The Viper, page 6
After they placed the patient where she told them to, the males stood around, like robots looking for assignments.
“Where are my supplies,” she demanded.
“They’re coming,” one of them answered.
“Go get them now and bring them to me. Some of these males are dying.”
After the guards ran off, their footfalls disappearing down the concrete corridor outside, she went across and stood over the patient she’d put on Kane’s bed. Her hands shook as she pulled the shirt collar away from the throat. The anatomy was ravaged, veins and arteries cut, the windpipe exposed. His breathing was bad, uneven and ineffectual because of the tear in the airway.
He had only a minute or two left to live.
As if sensing her presence, he opened his eyes. One was bloodshot from some kind of impact, a fist or perhaps a blunt object.
“Help… me…,” he whispered.
Reaching out, she gently lifted his head. Slipping the pillow free, she lowered him back down in place, his cervical column now flat, his throat no longer compressed in any way.
Nadya stared at him, taking note of the hair color, the complexion… the name badge on the front of his uniform.
“I know who you are,” she said softly.
His mouth opened as he tried to breathe better, his tongue clicking as fresh blood dribbled down onto the sheets she had washed with such care.
“And I know what you did.”
With that, she covered his face with the pillow and put all her weight into holding the seal in place. As the guard’s torso jerked and his arms flailed, as his heels kicked at the foot of the bed and his hips twisted back and forth, she pictured Kane’s face.
While she killed the guard who had taken him away with such harsh hands, taken him to his certain death.
When all movement ceased, she eased back and lifted the pillow. The male’s eyes were trained on something up above him. Perhaps the Fade… but she prayed it was Dhunhd.
“May you rot in the earth,” she said in the Old Language.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Apex had volunteered to go up and distract the guards, he’d been ready to fight. He hadn’t had much of a plan, but considering he’d found what appeared to be a steak knife in the back of the Monte Carlo, he was just going to balls-to-the-wall it and keep the guards busy long enough for Lucan and Rio to get the show on the road, so to speak.
Plus he really felt like killing something(s).
And he’d figured when the guards took him down, which they would because they had superior firepower, especially when compared to his absolutely-no-firepower, at least he could die with the knowledge that he’d done some damage on the way out.
Except now there was screaming up there. What the hell from the screaming—
Straightening from his crouch, he got a gander at… a massacre up on the road. The guards had stopped their vehicles in a tight row, the better to provide cover, and in the glow from all those headlights, six or seven of them were flailing around, trying to run, but getting dragged back into whatever was happening. Most of the action was out of view, but he could smell the blood—
Some kind of fragment flew up into the air, its arc bringing whatever it was into Apex’s orbit. After the thing landed on a bounce in the dirt, he glanced down. It was a hand, severed at the wrist, the gristle a glossy set of streamers for the opposing-thumb-and-then-some whole.
Fuck it.
As Lucan yelled for him to stop, Apex bolted for the fight, jumping across the hood, landing on the shoulder, and racing up to the cracked asphalt. Rounding the first vehicle, he—
Stopped.
A mere five feet away, on the pavement, a wolf was savaging the chest of one of the guards. As the male tried to beat the animal away, he got nowhere with that—and then there was no way he was defending himself against anybody: That set of canine hardware got past the shredded uniform and into the pecs, the sternum, the stomach cavity.
Like the shit was a meal.
“You want some beer with that?” Apex muttered as he looked past the funeral-in-the-making.
There were four other guards in various stages of lunch meat, the ones still on their feet soon to be on the ground, the ones on the ground soon to be immobile.
The immobile ones soon to be consumed.
Lowering his dagger hand and his pointy little steak knife, he stayed where he was, because why ruin somebody else’s party—but more to the point, holy fuck he was in pain. Getting blendered in a rollover was not conducive to being all hale-and-hearty, and as he took a deep breath, one side of his rib cage lit up like it was hooked to a car battery.
So yes, he stayed off to the side.
The gruesome deaths didn’t bother him. As a hired assassin, you better not be squeamish, and even though he’d been a prisoner for a while, it wasn’t like that camp had been Shangri-La. If anything, it had made him even harder.
And then it was over. Nothing left to kill.
The aftermath of such violence was as always so quiet and strangely peaceful: Dripping. Subtle shifting. Twitches.
Like after a thunderstorm, nothing but damage and rain drops left.
Although in this case, there was a lot of panting. One by one, the wolves lifted their bloodstained muzzles and set their sights on him. So yup, hello, boys, he lifted his knife, such as it was, into position. Because by all means, face off against a pack of carnivores with something better suited for a hamburger—
“Now what, Cousin.”
Apex glanced over his shoulder. Lucan had come up behind him, and the male was making a show of keeping his gun down by his thigh. Good job only the pair of them knew that there was no lead left in the chamber of that autoloader.
