Chapter 14 #2
And then he had me up against the truck, my arms trapped between my back and the metal door. The handcuffs pressed into my skin, burning into the already blistered flesh.
I hissed and bucked against his body. “My wrists.”
Cain jerked back and pivoted me sideways so he could examine them. His expression darkened. He muttered something vicious and worked the catch. The cruel silver circles opened and a moan of relief escaped me. He slid the cuffs off and yanked the passenger door open.
“In the truck,” he ordered, but instead of giving me a chance to obey, he swept me up himself and deposited me on the seat. “Arms out.”
I wordlessly extended them. He eased up my sleeves so he could examine my wrists. The spikes had tattooed a ring of raw, weeping blisters into my skin.
“Damn it, Nyx,” he said like I’d somehow wounded myself. “These look bad.”
I curled my lip. “Go to Hades.”
He muttered something that sounded like, “I’m already there,” and snapped the handcuffs on my wrists again.
Then, to my shock, he eased the soft cotton of my long-sleeved tee between my wrists and the silver bands, protecting my injured skin from further exposure.
“As soon as we get out of town,” he told me, “I’ll stop somewhere for salt and water to wash out those wounds.”
I shrugged. It would help, but the poison was already spreading through my bloodstream, a prickling, painful burn that would only grow worse. At least my hands were in front of me now.
“And Nyx?” He speared a hand into my hair, tugging it so my chin was elevated, my throat exposed to him. Making it crystal clear that, here and now, he was my alpha.
This time, I couldn’t resist dropping my eyes—a quick, instinctive response. “What?”
“Try anything and I will hunt you down and make you sorry you were ever born. Is that clear?”
I pressed my lips together, hating how easily he read me.
“Nyx?” he prompted.
“Got it,” I mumbled.
He released me. “That’s better.”
He shut the door, scooped a handful of snow, and scrubbed the blood from his face before rounding the truck. A few minutes later, we were heading east out of town, farmland and scattered houses sliding past.
The truck hit a rut, throwing me against the door.
I smothered a whimper. Silver wounds heal slowly, and I was especially susceptible.
Even without the spikes biting into my skin, the welts throbbed painfully.
And these handcuffs weren’t just restraints.
They’d been engineered to force the poison deeper, to flood my system as quickly as possible.
Cain swung the truck into a gas station with a convenience store attached.
“I’ll be right back,” he said with a frowning glance at me and hit the remote, engaging the locks, before loping off.
I watched him enter the store. My last chance to run.
I even unlocked my door and grabbed the handle.
But I was weakening by the minute, exhaustion weighting my limbs, my body aching like a human who’d caught the flu. I wouldn’t get a hundred yards like this.
And how would I remove the cuffs? I might even do something that would cause the silver spikes to dig into my skin again.
My breath leaked out in despair. I rested my forehead against the window, the glass cool against my heated skin.
I was still there when Cain returned. I heard his approach, but I couldn’t seem to make myself react. When the door swung open, I spilled forward toward the pavement.
He cursed and caught me, bobbling the two bottles of water he’d bought.
He dropped them on the truck floor and eased me back against the seat.
Through slit lids I watched him tear open several salt packets and empty them into one of the bottles.
He capped it and shook it, mixing the salt in, then pushed up my sleeves and eased me forward so my arms dangled out of the truck.
“This is going to hurt,” he warned—and poured the salt water over my left wrist.
He hadn’t lied. Pain exploded through me. I gasped and jerked against his hold.
“Don’t move.” Cain tightened his grip on my upper arm and grimly cleaned my other wrist.
I stifled a shriek. Mercifully, my mind went blank. I came back to myself to hear myself whining like a hurt animal. Dragging in a breath, I dug my teeth into my lower lip so hard I drew blood.
“Almost done,” he muttered.
I focused on his strained face. A muscle in his cheek flexed like he was hurting right along with me.
That emptiness inside me swelled, pressing against my ribs. He had no right to feel my pain, not when he’d caused it.
