Chapter 1
Someone’s blood was caked into my hands, but I had no idea who’s. I stared at them like they were alien objects; totally foreign things that didn’t belong to me. A hand came down hard on the grey, metal table I was sitting at, rattling the chains cuffed to my wrists—and my teeth.
I turned my eyes up and found two men staring at me, one of them more pissed off than the other. They wore black uniforms, their shirts tucked into their combat pants and buttoned up to their necks. From their belts hung a set of handcuffs, keys, and holsters with guns in them.
Embroidered nametags on their chests identified one of them as Brickmore, and the other one as Howes. Brickmore, the man who’d slammed the desk, glared at me, the veins on his neck and bald head popping, his teeth gnashed together.
“For the last time,” he growled, “What is your fucking name?”
I stared at him, my heart beating a ragged rhythm inside of my chest. “I don’t—”
He jabbed a finger at me. “—don’t you pull that I don’t know bullshit again. It’s not gonna work, and it’s not gonna get you out of this place. Tell me the truth, or I’m gonna have to start pulling your teeth out one by one.”
Howes laid a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t know who it is,” he said. “You know what they say about these creatures, right?” He pointed at his head and made a swirling gesture with his finger.
It? Creature? Hearing them talk that way made me grind my teeth. I swallowed hard, pushing down some of the anger rising rapidly into my chest. I didn’t know where I was, what I was doing here, or even who I was, but I knew I deeply disliked the stink of these two men.
It wasn’t just what they were saying, or even the fact that I was chained to a desk in a dull, grey room made of what looked like solid concrete. There was something about them that made me feel like someone was dragging nails down the back of my brain. Every time I tried to concentrate on what I was doing here, on remembering, that sensation only got worse and made it harder to think.
“I’m gonna ask you one last time,” Brickmore said, “Do you know who you are? Do you know what you’ve done?”
He’d said it like he was accusing me of something. I looked down at my hands. Of killing someone. “I didn’t kill anybody,” I said, finally connecting some of the dots.
“You deny it? Look at you! You’re covered in his blood.”
He was right. There was more of it; on my hands, up my arms, across my legs and chest. Not only was I covered in drying, brown blood, I looked like I’d been chewed up by a wolf the size of a school bus and spat back out. My jeans were tattered and torn, and my shirt was ripped, exposing more of my skin than I liked.
But I didn’t have a scratch on me; not as far as I could tell, anyway.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, “I-I don’t know where I am.”
He slammed the desk again and reached for my face, but stopped himself short, his fingers twitching. Instead, he pointed at me again. “He was a good person,” he snarled, “A good man. One of the best. I’m gonna make sure you never see the light of day again, you understand?”
My mind reeled. I saw myself standing in a room, the walls painted with blood. I could smell it in the air, feel the heat of it against my skin. I shut my eyes and turned my head to the side, trying to fight the vision, to will it away. I didn’t do that. That wasn’t me.
“Isn’t it supposed to have wings?” Howes asked. “Where are its wings?”
Wings?
“They’re probably broken,” Brickmore said, “These Outsiders are always broken.”
But I wasn’t broken. They were there, under my skin. Hidden. Waiting. I could feel them now, even if I hadn’t before. The muscles, the bones, they were strong, and they made me feel stronger for having them.
I stared at him, scowling. “Let me go,” I said, my voice a low rumble in my throat. A warning. A threat.
“Let you go? I already told you. We’re locking you up and throwing away the God-damned key, fiend bitch.”
The word bounced around inside of my chest like it had its own echo. Fiend. No, that wasn’t who I was, or what I was. I didn’t exactly know the answers to those questions, but I knew, deep in my gut, that I hated the word more than I hated them.
“Maybe you’ll confess after a few years in this place; if you survive that long,” Howes added.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said, “You have the wrong person.”
“Tell that to the Horseman,” Brickmore growled, the spittle from his mouth spraying against my face.
