Fury Read online

  “Nyx.” I said, giving his hand a quick shake.

  “Nyx? Like the goddess?”

  I shook my head, “It’s short for Onyx.”

  “Well it’s nice to meet you, Nyx. Thanks for the light.”

  “Any time.”

  I figured that would be the end of our exchange, but he surprised me when he sat down next to me.

  No. Go away, I thought, because something about this unassuming man was sending my senses into panic mode.

  “So, you live on campus or you waiting for someone?” He asked, and I found myself answering. Again.

  “I live here with two roommates.”

  “Friends?”

  “Yes. What about you?” What the heck was I doing? It was like my body decided to rise up against the warnings my brain was throwing out. ‘Stop the conversation!’ it was shouting, but I just kept talking.

  “I don’t live on campus,” he said as is lips turned up into a knowing smirk again. “You should grab a jacket before you go out. It’s supposed to be a little chilly later.”

  No, it wasn’t. It was going to hit ninety degrees before 10 AM.

  “I’d rather be cold than hot.”

  “You don’t like the heat?”

  “Not particularly.”

  He chuckled, standing abruptly and dropping his half-smoked cigarette onto the ground before grinding it into the pavement to put it out.

  “I’ll leave you to the heat, Nyx.”

  His eyes met mine, his laughter still encapsulated in them and even though every single part of me was screaming he was wrong. That something wasn’t right, I found myself protesting his retreat.

  Holy crap. Was I so desperate for attention from a normal person that I felt the need to cling to a stranger? One whose presence had set my entire body on edge?

  Callie’s whole life was souls, Iris was more interested in becoming a Watcher. I would be more than happy to leave behind a life filled with Oracles making deals with the desperate but still…Wanting to stay with a stranger? That was weird, even for me. He blinked, his lids coming down and hiding those blue eyes from me for a brief moment and the feelings of panic ceased instantly, replaced by the thought I should get back to our apartment. Now.

  I didn’t get enough sleep last night obviously. That paired with the soul business this morning must have messed with me.

  “See you around.” I said, hopping off of the bench and putting out my own cigarette.

  “Definitely.”

  The way he said the word had me high tailing it back to the front of the building, where I just about collided with Iris and Callie.

  “Hey, we were just headed over.” Iris said, happier now that she’d had a chance to wake up.

  “You okay?” Callie asked, taking in my expression.

  “Yeah.” I said, too fast and a little higher then I meant to. “I just forgot one of my books.”

  “Do you want us to wait?” Iris asked, but I shook my head.

  “No, I’ll meet you there.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Callie asked again.

  “I’m fine. It’s been a busy morning, I am still feeling a little off.”

  That answer seemed to placate her and she nodded, “All right. See you in class.”

  Why hadn’t I just told them the truth? There was some dude that gave me a weird feeling. They wouldn’t have found that odd. Furies had a natural aversion to humans. It was a survival instinct. The effects of taking a soul were bad enough, we didn’t need to feel overwhelming guilt too.

  So why had I felt the need to lie about it? And why was I still wanting to get to the apartment? My friends were here. Mr. Creepy wouldn’t have stood a chance in a crowd.

  I reentered my building, and even went as far as letting myself back into our apartment.

  I decided to go back. I’d meet up with Callie and Iris, tell them the truth, and to keep an eye out. I decided right then and there, but something was wrong.

  It was as if I didn’t have control over my actions.

  I closed the door, watched as my fingers reached up and locked it and then I walked to my room.

  I shut my bedroom door too, just as a hand wrapped over my mouth and nose, cutting off my air supply. Another hand wrapped around my waist and pulled me against a hard body.

  “I was sent to get you. We need a Fury.” He muttered into my ear, it would have been hard not to recognize the voice since I’d just run away from him.

  His declaration or maybe his touch, seemed to release me from whatever trance my body had been in and I reacted. I brought one foot up and planted it on the door, using it as leverage to send the two of us flying backwards.

  We fell back, knocking over my chair and landing on the ground. My head connected with something hard and I heard him curse, but his arms never moved from me, his hand staying locked over my mouth and nose. He didn’t even grunt.

  My vision started to go hazy and I’d lost my leverage. Kicking his legs was doing nothing and he still had my other arm pinned to my side.

  As a last-ditch effort, I tried to bite his hand, but as soon as my jaw opened, two fingers slid under my chin and snapped it closed. Then I tried to pull my head forward and bash it into his face but he lifted his head and when my head came back he used the momentum to pull me back into his collarbone. My back was pulled tight against his chest, and my last thought before the darkness took me, was that he smelled like cigarette smoke and had the feel of magic surrounding him.

  Chapter 2

  Awareness returned a bit at a time. My head was pounding and my eyelids felt heavy. I flinched when habit demanded I stretch out, my body felt like it had been crushed in a vice. Sitting up, I blinked away the last of sleep as I looked around the room.

