Innocence: Black Rose Files Book 3 (The Black Rose Files)

  This book is dedicated to my ever patient and supportive wife, Jolene.

  Without you, nothing I do is worthwhile.

  Copyright © 2019 by Ira Robinson

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  OTHER BOOKS IN THE BLACK ROSE FILES SERIES

  Black Rose Files | Book 1 – SLIPPED

  Black Rose Files | Book 2 – REVENANT

  Chapter 1

  Soft light filtered into her eyes as she opened and closed them slowly.

  Flickering ache prodded her to move, her back pressing against an uncomfortable surface.

  Tamara's vision blurred while she sat up, the illumination of the room spreading out with the motion. Her stomach twirled with nausea as waves of dizziness consumed her, and she closed her eyes once more, holding the lids tight until the sickness passed.

  When she opened them again, her sight was clearer, though the fuzziness was still there in her brain. She took a deep breath and looked around the room she found herself in.

  It was completely unfamiliar to her, as was the bed she had awakened upon.

  The sheets and blankets looked old, their once whiteness turned a dingy gray, and whatever fluff the mattress itself might have once enjoyed, it was long past gone. Bits of the wood frame were chipped with use.

  The light in the room came from the walls, though Tamara could not see any bulbs. Instead, symbols embedded into the wood seemed to be the source.

  Each of the markings were strange, carved directly into the wall. The subtle white glow from them did not shed much light but the combination of them all gave enough for her to see by.

  She reached out to touch one of them near her, a circle with a dot in the center, but her hand could not get to it. She tried again, pushing harder against a resistance there that did not belong, but her fingers were stopped an inch away.

  She pursed her lips and used her other hand to brush back a few inches of hair that had fallen across her right eye, tucking it behind her ear.

  She tried to reach for a different marking but, again, was unable to get to it, blocked by an unseen force.

  A small table and wooden chair was near the bed. A pitcher filled with clear fluid and a plate with a few biscuits or something similar waited for her, but she did not touch them.

  There were two doors, both made of a similar wood as the walls and floor, but while one had the strange etchings, the other did not.

  She had never seen a room like this; for all the strangeness they had and she had experienced at home, there was nothing similar to it within the confines of the Black Rose headquarters. While it would fit perfectly there, she would have remembered something like this.

  So she had not been brought home. She was somewhere else entirely.

  There were no windows to try to catch a glimpse of where she had been brought, nor was there any sign of whoever had brought her here.

  She stood, her legs wobbling for a moment beneath her. She was still under the influence of whatever had been used to knock her out.

  When the feeling passed, Tamara walked to the door with the symbols on it and tried to push against it. As with the walls, she was not able to grasp the handle or touch the portal directly. Her hand was stopped short.

  The other, however, was not cut off to her, and she grasped the cold metal handle. She braced herself as she swung it wide.

  There was no attack by a guardian nor an outburst of magical discharge.

  She stared into the small bathroom containing only a sink, toilet, and a shower with no curtain.

  The walls there, too, were covered with the symbols.

  She turned to look back into the other room, confused and frightened.

  Who had brought her to this place? *Where was she?

  She scratched absently at an itch on her arm and hissed through her teeth as a twinge of pain shot through.

  She scrolled back the sleeve of her shirt, a dark green forest patterned one she had put on before going out. Near the crux of her elbow, a piece of gauze had been taped down. A spatter of dry blood glared back.

  She ripped a corner open, wincing as the small hairs on her arm were pried away with it. In the subtle glow of white light, she saw a small cut in her skin. It was not deep, but fresh.

  Another wave of nausea spun in her stomach as she realized whoever had brought her to this strange room had sliced her open.

  A deep chill strode across her body as anxiety turned to fear.

  Chapter 2

  Tamara's concentration faltered again as the flow of power she tried to tap into once more failed to form.

  She slapped the wall, her hand bouncing away from it before it could actually touch. She screamed in frustration and fury as the magic, normally as close as her own breath, abandoned her.

  Each time she tried, the markings on the wall shone brighter, the aural light they cast into the room brightening with white.

  Not only had she been brought to a place she could not get out of, whoever ensorcelled the room made it so she was blocked from her own power, something she had never experienced before.

  It had always been there, a part of herself as much as her hands or hair. From her earliest memories, she could caress it, bringing it to the fore in an instant if she needed.

