Preparing herself for a lifetime as a sex slave. I grimaced. “And Abigail?”
“She’s upstairs. Watching…” Cariena groped for the unfamiliar word. “…the television.”
“Okay, okay.” My mind was spinning now. It seemed to be recovering faster than my body. “Here’s the deal. I need a weapon. Is there anything you’ve seen that would work as one?”
“We can’t do this. We can’t-”
“We can,” I ordered, making my voice hard and fierce. This girl had been beaten into weakness, and if those shamans scared her, I would make sure that I-her queen-scared her more. “And you will obey me. You’re my subject. You’ll get out of this alive-I swear it. You’ll see your family.”
She was still scared out of her mind, but she gave a weak nod. “I see Abigail and the Red Snake Man carry weapons, but there are none around. I couldn’t touch them anyway.”
“Alright. We’ll make do with…hey, is the garage attached to the house?”
“Garage?”
“Another building. One where they keep cars.” I recalled the garage but didn’t know if it connected directly to the house. Surely she knew what a car was.
She nodded. “Yes. They go in and out of it sometimes. It’s attached to the kitchen.”
“When you come down here, whose room do you pass first out there in the hall? Mine or Markelle’s?”
“Yours…” Cariena was clearly puzzled now.
“Perfect. I know what we’re going to do. Take me to Markelle.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, and I knew this was the turning point of whether she could help or not. The door was unlocked; I didn’t need her. But if I didn’t have her assistance, I’d have to knock her out to keep her out of the way.
“This way,” she said at last.
Markelle nearly threw herself into my arms when we walked into her room.
“Your majesty! I knew you’d do it. I knew you could…”
She wore a strappy little red sundress and had been applying makeup. Funny. I got dressed up like gentry royalty, and the girls here were dressed like human whores.
“Shh,” I said. “We’re not out of here yet.”
I hastily whispered my plan to them. Markelle understood instantly, and although Cariena still seemed terrified, she also appeared determined. I returned to my room, body tensed for action as I waited for my plan to unfold. Pressing my ear to the closed door, I listened as Cariena’s feet thudded up the stairs. Presumably she spoke to Abigail, but I couldn’t hear anything. A few moments later, two sets of feet came downstairs, walked past my room, and went to Markelle’s.
I opened my door a crack to make sure the hall was empty. Next door, I could hear Markelle having the nervous breakdown we’d planned-saying she was afraid to leave, afraid to meet this man, didn’t know what to wear…. Abigail, clearly irritated, began to scold her, much as she had responded to Leith’s whining. I waited to hear no more and turned in the opposite direction, heading for the stairs.
When I reached the main floor, I did a double-take. The house was beautiful, all new construction and designer decorating as befitted the neighborhood Art lived in. The gentry sex dungeon below us kind of detracted from the maple cupboards and crown molding, though. All the curtains were closed, the windows covered with iron grating, and outside I could just barely make out the Sleeping Beauty hedges blocking the windows too. Art’s lawn maintenance had been about more than aesthetics. The patio drapes I’d so admired weren’t laced with silver thread. It was iron.
The garage was adjacent to the kitchen, just as Cariena had said. The top half of the door leading out to it had a window covered with more iron grating. I turned the doorknob. Locked. There were no signs of keys anywhere, which meant I’d have to do it the hard way. First, I double-checked the kitchen and living room, looking for any other weapon options. On a good day, I could have taken Abigail with my own fists. This was not a good day. Kitchen drawers revealed butter knives, nothing sharper.
With a sigh, I returned to the garage door. This was it. The grating was loosely bolted, enough to keep it up and prevent the girls from touching it. Hoping I’d gained enough strength, I gripped the sides of it and tried to jerk it off. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, in one movement, it ripped from the wood. I froze, waiting to see if anyone downstairs had heard, but the deed appeared to have been performed fairly silently.
The next part, I knew, would not be so quiet. I dragged a chair up to the door and then grabbed a smaller stool used to get into high cupboards. It was metal and had some heft to it. Would it be enough? I stood on the chair and swung the stool forward into the door’s window. Yup. Enough heft. More than half of the glass broke. One more swing got the rest of it out, and I climbed through the hole into the garage. The whole maneuver was a bit awkward on my part; I wasn’t in that good of shape yet. But, I made it through, incurring only a few cuts on my arms and legs.
I knew, however, I was seconds away from Abigail’s arrival. There was no way that breaking glass had gone unnoticed. Small patches of light streamed into the darkened garage from narrow windows as I peered around. Yes, it was a normal garage-albeit it one with a Jaguar in it. I guessed that was why Art had to keep the SUV in the driveway. Part of me wanted to go kick in the car’s door, but there was no time. I had to assess the garage’s other contents. Scattered tools. Bags of fertilizer. Art’s gardening equipment. A heavy metal wrench held my attention for a moment, but then I decided I needed more leverage with my weakened state. I selected a shovel from Art’s gardening stash, its scoop heavy metal and wooden handle sturdy.
From inside the house, I could hear shouting. It wasn’t going to take Abigail long to figure out where I’d gone when she saw the glass. Grateful for the darkness, I darted over to the side of the door that led into the house, pressing myself as flat as I could against the wall. There was a click as the door from the kitchen opened, but no one came out right away. I could picture Abigail standing there, looking around for any sign of me.
After several heavy seconds, I saw a hand holding a blade-an athame-come out the door first, defensively positioned in case I came charging at her. That wasn’t my intent, though. I wanted to get her from behind. She took one step out, still cautious and slow, looking around everywhere. I had to give her credit for that. She didn’t just barrel forward; she knew I might be waiting by the door. And in fact, when she looked in my direction, that’s exactly what I was doing. My shovel hit her in the side of the head before she could react.
She crumpled to the ground, athame clattering against the concrete floor as it fell from her hands. I knelt down and immediately scooped it up and left the shovel. There was a bloody mark where I’d struck her, and her eyes were only half-open. My hand checked her pulse and found she wasn’t dead yet. She was going to have a hell of a headache or concussion when she woke up-which wasn’t something I could allow to happen any time soon.
I left her lying there on the garage floor and stepped back into the kitchen. I opened a few cupboards and found what I’d hoped I would: the household’s stash of medicine. Tylenol, multivitamins, et cetera. Behind them were a couple of prescription bottles. One I didn’t recognize, but I thought it was some sort of heart medication. The other was Ambien, and I smiled. Just like me, a lot of shamans were insomniacs.
I popped a pill out of the bottle, reconsidered, and grabbed a second. I then propped up Abigail and managed to shove the pills down her throat, with the help of a glass of water and some acrobatics with my fingers. “Payback’s a bitch,” I said when her reflexes kicked in and she swallowed the pills the rest of the way. She wouldn’t be waking up any time soon.
I stepped back into the kitchen and saw all three gentry girls standing there and staring at me. Cariena and Raina looked afraid. Markelle, though she bore a red slap mark on her face from the confrontation earlier with Abigail, looked excited and defiant. I ordered them to carry Abigail downstairs and lock her in one of the rooms. I didn’t know which way Art would enter the house and couldn’t risk him finding her on the garage floor. Of course, if he did come in through the garage, the shattered glass was going to be a dead giveaway that something was up.