Darkmore Penitentiary (Supernatural Prison for Dark Fae Book 1) Read online

  Dante’s laughter punctuated my footsteps as I ran straight at the three guards who were still on their feet. He tightened his air shield, pulling it back off of me to keep them away from him while letting me have free rein to play.

  Lee snarled as he lunged at me, throwing a fist coated in fire at my face.

  I dodged it and swung my leg around, aiming for the backs of his knees but before I could land the blow, the asshole shot away from me faster than was Faely possible. Or at least faster than was possible for any Order of Fae aside from a motherfucking Vampire.

  I cursed as my missed shot left me vulnerable to the two other guards who both lunged at me from either side.

  My palms hit the ground and I sent a quake through the stone floor, making it tremble and shatter at their feet.

  One of them fell, but the other threw a dagger of ice straight at my heart.

  I spun aside, cursing as the damn thing slammed into my bicep and agony ripped through me.

  In the next heartbeat, I tore it out and threw it at Lee as he shot back to join the fray. I missed thanks to his damn Vampire speed, but he had to leap aside to avoid it, buying me half a second so that I could press healing magic into my arm and fix the damage that blade had caused.

  I sprang to my feet, shaking the earth around me again as the guards ran at me once more. Vines shot from the floor at my command, grasping, reaching, hunting as the guards ducked and leapt aside.

  I caught one of them and my vines instantly grew and grew, cutting into him and pinning him down with the others in the thorny cage I’d created.

  He fought to free himself but I commanded the vines to find and bind his hands, effectively cutting off his magic and halting his fight. The others were already unconscious and he’d soon join them.

  Six down, two to go.

  I backed up as Lee shot across the room and I was forced to dive to the ground, rolling across my own vines, the thorns cut into my skin as mercilessly as they did my enemies’.

  I hissed a curse and sent the ground trembling around me again, but the hollow tug in my chest was warning me that my magic reserves were finally starting to run low. Digging that tunnel had taken its toll and I needed to end this before I ran out of mojo.

  The guard with the water magic threw a huge blast of it at me but instead of trying to avoid it, I ran forward, ducking my head and snarling my determination as I fought against the will of the current he was creating. His magic was weak and he’d thrown too much of it into the attack.

  The moment it faltered, I leapt at him, my shoulder connecting with his chest as I knocked him clean off of his feet where he landed on top of his friends who were caught in my vines. My magic instantly snared him too, growing and growing so that he was immobilised and I was left with just one stronzo Vampire to deal with.

  I turned back towards the vault and glanced at Dante just as he wrenched the safety deposit box open.

  Triumph sizzled through my veins and I grinned tauntingly at the final guard.

  Lee cast fire around his feet which burned my vines to a crisp and gave him a chance to shoot towards me again.

  This time I couldn’t jump aside fast enough and the solid weight of him collided with me.

  I let out an oomph as my back slammed into the bars and his fangs snapped out as he lunged for my throat.

  My heart leapt in panic as I threw a plate of stone from my palm, just managing to get it between us before his fangs could find my flesh. If he managed to bite me, I was done. Vampire venom immobilised the magic of the Fae they were feeding on and stole the strength from your limbs at the same time. The second that bastardo managed to bite me, I was doomed.

  Lee tried to break through the stone shield I’d erected and I threw a solid punch straight into his gut.

  He wheezed as the air was driven from his lungs and my knuckles sang with joy at finally being entered into the fight.

  I hit him again and again, catching him in the jaw as he was forced to stumble back. My stone shield fell to the ground as I abandoned it and I pressed my advantage.

  I clocked him straight in the nose and he bellowed with rage as blood flew.

  “Give up, stronzo,” I taunted, swinging at him again as he staggered back.

  My next strike caught him in the centre of his chest and he fell back to the ground with a curse.

  “Psycho bitch,” Lee wheezed as my vines snared him and I laughed like a madman as the thrill of the win washed over me.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I taunted.

  I tipped my head to the roof and howled, cupping my hands around my mouth and arching my back so that my hair swung down behind me.

