Black

by Donya Lynne

  Rameses was second-in-command only to his brother, Memnon, and oh, what a joy Memnon was. He never smiled, never showed compassion, never allowed emotion of any kind into his expression.

  Micah felt sorry for any female unfortunate enough to get stuck in the same bed with the guy. He probably fucked like a bulldozer. Or a ram. And not the animal kind. Micah was talking about the kind of ram that medieval armies had used to bust down the barred gates of castles and fortresses.

  He could almost see it. Memnon probably climbed on top of the woman, shoved her legs apart, and impaled her before slamming into her a few times—just enough to get off, because efficiency seemed to be Memnon’s thing—and even before his cock stopped twitching, he dismounted and left the poor female wondering what in the hell just happened as he showered then returned to his golden throne. Or wherever he went when he was acting as commander in chief over the lycan race.

  Memnon’s sexual habits aside, Chicago wasn’t lycan territory. So, what the fuck was Rameses and his black-haired sidekick, Pretty Boy, doing here?

  The nurse finished drawing his blood and slapped a bandage on his arm before hurrying off with her bounty.

  Rolling his sleeve down, Micah stood and meandered closer to where his father and the two lycans stared intently through the window at what was going on inside the room where he assumed Ronan was being treated. As he stepped around the nurses’ station and carts of equipment, more of the room’s interior broke into his field of vision. He saw the silver footrail of the bed first, then the white sheets covering what he assumed were Ronan’s feet and legs.

  And then . . .

  What the fuck?

  Another lycan, a behemoth with a mane of sandy-blond hair longer and prettier than Severin’s, stood with his eyes closed and his hands extended over Ronan’s body like he was some kind of shaman.

  Micah had seen it all tonight. Dead vampires who came back to life. A brother he never knew he had. A set of twins growing inside his mate’s belly even though he hadn’t had a calling. And now . . . some lycan with a hair-band complex was going medicine man on his brother.

  Micah just hoped Twisted Sister didn’t end up giving his bro a lobotomy.

  _________

  Priest heard the commotion going on around him, the doctors and nurses bringing in blood, blood, more blood, transfusing Ronan while he continued planting ancient healing energy directly from the goddess Sekhmet herself into the vampire’s body.

  Frantic voices shouted instructions, nurses called for more blood, and bodies bumped into Priest as the activity reached a fever pitch. But Priest remained focused on the task at hand, his body and mind in a more or less meditative state, homed in on Ronan like the vampire was the only other living being within a square mile.

  Priest’s left hand hovered horizontally over Ronan’s torso. In his right hand, he held his gold cartouche. Its gold chain coiled around and between his fingers.

  Gold held tremendous value to the lycans because of its transformative powers and ability to conduct spiritual energy. They used it to heal, to bring their brethren out of hibernation, to open the portals between worlds and cities. To the lycans, gold was the difference between life and death, peace and war, justice and corruption. Without gold, they would be lost, which was why they hoarded any they could get their hands on.

  He had known what he would find inside Ronan before he started the healing process. But he hadn’t expected the damage to be so prolific. The motley werewolf’s venom was more corrosive to vampires than he and the others had assumed it would be.

  This wasn’t by accident. This wasn’t some random beast whose venom coincidentally did more harm to vampires than old werewolf venom did.

  This was a weapon. One designed specifically to target vampires.

  In their never-ending quest to hunt down the werewolves and eradicate them from this realm, Priest and his lycan brothers had recently begun to notice a change in their behavior and physiology. Not in all werewolves, mind you, but there was a new breed of werewolf infiltrating the hierarchy of paranormal beings that called earth their home.

  There were lycans, vampires, drecks, and werewolves, among other lesser beings like fairy creatures and benign shifters who tended to do more good than bad, but this new class of werewolf didn’t fit in with anything they were familiar with. They could shift without a full moon. They were more cunning than their lupine cousins. Their venom was as corrosive as battery acid, and it worked quickly, spreading and infecting its victim with the speed of a lightning strike.

