Cat out of Hell, Volume III (Out of the Fire Book 6), page 1
Contents
Connect with Candace
Blurb
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
Epilogue
Bibliography
Bobcat Excerpt
About the Author
Cat out of Hell Volume III © August 2021 by Candace Blevins
All rights reserved under United States of America copyright law, and the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
Cover design © 2021 Candace Blevins
First Edition August 2021
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Blurb
Can a centuries-old child vampire be the voice of reason?
Becca doesn’t do anything halfway, and that includes screwing up. She’s made a horrible mess of things, and she has no idea how to fix it.
1
When the full-face mask was finally removed, Julien, Brooke’s wraithlike butler, was standing before her, looking as disdainful as ever.
“You are in Miss Brooke’s laundry facility, which handles the needs of not only her household, but it also contracts with other domiciles to pick up their towels, linens, and clothing and then deliver them once they’ve been cleaned. You’ll work in the linen and towel department, as it’s hard to fuck that up.”
She’d never heard Julien cuss before, and it startled her. She wasn’t even certain he’d known the words, which was silly. Of course he knew them, he’d just opted not to use them.
Until now.
Julien motioned to someone who stepped forward holding a metal device with chains hanging from it. The huge bear shifter looped the device over his left arm, lifted a pair of scissors from a small shelf, walked behind her, and cut her shirt away. The scissors were so sharp you could hear how crisply they sliced through the fabric, and within moments she felt cool air on her upper body.
The bear shifter cut the straps of her bra in three places, so it dropped to the floor without him touching it directly, and then he secured a cold metal band around her waist. He disconnected one of her wrists from the chain above, connected the steel cuff to the chain attached to the piece going around her waist, and then did the same with her other wrist. He walked around in front of her, dropped to his knees, and connected another chain between her ankles. She’d be able to walk, but she’d have to take small steps.
Finally, a steel collar went around her throat, and two more chains went from it to each wrist. She’d be able to eat, but she wouldn’t be able to wipe.
As if to punctuate that thought, the bear shifter cut her pants away, and her underwear. She was still sitting on the fabric, but she was no longer wearing it as clothes. Well, other than her sandals.
No sooner than she had the thought, the sandals were removed as well.
She’d gone through all of this stoically, but then the bear shifter came towards her head with the scissors. He cut her hair barbarically short, and then produced an electric shaver. Tears flowed from her eyes as she was shaved bald, but she didn’t protest.
Her heart was broken from being kicked out by Kendric, and now Brooke was having this done to her. Becca was completely crushed. Her hair didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
The bear shifter nodded to Julien and stepped back to the door.
“Brooke taught you something with the understanding you’d only use what she taught you for good. She feels personally betrayed.” He blew out a breath. “But that is my issue with you, not hers. She only told you not to use it to harm those she cares about, so that is all she’ll hold you to.” He stood a little straighter and his voice took on an official tone and cadence. “His Majesty the Amakhosi requested she provide consequences for you going absent without leave from Master Kendric’s custody. You are sentenced to three months in the laundry. If you try to telepath Brooke or anyone else, it will come to me. I strongly discourage you from going over the head of your immediate supervisor.”
The bear shifter spoke from his position in the doorway. “I’m the manager over the laundry, but you aren’t likely to see me unless you fuck up one too many times. I will walk you to Miss Shultz’s office. Come.”
She considered refusing, but she was in a locked facility about an hour from the Birmingham airport, naked, in chains. She’d be resisting just for the sake of doing so, and she didn’t have the heart for it.
Becca stood and followed the bear shifter. The leg chains weren’t as bad as she’d thought they would be. She could walk okay, but no way would she be able to walk quickly, or run. They were annoying, but she was to be put to work, so they’d engineered them to keep them from being a hindrance. They were both a security measure and a reminder of her status, but they wouldn’t keep her from being useful.
“The laundry runs round-the-clock in two twelve-hour shifts per day, beginning and ending at seven o’clock.” the bear shifter told her. “You’ll be fed before and after your shift, and you’ll have a five-minute bathroom break every two hours.”
