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

  Chapter 3

  Exhaustion finally had its way with her, overcoming her better desire to remain vigilant for anything the stranger might have in store for her.

  When she blessedly awoke once more, thick-headedness was still there, and the aching in her body from the uncomfortable bed was stronger than it had been.

  Tamara sat up, her legs swinging over the edge of the mattress to the cold wood floor. She wiped her eyes, the pressure from her fingers helping to scatter some of the mustiness from her brain. When she dropped her hands and opened them again, the light in the room skewed for a brief second before falling back into place again, the strange symbols all over pulsing gently with power.

  She sighed, a deep heaving breath into her lungs and out again as the anxiety over the positions he had been put into flowed back into her being, strengthening the endless twinge in her stomach. Beads of sweat began to line her forehead and her face darkened as the blood flushed through her skin.

  Her hands met her gut as she doubled over, a wave of nausea coursing through her as the dread of her situation hit her again, and she ran into the bathroom to the toilet. She leaned over it, heaving over and over, but nothing came out. The pain from the retching dizzied her and she finally leaned her back against the wall away from the porcelain, gasping for breath.

  She stared at the pulsating wall, concentrating on it to alleviate the heavy, sick feeling in the pit of her belly, which slowly passed.

  She tried to think of formulas, words of spells that she could make use of to help her, something she would sometimes do in the middle of the nights she could not get to sleep. While it relaxed her in those dark hours in her room, it did little to ease the tension now. If anything, knowing she would not be able to connect with her magic and use any of the spells in her head made her thoughts darker.

  She tore her eyes away from the pulsing light, staring at the floor beneath her bare feet. If she could not do magic, and was stuck in the room without a way to break the barricade the man set up for her, what could she do to help herself escape?

  She had seen his power. His ability to defend himself was obvious, and his strength had to be extraordinary, if he was able to trap her in the way he had, so why was she there?

  He claimed she was important, but for what? What purpose could he have for her?

  He had given no indication, and nothing in the empty room gave her a clue as to his purpose, but she suspected it was not going to be good for her. And that dread only became worse when she looked at the arm he had injured, using that for some unknown purpose, too.

  Had he used her blood to tie her to the spell binding her in the room? Perhaps. She had heard of that kind of magic before, but never used it herself. It was too risky.

  While the entrapment was bad enough, what also made her blood run cold and forced her anxiety to rise was how he knew about her at all.

  That he could trap her was one thing, but knowing who she was and that she had abilities of her own spoke volumes about his ties to things no one should know of.

  The black Rose Society kept secrecy as its highest order, demanding all of its members remain vigilant against any and all attempts by outsiders to know what went on between its walls. In its history, very few of those had been revealed, the members keeping close to the vest the things the Society did to protect not only Tanglewood, but the world. As her mind flashed across the faces of the people she knew, the group of people who had, essentially, become her family, she could think of none that would violate that creed.

  Certainly none would do anything to risk her safety. She had to trust in that.

  If she couldn't, then there was a bigger problem, one with consequences that went beyond her own predicament. It could cost the Society everything.

  In all its years, its mission to protect the citizens of the town and the world, itself, from the dangers that plagued them through the influence of other worlds, dark magics, and creatures that had destruction in mind, the Black Rose had been a success. It held itself apart, never letting on that it was they who kept them safe. There might be a few who suspected its existence, but they kept it to themselves, and could be ignored.

  Ones like Samantha Miller were either brought in fully or kept under close scrutiny for any hints of their revealing information.

  Could it have been Sam? The thought chilled Tamara as she rose from the bathroom floor, a frown coming to her face.

  It was possible. But Tamara had gotten to know the woman well, and, after thinking about it for a while, she decided that it could not have been her. She might have her doubts about the Society and the way it worked, but Tamara did not think she would actually put her own family in danger by letting out what she knew.

  Besides, over the months she had spent time with her, Sam seemed to be warming up to the idea of taking a greater role in what the Black Rose did.

  But if this man knew about Tamara, what else did he know?

  She had only recently been leaving the compound for things not relating directly to missions. While she did spend time working with one team or another with what they needed, she was always with those teams. And none of the missions she worked with revealed anything to anyone outside of the facility.

  So how did he know about her existence? Not just enough to be able to track her movements and catch her, but to know so much about her own powers and abilities that he could put her into a cell like this and cut those same things off completely.

  That took intimate knowledge, and that was what frightened her the most. She was not only trapped, she was stuck in a place with a person who knew about her more than all but a select few.

