Dark Redemption (13 page)

Chapter
12

         
Dominic tossed and turned in a sea of pain. Hot pokers seared his chest in a
half dozen places. A jackhammer slammed against his forehead again and again.
Boom,
boom, boom!

He couldn’t be dead. Death wouldn’t
possibly hurt this much. He’d born his share of pain in the centuries past, but
this was different. He’d been weakened by the silver in his chest cavity, while
his body struggled to heal itself against devastating wounds.

         
Dominic strained against the heavy shackles pinning his arms behind his back.
No luck. The failed attempt confirmed his suspicion. The bindings cut into his
immortal flesh as only pure silver could. He was going nowhere fast.

         
He groaned and tried to open his eyes. His throat was so
dry,
the sound came out in more of a muffled grunt. Old blood crusted his eyes, but
he managed to force them open.

         
The room was dark, only fractionally brighter than the backs of his eyelids.
His wolf senses kicked in as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Bare stone
walls surrounded him on all sides, matching the cold stone beneath him.
A prison cell, Spartan and medieval.

         
The damp, stagnant air, mixed with the faint odor of sewage, indicated he
rested in a subterranean chamber. What was he doing here? Where was Kate? Was
she okay?

         
Dominic licked at his dry lips and tried to make his mouth form words, his
parched throat make audible sounds.

         
“Hello,” he croaked.

         
“Hello, Dominic.”

         
He was wrong. He’d died and gone to Hell. The devil himself was there to
torment him. Alexander Ambrogio hovered over him, his white grin gleaming in
the darkness. Dominic squinted at the vampire in confusion. What the hell?

         
“Am I dead?”

         
The golden vampire smirked. “No. But you’ll wish you were.”

         
“How?”
Dominic still couldn’t wrap his mind around the
sequence of events that landed him there in a dungeon with Ambrogio.

         
“Oh, you made it all too easy,” Ambrogio gloated, his voice filled with glee.
“I knew Katerina needed blood. I knew she wouldn’t hunt, so I planted spies in
every blood bank and hospital in Europe.

         
“You thought you were so clever, scoping out the site before you robbed it. It
was just the warning I needed to set my own plan into place. We waited for you
on the third floor of the blood bank, ready to take you out and rescue
Katerina.”

         
The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. “Bastard,” Dominic muttered. “You
couldn’t get a clean shot at me, so you shot Kate.”

         
Ambrogio’s
shit-eating grin spread wider. “Guilty.”
He shrugged. “I knew it would draw you out.”

         
“But you shot me with silver---“

         
“Only in the chest.
We dug those out as soon as
Katerina was unconscious.” He seemed to answer the unspoken question on
Dominic’s mind. “The head wound was a regular bullet, just to make a point.”

         
Dominic swallowed at the lump in his throat. “And what point was that?”

         
“You’re dead. As far as Katerina is concerned, you’re a ghost.”

         
Dominic gaped at the jubilant vampire in a mix of confusion and horror. The
bloodsucker had staged his death. “Why not just kill me for real?”

         
“Are you kidding me?” Ambrogio cackled. “Now I have an eternity to make you pay
for ever looking at her, for every single time you touched her. I promised you
once that I’d make you wish you were dead. I am a man of my word and I always
make good on my promises.”

         
“Bring it on, blood sucker,” Dominic snarled at the leech.

         
Ambrogio answered with a kick to Dominic’s stomach, forcing his breath out in a
sharp gust. Dominic coughed and gasped for air. Stooping behind him, Ambrogio
fumbled with the shackles at Dominic’s back.

         
Though his body was still weak from the combination of healing and the remnants
of silver poisoning, Dominic struggled against the vampire as he secured one
wrist, then the other to metal loops in the ground behind his head. Dominic
kicked at the depraved bastard as the vampire moved on to the restraints at his
ankles.

         
Pinned to the ground like an insect in a display case, Dominic felt exposed and
vulnerable for one of the first times in his life. He clenched his jaw and
waited for the golden vampire to do his worst. He tipped his head back and
tried to follow
Ambrogio’s
movement, but the parasite
moved out of view. When he returned to Dominic’s line of sight, he bore a smug
grin.

         
“I think that smart ass tongue of yours should be the first to go.”

