Hurt (The Hurt Series, #1)

by Lydia Michaels

  Dripping pulp, red and thick with soaked tissue spattered on the moldings. Rhys’s body collapsed to the table, limp and lifeless. A flood of crimson rushed from where his face had been. But he was gone. Nothing was real.

  Surreal terror knocked Callan into the doorway. Denial hammered his chest hard enough to crack his ribs.

  Innis’s tortured howl ripped through the room, vibrating with Uma’s frightened screams.

  “What have you done?”

  Callan couldnae move. He couldnae breathe. Rhys’s face was gone.

  His friend’s blood pumped only a second more and then seeped slowly into the forgotten pile of stolen drugs. The metallic scent turned his stomach, and someone puked in the corner.

  Rhys was dead. His mind refused everything his eyes saw. The percussive echo of the shot so loud his hearing still pulsed with a strange echo of irreversible permanence.

  “Rhys!” His sister screamed, now cradling his limp body in her arms, his dark blood saturating the gossamer lace of her gown until it clung to her skin, matting all the little feathers.

  “No. No...” Her ravaged sobs gutted him.

  One of the whores held the screaming baby, trying to soothe her cries in all the chaos. Callan blinked. Numb.

  The empty gun clattered to the floor. Rory met his stare, his face blank and his eyes flat.

  Callan couldnae move. He couldnae breathe. His friend was dead, his sister devastated, the baby distraught. This wasnae their life.

  Rory rounded the table and jerked Innis by the hair and wrenching her tear-streaked face away from Rhys. Blood coated her neck and hair. “Use yer good eye and fucking look!”

  Her rough sobs ripped like jagged punches to the soul.

  Holding his stare, Rory leaned close to her ear. “Yer brother did this.” He thrust her head forward, releasing her. “Now, clean it up!”

  Tension zipped across the room as Rory’s gaze bore into him. His brutal possession still burned on Callan’s skin, scored him from the inside out.

  This bottomless hurt he couldnae feel—not yet.

  Unarmed. No shoes. He reeked of his mortal enemy’s sweat and semen. Perhaps he did own them because Callan could do nothing but flounder in shock.

  Innis stood, her sobs chopping through the space, her motions jerky, her mind truly unwell.

  “Shut that fuckin’ baby up!” Rory snapped, and the half-dressed woman holding Uma raced out of the room.

  But not far enough to silence the cries.

  Innis returned, her ghostlike presence dragging the weight of a mop bucket and supplies. Would he really be so cruel as to make her clean up Rhys’s remains? Everything was so fucked up he couldnae catch his breath, couldnae fathom how to intervene.

  “Tell me again, MacGregor.” Rory’s voice penetrated the fog. “Say I don’t own y—”

  The broad side of a board smashed into the side of Rory’s head. Callan flinched.

  “Jesus fuck!”

  Rory’s eyes widened, his unfinished words seemingly trapped in his paralyzed mouth.

  Callan’s shocked stare landed on Innis as she clenched the end of a wooden club, the crude board shot through with rusted nails, several piercing the side of Rory’s face as rivulets of blood drizzled from his eyes and ears.

  “Innis...” They were all going to die.

  She yanked the board, Rory’s head jerked with it, impaled. Red flooded the whites of his eyes and spilled from his lips.

  The board wrenched free with a slurp of wet tissue and hair. Her wild eye shined like a barometer of shrinking sanity.

  Callan reached for his knives that werenae there.

  “Again!” Rory needed to die. There was no coming back from this.

  She swung the board but Rory stumbled, and she missed.

  The disgusting wheeze of his rage drew in on a breath that pulled all the air from the room. He lunged at Innis. “Fuckin’ cunt!” His garbled hate pierced the silence, and the room erupted into chaos.

  Callan’s fear exploded as Rory’s bloodied eyes followed Innis with surprising accuracy, as he lurched forward.

  “I’ll fuckin’ kill ye!”

  How could he still speak and move?

  “Kill them!”

  Callan sprung into action when Rory bared his bloodstained teeth and lunged for her.

