Darkness Bound (19 page)

Jack blurted, “Nando, too! It wasn’t his fault, either. This entire situation is my doing . . . it’s my fault and I should be held responsible. I-I offer
belu
for Nando, as well!”

The defiant, agonized, sustained scream that emitted from Hawk’s throat sent a rash of goose bumps crawling up Jack’s spine, but she was undeterred. She straightened her back, lifted her chin, and nodded at Nando, who stood gaping at her on the side of the crowd in shock.

Across the circle, Morgan stood speechless, clutching her giant male, the look on her face one of awed disbelief.

Anyone who’s stupid enough to even look at you the wrong way will have to deal with me.

Hawk had offered his protection. He’d gone to his punishment willingly, without complaint.

But it wasn’t his fault. It was hers . . . all hers.

Above all things, Jack believed in justice. She believed in an eye for an eye. She believed in “manning” up to mistakes.

She believed in honor.

Because her own childhood had been entirely devoid of fairness, of any semblance of what could reasonably be deemed right and wrong, Jack fervently believed in taking responsibility for those errors one could claim as one’s own . . .

And this one was all hers.

Hawk. My strange, maddening, wonderful enemy/protector/betrayer/friend . . . this one isn’t on you.

“Mr. Alpha,” Jack said quietly, looking at Alejandro, “I will tithe for both of them. I offer
belu
for Hawk and Nando.”

The hooded man seemed aghast at the turn in events. He stood dumbly with the cane gripped in his hand, looking back and forth between her and Alejandro, his gaze confounded.

The Alpha stared at her long and hard. He muttered, “So be it,” and gestured for Hawk to be released.

It took four men to subdue him once his wrists had been unbound. They wrestled him to the ground, shouting, throwing punches, until finally he lay on his stomach with his arms bent painfully behind his back, a knee between his shoulder blades, pinned but still struggling to get free.

He kept shouting as the Alpha opened his palm toward the hooded man, kept shouting as Jack stepped to the tree, kept shouting as the hooded man instructed her to remove her jacket and shirt. She did, hands shaking, and stood there in only her bra, deeply frightened but understanding this kind of ritual punishment meant there were rules, rules that could be learned and obeyed—or smartly circumvented.

If they meant to kill her, there would be a different kind of ceremony for that, she felt sure.

The hooded man’s two assistants encircled her wrists with iron, and chained her to the tree. The rough bark scraped her stomach and breasts. The night air felt cool and soft against the bare skin of her back.

Her heart pounded so frantically she couldn’t catch her breath.

“Jacqueline Dolan,” said the Alpha, his voice tight and dark. “Reporter for the
New York
Times
. . .
human
. You have invoked
belu
in accordance with the ancient rites, and will stand in place for the two you have named. You will receive . . .”

There was a long, terrible pause. Jack closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the tree trunk, waiting.

“Fifty lashes.”

Only fifty. She sagged against the chains, grateful for this show of mercy. On the ground, Hawk began screaming.

“No! No! No! Alejandro, please! Don’t! I’ll take twice my punishment! She can’t heal the way we do—she’ll be hurt—she’ll be
scarred
!”

His screams were ignored.

The Alpha asked her, “Do you have anything to say before punishment commences?”

Jack began to shake so badly the chains rattled. She looked up and found Morgan’s face in the crowd, saw her standing with both hands clapped over her mouth, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

It hit her like a wrecking ball. Morgan was going to cry for her.

Witnessing her fear, this woman, this stranger—this creature she’d once argued should be exterminated—was going to
cry
.
She was going to engage in that dreaded, deadly show of weakness. And there was Hawk on the ground, screaming he’d take twice what he’d been given, so she could be spared. Even the hooded one didn’t want to hurt her. She’d seen it in his eyes. As she looked around the gathered faces—most stunned, some confused, others obviously feeling compassion for her predicament—she had the startling epiphany that Hawk had been right.

She
was
a bigot. She’d judged them all based on the actions of one.

Then came another swift, terrible realization: they lived in isolation like this, here in the darkest heart of the jungle, because of people like her. Because of humans, who’d hunted them near to extinction centuries ago, who were even now trying to do the same thing.

And this Draconian system of punishment she was about to become so familiar with was, in all likelihood, designed in an effort to keep them safe. Hidden.

But it actually kept them oppressed.

In a hoarse, tremulous voice, Jack said, “Yes, I do have something to say.” She took several deep breaths, trying to steady her shaking voice and body, but it didn’t help. So when she spoke it was with that awful, telling tremor of fear, her voice as loud as it would go. It carried well past the tree and the clearing, into the humid dark of the night.

“I was wrong to judge you. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

There was another silence, broken only by Hawk’s continual pleading.

