Branded Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 3) Read online

  Book 3

  THE MACHINERY OF DESIRE

  series

  by

  Cari Silverwood

  For mature readers only

  This is a dark series and is written to be disturbing.

  This book contains adult language and situations only suitable for adult readers.

  * * *

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  The final novel in The Machinery of Desire series,

  Book 4, Exquisite Possession

  Releases July 2018

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Glossary and Characters

  Landship Illustration

  About Cari Silverwood

  Acknowledgements & Copyright

  Chapter 1

  A Glossary of the world of Aerthe, a character list, and a labelled illustration of a landship, can be found in Contents.

  Gio blinked to keep her eyes open. Tired, sore, and every heartbeat made her head want to explode. Seeing her feet helped her weather the pain from her left arm. She couldn’t touch it due to her neck being locked to the wall and her wrists fastened at her back. Couldn’t free her right arm to feel the left. She’d thought she was ready for death but what a joke that was – no one was ever ready.

  She owed so many. Dying would accomplish nothing.

  This blood-snack room was deep within the bowels of the royal landship. She barely felt the rock as the great vessel’s tracks and wheels traversed terrain. The sound of the engines was distant. The hum of voices was muted yet thousands lived here. Thousands, and during the past hour she’d personally watched that number go down.

  Three women had died in this room, as far as she could tell from the bodies rolled aside to nestle into the steel walls. Didn’t matter how pretty or young, or even how smart you were. These Mekkers were having some sort of orgy cross bloody gourmet party.

  Illegal? Probably.

  Likely to be interrupted? Probably not, from the laughter and the attire of the men. They were rich, high-class assholes. Their clothes were...had been sumptuous. Though the women were mostly naked, the men had also lost clothes. Surprise, surprise.

  Discarded garments carpeted the floor and gave the thick blue rug a motley look. Past her toes were hints of torn dresses, edges of fabric, undergarments, pants, a wig, sex toys, dildos, ropes. She refused to raise her head.

  After she’d comprehended what blood snacks were, she’d looked down – even when someone came to the wall for a fresh woman.

  She was the last. Maybe being smart did matter.

  Chained to this wall, the women had been chosen, one by one, until only she remained. Her left arm throbbed and she glimpsed the bluish tinge of her skin. Left alone in her cell after the injection, she’d tied a pressure bandage over the needle mark. It worked for snake bite...

  One of the women had died before they took her off the wall. Whatever the drug might be, the dosage wasn’t fine-tuned.

  Did they know her crimes? Slitting Drette’s throat hadn’t been her proudest moment but it was her best.

  Smart to slow the spread of the drug, to use the leftover wrapping from her meals as a bandage. Everyone else brought to this room had fallen off the proverbial cliff, had been fucked and sucked of blood – the men’s mouths moving greedily over bodies, plastering over the neck port of whatever girl they currently had their dick in. Orgasms were had by all. Yay. The girls might come but they were oblivious.

  Her neck chain clinked when she slumped, her back rendered cold by contact with the wall. Cotton and skin against steel and rivets. Her legs ached nearly as much as her bandaged arm.

  Another quavering female whimper, then a groan from a man, made her shut her eyes and tense. Ignore them.

  Maybe the men were too stupid to see the bandage? Maybe they just wanted her to be last?

  Or the bruises put them off. The purple-and-black splotch had crept from her face down to her neck in the hours after the lawgiver smacked her. The steel of her cell door had let her examine the injury. The law here was an ass, but that’d been true of cops on Earth too. Some, anyway.

  If they left her much longer, her arm would die from lack of blood. The blueness, the numbness, were bad, bad signs. As if that would matter soon.

  The fucking continued.

  The slap of skin on skin, the moans, the derisive chuckling as one of the last living girls splayed on the couches spasmed in orgasm. The smell of spilled cum and sexual fluids thickened the air.

  She was going to die. Sentenced to death by the courts, she’d thought the lawgivers who’d tortured her for information about Drette and his portal magic would be the ones to do that.

  Not so.

  Someone whispered “Fuck, fuck, fuck” in the Mekker language.

  The panting and subvocal curses, the creak of couch and thump of feet on floor, told her a man had risen. She kept her head down until he arrived, then she gathered her courage and looked up.

  Him.

  Within the first few minutes she’d seen him tear the clothes off a girl and the plug from her neck port. He’d shoved his lips over her leaking neck and sucked. Pinned, she’d struggled but failed to get away. She’d appeared to faint. Only then did he decide sex was an option and had pulled apart her thighs.

  Heavy-set, watery eyes and mouth with redness around them. Ugly, bald, beastlike male.

  She curled her mouth in derision.

  He was drugged, if not by the same arousal-inducing concoction given to the women.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, staggering, grinning. Or was it her vision that was off kilter? She’d have slid down the wall to the floor if they’d let her. Everything had a wobble to it.