I looked past his shoulder. You’re nothing to me.
Not a lover. Certainly not my savior.
An enemy. A lying, two-faced enemy.
He rinsed the salt away with the second bottle. “That should be better,” he said, helping me to sit back against the seat.
I let out a long exhale. The throbbing hurt eased, although I wouldn’t have admitted that to Cain even if he’d held a knife to my throat.
He touched my bleeding lower lip without saying anything. I just looked at him until, with a distorted little smile, he released me and closed the door.
We continued east through the falling snow, the only sound the swish-swish of the wipers. Shortly after, we entered a thick forest.
We could’ve been driving into one of my paintings.
Headlights carve a path through the snow-choked night, their glow swallowed by the dark. A single set of tire tracks disappears into the trees. Ahead, a wall of thorns—razor-sharp, tangled, draped in roses so red they seem to burn against the cold.
Somewhere beyond the thicket, she stands, eyes wide. Watching and waiting. This is no Sleeping Beauty. She won’t be claimed by just any man who cuts his way through the thorns. He’ll have to prove himself—earn the right to her. And even then, she might refuse him.
Yeah, my paintings were repositories for all my bottled-up longing.
Cain glanced at me. “We’ll be at the coast in another thirty minutes or so.”
I nodded without speaking. To talk felt like too much of an effort. I felt feverish and lightheaded, as if my head had morphed into a balloon and was floating somewhere above my body, while the rest of me sagged in the seat, heavy with pain.
I stared dazedly out the dark window at the thick white flakes. Picturing the prince who’d come to my rescue. Funny thing was, he looked like Cain.
I snorted, and Cain exhaled. “Something amusing about this?”
That made me laugh out loud, a cracked, unhinged sound I barely recognized. “You h—have no idea.”
I felt rather than saw the look he shot me. “Just go to sleep already.”
“Noway,” I muttered, the words slurring together. “To sssleep, I’d have to feel ssssafe.”
But the next thing I knew, my eyes were closed, my head lolling against the seat. I jerked upright, heart pounding. My fever had worsened, my body burning, my head still floating around somewhere in the stratosphere.
We’d left the forest and entered another town, this one larger. We must be nearing the coast.
I forced myself to focus. “What happens when we get to Lilith Island?” I asked because if I didn’t say something, I might pass out again, and the vulnerability in that terrified me.
“You’re going to tell Brien everything you know.”
My smile was a bitter sliver. “Like Hades I am.”
I’d helped this man, and Brien, too.
And it still wasn’t enough. I was never enough.
“Then we’ll lock you up,” he said.
“I guess you’ll have to because I’m done helping you.”
“Up to you,” he said and turned on the radio.
I focused on the dark scenery again, the silver burning its way through me like a slow-moving fire. The snow stopped.
When my eyes drifted shut, I forced them open and asked another question, trying to keep myself from slipping into unconsciousness. “Why did your uncle hate you so much anyway?”
“Because I exist.”
“He raised you?”
“Yeah.” A beat passed, his profile carved in stone, giving nothing away. Then he muttered, “My mom died when I was a baby—I never knew her. And my dad… a car crash when I was three. I barely remember him.”
My heart clenched. I ignored it. I was not going to feel compassion for the man who’d abducted me.
But I found myself sharing something about myself.
“My mother left me with Nazaire when I was four. She couldn’t handle a dhampir kid.
Said I was too needy—always wanting blood.
” Mama had called me a “needy little bitch,” with a smile, of course.
To her, everything is a joke. “But I think she just wanted to party without tripping over a kid.”
“I know.”
Of course, he did. His syndicate probably had a book-length file on me.
Maybe he’d even targeted me from the beginning.
Although it had felt mutual to me. Two strangers stunned, even a little afraid, at how much they wanted each other.
“Do you ever see her?”
“Not really. She’d rather pretend I don’t exist.” Head pounding, I closed my eyes. “The dhampir thing, you know.”