         
The vampire held a ten-inch hunting knife in Dominic’s line of sight. Dominic
clamped his mouth shut as the knife closed in on his face. Squeezing his
cheeks, Ambrogio tried to force Dominic’s mouth open. Dominic resisted with all
his strength, clenching his jaw and denying the vampire access to his mouth.

         
“You always have to do things the hard way,” Ambrogio sighed. “Don’t you,
Ridolfi?”

         
Dominic grinned at him, in spite of his position. If he was going down, he was
keeping his pride. “Damn right. You’re dreaming if you think I’ll make anything
easy for you, Ambrogio.”

         
“We’ll see,” Ambrogio said, trading his knife for a weighted hammer.

         
Ambrogio held the mallet aloft in the air and Dominic closed his eyes. His jaw
exploded with pain as Ambrogio swung the full weight of the hammer down onto
the lower half of his face, crunching teeth and bone in the process.

A fuzzy black vignette framed
his world as Dominic tried to breathe through the agony. His mouth filled with
blood and broken teeth. He tried, unsuccessfully, to purse his lips to spit the
suffocating matter out, but instead gurgled on the chunky mess as his mouth
began to mend itself back together again.

         
Ambrogio grasped his shattered face again, squeezing the tender, broken flesh
and forcing his tongue out of his mouth. Dominic held his breath and waited.

         
Razor sharp pain, lightning fast and shockingly intense, flashed across his
tongue as the knife sliced it from his mouth. Dominic choked on the rush of
blood in his pouring down his throat, dousing the vampire with the red spray.

         
Ambrogio swiped at his face and tossed the severed tongue onto Dominic’s chest.
It landed with a sickening, wet
thump
.
“The tongue
that kissed and made love to the lovely Katerina.”

         
He fingered the blade of the knife as he studied Dominic, malice gleaming in
his golden, cat-like eyes. “Tell me, did you taste the sweet dampness between
her thighs? Did she taste as decadent to you below as she did above? Like
strawberries and summertime? Like sweet cream and sunshine?”

         
Though his mouth was afire, the stump of his tongue angry and burning as it
worked to rebuild the damaged tissue, the pain in Dominic’s heart was a
thousand times worse. The vampire had kissed Kate, had put that vile,
bloodsucking mouth on his wife.

         
“Go to Hell,” Dominic tried to growl, though the words came out more of a muted
grunt amid gurgled breaths.

         
The bloodsucker ignored him, moving toward one of Dominic’s hands, secured to
the floor above his head. “What about these fingers? Did you touch her with
this one?”

A flick of the knife and
Dominic’s pointer finger was gone. His hand screamed in protest, throbbing with
the sharp sting of loss and severed nerves.

“Or this
one?”
Another finger gone, chopped like a carrot on a cutting board. A warm puddle of
blood spread across the cold stone floor beneath Dominic’s back.

         
Ambrogio continued the process with Dominic’s remaining fingers, asking if he’d
touched Kate with each one before removing it from his hand. Dominic resisted
the urge to taunt the leech with the fact that he missed the appendage with
which Dominic touched Kate the most intimately. He might be crazy, but he
wasn’t stupid. He was in no rush to lose that particular piece of anatomy,
though surely, it was only a matter of time before the butchering bastard
chopped it off as well.

         
His toes followed, removed one by one with inhuman efficiency. Dominic closed
his eyes and his mind to the pain. Oh, he still felt every cut of the knife,
every spray of fresh blood, every dull throb as his immortal tissues struggled
to keep up with the carnage. But he focused on Kate instead.

         
What would she do without him? Oh, he wasn’t conceited enough to believe she
couldn’t survive without him. But what would become of her? Would she remember
him after centuries had passed? Would she still love and mourn him? Would she
fulfill the prophecy? Would she join up with the vampires and destroy the
wolves? Would she become as bitter and jaded as the rest of the immortals?
Would she marry Ambrogio? Have his vampire children?

         
That thought hurt more than the knife Ambrogio used to eviscerate his belly.
One sharp swipe sent Dominic’s guts spilling out of his abdominal cavity, but
Dominic endured it with a sense of dull detachment. He turned his thoughts
instead to the memories he and Kate had made together, ignoring the intense
agony of physical and psychological torture.

         
The night they’d met, watching her stand brave and tall before her attackers.
Her watching him in alarm, confusion, and even lust as he drove her home that
same morning. Cradling her, battered and broken in his arms, and realizing he
would protect her at all costs.

