by Kari Gregg
But a pirate treasure wouldn’t make her nerve endings snap with fear. It wouldn’t make her pulse skitter and race, nor set anxiety to writhing in her stomach like one of the swamp’s slithering snakes.
Luc poled to a dock where three men awaited them.
One caught the rope he tossed to shore and tied the boat to the roughly hewn wood.
Luc leaped to the dock on nimble feet.
When one of the men reached out to help her ashore, Kate cowered back into the boat. Why she should be repulsed by the touch of another, Kate didn’t know. She only knew that she didn’t want the men, any of them, near her.
Luc stepped in front of the weres. “I’ll tend to her. Gather your cloak, bébé.”
Luc had pressed the blasted thing on her. “For Garrick.” Black as sin and warm, smooth velvet, the hooded cape swathed her in shadow from the crown of her head to the tips of her feet. She assumed the luxurious fabric was intended to conceal her from the weres as well as keep the night’s chill from seeping into her bones. But she felt like the grim reaper. The material chafed at her tender skin too. Nor would any covering impede the gooseflesh that pebbled her skin or the shivery dread that streaked up and down her spine.
She was cold.
So cold.
She needed Garrick.
She wrapped the heavy folds of fabric around her legs so she wouldn’t trip, careful to reveal not so much as a square inch of skin as she climbed from the boat. She let Luc hand her to the dock and edged as far as possible from the men sent to guide them.
They stared at her, feral yellow eyes solemn but curious.
“Luc?”
“Stay close to me.” He tucked both of her hands through his arm to escort her behind the silent threesome. They followed a crude path cut into the undergrowth. Luc rubbed heat into her icy fingers until the path widened. “Speak to no one. Keep your cloak gathered around you. I’ll do my best to see that none of them touch you.”
“Wha—”
“Your mating to Garrick is not yet finished.” He drew her into a clearing lit by pagan oranges and yellows from a central bonfire. Perhaps two dozen women, men, and half as many children milled around its circumference, normal-looking people dressed in normal, everyday clothes. They could be anybody. Everybody. The harried waitress who topped off your coffee. The cop writing your speeding ticket. Any of the kids would’ve fit in their choice of playgrounds across America.
As one unit, they stilled and stared.
At her.
Kate’s breath froze in her chest.
Luc guided her forward. “God help us if Garrick’s vampyr feels his claim on you has been challenged.”
Peter emerged from men clustered on the other side of the central fire wearing nothing except frayed denim cutoffs and a grim slash of a smile.
Kate recoiled against Luc when he strode toward them. “Steady.”
Upon reaching them, Peter dropped to his knees in the dirt. He bent his head until his brown hair feathered inches from her feet, leaving his neck vulnerable and bare. Kate jumped back, but Luc’s grip on her tightened, holding her in place. “Do not be afraid.”
The others circling the fire fell to their knees as well. Man to woman to grubbiest toddler bent their heads, bared their necks.
The flickering light revealed in stark detail a network of scars, both old and new, that marred Peter’s flanks, his shoulders, a mass of hard ridges and poorly mended skin circling his neck. Kate shivered inside the heavy cloak as though a cold dead finger had drawn up her spine. “I don’t like this. Make them get up.”
Luc’s mouth curved to a pleased bow. “No. This is better than we had any right to expect.”
A line furrowed her forehead.
She was no sycophant to be bowed down to. Kate bent, reaching for him. “Peter.”
The were’s head snapped up, preternatural eyes glimmering.
“No!” Luc pulled her back a step. “Do not speak, Kate. Do not speak!”
“You’ve not prepared her.” Peter’s lips twisted to a stiff smile. “You and Garrick both are too soft with her.”
“She is only weeks out of a transition begun by a dark master—”
Peter’s hand chopped through the air. “Save it.” Rising from the dirt, he cocked his head instead toward the other end of the camp. His nostrils flared. “It’s time.”
Luc pulled Kate back against him, wrapping his arms around her so tight she could scarcely breathe.
Olivia emerged from the darkness, naked and shivering. A pair of weres bore her to the central bonfire, dragging her while she sobbed and wailed.
