What Rough Beast [Blood Oath 1] (33 page)

"They won't kill him unless they suspect the battle isn't going in their favor,” Elliot said. “Luc's far too important to them alive. They'll need him to try to distract Garrick, weaken him."

Garrick winced.

"You'll find him. Luc's taken a great deal of your blood. You'll track on to him quickly,” Aidan said.

"Like a homing beacon.” Malachi clapped him on the shoulder. “Fighting is always chaotic. It won't take much to build the confusion to mass pandemonium. That will buy you the time you'll need."

"Mass pandemonium.” Isabel smiled. “I like the sound of that."

"Try not to scare the children, dear.” Aidan took her hand in his, kissed it before his gaze returned to the others. “They won't expect us to use our women."

The side of the barn exploded, raining down burning timbers and shards of wood.

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Feet braced wide, Garrick sank to his thighs in a mound of loose trash in the storm cellar below. A lonely can pinged down the pile, disturbing paper, aromatic diapers, and an army of empty water bottles. The garbage skidded, a landslide that shifted the heap awkwardly left.

Garrick jumped free, crouched.

He waited precious seconds.

Assessed.

A rat scurried in retreat, nails clicking on discarded plastic.

The explosion above came as a muted roar. He stooped, lifting his elbow to shield his head from clods of dirt the blast loosened to pelt down on him. He blinked, clearing the grit of falling debris from his eyes, and in a brief flare of light from the fires that had begun burning above, he spotted a decrepit door in the shadows ahead.

"Luc?"

He ignored his stinging eyes—dear Lord, the stench—and the screams that followed the battle in the barn overhead. Instead, Garrick marched over a gauntlet of refuse that crunched under his booted feet. Luc remained stubbornly silent, but his pain and misery emanated from that direction in nigh crippling waves.

"I'm coming, Luc. How many are there?"
He ripped away the two-by-four the masters had jammed into iron slats pockmarked and grainy with dull rust.
"Talk to me. Focus. Help me save your life."

He ripped the door open.

The young vampyr's agony, unshielded, flared out to Garrick like a nuclear detonation.

He stumbled to his knees.

He clenched his teeth, body tensing.

No killing blow ambushed him, though.

No lethal blade sliced down.

Grateful, his eyes snapped shut. The unmitigated suffering that broadcasted from Luc paralyzed him, and moments later, when he could function again, Garrick's lashes slowly lifted.

The room was empty.

Deserted save for...

Good God, what was that
thing?

His sword dropped from nerveless fingers.

He lurched forward, fell because he'd forgotten the pain had driven him to his knees.

So he crawled.

He crawled through the garbage, in the dirt, to the bloody lump of twisted limbs and flesh that had once been Luc.

He was...raw.

Bloody.

Every patch of exposed skin seeped sick, glistening red. His body was a roadmap of shallow cuts that trickled, slashes that gushed scarlet. If there was an inch of him that hadn't been carved, cut, and sliced, Garrick couldn't see it. Smashed bone and violent bruises completed the rainbow of devastation that had been inflicted on him.

And it all leaked blood by the quart.

By the gallon.

Garrick scrambled, leaned over him, but he was terrified to touch him, to risk worsening his pain. But he had to. He knew he must. Luc was alive, but he wouldn't survive long without aid. Garrick needed to turn him, evaluate his injuries.

"Sweet Jesus. Please.” The words weren't a curse, but a desperate prayer. He reached a shaking hand toward him, hot tears burning his eyes when his fingers sank into the pulp of Luc's mutilated bicep.

Garrick jumped at Luc's mental scream, but he knew kindness lay in speed, so he rolled the young vampyr from his side to his back, though his stomach churned and twisted at the agony it caused him.

He groaned aloud when he saw what they'd done to him.

Bone gleamed crude, mocking white from a gash that split his face in a gouging diagonal from temple to his chin, identical to the scar marring Garrick's own face. But where Nathaniel had spared Garrick's eyes, the masters who'd imprisoned Luc had shown him no such mercy. His eye was a bloodred orb, the eyelid bisected though pasted roughly together by a thin crust of putrid, blackening goo. They'd blinded his other eye as well, vivid ruby starbursts competing with cloudy gray specks that cast gut-wrenching shadows on his retina.

