A Touch of Belladonna Read online

  A Touch of Belladonna

  K.A. Fox

  Copyright © 2019 by K.A. Fox

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  A Touch of Belladonna

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  By K.A. Fox

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  Micah Matthews learned early on to never bring his work home. He always kept the two separate. Better that way. As a Consultant, he made a legitimate living offering tailored computer solutions for a company's tech problems. But he couldn't deny the thrill his darker jobs gave him. It had taken time but now his name was out there. If you needed a new identity, needed to leave yourself behind, Micah was the one you wanted. It was those jobs that allowed him to use his imagination, building whole lives that had never existed before he dreamed them up, giving people a way to run when it was time. He'd also found it was best not to ask why someone came to him or where they came from. He accepted their money, gave them what they needed and then erased all traces that might lead back to him.

  As he pulled up to his home, dark and quiet, he wondered briefly at his luck. He'd built a good life for himself and his family. The garage door before him went up silently at the push of a button, and he pulled in, his mind already anticipating the small bit of time he had to himself before his wife and daughter returned home. He absently checked his phone for any new messages, and seeing none, pulled his computer bag from the seat beside him and slid out of the car, confidently navigating the dimly lit garage through years of experience.

  He was unprepared for the hands that grabbed his arms as he stepped into his home. They were iron hard, grinding down onto his skin and holding him fast. He twisted and fought, desperate to pull away, but it was futile. He was dragged down the hall toward the back of his own home, his captors ignoring his cries of pain and anger. No one bothered to gag him or even warn him into silence. Light flared around him. He blinked the spots away and saw the everyday items his wife had used to comfortably decorate the family room for them. The soft gray chenille throw she curled up under to read a book was the first thing he saw as his vision cleared. The deep cushions of the couch he relaxed into each night. But when he saw the person waiting for him here, in this room where he relaxed and enjoyed his football games every weekend, fear choked him so completely he couldn't make any other sounds.

  The woman who faced him was beautiful. Coal dark hair curled around one side of her face, the other side swept back over her shoulder. Bright sapphire blue eyes framed with long black lashes watched the panic spread through him, saw the quivering he couldn't hold back. Deep red lips spread in a slow smile that bared her teeth. He was struck by the immediate thought that seeing this woman smile was like watching blood seep across her flawless, pale skin. She terrified him.

  “You recognize me, yes?” The accent in her voice was heavy, coating the English words with a sultry weight. When he didn't respond, she continued on, dragging out the words. “You know who I am?”

  Micah Matthews wasn't a stupid man. Answering was his only option. The one slim chance he had at surviving this encounter. “Yes, ma'am.” He didn't meet her eyes, fixing his gaze on the carpet at her feet. He felt a strange gratitude for the two men who still grasped his biceps. Without them, he'd have been on his knees before her, his legs unable to support him.

  “You will say my name. I will have no misunderstandings between us.”

  He heard the threat she didn't need to say. His dry mouth worked, trying to form words but nothing came out. The skin around her lips tightened a fraction and terror speared through him at the idea that he might have irritated her even the slightest bit. Finally, he found the strength to speak, the urge for self-preservation fueling him. “You're Belladonna Delgado.”

  “Very good.” She crossed the floor between them, small feet eating up the distance too quickly for him, her slight weight barely marking the plush carpet as she walked. His heart beat faster with every step she took and his head began to swim. When she reached out, stroking sharp nails down his cheek, he couldn't breathe, afraid to move at all. “Now, I think we can discuss something very important. Something you stole from me.”

  Micah felt his heart stop mid-beat, a shudder step that tightened his chest and made his mouth gape open. Sucking in air, he realized she was waiting for him to respond. Survival prompted him. “I would never steal from you, Madam Delgado. I swear.”

  “Oh,” she crooned. “I'm sure you wouldn't. Unless of course, you didn't realize exactly what it was you were stealing.”

  Cold flooded through him, his muscles seizing at the very thought. He frantically thought of anything he could've been involved in recently that touched on the Delgado family's business, but there was nothing.

  She didn't wait for an answer or a denial. She just gripped his chin, black lacquer gleaming on her nails as they dug in, slicing minutely through the skin. Forcing his head up until his eyes were even with her cold blue ones, she drank in his fear. He saw the flush of pleasure heat her skin for a bare moment before it faded, replaced by barely restrained rage.

  “Now, my men will show you a picture. You will tell me when you saw this woman. And how you helped her.”

  Micah didn't resist as he was pulled to the couch. He couldn't have even if he'd wanted to. He sank onto the cushions, glad he no longer had to attempt to stand. One of the men silently handed him a photo, wrapping Micah's shaking fingers around it when he couldn't force them to follow his own command. His gaze dropped to the picture, swallowing down his nervousness and praying he had the answers Madam Delgado was demanding. The young woman in the photo didn't appear to know she was being photographed. Her auburn hair was pulled back loosely, waves of it caressing her shoulders. A genuine smile bloomed across her face as she spoke to someone who'd been cropped out of the shot. Warmth poured from the picture he held. But he didn't recognize her.

