Twenty-Seven
They’re pathetic.
Squealing like fucking pigs, the two try to talk over each other, desperate to gain my favor. As if they think there is anything they can say that will save them from pain. I know what they did to my wife. They will never know a moment’s peace until the day they die.
“She’s in the Underworld.”
“He has to undergo the Elusive Mysteries first. It’s a big thing. One of the last steps.”
“Eleusinian,”
the first werewolf corrects. “He has to go to Greece for it.”
“When?”
I demand as I walk over.
He shakes his head as snot and tears pour down his face. “I don’t know.”
His shoulders hunch forward. “We’re only the rejects. He doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Then how do you know this?”
His head snaps up as his eyes widen in fear, thinking I’m going to punish him for lying. “Eduardo told me.”
“Me too,”
the second one adds, shuddering as he still sits in his own piss. He lifts his right arm, twisted by medical experiments, the bones rotated to give it an awkward angle. His hand is permanently slanted twenty-odd degrees to the outside. “Antonio let him cut into us as a reward for finding out what the Mysteries entail. He was on a high for weeks.”
“He likes to talk while he’s working,”
the first wolf says, his voice breaking, but I don’t give a shit about what they’ve suffered through. I don’t care if they were ripped from their families and forced to join Antonio’s gang as nothing more than bodies to be dissected. They raped my wife.
“What do they entail?”
The wolf sitting in his piss starts to sob uncontrollably. The other one shakes his head in terror. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. But please… let me go. Antonio would’ve killed us if we didn’t fight. But I can leave. I can leave and never come back. Please… just, please... My name’s Jona,”
he says, trying to humanize himself to me but only managing to piss me off. “I’m a good guy.”
“You’re a rapist.”
He flinches.
Dayne steps up to us, radiating with the fury he hasn’t yet been able to release. He glances at me, a silent request for permission to break the containment spell and kick this fucker’s ass. I nod at him as I turn to the piss-sitter. I only need one of them to talk.
“The white wolf with the purple eyes,”
I say. “What’s his name?”
He whimpers.
Jona screams. He tried to attack Dayne as soon as he opened the circle, but now he’s down on his knees, his back arched in agony, his body convulsing, and all Dayne’s done is grab his arm. He can control electricity, but he doesn’t shoot it like Talon did. He wields it elegantly – precisely and controlled. Small lethal attacks rather than the crushing bursts of power my brother preferred.
Stepping behind Jona, Dayne places his free hand on the side of the guy’s head. The werewolf stops convulsing, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t fight. Frozen by Dayne’s electricity through his brain, his every moment now being controlled, he just stares at the ceiling in horror. Dayne places his other hand on his head.
Then Jona reaches down to his soft cock and grabs hold of it with his right hand. Tears fall down his cheeks. The captive I’m talking to cries just as hard, perhaps knowing he will soon suffer the same fate.
“Tim...othy,”
he sobs in answer to my question about the sadist. “He tortured me too. I didn’t want to… do that to her. But he forced –”
He screams, loud and shrill. Pure terror that causes him to jerk back, right into the runes still surrounding him. He shrieks again as he’s burned, but it’s nothing on the noise Jona is making.
He squeezed his dick so tight it became purple. Then he yanked his arm, fast and hard, away from his body. He did not manage to tear his penis off, not enough power, but he’s degloved it. The skin’s been severed from the base, and now it dangles in his grip. A bloody sock.
His eyes dark clouds of vengeance, Dayne forces Jona’s hands towards his mouth.
The wolf’s screams grow higher; he knows what’s about to happen.
But he can’t stop it.
He’s locked in, a prisoner in his own body.
Still screaming, he sticks his tongue out and slides the skin of his cock onto it. Then he grabs what remains of his penis with his other hand and starts jerking himself off, chaffing his exposed nerves, veins, and tissue, sending bits of blood spraying with every movement.
“I swear I didn’t want to,”
the other captive sobs. A lie to save his own skin. I have seen the video. I can never forget that fucking video.
He fucked her as she lay unmoving, trying her best to dissociate and survive. He did it enthusiastically. He did it willingly. And even if he hadn’t, he hadn’t saved her. That is enough for me to punish him.
Feeling my own guilt for not stopping it, I step forward and rub my foot across the outer circle of runes. He doesn’t try to fight like the other two did. He just sobs harder.
“Please… don’t… I can be of use. I can tell you what they are working on.”
I stop just to give him hope before I take it away. “Talk.”
He shudders in relief. “Eduardo has made chimeras. Not like us but finished ones. And he’s trying to get that other witch to create a disease that’ll enhance us. Like rabies or myso – myso…”
He breathes out heavily as he struggles to remember the words. “Myostatin hypertrophy!” he blurts. “She hasn’t managed it, but she’s close.”
