Page 8 of Branches of the Willow (The Ancients #3)

8

Blood and Bonds

I had just been inside Mikael’s head. It felt like waking from a dream only to land inside of a nightmare. Every muscle in my body ached, and the more I tried to move the more the pins and needles sensation from my feet crept upward along my entire body, as if every fiber of my being was just now coming out of a deep, uncomfortable sleep. Now that I thought about it, even my tongue felt thick in my mouth. Thick and dry. I tried opening my eyes, but my lids ripped at my eyeballs as if they had been lined with sandpaper. It was a feeling I remember from being drugged another time. This wasn’t the same feeling as the tranq darts though. There was something a bit extra potent about whatever had been in that powder. Considering there was a witch involved in my kidnapping this time, I assumed the extra was magic in nature. Needless to say, everything ached, but what hurt the most was feeling the bond I had to Mikael. It still existed, but it felt stretched so perilously thin, that I just knew I had to be far away from where he was. Either that or our link was being diminished somehow.

I waited another moment or two, trying to let the sensation of bugs crawling through my skin come and go again. At least, I hoped it would go again. Finally, painstakingly, I was able to crack one eye open. There was still a floor beneath me, but not one that I recognized. They had indeed moved me from where I’d fallen at Betsy’s place. The cold, unforgiving ground beneath me meant that either I was in a cave or on a slab of stone somewhere, or it was a building made using stone floors. I moved my eye a little further, to open up my peripheral vision a little more. There were bars in front of me. Just the sight made me want to vomit as flashbacks of the last two times I had been trapped behind bars came back in flashes. Once, when I’d been shot inside of them, and the other when it had been Mikael dying inside the confines of a cage.

Fear and anger warred inside of me, bubbling up as bile ready to erupt one moment and shiver-inducing adrenaline the next. There were bars in front of me, and I was laid out on a rock floor. My eyes burned as they tried to fill with panic-laden tears, only the tears wouldn’t come at all. My body was too dried out for that. I closed my eye instead, ignoring the burning pain the movement caused. I needed to think. I needed to calm myself and come up with a plan, but in order to form a plan, I had to wake the hell up and gain all my senses back. I needed to see where I was, the whole picture, not just bits and pieces of it.

I reached down inside me for all my reserves of strength and managed to open both eyes this time. I was in a large room, obviously closer to the back corner than the middle. There was one, small window that looked to be about seven feet off the floor. In front of me was a white rug, and off to the left a long wooden table with all sorts of glass tubes, herbs, and books on top. It looked like something straight out of an old apothecary, or a witch’s cottage. “Crap,” I muttered to myself. “Not again.” I was in a cage, and there was a witch somewhere nearby.

My memories from the initial attack came back then as I remembered Leanna blowing something in my face, and then… Sophia was there, in the shadows. “Damn it.” I yelped inadvertently, and a lot louder than I intended to. I had jerked backwards when I realized it was Sophia I had seen before I passed out. Now, my head was positioned staring straight up at the ceiling, and it hurt like hell where it pressed to the stone. Apparently, I had some sort of contusion back there that hadn’t healed yet. That was a good sign. It meant I had been out for less than 24 hours. Any more than that and a bump to the head would be gone.

“Finally, love!” Zach cooed excitedly from across the room. “I wondered when you were going to wake up.” I didn’t miss the fact that he had used Mikael’s endearment for me. Only coming from his mouth, it was a perversion. Dirty. Twisted. Vile. No matter how cheery he made his voice sound, it didn’t change the way the word was tainted on his lips.

“I am not…” I tried to get out but ended up coughing as my dry throat refused to cooperate.

“Best not to talk yet. That’s some nasty stuff they used to knock you out. Dries you out like crazy.”

“I have.” I had to cough again. “Never.” I sucked in another dry breath and tried to finish. “Been. Your. Love.”

“You always have, Jess, just as I’ve always been yours.”

“Fucking psycho.” Cough. “Delusional.” Cough, rasp, cough. “Bastard.” My voice was all but gone by the time I got to the end, but I said my peace. My throat burned, and begged for water, but my pride kept me from asking for any.

“Ouch!” Zach mocked. “That hurts, Jess! Sounds like it hurt worse for you to say it. You’ll see though.” He was in front of the cage then, watching me. He saw the way my eyes rolled back. “You’ll see that you’re wrong, love.”

A loud, low rumble issued forth from somewhere in my chest. It would have come out a defiant growl had it not hurt so much. What started out as a growl turned into a fizzled attempt that ended as more of a whimper. My throat was done for.

“Quit tormenting the girl, already. She’s about to go through enough pain and suffering without you adding to it.” Sophia scolded him like the child that he was.

“But she will live!” Zach stated, not so much a question as it was a demand.

“Yes, yes!” Sophia responded. “She will be a fractured shell, something even you can manipulate.” The snide remark did not go unnoticed. It did however go unpunished, which meant that no matter how much he wanted to be, Zach was not in charge here.

“What are you waiting for then? Let’s get the show on the road,” Zach demanded.

“I need the moon, like I’ve told you already. We have a few more days to wait.”

“Don’t make me throw you in a cage with her, Sophia.” Zach threatened.

“Because that worked out so well for you the last time you threw me in a cage?” Sophia laughed at him. “I will get my revenge and you will get whatever is left over in the end.”

“Revenge?” I choked out breathlessly. “What the hell did I ever do to you?” It took me a while to get all the words passed my dried throat and wrecked vocal cords, but the witch was patient and waited to tell me her tale.