  It was, she suspected, ultimately the reason her parents left her to rot at an early age, placing her on the bus for parts unknown and never looking back again. The power that was hers, perhaps, frightened them too much and they used it as an excuse to leave her to her own defenses.

  That same magic, too, was what drew the woman who eventually found her, barely clinging to life in a dingy alleyway surrounded by the rats she made her friends.

  Even then, the magic within her was potent, and that same woman brought her into the arms of the Black Rose Society, where she finally had a chance to flourish, surrounded by those who understood the good and bad being a magic user could bring.

  They taught her control, showed her how to not be consumed by the abilities she had and, too, to temper the emotions she, even now, carried with her because of the abandonment.

  But in this place, this room filled with unknown symbols and negating energy, the power she always wielded was gone, cut off from her completely.

  How had they done it? And, more importantly, who were they?

  Before waking in the room, she had been driving one of the nondescript white sedans the members of the Society had access to, heading back to the old building past the Rosewood Orchard that had been her home for so long.

  She was stopped at a light, waiting for the green to come on, having left Samantha Miller's small home only a few minutes before.

  Over the past six months, she had spent a lot of time there, talking to Sam about magic and other worlds and the responsibilities the woman had, now that she'd been exposed to power of her own.

  While most of the members of the Black Rose did not want her to be a part of their group, treating her as an outsider, even though her family had been such a major part of them from the onset, Tamara advocated - loudly - on her behalf. She had finally been granted permission to train Sam, with the stipulation she still be treated as more of an o
utside consultant than a full member.

  Tamara hated that. She liked Sam and, over the past months, had become closer to her than she was to most people. She, too, had been an outsider to the Society, once, and the rejection by her parents even this many years later still made her pause when she thought of it. It gave Tamara a sense of common ground with Samantha, one which most others in the Black Rose could likely not fathom.

  Sam, for the most part, was happy to take the teaching from a girl much younger than herself, since Tamara's eighteen years on the planet were filled with more things than Sam, herself, could ever imagine. Magic was not in her world-view until she was not only exposed to it, but nearly killed because of it.

  Tamara could not just let her fall to the wayside, risking her life falling apart because she could not control it. She could not, in good conscience, abandon her.

  Sam had a good knack for the power she controlled, though she started her training so late in life compared to most. Most people who could tap into magic had their abilities young and learned to control it as they grew. Sam was a different case, having been born with abilities that had been locked up tight inside of her until she was exposed to a breach. It took everything Tamara had to save her during that time, and that, too, perhaps contributed to the feelings she had for the woman.

  Her own sense of responsibility to Sam could not be denied.

  She had been at one of their weekly sessions together, this time at Sam's house, looking forward to getting back home and crawling into bed. Sometimes the training was draining and this time around was especially so.

  That's when the car door was opened from the outside and a tall figure slapped a cloth across her nose. Her breath inhaled quickly at the unexpected assault. A strange scent entered her nostrils and she blacked out.

  It could not have been chloroform. That took time to act on the body and she would have been able to fight off whoever it was that attacked her.

  No, it had to be something else, but what that was, she did not know. A dozen different plants and formulas that would do the trick came to her mind, and it could have easily been one of them. The effects of those, however, were not long lasting and she had obviously been knocked out for far longer. Enough so she could be brought to this place and spelled within the walls.

  That would have taken a few hours, at least. Binding of this magnitude took time to set up properly and the person who did it had been thorough.

  This was someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

  The plate of food and pitcher of water remained untouched. She was hungry and the after-effects of the substance used on her had her thirstier than she could remember being, but she did not trust it.

  It could be poisoned, tainted with something to hurt her even more.

  She went into the bathroom and stared into the small mirror above the sink. Her hair, long and brown, was disheveled and hanging at odd angles from her efforts. She ran her hand through it all, smoothing it out a little, but she would need a proper brush to get it under control. The slight blue tinge to it from the last time she dyed it was nearly gone, but, in the soft white glow, she could pick out the deepest parts of it.

  She tried to pry the mirror away from the wall, hoping there would be a missing component of the spell keeping her in the room, but it held fast against her fingers, and the more she tried, the more ache it brought to her short-cut nail beds.