  Dante echoed me and our combined voices bounced off of the walls of the confined space so that it sounded like a whole Wolf pack was in here with us.

  I turned my back on the guards and strode to join my cousin with a swagger in my step.

  “Fuck yes! Did you get it?” I asked, my blood humming with energy as the thrill of the fight faded from my limbs.

  Dante patted his pocket with a smug grin. “We could just leave now, you know?” he suggested, a soft plea in his eyes. “Forget about the rest of it?”

  I barked a laugh, throwing my arms around his neck and squeezing him so tight it should have hurt. He crushed me against him in return, knowing there was no chance in hell I was changing my mind.

  “You’d better come visit me, stronzo,” I said seriously as I released him.

  “When I get the time,” he teased as the two of us headed for the stack of auras at the back of the room.

  The Oscuras didn’t really need any more money. Our Clan was so rich that we didn’t know what to do with all of it, but it would have been a damn shame to leave all that lovely cash just sitting there.

  Sirens started up out on the street and I stilled at the finality of that sound. It was all well and good planning this, but actually going through with it was something else. I was born to run free, to lead my pack, to make bad choices and make them again. I wasn’t meant to be locked up. Maybe this was a terrible fucking idea. But I’d given my word now and I wasn’t going to go back on that. Besides, I had a debt to pay.

  “Tell Aunt Bianca I’m sorry,” I said, smiling sadly as Dante hopped up on to the huge pile of aura notes and sat on it like it was a goddamn throne.

  “She’s gonna whip your hide until it’s bloody when you break out of there,” he warned, pulling the pouch of stardust from his pocket and holding a generous pinch of it ready.

  “A morte e ritorno,” I said fiercely, quoting our family motto. To death and back.

  “A morte e ritorno, Rosa,” Dante said fondly, hesitating one final moment before throwing the glimmering black stardust over his head and leaving me behind.

  He disappeared alongside the whole stack of aura notes and I couldn’t help but laugh as I turned back to await my destiny.

  Instead of finding it, I found a pissed as hell Vampire with a fist full of flames charging straight at me.

  “Oh fuck!” I leapt away, but with his goddamn Vampire gifts he was too fast for me.

  His arms wrapped around my chest and his weight knocked me from my feet.

  I cursed him as I swung my fists into his side, his back, his head, punching him as many times as I could before-

  The sharp bite of his fangs cut into my shoulder and I cried out as my magic was locked away deep inside me and the strength slid from my muscles.

  He groaned in pleasure as he started draining me of my blood and magic, stealing what little power I had left.

  My heels scrambled against the floor uselessly as his weight pinned me down and I hissed curses at him beneath my breath.

  Lee groaned again as he stole the last dregs of my magic and a horribly empty feeling echoed through my chest.

  He didn’t remove his fangs from my shoulder, but his hands slid between us and ice froze my veins solid as he unbuckled his belt.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I grow
led, trying to shove him off despite the leaden feeling in my muscles which sapped all of my strength.

  A dark laugh escaped him and panic gripped me for a moment before he snatched my wrists into his hands and yanked the belt tight around them.

  He grasped a handful of my hair into his meaty fist and finally pulled his fangs from my flesh. But before I could strike at him, he shot across the room with his Vampire speed, dragging me with him by my hair and using the belt to tie me to the bars of the vault door.

  He stood back with a triumphant grin as he looked down at me and the sound of sirens drew ever closer overhead.

  “I’ll be praised as a hero for catching you,” he snarled wickedly.

  A bark of laughter left my lips as I looked up at him. “Joke’s on you, stronzo,” I said with a grin so wide it made my cheeks ache. “I always wanted to get caught. Besides, what kind of hero will you be when they realise my accomplice got away with every penny in the vault?”

  I kept laughing and Lee snarled as his palms lit with fire. “Well it’s a shame the Fae Investigation Bureau got here too late,” he hissed, his eyes lighting with a sadistic gleam.

  “Too late for what?” I taunted.

  “Too late to arrest you before you tried to kill me and I was forced to defend myself.”

