“What do you mean?”
I was cut short by the door opening and a woman’s voice yelling down the stairs.
“I know there is more than one elder. I can feel it in my head, and the girl, she is no normal breeder.”
“Yes, Merna,” one of the men said coming back down the stairs in front of her.
“Take this one with the long hair in the room. She will wake soon enough.”
“Leave her be,” Cates said fighting the heavy chains.
“See you fools. Knock him back out,” she ordered then squatted down by me. “Come to destroy my home have ya?”
“Merely seeking shelter from the rogues who chased us here,” Jacob replied.
“You would say anything to save your life. I know you are the rogues that have been trying to smell us out. My magic may have failed, but your life in return will be a great payment I should think,” she retorted rolling me onto my back.
“Touch him again and you’ll wish we were those nasty things you call rogues,” I said kicking off the wall and knocking her back with my arms.
“You are a feisty thing aren’t you?” she growled as one of the men stomped on my stomach.
“Your death is mine!” Jacob yelled.
“And your mine if you open that mouth again!” Merna yelled back.
“If you are not the rogues why have you broken into my home?” Merna asked, pulling my head back by using my hair.
“He already told you, to get away from those things that you keep calling rogues.”
“How can I believe you?”
“Because they will return,” Cates said breaking one of the chains.
“Merna?” one man yelled.
She sat back on her heels, looking from Cates to me then back at Jacob. I watched as the knowledge ran through her mind that she may indeed have the wrong group of breeders chained to the floor. She was an older woman close to my mother’s age, wearing very much the same style that my great grandmother would have worn in her very early years, down to the button up shoes that showed under her full length skirt, while she was squatting down by me. I heard movement in the corner and knew that my little ones were waking up, which also meant they would be extremely confused as to why they were chained to the ground. I was about to ask her to just listen, to try and understand that we only needed refuge from the light of the day, not only from those who tried to attack us, but the basement door flew open and the other skinny man all but fell down the steps. He was screaming about movement that he had seen when he looked out after the sun had set.
“What’s going on, Renee?” Derek asked with pure panic in his voice.
“Just stay calm, there’s been a big misunderstanding, hasn’t there Merna?” Cates spoke calmly as he broke another chain.
“You broke my ward when you kicked in my door. They will surely make entrance now,” she mumbled.
“Then remove these blasted chains, so we can fight, woman!” Cates yelled breaking yet another, growling his frustrations as he did it.
She stood up and pulled a set of keys out of her pocket. “I have your word? You mean us no harm?” she asked looking over at Cates.
“You have more than that. You’ll have my life if the rogues get through that door.” She quickly walked over and unlocked the chains that bound him first. As soon as Cates was free he yanked the keys from her hand, sending her into the arms of the skinny man. Cates unlocked Jacob, and then the rest of us. Jacob stood and walked over to one of the skinny men and knocked him smooth out.
“Your word,” Merna said.
“I gave you nothing,” Jacob replied. “Now where are our weapons?”
The skinny man standing next to her pointed at the door that they had brought Jacob out of. He stormed back in, bringing every one of our weapons back out using a blanket he found in the room. By the time he had them laid out, Cates had us all free from the binding chains. Merna now stood at the back of the room with the one man standing at her side and the other pushing himself up into a sitting position. Cates took off up the stairs with all the boys behind him. Tammy and I went up last followed by Merna and her men.
Once I got up there, Cates and the boys were peering out trying to spot the rogues. Cates turned and asked Merna if she knew how many there were, and she said that she had felt a group much the size of ours, which was the reason that she thought we were them. Derek hit Cates in the arm and pointed out the small crack by the china hutch. “There by the big tree to the left.” Cates nodded then pushed the hutch back in place.
“We need a way to get out the back,” he said turning around.
“The door has a ward much like the front did,” Merna replied. “If you open it we will be vulnerable to the likes of them.”
“Upstairs love,” the skinny man by her side added. “The window that overlooks the garden.”
“Yes, Alec. I completely forgot. It is a long drop, but it would do nicely and leave my wards in place.”
“Can you reset the ward on this door?” I asked walking back to her.
“Not with any of you in my house,” she replied looking at the ground.
“Why?”
“We have given ourselves over to a different side of the dark, child. It keeps us safe from slavers and rogues alike, but it also keeps us in the boundaries of our domain.”
“How do you feed?” Derek asked joining our conversation.
“I drop the ward every other month. Hunting is something we do well. And the blood of one deer fills us three nicely for a good time.”
“Her magic is a source of feeding, my wife is good with the craft,” Alec added stepping closer to her.
“So, you are a witch then?” I asked, stepping back.
“Don’t look so surprised. Did you think me to have a green face and maybe horns?”
“I think maybe I did.”
“The window,” Cates interrupted.
“Yes, of course. Alec, show them the way.”
“Set your wards as soon as we are out,” Jacob said as he sprinted up the stairs behind the others.
“We’ll do our best to take care of these rogues, Merna.”
“Here take this, but do not touch one drop on yourself, or it will go right through you like water through bread.”