  Innis screamed like a suicidal warrior and swung the board, missing Rory’s head and slamming it into the table.

  Rory choked and gagged, spitting a thick clot of blood as he lurched back, stumbling away from her. His hacking, wet cough rattled as he spewed blood and hate, swallowing down whatever choked him. “Kill ... her.”

  Hamish lunged at Innis. Callan flew after him without feeling the ground under his feet. “Dinnae fuckin’ touch her!”

  His fist crashed into Hamish’s face, shattering bone and flinging his body away from the table. He ripped the board from the surface. Crooked nails punched through the end like a crude, homemade mace.

  He dinnae think. Only acted. Slamming it down on Hamish’s pocked face. The sickening smash left his legs twitching. Another blow and he stilled.

  The room exploded in a flurry of howling chaos. Glass broke. Men shouted. There were too many.

  Rory stumbled after Innis, a riot of murder seething from his soulless, red eyes.

  “Grab that fucking bitch!” He hacked and spit, his voice crunching like crumpled cellophane as he wheezed out the command.

  A guard snatched a fistful of Innis’s hair, and she screamed like a possessed banshee. In a cloud of blood-drenched feathers and lace, she clawed her nails down the captor’s face leaving rivulets of blood and biting his ear.

  Bellowing screams howled out of the stumbling guard as he released her and covered his scored flesh.

  Pain exploded in the back of Callan’s head as something dropped him to his knees. He twisted, finding three men at his back. A booted kick slammed into his face, blinding him in a white burst. Another kick and the wind punted out of him. Too many.

  They railed into him, tenderizing his muscle to mush, beating him until he tasted blood and his eyes swelled shut.

  “Innis!” he screamed, unable to hear her anymore.

  More men joined the fray, breaking chairs over his back as he tried to shelter his face from any more blows. He crawled, only to have their vicious kicking follow him. He couldnae escape them. His body became a bag of flesh, smashed to the bone.

  They beat the fight out of him. The last of himself he had left.

  He could no longer hold a thought. There was only pain. Only hurt.

  Broken.

  Defeated.

  Finished.

  He waited for merciful death to come. Someone dragged him, but he could only blindly moan.

  “In ... nis...” he rasped. Where was she? He had to protect her.

  His eardrum sloshed with a disgusting crackle and crunch. Breathing was excruciating, as if water filled his lungs. Glass cut into his back as they dragged him.

  Stolen from their drafty house and plunged into the fiery flames of hell. This was the end.

  No more....

  Please. No more.

  The distant pop-pop-pop of a gun firing pierced his heart. Innis...

  He needed to get to her.

  But they dragged him away. They had her. He couldnae help her.

  Maybe she’d be safe now. At peace. With Gavin.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Somewhere dark.

  No concept of time.

  The throbbing of his skull around his brain shook the hinges of his jaw. His teeth rattled in a constant tapping that resembled the prattle of drizzle against a window. Cold. He was freezing cold.

  A ruffle of cool air ransacked his exposed body, like icy needles piercing the skin. The twitch of his finger, strapped to something bulky, made it impossible to move.

  His bare knees shifted under the crushing weight of the sheet. Sweat gathered like a blanket. His drenched flesh quivered. Scalding heat pushed in
to cold and a wheezed moan raked up his throat.

  “Are ye finally awake?” The soft, muffled voice was too far away to hear.

  Wet heat pressed to his ear. A shiver stabbed down his shoulders.

  Tiny threads of pain traced to every point of his body. Even the insides of his ears screamed in agony.

  Thirsty. Parched. But when he swallowed the swollen sides of his throat screamed.

  Cool drops drizzled across his cracked lips. His tired tongue chased them into his mouth. Life.

  “More,” he rasped, hardly able to shape the word.

  The damp cloth bathed his lips again, and his tongue greedily caught the droplets. He mentally told his arms to tell his fingers to move, to reach for the water, but straps held him down.

  Where was he? Who fed him water?

  Open your eyes...

  The command hit a brick wall.

  Open your eyes...

  A small flash of light burned his retinas. A blurred figure wavered. The struggle to see knocked the strength out of him.

