Scent of Salvation (Chronicles of Eorthe #1) (34 page)

The Payami hunter’s eyes flashed before he stepped into Sorin’s personal space, butting chests. The odor of his breath coated Sorin’s tongue. “Yes, you are.” Ahote punctuated each word with a thrust of his shoulders. “And I’m not your brother, dog.”

They weren’t speaking about the same female. Technically, Sorin had stolen Susan from the Payami while she wore Ahote’s mark. “If she was so important, then you shouldn’t have failed in your job to protect her. Susan gave herself freely to me.” With a move his father taught him, Sorin tossed the other hunter on the ground, his teeth around his throat the moment he landed. Sorin might not be Ahote’s alpha but he needed to understand Sorin deserved the title. The Apisi had a terrible reputation because of his father but Sorin had earned the position. He shook Ahote by the throat until he went limp in submission.

The dark shifter took a shaky breath.

Sorin dropped him onto the ground and pinned his chest with his hand. “Don’t forget this.” By the setting sun, they’d been asleep for hours. Storming the castle was suicidal. Yet what choice did he have?

The Apisi were weak, still recovering from illness. Sorin couldn’t remove the healthy hunters guarding them for his selfish desires. Also, his territory lay in the opposite direction from the castle. He didn’t have the time to return to the den and come back.

With aching lungs, he took a deep breath. Who knew what the vampire was doing to his newfound love? Glancing at Peder, he couldn’t ask such a sacrifice from the smaller omega either. “Peder, I need you to return to the den with a message.”

The young shifter changed into his feral form and approached him on his stomach. “Don’t send me away. You need help.”

Pride swelled in Sorin’s chest. He cleared his throat. His omega would risk life and limb for his happiness…

Ahote pushed Sorin off his chest. “Let him come. We don’t have time to waste.

The metal bracelet around Kele’s wrist chafed her skin. A thick chain linked it to one of the solid wooden posts of the bed. She yanked at the restraint again. It didn’t even creak. The metal was vampire-made, which meant shifter-proof, and definitely Kele-proof.

Short of breath, she paced at the limit of the chain’s length, searching for something to break the lock. She tried not to look at the other empty chains on each bedpost. No matter how much she tried to ignore them, her gaze would return.

Benic restrained people to his bed? Queasy, she pressed her hands to her stomach. Things could have been worse. She could have awoken restrained by all four limbs but Benic never struck her as the kind who would take a female against her will. Yet here she was, chained to a bed after being drugged.

Her parents lacked the resources to attack the castle. Would Benic bargain with them for her release? According to him, they wanted to mate her to some stranger and send her away.

She flopped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. No one would rescue her. She needed to make an escape plan and include Susan in it.

Resting her arms on her forehead, she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been such a fool. She’d watched Benic manipulate her parents for years. A simple statement at the right time or a minute change in expression. He used those same tricks on her so she’d allow him on her journey to the Temple.

With a small growl, she grabbed the chain and gave it a good yank again. She’d thought herself so smart.

Naïve. That’s what she was. Taking Benic into her confidence, thinking him a friend but he had played her. History should have taught her. Vampires knew how to weave themselves into a shifter’s life and tear them apart. She’d thought Benic was different. Sneaky, but not malicious.

He’d kissed her. Made her think he cared. She would have followed him home if not for Peder. The omega had opened her eyes. Showed her a shifter’s interest was what she truly wanted. She glanced at the bed. Benic would use her.

The bedroom door cracked open.

She jumped to her feet and swallowed her fear. With a snarl that would have made her mother proud, she met a stranger’s wide-eyed gaze.

He kept the door between them. “Benic must still be occupied in the laboratory.” Moving with the combined grace of a predator and a dancer, the stranger entered the room. His gazed traveled from her head to her toes. “I do love it when he brings me a present.” The stranger didn’t smell like shifter or vampire—or human. Step by slow step, he approached, remaining just out of her reach. “Aren’t you a pretty shifter? Do you bite?”

His scent drifted deeper into her muzzle. She leaned toward him. He smelled of cedar and fresh rain. She took a deeper breath and caught a hint of sex in his scent as well. Dark eyes watched her with pretend disinterest. She recognized such a look. Benic used it when he hunted, yet this one was no vampire. “What are you?”

The male sat on the floor. Crossing his long legs, he settled and made a pleasant sound in his throat. It vibrated along her spine. “Straight to what and not who?”

She wanted to stretch out over his lap and let him pet her. Shaking her head, she cleared those urges. Or tried to. Something was clouding her judgment, making her react more on an instinctual level.

He gave her a lazy smile. “I’m an incubus. My name is Inacio.”

Lungs burned and muscles ached as Sorin finally reached the edge of the forest, close to Benic’s castle.

Ahote and Peder followed somewhere behind him. Once he started running, he couldn’t rein in his speed, not with Susan awaiting rescue. He clenched his jaw to silence the snarl wanting exit. Better to keep his thoughts on task and not allow his limited imagination any freedom when thinking of Susan in Benic’s clutches.