I recall the souped up wolf we fought in Morn Tower. It was going to die even if we hadn’t killed it; whatever it had in its blood was terminal. I don’t doubt Terra Harrison, the infamous witch who helped wipe out nearly a third of the world’s population barely more than a century ago, could perfect her work with time. But we’ve just taken down the majority of the Death Hunt. Now they don’t have enough soldiers to infect.
I stare down at the pathetic man before me.
His hope dies in his eyes, and I relish in the fear that soon replaces it. He starts to hyperventilate as he tries to think of something else to say.
“Is that all?”
I ask mockingly.
He gasps, falling to his hands in front of me, kneeling down as he begs for mercy. “Please! My name’s Alejandro. I’m a victim! Eduardo would cut off our hands and use them to jack himself off if we didn’t obey! I –”
Dayne charges in front of me, tearing through the circle. He grabs Alejandro by the top of his head. He hauls him to his feet, then moves his grip to be around his neck. “What did you just say?”
I glance at Micha’s best friend, studying him warily. He was enraged before, but now he’s lethal. Calm. Buzzing with a volatile energy that sits right beneath the surface. The air around him becomes charged.
Sobbing, Alejandro tries to collapse back to the floor.
Dayne simply lifts him into the air, his feet now kicking as he struggles to breathe. His body convulses as jolts of electricity fry him from the inside. When he is dropped, he hits the ground with a thud, then curls into a ball. Dayne squats down in front of him, but before he can touch him again, Alejandro blurts out what he wants to hear.
Eduardo cutting off their hands clearly means something to him. His eyes blazing, Dayne stands and looks at me.
“Take me to her,”
he demands.
“I can’t phase.”
“Then we drive.”
My eyes narrow. “He’ll move her before we get there.”
As much as I want to be her fucking white knight, I can’t waste time on pointless endeavors.
Pivoting on his feet, Dayne roars as he throws a bolt of lightning at the wolf I knocked unconscious.
“Stormie!”
I snap, not wanting the fucker to die. I barely left him alive.
A bubble pops into existence, blocking Dayne’s attack a second before impact. Crackling white bolts spread across the pink surface with a deafening boom. Jona tries to take the moment to run, but Stormie throws up a bubble around him too, catching him mid-stride. He slams into the inside of his prison, then screams as it shrinks around him, forcing him into a stress position. Khalid just stands there watching everything, ready to step in only if he’s needed. I know he wants to use his energy for other things; it’s been clear in his pheromones ever since we got back.
“What do the hands mean?”
I ask, ignoring the smell of my brother’s desire.
Dayne turns to look at me, his lips flat, his anger back under control – barely. “There was a serial killer targeting sups a few years ago. He’d have three or four victims at a time, and he would keep them in dog cages until he wanted entertainment.”
His jaw tightens. Tension rolls off him in fucking waves. “Then he’d force them to fuck, maim, or kill each other, using the… improvements he’d given them.”
My stomach churns, able to guess where this is going.
“He would cut off their hands – sometimes after they died, but mostly while they were alive and able to watch him use them.”
He clenches his fists as he struggles to stay still. “The SCU eventually went after him when he took one of their families.” He glances away, his eyes darkening like they did before. A trick of the light perhaps, considering when he looks back at me, they are his usual dark-brown with white scleras. He shakes his head, furious with himself. “I thought the fucker died, and I never knew his name. He’s changed his face too.”
He shifts on his feet, and I am acutely aware he hasn’t shared this story with many people. The body remembers, and his trauma is carved deep into his skin, a festering pool of infection. “When Micha and her dad found me,”
he says, “I was still locked in my cage, only a day from death.” He smiles cruelly, a mixture of fond memories and dark humor. “I was so hungry, I tried to eat her.”
“He did experiments on you?”
Stormie breathes in shock.
He stiffens even more – damn near rigid. Stone-like. Full of shame and self-loathing. “No. He kept me alive as a pet. I was to be killed after my ascension.”
“He took you as a child! Did you ever find your pare–”
“He is my father.”
Stormie gasps.
“My mother was his ‘favorite,’”
he says bitterly.
My heart races. If Micha knows this, she’ll try to kill him herself. He was strong enough to fend off Mother, and my wife doesn’t have any magic anymore because of me. That won’t stop her from trying though. She is a fighter. A Black, a fucking talented assassin.
Dayne starts to shake as he looks at me, and my heart beats even faster, terror pumping through my veins. “I was feral when Micha found me,”
he says. “I only knew violence. Eduardo –” He stops, as if he’s trying the word for the first time, finally putting a name to the face in his memories and nightmares. “He rewarded me for that. He thought it was funny whenever I tried to fight back because I was too weak to do anything. But Stefaan didn’t like that. He wanted to put me down, and Micha is the only reason he didn’t.”