  His consciousness jerked. The unforgiving taste of their boots and the lingering scent of blood had him tensing in fear.

  “Dinnae tax yourself.” A hand held him down, but he fought it.

  His lungs stretched around a wheeze. He counted two, possibly three splintered ribs pushing back.

  Open your fuckin’ eyes. Now!

  Light flickered, the tall, blurred figure bent closer. More muffled words.

  He tried to ball his fist and failed. His strength sapped out of him and sleep pulled him under.

  Sometime later his eyelashes pulled apart, and he was alone. Dark shadows and a cricked neck. Everything hurt. His search, enlisting only his roaming eyes, exhausted him.

  The familiar ceiling he recognized. This was his space.

  He dinnae blink. Rather, he awakened, again and again, unsure how long he slept in between. He waited for the person with the water, but she never returned.

  For hours, possibly days, his thirst grew, and his mind spun. The pain ebbed and flowed with every pulsing beat of his heart.

  He kept time with the muscle, counting off sixty beats and then sixty more—frustrated when he’d wake up, his count lost.

  He coasted on a sea of hypnotic waves. Choppy water battled against the burning cold, submerging him in a fevered chill of thirst and shivers. No anchor. Lost.

  The hot press of something solid to his lips woke him with a jerk that radiated down his spine. Metal clicked against his teeth.

  He opened, stretching his battered jaw. The warm spill of broth filled the crevices of his mouth. He swallowed greedily and opened for more.

  Another swallow. And then another.

  A sweet, merciful angel cared for him, bathed and fed him. He’d swear fealty to her as soon as he had his strength back. Her figure sloshed in his blurred sight, but he needed to know who...

  “Who are you, angel?”

  “Elspeth.” The muffled voice carried the soft tenor of a female.

  “Els...”

  “Try not to talk. You need to eat.”

  He swallowed another mouthful of broth. His mind sorted through the limited information he had. He was still in Rory’s house. Still alive. Where was everyone else?

  “Where...” The spoon interrupted his question, and he lost his train of thought. “Who...”

  “I’m one of the tail.”

  A prostitute? He dinnae recognize her. Nor could he fully see her.

  “That’s my call.” She stood, taking away the warm broth.

  Panic gripped him. He dinnae want to be left alone again. “Wait. Please.”

  “The baby’s crying. I’ll be back.”

  The baby? Visions of Uma spun through the maze of his mind, twisting until relief settled in. Uma was still alive.

  A cold drift of fear moved over him like a sheet of ice. He’d use the baby against him again. He kept it alive for a reason. He’d hurt her to hurt him.

  “Elspeth,” he rasped and coughed.

  What if the whore’s loyalty belonged to Rory? Could he ask her to take Uma and run? He was too weak to defend himself or the child.

  Forcing his shoulder to lift from the bed, he screamed through his teeth at the deluge of pain. The broth in his gut swilled.

  His elbow cracked with the reverberation of a rifle, and he collapsed.

  Fast, panting breath hissed past his teeth as sweat beaded across his skin. He shut his eyes, sensing he might pass out from the pain. So weak.

  Discomfort splintered from his back to his front, goaded by a hacking cough that tasted too much like blood to be a sign of healing.

  “Are you mad?” Elspeth’s voice softly reprimanded as she returned. Maybe he passed out.

  No time for that. “The baby,” he coughed. “Dinnae leave her...”

  “Hush now. You’ve got yourself in a fit.” She pressed a cool glass to his lips and held his head. “Sip slowly, so you dinnae choke.”

  The water quelled the coughing. He sagged into the bed and caught his breath.

  Too weak to escape. Too feeble to walk. Too blind to see clearly. Too deaf to hear. Too dead inside to be certain he was alive.

  He surrendered. Too beaten down to fight.

  He lost any grasp of time. Days counted by the intermittent night, but he might have slept through some, so nothing seemed accurate or trustworthy.

  The fever came when he was at his weakest, ravaging his already broken body. His depleted strength wrung out eventually, and his tattered mind simply begged for peace.