  Her hand dropped to her side and she sighed, wishing she could somehow get a message out that she was in trouble. But with her magic cut from her completely, there was nothing she could think of to do that would help her.

  Tamara turned the knob on the faucet, hoping the water that came out would be clear enough to drink, but nothing came out. No noise, no gurgles, just the squeak of the turning of the knob and nothing more.

  Her heart sank. Even this was taken from her

  She tried the same with the shower, its modest size exposed by the lack of any curtain to block the view of anyone making use of it. It, too, gave her nothing.

  Pushing the handle on the toilet did cause it to flush, so she knew there were pipes connected to the room, but she was not about to touch the water in the bowl,

  She whirled around to face the room when a scraping met her ears. The door was swinging wide.

  She braced herself and ran, her feet crossing the few dozen steps to the other side of the room in a heartbeat, but was stopped shy of the opening by a tall man, buffeted aside before she could touch him.

  Her back hit the floor, bouncing twice against the hard wood. Pain flared between her shoulder blades and the breath in her lungs spurted out.

  She turned her head toward the door again, though, as she rose to her feet, legs wobbling slightly beneath her.

  He stood a few inches taller than she, his brown hair color matching her own, but it was closely cropped to a style only a few inches long. She huffed a few breaths in an effort to alleviate the pain as she watched him come a step closer, his thin frame barely concealing the small paunch.

  "Who are you?" she demanded, raising her voice. "Why am I here?"

  Was that anger upon his face? Perhaps, but he said nothing as he stared into her eyes, seeming to search for something in her own flaring emotions.

  The door behind him was still open, giving her the hope she could break past him and escape from wherever she had been brought to, but when her feet started to move again, he raised his hand and incanted a few words rapidly.

  She was, again, thrown backwards, an unseen force raising her from her feet a few inches and tossing her aside.

  She kept upright for a moment before crashing down again, wincing as her back side met the mattress of the bed. Her breath escaped her again with the fall, but at least this time she had no pain to go with the landing.

  She screamed in fury as she rose once more, words flying from her mouth as she unconsciously intoned a defense spell of her own, readying herself for another attack. There was no outburst of power, her words rendered inert by the magic encapsulating the room.

  "Try to do that again, and I will have to hurt you." His voice was deep, much more than she expected with the frame of his body. The anger remained written on his face, but could not match her own.

  She ripped her eyes from his face and stared at the open doorway again, but made no more moves to try to make it. He had shown his upper hand and was ready for her.

  He watched her until she relaxed her body, telling herself she had to let this play out for the moment, until she could figure out what exactly was going on.

  "Who the hell are you and why am I here?" she asked again, her voice echoing in the nearly empty chamber.

  She followed his glance to the table with the food and water, before returning to him once more. He did not look to be strong, physically, though the dark three-piece suit he wore could have hidden much. Whatever strength he might have in body, however, was nothing compared to the magic this man had at his disposal.

  That was very clear. Only a potent magic user could have done what he had so far. This was a man well-trained in the arts.

  "Do you understand, girl? I will hurt you if you try anything against me." His voice boomed across the barren walls.

  She lifted her arm, pointing at the spot the gauze sat on her skin.

  "You already have," she muttered back. It was met by a laugh.

  "That's nothing, girl."

  He turned away and walked the few steps back to the door. Instead of leaving, he bent quickly and picked up a small bag. A brief flash of inspiration shot through her mind; she should rise up and attack while he paid no attention.

  But he was already turning back to her before she could lift herself from the bed, holding the bag out in front of him.

  He tossed it to the mattress beside her, the plastic fluttering as the contents rolled inside.

  Her eyes flicked to it for a second before relighting on the man. She raised her brows questioningly.

  "You need to eat and g
et your strength up. That should prove I am not trying to poison you."

  Her stomach twisted. Did he know what she had been thinking? Or was he just smart enough to infer what was there because she did not touch what had been left for her?

  Two bottles of water and a couple of energy bars poked from the opened edge of the bag and she shifted her eyes back to his gaunt frame.

  "Eat. Drink. You're too important to go to waste."

  He swept the room quickly before he turned away from her and passed through the door. He slammed it in place, the glow of energy coming together again as the symbols joined.

  Her mind swirled with the closing of the door, wondering how the hell she ever got into this position, and fearful of what this strange man had planned for her.