He crosses his arms, then drops them, his hands fisted. “She taught me how to speak and read. I rarely left her side for the first six months, and the reason… The reason I felt comfortable enough with her to calm down wasn’t because she saved me from that cage.”
He’s fucking vibrating now, unable to stand still. His need to move is so great, that his own body is betraying him. “I liked her…” He takes in a deep breath through his nostrils. His teeth clench tight as he struggles to push out the words. “Because she reminded me of my mother.”
I reach for my phone, wanting to call Aleric and tell him to take me northeast until I find her, but then I freeze.
She doesn’t need a husband right now.
As hard as it is, I force myself to breathe. “Antonio wants her to breed hybrids,”
I say, my tongue thick, my throat dry. I don’t know if I’m trying to convince Dayne right now or myself, but either way, I push the words out. “He won’t give her to Eduardo and risk causing a stress miscarriage. And once she is pregnant” –the words dig their claws into my throat, not wanting to be born– “Eduardo won’t be able to transport her.” The risk would be extremely high. “That is when we go for her.”
“That could take months,”
Dayne seethes.
“He’ll be using Vs.”
It’s what I’d do. “There’s one that can almost guarantee pregnancy.” They’re expensive as hel, the potions requiring the sacrifice of a fertile womb and a set of testicles. When mass is ‘created,’ it must first be taken from somewhere else. The Ricks and other Vs can get by with any meat being used, but when the spell requires more than just physical creation, specific items are needed.
Dayne’s jaw tics, but it’s not his wife who might decide to keep another man’s baby, too traumatized by having lost one already. It gets harder to breathe as I push my senses out towards the house. Through their heartbeats, I can tell Maddox and Lou are still sitting with Krypto, Mother is in the kitchen with Khalid’s girl, and the twins are asleep in their rooms. When at war, it’s important to rest whenever you can. But there is one heartbeat I can’t feel, who I never got the chance to learn.
Sitting on my bedside table is all that remains of a future that could’ve been.
The urge to scream claws at my throat again, but I shove it down.
“What’s the rest of the plan?”
Dayne demands, as ready as I am to put it into play.
I start to tell him when a wave of fear slams into me. My lips freeze as my head snaps to the northeast.
I ball my hands into fists. He’s fucking killing her. It isn’t quick. He’s making it hurt, and she’s trying so hard to fight back. I can feel her resistance, her refusal to go down easily. There isn’t any hope inside of her, but there is fire. There is fury.
Now there is numbness.
And then nothing.
“What is it?”
Dayne demands, but I barely hear him over the rage screaming around my skull. I want to be her white knight, her fucking husband. I want to slay her dragons and uphold my vows to protect my wife.
Except I never made those vows, did I?
Micha’s stinging words come back to me, how I didn’t have to offer her anything due to barbaric Shadow tradition. I brushed it off then because that was simply how the vows had always been said and I was so focused on trying to fix my bigger fuck-ups. I thought it was minuscule in the face of the torture and rape, but right now, the absence of them feels crushing.
“Varius.”
I look at Khalid. He’s always been my voice of reason, and his mere presence grounds me now. I exhale slowly. It helps that I can feel Micha’s revival. She’s groggy, but her willingness to keep fighting is still strong.
Fuck. This is going to kill me to do.
“How do I block the blood bond?”
I ask him, knowing it needs to be done. If my control slips and I try to push as much love and strength down it as I want to, I could use up what little blood of hers remains inside of me. Then I won’t be able to feel when she’s pregnant. I might not even be able to track her down, and the thought of running out right as I’m about to reach her is terrifying. What if I fail to save her again and Antonio takes her away from me forever? She’ll die if we don’t complete it.
No.
I’ll kill myself before it kills her.
A chill runs through me.
And subject her to a lifetime of torture?
Hating the choice I might have to make, I concentrate on what my brother is saying.
“… want it.”
Fuck, I missed most of it.
“What?” I ask.
“Want it.”
I stare at him, waiting for him to expand on that.
He does not.
Realizing I’m not going to get anything more from him, I decide to ask Mother. “He’s killed and revived Micha,”
I say as I move towards the house. “Once she’s pregnant, we will make a new soul doll of her.”
My phone buzzes inside my pants pocket, and I pull it out as I walk. The sight of Antonio requesting a video call makes me stop abruptly.
Dayne passes me a step before he turns around. Khalid is already beside me, looking at my phone.
“You don’t have to take it,”
he murmurs.
I don’t acknowledge him as I stare at the screen. At the red or green choice in front of me.
We all know what it’s going to be. Another video of my wife. Live this time.
Still... I can’t ignore it. What if he wants to trade now that we’ve crippled his organization?
