Chapter One
"Talya, slow down," my brother protested, a slight whine to his voice. It was bad enough that he was stuck trailing after me through Barneys, even worse that I was practically running from rack to rack. Time was running low – my father's dinner guests would be arriving in just a few hours and I had yet to pick a dress for the occasion.
"I'm serious, Tal. Slow down. You'll live longer."
"Live longer?" I repeated, scoffing and whirling around to face Nathaniel. "What does the pace at which I walk have to do with the length of my life?"
"Tal, tortoises are the slowest animals on the planet, and they live for like four hundred years," Nate said seriously. I snorted in response and rolled my eyes, continuing to scramble through the racks of clothes.
Nate and I might have been twins, but we definitely were not identical. Not physically or psychologically. I was glad for that, really – firstly, because we tended to balance each other out. Secondly, because I just thought it would be really creepy to live with a clone of myself.
It did sort of suck growing up and having to share my birthday with my brother, never having the spotlight to myself and all. But at least we weren't triplets or quadruplets or something. Women who have like five babies at a time were creepy to me. I always thought they were part Labrador or something.
"Hold this," I commanded, shoving my purse at my brother as I grabbed a few articles of clothing from one rack. I hurried to the dressing rooms and changed into a brown dress with giant black polka-dots. I struggled to tie a bow in the back of it as I slammed out of the dressing room for Nate's opinion. He was standing dutifully near the fitting rooms, holding my purse and looking kind of lost.
"How's this?" I asked him, doing a little spin and then planting my hands on my hips.
"Aren't you not supposed to wear brown and black together?" Nate asked curiously. He seemed to consider that a moment, and then added, "You know what, I like it though. It's like you're turning the fashion world on its head like the damned bitch-whore that it is." He paused again, smirking to himself. "What if Nietzsche wrote for Vogue?"
"Ugh, shut up," I whined, turning to go back into the dressing room. Nathaniel was no help.
I didn't get very far.
I swore that no one was behind me a second ago, but when I turned, I ran head-long into a girl standing there. She had all of my clothes in her arms, and was pushing me into a different stall than the one I came out of.
"Wha-" I tried to protest, disoriented.
"I'm sorry, the dressing room you were using is closed for – maintenance. Plumbing issues." The girl shoved me a bit roughly into the new dressing room, dumped my clothes into my arms, and then slammed the door shut quickly. I stared vacantly at the door, kind of terrified. What the hell was that? That girl had purple hair. I was pretty sure that none of the employees at Barneys had purple hair. And plumbing issues in a fitting room?
But whatever, right? I mean, it was just a different fitting room. I looked around, and nothing was out of place or weird. I shrugged my shoulders and set the clothes down on the bench, then unzipped the dress I was wearing and wriggled my way out of it. I surveyed the pile of clothes on the bench, fishing out a pretty dark pink dress.
I had yet to fully process the first surprise of the day – the girl pushing me into another room – when the second occurred.
I didn't hear any sounds that were out of the ordinary. There was no warning.
Just cold metal pressed to my throat from behind and a hand clamped over my mouth.
I made a muffled sound behind the hand over my mouth, a shout of surprise. His strong fingers blocked it. The man behind me was powerful and tall. For some reason, I was overwhelmed by the way he smelled. You'd think the guy who puts a knife to your throat in a dressing room would smell like cigarettes and filth or something. He smelled good. Musky, earthy. And why the hell was I even
noticing the way he smelled?
He had a knife to my throat!"You need to come with me," he murmured, low against my ear. He had a husky voice, and an accent I couldn't place. "You will die if you don't."
I remembered something I saw on TV once, on one of those Lifetime shows. It said to never let an attacker take you to a second location. So I shook my head and struggled in his grip. I realized suddenly that I was standing there in my underwear. What was he going to do, haul me through the store in my Hanes? Someone would
have to notice!
"You need to come with me," he said again, in a patient tone. "Your life – and your brother's life – depend on it."
Everything changed for me when he mentioned Nate. I would crawl into hell if someone told me Nate's life was at stake. He must have known that I had made a sudden decision to obey him, because his hand eased up slightly on my mouth.
"I will take my hand from your mouth, but you can't scream. You need to call your brother over. Tell him you need to show him your dress." His fingers slowly moved down, resting on my chin rather than on my lips. My mouth felt bruised, my jaw aching. His grip had been so strong.
"I won't," I hissed, refusing to bring my brother anywhere near this creep.
"Call out to him," the man commanded, his voice harsh even in a whisper. "Bring him into the room."
"Listen, you can slit my throat right here, but I am not bringing my brother to you."
"Talya?"
Fear turned my stomach to a solid block of ice when I heard my brother's voice just outside of the door. No, no, he
couldn't be here!
"Go away!" I shouted quickly, my voice cracking.
"Jeez, are you alright?" Nate said, sounding concerned. He
always knew when something was wrong. How could I fool him?
"Tell him to come in," that voice hissed against my ear again. I disobeyed.
"I'm fine. Go away, Nate!" I was panicking. Maybe I should have screamed for help, but the only thing I was thinking about was getting my brother away from this monster.
