Unholy Promises (20 page)

“One of the girls is the daughter of an influential Canadian, very influential. Another is the daughter of the Japanese consulate to the U.S. And one is a princess. We need a speedy recovery. We need the couriers alive.”

“How influential?” I quip, focusing on the Canadian girl, but he ignores my question and alarm bells ring in my head. I remember details about a Canadian drug lord’s long-standing feud with a Columbian trafficker, that he traffics anything of value—guns, drugs, women, children, even fighting dogs when there is a market, and it doesn’t improve my optimism on how tonight is going to play out. The thought of two rival cabals facing off in our public areas is one I’d rather not even consider. “Why Lewd Larry’s?”

“Recovery of an erased file on one of the girls’ computer produced information that they are meeting at Lewd Larry’s on the eleventh.” His voice holds an unspoken threat.

“Tonight?” I look at my watch, seeing that it is twenty-two minutes past midnight.

“It’s the twelfth as of twenty-two minutes ago. They may have already been picked up!”

“Hope not, Thomas. The girl’s father is en route to San Francisco under the general impression that Garrett Lawrence is behind the disappearance of his daughter and that Garrett is acting in conjunction with his Columbian enemies. With his power and the power of his Californian friends, he plans to have Lewd’s leveled by dawn.” He sighs heavily into the receiver. “Find the girls, keep them safe until we can extract them, and subdue the couriers. I’ll manage the father from here.”

The loud click in my ear signals that this conversation is over.

I do what I always do. I disassociate, forgetting for the moment Eva and Henri, cutting myself free of the emotions tugging me in a direction other than the job at hand, and head out to the main dance level. How hard could it be to spot underage girls?

Sadly, it isn’t the first time my duty has been such. Girls lured from the safety of their homes and families with promises of fame and fortune, not knowing that their new talent agents sold them as prostitutes into South American brothels—it happens on a regular schedule. They are victims, traffickers recruiting them through fake advertisements; both print, Internet, and in some cases radio ads, as has been happening more and more in Canada. Once under the control of the traffickers, the girls are confined, their travel and identity documents taken away. The traffickers quickly gain the upper hand, threatening that they will harm their families if they do not cooperate.

This isn’t why I was originally posted in San Francisco, but sadly it has become routine that I am called to retrieve children and young women being trafficked.

Descending to the second floor in the glass elevator, I spot them. Still together as a group of eight, they are very young and sitting in one of the conversation pits. Each holds a mixed drink, and though they look young and nervous, they are also excited, a brightness in their eyes says without words that they are on the adventure of a lifetime.

When the doors open to level two, my glare prevents any passengers from boarding and, just taking my eyes off the girls for that second allows them to be swallowed up by the crowd. Damn. I let my gaze soften, slowly scanning the crowd for the one thing that stands out like a sore thumb, because normal vision on the crowd below would be like seeking a needle in a haystack. However, their innocence back dropped against this crowd…

They have moved to the dance floor. Gotcha!

Though dressed to look much older, it is obvious that they are very young, fifteen, sixteen, maybe seventeen, but I doubt it, increasing my suspicion that we have someone here, working on the inside. None of our Security at the front door tonight would have let them in; but somehow, they are here, their captors buying them drinks, watching their reactions to the sexual activity in the room. It’s about making them feel grown up right away; to fit into the modeling world, or acting career they dream about, they have to lose their inhibitions to fit in with the cool crowd. Only two men guard them, but I know that somewhere there is a third. I stop the elevator, hovering between second and first, looking for their captors and finding them easily.

As I watch, the men encourage them to dance, helping them to shimmy their bras from beneath their blouses. It is a cheap trick to help them feel more hip and, one step closer to their goal, lowering the girls’ inhibitions. It makes me sick, and suddenly it’s very easy to do my job.

“Do not seek the because—in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.”

~ Anais Nin

My mind paces in its cage of bone and tissue. If I focus, my pulse, beating somewhere between my ears, is all that I hear. Sometimes I can even drown out my thoughts with so much noise, the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of blood shooting through my veins a very noisy thing indeed.

I think that perhaps it is night, although it could as easily be morning. Nothing here in the dark of my brain is factual. It is memory, or it is daydream, but it is not solid.

