Bloodright (21 page)

“As far as I’m concerned, you can hate him for the next sixteen years for almost succeeding! When he sees us together again he is going to be more jealous of our love and power than last time.” She chuckled. “But this time I can protect myself against him. He will not hurt me again.”

Lucien groaned, suddenly feeling suffocated.

“Get me out of these shackles so we can get the hell out of here.”

She slipped another smaller key from her skirt waistband and began to unlock each of the shackles. When she came to the ones around his ankles, she touched his foot. “Lucien, I about died when they did that.”

“I’ll live.”

As she bent over him to unlock it, she said, “I know where Balor is.”

Excitement sparked him. “Where?”

“I’ll tell you when we get home.”

Shit.

“We need to hurry, the spell only works for so long.”

He grabbed her wrist as she turned to move out of the cage. “Why didn’t you come to me before now?”

“I told you, I was a sex slave.”

“But you could cast spells and sneak away.”

“I was afraid Balor would come after me! He’s more powerful than all of them combined. What if I came back to you, and you rejected me or, God forbid, had another woman? What would I have done then?”

Falon.

His heart quickened when she did not respond to his call. Was she dead? Or had she reunited with Rafael? He shook his head refusing to believe either option. She was alive and would find him.

Mara sensed his increasing distance. He could not help it. His heart belonged to another now.

Grabbing his arms, Mara pleaded with him to understand. “Lucien, I know this is crazy and impossible to understand, but
please
trust me. I am alive and well, and once I get us out of here, you can take me home with you where I belong. Not even Rafael can stand between us now.”

Lucien shook his head. “I cannot take you to Mondragon.”

She dropped to her knees and grabbed his hands. “How can you not? I’ve bided my time for sixteen years waiting for this day to be reunited with you!”

He shook his head. “I cannot.”

When she moved in to kiss him, Lucien pulled back. Despite the love he once had for her and what she sacrificed for him now, he could no more pretend to love her than he could pretend to hate Falon. Tears tracked down her creamy cheeks. “We love each other!”

She pulled off her shirt. Her full breasts glowed in the low light of the room, she grasped them offering them to him. “Don’t you remember, Lucien, how it was between us?” Her voice lowered several octaves. “How you could not keep your hands off me?”

Lucien was not a dead man. His cock stirred. She smiled seductively. “You do remember…” She purred and moved closer to him. Her hard nipples speared his chest as her hands slid down his belly to his cock. He hissed in a breath as she slowly began to manipulate him. “How your body craved mine.”

Her belladonna scent clamped around his head, his chest, his dick, immobilizing him. Lucien closed his eyes as her siren’s call beckoned him. Just like old times… he was helpless under her spell.

She is a Slayer, Lucien!
He heard his brother’s voice all those years ago.
I can smell her black magic.

“You have no scars on your chest from Rafe’s attack,” he hissed when she flicked the metal bar just under the blunt head of his cock.

“I erased them with a spell,” she breathed.

She had a pat answer for every one of his questions. None of them rang true.

Lucien dug his fingers into her thick hair and yanked her head back. Her scent snaked around his head like a deadly sleeping gas. He set his jaw, fighting her seductive pull. “I loved you a long time ago, Mara. I love another now.” Saying it made it real. It felt right. Because it was right, and the rightness of it empowered him. He had loved Falon from the moment he laid eyes on her at Vulkasin. He just didn’t know it until now.

Mara’s deep green eyes clouded. “But you were promised to me!”

He shook his head. The air cleared, dissipating whatever spell she had cast to seduce him. “We never exchanged marks. There are no bloodrights.”

Her eyes darkened. “Am I to pay because of what your brother did to me?” She moved into him. “Lucien, we loved each other!” she pleaded. “I gave you everything. Is this how you repay that love?”

“I have howled at the moon for sixteen years mourning your loss. I know how you feel. But I have marked another and she has returned the mark. It cannot be undone.”

“I can cast a spell and make her quietly disappear.”