When he looked back to the other wolven, he witnessed the change that he had heard about, but had never seen up close and in person—and it wasn’t anything that he’d expected. Instead of some agonizing contortion, the wolves assumed humanoid form in a sudden burst, their fur retracting into their skin, their torsos expanding, their arms and legs breaking out in a smooth series of shifts. And when they stood at their full heights, curls of white smoke released into the thin air off their shoulders as if the energy required to alter was the combustion kind.
What do you know, they were all still bloodstained.
Apex marked each one with his eyes, moving sequentially from right to left, memorizing them. No surprise, their features were cataloged more easily in this form. As wolves? They’d looked the same with their white, gray, and brown fur—
He stopped at the last one—and not just because there were no more to take visual impressions of.
The male at the end of the lineup was especially broad of shoulder and tight of waist, the inverted V of his torso balancing his powerful thighs and calves. With white hair and what appeared to be pale blue eyes, he was both ethereal—and, with all that muscle, very, very corporeal.
And he was hung like a…
Well, yes, a horse, as the saying went. Which, considering the sonofabitch had just been a wolf, felt inappropriate. Too many farm animals.
Especially as Apex was staring at the guy’s cock.
To maintain a decorum he didn’t actually care about, he ran his stare back up over the abdominals, past the pecs… and to the face.
The male was staring back at him.
“Callum?” Lucan said. “You going to speak? Or is that blood all over you yours and you’re about to cardiac-arrest on us—”
Off to the right, one of the uniformed bodies twitched. It was such a small movement, the kind of thing that could just be part of the parasympathetic nervous system shutting down for good. But as Apex’s eyes shifted over—
“Gun!” he barked as he leaped into the air.
While everybody else took cover, he threw himself at the guard and led with the tip of his blade. Just as the male who was covered with blood sat up and pointed his weapon at where the white-haired wolven had been standing, Apex grabbed the wrist, slammed it into the asphalt, and struck the center of what should have been a corpse’s open wound of a chest cavity.
The steel went where Apex wanted it to, directly into the heart.
But he was a guy who took pride in his work. Always had.
And something about the idea that the fucker could have killed that wolven made him cranky.
Giving into his fury, and in spite of his busted ribs, he continued to stab, and stab, and stab—and then as he yanked the knife free again, he took that gun out of a very non-resistant grip.
After that, things got a little hazy, but he dimly noted the scent of gunpowder overpowered all the fresh blood in his nose.
Unlike Lucan, the guard had plenty of bullets left in his chamber.
* * *
All things considered, Lucan could not be surprised about the carnage. Apex had always had a nuclear switch, some level over and above what any normal male brought to a fight. And the fact that in this instance, what he was doing was more a case of mutilation of a corpse didn’t seem to matter.
The unhinged SOB stabbed that dead guard with some kind of knife, the arms and legs flopping each time a new entry was made, the blood splattering his prison tunic and loose brown pants until it was like he had joined the leaking artery club.
When it was finally over, the prisoner just stayed where he was, straddling the hips of the mess, his own chest pumping, his blood-speckled face something out of a nightmare.
“Good job,” Lucan muttered. “He’s really not coming down for breakfast now.”
The vampire looked over and there was a lack of recognition that, for a moment, was concerning, considering what he’d just done. But then Apex blinked, dismounted what was left of his prey, and seemed to wait for some kind of direction.
Like he was a hollow shell.
“Come over here.”
Lucan’s words seemed to reach him, and Apex walked over and turned back around so he was facing the wolven as they uncoiled from their defensive crouches.
Meanwhile, Lucan’s DNA pool only cared about their kin. In the tense silence, as he was stared at, all he could think of was… how much he did not want his mate to get tangled up in this family reunion. And given the noses of his cousins and his clan, they’d sniff out Rio’s scent on his clothes in a heartbeat, even with all the nostril-distraction going on.
It was killing him not to look over his shoulder to check on her position. But he didn’t want to get her targeted. Rio was smart, well trained, and had experience with shoot-outs. He had to trust that.
Callum came forward. Not a surprise. He was the most dominant of the wolven on-site, and they would submit to that authority.
Meanwhile, Apex’s focus was trained on the male like he hadn’t run out of an interest in turning things into pincushions.
Lucan reached out and squeezed the guy’s biceps. “Don’t.”
The reality was, if he wanted to get his mate and fellow prisoners out of here alive, a battle with the other wolven was not the path of least resistance. It was the path to the graveyard.
And something was bothering him.
Why had the wolven attacked? It made no sense. They had no reason to take on the guards, no role within the prison camp—other than framing people and tossing them in there.
Callum stopped about five feet away. “Lucan.”
The name was hoarse as it left his lips—and then…
The wolven lowered himself onto his knees, his naked form resplendent in the glow of the headlights. Dropping his head, he shifted onto one hip. Stretched his legs out. Then rolled to the side to lie faceup on the asphalt with his palms on the bones of his pelvis and his legs crossed at the ankles.
His eyes stared up at the heavens.
Until he closed his lids.
Lucan’s chest got tight—and abruptly, his grip on Apex’s upper arm was no longer to keep the guy from doing anything aggressive, it was to help with his own balance.