  Shaking his head, aware this wasn't the answer he was allowed to give, he said the words anyway. “I'm sorry, Madam Delgado. I don't know her.”

  Her sigh hit him in the gut and he fought against his bladder's immediate urge to empty. “No, no Mr. Matthews. You will look again. You will look again and you will remember.” Her voice was cold, unflinching.

  Micah did as he was told. He looked at the picture one more time and examined the curve of the woman's cheek, the way her hand was extended as she leaned toward the person he couldn't see. His eyes traced along the outline of her figure, from her jaw to her elegant neck, then her slight shoulder and down her arm. A thin bracelet hung from her wrist, a shining charm suspended in air at the bottom. Something clicked in his mind, tumblers beginning to grind slowly as a fragment of memory unlocked. He dragged his eyes back to the young woman's face but an internal resistance stopped him. He fought against it but the effort was useless. Returning his focus to the bracelet and the charm, he let that single point fill his vision and the fragment that had begun to emerge expanded. Like a film, he saw his own hand passing over a file of papers, backgrounds he knew he'd built from scratch. With them he handed her a small, portable drive, one he recognized as his own design. He only gave those to his dark work clients. A slender hand reached out to grasp the file and drive, the bracelet sliding with the movement as it was pulled from him. He heard a voice whisper, “Thank you. Now, you need to forget.” He saw the bracelet with its single charm again as her fingers wrapped around his, colored pinpricks of light reflecting off the facets even as he felt comforting warmth surround him, and then he was alone. Drifting. That was
it.

  He tore his eyes away from the photo and forced himself to look at the leader of the Delgado Family Crime Syndicate. Licking his lips, he nodded to her. “She made me forget. But I gave her something. Backgrounds, identities.” He cast about for more details but there was little else he could add. “It was a long time ago. Five years. Maybe more.”

  Belladonna Delgado regarded him, weighing his words. When he didn't break the silence, she closed the distance between them and knelt down in front of him. Rather than relax at this gesture, panic erupted in his brain, signals urging him to flee flaring rapidly. But there was nowhere for him to go. Her hands gripped his thighs and she leaned in, even as he shrank back into the cushions. Anything to create space.

  With a practiced toss of her head, she flipped the precisely sculpted waves of hair that draped one side of her face over her shoulder. Without thinking, Micah sucked in a breath at what was revealed by that simple movement. Scars roped the skin, twisting it, pulling it into painful knots. The skin sank in beneath her cheek bone and the edge of her eye was canted, angling unnaturally.

  “It is grotesque, I know.” She released her grip on his legs, one hand tapping the photo he now clutched. “She did this to me. She stole from me and left me to suffer.” She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in. “And now, I will collect what is mine. So, tell me, where is she?”

  Micah could only shake his head, fear preventing him from forming any words. He couldn't tell her what he didn't know. He swallowed the disgust he felt as the woman in front of him pouted at his refusal, her lips pursing, the damaged skin puckering sickly at the movement. Nausea curdled in his stomach. He didn't have the answers she demanded. He managed to whisper, “She touched me and made me forget everything. I don't know. Truly.” He wasn't too proud to beg in this moment. “Please, you have to believe me. I don't know.”

  Madam Delgado pushed his knees apart roughly, erasing the little space that had separated them. “Oh, I do believe you. But she didn't take it from you. She hid it. We just have to uncover it.” Her fingers crawled up his chest, coming to rest on the skin of his throat, an uncomfortable pressure that promised bruising. She waited there, her gaze on his, moments ticking by. He didn't dare break the silence. She shifted her balance, her weight suddenly heavy enough to suffocate him.

  When she spoke, her voice was frigid. “So now we dig.” Aching cold suddenly poured into him, freezing the skin beneath her fingers and burrowing its way deep inside. His blood iced in his veins and the pain made him scream and buck. Heavy hands pressed him down and the unrelenting cold spread through him, peeling through layers until he felt it completely, a raw wound gaping open for her examination. The tears on his face crystallized and he screamed again, his voice echoing off the walls.

  Finally, names poured out of him, incomplete pieces but more than he'd realized he knew. The pain of it left him breathless, gasping for brief snatches of air as he could. When she was finally satisfied, Belladonna Delgado levered herself up, her hands blessedly leaving his skin. The men holding him down stepped back, flanking her. She pulled her hair back into place, covering the ruined skin, her beautiful mask unblemished once again. There was no hint of exertion or even emotion in her final words to him, nothing marring her accented voice. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Matthews.”

  He waited with eyes closed, expecting a death blow or shot to his head, but none came. When he opened his eyes again, he was alone. A door closed in the distance, and he sagged in overwhelming relief. He'd come face to face with Belladonna Delgado and survived.

  He stayed on the couch, pinpricks of feeling gradually returning to his skin as it warmed, until he heard his wife's car pull into the garage. He soaked in her gentle voice as she spoke to their little girl coming into the house. He loved the sound of his daughter's sweet laughter in response.