I finally look at Khalid. “Get him out of here.”
I don’t trust Dayne not to give into his urges to rip the phone out of my hand and scream at Antonio. Hel, he might even be able to shock him through the device, but I know whatever he tries, the wolf will be faster. And he’ll take out his anger on my wife.
Dayne curses as he’s herded up to the house. Stormie stays with me, ready to contain my powers should I lose control. Trying not to feel the presence of the husks below the garage, I turn so my back is facing a wall, then hit the play button.
“If you’re calling to beg for your territory back, the only trade I’ll consider is for the alexandrite,”
I say in a tone that is strictly business. I know he isn’t going to give me Micha without first trying to use her to manipulate me. I’d trade my whole kingdom for her in a heartbeat, but if I tell him that, he’ll just torture her more severely. He knows I can’t give him back everything Aleric and I have stolen from him, especially with most of his soldiers now in jail. All he has left is to hurt me like my mother hurt him, to make us feel that same loss he did. So I’m going to have to pretend I do not give a damn about either her or Rudy.
I’m just the cold, heartless Boss. The nightmarish bastard who’s so infamous in his cruelty.
“You’re going to choose,”
Antonio says as he turns in place, his phone held out until a grubby mattress appears on the floor behind him. Single-size. Stained. They’re definitely in a fucking human trafficking house.
My wife is dragged into the shot by that fucking white-haired sadist, then shoved down onto the bed, and it takes everything inside of me to keep my face flat as he strangles her.
“She’s no longer my property,”
I say, keeping my voice as emotionless as my eyes. “Do with her what you will.”
My heart hammering, I go to end the call.
“No!”
Antonio snaps just as my finger hovers over the button. “You are going to feel what I did when your mother killed my mate. I’m going to take her eyes or her eardrums. And if you don’t choose, I will take them both. Then I will take her legs, her hands. I will cut her apart piece by piece until you do. So… which one do you want me to take from your lovely bride?”
The bastard! I want to jump through the screen and beat him to death. I want to blurt out an answer to stop him from going through the rest of his threat, but I know he will not stop. He will just keep me picking between the choices over and over again. Eyes or ears? Fingers or tongue? Breasts or clit?
Struggling to keep my arm from shaking, my rage and fear burning bright, I narrow my eyes. Pretending I’m only annoyed at him for wasting my time is the hardest lie I’ve ever had to sell.
But I do it for her. Because I know that if I break now, he will torture her for the rest of eternity to get to me. Micha is staying strong while suffering through this; I can’t fail her by being weak just for hearing what she might go through. I hurt her once, and that nearly destroyed us. I cannot hurt her again.
My grip tightens on my phone so hard my screen cracks at one edge. The werewolf husks down in the cells call to me, a shrieking darkness that demands to be used.
“Call me when you want to trade that alexandrite,”
I bite out. Then I hang up before he can see me break.
Screaming, I crush my phone in my hand, then launch it across the fucking yard. It shatters through a window of the house. Pivoting on my feet, I slam fist after fist into the garage wall, making the whole building shake.
Rage pours through me as I imagine what’s happening to Micha right at this moment. How she’s lying on that damn mattress, completely fucking vulnerable, and he’s shoving his cock inside her.
Magic flares beneath my skin, burning hot and wild, chaotic energy urging me to set the world on fire. To let my husk soldiers rise from the ashes and slaughter anyone who remains.
Screaming, I slam both fists into the wall, punching right through the material, and let my power rip free. Shadows pour forth from my feet. The husks’ bloodlust runs through my veins, so pale in comparison to mine.
He’s hurting my wife.
He’s hurting my wife!
Closing my eyes, I roar as I rip my hands free of the wall. Before I can take off towards the northeast though, a pink bubble forms around me.
“Noooo!”
I rail against it, slamming my shoulder into the curved wall over and over again, but it doesn’t give. So I start to use my magic, flinging out whatever I can – an uncontrollable, volatile energy.
Pain ruptures across my body as I’m hit by the ricochets, but cracks are starting to form in the pink. Roaring, I dig deeper inside of myself, willing to offer up everything I am to my magic. It can take a kidney, my muscles, my entire left arm if it means I can get out of here and to my wife.
But I’m struggling to extend my arms now. The bubble is shrinking rapidly. Forcing me to bend in half. For my knees to come up to my chest. For my neck to curve painfully.
And still my prison shrinks.
Smaller and smaller until every part of me is touching.
Until all that’s left to breathe is the black smoke that sits thick in my lungs.
My vision narrows.
My anger grows.
I gasp as I strain to keep trying to escape.
But my limbs won’t listen.
My lungs won’t breathe.
Unable to fight it, I pass out just as I feel Micha coming back to life.