A flash came back to her, a memory of that last thing she’d seen before they’d knocked her out again, and it took everything she had not to move, not to flinch.
They were behind her. She could hear them, torturing Brendan. She didn’t know how he could still be alive, how they’d not killed him by now.
Ellin was not a weak woman. She’d spent the better part of a year in trim dress suits and spiked heels, managing the houses of the Division. But in all the years before becoming Brendan’s aide, she’d trained since she was a child, worked and learned and practiced. She’d studied Council law and been taught to fight for her kind before Morgan and the others had forced them to choose a side.
But that slim blonde was gone now, taken when these men had invaded Westlake and destroyed the right half of her body. All that was left of her was the warrior, the daughter of a Council elder with the blood of Sky. She was strong. She’d downed seven of their men before they’d strapped her into a truck, and drove away from the fire and destruction that was the Division headquarters.
“Back for more?” a sadistic voice taunted from behind her. Her breath hitched; she couldn’t understand how he’d known she was awake, she’d not even moved. He laughed, the shuffle of his boots coming to rest at her back. Her good eye opened in time to see him kneel close to her.
“Do you want to watch?” he whispered, trailing a finger over the ragged material covering her side. “He can’t last much longer, but I’m sure he’d want you to see.”
His hand rested on her hip a moment too long before gripping it tight, tossing her forward and then wrenching her head around to face them. Her hair was laced into his fingers as he jerked her again. “Tell him, Ellin. Tell him to give us the girl.”
Brendan was strapped to a chair, the right side of his body limp, as if his arm was disconnected, dragged out of socket. Splotches of blood covered what was left of his undershirt, some of it clotted, but most bright, wet as it seeped through from the wounds beneath. The material of his pants was ripped, revealing gashes and burns, and the fingers of his left hand were broken, dangling loose below the bonds around his wrist.
His head hung, but he looked at Ellin from beneath his brow, swollen and bruised, cut and bleeding. She could still see the unhealed scars from the day he’d released Morgan; the day he’d tried to save their prophet. He wouldn’t give her up now, not any single bit of information that would help them. He would never turn on Brianna.
Ellin’s jaw tightened as their gaze connected. These men would die for what they’d done.
A man beside Brendan grabbed his head, jerking it up to face Ellin, to make her watch as they played out the next cruelty. But everything stopped when the slam of a heavy metal door echoed through the space. Ellin shivered, despite her resolve, and they were joined by a new group, five men surrounding the one who led them all.
Jackson, they’d called him, though she had no idea whether it was his first name or last. She’d not seen this man, any of these men, before the attack on Westlake. She didn’t know why they were targeting Brendan or why they hadn’t bothered with Morgan or Aern; she only knew they wanted information on the prophet. On Brianna. And that there was something powerful about them. Something wrong.
The one they called Jackson stood beside Brendan’s chair, the soles of his leather shoes splashing into a pool of water as they came to rest. He was tall and lean with perfect hair and dark eyes. His manner was cool, always calm. Ellin might have thought him attractive if she didn’t want to kill him so badly. He unbuttoned the crisp suit jacket with one hand, smoothly pulling it away to roll up his sleeves. The motions were practiced; everything she’d seen him do quick and clean. She wanted to close her eyes when he reached for Brendan, wanted to not see what he was about to do, but she couldn’t. She had to watch.
Jackson smiled at her, a slow, sexy smirk that said he enjoyed his job, that said he relished her pain, but still, she didn’t look away. His hand met Brendan’s chest and the air changed around them. It had been almost imperceptible the first few times, but it was charged with something, some current just below the surface.
Brendan gritted his teeth, the slackness suddenly gone from his body, and the man pressed harder, forcing power through Brendan’s sternum, into his chest. Brendan stared at her, eyes batting in panic, chest frozen, muscles strained, and Ellin couldn’t understand, couldn’t see what this torture was. Time seemed to stretch as Brendan struggled against his restraints, and then she saw it in the color of his face, and she understood.
He couldn’t breathe.