Chapter Nineteen
Brodie looked smug with half a dozen soldiers at his back. He unlocked the cell door with the confident smirk of someone who knew that he’d already won.
He had forgotten something important, though. He had forgotten that Blake was the Bloodhound and that the name was more than just a fancy title.
He had earned that name, paying for it with the souls of his fallen enemies.
Some hired-out guards from MacBrae never stood a chance.
Blake feinted, throwing an elbow toward one soldier, and when his companion surged forward to aid, Blake grabbed the second guard’s sword and used his forward momentum to run through the first. As the one dropped, his hands going to the gaping wound in his stomach, Blake snatched his sword and used it to dispatch the one who was now reeling from having, however inadvertently, killed his comrade.
Blake’s estimate of Edward MacAllan went up considerably when he put himself in front of his sister, keeping them both out of Blake’s way and keeping Katrina safe.
“Kill him!” Brodie shouted from his place at the back of the remaining soldiers. He might be a coward, but he was at least smart enough to know when he was outmatched.
Not that it would matter. Brodie was striving, ambitious, and unafraid to step on others in his relentless climb toward power.
But he couldn’t match Blake for cruelty, and he didn’t have the Bloodhound’s desperation. Blake had something to protect. He had something to lose.
He would die for Katrina. He would do it without blinking.
But he didn’t plan to die today. He planned to live to protect her instead.
Besides that, he intended to take Brodie down.
Blake forged his way through the remaining MacBrae guards, his purpose to move forward rather than to bother with the petty underlings that Brodie had brought to defend him.
Brodie—his brother, apparently—fumbled for his blade when he saw that Blake was not going to be deterred, bringing it up just in time to block Blake’s thrust.
“Ye cannae beat me, little brother,” Blake said, letting the words slip into a taunt. “If what ye say is true, perhaps ye should ask yourself why our father always kept me so close. Was his legitimate son nae good enough?”
“I’m going to kill ye,” Brodie spat, using the narrow hallway to his advantage so that Blake had to maneuver his bulk in the space to avoid being cut.
Still, when Blake pivoted to avoid Brodie’s attack, he saw that Edward had taken up a sword, and even though he was visibly trembling from the days spent in a dungeon with little movement, he was defending his sister with all he was worth.
“I’m going to kill ye,” Brodie said again, advancing a step, “and then I am going to take the MacAllan lass to wife and fuck the memory of ye right out—”
He didn’t finish the disgusting comment. Blake’s arm snapped out, bringing the pommel of his sword down on Brodie’s temple. Brodie’s eyes rolled back in his head and he was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Blake smiled his most fearsome smile as he turned to meet the remaining MacBraes.
“Who is next?” he asked, all murder and malice.
None of them looked particularly inclined to volunteer.
“Oh for—”
It was not any of the guards who spoke, nor even Edward MacAllan.
It was Katrina and then she darted around her brother.
“Katrina!” Edward cried, failing to grasp her as she moved.
“Lass!” Blake snarled, lifting his sword to defend her.
She positioned herself between Blake and the soldiers, a single move that effectively took a dozen years off Blake’s lifespan, then lifted her hand and blew—
The guards staggered, blinked, then dropped.
They were on the ground, clutching at their throats, choking. Edward glanced at the blade in his hand, then made himself busy dispatching the remaining attackers.
Ruthless. Blake approved.
Besides, he was grateful for the assistance because he was too busy grabbing Katrina by the shoulders and holding her close to do his own killing at the moment.
“Christ, leannan,” he murmured into her hair. “Ye and your bloody powders. Ye scared the life out of me. Where did ye even get that?”
She did not look even remotely abashed as she grinned at him, her arms going around his waist, entirely heedless of the blood that was splashed across his torso.
“Arran slipped it to me,” she said brightly, like she hadn’t just poisoned three men like it was nothing. As if he needed another reason to become completely mad over her. “I was saving it for the right moment. Now seemed good.”
Blake couldn’t help it; he laughed. It wasn’t a kind laugh. It was dark and vicious. Bloodthirsty. Worthy of the name he’d been given for all his misdeeds.
