Fortune's Favor (A Power Up! Story) (18 page)

Home. What a joke.

Malcolm turned and walked into the house, expecting Nathan to follow.

And what else could he do, since the bastard had kidnapped Avery? Nathan had spent over forty-eight hours envisioning the worst. Avery tortured, bleeding, dying. Nathan’s imaginings had been nightmares; he’d envisioned his lover in pieces, his hands reaching out for Nathan, who was too far away.

Then he thought about what Avery might think of his anxiety. Avery would call him a pussy, knock him on his ass, then berate him for not having the balls to face his fears and push past them. No doubt the arrogant jerk expected a full-out rescue.

God, he loved that man.

Nathan didn’t allow himself to flinch at his worry. Instead he called on his ability and let his fingers brush everything he passed by, hoping to get a hit on Avery while he followed Malcolm deeper into the house. The walls didn’t speak, nor did the furniture. But the blood on the door frame of the kitchen showed Malcolm dragging Avery by one arm. Bloodied and semiconscious, Avery trailed Malcolm and slurred insults, calling Malcolm every name in the book before he’d passed out. Before Malcolm dragged him to the basement door and pulled his ass downstairs.

Nathan knew he couldn’t avoid it forever. Memories rushed back, the terror of not knowing what lay in the dark no longer resonating as it once did. Maybe because he still had a psychic hand on his surroundings, or maybe because the KA-BAR he carried reminded him he’d beaten the bastard before.

He caught sight once more of the blood-covered sword in Malcolm’s hand. It pointed toward the ground, angling in the direction of the blood smear that disappeared in the doorway to the cellar.

“Downstairs, I take it?” Nathan said with a calm he’d started to feel.

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. You first.”

Nathan shrugged. He walked by Malcolm with ease, content that his father wouldn’t stab him unless he could look Nathan in the eyes as he attacked. Face-to-face, horror to horror. The way he’d attempted to kill Danielle over twenty years ago. Nathan glanced over his shoulder before he stepped into the cellar doorway.

“Like old times, eh?” Malcolm’s smile held real malice. “Hurry now, boy. Your
friend
is downstairs waiting for you.”

Nathan squared his shoulders and walked down into the gloom. The nightmare of his past came roiling back, and he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a quick swipe of his forearm and shoved the memories back where they belonged. They were dead and buried, like his youth. He didn’t fear the dark, and he wouldn’t let Malcolm terrorize him any longer.

Malcolm’s voice echoed in the darkness. “The KA-BAR was a nice touch, wasn’t it? I thought you’d like that.”

Nathan left the last step into the cellar and put his back to the wall while he waited for Malcolm to join him. A dim light was the only illumination in the large basement. The corridor into which he’d walked twisted around to an open area, lined with hardy shelving holding all manner of things. At one point Malcolm had used the basement as a work space. He apparently continued to work down here…doing God knew what.

Nathan followed his father around the corner and froze. Avery sat tied to a chair, a small pool of blood beneath him. He sat so still, his head hanging low, that for a moment Nathan feared he was dead.

Then Avery groaned.

He forced himself not to react. “Well, Malcolm? Now what?” He paused. “Or should I call you Dad?”

Malcolm turned to face him, still standing between Nathan and Avery. He raised the bloody blade in his hand. “Say what you want, but I won’t be rushed. I’m going to slice you up like a turkey, boy. The way I worked your mother. But I won’t kill you. Not until I let you watch me carve up your fuck buddy, piece by piece.”

Avery moved, distracting Nathan from the anger building. “Hey. I have to piss.”

Nathan snorted. “Hold on. I need to take care of this windbag. Then I’ll untie you.”

Malcolm didn’t like being ignored. He frowned and took a step closer to Nathan. Away from Avery.

“Don’t you want to know how it went, boy? How she begged for her life, begged me to leave you alone?”

“Not really.” Nathan did his best to sound bored. “I realize you’re older now, and you’re probably starved for attention. But I’m tired, and I have things to do. Playing with an old man isn’t one of them.”

He heard Avery suck in a breath. Okay, so that might be pushing things, but he was tired of letting Malcolm call the shots.

He wasn’t prepared for the older man’s burst of speed. The blade bit into his shoulder in a flash, the burn of psychic pain one he felt to his bones.

Chapter Twelve

“How do you like that,
son
?” Malcolm laughed and pulled the blade back. “Sangre likes you. Yeah, it can feel the soul. And yours is one sick little ball of need.”