Staring at him now, studying the hint of silver in his blue eyes, something started coming back to me. Not a memory, exactly, but a feeling. The chains around my wrists. I wasn’t new to them, I wasn’t a stranger to chains, or tight walls, or even darkness. There was something else, too. I could hear his pulse, the excited beating of his heart.
He was enjoying this, despite the accusation that I’d killed a good man; possibly even a colleague.
That was when I saw my moment. The room was small, barely large enough to fit four people, and the chains around my wrists—while slack—weren’t loose enough for me to grab him, but they hadn’t bound my feet, only my wrists.
Instinct took over, muscle memory blazing into action.
Twisting my torso to one side gave me enough leverage to bring one of my feet up and smash it into the side of Brickmore’s head. Blood spurted out of his mouth and he groaned, recoiling, his hands flying up to stem the crimson flow. Howes, alarmed, reached for his gun.
There was no way I’d have been able to punch or kick him from where I was, but I didn’t have to do either of those, because I had wings. Still running on instinct, I whipped around my chains and made my wings rapidly expand. They were huge, dark, leathery things but they moved like whips. I knocked the gun out of his hand and sent it clattering against a wall and to the floor.
“Oh shit!” Howes shrieked, his eyes wide and filled with grotesque horror. I slammed one of my wings into his face. The moment of contact was exquisite. Howes cried out again, only this time out of pain instead of shock. He staggered and fell into the corner of the room, clutching the side of his mouth, which was now also bleeding.
“You broke my mouth!” he yelled.
“Should’ve been paying attention,” I said.
With both men now injured, I turned my attention to the chains keeping me tied to the table. They were simple manacles; rigidly built, made of solid iron, and designed to keep someone from moving around freely. Something about them, though, felt familiar. Too familiar. My fingers were already starting to work on the linchpin that made them work the way they were supposed to, but without a tool, it was slow going.
A flash of light filled the room, and my whole body seized up, as if every single one of my nerve endings had decided to suddenly clench like a fist. I fell flat on the table, limp, my cheek hitting the metal hard. I couldn’t move. My whole body was numb, but I wasn’t unconscious. Not yet, anyway.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Howes said, through his swollen mouth.
“I thought you said you could handle her,” came a smooth voice. It was calm, low, and dangerous, like a panther’s purr. A third man was in the room with us. Had he been here the entire time? Why hadn’t I seen him, or smelled him?
“I have it under control,” Brickmore barked. I could hear the blood pooling in his mouth. By the sound of his voice, he wanted to do more than just control me.
“Why isn’t she collared?” the mystery man asked.
A nervous pause filled the room like an ill wind. “It—it looked weak,” Howes said, “It only had those eyes… no magic, no memories. It barely even put up a fight.”
“She should have been properly processed before being brought for interrogation, or have we already forgotten what happened the last time your people didn’t follow procedures?”
Another pause. It was like they were worried to even speak in front of this man. “We… we haven’t forgotten, boss. But this isn’t like last time. No one’s coming to break it out of here.”
“Give me another minute with that fiend bitch,” Brickmore said, “I’ll get it squawking.”
“The arrogance of man never ceases to amaze me. You’re both pathetic,” the mystery man said. “Get out of my sight, both of you. If I have to so much as look at you tonight again—”
He didn’t finish the threat, but he didn’t have to. Brickmore and Howes tried to leave the room so fast, they were stumbling into each other at the door to get out. Eventually, they did, and the door slammed shut, leaving me alone with the man who had done… this to me. Whatever this was.
Had he stunned me?
I wanted to move my hands, my legs. I wanted to get up and fight, or at least speak, but I couldn’t do any of those things. I could only think, and even that was difficult. The man I’d been left alone with started to approach, sending my heartbeat into a frenzy. While it was good to know my heart was still working, the fact that I couldn’t see his face—only his muscular abdomen, his belt, his pants—was too much for me.
He was doing something to me, though I couldn’t be sure exactly what. I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing. All I could do was wait, and seethe, and fantasize about killing all three of these men with my bare hands.
Finally, I felt something. A single touch of his hand against one of my wings. His hand was warm, his touch soft, and a moment later, a kind of strange heat moved through me, coursing through my body and relaxing my tightened nerves. Slowly, I flexed my fingers, curled my toes, licked my lips. I could move again.
