Page 6 of Property of Mako (Kings of Anarchy MC: Louisiana #1)

Pretty Dolls Don’t Scream

Lily

I woke up cold again.

Cold and wet, like the air itself had teeth. My lips felt cracked. My wrists ached. How long had I been here? The floor beneath me was marble, probably stunning at one time, but now it was slick with something that smelled like perfume and… iron?

I tried to sit up, but my body didn’t listen.

For a while, I thought maybe this was a bad dream. Like the kind where you need to run but your legs don’t work and where you scream but nothing comes out.

That’s when I realized the blindfold I’d worn since they took me was missing. Eyes still heavy, I rolled my head and tried to focus on the room I was in. But then I heard the voices.

Whispers.

Low and sweet, yet disjointed. Like lullabies fed through a meat grinder. The closer they came, the clearer they were. I’d heard them before, though I never saw their faces.

“She’s awake.”

“Don’t frighten her. The vessel must remain calm.”

“She smells perfect.”

Blinking several times, I saw the room I was being held in.

Not a basement. Not some back alley drug den like the cops always warned us about in school. No, this was obviously an old plantation-style home. At one time it must’ve been absolutely beautiful.

Now?

Falling into utter disrepair and left to its ghosts.

The walls were painted with symbols I didn’t recognize or understand—circles within circles, snakes swallowing their own tails, a sword of some sort dividing a triangle.

I had no idea how I knew, but it wasn’t human art.

It was… other .

The voices had called this the Velarium —I heard them whisper that when they thought I was asleep.

A room for preparation .

For grooming, they’d said.

Oh God, I thought as I glanced around. There were others here. Girls like me, sitting cross-legged on satiny cushions, dressed in pale slip-like gowns that showed too much skin. Their eyes all had one thing in common—they were empty. Glassy, like dolls someone had allowed to wind down.

Some of them whispered what seemed like prayers. Several were chained to the walls like dogs, heads hanging in defeat. Others stared at the walls, tracing invisible symbols in the air.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to prove I was awake and still real.

The longer I looked around, the more things I remembered.

They fed us… things. Slimy and gross.

They placed drops of a sweet, oily substance on our tongues, like melted sugar and ash. I spit mine out when no one was looking, but my lips still tingled. My thoughts all seemed so heavy, like wet paper.

The whispered voices belonged to the shadowy figures that seemed to move and dart at an unnatural pace. Though I heard them, I couldn’t see any of their faces behind the heavy hoods that obscured their features from sight.

“Where am I?” I demanded. No one answered, and no one looked my way except one. Though I couldn’t see its face, I knew that it stared at me. Chills skated down my spine, but I refused to look away. Finally, I thought I heard it chuckle before it went back to what it was doing.

Every hour—or maybe longer, time was so weird in this place—they brought us in front of a mirror. We were forced to look at ourselves.

“See how perfect you’re becoming?” they’d croon in our ears, their breath hot and fetid on our cheeks. Becoming?

“The Master wants you soft and clean. You’re so lucky to have been chosen,” one whispered.

Though I wanted to scream, there was a part of me I didn’t recognize that wanted to believe them. As if they could read my mind, they seemed to delight in telling me, “Don’t forget the rule… pretty dolls don’t scream.”

Time seemed to both drag and fly. I had no idea how long I’d been there. No idea why I was there. All I knew was I slept, I woke, I ate what I was fed, and had the sickly-sweet drops placed on my tongue that I did my best to spit out.

So I had no idea how long it had been when he came.

The shadow people, as I began to call them, had roughly jerked me up from my cushion until I was on my feet.

They dragged me across the floor. As we neared the doorway, a piercing scream made me jump, and I turned toward it.

A dark-haired girl was thrashing and fighting as one of the cloaked figures tried to shove a dripping chunk of what looked like blackish raw meat in her mouth.

She kicked and rapidly shook her head as she clamped her teeth together. One foot shot out and connected with one of the mirrors. Where her heel made contact, it broke and spidered out to the edges.

I didn’t see what happened to her next because they pulled me out of the room and down the hallway to what seemed like the library from Beauty and the Beast.

That was where he waited. The one with white-blond hair and eyes like dead stars—dark yet oddly illuminated. He wore a ring with a deep-red faceted stone that I saw when he lifted my chin to study my face.

“Lily Callahan,” he murmured, and though he said it as if he was reading it off a list, his voice slid under my skin like cold silk. “Such a fragile name for something so… important.”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t blink. Didn’t move.

He circled me, slow, like a wild animal deciding where to take the first bite. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Though I swallowed hard, I straightened my spine and gritted my teeth. “Because you’re a sick piece of shit?”

He smiled.

It didn’t reach those empty eyes.

I’m not sure how I knew, but it wasn’t a human smile. It was more like a twisted mockery of the motion. “No, my dear. You’re here because you carry legacy blood. A whisper of something ancient. Do you feel it? The burn in your bones? The eyes of the old gods watching from behind the veil?”

No, I didn’t. All I felt was terror.

Then he reached out with icy-cold fingers, brushed my hair back, and whispered, “Your sister will come for you, of course. And when she does? We’ll have both of you.”

That’s when I realized this wasn’t just a random abduction. Nor was it only about me.

It was about Lyra too.

They wanted her too. Oh God. Memories of a time in my life I’d tried desperately to forget flooded back and things that I’d overheard made me pause—or maybe something inside her. Though I still had no idea what, I knew enough to be extremely afraid.

Before I knew it, he held my forearm in a bruising grip and had pressed something cold and metallic against my wrist. It was a small brand—not unlike a cattle brand, but one fueled and heated by something dark and sinister.

It seemed to burn through my skin, rewriting me from the inside out.

I screamed out and tried to jerk away, but he held my arm in a punishing grip, his nails digging into my soft flesh.

His lips curled back, and his canines elongated into glistening fangs.

My vision blurred, and I think I blacked out.

When I came to, I was back in the mirror room on my cushion. The other girls were still humming. The chandelier pulsed like a sick heartbeat overhead.

But there was an empty cushion.

The dark-haired girl who broke the mirror.

Time ticked by, and she never came back.

That’s when I finally understood the rule here.

Pretty dolls don’t scream .

They just waited for the next hand to come along and wind them up again—or they quickly disappeared.

But I wasn’t a doll. Not yet.

If Lyra was coming for me, she’d better hurry—because, despite my resolve, I could feel myself disappearing, piece by piece.