Captiva Capitulation (30 page)

“Shut up!” she screamed.

“I see that you’re in shock, can smell it, too.” He sat upon his haunches, boring eye-to-eye with her. “Introductions, then? My name… well no human or even mixed blood can pronounce our special syllables to say my true name. It’s funny, really, how you’re so limited. Anyway, I’m Poison. Why am I Poison?” He smiled, exposing a perfect set of teeth. “What? You don’t get it, do you? I’m venomous. See, to you, I’m an
alien
. You cannot find that shocking, since you mated one.”

“You’re another mad scientist,” she choked out, moving her hand slowly to her pocket.

“All Ravens are venomous
aliens,
” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “an added insurance policy that we warriors don’t need, yet I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Venom is fun to play around with from time to time.” Lifting a lock of her hair, he twirled it around his finger. “I see you’re wondering what warriors I could possibly be referring to in this day and age. Yes, well, some time ago I led the Habaline Ravens. In fact, I was the highest-ranking soldier in my realm.”

He moved closer, and she stilled her hand. “Long ago, we inhabited your feeble world. Too many years passed with us trying to assimilate, butting heads with werewolves, vampires, and various un-caged whatnot in the process. Sadly, during that time, your worthless world sickened our race in a most peculiar way. So since we found ourselves trapped here among you, maddening, we searched for another pocket to sequester ourselves in, like a realm inside yours.”

Releasing her hair, Poison scratched his jaw. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I would think it, too. However, I promise, there are dozens of these pockets your weak-minded scientists know nothing about. At any rate, we found one. Sadly, we are too potent, cannot adjust to its limitations. Therefore, we wait, plan, and execute our plan beautifully. Without question, we have the supremacy to do so. As any immortal would admit with great honesty, bowing down to the weak only makes you weak. So, yes, we bow down to no one.”

A sigh left him. “Nights like this, I have a peculiar longing for my people. Did I tell you our Habaline Prince is dead, was murdered by his ungrateful brother? Sixten! Sixten! Sixten! The king’s bastard struck him down!” He laughed until tears streamed his perfect face. “As you can imagine, by killing his brother, Sixten put a major kink in our plans. Even so, we would never give up.
Not like you
.”

She whimpered when he touched her stomach longingly, and he shushed her. “Don’t you find life boring when you sit around and give up? All the while, you’re thinking about possibilities without ever reaching any outcome. Precisely, I see that you agree with me.” He trailed a fingertip down the slope of her hip. “Even considering Sixten’s interference, for the most part, plans are coming along nicely.”

He cocked his head, watching her as she stilled her hand again. Blythe could feel the hilt of the small dagger, could almost curl her fingers around the very tip. She panted, realizing she was holding her breath. “I can see you’re gulping in air, trying to feed your brain some oxygen, slow down the heart rate a bit. Don’t bother breathing,” Poison said with a dismissive snort. “Bother with
thinking
.” He tapped her temple with the barest of touches, before bringing his lips against the shell of her ear. “Survival one-o-one says a captor who allows you to see his face and listen in as he explains some of his instrumental vision means that you will never again be a part of your world, only
his
if he permits you to live.” Lips brushing her skin, he added, “I presumed Sixten’s mate would be smart enough to figure that out by now. Certainly, I’m disappointed.”

When the flashing behind her eye subsided, she caught his eyes roaming all over her body. “You are beautiful,” he breathed, “a treasure I will find between your open thighs. Normally, your kind does nothing for me. However, I’m shockingly aroused.”

“Listen to you,” she pleaded, needing another second to grasp the blade. “Listen to your heartlessness!”

“Yes, Blythe,” he taunted. “Even I hear the heartlessness in my words; however I cannot stop it. Days of sanity are far behind me, and I haven’t the power to bring them back. Still, I’m superior to you and every other creature on this planet. In my true world,
your
kind would be scurrying roaches. In
this
world,” he explained, arms swinging outward, “I am a god among men. And now you and your precious daughter are
indispensable
.”

Then it stopped.

A tear sounded behind him, as though the air literally ripped in half. He wasted no time spinning on his heels, spotting a large portal, its border wavering like an aging mirror. Sixten edged the ripple, peering inside and expecting to find another world. Instead, he met a reflection of himself, only somewhat different. In the next instance, that mirrored imaged tilted wildly to the side, causing his stomach to lurch painfully. A strange distortion followed, twisting his mind, rendering him lightheaded. Placing his hands on bended knees, he lowered himself on his haunches. With closed eyes, he took in calming breaths through his lengthening fangs.

“I am a Vojak,” he coaxed himself. “I fight insanity. I sort confusion. I protect what is mine, and I no longer live for pain. But I sure as hell can deal with it.”

“Much pain you’ve endured, my son?”

One eye opened, Sixten taking in his mirrored image
that was still standing
. My son? Both eyes popped open in shocking realization. “So Poison didn’t lie about you after all.” Reaching for the scroll, he added, “Or about the means at which to summon you.”

“Poison?”

Sixten heard his own voice reflected in his father’s, but the intonation was all wrong. Every syllable exaggerated as though English were uncommon to him. Certainly, it was. However, those ice-green eyes were the same color, yet far more crystalline than his ever were. Deep inside, they held a vast knowledge Sixten could only dream of obtaining. Dear ‘ole Dad didn’t appear to be crazy, not at all. His father stood with clear lucidity, carrying infinite understanding for however long he had lived, without maddening in the least. By the hour, Sixten fought for his own sanity, living in a world that wasn’t made for shifters. For that reason alone, Sixten could hate his father. Whom was he kidding? He
did
hate his father, every damn day.