A wolf never offered his belly to anybody, especially if he was undefended.
Unless it was his family… and he was seeking forgiveness.
By presenting the kind of atonement that, if it was refused, would lead to his own death.
Lucan didn’t speak. He couldn’t.
Instead, he took two steps forward. When his cousin’s eyes reopened, he thought about the murder he’d been framed for, and the years he’d spent in that prison, all because he’d been born a half-breed. As if he’d had control over that.
“I have hated you for decades.”
Callum’s pale blue stare gleamed. “I don’t blame you. My father ordered us, but that’s no excuse. It was wrong.”
Lucan thought about those fantasies he’d had as he’d lain in that hard bunk, behind bars. Then he glanced at the other four wolven. They were all standing still, their hands clasped behind their backs, a signal that they would not interfere. No matter what Lucan did.
Glancing over his shoulder, he checked on the Monte Carlo. Rio was standing in front of the bullet-riddled hood, her arms crossed over her chest, her body braced.
Lucan smiled as he refocused on his prostrated cousin. “You’re fucking lucky I met her because of that hellhole.”
On that note, he extended his palm—and when his relative took what was offered, he pulled the other male up… and held him close.
Callum shuddered as the scent of tears wafted up between them. “My conscience has never forgiven me those actions.”
“Good.” Lucan cradled the male’s head as it dropped down. “That’s a fitting punishment.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Several hours later, Kane awoke to the sound of burbling water and the smell of fresh-cut pine and good earth. As he drew in breath, he had the sense that his body had been carefully tended to. He was not pain free, but he did have enough distance between his sensory receptors and his brain’s capacity such that he could try to assess where he was.
His eyes opened. He expected to see the night sky, for he was certain that he was out of doors. Instead, there was some kind of draping over him, and not far above his head, but rather close to, by merely six inches.
Somewhere nearby, a fire crackled, and the flames cast yellow and orange flares across the sheeting. He wondered about the water, the flow like a small stream that traversed rocks, the chatter friendly. Welcoming.
“You wake.”
The voice was female, but he could not tell what direction it came from. Rather, it seemed to be all around him. Perhaps inside of him? But that was not possible.
What kind of drugs had they given him back at the prison camp?
“Where am I?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. He wasn’t sure he was conscious, and if he was, he didn’t trust that voice was real.
“You are on the mountain. You are safe.”
Unexpected tears speared into his eyes.
“It is all right,” the voice told him. “You have been through quite a trial.”
Was she referring to finding his shellan murdered, or when he’d been framed for the death, or the centuries in prison? Or the escape itself?
“May I inquire something?” he said hoarsely.
“Yes, of course.”
“Are you real?”
There was a chuckle. “Yes.”
“Am I out of the prison camp?”
“Yes. You are here with Lucan’s clan, on our territory.”
“Are my people okay? Lucan and Rio? Apex. Mayhem…” The male had been so injured. “Is Mayhem—”
“They are all well and safe. They’re being fed and watered by Lucan’s family. Amends have been made and accepted, the rift that was someone else’s tear mended by what is left of the perpetrators of the crime.” There was another soft chuckle. “I do believe Callum, as intractable and arrogant as he is, has had quite a humbling.”
“Are they safe? My… friends.”
Given that they were out of the prison camp, it seemed wrong to use the term “prisoner,” and what a relief.
“Yes. And so are you.”
He paused and gathered his thoughts. “What year is it?” When she told him the date, he frowned. “Is that in human years?”
“Yes.”
Kane’s math on how long he’d been in the camp was a revelation, and he was tempted to ask her if she was sure. “I thought I was in there for… much longer than I had been. I lost count of the time.”
“That would be expected.”
“Who are you?”
“I am a friend Fate has seen fit to provide you. And you’re with me now because it is time for you to choose.”
“Choose what.” He lifted his good hand and wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t hold the slight weight up for longer than a heartbeat or two. “What am I choosing.”
“Whether you stay or go.”
“I didn’t know I got a vote in that,” he muttered.
“We are in a unique situation, you and I. I have something that I can offer you, a rejuvenation of sorts. There are some… unusuals to the commitment, but given your situation, I have a feeling they may be worth what you get in return.”
A breeze entered whatever room he was in—no, it couldn’t be a room. Unless it was made of windows and all were open.
“You’re in my private quarters,” the voice explained, as if she read his mind. “It’s a bit of a tent, a bit of a hut. This is where I live.”
He closed his eyes, weariness catching up with him. As he felt his strength ebb, he thought back to another disembodied voice that had kept him going. Under all the robing, Nadya had seemed mysterious and formless to him, too.
His lids popped open. What about her?
“You are dying,” his host proclaimed.
“No.”
As the word exploded out of him, hazy memories of a guard all but ripping him off the bed he had been lying on were so vivid, he remembered the male’s face with all its satisfaction, as if the domination was enjoyed. Nadya had begged the guard to stop. Pleaded.
He had pushed her aside and she had fallen hard on the concrete floor.
