by Isabel Wroth
“What’s up, pussy cat?” Juliet greeted with her usual exuberance.
Ilex gave an audible swallow and announced himself, “Reece has allowed me the use of his mobile device. It is I, Ilex.”
To Kerrigan’s surprise, Juliet sounded flustered.
“Oh, uh, hi.”
“Greetings,” Ilex replied gently, the softening of his gaze as he stared at the phone made Kerrigan’s already tight chest feel as though it was being squeezed between a pair of boulders.
He really felt something for Juliet. Something beautiful and fragile. Something easily broken.
Kerrigan reached out and took his hand, glad Reece had put the phone on speaker.
“Juliet?”
“Kerry? What’s going on? Where are you?” Extreme suspicion put a hard edge to Juliet’s voice that made Kerrigan smile. If Juliet was feeling jealous, then she was every bit as into Ilex as he was to her.
“I’m in Vermont with Ilex, Reece, and—”
Not blessed with an abundance of patience, Juliet interrupted hotly, “Vermont! What the hell is in Vermont?”
In answer to the wince Ilex gave, Kerrigan squeezed his hand. “Maksim. Astrid helped me find him last night, and the guys came with me to help us. I need you to shut up and listen for a minute, okay?”
“Maksim, Maksim? Your dead boyfriend, Maksim?” Juliet clarified in a rush.
A smile broke out on Kerrigan’s face immediately.
“He’s not dead.”
“Oh, my GODDESS! And you’re just calling now? I’m still on the job with Rowena and Callie! This shit got real, and we’ve had to do some serious—”
“JULIET!” Kerrigan hollered, taking full advantage of the silence. “Maksim is alive, but he’s in really bad shape. Ilex can help, but he’s worried about what it will cost him. I need you to listen with an open mind, and if you can’t do it, I will one hundred percent understand and find another way.”
Juliet didn’t hesitate to answer, “I’m listening.”
Kerrigan nodded to Ilex, and the Fae gave a regal dip of his chin.
He took a breath and thoroughly, without mincing words, explained how bad off Maksim was and what would happen to anyone who went into his cell in his current state.
“I can take his blood lust and transform it into sexual lust. My green magic will be activated, and given the state Maksim is in, the power will not run its course for many hours. I will be insatiable, and anyone within a ten-mile radius will be forced to answer my call. Male or female, it will not matter.
“No one will perish from the experience, though they might have deep-seated trauma or regret when the magic fades, and they remember what they have done. What I have done. Doyle tells me there is a pack of female werewolves not far from here who will come willingly, and so I will not be forced to violate anyone, but I cannot do this unless I know you will someday forgive me.”
Kerrigan was surprised when Juliet didn’t immediately answer. In fact, she was a little worried, and it seemed Ilex was too.
When Juliet finally did answer, there was a bite of anger in her tone that made Kerrigan’s heart drop to her toes.
“Let me get this straight. Those Silver Whores made Kerrigan stab her man, who’s a vampire, locked him up, and starved him for twelve years, to the point where he’s in so much pain he can barely speak.
“Kerrigan needs to get in there to feed him, and the only way to keep him from ripping her throat out and killing a bunch of people trying to fill his belly is if you take on his blood lust and go fuck a bunch of werewolves, and you called to ask me for permission because you don’t want me to be mad at you later?”
Ilex raked his hand through his long hair, stress and uncertainty pinching at his features.
“To put it plainly. Time is short; Kerrigan has exhausted herself of magic, and I see no other alternatives to safely—”
Juliet cut in, shouting at the top of her lungs, “Ilex, I don’t care if you have to fuck your way through the entire state of Vermont to make this happen! You get off this phone right now and order up a bunch of werewolf hookers, do you hear me?”
Ilex managed to grin, but it was brief. “Juliet, a stor.”
“Don’t you, ‘treasure’ me! I said get off the phone!”
“I will, but I need to hear you say the words. Tell me you will forgive me—”
The hostility in Juliet’s voice softened in an instant. “There’s nothing to forgive. We all make sacrifices for our family, and as far as I’m concerned, that you even offered to do this makes you my hero today. Kerrigan?”