“Yes, Poison.” Somehow, Sixten forced his stomach to rights and stood. This man, his father, could kill him for killing Rave. And for the first time, Sixten feared dying, if only because he would never hold his daughter for the first time or his Blythe ever again. “I can’t decide if he’s a brilliant, mad scientist working for Satan, a true representative from your realm, or a simple fungus that one day jumped the confines of its petri dish.”

“Poison you call venomous?”

“Is there another earthly language you’re more familiar with other than English or even Habaline?” Sixten asked with as much respect as he could muster, which wasn’t much. He could read most of the Habaline script, could decipher when shapeshifters spoke in their mother tongue, but Sixten was slow in speaking it. He glanced at the growing sphere....
That must be the fucking wormhole.
“I’m fluent in most of them.”

His father’s mouth curved. “I did not expect anything less of you, my son. However, you do not know your homeland language
fluently
, and for that, I feel shame in myself.”

For a simple language barrier, his father felt shame. Was anything else of consequence? Easily, he pushed away the discussion of Poison. “Where is your remorse for my mother? You left her to fend with a crazy half-breed bastard. Or did you ever consider what you put my parents through?”

“Crazy?”

Latin, maybe? “Rabidus.”

“Frenzied, you say?”

“Beyond frenzied,” Sixten ventured. “I drove her bat shit.
Now
I drive myself bat shit.”

“The barrier,” he appeared to be talking more to himself then, “between our realms prevents this… rabidus. Crazy.”

“Does your barrier, this particular realm,” he said, gesturing behind the man that was his father, “not contain iron?” Over the years, Rave had deteriorated, and Sixten couldn’t understand his later behavior. Poison had surpassed Rave’s deterioration into something obscene. The instabilities the werewolves had found in many of the mixed, Habaline breeds they’d captured were staggering. Many truly needed to be put down, the head count unimaginable. Then again, Sixten didn’t need any damned statistics to convince himself his brain wasn’t wired right after years of iron exposure.

“Yes, in this adjacent realm, we find comfort and health.”

“I killed Rave.” He put it out there, couldn’t wait any longer, had to get it over with.

“I sensed his death,” his father said, nodding. “I knew you were the only one who could have killed someone with his power,
my
power. As a halfling, you are outstanding, nigh unstoppable.”

That was it? “And you feel…nothing?”

“Pride in you.” He crossed his arms, his image wavering in and out. “Yes, your strength is a testament of my superior lineage.”

But Rave had somehow disappointed their father. “You don’t feel pride in me, but in yourself,” Sixten observed, horrific understanding dawning on him. “I heard two stories about you. The original I lived with most of my life. It goes something like…you procreated all over Slovakia, spreading your seed, moving between one female’s open thighs to the next.”

“Your mother was the only female who grew heavy with child,” he said in a detached, clinical tone.

“
Father
, are you certain?”

“I can sense my power, my blood. I sent Rave to you, forced him from ruling by my side to oversee your upbringing while I led my people alone. He feared you even then, understood that your power in childhood overreached his in adulthood. In a way, he knew if he one day dropped to dust, it would be by your hand.” He nodded. “And so it was.”

“Do you want to know the alternative story that I was fed about you, the one my mother seems to believe? When she handed me this”- he wiggled the scroll in his hand - “she was convinced that you had somehow loved her, still
do
love her. That you sired me with her out of
that blinding love
because she couldn’t procreate with her Undead mate.” Sixten was another science experiment, though he wasn’t one of the many developed and raised in a cold and unfeeling lab.

“My gift to her,” he said with that same toneless lilt, “for breeding. I ordered a powerful vampire to weave a tale inside her mind as well as the Undead’s, one she could hold to her
feeling
heart for all her days.” He cocked his head, his eyes assessing. “I see that you have these feelings, too. That she raised you in her emotional Species ways.”

Emotions? Was he saying Habalines weren’t capable of love? “I hated my mother most of my life. In fact, I thought she was a whore.” Sixten needed to go on bended knee, begging her forgiveness if he lived through this night, although he didn’t deserve her understanding.

“None of that matters now, my son. This night is a celebration,” he said. “You created a daughter to gift to your people. A female of royal blood is worth a hundred thousand female peasants. Her power will be infinite. When more of our people come through” - he gestured toward the widening sphere, growing by the second - “we will have enough for an upheaval, making this world our own, eliminating anything which harms us.”

“All those lies Rave and Poison told about Habalines assimilating with humans. Coexisting." Sixten shook his head. "Tonight, you need my power. And from then on? My
daughter’s
power, you will need?” Sixten asked, sensing sweat trickling his temples. His father didn’t answer, his imaging flickered out as the sphere brightened and widened. Disappearing without another word spoken between them, he left Sixten with the knowledge that he was taking his daughter in a way of service to his race. “You fueled these labs, Father,” he said through clenched teeth. “Blood of my blood caused this destruction, the torture among females, the life given and held underground, where mixed blood creatures were treated like the lowest life forms. My daughter will never be a part of that!”

Crushing the scroll into fine powder and kicking it into the sand, Sixten misted toward the sphere faster than he’d ever flown. “I will cut your throats!” he screamed into the overwhelming light, its power burning his sensitive Species retinas. He knew how to stop it, knew that if he were to transverse the wormhole the opposite way, it would collapse, since it couldn’t sustain a bilateral highway. "Never forget that I loved you, Blythe." A sacrifice, if this was all he could do to save his child and his wife from the unspeakable, than he would do it
now.