Blood-Bonded by Force (32 page)

“You
made
this?” Nỵko accepted the map, stunned.

“Yeah. I etched it into metal so it wouldn’t melt in the heat, then edged the sides in high-grade rubber so you could hold onto it without burning your hands.”

Nỵko studied the map. Holy smokes, this was exactly what he needed. “This is fantastic.” He gave Thomal another astounded look. “I can’t believe you etched it.”

Color rose in Thomal’s cheeks. He shrugged. “I used to mess around with carving a while back. Anyway…” He pointed to the map. “See this fork here? Ãlex says that once you reach this point, you should be able to take either the left or right route and get into Oţărât.”

“Okay.” Nỵko took a breath and said, “Thank you.” Thomal might’ve just saved his life.

Thomal nodded shortly. “I’d go with you, if I could.”

But without any Rău in him, he wouldn’t last more than a minute in the extreme heat.

Thomal’s jaw hardened. “Just get in there and get back, Nỵko, all right? That’s my woman in there, too.”

Really
?
Since when
? Nỵko grimaced inwardly. Kind of an ungracious thought to have, considering Thomal’s major contribution to the rescue operation, but…true nonetheless.

“I’m going with you,” Jaċken repeated, then gestured at the map. “There’s a good chance we’ll make it now.”

“Good? I’d say
fair
, at best.” Nỵko tucked the map under his arm. “Even though I may have a possible way into Oţărât now, my ability to grab the women then get back out, with an entire town of Om Rău to face down, is still a huge IF.”

“All the more reason for me to come along and help fight.”

“No.” Nỵko remained adamant. The mission was still too suicidal for him to bring along his brother. Not with Jaċken becoming a father any day now. Nỵko laid a hand on Jaċken’s shoulder and lowered his voice. “You have a wife and a soon-to-be-born kid who need you a lot more than I do for this mission. You can’t go with me.”

Jaċken’s lips compressed into a thin line. He stepped back, his hands on his hips.

“I
know
you know that,” Nỵko said.

Turning aside, Jaċken stared off into Stânga Town.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t allow it,” Nỵko maintained. “I’ll knock you out if I have to.”

Jaċken scowled, then cursed. “At least feed before you go.” He gestured at Nỵko’s knife wound. “You’ve lost a decent amount of blood.”

“I don’t have time. Every second that passes puts Faith and Pändra in more danger. Jøsnic and Lørke could be doling the women out to their men right now.” Nỵko aimed his steps toward the Hell Tunnels, but then paused. His chest jerked once. He turned back around, keeping his voice soft enough for Jaċken’s ears only. “You won’t admit it, but you’re worried about what kind of father you’re going to make. We were raised by a complete ass, so we don’t have the best model for that sort of thing. But…you’re going to be a great dad.” Nỵko’s heart folded inward. Dang, he’d really wanted to meet his niece or nephew. “I need for you to know that.”

Jaċken’s nostrils flared and quivered almost imperceptibly. He recognized a final goodbye when he heard it.

Nỵko grabbed Jaċken by the back of the neck and squeezed hard, giving him a firm shake. A big brother silent message for
don’t mess up your life when I’m not around to kick your butt
.

Nỵko turned around for the last time and took off into the Hell Tunnels.

Chapter Thirty-five

Oţărât

There was a horde of them.

Faith was awakened by their loud male voices, arguing, chortling, grunting, growling—they sounded like animals frenzied by the hunt, ready to move in for the feast.

And Faith was their kill.

Pain in her shoulder sockets told her she was hanging by her arms from bound wrists, her feet dangling God knew how many feet off the ground. And the worst: she was naked.

She flinched with the need to tuck her legs into her chest, every feminine instinct urging her to curl into a fetal position right there in midair, to cover and protect herself. She wasn’t a prude or anything, certainly not. A woman couldn’t be a dancer and be shy. How many times had she had to do a quick change backstage in front of men and women alike? Early in her career she’d even danced an avant-garde piece topless. But this was different. Without even looking, she knew she was vulnerable and helpless in the most absolute way imaginable.