Garrick had known.

The masters had taken great care to ensure he'd known when Luc had been blinded. How they'd hurt him. Why. Just as the masters had made him screamingly aware of each severed finger. There was not a single torture inflicted on Luc that Garrick hadn't shared.

Every cut.

Every blow.

Every horror.

But knowing and seeing the final results were entirely different nightmares.

Garrick was sickly relieved that they'd fouled Luc's eyes.

At least the young vampyr wouldn't see the damage they'd done to him.

That torment was for Garrick alone.

As it should be.

"It's over, Luc. I'm here now."

He wouldn't be able to answer.

Luc had chewed his lips to bloody ribbons, and his jaw hung at an odd, loose angle, obviously broken. When Luc's mouth opened, fighting for air, Garrick flinched at teeth absent, cracked, and splintered to jagged shards. If that devastation hadn't prevented speech, the razor-thin cuts circling his neck from ear to tattered earlobe would've. Garrick hissed in a sharp breath at the marks that sliced his throat, visible even through the thick wash of blood that dried and flecked to his shoulders.

The misery he'd endured didn't end there, though.

No.

Hurting Luc, torturing him, hadn't been enough.

They'd devastated him. Broken bones jutted from both arms, tearing through ravaged skin. One knee bent to an awkward unnatural angle. His chest gurgled, his lungs pierced by God knew how many shattered ribs.

Without his vampyr, Luc would have—and should have—died. Even with the virus, Garrick was dumbfounded to find him still alive. His elder blood couldn't hope to repair this. No matter how long Luc lived after this, the virus wouldn't grow new fingers for him, couldn't mend this level of damage and destruction. As it hadn't healed the cut Nathaniel had sliced into his own face long before Luc. When Garrick had fought and failed to save his own father.

Luc, too, would scar.

But he was alive.

Like Garrick, he no doubt wished for death, longed for it.

But he'd survive.

He had to.

"Kill me."

The anguish in Luc's plea galvanized Garrick, prodded him to action. He ripped his shirt over his head, bunched it, and wiped sticky blood from the young vampyr's throat. “I won't let you die, Luc."

His stomach rolled when he realized one gouging slice had partially severed his vocal cords, but he dabbed at the wound. His mouth tightened to a grim line. “If I have to drag you every inch of the way, kicking and screaming, I swear before Holy God that you
will
live."

"Please."

When he pushed Luc's scarlet-stained hair from his eyes with a shaking hand, the sour scent of the blood that had soaked into his shirt from Luc's neck finally pushed through his dazed senses.

Garrick froze.

His eyes widened.

He reached forward, unwilling to grasp what his fingers, slicked vermillion, told him, the reeking aroma that wet his hands sweet, faintly nauseating. And horrifyingly familiar.

It wasn't Luc's blood.

"Get away from me."

He shoved the bunched shirt down Luc's ruined torso. He mopped the blood into the cloth and brought it to his nose to inhale deeply.

His breath left his body on a broken moan.

His shoulders sagged.

"Please, get away."

When his horror-struck gaze lowered to what was left of Luc, when he saw the word they'd carved into his chest, Garrick flinched.

"I am unclean."

Agony tightened and choked his throat, but he complied. He backed costly inches from the wreck of Luc's body.
"The masters fed their blood to him, Aidan."

Far above, the prince answered him.
"Yes. I know."

He rubbed at eyes that burned with the crook of his elbow.
"They made a slave of him. To all of them."

"The one you killed was Jonas. Malachi and Elliot have cornered another master in the hayloft and a third, whom I believe to be Krystiyan, left a blood trail so thick he won't last the hour even if he manages to elude your weres. But he won't escape."
Garrick felt the prince's sharp regret.
"In the confusion, Zechariah slipped away. I'm sorry."

He squared his shoulders, sucked in a steadying breath.
"Their heads are mine and mine alone. No one takes their heads except me."

"I'll make sure the others know. You'll have your vengeance, Garrick. This much, I promise you."

He shoved himself upright and snatched his sword from the floor. He gazed down at the bloodied, beaten shell that contained the boy he'd met in Nathaniel's stable, the friend who had saved Garrick when he only wanted to die once they were free. One of the few genuine friends Garrick had ever had.

"If you can't bring yourself to kill him..."