  These werewolves were not of a natural order. They were creations.

  Someone had made these beasts.

  The lycans needed Hunter more than ever now. Hunter would be a tremendous asset in tracking and destroying these abominations. These motleys. None of his brethren could hold a candle to Hunter’s tracking abilities and slaying skills.

  And now he was back. Returned to earth by the curious and troubled mind of the vampire prostrated beneath his healing hands.

  No doubt Ronan hadn’t a clue what he’d done by opening the gate. From what little he, Rameses, and Dain had overheard through the portal before activating the gateway, Ronan didn’t even know he’d opened it. He thought the ankh—the key—had failed. Only because he had no idea how the gates worked.

  He and the others had a good chuckle at the conversation between Ronan and Rysk, waiting for them to depart before coming through, but then the werewolves had shown up, and it had become clear they couldn’t keep their arrival in Chicago a secret. They had to pass through the gateway, not necessarily to save the vampires, but to kill the beasts.

  After millennia of hunting and killing the escaped werewolves, lycans were hardwired not to let even one get away. It was their bound duty to kill them. They had sworn an oath to both Osiris and Anubis that they would remain and hunt the werebeasts to the very last one. To rid this realm of their poison. Their sickness.

  The problem with werewolves was that they bred quickly, and in a myriad of ways. They could infect a human with the sickness through a bite. Or a male werewolf in human form could mate with a human female and produce a werewolf child. Or a female werewolf could lay with a human male. Of course, the child would be latent until it reached adulthood and went through its first change.

  This was an even bigger problem because lycans couldn’t detect werewolves until their first shift. That’s why such an effort was made to identify the offspring of known werewolves. Tracking and eliminating offspring during their first shift accounted for at least a fourth of the lycans’ kills.

  And now they had these engineered motleys to contend with.

  Which was why Memnon needed to cease Hunter’s exile. Immediately. Before they fell even further behind.

  Yes, what Hunter had done was bad. Mating a vampire when it could result in an abomination was verboten, but this was no time to sit your star quarterback on the sidelines. They needed Hunter in the field, doing what Hunter did best, even if Memnon cast him from the clan. Having Hunter in this realm as an outcast was better than relegating him to some prison planet where he couldn’t do any good at all.

  Priest sensed Dain and Rameses felt the same way, but even Ram, as Memnon’s blooded brother, held little persuasion over their imeut. And trying to withhold the knowledge that Hunter was back in the earth realm wasn’t an option. Memnon would know. He would see it in their thoughts. Which meant they had no choice but to tell Memnon the truth and hope they could persuade him to allow Hunter to stay, given these new developments.

  New developments that caused Priest to think forming an alliance with the vampires was the best course of action. Something else he sensed Rameses agreed with him on.

  He directed more healing energy into Ronan’s blood, gradually siphoning out the poison.

  Vampires were crucial to maintaining the balance among the paranormal beings on earth. Without them, drecks would run rampant, and then the lycans would have two direct enemies, with no buffer to o
ffer protection. And since Priest held little doubt these new motley werewolves were creations of that psychotic dreck, Bishop, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Bishop also possessed long-term ambitions to do to the lycans what he was perpetuating against the vampires. Bishop had already dealt the sin eaters a heavy blow with cobalt, and now he piled on the hurt even further with his deadly motleys.

  What would Bishop have in store for the lycans when the vampires were no longer a threat?

  Priest didn’t want his brethren to be caught on their heels. It was time to be proactive and make a change. A lot of changes. Their survival depended on it.

  He only hoped Memnon agreed once he was awakened and briefed.

  Because if he didn’t, Priest might have to make hard decisions he would rather not make.

  Remain loyal to his brothers? Or join Hunter and create a new path?

  Chapter 15

  Micah joined the two lycans and his father outside the window of Ronan’s room, his stomach knotting as he watched Ronan writhe in obvious pain.

  His brother. That was his brother in there.