Kerrigan sniffled and wiped the tears that wouldn’t stop falling from her cheeks.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Rowena says we’ll be done here shortly. I’ll call Ivy and Uriah to let them know what’s happening; we’ll all be waiting for you at home. Text us whatever you need to help Maksim get through, okay?”
“Thank you, Juliet.”
“What for? I’m missing out on an orgy.” With that pissy grumble, Juliet hung up.
Doyle cleared his throat. “I’ll make the call.”
He walked off to explain what he needed from the nearby pack, Reece took his phone back, and Kerrigan squeezed Ilex’s hand until the Fae met her gaze.
From the bottom of her heart, she said, “Thank you.”
Ilex nodded, and when he stood up, Kerrigan didn’t see a man worried whether or not the woman he desired would forgive him for straying before their relationship could truly blossom.
She saw the son of a forest god, tall and strong, confident in what he was about to do.
“I must prepare a space in the woods. Do not go into the cell until I return.” Kerrigan promised she wouldn’t, and Ilex turned his commanding stare to Reece. “Find any iron items you can fit into your pocket or wear around your neck. Enough for all of you. It will allow you to resist the pull of my magic.”
“On it,” Reece answered with a snappy salute, following Ilex out of the dungeon, leaving her with Doyle, who confirmed a few minutes later that the wolf pack was mobilized and ready for action.
“They’ll be here in about thirty.”
Kerrigan nodded her thanks. “You’ll have to tell me later how you know this pack of wild girls.”
Doyle grinned a very male grin and shrugged.
“It’s not a secret. I met their pack alpha in a bar a few years back. We went at it like cats and dogs, and I kept her number. You need anything?”
“A pitcher and a straw wouldn’t go amiss.”
His eyes slid to Maksim’s cell and back to her. “You promise you won’t go in there alone?”
She drew an X on her chest. “Promise.”
He hesitated only for a few moments, but not long later, she was alone in the dungeon with only the crackling sound of flames and her own heartbeat to break the silence.
*****
Kerrigan stared into the cell, wishing she had the eyes of a predator to penetrate the darkness to see Maksim for herself. It didn’t seem real without being able to see him, but like Orpheus, she had to take it on faith and be better than the guy who couldn’t wait just a few minutes longer to be with the one he loved forever.
“I thought you were dead,” she confessed in a guilty murmur. “But I shouldn’t have just left you here. I should have known Vivica would find a way to make you suffer for what I did to them. I kept trying to summon your damn ghost to tell you how sorry I was, but you were here this whole time, alive.”
“Not… not your fault,” he rasped slowly.
Kerrigan didn’t go inside the cell, but she scooted closer to the bars and curled her hands around the unforgiving steel.
“I wasn’t going to give up until I found you, in this life or the next.”
“Relentless, my precious heart.” An ugly knot of fear that after all this time, after being here in the dark, tormented and starving, he would think of her and feel nothing but hatred, finally unraveled.
Kerrigan deflated wi
th a sob, her forehead hitting the bars.
“No… crying. Please.”
She nodded, but she couldn’t stop. Desperate to fill the silence and wear away the time, she babbled,
“This will be over soon. I’m going to feed you, and we’ll get you upstairs for a shower. I’ll summon you some clothes, and as soon as it’s dark, we’ll go home. I have sisters, a coven in New Hampshire. They’re really good people, and I know you’re going to love them.
“It’s winter right now, and the forest at night is so beautiful. Ilex is my coven sister Ivy’s brother, and I guess he has a thing going with my other sister, Juliet. They’re perfect for each other because he’s as calm and steady as a rock, and Juliet is as wild as the wind.
“Ivy’s mate is a bear; he’s a contractor and he’s building my house. He’s almost done, but if you don’t like it or you don’t want to live there, we can start over somewhere else. Anywhere you want, except Spain.
“I don’t want to be in the same country as my parents. I haven’t spoken to them since the day they lured you here and forced me to become something dark and disgusting. I blame them as much as Vivica for what’s happened to you.”
