BROKEN BLADE

BROKEN BLADE

By J.C. Daniels

Copyright © 2013 Shiloh Walker

First digital edition 2013

Cover by Angela Waters

Editing by Sara Reinke

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Please note that if you purchased this from an auction site or blog, it’s stolen property. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Your support is what makes it possible for authors to continue to provide the stories you enjoy.

Also by J.C. Daniels

Blade Song

Night Blade

Dedication

For all my readers who’ve supported me with these books…thank you.

Sarah, Tori, Nicole & Angie…you’re awesome. A huge thanks to my beta readers, Teresa, Kris, Jen & Laurie.

And my family. Always. Thank God for you. You’re my world.

Part One

Broken

Chapter One

I am
aneira
. My heart was strong. Now it’s broken.

I
am broken.

Completely broken…sitting wide awake at ten in the morning, hiding in a closet, hiding from the memories of the time when a massive werewolf by the name of Goliath carried me out of hell.

I’d spent almost two weeks as a vampire’s prisoner. He’d wanted to break me. He succeeded.

How much more broken can you get? 
Cowering
in a closet, clutching a knife, praying the monsters wouldn’t find me.

In the closet, where I could I hide.

In a closet where eyes wouldn’t roam over my naked body—it didn’t matter that I was dressed. In my dreams, yet again, I’d been helpless, naked, and trapped.

Hiding in a
closet
.

It infuriated me. But I couldn’t stop it, either.

It had been four months since my rescue and although I no longer cringed in my room every second of every day, I still felt like a shadow of myself.

I could handle the nightmares. Those are nothing new. I’ve lived with nightmares off and on most of my life. But up until Jude Whittier kidnapped me, I’d gone years without waking to the sound of my screams.

I’d spent two weeks as his prisoner and he reduced me to a…thing. To a creature who hides in the closet.

I’d been a thing before…there for the abuse and the mockery and the pain others could mete out. He’d reduced me to this again. I hated him so much. I feared him so much. I wanted him dead with every bit of strength I had in me.

But even thinking his
name
reduced me to a pitiful pile of nothing and the nightmares sent me…here. Hiding in my closet and clutching a knife. How could I find a way to kill him when I was too weak to even face my nightmares?

I shifted and the stinging pain on my arms told me I’d done it again. Cut into myself. In my dreams, I lashed out at my attacker but there was nobody to fight. So I fought myself. Bloodied myself. I could feel the blood that had dried on my arms.

This was what he’d made me into. This was what I had become.

I hate this
…

Coming off the heels of a bad nightmare was enough torture for one day, but the fun wasn’t over.

I wasn’t alone. Somebody was out there, prowling around in my room and even though my gut told me who it was, the fear inside me wouldn’t let me breathe. I eased myself upright and did a mental check of all body systems.

Nothing on me hurt, except the muscles in my back from sleeping on the floor and the sting from those minor cuts, already healing. Nothing bad. I could fight. I could flee. All things in working order.

Or close enough.

My back complained as I moved into a crouch, preparing myself to face the man who awaited me. I’d locked my doors, but if it was who I thought it was, those locks wouldn’t stop him.

He knocked.

The sound of it made me flinch and I rose to my feet, braced. Ready.

“Come on, Kit,” Justin said quietly. “You can’t keep living like this.”

Justin. A friend. Or sort of. Once he’d been a lover. Then a partner. Then...just a part of my past. Now he was trying to drag me back into life, the way he’d done years ago, and I didn’t want it. Closing my eyes, I pressed my head to door and swallowed. “Go away, Justin.”

“For the love of all things holy, Kitty-kitty, you’re sleeping in a closet.”

”Go away.”

The door opened with a suddenness that sent me sprawling forward. I caught myself before I could touch him and danced backward before
he
could touch
me
.

Dark brown dreadlocks hung down past his shoulders and his eyes, vivid, bright green stared at my face. “Hi, Kitty.”

“Go away, Justin.” I turned my back on him and now that I was out in the light, I studied my arms, my legs. The synthetic cotton yoga pants were trashed, slashes showing in the thighs, revealing my bloodied wounds. A few of them were already mostly healed so apparently I’d been tearing into myself throughout the night.

The shirt I’d worn was short-sleeved and black. It had blood on it, but since the dark color wouldn’t show the stains as well, I could salvage it.

“The nightmares aren’t getting any better,” Justin said.

I managed, barely, not to flinch at the sound of his voice. Instead, I cleaned the blade and checked the sheath. It had managed to avoid getting bloodied, which was good. The leather wasn’t cheap.

Once I’d put the knife away, I grabbed my med-kit and headed to my bathroom. It wasn’t much bigger than the closet and when Justin came to stand in the doorway, it felt like the walls closed in around me even more.

I barely managed to keep my hands from shaking as I turned on the water to scrub the blood away. “What do you want, Justin?”

“How much longer are you going to hide in a closet and tear into yourself while the dreams eat you alive?”

I clenched my jaw and focused on the rust-colored water. “If that’s all you needed to talk about, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

He swore and turned away, starting to pace. Oddly, having him a little farther away didn’t make me feel any better.

I shut the door, finished scrubbing the blood and slathered some ointment on the deep ones—the magic-infused gel started to tingle. The cuts would have started to heal by the time I left my room. Good enough.

