Chapter Twenty-One

then let men kill which cannot share

let blood and flesh be mud and mire,

scheming imagine, passion willed,

freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

From My father moved through dooms of love – E. E. Cummings

We appeared in the center of the great hall like shadows forming from the soot of the earth. Lucien’s blade still carefully poised against my throat’s main artery, which beat a thready rhythm matching the anger that rode my bones. I wanted to tear his heart out. I wanted to tear all of their hearts out as I slowly looked around at the mayhem Jirvel had wrought.

She sat on a dais dressed in a snow-white gown of silk overlaid with a sprinkling of gems, and looked like the pale queen of death that I knew she was. The gown was sleeveless, the vee of its neckline cut low to her waist, her pale, firm breasts peaking beneath. When she stood at our arrival, the sound of Lucien’s breath catching resonated in my ear. The cloth of her dress was so frail and gossamer you could just make out the blush of her nipples, the indenture of her waist and the fact that she wore absolutely nothing beneath.

I hated to admit it, but she bore a striking pose. I suppose it was probably enough to make most men catch their breath...if you liked the hopelessly dead and virally pasty. Personally, I looked forward to seeing her blood stain the hell out of the damned slutty outfit. And being the one to put it there.

To the right of her toothy-bitchiness’ throne stood a wall of sheer rock face, uncovered and unblemished, except for the wall decor she’d chosen to have chained to it.

To my utter disgust Ien, Garric, Jade and Dragon now hung as her petty attempt at demoralization and vagrant fear tactic. All had been shackled with silver. Burn marks that did not seem to be healing still smoldered on their chest. Cuts, gashes and festering wounds seeped from each of them. I couldn’t really tell for sure, but it appeared that Dragon’s legs were broken in several spots. I knew that had he been able to change the wounds would have healed. The legs repaired, but left too long, he would never walk again.

Had to give the bitch props on one account...it was definitely demoralizing. Me, personally, I really tried not to let the bad guys see my fear. They’d usually find a way to beat the crap out of me with it.

I took a brief moment to scan the wounds of my pack. Ien had a horrible puncture in his torso and his left eye was completely sealed shut. His chest bore the marks of claw and bruises everywhere. His brother Garric was not much better. It appeared he hung from a dislocated right shoulder. A bullet hole marred his upper left thigh, the wound a garish crimson with the silver tinge of pus. Thankfully, both of them had passed out.

Jade, on the other hand, hung like a crucified warrior, unrepentant and unashamed. Three Werewolves stood with spears before him, their silver blades glistened in the dim light of the wall sconces, each sharp edge aimed for his throat.

“I’m going to fucking rip your throat out, you vile bitch,” he growled, struggling against his chains.

Jirvel’s wicked laughter echoed through the great hall. “You poor, pathetic beast. Have you not yet seen your demise?” she questioned. “Your brothers are nearly dead. And soon you too shall follow.” Her voice was so reasonable. So contemptuous. I wanted to wipe the smirk off her pouty red lips. I yearned to rip her voice box right from her throat.

“Did you think that your Chosen One was going to save you?” she questioned. “That your precious, half-breed, your prophetic Fey, Rihker, was going to save all of you?” she laughed hysterically; the sound of a mad-hatter run amok.

Jade finally looked up, his eyes finding mine across the distance that separated us as realization struck. I could feel the wild frenzy of his beast howling inside him. I tried to tell him without words to calm himself. That all would be well. That we would get through this, but my she-wolf caught another familiar smell.

It was a scent that had once stirred the passions of warm nights and warmer desires. A scent that was uniquely dark and musky. The smell of earth and sandalwood, dark dreams and darker passions fulfilled. A scent that stirred my soul. One I thought I’d never smell again. One I’d worried over and feared for.

The hackles of my she-wolf rose. Danger rushed through her flesh and mine. Fear burst in a nauseating rush up from the pit of my stomach, lodged itself in my throat. Beads of perspiration broke out all over my body. I wanted to run. Knew there was no place to go, that I was trapped. I was afraid to look, yet fearful not to. Hesitantly my head turned to the left side of the room, where I found the sum of all of those fears.