  My eyes widened as a fireball shot straight for me. I lunged aside but with my hands tied, I couldn’t avoid the flames entirely.

  Pain exploded across my side and I cried out as the fire burned through my clothes and charred my flesh. It was agony unlike anything I’d ever known and it set the beast inside of me howling with the need for blood.

  “Coward!” I yelled as he readied another fireball. “Fight me like Fae if you think you can!”

  “Why should I?” Lee growled. “When I’ve already won? I’ll be praised for taking down one of the thieves who dared to steal from the Solarian Bank!”

  Fire flew at me again and I screamed as it blazed across my skin. The Wolf in me was howling, baying, begging to be set free and I did the only thing I could as I gave in to the call of the moon.

  The shift came on me hard and fast, my clothes shredding off of me as my huge Werewolf form burst from my flesh and my skin was coated in pure silver fur.

  My lips pulled back and I snarled my rage as I leapt towards the creature who hungered for my death.

  Lee threw more flames at me and the scent of burning hair filled my nostrils as I charged right into it. I ignored the pain as I raced forward, jaws wide and a growl tearing from my throat.

  Lee screamed in fright as my paws collided with his chest, the weight of my huge Wolf form slamming him to the ground as I bared my teeth in warning.

  He threw his hands up, fire blazing from his palms and pain seared across my body in an agony so pure I couldn’t think or feel or do anything at all other than follow the nature of my Wolf.

  My jaws pulled wide, a snarl left my lips and I lunged forward with one powerful snap of my teeth.

  The iron tang of blood coated my tongue and the scent of burning hair overwhelmed me as he pressed his hands to my chest in an attempt to fight me off.

  I shook him like a rag doll, tossing him away from me before stumbling back, whimpering in pain as I rolled on the floor, trying to put out the flames.

  Something metallic clattered into the vault and I twisted around as a canister rolled towards me, the top flicking open as purple gas spilled from it to fill the room.

  The second I inhaled the noxious gas, my bones twisted within me and I gasped in panic as the power of my Wolf was stolen from me.

  I was forced back into my Fae form without ceremony, a sob spilling from my lips as the agony of my burns flooded me. Without a drop of magic left in my reserves, I had no way to heal them and it felt like I was burning alive with the pain.

  “On your feet with your hands on your head!” a strong voice barked and I blinked through the smoke to see countless FIB agents flooding into the vault, each wearing a gas mask to protect them from the Order suppressing fumes.

  They held magic stunning guns and the one in front brandished a pair of power restricting cuffs which glowed blue through the smoke in the room.

  “On your feet now or we shoot!” the officer demanded.

  Somewhere deep inside me, I found a nugget of strength and clung to it with all I had as I pushed myself to my feet with my hands raised.

  I was butt naked, bloody, bruised, looking like hell warmed up and fresh out of magic.

  Not the way I’d envisioned this going…

  “Step towards us, slowly,” the officer said and I did as I was told.

  Just before I made it to her, my bare foot slipped in a puddle of something warm and wet and I automatically looked down to see what it was.

  Blood pooled across the floor, soaking my feet and making my heart skip a beat. My eyes slowly trailed across the ground, following the flow of blood back to its source and my pulse found an unsteady rhythm as my gaze fell on Lee’s lifeless eyes.

  My lips parted and horror washed through me. I hadn’t meant to kill him. I’d only been trying to protect myself. I never wanted-

  Manacles snapped closed around my wrists with a resounding clang and my eyes whipped up to meet the gaze of the agent who’d chained me. There was no mercy in the woman’s eyes as she scowled at me darkly through the gas mask she still wore.

  “Take her straight to Darkmore,” she snarled. “They’ll see that she faces the wrath of the law.”

  “CMF in holding,” Jack Hastings’ voice sounded over the radio followed by a boyish chuckle.

  CMF = Crazy Mother Fucker. He had a string of code names he thought were fucking hilarious. He also thought we were friends, so that went to show how switched on his single brain cell was. I could count how many friends I had on a closed fist.

