Blurred Memories (24 page)

Jen’s hand closed over his
wrist. “If you open it, they’ll hear it. If you have to carry
someone too scared to even walk, you won’t be able to fight. And
then what?”

“
And then I’ll have tried,”
Marc growled, wrenching his arm free. “If we can free even one of
them, it’s enough. Better than allowing two hundred and thirteen
people to be taken.”

She recoiled like he had
struck her. He crushed the padlock in his hand and pulled the door
open. Before he had motioned for Simon to go inside and put the
prisoner under the glamour so they could help him out, Jen had
already opened two more cell doors.

Six people, Simon had said.
No more than six. Marc considered the corridor and the many doors
it held, chewing on his lip as he thought.

In the next cell could be
someone else’s Blake, someone who was loved and missed. Someone he
could free.

If he was going to fight
anyway, he didn’t need to be under the protection of the glamour,
did he?

Chapter 20

Blake had finally fallen
asleep, and for that much Kate was grateful. She had barely been
able to stop him from hurting himself, and without Daniel’s help,
she might not have managed to coax Blake back into bed. He seemed
to respond to Daniel, for some reason Kate couldn’t quite
understand, and it was hard not to feel jealous. She could
understand Marc’s pull on Blake, but Daniel’s? The two of them
tolerated each other at best, and there was no lost love between
them.

Kate leaned against the wall
and watched Blake sleep. She felt mentally drained and only hoped
that she would be able to help. She had stayed a step back and let
Marc take care of Blake for months, trusting that Marc knew what
was best for his Childe. But Marc couldn’t help now. Worse: he had
caused this latest stumble by disappearing on them. When he
returned, Kate was going to kick his ass. She’d kiss him right
after that, but she’d kick his ass first. Couldn’t he have waited?
They had crossed such an important step together just hours
earlier; surely he could have delayed his plan until they were sure
that Blake was all right.

She bit her lip as tears
rose to her eyes. Blake was certainly
not
all right. Even
while he was sleeping, she could see his distress in his jerks and
the quiet, pained noises of his nightmares.

She wanted to scream. She
wanted to grab Blake with both hands and shake him hard: shake some
sense back into him and shake away the nightmares that trapped his
mind. She wanted to draw him into her arms and hold him, rock him,
whisper nonsense to him until he came back to her. She wanted to do
something—anything—as long as it helped him. But nothing she had
tried so far worked, and she was afraid she would only make things
worse if she tried to touch him again.

The door, propped open yet
again, creaked. Kate motioned for Daniel to wait outside. She
didn’t want to wake Blake now. After a last look at the bed, she
tiptoed out of the room and let the door close almost all the way
before she gave Daniel a questioning look.

“
What did they
say?”

Daniel passed a hand through
his hair and nodded. “They gave me the go ahead. I can take troops
to the other side. Volunteers only. They weren’t happy about it,
but they agreed that Simon is too important an asset not to go
after him.”

“
Simon,” Kate repeated
tonelessly. “What about Marc?”

Daniel’s gaze drifted to the
bedroom door. “I didn’t tell them the whole thing was his idea.
They know he’s my Sire. They’re scared of what that means where my
loyalty to the squad is concerned.”

“
So you lied to
them.”

His stare settled back on
her, and Kate shivered at the glitter of gold in his eyes. “I
didn’t lie,” he said mildly. “I told them Simon left with our
prisoner and a soldier. They didn’t ask who, and I didn’t volunteer
details. Now, I’ll be talking to the squad and the town’s soldiers
in a few minutes, and regardless of the numbers, I want to be ready
to leave in an hour. What about you? Are you coming?”

Of course
, Kate
wanted to respond, but the words caught in her throat. She wanted
to go, God only knew how much, to get Marc and Simon back, but also
because she prided herself on never having let Daniel down in all
their years of fighting. Could she go, though? Could she leave
Blake alone—abandon him like Marc had? In the state he was in,
there was no way she could take him along, but she also couldn’t
leave him behind.

“
I…I don’t know,” she
murmured. “I have to think about it.”

Daniel looked like he
understood. He set a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.
“One hour,” he said again. “And don’t worry, even if you can’t
come, we’ll get them back.”

Kate nodded, but she still
worried.

* * * *

“
There, that’s a good
boy.”

Blake remained still as the
fingers breached him, nails sharp as claws that left trails of
blood in their wake. He tried to focus on the feel of the cold
stone beneath him rather than the digits invading him in a mocking
simulacrum of preparation. Tried to listen to the harsh noise of
his breathing rather than that of the syrupy voice above
him.

He must have done something
good, if his Master was talking to him so nicely for once, and not
yelling as he so often did. Blake tried for a moment to remember
what, before deciding that maybe it was better if he didn’t know.
He had stopped refusing orders, trying to escape, mouthing off, and
fighting, plain and simple, and things were sometimes better, since
he had.

He still received beatings
for no apparent reason, but his Master would usually let him come
afterwards. He still wasn’t fed nearly enough, but at least the
blood came at regular intervals. And she…she wasn’t brought in to
be tortured in front of him as often as she used to be.

“
My good boy, aren’t you,
Childe?”

He knew better than to say a
word, but he forced himself to nod, keeping his eyes shut as he
did.

“
Liar.”

From syrupy, the voice had
turned acidic, and Blake knew he had made a mistake. Didn’t he
always?

“
Good boys look at their
Master. They don’t try to hide behind closed eyelids. You’re a
fucking liar, Blake. And liars get punished.”