"God, fine." Nate sounded annoyed. I knew exactly why – he knew I was lying. He knew something was wrong. A terrifying realization hit me – he would find out soon enough that he was right. When my body turned up in the Hudson or something. I whimpered faintly and struggled against the man's arms, but he only held me tighter. I could hardly breathe.
"You just made an enormous mistake," he whispered, sounding almost stricken. I tried to elbow him in the ribs, but they were hard as a rock. It hurt my elbow more than it hurt him. He started dragging me backwards, and I struggled to peer around him to see that he was leading me towards the mirror. He slid his fingers under the frame and opened the mirror like a door, pushing it aside and revealing a poorly chiseled hole in the wall, leading deep into blackness. I gasped, my eyes flying wide open. How many girls had this horrible man kidnapped this way?
He stopped suddenly, his arm easing up slightly on me. He was looking down at me, I realized, when I strained around enough to finally see his face. I sucked in another gasp when I saw him. He was hardly a
man at all. He was young, and ridiculously -
absurdly handsome. He had beautiful dusky tan skin and dark hair, broad shoulders and black eyes framed by long eyelashes. Those eyes were currently on my bare stomach, and I blushed vibrantly as he lifted his eyes to my face again.
"Get dressed," he commanded quietly. I gulped, frozen in place by his black eyes. They weren't just dark brown, or any sort of black I'd ever seen before. They were deep, fathomless black - void of any color at all, and filling up more of his eye than most irises should. I must have been gaping at him, because he made an impatient noise and grabbed that dark pink silk dress I had been about to put on and shoved it at me. My hands were shaking as I parted the fabric, and then stepped into the dress, pulling it up and slipping my arms through the sleeves, tying the thick ribbon that wrapped around the waist in a bow at my back. He watched me do it, his eyes closed off and distant. I lifted my gaze to his face again, trying to decide if it was worth making a break for it. I swallowed hard and then decided to try, turning fast on my heel, wanting to run for the door. Before I could even turn all the way, I slammed into something hard. My breath was knocked out of me.
How the
hell was he suddenly in front of me?
I panicked and tried to scream, but his hand was over my mouth again. His grip was too strong; tears sprung up in my eyes, falling down my cheeks and over his hand. He ignored it, pulling me through the doorway the mirror had turned into. He pulled the mirror shut behind him, and then started dragging me through the pitch-black tunnel. My feet were bare and dragging over uneven ground, scraping concrete and brick. I had no idea where I was, what was happening. My eyes were squeezed shut and flooded with tears, I was sobbing against my captor's hand. I gasped and started crying harder when my feet suddenly touched water and sludge and my senses were assaulted with the stench of stagnant filth. The sewer.
I was struggling to keep up with the man's long strides, my feet bleeding from dragging along the ground. I could barely breathe through my sobs, and now I was being pulled through the sewer. It was still impossible to see through the darkness, and the tears in my eyes made it even harder to see. I shook and sobbed, but I stopped crying very suddenly when I felt something solid brush my foot. I gasped, my eyes opening wide as I looked down at the ground. There was suddenly a light, and I looked over at my captor to see the source. My mind spun. I could swear that the light was coming from his fingertips. I felt faint, dizzy and it only got worse when something brushed my foot again and I spun towards the water below me.
What I saw was undoubtedly the most bewildering and terrifying thing I had ever seen.
Crouched low in front of us was a mass of tangled dark fur, baring yellow teeth and staring at us out of glimmering black eyes. It looked like a wolf with clumps of dark green fur, seeming to blend in with the sludge of the sewer. But as it rose from its crouching position, I realized that it was no stray dog with a bad dye job. It was huge. It rose up to nearly the size of a horse, and I could have sworn my heart stopped. I was gaping at it, and suddenly I was clinging to my captor instead of trying to get away from him.
The dark-eyed man shifted, edging me behind him. The dog growled and I let out a yelp of fear, unable to take my eyes from the beast. The man suddenly snarled in return, a sound I had never heard a human make before. It hardly registered as bizarre to me anymore - I had been kidnapped out of a Barney's fitting room and I was facing down a green wolf the size of a horse. Suddenly nothing seemed unbelievable.
The creature suddenly leapt towards us, and my captor rushed forward, bearing the weight of the enormous canine.
"Stay back!" he shouted at me, as if I had some plan to join the fray. I was pressed back against the wall of the tunnel, my feet ice cold in the sludge and the hem of my dress soaked. I couldn't take my eyes off of the man and the wolf. Running didn't even cross my mind in that moment. The dog lunged for the man's throat, the both of them snarling like wild animals. The man lifted his arm and the dog's inch-long teeth buried in his forearm instead, tearing at flesh. I wasn't particularly concerned with my kidnapper's survival, but I was all too aware that the dog would come for me next if he defeated the man. There were tears in my eyes and I had my hands clamped over my mouth to muffle my shouts of terror as the dog tore at the man.
