A Forbidden Taking (19 page)

“I don’t want it. How can I…I
wasn’t even a person when I wasn’t a monster, was I? All this time I’ve been a
freak, a chemically enhanced freak that her parents couldn’t even save.” Megan
started for the door, but she got no further than a foot before she stopped.

“You would do well to curb your
tongue, Megan Allison Reed. I’m not a vampire that will tolerate you for the
sake of humor.” Mel’s voice was low but full of strength. “Now, you will sit
and another outburst like that and I will remove that flapping piece of skin
you spout nonsense with.” Beau couldn’t rise. He tried and when Mel looked at
him he calmed. “I’ll not harm your mate as long as she listens. You’ll sit
there and be quiet or I’ll send you to a realm so far away you’ll be centuries
getting back here. Now hush.”

Beau was pissed. No one harmed his
mate, no one. But the harder he fought against the bonds, the tighter they
grew. Finally he gave up, but he wasn’t going to forget this.

“We will deal with your lack of
common sense at a later time. For now, you’ll need to know what you can do. I
can’t help you other than to show you a few things you might need. Put out your
hand, Megan Allison
Desjardin
.” Beau could
tell she was fighting Mel and was glad to know that it wasn’t just him that
Megan fought against.

“Fighting me will get you and your
mate killed. Is that what you want? If so, then I’ll just give you to Rome
myself. Don’t make your parents’ sacrifice be for naught. Let me help you with
this one thing.”

Megan put out her hand. “Good. Now
I want you to think about a weapon that you’ve seen before. You know which one
I mean. Think about it.”

“Weapon? I don’t know what you
mean. My par…the people I lived with didn’t believe in—” Megan looked at Beau.

“Yes, that’s the one. Think of it;
bring it to your mind and think of all the details that went with it. All of
them.”

At first, there was nothing. Then Beau
could feel a bit of magic, taste it as the seconds went by. Soon the room
seemed to expand with it. He watched as Megan seemed to grow, rise from the
floor, and then a bright circle went around her. Lifting her other hand Megan
turned it toward him and he felt a strong pull toward her. Suddenly the bonds
were gone and he was standing next to her, holding her hand and the magic
surrounded them.

It took only a few minutes then
the magic, the feel of it, seemed to dissipate. Soon it was nothing. When Beau
leaned his head against Megan’s she pushed him back and handed him a sword; a
long, wide blade with a handle as wide as his own hand.