“Sit down,” he said, stepping away from me.
I thought about attacking him, I wanted to attack him, but he’d manipulated my body in a way I wasn’t used to, and I didn’t want that to happen again. I needed to bide my time, so I did as he asked, crawling over the table until I could sit down again. Then I realized what he’d done. He’d pinned my wings together with iron manacles.
I tried rolling my shoulders, but they wouldn’t move.
“Uncomfortable?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I snapped, looking up at him.
He was tall, broad shouldered, with a barreled chest that was almost too muscular to fit into the black uniform he was wearing. A mane of black hair hung about his shoulders, framing a strangely beautiful face, with a set of light brown eyes flecked with gold and green. It wasn’t at all the kind of face I’d expected to see on a man who struck such fear into other men.
It made me lose my breath.
He scanned me with his eyes, then touched his lower lip with a black gloved thumb. “You truly don’t know who you are?” he asked.
“I don’t,” I said, searching for a nametag on him but finding none. “I don’t know who I am, who you are, why I’m here, or where here even is.”
“Do you remember how we found you?”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed like he was trying to peer into me to find the lies in my words. “We found you with a dead man at your feet, his blood all over you.” He was so soft spoken, so quiet, but there was power in his voice. Hiding, lurking underneath it like a wild animal. “You were arrested and brought here, where you’ll spend the rest of your days for murdering a citizen of the Coalition on the streets of Devil Falls.”
“Devil Falls? I’ve never heard of that place.”
“You deny coming here?”
“I deny everything,” I hissed, “You can’t accuse me of a crime I didn’t commit, and you can’t imprison me for it.”
“We can. And we have. Confessing to the crime will help you live with a clean conscience, but if a clean conscience isn’t important to you, feel free to keep your silence. It isn’t important to us, either. Regardless, you’ll spend the rest of your days here.”
I still didn’t know where in the world here was.
My mind continued to race, my heart now slamming against my chest. I wanted to tear this man’s throat open with my teeth. The urge to kill him was just as strong as it had been with the other two, if not stronger, despite the fact he’d treated me with more dignity than the others had. But remembering how easily he’d stunned me, and how easily he’d fixed me, gave me a reason to hold back, to wait, to think.
This couldn’t be right. I didn’t belong here. How could I have killed someone and then have no memory of it? And where had my memories even gone? I was being set up, but hell if I knew by who, or even why. I needed to figure it out, but one thing at a time, I supposed.
“You’re not keeping me here,” I said.
He studied me carefully, his eyes roaming, exploring, and pausing just below my neck. “No?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “No, and I’d appreciate it if you could talk to me without staring at my tits.”
Half a smile crossed his lips. He walked around the table, took hold of the shackles binding me to it, and undid them with a thought. The chains fell to the table with a metal clang, but before I could even think about striking at him with my newly freed hands, he had a new set of cuffs slapped against my wrists.
He was fast and strong—impossibly so. His scent wrapped itself around me as he moved me from the desk to the door. Oakwood in the spring, with a hint of something primal, animal, and wild. That scent struck a chord somewhere deep inside of me. It wasn’t quite a memory, or a feeling. I wasn’t sure what it was. Then again, I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to analyze it.
He opened a door that led into a well-lit, dull-looking corridor and handed me over to a fresh-faced guard who had been waiting for us outside.
“Get her to processing, then instruct the guard to send her to the hole,” he said, his voice distant and disinterested. “One night spent in there should teach her not to attack the guards at Harrowgate Prison.”
“Yes, Horseman,” the guard said, offering a quick salute and grabbing me by the manacles. “Move, fiend,” he barked, the word like a final nail in the coffin.
Those nails had been getting hammered in all night.
Fiend.
Murder.
Prison.
Horseman?
It was real. This was real. I had no idea who I was, who I’d killed, or what this place was, but I was here, and as I was marched down the corridor, I was starting to feel like I really never would see the light of day again.