Quite suddenly, the beast backed off, yelping and howling. Through the darkness I realized that the man had a weapon in his hands now - a long, curved blade. He advanced on the beast without hesitation, chasing after it and swinging his weapon. The wolf made another lunge at him, and the man held up his arm again and sliced with his other hand, slamming the blade into the beast's throat. It made an awful keening sound and writhed on the end of his blade, pinned like a mouse in a trap. The man thrust the blade into the wall of the sewer, sliding the metal deep into the cement as if it were soft as a bar of soap. He was panting faintly as he turned towards me, holding out his hand. I immediately rushed forward, grabbing his hand with my own. His skin was warm and slick with blood - his own or the beast's. Suddenly my kidnapper seemed like a savior to me - he seemed much more safe than the monster-filled sewer.
"What the hell was that?" I finally managed to ask him, my voice trembling like a child's.
"Cu Sìth," he said, as if that name meant anything to me. I nodded as if it did, because damned if I was going to make sense of anything just then. I willingly kept close to my kidnapper's side now, my hands shaking a bit violently. He led me on through the sewers, his breath getting more and more labored. His clothes were soaked with blood. The dog's long teeth had torn up his arms, and I was pretty sure there was some kind of vital artery in there somewhere. I hoped that he at least waited until he'd shown me a way out of the sewer before he dropped dead. I did
not want to run into any of those beasts on my own.
"Here," he murmured, stopping and reaching towards the wall to find a ladder. He turned to me and placed his broad hands on my waist, lifting me up to reach the metal bars. My raw-skinned feet screamed in protest as I climbed, my captor close behind me. He reached up over my head to wrestle with what I could only assume was a sewer cover, pushing it off and aside. He helped me climb out and emerged after me.
As I stood above ground again, I realized that we were a far ways from Barneys. The alley I was in was trashed and full of garbage, and my view of the street showed graffiti-covered buildings and clusters of loud people. I was in a part of the city I never dared venture into. I was the daughter of the C.E.O. of a multi-million dollar company. I had no business in these parts of the city. I was just as scared of it as I was of that beast, and I looked to my kidnapper. He looked exhausted, no doubt losing blood. He put his arm across my back and started guiding me towards a door right beside us, ushering us into the building.
I found myself in a dimly lit hallway full of doors, each with rusty apartment numbers hanging from them. I limped along with my kidnapper, who led me to an endless flight of stairs.
"Why don't you just get it over with and kill me?" I groaned, stopping at the foot of the stairs. My feet were bleeding, my head spinning and my body weak. "Please, I don't need to cater to your sadistic games."
My kidnapper must have found this statement very amusing, because he abruptly snorted and grinned faintly to himself. He looked back over at me with a smile curling the corners of his mouth.
"What's your name?" he asked me, rather bluntly. I was taken by surprise, and answered automatically.
"Talya," I responded immediately. "Natalya Wharton. You didn't know that?"
"I knew you were a Wharton," he admits, shaking his head, one of his bloody hands on the banister at the foot of the flight of stairs.
Realization suddenly dawned on me, and I gasped and lifted my hand to my mouth, then planted both of them on my hips. "You're going to hold me for ransom, aren't you?" My kidnapper laughed again at this, and I felt rage bubbling up in my stomach at his simple amusement in a situation where I was terrified for my life. "You're repulsive, you know that?!" I shouted, crossing my arms firmly over my chest. "Kidnapping a girl and dragging her around, throwing her at giant man-eating horse-wolves-"
"
Hey," he interrupted, holding up a hand. "I
saved you from the giant man-eating horse-wolf."
"Oh yeah? And why?" I demanded, lifting my eyebrows at him. "So you can - so you can
ravage me?"
"
Ravage you?" he repeated, blanching and then bursting into wildly amused laughter. He had an odd laugh - a sort of wheezing, rough sound that sounded more like he was coughing than laughing. "Oh, you wish." He started to climb the stairs, still laughing. I gaped at him and started to slam up the stairs after him, furious.
"I do not wish! I don't know what you sick people have on your mind! You made a tunnel to the Barney's dressing room, I'm sure you're not exactly playing with a full deck of cards!"
"Can you shut up for a little while? I'm kind of bleeding to death right now."
"Don't tell me to shut up!" I shouted, still storming up the stairs after him. I gasped and stopped suddenly, letting out a shout of pain as I brought my already injured foot down on a step and lost my footing, scraping away more skin. I was in the process of falling when his arms caught me. He didn't even wince, despite the wounds under his sleeves - which were themselves torn to ribbons. He gathered me up in his arms, pulling me to his chest with one arm under my knees and the other across my back. I punched his chest a few times, attempting to get free, but he started carrying me up the stairs and I stopped struggling. Maybe it would cause him to bleed to death faster. Maybe I could get away from this infuriating creature as soon as possible.
And somewhere along the road, in the back of my mind, I had started calling him a creature. Not human. I wasn't sure what put that idea in my head - maybe seeing the whole giant green wolf. Maybe seeing the way he fought said giant green wolf. Maybe it was the fact that he should have bled out everything in his body by now, but he was carrying me like I was weightless. Maybe it was he blackness of his eyes.
But I think the thing that pretty much sealed the deal for my subconscious was the fact that the blood he was trailing up the stairs was the same color green-brown as a squished beetle's entrails.