She didn’t need any better explanation than that. I took the clear liquid that she gave me and stuck the small glass bottle in my pocket. She said to use it on any breeder that got too close. I nodded, and then went to find the others. “Don’t forget we are here.” I stopped halfway up and looked back down at her.
“My name is Renee Lebrun. One day you won’t have to hide from slavers anymore, Witch Merna. I plan on killing each and every one of them.” Then I smiled and took off after my little ones.
I found them in a lavish bedroom made up like that of a king, or maybe I should say, queen. Silk curtains hung from the double French style doors that over looked a balcony. The bed was a large four poster, covered to over flowing with different colored throw pillows. One wooden chest sat at the foot and one single vanity with a black velvet bench sat opposite from the fireplace. Cates went to open the French doors when Alec yelled for him to stop, and then explained that that wasn’t the window in which they had spoken of. He turned and moved a painting as tall as myself and revealed a single window that no one would have even known was there had he not moved it.
Tammy was the first to look out then she started shaking her head. “I can’t get through that, much less drop from this height.” It was then that we learned of her fear of heights, because we all knew she would fit through the window. True, she would have to readjust her breasts a few times when sliding out feet first, but it was doable either way. One by one, we made our way out the window leaving Cates, Tammy, and myself standing in the room with Alec, who stood there and watched as we argued about who went next.
“If I go there is no way in hell that you’re going to talk her down so just go, Cates,” I said stepping up to the big man.
“I will not le
ave any behind in this place.”
“I’m not worried about it anymore, so just go,” I said getting madder by the minute.
“Stubborn woman!”
“Stubborn jackass!”
While we were going back and forth neither of us noticed as Tammy tried to work her bottom half through the open window, going feet first and on her stomach. “I’m stuck!” she yelled, getting our full attention. We both looked at each other, me shrugging my shoulders and Cates taking on an even colder expression. He took her arms while I tried to push her shoulders. It was her enormous breasts that had her stuck. The moment her lower body took the weight of hanging out the window, her breasts became lodged on the sill of the window’s ledge. She tried desperately to lift herself up, but her luck was failing fast.
“Cates, you’re going to have to lift her by her breasts,” I said not thinking that anyone would be offended.
“I will do no such thing!”
“Please, just get me out of this damn window!” Tammy cried now trying to pull herself back in.
I reached down and took one breast in each hand and pushed up and forward with all my might. She popped free and fell to the earth with a scream and a thud. I looked back at Cates who now looked mortified at my grabbing her breasts and was speechless for the first time in the short time that I had known him. I went to the opening and jumped down right beside Tammy, who was clutching her chest. I felt someone yank me backwards as a loud thud hit right where I was standing. I looked back to see Cates going from a half kneeling stance to a full prone position in one smooth stand. He was so huge that the earth actually shook when his feet hit the ground, or so it seemed.
“We have to move,” Jacob said releasing my arm. “Sydney and Garvin are making their way to the boat.”
“What about the rogues?”
“They can take care of themselves,” he replied reaching down and helping Tammy to her feet.
“No…I’m not going to leave them to do things like eat other breeders.”
“Renee, we are other breeders,” Jacob added swiftly turning to look behind him. “We must go now!”
“Then go! I’ll not leave them here to hurt Merna and her husband.”
“For the hell damn, woman. Do you wish us all dead?”
I swallowed back the laugh at Jacob’s poor attempt at cursing, and quickly averted my eyes elsewhere.
“They could have killed us, but they didn’t. Now they could die because we entered her domain, breaking what she calls her wards.”
“She also said she could replace it,” Cates added stepping over by Jacob.
“If you boys can’t handle a good fight then run, just get,” I said pulling my blade.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Derek added stepping to my side, holding his blade.
“Same here. It’s what we do, Jacob. Kill off the bad so the good will have a chance in this jacked up world,” Brandon so elegantly put what I was thinking.
“Sorry, I’m with them. I want to agree with you, Renee, but these things you want to go up against have no stopping point, they’re hungry all the time and their want and need to feed, makes them manic.”
“Looks like it’s us three,” I said looking over at Derek and Brandon. “Y’all go back to the boat with the others. If we don’t show up before the sun rises you’ll know what happened.”
Cates growled a loud, long guttural sound and then slammed his fist into the back of the house, splitting a perfect crack up the face of the wall. Jacob hung his head and shook it. Tammy just let out a deep breath and looked at me. But no one had a chance to say anything else because Garvin and Sydney came racing around the house at top speed. “Run!” And run we did, deep into the forest behind Merna’s house.
“We saw eight all together. Four of them were watching the front of the house, waiting I think for us to come out I think, and four more are trying to sink my boat,” Sydney said with anger boiling over like molten lava.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The wind was picking up, which seemed to make Jacob and Cates more nervous than what I thought they should have been, until they explained that the wind was blowing our scent in the wrong direction. I got the idea perfectly, being that I’d gone hunting more than half of my ‘normal life’ with my father and brothers. We stopped running after we were clear of Merna’s land and to an opening where we could see the rogues coming. Some of us took to hiding in the trees with our blades in hand, while the rest found ways to hide in the debris that the forest provided. I crawled into a healthy shrub under the tree that Jacob hid in and then we waited for them to show their selves.