  One other thing bothered her.

  She felt herself weakening.

  It was subtle, but she spent enough time working magic to know what she felt like afterward. There were certain cues her body did, such as the slight headache she could feel growing in the back of her mind, that told her she was, somehow, using magic.

  The drained feelings in her legs and arms, the headache, the hollowness at the back of her throat, all were signs that she would get after working magic.

  And as the hours trapped within the walls of this strange room passed, that drained feeling was progressing. Her strength was flowing away, somehow, just as it did when she worked with her powers.

  She plopped on the bed, the springs squeaking lightly as her weight came down on it. She closed her eyes for a moment, searching within herself for some sort of line, some connection to anything outside of herself. Nothing. A blank slate was all she was met with.

  It should not be possible, but dread began to course through her veins as a thought entered her head.

  Could the barriers she was surrounded by be getting fed by her own power?

  If so, the power of this magician went beyond anything she knew. If he had, somehow, tapped into her own connection to magic and used it to build up this barricade, he was stronger than any sorcerer she had encountered, even surpassing herself.

  Chapter 4

  Tamara's legs swung over the edge of the mattress, the loose-fitting jeans she had been wearing for two days hiking up to the middle of her calf.

  Her head was musty, the broken sleep and constant draining from the room getting to her in ways she could not counter. While she had been through worse in her work with the Society, she had never been trapped like this before, never subjected to a continuous pull on her power for days.

  She was wearing down and it was only getting worse as the hours passed by.

  She scratched her head, trying to slough off some of the sleepiness that still remained after opening her eyes again. Before passing out this time, she tried to meditate, to give herself a sense of clarity and balance. Usually, when she did it, she would come away from it being rested and could even get away with much less sleep overall.

  This time, though, she could not make it. Whenever she closed her eyes, she would see the face of the man holding her captive, the strangeness of his mannerisms.
And each time his face appeared to her, the anxiety in her grew.

  Even if there was no power behind it, she then tried to chant a spell or two, to allow the familiarity of it to comfort her, but that, too, failed her. It only served to remind her that in this place of entrapment, any connection to her magic she might have was useless, serving only to feed that which kept her captive.

  When her frustrations finally overwhelmed her, courage fled her and she gave in to the tears that wanted to come.

  Why was this happening to her? She wanted nothing more than to be of service to people, to give those who needed it help and support, not really wanting anything in return. Knowing she made people's lives better gave her joy.

  Where were her friends now? Where were the many people she helped when she needed them the most?

  She should not be angry, she knew that. It would do no good, and the people she cared about did not deserve it. After all, they didn't even know where she was, and perhaps were not even aware she was missing yet. How could they be to blame for not bursting through the door and bringing her out of this place?

  But it was there. She could not help herself. Even as she put her socked feet on the cold wood floor, she was disappointed in the family she had come to know and love.

  It was too familiar, too much like what she had been through before.

  Her eyes lifted to the door as a metal scraping sound met her ears, the deadbolt knob snaking back from its place.

  Before she could react, the door swung wide and the tall, gaunt figure strode into the room. He was dressed differently, his jeans and long-sleeved shirt clinging to his frame.

  He raised his hands and shouted a few words, the chant spewing from his lips even as she opened her own mouth to demand what he wanted.

  As the words of power escaped from him, she was brutally pulled down to the mattress by an invisible force. Her arms pinned beside her lithe body while her long hair skewed around her head.

  Her legs, too, were lifted and unceremoniously plastered to the fabric covering the bed. She fought against it, her limbs raising only an inch or so before they were pulled down again, while unseen hands ground her down.

  She could barely take a breath through the pressure on her chest, those same hands holding her in place with a crushing weight. A low moan was the only sound making its way through her own clenched teeth.

  She rolled her eyes down and saw the man step closer, his arms still stretched out in front of him while silently mouthing words in her direction. She tried to lift her head to see him more clearly but the pressure on her forehead made it impossible to do more than turn it slightly.

  "What -" she gasped out, before he moved his fingers and a new force pushed on her throat, gagging anything more from coming forth.

  He did not smile, did nothing more than mouth the words of the spell he worked to pin her down as fury and indignation rolled through her own belly, the roiling rage giving her more useless strength.

  The surge of adrenaline did nothing for her, though, as the man made it to the side of the bed and stared into her eyes. She tried to mouth words of her own but heaving breaths were her only sounds.

