Nyko moved to rise, but the man pushed him back down, the hand on his chest very strong. What’s this? Nyko back-stepped his senses and caught it then; the man’s scent was sort of off. Who the heck is—? A fist rocketed toward his face and his lights blinked out.
Nyko popped his eyes open. Tied to a chair. Pain in right arm. Om Rău male nearby.
He tabulated sights, smells, and sensations in 3.5 seconds.
“Welcome back to the livin’, half-Rău.”
The Om Rău male Nyko had scented was standing directly in front of him, making it impossible to ignore the sheer size of him. Shirtless, dressed only in combat boots and tight black leather pants, the man was a towering fortress of muscle with the body of a heavyweight boxer, shoulders, arms, and chest bulging with thick, hard slabs, his abdomen striated. Black flame tribal tattoos whipped up the entire front of his torso, erasing all doubt that this was a Topside Om Rău. A lip scar tugged the man’s mouth into a sneer, adding more menace where none was needed. Lip scar…
So Nyko was finally meeting Videon.
Three other men were in the room, smelling like regulars, but kind of not, too, like the guy who’d punched Nyko.
Their odd group appeared to be gathered in the living room of a condemned building. The windows were closed off with crisscrossed boards, drywall had crumbled away in sections, exposing the bowed and splintered wood frame beneath, and there was a fire-charred hole in the middle of the floor, revealing part of an empty apartment one floor below. No electricity equaled lanterns set up around the room. Wisps of black smoke curled up from their glass chimneys, adding a distinctive kerosene stink to the stench of Videon’s caustic acid blood.
Nyko concentrated for a second on the sort-of-regulars. To a man, they were big, their bodies covered with a staggering variety of tats, and their eyes were narrow and mean. Probably ex-cons, the kind of men who asked questions, maybe, after all the killing had already been done. They didn’t seem like the type to wear jewelry, but necklaces glinted at each man’s throat. Nyko squinted. Not necklaces, amulets. He nearly shivered from a feeling of evil enchantment.
“Ye havin’ a brown-trouser moment, fella?” Videon asked, then smiled cruelly. “If not, ye should be.”
Probably so. The advantage-disadvantage ratio was fairly obvious. Nyko was currently chained from ankles to collarbone to a chair that felt bolted to the floor, and even though he was bigger than Videon—because Nyko was bigger than every man—in this case, it wasn’t by much. “What do you—” want? The last word dropped off the end of Nyko’s sentence as Shon sauntered into the room.
His little brother crossed to a rusted-out radiator and sprawled against it, crossing his arms, his eyes cold, black ice. Just watching.
Videon indicated Shon with a nod of his head. “Yer brother here says he don’t know where the entrances to yer lair are. Says he gets transported in and out in a vehicle with blacked-out windows.”
Nyko glanced at Shon again. That was true. The community doled out information about their secret entrances on a need-to-know basis only. The Travelers knew, of course, since they brought supplies into the community, and the Special Ops Topside Team, as they did their own driving on missions. The Dragon women had found out, too, because once they’d engineered an escape from Ţărână. But no, Shon didn’t know.
“Says ye know, though. So ye’ll be tellin’ me.” Videon grabbed a gym bag and dropped it at Nyko’s feet. “I couldn’t break that fuckin’ mare o’ yers tryin’ to get the information out o’ her. What was her name?”
“Candace,” Shon supplied.
Bile brewed in Nyko’s throat. Candace was the Traveler Videon had tortured to death, which had led to Marissa getting captured, which had led to Pandra letting Marissa go—a whole chain of events had been set in motion by Videon’s brutality.
Videon rolled his neck, cracking vertebrae. “Goin’ to get it out o’ ye, though.”
“No,” Nyko said. No, you won’t break me and also, No, I won’t let you hurt me. Covered all over with marks that had come from torture, he was done with that. Plain and simple. There wasn’t a man on this earth, regular, demon, large, or larger, who could make him endure it anymore. Death would come first.
Videon’s laugh was coarse and grating. “I was hopin’ ye’d be full o’ piss about it. Funner that way.”
Nyko shifted against his restraints. They were tightly secured. “Why do you even care about our entrances?” he asked. “You’re not after Toni.”