“So she wasn’t at the show.”
I gave a tiny shake of my head. “She doesn’t even know I paint.”
“So it really is a big secret. Not even Nazaire knows.”
“He knows I paint.”
“But he hasn’t figured out you’re The Haunt? Wait, does he even know how good you are?”
“I don’t show him my work. Not that he ever asks to see it.”
“That’s fucked up. You know that, don’t you?”
His voice came from a long way away. I had the odd feeling he wasn’t even there—just a figment of my imagination.
“As fucked up,” I replied, the words slurred again, “as your uncle trying to sssell you to usss.”
This time, when my eyes closed, I couldn’t force them to open. The next thing I knew, the truck had stopped. Cain scooped me up and carried me to a waiting helicopter.
Keeping me on his lap, he slipped headphones over his ears, then mine. The pilot lifted us into the sky. The chopper lurched, the wind off the ocean tearing at the frame, then steadied. We swung out over the black water.
I was too hot. Skin too tight, head too late, my whole body aching. My eyes shut again.
Lips brushed my forehead. I thought I was dreaming until Cain grumbled, “You’re burning up.”
“Silver,” I rasped. “I’m…allergic.”
His curse vibrated against my temple. Then I felt him removing the cuffs. “I’ve never seen it wipe someone out like this.”
“Lucky me.” Keeping my wrists out so they didn’t touch anything, I curled into myself, refusing to read anything into how he held me—like that he might actually like care.
“Nyx.”
“Lemme sleep… Tired.”
“No. Here.” He pressed his wrist to my mouth, the skin smooth and cool against my dry lips. “Drink.”
I made a half-hearted attempt to feed, but I was too out of it to puncture his skin. The effort drained me. I sagged against the solid wall of his chest. “Just…leave me alone.”
“I fucking wish I could,” he said under his breath.
He shifted me around, fumbling for something out of sight. Then his wrist pressed against my mouth again. This time, blood seeped through my lips, warm, salty. Life-giving.
I lapped at it greedily.
“Suck,” he urged, and I obeyed.
I managed to swallow a few mouthfuls before darkness took me under again. Five minutes later—or that’s how it seemed, anyway—the chopper touched down.
I raised my head, still weak and achy, but Cain’s blood had sent a shot of energy into me, thinning the fog in my brain enough to let me take in my surroundings.
We’d landed in a courtyard, hemmed in by what had to be Castle Leclerc.
Four black towers rose around us, their silhouettes carved against the moonlit sky like a threat carved in stone.
Cain stood, still cradling me, and dropped to the worn cobblestones.
I pushed at his chest. “I can walk,” I said above the thump-thump of the blades.
“Why don’t you just shut up,” he suggested and strode up the castle’s granite steps like I weighed nothing.
The wooden doors groaned open and a broad-shouldered man in a blue Maritime Syndicate uniform filled the threshold. He glanced at me, but his expression didn’t change, as if Cain carrying a woman into the castle was nothing remarkable.
“Good to have you back, sir.” He ushered us into the domed foyer.
I caught only flashes of the foyer as we stepped inside—a sweep of night sky painted overhead with swirling stars and a golden moon; faded tapestries sagging on the walls; sea-serpent sconces with glowing pearls of light clamped between their teeth; and a mosaic of a great white shark, jaws parted wide, beneath Cain’s feet.
“Impressive,” I muttered, and for a second, Cain’s gaze locked with mine, like he understood exactly how I felt.
Then he wrenched his gaze away and shifted me in his arms so that as little of our bodies touched as possible. Like I was a sack of hazardous waste, in fact.
“William,” he said, “could you let Brien and Talon know we’re back?”
“I already have. And the lady?” The big man’s gaze flicked to me. “Will she require a room?”
“No,” was the clipped reply. “We’ll be in my quarters. Have Brien and Talon meet us there, would you.”
“Of course, lieutenant.”