Disgust curled in Kate’s stomach. “Luc—”
“Do not speak!”
“But she’s naked!”
“Be grateful I ordered the rest of the pack into clothes.” Peter’s lip curled to a sneer. “You should have prepared her, vampyr.”
Luc shook her within his steely embrace so hard she bit her lip. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. “If you cannot hold your tongue, Kate, I swear before holy Jesus I will gag you.”
“Garrick felt otherwise.”
“They are not fully mated yet. I would’ve smelled it on him.”
“They will be.”
“Why can’t I speak? And why aren’t we mated?”
Peter watched with cool, assessing eyes as the pair of weres manacled Olivia’s hands to a pole topped with thick silver chains in the center of the camp. She screamed when the metal touched her wrists. “Until they’ve mated, you remain her guardian. The responsibility is yours. You should’ve prepared her.” He smiled as the paired weres stepped away from the pole from which Olivia now hung, her grubby toes digging into the ground below. “Control her. Or I will.”
“Control yourself, were, and your people. Or Garrick will.”
Peter arched an amused eyebrow, but he pivoted on the balls of his feet to stalk to the central fire. And Olivia. He circled her, crowding her dirt-streaked body as she hung there, helpless. He sniffed and growled low in his throat while she sobbed.
Kate’s heart tore. “What—”
The restraining arm at her waist tightened. “You must not interfere. Say nothing. Do nothing.”
One of the men who had guided them from the dock plodded to Peter’s side and waited.
He cradled a whip in his hands.
Kate’s eyes widened. Her body collapsed against Luc’s in revolted disbelief. “Luc!”
“Be still. Watch. Only watch. Garrick demands this of you.”
At Peter’s nod, the were lifted the weapon high and presented it to the pack. A pitted, bloodied club formed the handle. Cables of leather streamed from one end. Shards of silver along the length of each cord glittered and shone in the feeble moonlight, catching fiery red and orange glints from the bonfire.
As one, the pack cowered from the weapon.
Kate swallowed back bile, but she didn’t fight Luc’s imprisoning grasp. She had no fight left in her. Helpless horror numbed her to the marrow of her bones and held her captive more tightly than her guardian ever could. “Please, God. No.”
The were with the whip bowed to Peter and head bent, blindly offered the weapon to him with hands that visibly trembled. When Peter took the whip, the other scrambled backward and into the crowd gathered around them in a loose semicircle.
“Pack is inviolate.” Peter stroked the whip as his eyes sought each of the weres surrounding him. “Pack provides safety, but pack demands our obedience—even to death—because, ultimately, the survival of our kind lies only within the bonds of pack.
“Olivia broke pack. Olivia betrayed and jeopardized us all. Olivia is alpha no more. I revoke her right to pack and its security. She will pay dearly for the danger she’s brought down on us.”
He nodded to a roundly pregnant redhead while Olivia shrieked and pulled at the manacles at her wrists like a wounded animal. “Elise, you and the whelps are excused.”
Tears burned Kate’s eyes as the woman gath
ered the children and ushered them away with nervous hands.
When they were gone, Peter caressed the hilt of the weapon with hard, callused fingers. “Traitors to the pack court silver and the scourge.” He kissed the club of the whip. “As with our forefathers, so goes with pack Pridemore.”
Olivia howled in terror. She jerked against the heavy silver links binding her wrists.
“Peter, alpha to pack Pridemore,” Garrick’s husky voice called from the surrounding darkness of the bayou. Kate’s heart stuttered when he strode forward. Naked, his skin glowed bronze by the firelight, beautiful and brutally vulnerable. When he fell to his knees before Peter, head bent low, panic washed hot and urgent through Kate.
“No! No, no.” She scrambled and clawed to reach him, but Luc’s grasp refused her, holding her as securely as a million chains. “Garrick!”
Garrick’s muscles went rigid, but he did not move.
“Please, no…”
“Shh, bébé. He made his choice.”
Peter trailed the leather cables across Garrick’s naked shoulders.
Garrick winced.
The were smiled. “Speak, vampyr.”