The vision of Falon’s death played out in his brain. The pain of losing her so unimaginable his heart, body, and soul shuddered. Fury flared at Mara’s proposal. And he suddenly understood why it was so difficult to resist her body now as it had been all those years ago. She had not just learned black magic, she had perfected it long ago. He grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Go near her, and I will kill you myself.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed to slits. When she fully opened them, he saw it. Granite-hard, onyx eyes. The true mark of a Slayer.

Ten

RAFAEL HAD BEEN just when he’d tried to kill Mara. The realization made Lucien sick to his stomach. Sicker still because part of him—some small, hidden, ignored part of him—had always suspected he’d been right. Part of him had known Rafael could not have done what he had if he had not been sure…

But Lucien’s pride, resentment, and anger had pushed the truth aside.

“I loved you. I thought you loved me—” Lucien said, not understanding why she had given herself to him if she did not love him.

No longer trying to hide what she was, Mara’s eyes glittered polished onyx. Her red hair turned blond and her full, voluptuous body morphed into the svelte athletic one reminiscent of many Slayers. But what defined her for what she truly was, was the Slayer stink that permeated the air around her. His grip tightened.

“You fooled me with your black magic. You fooled everyone except Rafael,” Lucien accused. “But why?”

She shoved him onto his back and pinned him to the floor. “I am a Corbet! I watched you kill half of my family the night we met! My mother and my two sisters! I followed you into that bar and beguiled you with black magic. You were so easy. So damn arrogant. I wanted to kill you every time you touched me! I almost had you. I would have bred Slayers into your precious Vulkasin pack and destroyed you all from the inside out.”

He flung her from him. She hit the metal bars of the cage so hard, she bent them. When she screamed, he flung his hand across her mouth and grabbed the shackle chain she had just freed him from. Unable to get leverage with his feet, Lucien rose on his knees and shoved Mara harder against the cage bars, pinning her by the neck with the chain as he wound the end of it around her neck. “You nearly destroyed me and everyone I loved with your lies!” He twisted the metal around her neck. She grabbed his arms, dug her nails into his skin, and slammed her feet against his severed heels. He grunted in pain when she slammed him again. She was strong, but Lucien’s hatred fueled him to greater strength.

She opened her mouth to scream again but only a hoarse plea emerged. Lucien yanked her down to the floor, pinning her with one knee to her chest, moving all of his body weight on top of her. His hatred was so intense her features blurred. He twisted the chain so tight it dug deep into her skin. He twisted until her body went limp beneath him. Breathing heavily, Lucien kept the tension tight until he felt her life force wane. But it would take more than strangulation to kill a Slayer. Keeping one hand on the metal noose, he crawled out of the cage, dragging her behind him. He reached over to the shovel standing up against the wall by the door, grabbed it by the handle, and then straddled her. Keeping her immobile with the one hand, he grabbed the shovel handle just above the metal scoop and in a vicious blow severed her head from her body. Her black eyes flashed her hatred for the last time. And as Slayers do when they die a true death, her body smoldered to ash. Lucien flung the shovel and shackles from him and rolled over onto his back.

Breathing heavily, he clamped his hands over his eyes, hating what he had done. Not the taking of Mara’s life—he would do the same thing one hundred times over. He may have loved her once, but the fact that she was a Slayer erased every vestige of that emotion and replaced it with hatred. He hated Slayers with every fiber of his being. Nothing would change that.
Nothing.

It stung that she never loved him, that she used him, that he was so damn blind to her wiles.

Though deep regret filled him, he could not change the past. What was done, was done. It was the present and the future that mattered now and both looked dark to him. By Blood Law, he was condemned to death for lying with a Slayer. Because he had no claim to Falon now, death would be welcome.

She would return to Rafael, just as he had always feared. How could he make peace with his brother when he possessed the woman Lucien wanted above all others?

He swiped his hand across his chin. She had marked him today. In that one oh-so-meaningful gesture he never thought he would get, she freely gave herself to him. She gave him everything, including a piece of her heart. He felt it in the way she looked at him. Touched him. Made love to him. He had never been happier than he was this afternoon with Falon. He did not want to lose that. But how could he hang on to her?