Then Alejandro said simply, “Begin.”

Four feet long, half an inch thick, soaked in an antiseptic bath made from boiling the roots of the suma plant and the leaves of the flowering herb clavillia, the cane applied with full force to the naked skin of Jacqueline Dolan’s back and shoulders was made of a lightweight, flexible wood from the Capirona tree.

Flexibility causes less damage to the underlying tissues. The skin, however, disintegrates.

At the first
crack
of impact, Jacqueline sucked in a loud, hard breath. Her back bowed, her head flew back, and her mouth opened wide, as did her eyes. She pulled hard against the wrist restraints, her fingers wrapped white-knuckled around the chains.

What she didn’t do was cry out.

The next strike distorted her face to a grimace of pain. Her eyes clenched shut.

By the fifth horrible, echoing
whack
, all the color had drained from her face and she was shaking uncontrollably, her jaw gritted so hard all the tendons in her neck stood out.

She still didn’t make a noise.

Standing beside Morgan, watching with his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders, Xander muttered, “Damn.”

Hawk, still being restrained by the four men on the ground, had turned his head away.

When the count reached ten, someone in the crowd behind Morgan whispered, “Ten.”

Whack!

Someone else said, “Eleven.”

Whack!

“Twelve.” More voices, joining in with the first.

Whack!

“Thirteen.”

Now the crowd took up the count in unison, their voices growing stronger with each unforgiving strike of the cane.

Whack!

“Fourteen!”

By the time the count reached twenty, the entire crowd was shouting together. And still Jacqueline was silent, though her body jerked violently with each blow. Nando looked as if he was going to vomit.

A female had never before been caned against this tree.

Their punishments, though handed out liberally, were typically less severe than the males’, who were able to withstand more vigorous physical discipline as they tended to heal faster than the females. The punishment tree had seen floggings and canings and beatings of various violence and bloodshed, but never had a woman stood chained to its trunk.

Never had a human stood there.

Never had a female offered
belu
for a male . . . one she wasn’t even mated to.

Whack!

“Twenty-one!” roared the multitude.

With every hit, with every vicious stroke that elicited howls of agony from almost all the previous victims under the cane’s unforgiving bite, but produced nothing from Jacqueline but that awful, unyielding silence, Morgan felt a growing certainty she was witnessing something holy.

When the count reached twenty-five, Alejandro held up his hand.

“Enough.”

Álefe, the tribe’s
usmi
—the hooded punisher, literally translated as “he who shows the way”—lowered his arm and stepped back, breathing hard. Jacqueline sagged against the tree, swaying on her feet, her face a mask of agony. From her position, Morgan couldn’t see Jacqueline’s back, but Hawk’s guttural moan when he turned to look at her told her everything.

Alejandro jerked his chin at the
usmi
’s two assistants, who jumped to comply with their master’s command. They released Jacqueline’s wrists from the shackles and chains, one at a time. When she was free she collapsed into their arms, boneless as a rag doll.

“Let him go,” said the Alpha to the four holding Hawk. They did.

He sprang to his feet. He sprinted to her. He shoved the two males aside and gathered her up—gingerly, tenderly, fury and anguish twisting his handsome face—hooked one arm under her knees, pressed her chest to his, and cradled her head with his other hand, leaving her bleeding back untouched. Without a word, he turned and strode swiftly away into the darkness with a semiconscious Jacqueline in his arms. The crowd parted silently for them to pass.

Everyone watched them go.

Xander said under his breath, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. What the hell has gotten into Hawk? Why would he care so much about her? Did you see his face? The way he fought? And the human . . . why would she do that for him? For Nando?”

“I don’t know,” Morgan answered in a whisper, just as the first of the tears crested her lower lids and began to stream down her cheeks. She swiped them angrily away before anyone could see them.

This had been her idea. Though the Alpha had approved it and even pretended he’d not only agreed to it but had also thought it up in the first place, it was Morgan who had wanted this, who had risked this very outcome. She’d brought the woman here, knowing all the dangers, all the ways an outsider could be harmed or worse, and yet she’d hoped they’d somehow navigate the murky waters together to find a common ground, a safe place where they could come to understand each other. A place where they might learn to live peacefully, so they could show the rest of the world it could be done.

Now that hope was as flayed and bloodied as Jacqueline Dolan’s skin.

What would she tell the world of them now that she’d been beaten bloody within ten minutes of her arrival, beaten so badly her knees wouldn’t even support her own weight?

The old man in white stepped forward into the clearing. He was
kalum
, the priest, Keeper of the Ancient Ways, the oldest, most venerated member of the Manaus tribe. Without speaking, he turned in the direction Hawk and Jacqueline had gone, gazed into the darkness, then bowed low at the waist.