She squeezed her eyelids tighter. Sensations beyond sight were making it painfully clear that she really,
really
didn’t want to see whatever was out there: the stench of old sweat, human waste, rotting garbage, decay, and sour blood. A rush of bile plugged up her throat. More sweat slid over flesh that still felt sensitive and sunburned from her trip to get here through literal Hell.

God, that heat
…

Two seconds into her journey through the Hell Tunnels atop her captor’s shoulder and she’d started screaming. Five seconds, and not enough moisture had remained in her mouth to scream. By eleven seconds, the agony had driven her into unconsciousness. And such a horrendous journey could only have landed her someplace equally horrendous. Her chin quavered with the threat of tears, although her dehydrated body probably wouldn’t be able to produce any.
Faith, come on. See how bad this actually is
.

She pried open her eyelids.
Catastrophic
.

A small squeak of fright slipped passed her cracked lips before she could stop it. She was strung up next to Pändra—still unconscious, but fully clothed—at the far end of an arena of sorts: an area naturally created by a huge curvature in the cave wall. A violent-looking assortment of men, a couple hundred of them, were gathered in a seething mass fifty feet in front of them. Hair color was either black or red with no shade in between. Most of them were tall and muscular, all of them shabby, and every single man clearly needed to cut down on the caffeine. Or the testosterone. They were shoving at each other and snarling, already ripping clothes. Some were bleeding.

She saw Jøsnic among them. He was easy to spot standing head and shoulders above the rest and with that luscious red mane of his. Only one other man could match his towering height, and he was…was…

The personification of evil.

This man didn’t have a single quality to soften his menace, like Jøsnic with his beautiful hair and teeth. Black-haired, this man’s face was viciously constructed out of large, indestructible bones, his right temple marked with a tattoo of black teeth that sliced into the corner of his eye. His body—probably no more ruthlessly muscled than Jøsnic’s—somehow gave the impression of being equipped exclusively to cause pain. He was shirtless, although his forearms were covered with strange spiked leather coverings. He wore black leather pants and combat boots with a ring of knives circling each of his calves.

A scream rang out behind her.

Faith whipped her head around to look over her right shoulder. She stiffened on her chain as dread dumped another load of adrenaline into her veins in a sickening flood. A man was dragging off a kicking and screaming woman by her hair…strange-colored hair, dark blonde several inches from her scalp, then brassy blonde for the rest of it. Like a bad dye job that had grown out partially, but not completely. The two disappeared behind an open-fronted building—just a roof and three walls—of what appeared to be a recreation area.

Inside, there were half a dozen television sets arrayed in front of three tattered couches, a couple of desks loaded down with computers, a beat-up pool table with the green felt worn in places.

Someone was moaning from the rickety building next door. This one had a medical red cross painted above the door and a steady billow of steam rising from a tin chimney.

She craned her head around to check out the left, finding the beginnings of a neighborhood…or an attempt at one. Ramshackle houses trailed far back into the cave, too far back for Faith to see them all, but the visible ones looked like they’d been put together on a song and a prayer. The wooden walls were warped and gaping, the ceilings lopsided or unfinished, the doors pitted and split. No quaint drapes, fake plants, or decorations like there were in Ţărână’s family neighborhood.

In the middle of a cluster of these “homes,” there was a squared-off space—what appeared to be a communal area—containing a couple of wooden picnic tables with benches, a large aluminum tub, a rusty stove, a refrigerator hiccupping along like it was on its last legs, a lineup of Sparkletts water containers, and half a dozen stacked barrels, some marked “supplies,” others “sewage.” Up near the ceiling, exposed electrical wires ran the length and breadth of the cave, snaking down in tangled vines to the houses and appliances. Naked light bulbs sagged from the uppermost wires at regular intervals. Again, crude and careless rather than quaint and homey.

The saying,
You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,
never fit more appropriately than now. Ţărână suddenly wasn’t so “hick” and “backward” anymore, was it?