He looked at the gray ashes on the dirt floor: The only evidence that Mara was a Slayer. And now, a dead Slayer. Lucien inhaled sharply. Only he knew the truth. Only he could set it free. Only he stood between the woman he loved and Rafael, the man who had always stood between Lucien and his own glory.

He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. Was he willing to forgo all honor—to lie—to keep the woman he loved?

He snarled. Lucien was many things to many people, but he was a man of his word. He had given his word he would never lie to Falon. And since Falon valued honor so highly, would she value him for swallowing his pride and telling the truth? Maybe, but it would not bind her to him. It would drive her away, straight into Rafael’s arms, making Lucien hate him even more.

Setting the truth free would also sign Lucien’s death warrant. The Blood Law was clear: no Lycan shall lie with a Slayer; the penalty, death. While the Blood Law was black and white, it had been lenient with Falon. Could it be with him? Lucien was not feeling so lucky. Mara had not been a one-night stand. He had not only lain with her repeatedly but would have marked her and bred with her had Rafe not seen through her trickery.

He was screwed.

Except for one unseen benefit: the vengeance that ruled his every action for the last sixteen years began to unravel. Rafe had been just. Rafe had not slain Mara for personal gain but to protect the pack. Rafe lived by the pack-first credo. And while Lucien did the same in his own way, he was not the honorable man his brother was. Or the honorable man Falon deserved.

He raked his fingers through his hair again and sat up. He needed to get the hell out of there before those bloodthirsty bastards came looking for him. He dragged himself to the door and cracked it open. What sounded like a Slayer kegger party echoed from a large building roughly fifty yards from where Lucien hid. The doors were closed and no guards stood sentinel. Was Mara’s spell still in effect? Or had she lied? Lucien guessed everyone was in on the joke except him. Those Slayers were deliberately looking the other way. Just like they had deliberately isolated him so that Mara could act as if she were helping him escape. And then what? They’d let him take her back to his pack to finish what she had started sixteen years ago?

He snarled and shifted. He needed to heal himself. As an alpha, he could heal others but not himself to the same degree. In wolf form, however, he could lick his wounds, healing himself enough so that he could at least walk. Once home, Talia would use her power to repair what he could not.

Once he was able to bear weight, Lucien nosed open the door, and like a shadow, he slipped up to the building housing the merrymaking Slayers. Though some were clan Corbet by their scent, there were others Lucien did not recognize. Could these be the Slayers Balor had recruited from the east? There were nearly two dozen of them. He moved around the building, absorbing his surroundings. They were close to water. The scent of motorboats and aquatic flora and fauna was strong. But the Slayer stink was stronger.

Facing north, Lucien raised his nose to the air. The breeze came in from the west, a slight salt scent carried all the way in from the bay, heading due east. By the landscape Lucien knew he was south of Mondragon. Probably somewhere due west of Sacramento close to the delta roads.

He moved in closer and, though it hurt, he rose up on his haunches and peered through the closest window to get a head count. Twenty armed Slayers. Not only did they all have snub-nosed automatic machine guns slung across their backs, no doubt with silver rounds, but a short metal scabbard hung from each one of their belts. New-world weapons to stop them, old-world weapons to kill them.

Old farming equipment was neatly pushed to the back of the building with several stacks of round shipping containers lined up on the opposite wall. His nose twitched. Gasoline.

Lucien dropped to all fours and did a slow perimeter check. Roughly four hundred feet. Two exits, double wooden doors in the front, same type in the back. From the contents, the building was some type of storage barn with high vents on either side of the pitched wood-slat roof. The building was wood. In the heat of the late summer, it was dry. Perfect kindling.

Lucien!

His heart leapt against his chest.

Falon! I have been calling for you! Where are you? Are you safe?

Lucien, we’re coming for you!

Who?

Vulkasin. We’re close, your scent is strong.

Lucien grit his jaw. He should be ecstatic she had gone to Rafe for help and not left him there to die. But he could not get past the irksome fact that his brother was coming to his rescue. Or at least was. Lucien had procured his own freedom and was free to go. But he was not running, not when he had the opportunity to take out more Slayers. Four this morning, twenty more tonight? No fucking way.