I couldn’t keep the gasp of horror from escaping me, my knees from going out beneath me. If not for Lucien’s hold, I’d have slit my own throat on his blade, had he not moved it in time.

Kieran lay chained to a black marble altar, his beautiful body lifeless. His pale, pale flesh now held the ashen color of true death, a blade plunged through the center of his chest.

My thoughts began to run rampant. My throat closed off while the thundering of my heart took over, swallowing up my will to breathe, to think or to function. And right on queue, Blaen strolled into the room with Mercy chained like a dog on a leash behind him. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck, screamed over and over in my head.

“Has my wolf been treating his new Goblin-vamp whore with care?” Jirvel asked, her voice tinkling with ironic laughter.

I tried not to look away from Kieran, tried to keep all of my focus on him, but I knew that Mercy deserved better than being left to the brutality of Blaen and his wolves once again. Her past experience with him told me that whatever torments he had done to her would be just as terrible. Just as sadistic. This time was no exception.

She wore nothing but the spiked collar at her throat and a chain of crosses that ran from it to the belly band at her waist; this too hung with more crosses. Each one singed as it struck her fragile flesh. The hiss seemed to stalk down my spine. It resonated in the pit of my stomach, where darker hatreds began to ache.

A dark row of bluish-purple bruises ran the expanse of the right side of her face. The pale shimmer of older bruises, yellow-green in color, burst beneath. Each mark reflected how often she’d been beaten. Beaten into submission by a beast who knew no kindness.

Her lips were swollen, stained dark red. There were puncture wounds at every blood mark on her body: neck, wrists, the indenture at the bend of her arms, even the inside of her thighs still bled with fresh blood. It was like she’d been passed around to Jirvel’s vamps as well.

My anger continued to grow despite the overwhelming feelings of defeat that flirted through my mind like apparitions. How could she have done this to them, especially to Kieran? Hadn’t she created him? Once professed to care for him? I knew part of the answer—she was a stone-cold-dead bitch. She just hadn’t lain down yet.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waited for Gimlit to arrive in his own set of chains. Looked to the doorway that Blaen and his flunkies had come through, waiting to see the shining turquoise eyes that I knew so well. But they never came. My heart sank, fear an ugly knot that twisted my guts.

I stood firmly for the first time in several minutes. Let Lucien’s blade remind me of the pain the others had suffered on my behalf as it pierced the flesh at my neck, the cool air of the great hall stinging the warm trickle of blood that now seeped beneath.

“What have you done with Gimlit?” I asked her. I couldn’t keep the hatred from my voice, the glow from my flesh increasing as my anger rose. I could feel the Darkness inside me seeking an escape, burning in my belly like a cauldron filled with dark, slippery mutilated things waiting for the right moment to be stirred that one time too many so that the pot overflowed.

Visions of a murderous rampage swarmed my thoughts. Blood mania—total annihilation. Walls bleeding and limbs dripping. I wanted to feel the warmth of eviscerated remains run through my fingers. I wanted to worry bones like the beast I knew thrashed inside me for vengeance. Fury became a glowing haze. I had to clench my teeth to stifle it. Trample it down inside me for my own fear of its dark rage.

Jirvel merely laughed with wicked mirth. “Your pet Ogre is a mite busy, dear,” she merrily stated as she turned and retook her throne. “Off fighting Shadows. You know how those Ogres can be...such an ugly warring lot.”

Her offhanded statement and smugness was almost more than I could stomach. My teeth were clenched so tightly my jaw began to throb. I clenched and unclenched my fingers, yearning for a blade. I wanted nothing more than to rip the bitch’s face off. Cut out her heart and rip off her head. But even I knew that there was greater Darkness behind her. Someone—or something—pulling her strings.