Nothing is solid inside my cranial cage, but better here than there. There being my body, of course. I left my body and the steel confines that hold it motionless when the first ache lodged solidly in my lower spine. That was hours, or maybe days after my palms had gone numb, my knees, shins and ankles just as useless.

A fact I can attest to is that Master is not here. He does not watch me and that makes me lonely, although I am not alone. Master would never leave me alone and unprotected.

I know that Enrique is here, standing watch, but only because the air ducts are wonderful conductors of voices.

“When will you be back?”

“Soon, I only need to go to the office for a little while.”

“I don’ like dis, I don’ like being Kitten’s keeper.”

“I won’t be long, I promise.”

I think that Master kissed him goodbye, or maybe I just imagined it. No, I think he kissed him. In my mind, I see Master wrapping his hand around Enrique’s nape, pulling his head close as he promises to not be long, the strong assurance of his hand wrapped tight around Enrique’s neck, making his words believable, and then his lips pressing into the middle of Enrique’s forehead, the promise sealed.

I sigh, wishing wistfully that it was my forehead being kissed goodbye with promises.

The sigh is a big, huge mistake that makes me remember my body. Shards of pain remind me of my steel prison. Trying to focus on the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of my heartbeat, it hides in the loud, pitiful sound of moaning and then sobbing. I hurt. I hurt all over hurt, but that is not why I cry.

I cry because Lord Fyre has left us and I do not think he is coming back.

Her name is Eva. That much I know. He dreams about her and he has gone to find her, although he has never spoken of her. Without his dreams and sleep talk, I would have never known of her existence.

I think he went to France. He always dreams in French.

Isn’t it odd that he dreams in French? Considering that his native tongue is Greek and he lives in the United States, I find it very odd that he dreams almost exclusively in French, though his dreams aren’t always of Eva. From his dreams, I know that he has lived a very dark life, or maybe his dreams aren’t memories, but honestly just dreams.

And then I wonder … if they’re just dreams, why do they wrench his soul so?

I hope that Eva doesn’t want him.

That was mean. I take it back. If he truly loves her as much as his dreams make it seem, then they should be together, even if she loves him only half as much.

She would be a fool to not love him.

Which means he won’t be coming back…

God, what was I thinking?

Perhaps that I could tell him about the baby…

Then what? Would he support my plans? Would he hate me and think me a horrible person? I am a horrible person … I want to kill my baby.

No! No I don’t.

I want this baby. If God has given me a second chance to be a mother, shouldn’t I take the chance? Even if I don’t believe I deserve it? Oh God. A baby will change everything. Everything…

Sobbing, choking on snot, it is only when a soft light blinks on that I realize I am hysterical, or if not hysterical, sobbing hysterically. Isn’t that the same difference?

“Blow!” Enrique commands, holding a tissue to my nose. I obey.

“Again!”

I blow again, but then I am retching as snot leaves my throat to go through my nose and vomit follows.

“God, you’re a mess. I can’ understand why Garrett would leave you like this!”

“You can?”

“No, can’. I can’ understand it.”

“You can’t understand it.”

“Si,” he answers, clarifying my confusion with his thick accent as he wipes my face with damp wipes pulled from a baby wipe dispenser. Handy things, baby wipes. They clean up all kinds of messes, even snotty, vomity kinds of messes.

“Are you done now?” he asks, holding my chin, looking into my face.

“Done?”

“Si, done. Wit’ dis … dis tantrum?”

I jerk my face from his hands, quite offended. “I am not throwing a tantrum!”

“Oh, si, you are,” he insists, pushing my bangs out of my face. “But it won’ get you out of dis cage. No, Enrique is just watching you, making sure you don’ die in a fire or somet’ing. Making sure you don’ die on your own snot and puke too. So save dis … dis theatrics for your Master. Because I am jus’ de house boy. Dis is not my bis’niss.” He takes my face in his hands and makes me look up at him. “If he knew … ju wold not be in dis cage. It’s no my bis’niss to tell him.”

He stands and the light blinks out as he closes the door, leaving me once again in pitch-black darkness. Oh God! Enrique knows about the baby? How can he know?