“But Raymond is,” Videon answered. “And since I’m gettin’ myself into a bit o’ a war with that scunt, I’m acquirin’ what he wants.”
Another ex-con entered the room. It was the guy who’d punched Nyko. He was also wearing an amulet. “Preston’s ready,” he told Videon.
So these jerks had succeeded in capturing Dr. Preston. An ache speared through Nyko’s throat. It was his fault the team had failed to save the plastic surgeon. If Nyko wasn’t such a freak of nature, then he and Thomal would’ve made it up to the sixth floor in time to help Dev and Gábor fight the bad guys, and the outcome would’ve been different.
“I’ll be there in a tick, Kevin,” Videon answered, an ugly grin still aimed at Nyko. “I ain’t finished with this tonk, yet.”
“I don’t think Preston has much life left,” Kevin said. “He’s bleeding out fast.”
Videon growled. “All right. Is Jerry ready for the ritual, too?”
“’Course.”
“Let’s crack on, then.” Videon waved his men toward the door. “Shon, ye guard this bloke.”
Kevin frowned. “They know each other, Videon.”
“Aye, they do. So it’ll be another test o’ his commitment to us.” Videon shot Shon a heavy-lidded glance. “He’ll pass.” Videon left with his men, the gym bag swung over his shoulder.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nyko let his gaze wander around the squalid living room, looking anywhere but directly at his brother. Not that there was anything much to see in here besides rat poop and mold. After a thick silence, he finally forced himself to meet his brother’s eyes. “What are they doing to Dr. Preston?” he asked, avoiding the real questions. What the heck are you doing here, Shon? Why are you betraying your people?
Shon hitched a shoulder. “Don’t know. I’m not that far into their inner circle, yet.”
Yet. “Ah. So…” Nyko coughed. “So how long have you been hanging out with the Topside Om Rău?”
“A while,” Shon answered vaguely.
“And, uh… Well, why are you with them, Shon?”
Shon scoffed. “I’d think that’d be obvious. The community banished me, so I headed where I was wanted.”
Nyko’s mouth fell open. Shon thought they’d abandoned him? “But… No, Shon. You were sent topside temporarily, to help you get better, to give you a break from the community for—”
“It was a punishment.” Shon’s words slammed into Nyko. “And if the community thinks it can keep my loyalty after a maneuver like that, then the whole damned town should be nuked for its idiocy.”
“It was partly a punishment,” Nyko admitted. “But it absolutely wasn’t a rejection of you. You were supposed to come back. Jacken and I, the whole community, want you to—”
“I’m not going back.” Shon sounded bored now. “And don’t worry about my survival, either, when you stop sending my blood donor up. Videon keeps a stable of whores around. I’ll feed off one of them until Videon kills her, then move on to the next.”
Horror invaded Nyko’s chest. His brother really hadn’t just said that. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “You’ll hate yourself if you do.”
Dark, predatory emotions rolled off Shon. The bones in his jaw moved into a menacing position. “I already hate myself.”
Nyko’s ribs squeezed his heart, his own emotions a nearly overwhelming tide—worry, guilt, confusion, fear. “Why?”
“None of your fucking business.”
Same as at Shon’s tri
al. Nyko drew a breath with difficulty, the chains draping his body suddenly feeling like an impossible weight. “Tell me what’s bothering you?”
“Bothering me?”
“Something torments you, Shon. I…I’ve known it for a long time.” Nyko wet his dry lips. “You need to get it off your chest. Purge yourself of it. Then you can move on.”
Shon laughed. The sound wasn’t pleasant. “You really want to know?” He sprang off the radiator and stalked over. “Okay, big brother, let’s have share time.” Shon planted his hands on the armrests of the chair and shoved his face close to Nyko’s. “It was because of you!” he yelled.
Nyko didn’t know how he remained still, but he did.
Shon straightened, but didn’t move back. “When was the last time you saw yourself in a mirror, Nyko? You’re covered in tattoos from top to bottom, marred with more teeth than Jacken, way more than me. And why is that?” Shon’s nostrils flared. “Because you took Lorke’s torture for us, you fuck!”