I smelled them before I even heard them, knowing they had to have smelt us, but did they know where we stopped? Two came crashing through and kept going, four more ran into the area and stopped. Death, they smelled like pure, rotting death. When I peered through the bush I could see why. They were drenched in fifth and what had to be old, dried blood, hence the smell of rotten meat. The four stood sniffing the air; all looked very much the same and not one spoke. Their hair was in thick strands of matted knots, and their clothes were mere rags. What I could tell from where I lay hidden was that they were all males. Two more ran in and joined them, causing me to get more uncomfortable by the second.
I looked up as Jacob came flying out of the tree, landing on top of one and slicing open another. The other four turned on him like wild tigers and consumed his body with theirs. We all stepped out and started chopping; it was the best way to describe it. Like Tammy said, these things called ‘rogues’ were nothing close to a normal breeder. Three turned back on us like they never knew that they were wounded, causing me and my little ones to take a step back. It was their eyes that took me by surprise; they were as red as a freshly bloomed rose and glowed in the light of the moon. In my moment of shock one ran right at me, knocking me flat on my back as the other two went for the boys. I blocked my throat with my left arm and drove my blade into his side with my right. He made no response to the piercing of my blade and continued to try and get at my throat. Tammy was trying to rip her blade down the back of the one that was biting on Derek’s collar bone at the same time he was cutting open and spilling the ‘mad’ breeder’s intestine on their feet, yet the rogue held on.
“Hit the spine,” Jacob yelled and pulled his blade from the base of one’s skull as it fell to the ground.
Brandon spun to miss the reaching arms of the one that he had just kicked off and plunged his black blade into the back of the rogues head, snapping it off when he tried to pull it free. I screamed as the rogue got the best of me and sank his fangs first into my arm, and then when I pulled it free, into my neck. I turned my blade and ripped it out of his side, feeling the warm sensation of his blood sliding down my body and covering the ground seconds before I felt his head press harder into my neck. He stopped drinking my fluid and just laid there frozen with his teeth in my body. His body started lifting off of mine and I screamed again as his teeth tore through the soft tissue of my neck. Cates, like the giant he was, towered over me, holding a very dead rogue with his silver dagger sticking out of the back of his head. Garvin and Sydney came back in as the last rogue fell at Jacob’s feet and dropped the two that had ran through, both bleeding from bite marks. Cates and Jacob were the only two that didn’t have some kind of a mark from the once raving mad breeders.
“That wasn’t so hard,” Derek said sitting up and grabbing his badly mangled shoulder. “I think it bit right through the bone.”
“They didn’t even have weapons,” I said getting to my feet.
“They were insane. We did them a favor,” Tammy replied, acting lower than I had ever seen her.
“Are you alright?” I asked walking over to her, where she was inspecting the bite mark on her arm.
“My brother was a rogue.”
“You had a bother that was a breeder?”
“Had, being the best word. Cortez let that doctor take him shortly after he turned us. My brother was supposed
to be trained for heavy work, like every male was, but Cortez was offered a price he couldn’t refuse. I couldn’t tell you how many years passed, before I overheard the two of them talking about the test making my brother insane and how he almost escaped and had to be put down, as the doctor put it,” she paused and took in a deep breath. “Will life ever be anything more than this?”
“We’re working on it,” I smiled, holding my throat. “I’m sorry that you had to hear that about your brother.”
“You’re bleeding badly,” she said as soon as she looked at me.
“It’ll stop,” I said softly. “When the time comes and my brother loses his mind to the world of the insane, I may come to you in my time of need.”
“It may never come to that,” she smiled back at me. “Now let me have a look at that neck.”
On the way back to check on the boat, my mind went through everything that had happened in the last few days, and I found myself disbelieving my own thoughts. I kept asking myself why it was so hard to believe that the dead could walk when here I stood, not sure whether or not I too fit in that category, and I’m sure I did in the eyes of the normal world. Breeders gone mad, and carrying a well-placed name, the rogues. To me they were worse than those who walked with decay, because they hungered and they moved with a speed to match my own. I now without any form of doubt believed in the art of witchcraft, and preferred to leave it to those who chose to deal in such things. I saw what it can do and see no use of its unnecessary means. In reality it is a more complicated art of the dark magic. Call it what you will, but witchcraft leaves a stain on it all.
“My boat!” Sydney yelled bringing me back into my senses.
I took off running with the rest only to stand on the shore to witness the tip of Sydney’s boat sticking out of the water. He dropped to his knees and threw his hands in the air. Garvin went up to him and placed his hand on the top of his head, but this time Sydney pushed it away. He got to his feet and started walking down the shore. I grabbed Garvin’s arm when he started to go after him and shook my head.
“How far do we have to go?” I asked.
Bloodbreeders: Seeking Others Page 15