But Katrina went right on smiling at him, despite the blood and chaos that lay at their feet.
Christ, he adored her.
“Well, I suppose that I did tell ye that your mind was your sharpest weapon,” he said, still chuckling darkly.
“As lovely as all that is,” Edward chimed in, sounding as though he did not actually find it particularly lovely at all, “perhaps we could get the bloody hell out of here?”
“Aye,” Blake agreed. “Behind me, lass.”
They moved out of the dungeon, Blake in the lead, Edward defending them from the rear.
Blake used his knowledge of the keep to traverse only the least used hallways of the building.
He saw the occasional flicker of a maid’s skirt as she darted around the corner, but his reputation was another weapon in his arsenal; nobody wanted to interrupt a Bloodhound that was holding an unsheathed sword that still dripped with the blood of his most recent opponent.
They had nearly made it out of the keep when they had their first true encounter. Blake had halfway drawn back his arm to dispatch this potential enemy when he recognized the newcomer.
“God, Lennox, what the hell are ye doing here?”
Arran looked so incredulous that, even to Blake, it bordered on the comedic.
“I’m saving Katrina from ye,” he snarled. “Katrina, would ye—”
“I’m fine where I am, actually,” Katrina told him brightly from where she was protectively sandwiched between Blake and her brother. “We’ve rescued Edward.”
Blake had to hand it to Lennox; he recovered quickly.
“Right,” he said, lowering his blade so that he wasn’t about to skewer Blake, but still holding it at the ready. “Well, ye arenae fine here, actually. MacBrae soldiers are about to swarm this place, and we need to be gone before that happens.”
Blake nodded absently. “Aye…” he said, even as his eyes were trailing toward the Great Hall, away from the route that he knew would take them out of MacFarlane Keep.
Once he left here, though, he knew that he would never come back here again.
He would be drawing a line in the sand, and he would no longer be welcome in the place that he had called home for so many years.
But, knowing what he knew now about MacFarlane’s role in his family’s death, about his true parentage, he couldn’t leave. Not without facing the laird one last time.
“Aye,” he said again. “We will leave. But there’s something I have to do first.” He looked at Arran. “Ye take Katrina and Edward and go. I’ll meet ye—”
“Nay!” Katrina interjected, grabbing his arm. “We shouldnae separate from one another.”
“I agree,” Lennox said. “We are better off together.”
Blake was loath to take Katrina any closer to potential danger, but he couldn’t deny that he preferred to keep her where he could see her.
“Fine,” he said. “Katrina, take a knife. MacAllan—”
“Guard her with my life,” Edward interjected. “Ye dinnae even need to say it. She’s my sister, after all.”
He sounded as amused as anyone could, given that they were still in a fight for their lives.
Aye. Blake liked Edward MacAllan.
The trip to the Great Hall was short, but every sound in the keep grated at Blake’s nerves in that way that he always got in the midst of a battle.
Every scrape was heightened, every shadow was a potential threat.
Another man might have been worn down by the heat that surged through his veins with every beat of his heart, but for Blake, it was what he had been born to do.
And finally he had a good enough reason to do it. He had always known how to fight, but now he had something—someone—to fight for.
He surged into the Great Hall like a vengeful angel—
Only to draw up short when he saw Laird MacFarlane, lying on the ground, facedown in a spreading pool of his own blood.
“Oh,” Katrina said softly from behind him.
Curiously, the first feeling that Blake had was loss. Not for the man as much as for the answers.
And perhaps for the last chance he would ever have at a family of any kind.
Although…
Blake was still looking at the slain laird, uncertain what to do next, when Brodie appeared through the back of the room, behind where his father’s body lay cooling. He was wild-eyed, visibly furious, and with an unsheathed sword in his hand.
He spared his father’s corpse a dispassionate glance before baring his teeth at Blake, raising his sword, and charging.
“Ye!” he seethed as Blake sidestepped the slash of Brodie’s blade, which was swung with impressive strength, considering his recent head wound. “It is always ye. Ye are always bloody here.”