One by one, the crowd began to follow his example, paying their respects in silence, until the only one left upright was Alejandro.

The Alpha gazed impassively at the lowered backs of his subjects, then turned and walked slowly away.

The fury was a thing inside of him, an animal of bloodlust and blackness that wanted to claw its way out of his skin.

Hawk couldn’t remember the last time he felt such pure, unbearable rage.

With Jacqueline cradled limp and bleeding in his arms—breathing shallowly, white with shock—Hawk went to his home, his pace just under a run so he wouldn’t jostle her. Cursing his lack of a ladder and the proper tools to make a pulley, he entered his home the way he always did when in human form.

He climbed the rope.

With Jacqueline a dead weight over one shoulder, he slowly and carefully pulled them up with both feet twisted around the rope, one hand pulling as his powerful legs pushed, an arm wrapped around her thighs. He navigated them carefully through the circular opening in the floor that opened into the lower level, and, once he had his feet beneath him again, took her upstairs.

He laid her on her stomach on his bed as gently as he could, wincing when she moaned.

She was conscious, but barely. When he straightened and got his first good look at her raw back up close, it was all he could do not to scream at the top of his lungs and break every piece of furniture in the room.

Alejandro would pay for this.

He knelt beside her, brushing the hair gently from her face. “I have to wash you,
namorada
. . . clean the skin to ensure there’s no infection. Then there’s a salve . . . you’re going to be fine, okay? I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to take care of everything.”

Her lashes fluttered. He glimpsed her eyes, blue, hazed with pain. She whined, a small, high noise in the back of her throat. Her lids drifted closed.

God, what had he done? How had he let this happen? He’d promised her no one would hurt her; he’d promised her only moments before they came here that he’d protect her and now . . .

Every curse Hawk had ever heard flooded his brain, and he wanted to shout them from the windows. He wanted to kill something with his bare hands. He wanted to make someone bleed.

He rushed to prepare the salve that would help her. Because he so often needed the salve himself, he kept most of the ingredients dried in glass jars in the cupboard. There were a few items that had to be fresh, an antimicrobial herb and a vine whose leaves were an analgesic, so he went into the forest for those, hating to leave her but having no choice. When he had gathered and prepared all the ingredients, he ground them to a paste with a tincture of other medicinal extracts, and returned to her side with clean cloths and a large bowl of cool water.

He saturated the cloth in the water, wrung it out, and caressed Jack’s arm. She hadn’t moved from how he’d left her, sprawled facedown on his bed.

“Okay, Jacqueline. I’m going to start. I’ll wash away the blood first, then apply the salve. I need you to try and stay as still as possible.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I know it hurts. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

She made a faint noise of acknowledgment, but didn’t open her eyes.

The strap of her bra had broken during the lashings. He cut the elastic around her shoulders but otherwise left it intact so he didn’t have to move her to get it out from beneath her body. Then he began.

As soon as he touched the cloth to her naked back, she gasped and jerked as if she’d been electrocuted.

“I know. I’m sorry. I know.”

He stroked her arm, trying to soothe her, cooing soft words of encouragement as he gently washed away as much of the blood that had streaked down her lower back and sides as he could. The
usmi
had avoided the delicate kidney area, thank God, but there would be scars.

There would be so many scars.

Twenty-five to be precise.

Her breathing had changed from shallow to ragged, strained. He looked up from his work to find her staring at him, her lips twisted, eyes glazed in agony.

She whispered, “Boy, that was a real barrel of laughs.” She cracked a smile. Then her eyes squeezed shut, her face crumpled, and she began to cry.

That was worse than anything yet. Her tears were like a sword thrust straight through his chest, punching the breath from his lungs, leaving him weak-kneed and trembling.

Hawk lowered his forehead to hers. Her skin was hot, burning hot.

“Finish,” she pleaded, the barest of whispers. “Please . . . Hawk . . . get it over with.”

When he pulled back he had to look away and swallow, trying to gather his wits and his strength, trying to understand how things had gone so wrong so quickly, trying not to give way to tears himself.

Mercifully, his dead father’s voice remained silent.

He finished washing the streaked and caked blood from her skin. He applied a thin layer of salve with the lightest touch possible. He laid clean strips of cotton over the ointment, removed her boots and socks, and gave her small sips of water and a tonic to drink that would help the pain and help her rest.

Hawk sat on the floor next to the bed and held her hand until she fell into a still, silent sleep. He stared out the windows through the night, watching over her, keeping vigil until the light rose soft and pink over the tops of the trees.

Then he went downstairs, leaned over the porch railing, threw back his head, and screamed so loudly it sent every bird in the trees within a quarter mile into panicked, shrieking flight.