  “Hi,” she whispered. Replying might delay him.

  “You’re still here? Wet yet?” His grin widened to one that’d not shame a crocodile.

  Every time they came to fetch another woman, they’d tried her, Gio – placed their hand between her legs, squashing the light cotton and lace of her dress into her pussy. Every time, they’d grunted and moved on.

  They wanted wet females and seriously that was a problem when she was scared to death of what they me
ant to do to her...and her arm was about to fall off.

  With a smack that made her flinch, he put his hand on her then wriggled a finger partway inside.

  “Dry still? No fun.” He peered at the bandage and tapped it, made her squeak and flinch again, because that really had hurt. The nerves still functioned. “I’m guessing this is the culprit? Clever, clever bitch. Want to keep your arm or want to have fun?”

  She stared back, overwhelmed.

  “I can leave it like this. Either way I’m sucking you, fucking you. Last choice.” His grin morphed into a sloppy leer. “Humans are so fucking tasty.”

  She’d rather be lucid for her last moments...wouldn’t she? Letting them control her was repulsive. As if they weren’t doing that anyway. She hated giving in. The drug would flood her system if he undid the bandage.

  He shrugged. With wavering hand, he reached for the lock on her neck chain. “Never had one with a fucking blue arm.”

  She didn’t want to know this and feel it, did she? Why make herself feel the pain, the humiliation? Tears welled. Give in. There was no gain in suffering. She parted her lips to speak, and her knees picked that second to shake. She wedged her back into the wall in an attempt stop herself falling.

  “Wait. Wait.” She swallowed. This was it. There was no hope; no one on the Aerthe cared enough to help her. No one. Give in.

  “What’d you say?”

  Her ears rang in a thin, high tone – a sign she remembered from times when she’d fainted – at school, on a jog at the park.

  Fuck. “I –”

  Another man rose behind her molester. A cloak with a hood partially concealed his face.

  How quietly he’d arrived. Shadows shifted. Something was raised, dark in his hand.

  The blow or shot, took out a fair portion of the bald one’s head.

  Silently, apart from the ringing, and a soft pop, blood spattered her.

  She couldn’t deny the thrill as he crumpled to the floor – the exultation. Die, asshole.

  “Evening,” the remaining man murmured. “Nice party.” His lips were thick with promise of evil. They arched lopsidedly, as if this grim reaper attempted a morbid sneer.

  Her heart clenched painfully. Was she next?

  But the assassin turned away. He’d surpassed the bald one’s height by a foot, and wore scars on a face that was not normal. She watched as he stalked the room, finding new prey, assessing who was where.

  He raised his hand again and this time she saw the lines of a gun.

  The lights were low and they were all intoxicated by blood and sex and liquor of some variety – their undoing. The poor fucking souls. They didn’t see him coming, until they were a millisecond from dead.

  One squawked and scooted along the couch on his back. One gasped. The rest died without knowing. A shot to the back of the head, same as baldie. Pop. Pop, pop.

  With each kill, a flicker of blue erupted from his weapon. She smiled and kept herself upright by making judicious use of wall. Bye-bye. If she died from gangrene, it was worth it, just to see vengeance dealt. Her vengeance, god knew what his reasons were...

  Then. Oh, fuck then...

  He aimed at the first girl and she held her breath, muttering a tear-filled prayer, but he felt the girl’s neck then shot her anyway, and moved onward to the next. They lay so very still.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  She sobbed, caught that sob, stifled it. Forget me, forget me. I’m not here.

  She’d get loose somehow, then run, escape, crawl into some hole. All so impossible but panic let her hopes run wild. She tugged at the bindings keeping her wrists at her back.

  Only he didn’t forget her, he turned and walked to her, stopped in front of her. The weapon was at his thigh, dangling there as if it were of no consequence.

  Chapter 2

  “Do you want to live?” The question was asked of her quietly, as if he didn’t care what her answer might be.

  “Yes.”

  Of course she did. Then she thought of what live could mean. There were ways to live that scared her: in horrific, never-ending pain, or only for the next five minutes while he did things to her. She didn’t dare to add to her answer, but watching the blood snack orgy had made death a very personal, terrifying topic.

  Though he angled his head downward and the hood shielded his features, at mouth level his disfiguring scars were obvious. In the deepest gouges, the tiniest blue wisps flickered.

  “Then you’ll come with me, silently. Make no noise, say no words, don’t trip and scream, don’t see corpses and scream. Understood?”

  She nodded, her heartbeats banging at the inside her chest.

  Using a key, he unlocked her neck from the wall. She’d have slipped to her knees if not for his hand on her collar. He studied her arm, inserted a finger at the edge of the makeshift bandage while she whimpered at the disturbance of blurred pain. At every poke and prod she hissed.