“Your parents are fucked up,” Doyle announced as he arrived and interrupted Kerrigan’s wild rambling.
He lifted up a plastic pitcher, the kind you’d see in a frat house or a pizza parlor, and a big smoothie straw.
“This is the only pitcher in the kitchen that wasn’t made of silver.”
Kerrigan gave a quick smile, trying again to quit crying and woman up.
“That’ll work perfectly, thanks.”
“Don’t…come in…here. Don’t want… you… to see—” Maksim cut himself short with an agonized hiss.
Hearing the pain in his voice strained the tenuous hold she had on her patience until it frayed to a few fragile threads.
“Tough shit, Maksim. I’m your Bride, yes?”
“Yes,” he groaned, chains sliding and rattling on the stone floor. She would never forget that sound, or ever hear it again and not have nightmares.
“Then I’m coming in as soon as Ilex takes away the blood lust, and I’m going to feed you. My blood will do the work of four donors and help you get strong enough to get the fuck out of here. End of discussion.”
“Stubborn,” he rasped in answer. “Lion?”
Doyle stepped up beside her, feet braced, hands on his hips. “Name’s Doyle. Your woman is definitely stubborn, but we like her.”
“Me… too. Talking… hard. Tell her.”
Kerrigan looked up at Doyle with a confused frown, but Doyle was nodding like he understood. He met her gaze and dropped to his haunches, waving his hand at the shadows beyond.
“He wants me to prep you for what you’re about to walk into.”
Prep her? “Whatever it is, I don’t care.”
“You say that, but he’s fucked up, Kerry. Not just the whole Crypt Keeper thing he has going on—” Maksim actually managed a papery bark of laughter, and Kerrigan quickly explained to Doyle that she’d called Maksim the Crypt Keeper the first night they’d met.
Doyle grunted. “Yeah, well, I bet he didn’t look like it at the time. Probably had on some nice suit and a fancy-ass tie.”
“He totally did.” Kerrigan laughed thickly.
“Vampires,” Doyle drawled, but there was no humor in his gaze as he stared her down. “From the look of things, the Silver Wives didn’t just leave him down here to starve, honey. He’s covered in burn marks, the kind that probably came from targeted sunlight or something like a UV flashlight. You know about his fangs, but that’s not all they took, okay?”
Stomach churning with bile, Kerrigan nodded, eyes wide, biting into her lips to keep them from trembling.
Doyle reached out and took her hand, giving it a careful squeeze. “He’s missing some fingers, and they fucked with his face pretty bad. Took his eyes and made a hell of a mess sewing the skin back together.
“It looks fresh, raw, and infected, but I don’t smell any putrefaction, though that could be thanks to that sweet-ass peppermint oil keeping me from smelling Eau de Hag. I don’t see any other obvious damage, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t do worse.”
It was hard not to break down, but considering all he’d suffered, she could be strong for him. Kerrigan nodded and pulled in a shaky breath.
“Okay. Okay, I can fix this.”
“Sweetie, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that can be fixed,” Doyle told her gently.
She snorted derisively, allowing herself to feel anger instead of pity or despair.
“Even if I couldn't, I’d love you just as you are, Maksim Gray.”
“Gray?” Maksim choked out.
Kerrigan found the power to smile. “I poured over every text on vampire lore I could find in an effort to figure out how to summon a fractured vampire spirit from beyond.
"I learned about vampires and their brides, and according to vampire law, if we had walked out of here together twelve years ago and made our relationship official, you wouldn’t have been your maker’s property anymore. No longer Maksim Austmathr, because you would have been mine. My mate. Yes?”
Maksim gave a long, rattling sigh. “Yes.”
“I also went through a pretty nasty phase where I thought if I couldn’t raise your spirit, I’d try raising your body. There’s only one professor at Haggara who teaches necromancy, and she’s not exactly a white witch.
“I studied with her until I felt myself slipping into territory the Silver Wives would have approved of, so I stopped. I couldn’t betray your memory by becoming the thing responsible for your death.