“Brodie!” Blake snapped, deflecting another blow. This turn let him confirm that Katrina was safely being herded out of the way by Edward and Lennox.
A feeling of calm settled over him. A killing calm.
“Brodie,” he said, barely even focusing on the clash, parry, and thrust of their battle. His body knew these motions better than he knew his own name. “I have always wanted to tell ye that ye are a bloody coward. Cowering behind your father, acting as though it made ye a king.”
“While ye begged at his feet for scraps?” Brodie snarled.
Brodie was on the back foot now. Blake pressed his advantage. He struck and struck and struck, getting grim satisfaction from the way Brodie’s parries grew more and more frantic.
“Perhaps we are brothers after all, then,” Blake snarled. He took one more step forward, and Brodie stumbled as he was knocked back into the seat that had once been his father’s—the throne that he has so clearly longed to occupy for years.
Well. He could die there, then.
Blake raised his sword.
“Do it,” Brodie snarled, his face twisted into a mask of malice. “Ye are nothing but a weapon, remember? Do it.”
Brodie was a burning mask of hatred. The kind of man who cared for nobody and nothing but himself. Nothing but what power he could gain and wield over others.
Death was too good for him.
Blake smiled his cruelest smile as he lowered his sword.
“Hear me now, brathair,” he said icily. “I am nae going to kill ye. Nae yet. I am going to take everything from ye first. MacFarlane—” He spared a loathing glance for the corpse on the floor—“this clan has taken everything from me. My family. Years. My bloody soul.”
Well, he thought, there was perhaps a chance of getting that last one back, if the woman behind him was any indicator. But that was not the point.
“I,” he told Brodie, “am going to take everything from ye. And only then—only when ye have lost everything, only when ye are broken—then I am going to kill ye.”
He reached out with his unarmed hand and punched Brodie right in the same spot where he’d hit him before, sending his brother reeling back into unconsciousness.
And then Blake turned his back on him.
He turned his back on the life he had lived for far too long.
“Nice work,” Lennox said approvingly, and that startled a true laugh from Blake.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s get out of here, aye? While we still have the chance.”
This time, they didn’t stop for anything on their way out of the keep. The warm sunlight outside felt like a shock; with everything that had happened, it seemed impossible that it was still the same day where he had woken with Katrina in his arms.
But maybe, if the sun could still be shining after all this, it would all be just fine. It was hard to fathom, as the battle fever still surged in his veins, as the knowledge of everything he had learned started to settle over him like a weight.
As they ran across the field, heading for the forest, he started to let himself believe it. Katrina was at his side. For better or for worse, he’d thrown his lot in with Lennox, whom he respected, if very, very begrudgingly.
Perhaps it would all be well.
He cursed himself a moment later, because no sooner had he had the thought than a piercing scream rang out.
A feminine scream.
Arran was running before the last echoes of the sound left the air.
“Kenna!” he roared. “Kenna!”
Blake followed, Katrina and Edward on his heels. Kenna screamed again, more rage than pain, and Blake took comfort in the fact that if she was screaming, she was still alive to scream.
He wasn’t certain when he’d started caring about Makenna MacBrae, but his relief was undeniable.
They reached a clearing, where Kenna was kicking and snarling at the duo of guards who were trying to grab her as she thrashed in their holds. One of them had a large gash across one cheekbone.
Arran dispatched one of the guards with the kind of fury that only a man in love could manage. Blake took care of the other with less passion but equal speed.
“Well,” Kenna said briskly, as though she hadn’t been screaming like a banshee moments before. “That was efficient.”
Arran gathered her up in his arms then, and she buried her face in his throat, the trembling in her hands giving away her anxiety in a way her voice had not.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “Ye are fine. We are both safe.”
Blake didn’t even realize that he had reached for Katrina until she was safely tucked under his arm. Right where she belonged.
Edward looked at Lennox and Kenna. Then he looked at Blake and Katrina.
Then, he sighed.
“Right,” he said. “What are we supposed to do next?”