Mission?
What mission?
The bodybuilder clenched her jaw but nodded. “Fine.” Pointing at all of us, she added, “But stay the hell out of my way. I know a bunch of you have come here to seduce that bastard and have his bastard children, but me? I’m going to rip out his throat and ruin any chance he has of unleashing the apocalypse.”
Okay, WHAT?
My eyes ached. My ears rang. I was very close to throwing up from the pain. But I clung to sanity and asked, “Can someone please tell me what the hell is this place?”
“No!” Evelyn snapped. Hurling her wrath at the panther, she shouted, “Take us to Lucien. Immediately!”
Incredibly, the cat grumbled and growled but slinked around us and headed back toward the main palace.
Everyone followed, as if entranced by its jewel-black pelt and hypnotising tail.
But as everyone vanished into the black stone castle, I turned around and bolted.
Chapter Six
THE WOMEN DISAPPEARING INTO MY HOME below brought promises of death, sex, and more noise than I could cope with.
Yet another group.
Yet another attempt to make me breed.
I’d lost track of how many they’d sent here over the past two decades. How many I’d killed. How many hopefuls had tried to sneak into my bed.
It was a pity—for those imprisoning me—that they were slowly running out of women who were eager to rent out their wombs. Despite their careful screening to find me a lover, assassins crept through the cracks.
More and more little murderesses came to kill me, until each day became a matter of who could kill who first.
A smirk curled my lips as one of the women broke from the pack and bolted.
The wind was stronger on the roof of my palace.
No one could see me watching them.
I was like the God of Death himself—making notes of which ones I’d end first.
But that one?
The girl with long black hair and dressed like a penniless teenager seemed...different.
“Either she’s pathetically stupid or impressively smart.” The breeze snatched my whisper, shredding it into pieces so no one would hear.
For years on end, I had no one to talk to but myself. They gave me books and pre-approved entertainment, but human companionship wasn’t allowed.
Not unless I got them pregnant.
And even if I did, they’d be whisked away to have my bastard child, condemning my offspring to a fate worse than the hell I currently lived.
I would die before that ever happened.
As the girl fled across the gardens, arrowing toward the wall that she’d never be able to scale, I turned around.
I’d seen enough.
She was just another mouse caught in their trap.
Another morsel I had no intention of enjoying.
My black coat billowed around me.
A chill bit into my skin.
And as I descended the tower to the ballroom, I sighed.
I felt ancient and weary, burning alive with hate and revenge.
Yet now my home was infested with rats, and the games were about to begin.
Chapter Seven
“KEEP IT TOGETHER. YOU’VE GOT THIS. See, you’re fine.”
Giving myself a pep talk, I ran straight for the wall barricading us in this nightmare. The broken glass at the top twinkled and that nasty wire said it was probably electrified but I had to try.
Pressing myself against the wall, I fumbled with my backpack and yanked out my cell phone. Looking around furtively, I turned it on and waited with a pounding skull as it booted up, whirred to life, and...no signal.
Of course.
Holding it aloft like an idiot, I walked a few metres, begging the bars to glow with reception.
And nothing.
Fine.
I’d never relied on that stupid device anyway. And my bodyguard, Dillon, had enough experience tracking me down without it. How many times had he found me in some obscure place in the rice paddies of Ubud or on a river cruise through Europe? I mean, I wasn’t exactly incognito with using my credit card, but still...he would find me.
Eventually.
Shoving my phone back into my rucksack, I slung it onto my shoulders and eyed the wall.
I’d already yanked on the gate and found, just as I suspected, it was locked.
I staggered a little as my heart skipped a few beats, driving me closer to burnout.
I either needed to be far, far away from this place or to find a bed where I could rest because I was swiftly running out of time.
Dashing to one of the baby oak trees, I launched myself at it and managed to grab the closest branch. Scrambling in my ridiculous flip-flops and scratching my thighs on its bark, I hauled myself high enough to look over the wall.
And...nothing.
The G-wagons were gone.
No men in sight.
It was as if the selection process and wellness lie were all made up in my head.
“Please get down from the tree and join the others in the ballroom.”
I flinched in shock, looking around. “Who—?”
A drone dropped to eye level, repeating its message from whoever watched me on the other end of the camera. “Please join the others. That is not a request.”
My pounding head turned my vision hazy again. Clinging to the trunk with one hand, I rubbed my eyes with the other.
“Please join the others.”
I ignored it, wishing I was normal. Wishing I could handle panic and worry or be one of those lucky people who found they became superhuman the minute they suffered a little bit of anxiety.
Instead, I clenched my teeth against the very real possibility of throwing up.
“You leave me with no choice.” The drone made a high-pitched noise before a blast of electricity drilled through me.
It seized my muscles.
It blazed my bones.
Every ligament locked and I tumbled headfirst to the grass below.
I landed hard, winded and gasping, my limbs thrashing like a broken puppet.
As quickly as the drone shocked me, it stopped. Hovering over me, no doubt taking celebratory photos of me flat on my back, it announced, “You have two minutes to join the others, or you will be shocked again.”
I gave up.
I went back.
And the damn thing trailed me the entire journey.
* * * * *
Following the murmur of feminine voices, I made myself as small as possible and tiptoed through the palace. I didn’t even know if that word was correct for a home in the meadows of Britain, but it certainly helped encompass the grandeur.
Vaulted ceilings soared like the nave of a cathedral, yet instead of saints in stained glass, the arched windows were patterned with flowering lotuses and flying phoenixes. Light poured through them in fractured rainbows, painting the black stone floors with shifting mosaics.
Silk scrolls of cranes and misty mountains hung between marble busts of long-dead kings. European portraits of whiskered men glowered at me, while huge banners of Chinese calligraphy hung beside them.
It seemed as if two civilisations had collided and combined, blending East and West with paper lanterns dangling from wrought-iron chandeliers, and potted bamboo growing against baroque wallpapered walls.
By the time I reached the threshold of the ballroom, my head spun with too much beauty.
The group of women huddled together in the heart of the cavernous room, the lights turned down to mimic a false gloaming—thanks to the black velvet draping most of the huge windows. The carved panels on the walls glittered with mother-of-pearl and tarnished mirrors, reflecting the flicker of low-burning lamps and thirty pairs of worried eyes.
Coming to a stop, I glanced around, peering into the shadows for signs of the panther.
I’d begun to think I’d lost my sanity on the bus here and everything that’d happened since was a strange kind of dream.