  He stretched out his right hand, his fingers splayed wide over her left arm. A subtle blue aura tinged the edges of his skin, barely visible above the surrounding white light from the walls. More words came, ones she recognized but could not fully grasp in her shocked and befuddled mind.

  His hand plunged down and grabbed her bicep, the fingers wrapping around with a force she did not expect from his thin frame. She tried to cry out against the ache that throbbed through her skin at his touch but only a trace of a moan escaped.

  More pain came as he incanted the words, rising with each passing second. It spread past her skin, driving deeper into the meat beneath, tendrils of burning.

  It worsened as the burning changed to acid and the whole of her arm burst into agony, trailing down into her own fingers and radiating up her shoulder into her chest. For a moment, her heart seized and her body shook with the ache, but her mind did not shut off.

  Her heart started to beat again when his hand came away, fingers still outstretched toward her. The immense pain eased to a dull ache as she watched him step back a pace, then two. She was still unable to move, the invisible force cocooning her to the bed.

  One of his hands dropped to his side while the other remained upright, while she thrashed ineffectively against the mattress. He reached the doorway and remained there for a moment, words still pouring from his lips. He stared at her with a blank expression, his brown eyes searching her for whatever was on his mind.

  Then his other hand dropped, as well, and the words stopped flowing.

  The hands holding her down were loosed and she sprung up from the bed, her legs, wobbly and unsure, streaked across the floor to the other side of the room as the door came closed behind him. The symbols of power flooded back into place and she was pushed back from the wood frame before she had a chance to touch it.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs, the breath forced out of her as her fury raged against the barricade. She pounded her hands against it, shouting words beyond her control, the outburst echoing in the chamber around her.

  Her anger still burned within her as she slumped against the barrier, her back covered in sweat. She took a few deep breaths through her nose as she tried to get herself calmed, but she could not let go of the violation the man had done to her.

  Her arm still throbbed where he touched her and she bent it toward her eyes, but there was nothing on the fabric of the shirt she wore to explain what he had done.

  She stood, her legs still unsure beneath her, and paced across the distance to the bathroom.

  She undid her shirt buttons and pulled her arm from the sleeve, staring into the mirror at the dark marks on the side of her arm, the colors heavy against her pale skin.

  She squinted, trying to make out the subtleties of it; it could have been a cross between a tattoo and a scar.

  She frowned, recognition finally stirring within her mind.

  Why would he do this? Why this spell above any others?

  She put her shirt back together again and the ire at what he had done rose again.

  The spell was a brand, binding her life force to his own.

  It was a dark magic, one that was normally forbidden by anyone in the black Rose Society to use. Necromantic magic.

  If anything happened to him, her own life force would diminish to keep him safe.

  What the hell was going on?

  Chapter 5

  For more than three hours, Tamara pressed herself against the unseen barrier, her back tingling with the lack of solidity, yet being unable to move closer to the door.

  She shifted herself slightly, taking some of the weight off of her knees. Her hand fluttered over the empty energy bar package she threw down only a short time ago.

  Staying vigilant for so long was not easy; a few times, she caught herself drifting away with thoughts of home and a hot meal. Once, the daydream was so strong she thought she could smell the spiced potatoes they usually served on Thursday nights, but she snapped out of the reverie before falling fully asleep.

  She wanted - needed - to be ready when the man came again, as she was sure he would. Whatever he was about, the plans he had for her had to be more than to just abandon her to the room and never come back. He had an end goal in mind, and, even if she did not know what that goal could be yet, she had to trust her gut that he would step back into the cage he forced her into and finish the job.

  In this place, she no longer had a connection to the magic she held dear, but that did not take away her other skills. She did not spend all of her time sequestered behind the walls of the Black Rose Society doing nothing but reading. She had been trained to defend herself. Though she had not been given her chance to make use of those skills when she was abducted, she could do her best now.

  She bade her time, waiting, with her back an inch from the wood, its
elf, listening for the barest hint that the stranger, her abductor, would be coming.

  "Vigilance," the voice of Sebastian Miles, the old man who trained her, filtered into her memory, "is ever the key."

  She closed her eyes, the scent of the old mats in the darkened 'action room' wafting into her nose. They were so aged, she was always surprised she did not see stuffing fly from the edges as her body came down from a tackle.

  She almost always trained alone with Sebastian. He was one of the oldest members of the Black Rose, and was given the responsibility to train those who were new in the arts of defense. While magic was useful and could end many situations quickly, it was always draining to the one who used it, and there were times when the tapping of that potency would not be the best thing to do.