  “What’s he doing to him?” He gestured toward the blond lycan just as Digon and his Grudge Match sidekick, Rule, exited an examination room a few doors down.

  Rule appeared worse for the wear and strung tighter than a crossbow. He’d been patched up from what looked like one hell of a fight, and contusions darkened both cheeks and one eye.

  Without turning toward him, Rameses answered his question in a deep, no-frills voice, “Priest is healing your kin.”

  “Kin?” How did Rameses know Ronan was his brother?

  Rameses’s gaze slid to his. “Is he not a vampire?”

  Okay, so maybe this was a general term lycans used regarding vampires. “Yes, but—”

  “Then he is your kin.” Rameses remained unaffected, facing the action in Ronan’s room once more.

  What a dick. But it wasn’t worth getting into a battle of words while Ronan was fighting for his life. Instead, Micah made a mental note to revisit this with Rameses later.

  Digon and Rule joined them, remaining a safe distance away, as if they knew tensions were high and didn’t want to spark an explosion. Rule’s clothes were splattered with blood and covered in dirt and grass stains. One sleeve was shredded. The other had been ripped clean off. Blood-soaked bandages covered his arms and neck. From the clawlike rips across the front of his shirt, it was a good bet his stomach was bandaged, too.

  Rule huddled to the side with Digon, near his father, whispering quietly, exchanging glances with his dad in a way that made it clear they knew one other. A moment later, his father joined them, and it didn’t take a body language expert to know good ol’ Dad didn’t just know Rule, but Digon, too. And he knew them well.

  Very well.

  They looked more like three best friends who’d known one another long enough to know who among them wore boxers, briefs, or went commando.

  Okay, so maybe that came off sounding too homosexual. Micah knew his dad didn’t swing that way, and while Digon and Rule were elegant enough to give the impression they were into male-on-male action, there was something about both of them that screamed heterosexual. He’d noticed both of them eyeing the females of Grudge Match during the one and only visit he’d made to the fight club only a few days ago. Gay males didn’t get that special gleam in their eyes when they were checking out females. But hetero males did, even if they had every intention of keeping their hands off the goods.

  So maybe another way of putting this would be to say that it was a good bet Digon and Rule knew his dad’s full, painful history, and he knew theirs. Micah couldn’t pick up anything but a black void from inside their heads, but he couldn’t ignore the gut feeling that the trio had known one another a long fucking time.

  And he wasn’t sure what to think about that.

  But he didn’t have long to ponder the sitch as the double doors swung open and King Bain strode in.

  And there it was, the trifecta of bizarro to put The Twilight Zone cap on the evening.

  “Micah,” Bain said in greeting before eyeing the rest of the crowd gathered outside Ronan’s room.

  Interestingly enough, Bain didn’t appear surprised or taken aback to find a dreck, three lycans, and his father among the crowd. In fact, he nodded privately to each in turn.

  “Your Highness? What are you doing here?”

  It seemed a pretty far stretch that the king of the race, who was notoriously private and reclusive, would leave his home and come to AKM to check in on the condition of a civilian. And, to Bain, that’s what Ronan was. A cat burglar, yes, but a civilian. And, well, Micah’s brother. But, surely, that wasn’t reason enough to bring Bain out of his fortified royal home.

  Without answering the question, Bain spied the bandage on the inside of Micah’s elbow then snapped his fingers in the direction of the nurses’ station. “Take my blood, too.” His heavy voice boomed, drawing the attention of everyone within twenty feet.

  A shocked nurse nearly dropped a tray of vials and syringes as she tripped over her own feet when she saw the king. “Yes, sire.” She nodded, bowed, nodded awkwardly again, then hurried to collect what was needed to draw another bag of blood.

  Bain dropped into a nearby seat and started rolling up his sleeve to reveal his massive arm.

  Trying again, Micah asked, “Sire, what are you doing here?”

  Bain cast him a sidelong glance. “Once Ronan stabilizes, you and I need to talk. I’ll give you answers then.” He nodded toward the buzz of activity in Ronan’s room. “How is he?”