  “Hurts, does it? Huh.”

  Idiot.

  Or sadist.

  He grunted and produced a knife from somewhere below – she glimpsed steel sliding past. With the blade inserted between her skin and the bandage, he made a long, precise slice. The sticky paper peeled away and fluttered to the floor.

  Hordes of small teeth tore at her arm – compared to this, pins and needles were the waft of a breeze. Muscles twitching, gasping, she nearly doubled over and was brought short by his hold, by the jerk of metal on neck. She grunted at that, her face contorting. They’d stuck a port in her after Drette and she would’ve sworn he’d yanked on the tube that led into her artery.

  Whispering, she leaked curses she shouldn’t say. “Fuck! Fuck you all.” More nerves revived, slicing and dicing her arm. Her left fingers were ten times the size they should be, surely? She couldn’t see, with them trapped behind her.

  “Don’t scream. Thirty seconds for you to acclimatize then we leave. Breathe. Breathe slow.”

  Teeth gritted, she didn’t scream, she breathed slowly, and at last the molten warmth of whatever drug was in her tissues fed into her mind and gave her respite. Her panting slowed and she let her eyelids drift shut again.

  “We’re going. Open your eyes, Gio, and watch where you step.”

  Gio? He knew her name. He’d probably come to get her, specifically. Why?

  Why was too hard right now when the world was bending at the edges.

  “My hands? Untie?” The words slurred but came out understandable. She tried to indicate her bindings with a nod but he shook his head.

  “No.”

  With the grip on her collar, he pulled her with him.

  Bodies on the floor, on the couch. Blood. Bodies on the dance floor. Or was it blood on the dance floor? She thought to hum the tune but decided he’d be angry. They walk-staggered through the doorway and into the vestibule. A door ahead, leading out into a corridor, beckoned. Dead man on a chair, another slumped in a pile at the door, his arms and legs stuck out randomly, as if somebody had forgotten to attach them properly.

  Her rescuer’s boots made so little noise and she had elephant feet.

  The drug made everything slow down, everything not where it should be.

  That was why her head was like a vase wobbling on a –

  His hand landed over her mouth and she realized she’d said that aloud. His skin tasted bitter.

  He wrenched her through the door, then here and there, and she managed to stay upright, until he shoved her into one of the rickshaw-like hoppers. Though he slowed her fall by grabbing the cloth at her waist, with her hands at her back Gio still flopped to the seat, hard.

  Her cheek squashed on the upholstery. Leatherish – it smelled like leather. Did they have that here? On Aerthe? Cows were leather. They didn’t have cows here. She was babbling in her mind but too tired to stop herself.

  The hopper surged forward, directed to a destination by programming and what must be a brain similar to a mechling’s.

  They were going somewhere unknown and s
he didn’t care where. Giving in grew easier the more she did it.

  She was alive, if completely fluckadaisical on some Mekker drug. Fluck them all.

  And the darkness wafted in, wafted out, sucking at her brain.

  Tick tock, tick tock.

  That man was across from her, on the other seat. The hooded, scarred man who killed people as if they were insects underfoot. Sitting. Watching her maybe. Focusing on him for long was beyond her capacity...currently. Her eyes rolled up. He’d saved her, though.

  For what? For why?

  Fingers, she could feel fingers. The left ones – they were alive same as she was, buzzing as her veins and arteries decided to do finally their job. Lying on her side, she wriggled those fingers. The poor shortened things. Sticking them in that portal to see if she could sneak home to Earth had been a mistake. It had eaten the tips, lightning fast.

  Now they’re here. Now they’re not. Lightning agony, staring at her severed digits.

  They’d had to cut off more bone to get enough finger skin to stretch across to stitch the wounds closed.

  That time, that particular portal version, she couldn’t go through...

  Sawyer and Aribelle had succeeded, they’d gone back to Earth, and here she was, left behind. Alone.

  So very alone.

  A lazy tear meandered down to her ear. Left her after she’d told them to do so. Martyring herself was harder than she’d thought. She’d imagined some fast execution – the Mekkers did so like their killing – and had felt the vindication of finally doing what she should have done when she first met Drette.

  Helping him make portals? Mistake. Big huuuge mistake.

  Though cutting Drette’s throat had been one too. She wallowed in that realization, sickened, not having let herself go there before.

  Could killing ever be good, or was it always bad and disgusting? It seemed as if that was so. All that blood when she’d cut across his neck. Like slicing into a steak that breathed. It’d unleashed a backlash of self-disgust, awe, horror.

  Drette had been a selfish, misguided, narcissistic asshole, yes. This man here, Mister Scary-face, he glided through murders. Drette would never have done that.