thanks to my magic. I can make it feel so very good, Quindici; you know I can. Just like we did of old. When you were asked to obey my ways.”

“I was only asked by Emiliana to bed you because she would hurt people I cared about if I resisted.” My voice is a growl now, even as he slips his lips along my shaft again, shuddering me as he gives a nice, slow lick.

“Ah, yes. We come back to it; your bleeding heart.” Florian chuckles as he rises—leaving me bereft and throbbing, my balls so clenched and tight from being denied, with Florian’s power racing all through me.

He chuckles more at the look in my eyes, which I can’t help even though I’m fighting him. Because what Florian’s power and powerful temptation have done is make my body a towering blaze of heat and need now.

As I fight to not succumb to him—and just fuck, and fuck, and fuck.

“There it is.” Florian peers into my eyes, watching me blaze and twist with a new agony. “There’s the conflict in your undead soul I was hoping for. Though you fight my power, Quinn, there are other ways I can make you twist. By sending the Vampire Council to ferret out that Dark Fae safe house you’ve been keeping from me, for example. Oh, by the way, which they’ve already figured out is on the human side of Florence. And are sending their tactical army to at once—to kill, now that their Master is away in my clutches. ”

As everything screams inside me that the Vampire Council is on to Ariana’s and Lucca’s whereabouts, I feel that scream flash right to them through our bond.

Ariana and Lucca don’t understand it, they only feel my agony; but Florian’s opiate energies are on that connection like a lightning storm, as his power grips that message inside me and rides it like a hurricane, straight to its source.

I feel Ariana and Lucca cast him out in a sudden wave of power that leaves my head ringing, but not before he sees a detailed picture of their whereabouts inside the Summers manor.

And a magazine upon a side table—flipped back page up to show their human-world address.

“Gotcha.” Florian smiles with terrible cunning now as he squeezes my connection to my Dark Haven, Lucca, and Ariana like a boa constrictor. I feel him shut it off as his power blazes deep inside me.

He can’t sever my connection to my loved ones, only mask it with his magic. I feel it go so far away now, however, as Florian floods it with his power and makes me draw away from my beloveds, lest he become able to take them with his might.

Florian’s never been a Council Master who could do that. I’m not so sure now, though, as I gaze into his wicked, gleaming eyes and realize I was the one who just gave up my beloved’s position to the Vampire Council of Rome.

When they had no clue where my people were before—and Florian was only guessing at it.

“I need to make a phone call. Hang tight.” Florian pats me on the cheek, triumph in his eyes.

I twist in his bonds even as another scream goes off inside my heart, that the Vampire Council will soon attack my people, thanks to me. I’m powerless to stop it, as I try to flood my magic down through the bonds between me, Lucca, and Ariana now, and find I can’t.

Florian has shut down that connection, somehow, even though he can’t take it with his power. As he gives me one last wicked grin and departs, he leaves me twisting in his chains.

With one parting blast of his energies, he makes me surge with his dark opiate magic. I come, and come, and come, hating myself for it, as my people’s lives are in vast danger now, because of me.

It’s danger Florian himself is going to orchestrate, as he captures or kills everyone I hold dear with the Council’s help. Then he’s going to bind the survivors in his manacles, I know, making them do his bidding before me until I die deep inside, watching my beloveds be his.

I’ll meet my true death finally, dying as a Dark Fae with a broken heart. And Florian will laugh all the way to the graveyard.

Knowing I lost—and that I evermore was his.