  Had we partied last night? What time was it? I reached out for my phone on the nightstand… and found nothing. No nightstand, no phone. Just empty air as other details started to register.

  These sheets were too soft to be mine.

  The bed was too big.

  It was too dark. Even with my blinds shut the street lights or sunlight always filtered in.

  Thoughts swarmed in my mind faster and faster and then I remembered Joshua.

  I scrambled out of the bed, blinking as I willed my eyes to adjust to the barely lit room.

  My breathing began to quicken as I took stock of myself. My shoes had been removed, but my clothes were still on. So, Joshua wasn’t a rapist as well as a kidnapper. So why had he taken me? It didn’t matter. I just needed to get out of here as fast as possible without alerting Joshua I’d woken up.

  I didn’t even take two steps before I tripped over something lying on the floor and fell, landing on the lump.

  A harsh exhale sounded from whatever I landed on and I did what any sane person would have done when they realized they’d fallen on a body.

  I screamed.

  “Please shut up.” A grumbly voice said, as I rolled off of him.

  Joshua the kidnapper. Great.

  My body instantly recoiled from him, doing an awkward scrambling crawl in the opposite direction, not stopping until my back came in contact with the wall.

  “What did you do to me?” I demanded, thinking of the way I’d been incapable of stopping myself from going back to my room where he’d been waiting. “What do you want?”

  There was a shuffling sound, then a door on the other side of the room opened. Light blinded me and my eyes fought to adjust.

  “I don’t want anything with you. My boss does.” Joshua muttered, then turned his head out the door and yelled, “She’s awake!”

  I looked around the room, trying to see if I recognized where I was, but nothing about this room looked familiar. Wherever I was, I needed to get out of here. I realized Joshua had started throwing the pillows and blankets he’d been using back on the bed, the door still open.

  Some kidnapper. He’d left the door open and now his back was to me.

  I ran past him, my body seizing up when he
turned to look at me, but he didn’t try and stop me. He chuckled and muttered, “Your funeral,” before I darted out the door and a second later he shut it behind me.

  I didn’t stop to take in the room I was in before my eyes zeroed in on another door and I ran towards it. I needed to find a hallway, stairs, a front door, anything that would get me out of this house and closer to anyone else that could help.

  Throwing open the door, I didn’t stop to take in what was waiting on the other side and ran full force into a bare chest.

  Hands clamped down over my biceps as my eyes flew up to meet with dark gray ones.

  His dark hair was wet, and with the towel wrapped around his waist and the steam coming from the room behind him, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to put together that he’d come from the shower. He was taller than Joshua and looked to have twice the muscle, but that could be because most of his body was bare.

  “Good evening, Nyx. You smell even more like an ashtray than Joshua did.” Mr. Naked said, his voice deep and smooth. Inappropriately, I wondered why this guy hadn’t come to kidnap me. I might have gone with him voluntarily because he was so my type.

  Holy souls. When had I decided to morph into Iris?

  Ignoring the obvious lapse in common sense, rational me took over. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

  “My name is Salem. I sent Joshua to go get you.”

  Get me? As if taking a human being was akin to grabbing a loaf of bread from the store.

  “He took me!” I bit out, narrowing my eyes on the man.

  “Obviously.” He said, like I was one card short of a full deck. “It needed to be done as quick as possible.”

  “Let me go!” I snapped, shoving against him as I pulled myself free from his hands. I turned on my heel and my eyes scanned for the doorway.

  But there was no door. Not even the one I’d run through.

  We were in another bedroom, one decorated similarly to the one I’d just escaped from, but this one was bigger. The walls were made of a dark, gray stone, the floors a black wood with maroon rugs here and there. There was a fireplace situated on the far wall in front of a sofa and two love seats with a coffee table in the center. But the wall where I’d entered from—the one I swear a door had been, now only had a large bed pushed up against it.

  That couldn’t be right. I’d pushed past Joshua and run through a door into this room, but as I spun around in a circle, the only door I saw was the one Salem was standing in.

  “What the hell?” I muttered, taking another step further from him.

  “Not quite.” Salem said, heading back through the only door in this room.

  It was then that I came up with the only possible scenario.

  I was still asleep. I’d never woken up. Never gotten the soul. None of it.

  Kidnappings, disappearing doors and sexy, half naked strangers? Not what I usually dreamed up, but there was a first for everything.

  This would be the most vivid nightmare I’d ever had, but I had been functioning on little sleep for so long, maybe my body had just decided to shut down and throw me into the most insane REM cycle it ever had.

  I pinched myself hard enough to leave a bruise and cursed under my breath when nothing changed.

  Not asleep. Very much awake.

  Shit.

  I looked down at the now angry red mark at my wrist, and for the first time since I got here, my thoughts on escaping came to a halt.

  My wrist was bare.

  Where was Fitz?

  Nobody could take him off me. I couldn’t even take him off. Fitz would still be sleeping off the effects of the soul from earlier and even if he hadn’t, he would never leave me.

  “Looking for this?”