“Have you ever been raped?”

Faith startled, rattling her chain, and dropped her chin to look down.

A woman was standing on her left side, her neck angled up to meet Faith’s eyes. She had dark blonde hair cut very short, nearly buzzed off, and was dressed for practicality in olive-colored cargo pants, a stained beige T-shirt, and dirty white tennis shoes. She had a clipboard tucked in the crook of her arm. Someone in charge?
Please, say yes
. This woman looked normal.

“No,” Faith answered the question, her voice a mere croak. “I’ve never been raped.”

“Good.” The woman nodded firmly. “Because you’ll get raped here, and the women who’ve been raped before handle it less well.” She aimed her chin at where the shrieking woman had been. “As you saw with Kendra.”

Faith repeated the name to herself.
Kendra
…She drew a quick breath. That poor woman who’d been dragged off was Kendra Mawbry, the Dragon woman the Vârcolac had saved, but then re-lost one night to the cruel Topside Om Rău Videön.

The clipboard woman exhaled roughly. “Unfortunately, Kendra doesn’t listen to anything I say and gets herself into trouble all the time. Before her, came Ashling, a spoiled little rich girl who spends her time weeping about wanting to go home.” She gave Faith a quick, clinical once-over. “I hope that’s not you.”

“I…I…don’t…” Her words were hitching up inside her head. She’d made the biggest, dumbest mistake of her life agreeing to come to Oţărât. She’d way—way,
way
—overestimated how brave and practical she could be about this.

“I’m Gwyn Billaud, by the way.”

She had to swallow twice. “Faith Teague,” she managed to introduce herself.
Sorry I can’t shake your hand, but I’m hanging from the ceiling naked
. Her lips quavered.

“Some pretty bad stuff is going to happen to you,” Gwyn continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “I know what you’re going through right now is
immense
. So it probably seems callous of me to stand here and talk to you about it while you’re in your current position. But if I can prepare you as much as possible beforehand, it’ll help you deal and settle in more quickly.”

Faith glanced again briefly at the ramshackle neighborhood and nausea burned her nose. “Settle in?” she gasped out.

Gwyn made a sound that sounded almost like a laugh. “Oh, Oţărât looks bad now, but trust me, it used to be way worse. I’ve organized the place, and now we’re cleaner, we have scavengers traveling topside regularly for supplies and water, we’ve formed groups for enjoyment—for playing cards and games and sewing and whatnot—and we have systems for safety, Faith. Important systems you need to follow in order to limit the abuse you suffer. You won’t escape it entirely, but if you’re smart, you can keep it to a minimum. Okay?”

Faith couldn’t locate her voice to offer an answer. Not including the constant berating dancers typically tolerated from their choreographers, she’d hardly ever endured a harsh word: never from Idyll, rarely from Kacie. She’d certainly never had to put up with abuse of the magnitude this Gwyn was hinting at. Her dry tongue spasmed in her mouth against the urge to shout.
Why, why,
why
had she run away
?!

“In a few minutes there’s going to be a fight for you and”—Gwyn gestured at Pändra—“this woman. Whoever wins you will become your mate. He’ll be the first to have sex with you, marking you so you can have only his children.”

Faith dropped down her eyelids in an extra-long blink. Children. By one of
them
. She couldn’t think about that.

“None of the other Om Rău will mess with you during that marking period, but afterward, it’s open season. If you happen to be wandering by another man when the mood strikes him, he’ll jump you. The only one who’ll protect you in this instance is your mate. Partly out of a pride thing, but mostly because he’s been properly motivated to do so. By you. Get on your mate’s good side immediately, Faith, I mean it. I don’t care if you abhor him. You need to please him. Find out what he likes and give it to him. And
never
refuse him sex. No matter what,
don’t
. One time I had a raging urinary tract infection. That night my mate came to my bed. Do you think I wanted to have sex with him? No. What did I do? I shut my mouth and spread my legs.”

Faith stared down on Gwyn, appalled.