Garrick pivoted. He strode from the dank, dark room on determined feet though every sense in him revolted at leaving Luc in that unspeakable hell.
"No."

He sensed the prince's heaving sigh.
"Very well. I'll kill him for you."

Reaching the piles of garbage in the antechamber, he looked up, wild eyes searching for a rope, a ladder. Something. Anything. The masters would've needed some means of going up and down to the cellar to torture and feed their prisoner.
"I'll have the head of any man, woman, or were who touches him."

A rope, thickly knotted at even intervals, fell from above. Aidan stared down at him. “I know you love him, and I am more sorry than I can say. But you can't leave Luc to live like that,” the prince said when Garrick had sheathed his sword.

Grabbing the rope, he heaved himself up, hand over hand. “How do you know what condition he's in?” he panted through gritted teeth as he climbed.

"You've my blood in you, vampyr."

"Even if he could recover from...that, he is lost to us. We've captured the remaining two masters, but if you kill them as you killed Jonas, Luc is no less a slave to Zechariah. Life, for him, has become the greater cruelty.” When Garrick reached the lip of the trapdoor, Aidan offered him a hand up.

Garrick brushed it aside. He pulled himself to the floor of the barn and swung his legs over. “It will be the greater cruelty only if I don't destroy the masters who enslaved him. All of them.” He scrambled to his feet, slid his sword free. It felt right in his grasp, gave him the control he needed to keep going, no matter how his heart ached.

"Elliot was right. Do you understand? He was right.” Garrick met the heart-wrenching sympathy in the prince's gaze. Determination stiffened his spine. “Dawn is hours away."

"You risk much.” Aidan frowned. “To what purpose? Even were you to succeed in releasing him from his slavery to the masters, would Luc thank you? His vampyr won't heal him. What kind of life could he hope to have as he is now?"

Garrick's features twisted to a fierce scowl. “What wouldn't you do to save Elliot's life? To save Isabel's? If she were lying below, crippled and dying, what wouldn't you do to save her?"

The prince's eyes narrowed. “Isabel is my mate.” He shook his head. “Elliot is not."

"If you're not willing to die for Elliot, you've no business fostering him. He'll come to love you that much, if he doesn't already.” Garrick blew out a frustrated breath, his grip on his sword tightening. “Why do you think I lasted as long as I have?” He jabbed the tip of his sword down so it pointed belowground. “I won't watch him die!"

"Garrick?"

He spun around and snarled when he spied Kate's lithe form in the barn door. “What are you doing on a field of battle?” he said through clenched teeth. “Two masters live, and another has escaped. You aren't safe."

She planted her hands on her hips, eyes glinting mutinous temper. “If it's safe enough for
her
, it's safe enough for me."

Beside him, Aidan sucked in a sharp gasp. “Isabel!"

The prince's mate strode across the smoky room, stepping delicately around a charred, headless corpse. “Oh, be quiet, Aidan. I've ten times your power. I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself and you if need be."

Garrick left the pair to bicker and walked to Kate instead. He grasped her arm, but not in anger. His fear was a terrible black void inside him that sucked all warmth and vitality into its greedy maw. “That is not so for you, love. Your vampyr is new, your power nascent.” He tipped his head to Isabel. “Someday. But for you, not yet."

What he wanted, more than anything else, was to pull her into his arms and just stay there. Forever. He'd give anything to just rest his forehead to her shoulder, feel her fingers twining in his hair and just weep. Pain squeezed his throat. “I can't lose you too."

Color drained from her face. “Luc?"

"He's alive. For now.” Garrick's head jerked in a stiff nod when a pair of beasts appeared at her side. “Peter will see to your safety in my stead. Tim?"

The gray beast plopped in the dirt by Kate, but the much younger black, coat streaked with gore and mud, fastened his teeth around Garrick's fingers to guide him to the fields to the east.

"Time is a luxury Luc can ill afford.” Garrick pulled his hand away. “Run. Find the injured master. I'll follow."

When he returned, Peter sprawled, naked and smeared with mud, at Kate's feet in the barn's smoldering interior. His chest heaved in exhaustion, his body spent, but a wide smile stretched across his soot-streaked face. Kate, Aidan, and Isabel argued in low voices, paying no attention to the blood-spattered were.