Kate’s heart felt as though it had been ripped from her chest, bleeding and bloodied in the ground at her feet. “Let them have her, Rick. Please. I don’t care, not if it means—”
“I offer my body as proxy.”
Her eyes snapped shut.
“For the silver and the scourge, vampyr?”
“For the silver and the scourge.”
“You understand that, living, Olivia cannot return to pack and neither be released to betray us again?”
Tears leaked from Kate’s eyes.
What had she done?
Oh God, what had she done?
“Yes.”
“Chain him.”
Sobbing, Kate collapsed, would’ve fallen to the ground in a boneless heap if not for Luc’s iron grip on her.
Olivia screeched when the clink of her chains fell away, the metallic rattle resounding in Kate’s ears. She couldn’t bear to look, to see, and her eyes focused only when she heard Garrick’s grunt as the weres secured him to the pole in Olivia’s place. “What’s happening to him?” She rubbed the watery blur from her eyes, her heart seizing at the grimace of pain that etched grooves on Rick’s face. “Why is he hurting?”
Luc’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, his eyes sick and desolate when they shifted away. “Garrick has fed from his weres too often. Silver pains him.”
They dragged Olivia to Peter and dumped her at his feet like so much garbage. She curled to a fetal ball, rubbing her wrists, now raw and bloodied.
“This traitor is as an example to us. She is a prisoner, our enemy. Not pack.” Peter kicked her. She cried out but did not move to evade the blow. Peter jerked his head to one side. “Tie her over there.”
The weres dragged the hysterical woman into the shadows, but Kate didn’t care what happened to Olivia anymore. Her attention was for no one else. “Rick.”
“I love you, Kate.”
She met his gaze across the camp. The pain glittering in his eyes ripped at her, leaving her wounded and aching.
His returning stare glinted with stony determination. “And you will love me.”
Peter stood before him, lips curling to a derisive sneer. “His woman comforts him.” He flipped the whip in warning, once, twice. “Let her comfort him when he is blooded and more dead than alive. Turn him.”
Kate’s gut clenched, but Garrick didn’t resist when they shoved him around so that his resolute eyes were hidden from her and his back and bare buttocks were presented to Peter.
And his whip.
The were drew his arm back.
Kate cried out with the crack of the first blow.
Garrick’s body bowed.
He threw his head back.
Thin stripes spilled fresh crimson from the meat of his shoulder blade.
He groaned, a low, broken sound that pebbled her skin with gooseflesh and made her stomach roll with sick anxiety.
“Garrick!”
Peter’s mouth thinned to a grim line when he shifted his gaze to them. “Hold her, vampyr,” he said, voice deep and menacing.
When he brought the whip down again, Kate screamed.
And screamed.
Every lash spouted blood, tore chunks of flesh and spattered gore. Garrick groaned, then shouted and finally screamed as blow after blow after blow shredded his back, his shoulders, his ass and thighs.
Unable to deal with the unfolding horror, Kate’s mind shut down, leaving only her vampyr, a feral and rabid thing inside her. She shrieked and clawed and bit to reach him, but no matter the damage she inflicted on Luc, he wouldn’t release her.
Garrick’s body crumpled under the onslaught, dangled from the cruel silver that chained him. Peter slowed only when Garrick’s flesh was a mass of bloody ribbons and his screams tapered to weak moans.
Panting, Peter nodded grim approval. He shoved his hair from his eyes, smearing bright crimson across his forehead. The cords of his whip dripped fat beads of blood to the dirt. “Turn him.”
“No!” Kate shrieked.
She surged forward one step, two, in spite of Luc’s death grip on her.
He abruptly shoved.
Off balance, she stumbled to the ground. Luc’s body crashed down on her, knocking the air from her lungs so that her enraged shriek cut off. Still, she scrambled, sucking in much-needed oxygen.
“Damn it, vampyr. Hold her, or you’ll kill us all!”
“Kate,” Garrick groaned as they turned him. “Look at me, love.”
Her gaze flashed to his. Her struggle—and her heart—stopped at the dark, mesmerizing depths of his eyes. There was pain in them, unfathomable pain, yes, but above and beyond it, love glowed warm and pure. His love called to her, commanded her, begged of her.