  The new kids always seemed to think I was open to casual conversation and after work drinks. Apparently the murderous look in my eyes and the two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle that towered over them didn’t give them enough of a hint. You’d think the fact that I only smiled when I bled someone dry of magic and only laughed when the punchline was a dead body would have given them fair warning to back off. But no. Still, they tried to befriend me.

  Fact: every Fae in the world would cut my throat and take my position given the chance. It was what Fae did. I was about the only one who worked here who didn’t pretend like that wasn’t what everyone was thinking. It was what I was thinking. I wanted as much power as I could get in my veins. That was why I’d wanted this job. As a prison officer at the only maximum security penitentiary in the whole of Solaria, I had access to some of the most powerful Fae in the world within the cells. And as a Vampire, I was more than happy to bend the rules and sink my teeth into them whenever I got the chance to fill my magic reserves. Plus they tasted fucking divine. They were like different brands of candy and I couldn’t say I’d found a favourite yet. I was sure looking hard though. Technically, I was only allowed to bite an inmate to subdue them in an attack. But when it was my word against some lowlife criminal’s, who was the Warden gonna believe anyway?

  I knew where the cameras were in this place, every last one of them. I also knew when the guards who watched the security feeds changed shifts and that old Jeff always slept through from midnight to three. I organised my work hours around him, but the new boy seemed to be organising his pissing shifts around me.

  Hastings was like a stray dog yapping at my heels. He was fresh out of Starlight Academy with his shiny-ass certificate of excellence to prove it. Unlike the little shithead, I hadn’t had rich parents to pay my way through one of the prestigious magical training academies. I’d learned to fight on the streets and clawed my way up through society by brute force.

  After all the shit I’d done in my life, it was a miracle I wasn’t sitting behind these bars instead of looking in.

  Our society might have been based on climbing the ranks through a show of power, but that didn’t mean
there weren’t any rules. Killing outside of Council approved Fae on Fae tournaments, magical training accidents, through permitted jobs like mine and marriage pairings contests in Eastern Voldrakia, was strictly against the law. Besides murder, high level theft, bedazzlement, Order suppressing in children, and rape were amongst a few of the reasons the inmates of Darkmore had ended up here. To put it frankly, they were scum. And I was more than happy to drain them dry and make their lives as miserable as Faely possible. Nothing in my contract said I wasn’t allowed to enjoy it either.

  “Copy that?” Hastings asked over the radio, still laughing.

  Fuckwit. “Copy,” I grunted as I pressed the button, clipping the radio back onto my belt and heading out of the rec room. “I copy that you’re a fucking waste of oxygen,” I muttered to myself.

  The newbies were always keen, but most of them didn’t last more than a month. And Warden Pike just loved assigning them to me to train. I’d say she had it in for me, but she was a ruthless bitch to a hundred percent of the Fae population. Something foul and diseased must have crawled up her ass at birth and taken root in her soul if you asked me.

  I headed up the stairs to the double doors that led out of the Guard Barracks into the main prison. I pressed my palm to the magical scanner to step through the first door then again to open the next one, stepping through onto the first floor corridor. The staff only elevator stood to my right and I moved toward it, scanning my palm again and moving inside.

  I took the elevator down to the processing rooms on level eight, the mirrored walls reflecting me in every direction. Short dark hair, midnight eyes, teeth as straight as my uniform. I wouldn’t have stood out if I wasn’t over six and a half feet and built like a fucking Minotaur in its shifted form. I was the perfect weapon for this job. As a Vampire, I had super speed and super strength. There were only a few mean fuckers in this prison who really caused me any problems, but as their magic was on lockdown ninety percent of the time, I only had to worry about it the other ten. And in all fairness, I relished a good fight with a powerful opponent. It also tasted as sweet as pie to lock them up in isolation or send them down to Dr Quentin for interrogation. They didn’t look so hot when they came back from a visit with him. The guy even gave me the creeps. Magical torture was his speciality. And I particularly relished sending the rapists to him; it wasn’t hard to goad them into infractions.