They went through a door that required his palm and a code punched into a number pad, and then another door that only needed his ID card held a few inches in front of a reader. Finally, he stopped at an open door, motioned her in, and told the severe looking woman behind the desk, “This is Becca,” and he left.
The bear had been in jeans and a red plaid shirt. The woman was in a navy-blue pants suit, and Becca scented bear, but a different kind of bear. She didn’t know enough about bears to know what kind they were, just that they weren’t the same. It made sense, in a way. Bears live in caves, right? A wolf or a bird would go crazy in this building with no windows. Or a lion, but she’d survived Hell, so she could survive this.
Mrs. Schultz stood and walked around her desk. “Easiest way to explain your job is to show you. You’ll be in a room by yourself with enough machines to keep you busy. You’ll have linens and towels from four households at a time. You’ll wash, dry, and fold them. Package them with the correct customer name, and get another bundle as needed. Sending the wrong items to the wrong house gets you three demerits. Folding sloppy gets you one demerit per household. Disobeying an order, speaking out of turn, or any other misconduct is solely at the discretion of the guard or manager as to number of demerits.”
The demerit system was a little pocket with nine cards in it. Another pocket was underneath, and the cards were moved down when she was in trouble. Every three demerits meant a meal replacement drink — whatever that was — rather than a meal, and it meant you worked through what should’ve been your downtime. Once you’d consumed the drink at the next meal and gone right back to work, three cards were moved back up. If you ever lost all nine and had a need for a tenth demerit, you went to see Remy, the bear-shifter manager. Apparently, that would be bad.
She was given nine canvas bags of laundry, each with one of four customers’ names printed on the outside. Three households had two bags, and the fourth had three bags. She sorted through two bags for the same customer as directed by Mrs. Schultz, and put four loads into four washers. The bags were washed with the sheets, so they’d be clean when the delivery driver returned the laundry to the customer. Each washer got a metallic red star magnet put on it.
She wrote in the customer’s name on a dry erase board, next to the red star on the board, and considered why she was so meekly obeying and doing as she was told. Was it because she hoped Kendric would find out she was behaving and would take her back?
No, it was because she’d let Brooke down. Brooke thought Becca had abused a kindness, and Becca didn’t want to further let down the vampire she’d come to see as a friend.
The next customer had two much larger bags, and Becca needed to move magnets so she had seven washers with blue crescent moons in order to get everything into a machine.
She wrote the customer’s name on the dry erase board by the blue crescent, and then followed suit with the laundry from the other two customers. It wasn’t hard work, but she had to stay focused to keep everything straight. She’d have to pay attention no matter how boring the job was.
“Make certain the red star items go into the red-star dryers, and then back into the proper bag, which gets washed and dried with the sheets. Under normal circumstances, you’ll be in a constant cycle of sorting clothes out of the bags, cycling them through the washer and dryer, folding, and packing them correctly into the bags. Since you didn’t pick up where the person on the shift before you left off, you’ll have some down time before you begin folding.” Mrs. Schultz pointed to a button near the door. “Push that button when the first load comes out of the dryer, and I’ll show you how we fold and pack into the shrink-wrap, so everything is fresh and perfect for the customer.”
Not surprisingly, the chains restricting the range of motion for her arms didn’t get in the way of sorting or folding the laundry. They were annoying as fuck, but she couldn’t claim they hindered her work.
The laundry ran seven days a week, and Mrs. Schultz’s division ran on a tight schedule. Wake-up alarm at six fifteen, breakfast at six twenty-five, and you were expected to eat and use the restroom before the seven o’clock shift started. After the shift, dinner was at seven-ten. She had to report to the loading dock at seven-fifty, where she helped load the delivery trucks with the proper customers’ bags. This usually took about an hour, and then the showers were available until nine-forty.
She was locked into her small cage at ten o’clock, and was awakened again at six fifteen. Calling the guards for a bathroom break during the night resulted in a demerit, so you didn’t bother them unless you really needed to go.
