Moonlit Mirage

Chapter Ten

Consciousness returned slowly, dragging Xena up from darkness through layers of pain and disorientation that made the world spin even with her eyes closed. Her wrists ached, bound tightly behind her back with something that bit into her skin every time she tested the restraints. The ground beneath her was hard, cold concrete instead of the desert gravel she remembered last.

She forced her eyes open.

The room was windowless, lit by a single bare bulb hanging from exposed wiring, walls made of rough, unfinished concrete that suggested somewhere industrial, somewhere far removed from anywhere she'd be easily found. Her head throbbed with the particular ache of whatever sedative they'd used to keep her unconscious during transport.

"Finally awake," a voice said from somewhere near the door.

Xena twisted to find a man standing in the doorway, watching her with the kind of patient, predatory stillness she'd already learned to associate with danger. He was older than Ragnar, silver threading through dark hair, his expression carrying none of the warmth she'd glimpsed even in Kane's grudging suspicion.

"Damon Blackthorn, I presume," she said, proud of how steady her voice came out despite the fear clawing at her chest.

"You presume correctly." He stepped fully into the room, crouching in front of her with the casual confidence of a man entirely certain of his own power. "You have your mother's eyes, you know. I noticed it the moment our people brought you in. Elena had that same stubborn defiance, right up until the end."

Xena's blood ran cold. "You knew my mother."

"I knew her very well." Something flickered behind his eyes, not quite grief, but something adjacent to it, old and complicated. "She was supposed to give me what I needed willingly. Instead, she chose to run, chose to hide a child rather than honor an agreement that could have saved countless lives."

"What agreement?"

Damon's smile turned sharp, humorless. "Your mother knew exactly what that pendant could do if used correctly, rather than simply sealed away out of fear. She chose fear anyway. And then she disappeared with the one thing that could have changed everything, leaving me to spend two decades searching for a child I didn't even know existed until very recently."

"If you're looking for the pendant, you're wasting your time. I don't have it with me."

"I know exactly where the pendant is, Xena. It's sitting in a wooden box in the back of your closet, behind a collection of winter coats you never wear in the desert." His smile widened at her visible shock. "Did you really think breaking into your apartment was an accident? I've known where it was for weeks. I simply needed you."

"Why? If you already know where the pendant is, why do you need me at all?"

Damon's expression turned almost gentle, which somehow made the words that followed more terrifying than any threat could have been.

"Because the pendant is sealed, my dear. Has been for over two decades, ever since your mother locked it down with the last of her strength before she died. Only blood of her bloodline can unseal it." He reached out, tracing one finger down the side of Xena's face with a tenderness that made her skin crawl. "Only you, Xena Silverfang, can open the door I've been trying to open for twenty years."

"I won't help you."

"You don't have a choice." He straightened, moving back toward the door with the unhurried confidence of a man who'd already won. "But don't worry. I'm not a monster. I'll give you every opportunity to cooperate willingly before I'm forced to take what I need by other means."

"And if I refuse no matter what you do?"

Damon paused at the threshold, glancing back at her with an expression that turned her blood to ice.

"Then I suppose we'll find out exactly how much pain a person can survive," he said, "before their body simply stops giving them a choice in the matter at all."

He stepped through the doorway, the heavy steel door swinging shut behind him with a finality that echoed through the concrete room like a death knell.

Xena was alone in the dark, bound, trapped somewhere Ragnar had no way of finding her, with a man who had just promised to break her by whatever means necessary.

And somewhere outside this room, she had no idea if Ragnar had even survived the attack that brought her here at all.