  “Actually, he’s not stabilizing.”

  “Shit.”

  The nurse rushed over and got to work drawing the king’s blood, sticking his arm. The clear plastic bag hanging beside him began to fill.

  Micah lowered his voice and chucked his chin toward Rameses and the other dark-haired lycan standing off to the side. “What are they doing here?”

  Bain studied the lycans. “They killed the werewolves that attacked Rysk and Ronan.”

  “Who the hell is Rysk?” Micah didn’t know anyone named Rysk.

  It felt like the world had turned upside down while he’d been finding out he was going to be a father, and now he was playing serious catch-up.

  Bain sighed as if he’d realized he shouldn’t have said anything. “Rysk is Rule. Rule is Rysk’s alias.”

  Micah glanced toward the male he knew only as Rule. The guy had never given Micah the warm and fuzzies, and this surprising switcheroo with his name gave Micah one more reason not to like him.

  “Why the hell does that asshole need an alias?”

  Bain pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “With all due respect, sire, what aren’t you telling me?” Micah didn’t like this keeping-him-in-the-dark feeling one bit.

  Bain dropped his hand to the arm of the chair as the nurse finished drawing his blood and slapped on a bandage. “Drop it, Micah. It’s been a long fucking night, and I’m about to throw my royal titles in your face if you don’t shut the hell up.”

  Micah took a deep breath and sighed as he bowed his head. “My apologies. It’s been a long night for me, too.”

  He glanced at his father again, who was still speaking in hushed tones with Digon and Rule—er, Rysk. Jesus, it was getting hard to keep all the players straight, but it did beg the question of whether or not his father knew Rule’s true identity. Given how chummy the three seemed to be with one another, Micah had a feeling his father knew the truth and a whole lot more.

  “I know it has,” Bain said, rising. “And it’s only going to get longer. But first, let’s see what we can find out about your brother. We’ll discuss the rest once we know he’s out of danger.”

  Micah didn’t even question how Bain knew Ronan was his brother. Right now, he felt like a visitor in an alternate reality, so he was goi
ng to stick with being an observer more than a participant. Maybe that would shed light on what everyone else around here seemed to know already.

  In reluctantly dutiful observation mode, he followed but hung back as Bain joined the others.

  “Rameses.” Bain extended his hand to the lycan.

  “Bain.” Rameses shook his hand. “It’s good to see you again. I only wish it were under better circumstances.”

  The necessary royal formalities were exchanged, but all Micah wanted was for them to get past all the hoity-toity bullshit and talk shop. He loathed wasting time, and that’s what all this “How’s the queen?” “Fine. How’s your brother?” “He’s in hibernation now.” “Oh, that’s nice.” was. It was all Micah could do not to grab Rameses by the scruff and demand he tell them why he was there and what had happened to his brother.

  “This is Dain.” Rameses introduced the other black-haired male then nodded toward the imposing blond performing whatever voodoo magic he specialized in on Ronan. “That’s Priest. He’s our healer. He will ensure your kin pulls through.”

  There was that term again. Micah almost mouthed off about how just because they were all vampires, that didn’t automatically make them kin, but before he could, Bain turned toward him and gestured.

  “This is Micah Black, my strongest enforcer.”

  Rameses faced him, and Micah found himself gazing into the darkest set of eyes he’d ever seen. So dark they were like black holes. Not even a shred of light or emotion stared back at him. No color, no fear, no anger, no discontent. Only an astute sense of observation that dissected him and made him feel like he was under the lens of a microscope.

  “Micah Black,” Rameses said. “It’s been a long time.”

  My God, were they going to dance this politically correct waltz all night?

  “It has.” Micah remained wary, keeping his distance.

  Rameses blinked, and one corner of his mouth ticked subtly upward. “We have found much amusement in following your exploits.”

  Was Rameses making fun of him or just stating a fact? It was hard to tell. But if the latter, how the hell would Rameses have learned anything about what Micah had been up to? And why would he find his “exploits” amusing?