Engles gestured with an elegantly swept arm, encompassing the audience of at least a hundred of his guests. “We have resolved our differences. Please, enjoy the party.”
Like magic, the crowd turned back to its various conversations.
Reyes glanced down and spoke to Angelica in a forced voice of command. “You may stand now, slave, well behind me.”
She rose to her feet, her head bowed heavily. Her arms crossed over her stomach. He felt her remorse. More than anything, he needed to get her out of Engles’s home.
He was about to thank Engles for his party when he said, “A word, Reyes, if you will, for I want you to know that despite your slave’s unfortunate conduct, I have some good news for you. If you’ll come with me.”
Reyes wanted to protest, but Engles had already turned and now headed down the central hall that took him beneath the split staircase.
Angelica’s voice broke into Reyes’s thoughts. Do we have to go with him? I despise the man.
We don’t have a choice. He’s the gateway to what I need for Starlin’s destruction.
Angelica sighed. I know. My question was more rhetorical.
Believe me, if there was any other way …
Engles led them deep into what appeared to be the private part of his home, unavailable to his guests except by invitation. The hallway was part of a much older section bored out of solid rock. Again that odd shiver chased down Reyes’s back. Why did Engles’s home seem so damn familiar?
Reyes, you’re feeling it again, aren’t you? That you’ve been here before?
The chains didn’t lie. Yes.
Are you sure you haven’t? She sounded worried.
I don’t think so.
Engles led them to an alcove and through a doorway into a smaller room full of books and two maroon leather chairs. “Please sit down.”
With leash in hand Reyes took a seat, gesturing for Angelica to stand behind his chair.
Engles poured out a drink. “I hear you like a good Bowmore.”
Apparently, Engles had done his homework as well.
“I do.”
Engles poured from a crystal carafe, then handed Reyes a heavy cut-glass tumbler. He held the scotch beneath his nose but never took his eyes off Engles as he sipped. “Excellent, but I must say I’m honored that you actually have the brand I prefer.”
Engles planted his hand on his chest. “You do not have me to thank but rather Scorpion. He had you vetted and learned your proclivities and your background. I understand that you were a slave yourself once, but that you managed to elude your captor. I was stunned but, more than that, could not imagine how you escaped. So how did you?”
Reyes fell to a place of vampire stillness so that his mind could work on these swiftly rendered bits of his life. No one knew of his slavery, so how did Engles?
“I see I’ve stunned you.” Engles smiled and poured his own drink. He sat down slowly in the chair opposite. Behind Engles’s chair a slow trickle of water ran down the natural cave wall. Reyes watched the water, his mind turning in deep circles.
Reyes, what’s going on? It’s as though you’ve disappeared.
I need a moment. He needed several. What was Engles’s game?
But how did he know about your past?
I don’t know. He glanced around the room and felt uneasy once more.
And this place seems familiar to you, doesn’t it? I can feel it through the chains.
Yes. Like a dream I can’t quite remember.
###
Angelica touched the chain at her neck, focusing on Reyes and Engles at the same time, as well as this small, strange room. Suddenly it was as though the edges of the space began to spin and she felt herself drifting backward in time.
Another revisiting vision, a trip into the past.
After a few seconds the full vision arrived and she saw Reyes in this exact same space, because she recognized the narrow waterfall along the natural flow of rock.
There were no chairs, however. Instead, a hard wood platform took up the same space as Engles’s current chair. Reyes lay on the table, on his back. His face was bruised, his arms bound overhead. A familiar woman with a mass of curly red hair straddled him, riding him hard.
He cried out as if in pain.
Sweet Dove.
She lifted her hand, cloaked with the cat’s claw, and dragged it down his chest, cutting deep. Blood flowed from Reyes’s wounds. He screamed in agony.
Angelica felt faint. She wanted the vision to end, but she couldn’t turn away. This was Reyes, and she needed to know something about this moment in time. She needed to understand.
She worked hard within the vision to take herself backward, to see more of the room. Someone else was present, but who?
Then she heard him: “Yes, Sweet Dove, make him come like that. It will be better for you both. He’s taken enough for now. Focus on his cock. Slow down just a little. Let him feel himself low. The pain from the cuts will dim just enough and he’ll start connecting pain with pleasure.”
Angelica knew that voice. It belonged to the man opposite Reyes in the present.
Sweet Dove cried out. “He’s hard, Master Engles. So hard. I want to come.”
“Not yet. Lean down and take the blood from his chest. This is part of the process, the reward.”
Still straddling him, she leaned forward and lapped Reyes’s blood. Tears streamed from Reyes’s eyes, which were now closed. He moaned as her h*ps kept working him low.
“You’ll see. He’ll grow to enjoy all of it, including the pain.”
“And you’ll slice his memories after?”
“Yes, as we agreed, so that he’ll never think of me as his master. You were always a favorite of mine, Sweet Dove. And now you’re becoming the master. How does it feel?”
Sweet Dove turned to him and smiled. “A bit like heaven.”
Engles laughed.
Angelica had seen and heard enough. She released the chain at her neck and the vision faded.
Reyes, however, stood next to her now, his hand gripping her arm. “What’s going on?”
She met his gaze, blinking hard, as though trying to remove from her eyes the sights she’d just seen. Aloud she said, “I think I blacked out. I don’t know.” But to his mind she added, Reyes, I had a vision, but I can’t talk about it right now. It involves Engles.
“On your knees, and no more of this crying out.”
Did I cry out?
Yes. Just drop to your knees before Engles becomes suspicious.
She fell quickly, bending over to plant her hands beside her knees. She felt so dizzy and sick at heart that tears once more welled, then plopped on the faux-leopard trim of her black stockings. She’d seen the beginning of Reyes’s torture, and her heart hurt because of it.