  I spun around to see Salem holding not my bracelet, but Fitz. He was still sleeping, but he was very much scales and blood and not a bit of metal bracelet.

  I surged forward, “Give him to me!”

  The demand got me a raised brow. He’d put pants on—though they were still unbuttoned—and had a button up shirt thrown over his shoulder. Under other circumstances, I totally would have checked him out, but this wasn’t one of them.

  He held out his hand for me to come and take Fitz from him.

  “I didn’t take him to keep him. What would I do with a vessel?” he asked, as I closed the distance between us.

  I scooped Fitz up from his outstretched hand and Fitz’s eyes opened. He looked confused—which made two of us—and began wrapping himself around my wrist and giving me a gentle squeeze like he always did. But instead of retaking his bracelet form, nothing happened.

  Then, we panicked.

  He squeezed my wrist to the point of pain and then released his hold. After he’d repeated it once more, I realized he couldn’t change back. The worry in his eyes as he came to the same conclusion had me seeing red.

  “What did you do to him?” I snapped, not bothering to try and play nice with the man in front of me. I could feel Fitz’s little heart pattering on my forearm, his eyes wide and alert. He began to move up my arm, slithering all the way to my neck. My hair had fallen out of the bun I’d had it in, creating a barrier between him and the cool air. Vessel or not, he was a snake and snakes couldn’t function in the cold. When he was in the bracelet form, he didn’t have to worry about it, the magic protected him.

  “I did nothing. The magic your Oracles use to make their vessels doesn’t work here. As soon as we crossed over, he changed into his true self.”

  Crossed over? “Where are we? What are you talking about and how do you know about me and Fitz?”

  Fitz’s little body shuddered and he moved again, continuing his search for a warm place.

  Salem didn’t answer any of my questions, instead he pulled the shirt off his shoulder, his gaze on my snake. Salem put his arms through the shirt and pulled it up onto his shoulders, but before he started buttoning it up, he watched as Fitz folded himself into my cleavage, his head poking back up a little bit.

  “Smart serpent.” Salem commented, before pulling his shirt on. The words weren’t rude, his tone didn’t have a trace of innuendo, but I couldn’t help but think it was wrong of him to watch and comment.

  “He’s cold.” I bit out, my temper still brewing on the surface and I wasn’t the only one. Fitz’s response was to pull his head up and hiss, his fangs extending as he eyed my captor. He might not be able to go back into his metal form, but we were still connected and we did not like Salem.

  “Not anymore.” Salem answered, shutting the bathroom door behind him.

  “You didn’t answer any of my questions.” I said, changing the subject from Fitz and his new digs.

  “I will.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Then you will help me.”

  “You kidnapped me. I’m not doing anything for you.”

  “I don’t have time for you to decline. I wasted enough just trying to find you.” He said, and started towards me, an action that had me retreating away as he continued on. “You can help me and I’ll take you home, or you can refuse and I’ll kill your vessel.” His tone was impassive, like he didn’t care either way, or because he knew a Fury without her vessel was as good as dead. My back hit the wall and my eyes widened and my head tipped up as he stepped up to me.

  Fitz hissed again, drawing up so his small head was at my eye level, his fangs still extended.

  “Black Mambas are among the most poisonous snakes in your realm.” Salem said, his eyes moving from Fitz and coming to land on mine. “I’m sure a human would find your mamba’s antics threatening, but he could drain ever drop of venom he has into me, and it would do nothing.”

  Fitz didn’t appreciate that. He coiled, his body ready to strike.

  Salem took one final step up to me so we were toe to toe, and Fitz had had enough.

  He could strike faster than my eyes could track and when my eyes caught up to his head, I was shocked to see his neck being held between Salem’s fingers and I
swear Salem’s gray eyes darkened as his gaze moved to me.

  “You will choose now. Help me or I snap his head off his body.”

  There was nothing but threat in his words and his face.

  I had no doubt he was serious and I was sure if I took too long to respond, he’d make the choice for me. But I’d just been taken against my will because he wanted my help. That seemed too… convenient. If he needed my help—which was the cherry on this bullshit float—and he was ready to kidnap me to get it, why did it seem like he wanted my consent?

  Did he want me to take a soul for him? I hoped not. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t since the souls had to be marked by an Oracle for me to take them. Had a friend or loved one been marked by an Oracle and he wanted me to ignore their name when it came up? I could do that, but if I didn’t take the half of the soul the Oracles were owed, the magic would take over and eventually kill them. Their soul would be stuck in the body, trapped in an afterlife that wasn’t death or living.

  Spirits, ghosts, apparitions. Those were all people who’d made their deals, hadn’t lived up to their bargains, whose Furies had either died or they couldn’t find them before the time was up.

  Still, let’s just say I did agree to help. What if I failed? Would he let me go home then? I could always agree and then run, I thought, latching onto the idea. Glancing at the window I saw it was still light out. The sun was setting but not gone. I’d only been missing for hours. I couldn’t be far.