The fingers retreated
abruptly and were immediately and brutally replaced by the full
length of his Master rock-hard cock. Whatever blood was already
there was far from enough, and Blake bit down on the inside of his
cheek at the familiar pain of his body being ripped from the inside
out.

A fist curled around the
base of Blake’s cock, too tight, too still.

“
You’re not coming today,
boy,” a grunting voice announced. “You’re not coming for a long
time unless you earn it. How are you going to earn it?”

His Master’s thrusting
stopped as abruptly as it had started, and Blake tried not to
whimper at what was to come. Whatever it was, he had endured worse.
He would endure this, too. One day, this punishment would end, and
Blake’s Master would be his Sire again, severe but fair.

One day.

Blake was sure of it. He
needed to be sure of it.

If that one day never came,
what was the point of living?

* * * *

Quiet words drifted through
Blake’s mind, as gentle and soothing as the fingers carding through
his hair.

“
It’s just a bad dream. It
can’t hurt you anymore. It’s not real, Blake. You’re here and
you’re safe.”

His first instinct was to
flinch away from that warm hand. This wasn’t allowed. He couldn’t
let Kate touch him for the same reason he couldn’t touch her. He
stilled halfway through the motion of rolling away from her,
though, and breathed in deep through his nose. Scents jumped at
him, filling his mind with warmth and memories.

Kate and him.

Marc and him.

All three of them
together.

The sweet scent of Kate’s
arousal and pleasure, and Marc’s deeper musk, combined with Blake’s
come. All of it, right there on these sheets.
That
was real.
And the rest…

Turning his head toward
Kate, he opened his eyes to look at her. She was sitting with her
back to the headboard, her legs curled beneath her. Dark circles
dulled her eyes. He had rarely seen her look so sad.

“
Not dreams,” he said,
pushing the words out despite the lingering fear, at the back of
his mind, that speaking only led to more punishment.

She blinked, and her lips
just missed curling up into a smile. “Nightmares?” she
murmured.

Blake wished it had been
that simple. Nightmares, he could dismiss as figments of his
imagination. He had not imagined this. He had lived it.

He had
survived
it,
he reminded himself, clinging to that small victory.

“
Not nightmares either,” he
said, his voice rasping like he had shouted too loudly and for too
long. “Memories. Bad ones.”

Kate slid down the bed until
she was lying on her side next to him, her eyes level with his,
only inches separating their faces on the pillow.

“
Do you…do you want to talk
about it?” she asked, but from her tone she already knew Blake’s
answer.

He shook his head. Whether
he wanted to talk about it or not wasn’t the issue. Kate didn’t
need those images in her head. It was bad enough that they were in
his.

“
Are you feeling better?”
she asked next, her voice still quiet as if he were
convalescent.

“
I’m not banging my head
against the wall, so I must be.”

His attempt at humor was met
with a stare, and he wiped away that smile that had been so
difficult to summon.

“
Better,” he repeated,
because that was what she wanted to hear. She didn’t need to know
that he was clinging to his calm and sanity with every last bit of
strength he possessed. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

“
You don’t have to
apologize.” Gone were her careful tone and gentle whispers,
replaced by that fierceness he had always loved. “You don’t have
anything to be sorry about.”

Blake didn’t reply. No
answer he could give would be acceptable in her eyes, and he didn’t
want to lie.

“
How long did I sleep?” he
asked instead, but the real question was,
how long has Marc been
gone already?
Time passed faster in the demon dimension.
Minutes here were hours, or even days, there.

“
You only slept for half an
hour,” Kate said, the words slow as she scrutinized his
face.

He wondered what she found.
He couldn’t feel anything other than the void in his chest, where
Marc’s presence should have been.

“
Daniel is putting together
a strike team,” she said, more slowly still. “They’re about to
leave for the breach to get…to get them back.”

He waited for her to finish,
but she didn’t add anything, merely observed him. It was a struggle
not to let his fear shine through.

“
Are you going?” he barely
managed to keep the nausea out of his voice at the idea of Kate in
the demon dimension.

“
That depends,” she said
after a beat. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

Relief flooded Blake. He
brought his hand up and slowly, gently, covered hers with it. She
entwined their fingers together and squeezed gently.

“
Do you feel good enough to
go?”

The question took Blake by
surprise. Good enough to go? Couldn’t she see he was only hanging
on to the cliff by his fingernails?

The next second he realized
that, of course, she didn’t know. Of course she couldn’t see it. He
had become very good at hiding his true feelings. This, he had to
share, though. He had to tell her that, no, he didn’t want to set
foot in the demon dimension, not ever again. Marc would come back
to them, he had promised he would, and in the meantime Blake wasn’t
going anywhere.

Before he could say
anything, though, the phone rang. Kate glared at it but then looked
at Blake again with something that resembled hope.

“
It has to be Daniel,” she
said as she slid out of bed. “Maybe…”

She didn’t finish the
thought. She didn’t need to. It was all too clear what she hoped.
She picked up the phone and listened for only a few seconds before
hanging up again. When she turned back to Blake, she was all but
beaming.

“
It was him. They heard
from the outpost by the breach. Some people jumped back through. It
took them a while to report because they had to battle the demons
that followed, but…” She came closer and sat on the edge of the
bed, taking Blake’s hand in hers again. “They’re back,” she
whispered. “Marc is back.”

Even though he knew it
wasn’t there, Blake took the time to search inside him for that
link that ran to his Sire, the bloodline he could clutch to let
Marc know he needed him. As before, he found nothing.