         
Wooing her, kissing her, teasing her.
Her cheeks, flushed and rosy with pleasure, with self-conscious
discomfiture.
Holding her in his arms beneath a starry sky, praying she
would let him make love to her.
Her whispered plea, begging
him to do just that.

         
The taste of her and the silkiness of her ivory skin.
The satin feel of her as he moved within her.
Love and
adoration glowing in her emerald eyes.
The exuberant joy he felt when
she agreed to be his wife.

         
Her
return
to him, the fiery passion and heated
kisses. The jubilation when she promised to stay.
Kate, all
in white, beaming at him as though he was the only man in the world for her as
she walked down the aisle toward him.
Vowing to love
him forever.
Promising to always be his.
The
pleasure of stripping her out of that white dress and making her his wife in
every way on a bed of rose petals.

 Laughing and playing in
Paris.
Her smile.
Her laughter.
Her eyes.
That beautiful soul.

         
So lost in his memories, Dominic hardly felt the explosion of pain as his
kneecaps shattered beneath the blows of
Ambrogio’s
hammer. He had more than enough happy memories of Kate to last him an eternity.
He could withstand any torture, any pain, so long as he could hold onto her
memory.

“I’m going to neuter you like
the dog you are,” Ambrogio snarled, aggravated by Dominic’s lack of response to
his vicious efforts.

Dominic tried to keep the
vampire and the pain he induced blocked out, to focus on thoughts of Kate, but
when sharpness pierced his groin, the blinding pain rocked his body. The
intense, white-hot agony of castration and emasculation was at last enough to
send him careening into the blackness of oblivion. But Dominic knew he would be
alright. Kate was there too. 

Chapter
13

“Katerina,
please,” Alexander’s voice begged through the door. “Just talk to me.”

         
Kate glared daggers at the chunk of wood that protected her ex-best friend and
equally ex-fiancé from her wrath. There was no forgiveness for what Alex had
done. She’d sooner gut the bastard than talk to him. Even if she wasn’t bitchy
from blood deprivation, she’d still want his head on a platter.

         
She’d open the door and kill him in a heartbeat, if only she didn’t feel so
weak.

         
How long had it been?
Hours?
Days?
Weeks?
Her mind was too fuzzy to recall. It didn’t
matter how hostile and murderous she felt. She was far too weak to do anything
about it. Starvation had its pitfalls. Unfortunately, the only revenge she was
capable of was depriving Alex of his vampire princess-pawn. Not her most well
thought out plan. Should’ve tanked up, killed the bastard, and then starved to
death. Oh well, hindsight was twenty-twenty.

         
Kate heaved a disgusted sigh and stomped off in the direction of her bedroom,
pausing halfway across her sitting room when he spoke again.

         
“So help me, Katerina, if you don’t open the damn door, I’ll break it down,”
Alex ground out. Kate could hear his clenched teeth grinding from where she
stood. Good. She hoped he broke his jaw.

         
“Go ahead and try,” Kate called back.  “I’d gladly use the broken wood as
a stake to drive through your non-existent heart.”

         
Alexander’s dark chuckle chuffed behind the door. “You know that’s not how it
works. But hey, at least you’re talking to me now. Death threats are better
than nothing.”

         
Kate rolled her eyes at the door.
Asshole.

         
“What happened to my gentle vegetarian vampire who wouldn’t hurt a fly?” His tone
was teasing, reminiscent of the Alex who’d wheedled his way into her heart.
Kate hated him even more for it.

         
Kate bit her lip and warred with herself.
Acerbic comeback or
obstinate silence?
Either way, she took the bait.   “That was Kate
2.0. You killed her when you shot Dominic between the eyes. Kate 3.0 can’t wait
to skin you like the snake you are.”

         
“Ah, keep talking dirty to me, baby. I like it.”

         
Kate snarled in response and flopped onto the couch. Her body trembled with
impotent rage and raw grief.

         
Empty silence hung in the air between them, heavier than the door that barred
Alex’s path. Kate thought perhaps the stubborn ass had finally taken the hint.
But, no, he was there. She could hear the soft, steady sound of his breathing
across the distance and through the wood. Kate clutched a throw pillow to her
aching head and prepared to wait him out.

         
Silence.

         
Kate heard Alex heave a heavy sigh. “Kate, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. It
had to be done.”