“I am not throwing a tantrum!” I scream at the closed door, not caring if he really hears me or not. I say it for myself, to convince myself, whispering it again, “I am not throwing a tantrum … and I am not having a baby.”

Going limp in my bonds, whether defeat or exhaustion, the sharp ache comes … and then retreats, leaving in its place the soft whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of my heartbeat …

not asleep, not awake either, trapped in my mind, remembering…

I walked into the living room when I heard their voices. It always makes me so happy when I hear them together. They love each other. They love me. My heart sings with the joy just knowing that brings.

Thomas held a small box, one I recognized from the fetish store Wild Things downtown.

“Master. Lord Fyre,” I addressed them.

With my entrance, their conversation ended, though the easy atmosphere remained, their mood seeming light. Master’s night, my brain clicked out in thought. If it were Lord Fyre’s night with me, Master would be tense, hating not that it is Lord Fyre’s night, but worrying because we sometimes play a little too rough, and that makes him nervous that someday we will take it too far and something disastrous will result.

I never worry about such things. Whatever happens would happen, life is too short to worry about what ifs.

“Kitten,” Master answered me. His gaze trailed over my nakedness, warming me, and it was as it always was with him … like it was the very first time he saw me naked. It made me feel shy in his presence.

“Come,” he called to me. “I have a surprise for you.”

Smiling, I went to him. Went to both of them, since they were standing side by side.

“Master?”

Reaching into the box, he pulled out a sturdy leather collar, fitted with several silver rings, and, lifting my hair, he placed it around my neck, above my golden locket and kitty collar that marked me as his and above the frayed rope collar that marked me as Lord Fyre’s. He tightened it down snug and it seemed an uncomfortable weight around my neck, but I didn’t say so. I remained silent and watching, wondering what an additional collar might mean, and being more than a little apprehensive about what it could mean.

I relaxed a little more when he pulled out a second collar, identical to the one he placed around my neck, and handed it to me. “Put it on Lord Fyre.”

My lips parted, being not as well trained as the rest of me, dying to ask questions, but by force of will, I closed my mouth and, looking at Lord Fyre, caught his barely there lift of eyebrow before his face went smooth and non-expressive once more. Oh God, is this okay? Did the raised eyebrow mean it’s okay to collar you or was it a challenge to try it

… or was it saying don’t even think about it?

Trembling, I did as I was told.

Lord Fyre’s skin was very warm beneath my fingertips as I closed the buckle and tightened it, before locking it in place. Master doesn’t master Lord Fyre, so I couldn’t imagine what was going on. Or, what was about to happen.

“Kiss him.”

I didn’t take my gaze from Lord Fyre’s, not the entire time I was placing and locking the collar in place or as I leaned in to obey Master’s next command. Kissing Lord Fyre was easy, so unlike our first-ever kiss. It seemed our mouths melted together, binding us as one being. I never wanted our kisses to end, not even when I knew Master was watching as this time, but the kiss did end, eventually, leaving me warm and feeling drugged.

“Undress him.”

My breath caught and I paused, not reacting, my gaze still locked on Lord Fyre’s face. My heart slamming through my chest, hands trembling, I obeyed Master.

Using me as his tool, he was topping Lord Fyre and I had no idea how to react, not knowing how Lord Fyre felt about that, not knowing how I felt about it, but I didn’t think about it, I merely obeyed. I slowly unbuttoned four buttons on his knit jersey before pulling it over his head and dropping the fabric to the floor, knowing that Master would have taken the time to shake out the shirt and fold it neatly before proceeding and feeling a bit guilty that I hadn’t, then reasoning that Lord Fyre never takes the time to fold.

His thickly furred chest bared, I could barely resist rubbing my hands over him, but I did, even though I wanted to do so, so badly, that it was a conscious effort to restrain myself as I dropped to my knees and unbuckled the leather belt at his waist. I unbuttoned his jeans because they only buttoned, didn’t zip, and my fingers shook so badly that a zipper would have been a kindness. Then the task was done and I was left pulling the stiff denim over his hips, taking down his sporty, gray boxer briefs with the denim, realizing only after I had the fabric around his ankles that I had to unlace his boots and remove them and his socks first. Red-faced, I barely managed it, but once I had him standing before me naked, I rose, pushing aside the pile of clothes with my toes.