I put the kit away and grabbed some clean clothes from the basket I’d yet to empty. Once I’d changed, I forced myself to open the door. I couldn’t hide in there forever. I knew it for a fact…I kept trying to hide and people like Justin or TJ just kept showing up to drag me out of here, kicking and screaming.

Justin was still pacing out in my room. The dim light that filtered in through the narrow slits in my curtains danced over the silver worked into the sleeves of his jacket. I never had figured out what it was for, but lately, I didn’t much care.

As I moved out of the bathroom, he paused by the foot of my bed and reached out, touching his fingers to the blade there. The sword rested against the bedframe. Just seeing her hurt. I made myself look away.

That sword…so much a part of me. Once.

Now it was just another bitter memory.

Tearing my gaze away, I looked at Justin. “I have to work in a little while. Was there something you needed?”

“Work.
Shit
.” He spat it out and made a face. “Pulling drinks and serving half the lowlifes here who look at you like they want to eat you for lunch?”

“Lowlifes?” Wolf Haven was a breeding ground for all sorts of troublemakers, lowlifes and thugs. But the bar where I worked, TJ’s, was my safe haven.

I’d run away from home when I’d been fifteen. The first two years, I’d continued to run, with nothing but the clothes on my back and that sword, so certain the monsters from my childhood would hunt me down and take me back. When I finally stopped running it had been here. TJ’s had been my first
real
home. TJ had been my first
real
friend.

I shouldered past Justin. “Try to remember one of those lowlifes was there when you saved me.”

”I haven’t forgotten.” He glared at me. “I was the one who got word to Goliath, remember? I know him, and I trust him. Him
and
TJ. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know the kind of people who come in there. And that’s
not
the damn point. This isn’t you, Kit. You’re a fighter. A fucking warrior...not a bartender.”

I shook my head. “I’m not a fighter anymore, Justin.” I shot the blade another look. She no longer answered to me. I no longer heard her music. I wasn’t a warrior. If the blade that made me strong enough to handle these people no longer answered me, what good was I? “I’m not anything.”

Jude had made sure of that. The vampire had wanted to break me, and that’s exactly what he’d done.

* * * *

Justin might not think this was my place, but I fit in here well enough.

You didn’t need to be a warrior to serve drinks in a bar. Knowing how to fight didn’t hurt. I wasn’t the warrior I’d been, but I could still handle a weapon and I had a Desert Eagle strapped to my thigh as I headed down into the bar. It was one big-ass gun, especially in my hands, and that was one of the reasons I liked it. It looked big, it looked mean and it caught a man’s attention damn quick.

Tucked inside my vest, I had several blades. Nestled just under the counter on a pair of hooks there was a silver-plated Louisville Slugger. It would knock sense into just about any shifter. And just in case, there was a solid length of sharpened wood—a little long and large to be called a stake, but it would go through a vampire’s chest just fine.

I had enough weapons to buy the time needed for Goliath to get his giant ass in there. Relying on somebody else’s strength…it churned and twisted my gut, but I couldn’t trust myself anymore. I didn’t even
know
myself anymore.

Although, in all honesty, I hadn’t needed my weapons, or Goliath, even once. I’d been here for months and not a thing had happened.

It had taken TJ nearly two weeks to coax me out of my room. The first few days, though, I’d been flat on my back, healing up from blood loss and the other various traumas. But the second week, that was just me cowering in the corner like a mouse.

Once she’d talked me into leaving the room, I’d spent the next couple of days cowering down here in the bar…like a mouse. Those first days had been the worst. Then she’d convinced me to help pull drinks one busy night. It had been hell. Every loud noise had freaked me out and I’d slept in awful stops and starts once I was done.

It was better, though. I could handle it. The job, I mean.

I still wasn’t sleeping worth anything. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep well again. Every time I closed my eyes, I fear I’ll find myself back up in that cell, held prisoner by a vampire and I half-expect to be forced in wakefulness by the brutal dousing that had come from an industrial-strength water hose.

As I pushed through the doors, I felt the crawl of energy spread across my skin. Only one thing caused that.

Shifters. The bar was lousy with them. We got more than a few in here, yeah—it wasn’t called Wolf Haven for nothing.

The place was crawling with cats, though, just like it had been for several weeks. If I could have given myself a minute to smash my head against a wall, I would have.

I didn’t want to see cats.

Cats made me think of another thing I’d lost and I wasn’t up to even crossing that line yet. I handled it the same way I handled everything else lately— shoving it down deep inside so I didn’t have to think about it. Sooner or later, I was going to run out of room and maybe I’d bust open at the seams.

As I ducked under the bar, I found TJ back there with Gio. He was a new wolf she’d taken in, so skinny, his bones pressed against his skin and his eyes never seemed to rest in one place for longer than a second. He looked like he was going to attack at any given moment, but not because he wanted to hurt.

He just didn’t trust people not to hurt him, so he’d rather take them out first. That was the impression I got from him.

I didn’t give Gio my back. I didn’t dislike the guy, but I didn’t trust him any further than I could throw him. Something about him bugged me, a lot. It wasn’t just the way he kept eying everybody like he was trying to decide if he should kill them on sight or run.