Nyko blinked hard for a moment, an ache building behind his forehead as too many memories pushed around inside his skull. There was just so much awful stuff he didn’t like to remember, and getting those tattoos was the biggest: the pain, the blood, the knowledge that his agony was being doled out by his own father. Then there was the daily question mark of whether or not he’d even live to see another day in Oţărât, and the horrible realization that if he didn’t, that actually wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He’d survived to look out for his younger brothers. That was the only reason.
“You…” Nyko licked his lips again. “I’m sorry, but…” He grimaced. “You couldn’t handle it, Shon.”
Another ugly laugh cracked out of Shon. “You’re right. I couldn’t. Rambo Jacken could take it. Big Bad Nyko could. But not Baby Shon.” A darkness as deep as death took over Shon’s eyes. “Lorke knew you were taking all those tattoos for me, you ass, so he…” Shon broke off, his face losing some color.
A quake ran through Nyko’s jaw. There was leftover blood in his mouth from Kevin’s punch and it leaked past his lips.
Shon turned around and walked back to the radiator, staring down at it. His voice lowered. “Lorke had to make me into a man, didn’t he?”
A rat scratched inside the walls.
Shon swung around, glaring. “Didn’t he!?” he snapped.
“Yes,” Nyko forced out.
“But you’d taken away the tattoo option with your heroics, so Lorke had to come up with another way.” Shon’s chin dipped down. “Do you know what he did?”
Nyko’s throat knotted.
“I’m going to tell you. Not to purge myself, big brother, but because I want you out of my life forever and this will make sure you go.” Shon slouched back on the radiator and ran his thumb along the side of his nose. “Do you remember the whipping boards set up over by that part of the cave we used to call Death Ridge?”
Nyko’s throat closed down another notch. How could he not? He’d had his stint on the boards like everyone else, although by the time he was twelve years old, nobody’d been strong enough to strap him onto them, except for the two Pure-blooded demon leaders of Oţărât, Lorke and Josnic. “Yes,” he whispered.
“There was a table over there, too. We used to try and play a version of ping pong on it when the boards weren’t in use.”
A better memory. “Yes.”
“That’s where Lorke did it,” Shon told him, his eyes like over-polished eight balls.
Nyko swallowed heavily.
“Lorke gathered a bunch of guys around the table and then had Bollven bring Deborah over. You remember Deborah?”
Nyko briefly closed his eyes. He didn’t want to remember. Her loss had messed him up pretty badly. “Krolan’s mother,” he said.
“Fade and Havel’s, too.”
“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten them.”
“Deborah killed herself,” Shon said tonelessly. “Threw herself off Death Ridge. You remember that part?”
“I…” Deborah’s face flashed through Nyko’s memory, her gaze unseeing, her neck cranked at a wrong angle. He willed his thick tongue to form the words. “I remember.”
“Do you know why she offed herself?”
For a moment, Nyko wanted to cry uncle: enough was enough already in the memory department. Deborah had been one of the better human women in Oţărât. Many others had only been able to look out for their own survival in their violence-riddled world, maybe that of their children, and that was it. The rare few had managed to be motherly and protective toward all the little ones. Deborah had been in that second category, and life in Oţărât had turned a lot crappier after her suicide. “I suppose I figured that life as one of Bollven’s women became too much for her.”
“Oh, it was so much more than that, Nyko.” Bowing his head, Shon dragged his thumb and forefinger down both sides of his nose. “You see, Lorke laid Deborah out on that ping pong table and made that circle of guys start in on fucking her. There must’ve been ten of us, one guy thrusting into Deborah while the rest jacked on their cocks to get ready. The next guy would mount her and get going, and the next, and…and I’m standing there with my stomach in my knees as it gets closer to my turn, thinking, what the hell is Mom going to say if I screw Deborah?”
Nyko’s stomach convulsed. That was…he couldn’t imagine it.
“So I come up to bat all nervous-like, Lorke yelling at me to get my cock out of my pants and get on top of Deborah. I’m twelve fucking years old! But I…I yank on my dick like a maniac, right, screaming my lungs out because my loin blockage hurts so damned bad, but terrified of what Lorke will do if I stop.”
Nyko sucked in an uneven breath through his mouth and nostrils. Nausea writhed through him as he pictured it.