Nathan gripped the KA-BAR tight. “You’re kidding me, right? Talk about need? You’re so pathetic you couldn’t share your wife, a woman you supposedly loved, with her own nephew. Or should I say, son? Did you ever wonder why she gave me up? Because she knew you were crazy. That you couldn’t handle being a father. Christ. Look at you.”

This time when Malcolm came at him, he dodged the blow, using Malcolm’s own energy against him. The psychic memory stored in the KA-BAR let Nathan access Malcolm’s speed and agility. Everything Malcolm had felt and been while holding it bled into Nathan…the way the users of Sangre bled into Malcolm.

Malcolm smiled. “You might be a piece of shit, but you’re going to give me a good fight, aren’t you?”

“Well, like you said, I’m a piece of shit. A chip off the old block.” Nathan nodded at him with a similar grin.

Malcolm and he fenced and fought, but unless Nathan got his hands on a weapon with a longer reach, he wouldn’t be able to outlast Malcolm. He was wearing down, no sleep and his wounds taking their own toll. And Malcolm had the added benefit of fighting with a powerful object with a mind of its own.

Nathan bled from several cuts, intended to weaken and not kill him outright.

“Use your head, you idiot,” Avery snarled in the background. “Can’t you remember anything I taught you in the gym?”

Nathan frowned. “I could use some encouragement here.” Trust Avery to be a pain in the ass even now.

“Use it all, dimples. Hands, feet, balance.”

Images of him and Avery grappling came back to him, and as he danced out of the way of Malcolm’s reach once more, he realized the only way to beat the man would be hand-to-hand. No more weapons.

The next time his father came at him, he ducked and advanced. He took a fist to the face and a slice to his arm in order to knock Malcolm to the ground. But through it all, Nathan held on to his knife. A short stab to the man’s side satisfied, but it was a means to an end. To distract Malcolm long enough to grab on to that fucking sword.

The moment Nathan’s hands wrapped around his father’s and the hilt of Espada de Sangre, he tensed. Images and feelings not his own poured into him like poison.

“Nathan, fucking fight it!” Avery sounded far in the distance.

The rush of so many kills tasted sweet, and he suddenly understood Malcolm as he never had before.

“You need this. Energy, power. It fills you up.”

Malcolm stared into his eyes, and it was like looking into a mirror. The man faltered in his answer, as if seeing Nathan for the first time. “Yes. Fills me up. The way your mother used to.”

Nathan felt Malcolm’s loneliness, his antipathy toward everything. Only murder gave him the highs away from a monotonous existence. Because his time away from his wife had been hell. The constant kills, the work with so many deadly weapons, had eroded Malcolm’s ability to feel. His returns to Danielle had made life bearable, because only with her had he felt the love that brought him back to himself. But he’d been so greedy, so damn needy, that he’d refused to allow for the possibility of sharing her attention.

Michelle hadn’t been welcome. Nor had any of Danielle’s friends. They’d lived in virtual solitude for so long, and Malcolm had hated it. Hated what he was doing to her, but he couldn’t help it. And eventually he’d stopped hating their isolation and longed for it with every breath in his body. And then Nathan had arrived. A soft-spoken, handsome young boy just as deprived as Malcolm.

He’d hated Nathan, because in Nathan he saw himself. And now Nathan knew why.

Nathan yanked the sword from his hand and stood, leaving his father to grab the KA-BAR next to him.

“You can feel me in that, can’t you?” he asked Malcolm.

Malcolm nodded, his eyes wide. “You’re just like me.”

“No, he’s not,” Avery said in a hoarse voice. “Little bastard likes to think he can do anything, but he’s not a killer like you. He’s got the power, but he’s also got heart.”

Because I had the love of a great woman
. Because I’ve got you, Nathan thought but didn’t say. It was a struggle to remain separate from the blade. The thing wanted blood. It wanted to kill. And it didn’t much care who sated that need. Overcome with exhaustion, it was all Nathan could do not to lean completely on it for strength.

Malcolm blinked rapidly. “I don’t care. You’re the reason Danielle left me. Because of you.” He stepped forward with the KA-BAR, a deadly killer with or without the cursed blade. He lunged.

Nathan managed to block his attack, but the deflection allowed Malcolm to slice into his side.