“It’s mine. I found it one day
when we were having a garage sale. I don’t think I was supposed to find it, but
I did. I had it hidden…I had hidden it away in the attic of our home. I
couldn’t even lift it then, I could hardly get it to where I’d hidden it
without dragging it there. Now…” Megan swung the blade like she had been born
to do it. “I know what I have to do.”

~~~

Beau
watched her. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to him, but he wanted
something. Megan continued to practice with the sword as she thought about what
the queen had told her, told them.

Megan’s
parents had been working at something that would make it so that some diseases
could be eradicated. Cancer, for one, and a multitude of others that would make
it so that the human race, the race they had tried to save, would no longer
suffer as they did. Megan didn’t know what to think and had said nothing. Mel
had also given her a few pictures that she had of her parents.

“You
do know that you can’t do this without me, right?” Beau stood and came toward
her.

“Yes.
I know. You are the other half of me and without you…why?”

He
looked at her strangely. “Why? Why what? What do you mean?”

She
flushed. “Why do you want to help me? I understand that Michael gave you this
information to pass on to me, but why do you want to help me? You don’t really
have to.”

He
took the sword from her hand and put it in the ground next to them. She looked
up at him when he cupped her face in his hands. She swallowed hard. He looked
so big standing there.

“Why.
Well, I could say that I want to help because I want to see you kick some ass,
but as you do that often enough to mine I don’t think that’ll be enough. I
could say it’s because you are my mate, but we both know that we can’t live
without the other and that’s a poor excuse anyway. We do have this connection
that bonds us and I don’t mean the vampire one, but again that’s a poor
excuse.”

She
tried to pull away. He was making fun of her and she didn’t need it. Not now
and not later. If he didn’t want to help then he should just say so.

“No,
mon amour
. I help you because I love you. With all my heart. You are not
just my mate because the Fates have deemed it so. You are the mate of my heart.
I love your laughter, though you do not do it near often enough. I love that
you call our master Dingdong and he hates it, though I will never admit that to
him.” He kissed her mouth, a gentle brush of his lips over hers. “I love the
way you make me feel, even in anger. I love the way you stand up to me; again,
I will not admit that to anyone. You are my heart, my life, and my whole
being.”

Megan
could feel the tears burn at her eyes. No one had ever said that to her before,
not anyone. She leaned in to kiss him. A kiss as gentle as the one he’d given
her and more.

“Oh,
Beau. I love you too. I’m so glad you were a prick and made me be your mate.” His
burst of laughter made her flush. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I
only meant that you had to force my hand.”

“Yes,
you did, but I don’t care. It is just like you to be so honest that you would
tell me that you love me and call me a prick in the same sentence.”

The
snarl ripped them apart and had them back to back looking for the sound. A
shadow moved across their sight, but was gone in a flash. Megan peered deeper
in the dark woods, but couldn’t see anything. Before she could ask Beau if he
did she felt him ripped from her side.

“Creature
will kill him if you do not come with him. Creature wants to kill him, but will
not if you come.”

Mother
fuck
, Megan thought. The beast had come to play and now he had Beau.

~Chapter 22~

Megan
stood her ground. She could tell that the beast, Creature, was near, but she
couldn’t see him. Her blade was drawn, but it was doing her little good if she
couldn’t see her enemy.

“Give
me my mate and I’ll go with you. Otherwise I don’t trust that you won’t hurt
him. I’ll go, but first, he comes out unharmed.”

The
laughter from all around her ran up her spine and made the hair on the back of
her neck stand up. Eerie didn’t cover it. Terror, horror, creepy…any and all of
those including scared the shit right out of her didn’t even come close to the
feeling she got from the sound.

“Creature
cannot give you unharmed mate. Too late for him to be unharmed. Too late, too
late, too late.” His sing-song voice echoed around the trees.

Megan
felt the sweat trickle down her shoulders. “If he’s dead then all—”

“Creature
didn’t say he dead, said he was not unharmed. Creature knows you aren’t stupid.
Listen. Listen to Creature.”

“I’m
not harmed too badly. Do not give up to him.”
Megan felt Beau whisper
though her mind.
“I’ll come back and kick your bottom if you do.”

Relief
was profound, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him
know how much it had affected her.
“You try it, buck-o, and I will…I
will…you big jerk, what are you doing over there? I need you here, with me.”

“Then
perhaps you should do something about it. I am ready to come back to you, love.
We have a conversation to finish.”

She
felt his humor and his pain. She wanted him near her. More than for his support
magically, she needed him with her. Closing her eyes she could feel the beast
moving along to her right. Beau was with him.

“It
would help me if you’d get away from him first, you know. I have enough on my
mind right now with all this love crap you’re spouting.”
He laughed and she
felt better.

“Creature
is waiting. You will come to me, female, or Creature will kill the male.” His
voice was to her right, but she knew that he was more behind her. Then it
occurred to her he didn’t know her name.

“Michael?
Are you there? Come to me, Michael. I want to see you.”

The
scream was a loud and piercing sound. Megan didn’t believe it was from pain,
but from anger. He was pissed about being called Michael. Good to know, she
thought, and started to call out again.

“Creature
will kill him. Kill him dead if you say that name again. No Michael, just
Creature. Creature, Creature, Creature. I am Creature.”

Anger
makes the beast stupid
. She didn’t know where that thought came from, but
it seemed to make sense. If he was pissed, he’d be reckless. If he was reckless
then she could beat him. But first, she had to make sure that Beau was all
right.

“Beau, I need to piss that
thing off. I need to make him mad at me. Do you think I could do that?”
She
felt his humor and was warmed by it.

“I don’t believe that should be
a problem with you, love. You seem to have a knack for it. Would you mind
terribly if you brought me to you again? Just want to be near you when you kill
his fucker.”

She wanted to be offended, but
couldn’t bring herself to be. She did have a knack for pissing people off, she knew
this. Closing her eyes she thought of Beau; his hands, his face, and him being
near her, his body, his warmth touching her. When she felt his hands move along
her arm she opened her eyes again. She didn’t expect to see the beast with him.

Megan grabbed for Beau the same
second that the beast made a swipe at him with his claw. Beau dropped to the
ground and she rolled over and came up behind the beast. Her blade came around
in a full arc when he ducked and rolled forward. She had missed him. He stood
and turned toward her and she got her first look at the beast.

He was abhorrent. She stepped back
from him, not because of his size, which was enormous at over seven feet, but
because he was…well, ugly. His skin was a patchwork of colors, blended and
mashed together, browns and grays, hairy and smooth. His eyes were off center
to his face, one a good two inches lower than the other and green while the other
was a silvery pewter color. His lips were scabbed over in places and looked
bloodied and sore. And instead of a mouth as a human might have, it looked as
if he had a snout, a shorter version of a wolf or canine’s. Not all of his
teeth fit in his jaws and the ones that didn’t slanted out and some even
perpendicular to his face. They were long and short, sharp and flat, a mixture
of the two of him mashed into one being. Cheek bones that were coarse-looking
,
broken that had not healed properly, gave him
an obscene shape that made his skin stretch taut over them in places and hollowed
out in others.

His shoulders were wide and
muscled. He looked like a linebacker with pads on. His skin was scaled like
that of a fish, each scale lapping over the other, giving him what appeared to
be a protective shield. He was shirtless and Megan could see scars, deep ones
that looked like they had been painful when they had been inflicted and smaller
ones that looked fresh. His waist was small in proportion to his size, giving
him an unbalanced look that only added to his overall appearance. Along his
massive arms the hair was coarse and wiry-looking, the muscles bunched and
corded. His hands, though, his hands were terrifying.

His wrists ended at this forearms
and his hands—and she only thought of them as hands because of where they were—were
long razors in place of fingers. The blades, only three per hand, were about
six inches long. Silvery in the moonlight, more deadly looking, she was sure,
in the light of day. As he stood there he flexed them and Megan could see the
blood on them.

“Creature thinks you’re pretty,
yes, Creature does. Come to me now, female. Creature will take you to Master
and then we will play.”

Megan felt Beau’s body behind her.
She didn’t want the beast to remember him and moved to her right, away from Beau.
She could feel his pain and was worried that he would be too weak to help her.
She reached for him and was happy to find him still alive.

“You plan on taking a nap or
getting up and helping me sometime soon? I can’t keep carrying you, you know.”
She sent him warmth and love.
“If it’s not too much trouble, that is.”

“I thought that a nap might be
something perhaps we could both enjoy. You are to kill this beast, not I. I would
not mind if you dispatched him sooner rather than later,
mon amour
.”
Megan felt her world shift.
“I will be honest and tell you that I bleed
still and hurt a great deal.”
She wanted to go to him, but knew that if she
did they would both be dead.

“I’m not going anywhere with you. You’ve
been messing with the wrong girl if you think I’ll just come with you quietly.”
She moved to her right as she spoke so that now Beau was behind the beast. “I
like where I’m at just fine and dandy, thanks.”