  Elspeth tended to him on a random schedule he gave up trying to predict. He craved her when she wasnae there. Questioned her when she was.

  She only ever whispered, which made hearing her especially difficult. He suspected both his eardrums had ruptured. The pressure from the fever and the congested ache in his head dinnae help matters.

  He appreciated her gentleness, but dinnae trust it. He trusted nothing and no one. But as time passed, his yearning for Elspeth grew stronger. She represented survival.

  “Your bruises are healing,” she whispered, dragging a warm washcloth over his legs.

  She took turns washing his skin and bending his muscles. He’d been in this bed so long his body started to atrophy. She even applied a soothing salve to his burn scars, which eased a great deal of the pain in his legs.

  “Thank...” It was all he could manage.

  She massaged the salve into his ruined heels. “Save your strength.”

  Consciousness wove in and out. “Innis?”

  As he healed, his mind passed too many hours in silence, tortured by his thoughts. He needed to understand what was left out there.

  Elspeth bent and unfolded his knee, hesitating to answer. “You’re no help to anyone like this. Focus on healin’ yourself.”

  He needed to know if they’d killed Innis—needed the closure of knowing she was finally at peace.

  He knew the baby was alive and Rhys was dead. What of Rory? What would they do to him once he got out of this room?

  “Rhys’s body. And...” He couldnae get the question past the crushing lump in his throat.

  Elspeth lowered his leg and covered it with the sheet. “All the bodies are gone. I’d appreciate no more speakin’ of it.” She washed his chest and left him alone with his thoughts.

  Another length of time passed. He gave up speaking. Gave up searching for answers that might put his life in gruesome perspective. There was no sense in any of it. And the longer he lay in that bed, the less he understood why anyone would wish to live at all.

  The slam of a door woke him with a start. His hands searched for protection, but he had no idea where his weapons were.

  This was it. He’d been mentally preparing for the moment the end would finally come. At least the swelling in his face had gone down enough for him to open his eyes and face death like a man—fight with the last crumbled grain of his strength.

  Footsteps raced back and forth, up and down the
hall. Panicked patters and thudding objects collected on the other side of the wall.

  More doors opened and slammed.

  He forced himself into a seated position, adrenaline disguising his body’s protests. Where was Elspeth? He needed her to find his weapons.

  His trembling fingers curled around the bedpost. He pulled at the tape holding the cushioned metal splints to his hand, wincing when they tugged his damaged fingers. There was no time for self-pity.

  His legs failed him when he stood, and he stumbled into the dresser. Remembering the way he’d relearned to walk after the fire, he found his balance and staggered closer to the door, listening. He searched the dark for anything he could use to defend himself. Nothing.

  The door burst open. His fists flew to protect his face, his gnarled fingers unable to bend properly. Elspeth raced past him, opening drawers and tossing items on the floor.

  “What’s happening?” he hissed.

  “We have to go.” Her head shook as she frantically gathered up his clothes. “Or I do. You can come with me if you want. I assumed you would.” Dumping the contents of his drawers onto the bed, she looked at him. “You need pants.”

  He caught the clothes she flung at his chest and staggered. His grip tightened on the bedpost. “I dinnae understand.”

  “I cannae stay here a second longer. ’Tis cursed. And no place for a child.”

  She was taking Uma? He stepped into the pants. “They’ll catch us. I can barely stand.”

  She ushered him to the side of the bed. “Sit. I’ll help you.”

  His head swam as she jerked a shirt over his shoulders. He grunted at her rough handling. “Easy. Tell me what’s happened.”

  Her hands trembled as if she’d seen a ghost. “I’m takin’ that child away from this madness.”

  His hand tightened on her thin arm and her frantic gaze jerked to his. He’d not allow her to steal away the last of his family. “The wain stays with me.”

  Her mouth opened and closed. “You’ll come with me, too, then. But we have to go now.”

  He wasnae strong enough to leave, but also, not strong enough to survive without her. “I need my weapons.”

  “No. No weapons. I’m sick of blood and violence.” Her words choked off, the backs of her fingers rushing to her lips as her eyes flooded with unshed tears.