         
Now that just wasn’t fair, him playing the Kate-card. In her previous life, the
tutore’s
uncharacteristic use of her childhood
name would’ve made her melt. In this one, it just pissed her off more, if that
was even possible. How low would he stoop next?

         
“You’ve wronged me too,” Alex muttered. “I shouldn’t be groveling outside your
door right now.”

         
Shooting bolt upright, Kate lifted the pillow from her head to glare at the
door.
“Oh, yeah?
How’s that?”

         
His voice low and rough with pain, Alexander answered quietly, “Open the door
and I’ll show you.”

         
Kate scrunched her brows in frustration. Sure, open the door. Let the bastard
in. That would solve everything. “Why should I?”

         
Alexander’s low chuckle rumbled through the door. “Because, unless you’ve
developed super powers in the time you’ve been away, you can’t see what I need
to show you through the door.”

         
Kate sighed, “If I look at whatever it is, will you go away?”

         
“Yes.”

         
“Promise?”

         
“Yes.”

         
“Fine,” Kate grumbled. “But you have to keep your word and leave me alone.”

         
“Have I ever broken a promise to you?”

         
Though the question sounded innocent enough, the accusation was there. So was
the hurt. Faults aside, he’d always stayed true to his word. But she hadn’t.
Kate couldn’t bring herself to feel guilty for turning her back on him though,
not after what he’d done.

         
Instead of answering, Kate yanked open the door and glared at her
tutore
.
“What was so important, you just had to show it to me?” she snarled.

         
Alexander narrowed his golden eyes at her. “This.”

         
Turning this back on her, Alex lifted the hem of his shirt to display the skin
of his back.

         
Kate gaped at the expanse of damaged flesh in silence, her mouth slightly open
in a soundless gasp. Her hand rose to cover her mouth. Jagged stripes of
unnaturally shiny, pink flesh covered every inch of Alexander’s
back,
thick scar tissue layered atop more scar tissue and
disfigured muscle.

         
“Pretty gruesome, huh?”
Alexander asked with a dark
chuckle, dropping his shirt and turning to face her.

         
Kate tried to form a coherent question.
“What… who… how?”

         
His golden eyes burned into hers, a fire of fury raging in their depths. “That,
my spoiled
principessa
, was the cost of your freedom.”

         
Kate felt like a fish out of water, sucking air, but failing to breathe. The
night she’d been taken by the wolves, Alexander had let her stay out alone at
her request, but against his better judgment. She’d never thought about him
receiving punishment for her capture. Guilt washed over her.

         
Before he killed Dominic, Kate would never have done anything to hurt
Alexander, at least not intentionally. The guilt was gone as quickly as it
came. That was then. This was now. Now, she wanted his blood. She hoped he hurt
like hell.

         
Alexander’s keen leonine eyes watched her, studying her face as she processed
this bit of information. He must have seen the point when her guilt stepped
aside to give prevalence to her rage, for he cocked one golden brow at her.
“What? No sympathy? I lost everything I ever worked for thanks to your little
escapade.
Stripped of my titles, my power.
Publicly
humiliated, beaten, and mutilated. I took a thousand lashes with the whip of
light for you.”

         
“Why should I feel sympathy for you?” she growled. “If you recall, I was taken
prisoner by a band of werewolves who
you
were supposed to protect me
from. If you were punished for my capture, it was your own doing.”

         
“You sure looked like a prisoner, clutching
Ridolfi’s
dead body like a lost lover,” Alexander taunted.

         
“He wasn’t just my lover, you, selfish son of a bitch. He was my husband,” Kate
growled, lunging at him.

         
Alexander caught her against the hard wall of his chest, pinning both of her
arms together there. His golden eyes studied her face for a weighted pause,
then
his gaze drifted to her left hand. His face contorted
with rage.

“Like
hell he was,” Alexander hissed.

Before
Kate could blink, Alexander wrenched Dominic’s ring from her finger, snapping
the bone with a sharp
crack
in the process. Kate howled in outrage and
pain as her injured finger throbbed in agonizing protest. She clutched her
wounded hand to her chest and glared her malevolence back at the golden-eyed
bastard.

“Let
me make something perfectly clear, Katerina,” he enunciated each word as though
she was hard of hearing. “The wolf is dead.
Gone.
Worm food.
The sooner you accept that, the better. You’re
back where you belong, with me.”