“Look at me.” His chest rose and fell with hard, labored pants that he blew through lips he’d bitten through. “Look.”
Lost in Garrick’s eyes, Kate was only marginally aware of Peter lifting the whip, of the subsequent blows that sliced Garrick’s chest and thighs open. She moaned under her breath when the agony of the beating washed over him, but her stare held nothing except soothing warmth, tenderness. The caring and calm acceptance he needed to endure the hellish torture.
Garrick held Kate with his eyes so no screams tore at his throat, and Peter tired, the intervals between strikes longer, the blows less fierce. “Enough,” the were finally said, though the damage to the front of Garrick’s body was far less than the bloody mess he’d carved into his back. Peter handed the gory whip to a blood-specked were. “Fetch the wolfsbane.”
Garrick flinched, breaking eye contact.
Kate cried out.
“It’s almost done.” Luc lifted from the ground by slow, cautious degrees. His hands vised over her slender arms to prevent her from breaking free. “Don’t fail him now.”
One of the weres passed a slim brown vial to Peter, and when he snarled in warning, the pack fell back a step.
He pulled the stopper free.
“What is it?” Kate whispered, her voice rough, raspy from screaming.
Luc shuddered and didn’t even reprimand her for speaking aloud. “Poison.”
Peter swung the vial in an arc, flinging fine white powder over the streaming wounds on Garrick’s chest from shoulder to hip, then again, left to right. The powder pasted on his blood-slick torso.
Garrick’s head drooped.
Then fell.
His whole body collapsed, what little strength he’d had remaining in him fled.
“It is finished.” Peter shoved the cork back into the vial, now emptied. He nodded to the pair of weres who’d chained both Olivia and Garrick to the pole, and maintaining a wide berth from Garrick’s poisoned chest, they worked at the locks at his wrists with gloved hands.
Peter tipped his head to Kate and Luc in an informal bow. “His proxy is fulfill
ed. The vampyr is yours.”
She tore free of Luc’s restraining grasp.
Sobbing his name, Kate ran.
Mindless of the poison, she caught Garrick into her arms when his hands were set free. His body crumpled onto hers, too heavy for her. They both dropped to the blood-soaked ground. He groaned fresh agony.
“I’m here. I’m here.” Weeping at the pain she caused him, she used the hem of her cloak to wipe at the sticky paste of wolfsbane on his chest.
“Give him your neck. Your blood will strengthen him, buy him time.” Luc gathered Garrick, and Kate crouched atop him, into his arms. The muscles in his neck corded, but he lifted them both. Garrick’s body convulsed at the new assault on his raw and bloody wounds. “He can’t wait. Do it now.”
“Kate…”
She slid her fingers to his nape, urging his cracked and bloodied lips to her throat. “Drink.”
His teeth stabbed into her. “I love you.”
She stroked his hair as Luc carried them into the swamp. “I know.”
Chapter Thirteen
They nursed him through the night and into the next hellish day.
“He needs blood. Oceans of it.” Luc eased Garrick to the mattress, mindful of the pulp his back had been reduced to. His skin should have air to heal, but Luc had sworn the poison that had seeped into his chest deserved more immediate attention. “Peter never would’ve given so much to his own kind. Bastard.”
“Kate?”
“I’m right here.” She brushed his hair from his face with a gentle finger. “Luc checked your back, but he’s finished. Rest now.”
She shook her head. “He won’t die. Vampires don’t die.”
Luc laughed, a hard, brittle sound that set her stomach to roiling. “I assure you, bébé, we can and do die.”
She glared at her guardian. “Then I won’t let him.”
* * *
“I’ve fed from the weres and hunted the towns close to Pridemore as much as I dare.” Luc shifted foot to foot in the door days later. “The local population can support a more intense hunt, but we can’t risk the exposure. That’s what the masters are searching for—overhunted ground.”
She lay with Garrick in a tangled heap on their bed, their arms and legs, their bodies intertwined. The intimacy argued against every human notion in her to hold herself back from his injuries to avoid jarring the raw, bloody wounds.