“I didn’t know that a Vârcolac had to be blood-bonded before he could get a hard-on. None of us knew, except Mom, but she hadn’t told us that.” Shon dug his fingernails into the thighs of his pants. “The other men were laughing their heads off at me, of course. They could get boners. But not me, not impotent little Shon. Lorke didn’t laugh, though. Ho, no. He was humiliated. He was humiliated. Isn’t that rich?” Shon scraped his nails up and down his thighs. “So back I went to the ping pong table, again and again. Every day for four days in a row, and still no boner. Then on the fifth day Deborah offs herself because she’s…well, I think the reason’s obvious. She couldn’t stand it anymore. The sixth time I’m brought to the Boards, Lorke says to me, ‘You little pussy, if you’re gonna act like a woman, then I’ll treat you like one’. So he…uh, he…”
Nyko tightened the muscles in his neck to keep himself from shaking his head at his brother. You don’t have to tell me anymore, it’s okay.
“He bent me over the ping pong table, bare-assed, and straps me down. I broke three ribs and my wrist fighting not to get tied down like that, but…it didn’t work out, so… Lorke chose Bollven to do the honors, knowing that the bastard blamed me for Deborah’s death and would make things extra rough for me.” Shon’s eyes blanked as he stared straight ahead. “Thousands of times I’ve relived the scene in my nightmares; Bollven moving up behind me, that big cock of his brushing my ass cheek, his fist gripping my hair, and the throaty sound of his breathing. I hate that the most, like he was actually into what he was about to do. I wake up gasping and sweating, tearing at the bedsheets in a panic. But I always wake up before it happens.” Shon’s gaze dropped back to Nyko’s. “Because it never did. Mom showed up with her gloves and saved me.”
The oxygen Nyko hadn’t realized he was hoarding rushed out of him. It never happened. Mom had stood up to Lorke, the one man she always kowtowed to. She must’ve paid dearly for that.
“Later Mom got it out of me what happened, and then explained the whole bonding requirement for Vârcolac being able to throw wood, but by then it was too late. I already felt like a total pansy.” Shon noticed his nails scraping his pants and stopped, pressing his palms flat to his thighs. “What I did with Luvera in �
�ărână a couple of months ago…that Blood Ride…” He shook his head.
Blood Rides were a new invention of their breed, thought up, not surprisingly, by the rebellious Stânga Town kids as a means to participate in some kind of sexual activity outside of a life-bond. It entailed consuming enough blood, usually by licking it off the skin, to temporarily unblock a Vârcolac’s sexual plumbing. According to the community’s Non-Vârcolac-Fraternization-Law, it was an illegal act, and both Shon and Luvera had landed in court, and then jail, because of experimenting with it.
“I just…” Shon faltered. “I wanted to see what it was like to be with a girl, to finally feel like man. I wanted my dick, Nyko.” Shon dragged a hand through his hair. “I never meant to hurt Luvera. But…ingesting her blood during that Ride lit off my deepest bloodlust and made me go apeshit. I ended up trying to force her.” Shon’s head came up, his eyes churning with dark turmoil. “Do you understand what I said? I tried to force Luvera. I did exactly the same thing to her that was done to me, the thing that gives me nightmares. There’s no coming back from that.” He pushed off the radiator. “So I’m hanging with the Topside Om Rău now. It’s where a guy like me belongs.”
“No,” Nyko croaked, desperation clearing out a hole in his chest. “Please, don’t give up on yourself, Shon.” He tried to scoot closer to his brother, but, dang it, that’s right, the chair was bolted to the floor. “You’re okay…I mean, you can be okay, if you just give yourself a chance and some time working with your therapist. This is my fault, not yours. You said so yourself, right? If I’d let Lorke tattoo you, then he never would’ve tried to turn you into a man by making you have sex with a woman. Okay? Please.”
Heavy footsteps sounded in the outer hallway.
Nyko clung to Shon’s gaze, his panic wound so tight, it hurt. Had he reached his brother, even the smallest bit? If he lost Shon, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Shon’s face lost all expression. “Glad you agree that it’s your fault”—booted heels rang out hollowly just outside the door—“because you’re about to receive your penance.”
The Community Series, Books 1-3 Page 81