“Fuck.” Fury boiled over him, and he struck out. The blade found Malcolm’s weakness with ease, sliding between his father’s ribs and then again into his thigh through the femoral artery. It sang as it drank, letting the blood ease into the nicks and crevices of the ancient steel.

“Even the touch of it feels right,” Malcolm said with a sigh. The man didn’t act as if he felt pain. He came at Nathan again, graceful in step and form.

They fought for what felt like hours. Nathan couldn’t believe how powerful Malcolm was. Despite his age and injuries, he moved like a man possessed.

“For nearly thirty years, I’ve been dancing with death. You think you can take me, boy?” Malcolm attacked with well-oiled precision. He darted away to stand by Avery and stabbed into his bloody shoulder, no doubt hoping for a reaction.

Avery didn’t give him one, so Nathan wouldn’t either. But he needed to put himself between Malcolm and his lover. God, Avery hadn’t made a sound. Because he was disciplined or passed out? Because he was dead?

“Shit. Hurry the hell up,” he slurred, and Nathan breathed a sigh of relief.

Malcolm grinned. “In other circumstances, I might like the major. But I want my blade back before I finish our fight.”

And maybe that would be his downfall. Nathan tuned out the blade’s need for more blood and zeroed in on his father’s inability to work on his own. He needed to be filled, to work with an external device, a distraction that could cost him.

Nathan stopped and took a step back. “It wants you. It wants to be inside you. It’s promising me all sorts of things if I give it to you.” He listened and heard the whispered torment, the pledges of undying love and satisfaction if only Nathan would kill.

Malcolm tossed him the KA-BAR without missing a beat and stepped away from Avery. “I want it. See if you can beat me with that measly knife again. Once is luck, twice skill.”

“You don’t need luck, Nathan. Do it. Give him the blade.” Avery’s intensity sparked Nathan to action, and he followed his lover’s order without question.

Nathan put it on the floor and kicked it to his father, while at the same time, he dived for the KA-BAR.

Just as Malcolm picked up the blade, Nathan shoved the KA-BAR into his father’s leg. Then he pulled it out and sank it into Malcolm’s chest, where the KA-BAR whispered to strike. Since Malcolm had handled the knife, it knew his secrets. And now so did Nathan. Dextrocardia—the reversal of the heart’s position. The reason Malcolm hadn’t died all those years ago was because Nathan had stabbed him where a normal person’s heart would be. On the left side. But Malcolm’s was on the right.

Malcolm staggered but didn’t drop the blade, so Nathan dug the KA-BAR deeper and twisted. Then he pulled Malcolm’s hand holding the blade and positioned it so that the tip of it rested against Malcolm’s stomach.

“You want to be together with your precious weapon? Fine by me. Go for it.”

He didn’t expect Malcolm to actually do it, but when his father stabbed himself in the gut, he wasn’t exactly surprised. However, instead of peace, horror filled Malcolm’s eyes.

He screamed and screamed until death finally claimed him. And as Nathan watched, the blade seemed to glow, as if soaking up his father’s soul.

“Don’t touch it,” Avery rasped. “Leave it be and untie me.”

Nathan scrambled back from temptation, alarmed he’d been ready to pull the blade free and continue its work. The moment he left Malcolm and rushed to Avery, he felt woozy. Every cut and bruise throbbed, and he was more than tired. He managed to untie Avery and propped him up when his lover started to fall.

“Oh man. We have to get you to a hospital.”
And me to a bed.

“No shit.” Avery groaned and put the entirety of his weight on Nathan. A clear sign Avery was in bad shape. “You’re not alone, are you?”

“I figure the guys are right behind me. I drove like a bat outta hell to save you, princess.” Nathan tried to joke, but he started to shake, realizing all he might have lost.

Avery sighed and rested his head on Nathan’s shoulder. “You know, I want to comfort you, I really do. But I wasn’t kidding before. I gotta take a piss.”

Nathan laughed and couldn’t stop laughing. He helped Avery upstairs and to the bathroom just as four of his friends burst through the front door, weapons drawn.

When Ian saw the two of them, he shook his head. “You’re in so much trouble, Kraft.”

“Sue me.” Nathan slumped against the bathroom door Avery shut behind him and grinned. “I’ve never felt better.” Then he passed out cold.

* * * *

Avery didn’t want to spend one more day in the hospital. He’d been in Bloomville long enough. Three days being tended to by nurses while his buddies made fun of his hospital gown and the fact that a sixty-year-old man had kicked his ass were enough to have him plotting cold-blooded murder.