Sure, Jirvel was strong, but she wasn’t strong enough to capture this many of Glen Hills mightiest creatures. There was also the answers to the motive behind all of the deaths I was seeking. I knew she’d killed all of the Necromancers. That she’d killed the Lady Twilla. But I didn’t know why. What had any of it to do with us? Why the battle with us? Why the sacrifice of Kieran?

Oh, it was certain the bitch was going to die this night, but not before I got my answers. And whatever was happening to Gimlit, I knew it was her doing. At her ultimate command. Despite the fact that they were Lucien’s Shadow Slaves, she had given him the order to do it. But if Lucien had called them, then maybe he could release them and return Gimlit to me.

“Let him go, Lucien,” I told him. “Call off your Shadows, and I swear to you I will help you. I will help to free you from this psychotic bitch and get you your soul back.”

Lucien looked at me and I watched shades and shadows pass through his eyes like clouds on a crystal blue lake. It seemed a lifetime of memories and pain passed that I would never hear the words for and would never understand. “I will save you from her,” I whispered, praying that he would believe. “Help us and I will free you.”

I felt a sudden change in the air around us. The temperature shifted, dropping by degrees and every nerve ending I had rose to attention. Fear that I’d been holding stabbed me in the gut, brought my head back up and around, where my eyes alighted to Jirvel’s pale form.

“She can’t help you, Lucien,” she growled, the whites of her eyes fading to pure ebony as she rose. Anger and loathing were clearly writ in the lines that now creased her sneering lips and her once delicate face. Showing now what I had always known lay below: age and ugliness. The ugliness that her soul held. The ugliness that a millennia of death and torture to a plethora of others could only wrought upon a creature. All of it was there in the creases at her eyes, the line above her brow. The sneering crimson lips.

“I hold your soul. It belongs to me,” she snarled. “You were nothing when I found you; a pathetic Necromancer without any idea how to use his skills. You couldn’t raise the dead then and your feeble, failed attempts to raise them now has cost me nothing but disaster,” she scolded, and a huge chunk of my story clicked. All that remained was the why.

“And you,” she glowered, pointing with even more dark hatred blazing in her eyes. I had never seen such vile hope for the destruction of a person before. “You are nothing. Nothing!” The words were growled between clenched lips. They erupted as though from the pit of her belly, a belly of a monster; a monster born in the fires of hell. I could suddenly feel the air pressure around us shift again. Darkness blazed to life before us like a living flame, extending from her outstretched fingers toward us.

“You will never save him or his pathetic soul. You will never save any of their souls!”

One moment Lucien was holding me, blade poised against my throat and the next he was just gone. Flung away like mist, blade spinning free of his hand. Jirvel opened her palm, flexed her fingers and Lucien’s body slammed against the nearest column. She moved her wrist and he spun, slammed repeatedly against the column like a bag of bones. She swiped her arm the opposite direction and his body twisted, flew across the other side of the room, slammed against the far side of the wall and slid to the floor. Nothing moved again.

I started to turn to the left and Jirvel flung out her other hand toward me. I had time to blink, take a quick breath and a sphere of Darkness spread from her outstretched fingers, spiraled across the room and crashed into my chest. I watched it form like a bubble of soap; sparkling in intervals yet dark as sludge. The force of it as it rammed into me was like being struck by a boulder the size of a Hummer H2. My feet went out from under me, elbows jammed against the solid rock of the floor and the remaining air left my battered lungs.

Power slithered over me. Evil power. Power filled with utter Darkness. It was repulsive. Vile and disgusting. My skin crawled with the sickness and death that clung to the air around me. All at once I heard the voices of one hundred million dead things screaming. My stomach churned at a memory. My vision swam while I struggled to breathe. I could hear the dead scream their madness; calling me and I trembled at their need.

I only knew of one creature with this Dark gift. One with the force of will to cast his Darkness from afar. I knew one other creature besides Jirvel who possessed as great a will and dark desire to kill me as much as I wanted to kill him...my father.