“I
will never belong with you,” Kate snarled, struggling to twist away from his
hold. Her finger throbbed as though smashed by a jackhammer as the shattered
bones fused back together.

Alexander
smirked. “We shall see about that. I have petitioned the Grand Council for
reinstatement. I was promised redemption in exchange for your safe return.”

“They
wouldn’t,” Kate protested, her stomach lurching at the thought. “Not if I make
my feelings on the matter known.”

Alexander
laughed,
a throaty guffaw that made Kate’s skin crawl.
“You’re deluding yourself if you think for one minute what you want matters in
all this. The needs of the vampire race come before your petty desires,
princess.”

“You
don’t know me at all, if you think I’ll just go along with whatever you and my
grandfather have planned for me.”

Alexander
smirked at her, his gold eyes dancing with mocking laughter. “Oh, I know you,
Katerina,” he said, stroking the pulsing artery at her neck with a lover’s
touch.

Kate
flinched. Katerina stirred from her place within the shadows of her mind at the
touch, awakening at the promise of blood sharing and raw sex Alexander made
with the slightest caress. Kate closed her eyes, sinking her lengthening fangs
into her lower lip. The demon clawed at her consciousness, fighting for
prevalence.

The
taste of her own blood on her tongue drove the demon wild, increasing the
urgency with which her shadow-self struggled to surface. Kate sucked in slow
breaths and let them out even slower, ignoring the rapid drumming of her heart,
ignoring the wave of lust for blood-- and Alexander-- rising like a tidal wave
from deep within. Trembling with effort, she looked to Alexander with a mix of
hate and desire in her eyes.

“See?”
He said with a knowing smile. “I know you.”

Kate
shook her head frantically from side to side, in denial but also in an attempt
to clear her head of Katerina’s impulses.  “No.”

Alexander
stepped closer, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered. “I know you want me.
You want me to fuck you so long and hard, you forget any other man’s name but
mine.”

Katerina
purred at his words, excited by the promise of a rough sex-a-thon with the
golden vampire. Kate shivered in a mix of disgust and Katerina’s palpable
desire. Closing her eyes, Kate shut out Alexander’s inhumanly beautiful face,
and instead thought of Dominic.
Dark and handsome, Dominic,
making love to her with tender adoration.
Wild and
passionate, Dominic, branding her soul with the heat of his touch.
Dominic.

No.
Nothing and no one could make her forget his name.

 “Just
leave me alone,” she managed through labored breaths.

His
finger traced the column of her neck.
“Fine.
I’ll go,
but remember this, princess,” he growled as his fingers clamped around her
forearm, turning her to face him. He held her wedding band, her last piece of
Dominic, between his thumb and forefinger for inspection. “This means nothing.
Nothing.
No matter
who
you’ve
pledged your heart to, your body and soul are mine.”

Alexander
tossed the ring up, snatched it out of the air, and slid it into his pocket.
Kate glared at his retreating back as he strolled out of her room with his
hands tucked in his pockets. Glancing down at her healed hand, Kate massaged
her naked ring finger. Alexander could take the ring, but he couldn’t take away
its meaning. She belonged to Dominic, heart, body, and soul.

Tears
stung her eyes as she fled the sitting room and the ugly encounter. She
flopped
onto her bed, glancing aimlessly around the room
through tear-filled eyes. Her gaze settled on the picture of her parents on the
dressing table. Kate swiped at the tears and tried to blink their happy faces
into focus.

She
remembered how tragic she’d found their story the first time she’d held that
picture in her hands. Now she understood. All this world had to offer for their
kind was tragedy and pain. There was no fairytale ending for them, no happily
ever after. She could’ve made her peace with that. As she told Dominic before,
she didn’t care about a happy ending, so long as she could be with him when it
ended. Yet somehow, there she sat, waiting out the end alone. 

Kate
crossed the room and picked up the frame. Something rolled off the dressing
table and clattered to the floor with
a
plink
.
Kate crouched down, peering beneath the dresser in search of the fallen item.
The ultraviolet bullet Alexander had shown her on her first night at the castle
swirled with its ethereal purplish-blue light. Reaching into the space, Kate’s
fingers closed around the bullet. Her skin stung on contact, but she dragged
the object out into plain sight.