Her cage was long enough for her to stretch out, and barely tall enough to sit up. It wasn’t wide enough to roll over, so she had to scoot and roll to change positions in her sleep. The mattress wasn’t awful. Becca supposed they needed their workers to not have a backache every morning.
When she awakened the first morning, she couldn’t feel Kendric or his people. She felt so lost without his energy, his familiarity. She hadn’t thought it was possible to hurt any worse, but knowing he’d undone whatever they’d done in that cabin to connect their souls together — it killed whatever else had been alive inside her heart. She ate breakfast and did her job in a fog. Her only hope was to try to get through her three months and then she had to hope Brooke wasn’t still angry with her.
The meal replacement drink was disgusting, but it filled her up and supposedly had all the nutrients she needed. She’d had two of them by the end of her first week, and she was super careful about making sure everything was folded exactly right after the first. Breakfast was an all-you-can eat buffet of every breakfast food imaginable. Dinner always had burgers and steaks, an extensive salad bar, and another meal option that changed daily — pot roast, lasagna, meatloaf, etc. They were fed well, so long as they behaved and did their job properly.
The days merged into a living hell. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t as bad as Hell, but at least she hadn’t been bored there. She was only allowed to communicate with the staff enough to do her job. Any chit-chat with the other workers or with a guard resulted in a demerit, even if it was just to ask if it was raining outside when she noted a guard’s shoes were damp.
Every two weeks she was given an hour in a room without her cuffs so she could change into her lion. It was a concrete room with a steel door, and the lion hated it, but it was big enough to pace in, and it had fresh air, as if it was piped in directly from the outside. Her head was always shaved again when she changed back. She understood why — she couldn’t reach to brush or wash her hair. This way, the shower sprayed her with soapy water, then rinsed her with clear water, and she was clean. No fuss, no muss, no wasted time. The prisoners left the showers through something of a wind tunnel that dried them off, and Becca found it ironic that the laundry workers weren’t provided towels.
2
Kendric had asked Brooke to keep him updated on Becca’s time in the laundry facility, but he grew tired of seeing the check-marked, standardized reports with short, concise notations every week. Becca was doing her job and surviving. She was taking her punishment without fighting them.
He eventually had Brooke’s reports about Becca routed to Beckett’s inbox. Kendric had asked her for them, but then he wished he hadn’t.
Brooke had called him the day after Becca’s arrival and told him that Becca hadn’t been running away from him. “She expected that your people would be waiting for her when the boat returned, and if they weren’t, she intended to drive back to the gates of the mansion and refuse to apologize for needing a few hours to herself.”
Kendric could see Becca doing exactly that, but it was too late for them. She’d broken his trust after doubting his word.
Still, his heart broke for her because he knew what working in Brooke’s laundry had to be doing to her spirit. She’d earned it, though, and he couldn’t disagree with Brooke about it being a fitting way to provide consequences for her behavior. She was locked into a situation she couldn’t escape from, and she was worked from waking to sleeping. It wasn’t horrible work, but the monotony of it would be its own form of torture.
But the reports were all mostly the same, once she got past the first week, and it wasn’t constructive to keep reminding himself of what he’d lost. Beckett would tell him if there was anything of significance in the reports. Kendric didn’t need to be reminded every seven days that she was still in the laundry.
3
One day, Becca was taken to Remy when her shift ended, and she panicked, thinking she’d done something horribly wrong. However, she soon found out her three-month sentence was finished, and he was responsible for her exit interview, which was mostly just making her talk about her experience, the lessons she’d learned, and whether she was likely to leave her assigned location without permission at any point in the future. She answered his questions succinctly and honestly, and he didn’t press for more.
The cuffs were taken off, she was given a robe to put on, and Julien came to retrieve her.
The stodgy butler locked a ring around her wrist that looked like a solid steel bangle, but it was as big around as her thumb, and she understood it was just a fancier steel cuff. She also felt the barely-there tingle of magic, and knew she wouldn’t be able to change.