"However, I practiced necromancy long enough to be more than a little proficient, and because vampires are technically dead, I can fix what the Wives did to you.”
“Stubborn,” Maksim muttered again, making Kerrigan laugh.
“You have no idea.”
Reece’s clunky boots were loud on the stone stairs as he skipped down them, followed by Ilex’s much more graceful presence.
Ilex made not a sound, his expression grim, not looking like a man about to enjoy a magically fueled orgy.
Guilt pricked at Kerrigan’s conscious, but he’d offered up the help he could provide, and she wasn’t going to turn him down if his power could keep Maksim from having to live with killing innocents.
One of the first questions she’d asked Maksim nearly fifteen years ago was how many people he’d killed as a vampire.
She would never forget the look on his face or the regret in his voice when he spoke of the faceless horde of innocents who fell prey to his fledgling lack of control, and his maker’s encouragement to be as cruel and violent as possible.
“Girls are here,” Reece announced, passing Kerrigan and Doyle the iron he’d found. Kerrigan got a rusty gear from some kind of equipment, Doyle got a heavy padlock that looked antique, and Reece kept hold of a horseshoe.
Ilex nodded his approval when Kerrigan tucked her piece into her bra, waving his hand behind him.
“I recommend you stand as far from me as you can and hold onto the metal bars down there.”
Kerrigan got up and obeyed, giving him no lip, making no jokes. Doyle grabbed hold of Maksim’s cell door and yanked it off its hinges with a shriek of metal.
At any other time, she would have remarked how awesomely strong he was when he and Reece joined her at the bars.
Ilex took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders before entering the cell.
“Be easy, cousin,” she heard him murmur. “This won’t hurt.”
Moments later, a soft light shimmered from inside Maksim’s cell, and when Ilex strode out, he brought a wave of pure desire with him.
Everything about him became more appealing, more beautiful, and she had rabid fantasies rolling through her head, one after the other involving throwing herself onto the huge erection he was sporting.
“Damn, dude,” Reece grunted, muscles bunching in front of her as
his body responded to the erotic power rolling off of Ilex. “You weren’t joking about the pull.”
Ilex told them he wouldn’t speak in their presence once the magic was upon him, because one dulcet note of his voice would make them abandon the iron they held to follow him out into the woods.
He hurried past and up the stairs, glowing as brightly as Astrid had during their astral flight.
Kerrigan didn’t realize she’d tried to follow him until Doyle caught her and pressed his palm to her chest, pushing the piece of iron harder against her skin.
It was like a button that gave her a breath of sanity, logic resurfacing to remind her she didn’t want to jump on her sister’s would-be-boyfriend because Kerrigan had her own man waiting on her.
Doyle lifted his brows at her in question, and she nodded to say she was good.
“Thanks. Maksim? Still with me?”
“Yesssssss.” He groaned. From pleasure or pain, she couldn’t tell.
Reece gave a dark grumble and retreated, pushing his peppermint tissues back up his nose. “None of you better ever mention how hard my dick just got for that fairy.”
“I could pound a hole through the wall,” Doyle answered, clearly impressed as he too packed his nose with tissues.
When Kerrigan frowned at him in confusion, Doyle grimaced and glanced quickly at her chest and away.
When she looked down, it was to see her nipples poking hard against the fabric of her sleep shirt.
With their sensitive sniffers, the lions were being incredibly respectful by not dragging in the lungfuls of her Fae-induced arousal.
She blushed crimson, scurrying away to scoop up the pitcher and straw Doyle brought her, focusing on her next task.
“Can one of you bust Maksim out of his chains?”
“No prob,” Reece answered, his voice thicker with his nose packed.
He entered the cell and immediately started chuckling while the snap and ping of metal shredding in his hands accompanied the sound.
“Dude, where did the blood come from to sport that monster?”
Maksim’s answer was garbled Russian curse, which just made Reece laugh harder.
“Not even if you were the last man on earth, buddy. Woah, girl, what’s with the weapon?”