  He forced himself to stand, wanting to hold them close as he recognized the fine line he'd danced tonight. His work had followed him home and he knew this had been a terribly narrow escape. He stepped toward them, wondering at the frightened look on his wife's face and the darkness that was closing down around him, narrowing his vision until it went completely black. He didn't feel the impact of his body hitting the ground in front of the two people he loved the most in the world or hear their cries of alarm.

  Emory Kinkaide scanned through the channels, briefly stopping when national news caught her interest before moving on. She swallowed down bites of her small meal, dinner for one. This had become her evening ritual. One that provided a small measure of reassurance when she saw nothing that raised a flag of alarm.

  A name caught her attention as she was flipping to the next channel. She went back one, her heart stopping as she heard the reporter say a name she should never have heard again. Micah Matthews. The reporter cut to footage of an interview with Mrs. Matthews, explaining her decision to donate her husband's body for scientific study. She stilled as she listened, her food forgotten. The voices droned on but a few facts stood out. Micah Matthews was dead. His blood work showed something doctors had never seen before. Having no other alternative, they deemed it a new type of leukemia, aggressive and brutal. He'd been dead within hours of arriving at the hospital after fainting in his home. As the interview drew to a close, Mrs. Matthews wiped tears from her face and they played a video she'd taken of her husband shortly before his death, showing how determined he was that doctors be able to use his body to find the answers nobody had known they would ever need. Emory sucked in a breath as Micah's face appeared before her, pain and exhaustion evident in the gritting of his teeth in between the sentences he struggled to share. “I had to do it.” He grabbed for his wife's arm, the weight of his hand causing the camera to jog and blur before steadying. “They know what they're looking for now. And they'll find it.”

  Emory Kinkaide paused the video, her heart aching at the stark image of this man she'd met with just a few years ago. She'd tried to protect him, but they'd found him eventually. The half-moons marking his chin were familiar and she swallowed nervously, a reflex as she felt phantom fingernails sinking into her own skin again, a tactile memory she'd buried deep down. She caught sight of the bruises just visible on Micah's throat, her own skin flaring with pain as she recalled the insistent pressure of small, furiously cold fingers punishing her for transgressions and mistakes. She choked, knowing the torture Micah had suffered at those deceptively tiny hands. She remembered too well the agony of having your blood cooled so quickly that it began to ice over, crystals scraping the inside of your veins as your heart pumped, faster and faster, trying to push life through your system. She forced herself to look at Micah's eyes one final time on the screen, then turned off the television, unable to bear it any longer.

  Leaving the room, Emory woodenly carried the bowl of uneaten food to her kitchen and rinsed it out, pieces of vegetables and rice a maelstrom before disappearing down the drain. She looked up, the window above the sink reflecting her image and snaring her. The face there was pleasantly plain, nothing remarkable. Brown hair, brown eyes, thin lips and a nose that was neither too big or too small. Everything was just as it should be. No feature stood out, a specific calculation she'd made when she decided to run. She'd looked at this face every day since she'd started life over and it still didn't belong to her. Her magic coiled under skin that would always feel slightly alien, gathering itself before boiling up to press at the boundaries of her body, eager to find a way out as it was fueled by her racing emotions. Belladonna had done this unspeakable thing to someone who'd given Emory a way out of an existence that was killing her, inch by inch. He'd simply done what she'd paid him to do and while she'd tried to shield him by helping him forget, Emory knew she was the reason Micah was now dead. She forced herself to concentrate on deep breaths that slowed everything down, her heart calming its frantic beat gradually as she counted every inhale and exhale, a constant focus point.

  The magic responded, the stretch of it within her easing as she gained
control and her power relaxed. Emory looked at her reflection one last time. Even in the face that wasn't her own, her gaze was strong and steady. She could only go forward from here. She turned off the kitchen light with a flick of the switch, the face she wore swallowed by the darkness outside. She wandered through her now silent home, twisting the antique gold ring she always wore on her left hand. The words etched into the metal were familiar, her fingers tracing over them repeatedly as she soothed herself and trusted the ring’s ability to keep her magic contained, the glamour she wore intact. Without that protection, her magic would have been a beacon guiding Belladonna right to her door.

  Emory shivered at the idea of Belladonna finding her. She whispered reassurances to herself in the silence, checking every lock and ward as she turned off all the lights. The magical defenses planted around her home were potent but similar enough to ones utilized by every other magic user that they shouldn't draw attention. Hiding in plain sight was something she had learned to be very good at. But in the end, she couldn’t ignore the feeling that everything she'd done wouldn't be enough to stand against what was coming. She had to be ready. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes focused on the darkness above, wondering if her lonely bedroom was the only thing waiting for her at the end of that climb.

  The words Belladonna said to her at their last meeting echoed in her head. “You've been bought and paid for. Never forget that. You belong to me.” Emory pushed aside the pain those words dredged up and chose to remember instead her escape, the cruel smile she'd wiped from that beautiful face with her own magic, power amplified by love and loss in those terrible final moments. She replaced the hated voice she was hearing with her own, the steely promise of it ringing out in the absolute quiet of this home she'd made for herself. “Never again. You will never own me again.” She continued up the stairs, her spirit rising with every step she took, a tangible thing, filling the space with determination and resolve. Never again.