Crouching in the thick underbrush, he caught his breath. The stone castle rose on the crest of a hill. Colorful pennants snapped in the wind on the peaks of the three towers. He had never seen a castle, let alone been in one. The thing was huge. Where would Benic hold Susan? A wall surrounded the structure, too high to jump, and soldiers guarded the entrance.

How would two-and-a-half wolf shifters take over this monstrosity? He laid his head on his arms and watched the guards pace the wall back and forth, more like a mechanism than people.

A silent brush of ferns announced Ahote’s arrival. He settled next to Sorin. “You drive a hard pace.” Licking his muzzle, Ahote took in their surroundings and panted. “I lost the omega though.”

“Peder will follow our trail. He has a great talent for tracking.”

The guards were shifters and never missed a beat. Back and forth, back and forth they covered the wall. In some sick way these shifters considered this eyesore a den. “Have you been here before?”

“Yes. My alpha came on occasion for diplomatic visits. You should try it sometime.”

Sorin cuffed his ear. “I bow to no one. A shifter doesn’t need to live in a castle to be domesticated.” Ahote didn’t deserve the brunt of his frustration but he kept poking at Sorin’s wounds.

“Are you calling my alpha a pet?”

Sorin ignored him. The vampires used diplomacy and sweet words like shifters used claws and teeth. Benic’s control over the Payami, the strongest pack in the tribe, galled him.

Sorin had been fighting the world his whole life. First his father, then the demoralization of his pack, now the illness, but he’d won each fight. He wouldn’t lose this one either. The only difference was for once he acted for himself.

“The gate is too well guarded.” Sorin pointed to the entrance at the castle front. Merchants and farmers passed through, each questioned by the guards before entering or leaving.

“Benic is smart. He’ll have warned the guards about us and given our descriptions.”

The bastard knew tactics. “He mocks us by leaving the gate open like an invitation.” Who knew how long he’d been fighting shifters? The vampires had ruled these lands all Sorin’s life yet he knew very little about them.

“We should wait until nightfall to move.” Ahote stared at the walls with as much hatred as Sorin felt.

“I can’t bear what he could be doing to Susan during those hours.” She could be dead by then. He shook his mane and laid his ears flat. “We move after the sun sets.” They had at least an hour to make a plan.

“You really do care about her.” It wasn’t a question. Ahote grasped his shoulder, the tips of his claws resting on the skin. “That’s commendable.”

Guilt stabbed Sorin’s chest. It didn’t last long but it made an appearance. Had this shifter cared for Susan? He glanced at the dark hunter and words escaped him. He nodded then turned his attention back to the castle. He almost wanted to apologize. Almost.

A branch snapped, and a disheveled Peder plopped onto the cool ferns—eyes closed, tongue lolling out. He caught his breath.

“Good, we didn’t lose you.” Sorin patted his shoulder.

“Not yet, Alpha.” He spoke between gasps.

“Tell me about the castle, Ahote.”

He sighed. “What can I say? It stinks of stale offal. The shifters who live within have gone nose blind. People are everywhere. They keep prey animals in pens and some…farm.”

Sorin shuddered. “Any other ways inside?”

“The south gate is just as guarded as this one. I haven’t been here enough to discover any secret ways in or out.”

Scratching his chin, Sorin continued watching the guards pace the wall but the eastern sentries passed at a slower march than the northern. “We’ll have to climb the wall under cover of night, take out the guards and search the castle.” With an army of shifters, they might succeed. He gazed at his exhausted, recently poisoned companions.

They were doomed.

“And how do we escape with the females?” Ahote asked.

“On my magic unicorn.” Sorin pointed at his cock then punched the hunter in the shoulder. “How do I know? We run. My main concern is getting inside. I must have missed the lesson on raiding castles as a pup.”

“I didn’t.” Peder spoke into the thick silence. He crouched low under both their sharp gazes. “I listened to stories the old ones told. Actually, I begged them to re-tell them when I could. About when the vampires first arrived on our lands.”

“And what is your idea?” Sorin prompted his resourceful omega.

“We’ll need a cart, some peasant’s clothes that fit me and a skunk.”

Sorin refused to blink, afraid if he looked away, he’d miss his Peder blooming into a possible hunter.

“Sounds like the making of a nasty joke.” Ahote chuckled.

“We’ll separate and meet back here. Peder, you find the clothes and I’ll get the cart.”

“What? That leaves me with the…“ Ahote’s eyes went wide and he grimaced.

Chapter Thirty–Seven

With a racing heart, Susan clung to her chair, afraid if she let go she’d make a fool of herself by attacking Benic, a vampire ten times stronger and faster.

“Separating you from Sorin is a tragedy I would have avoided but I doubt he would have agreed to sit quietly while I study your reaction to the virus.” Benic leaned against his lab table, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not a cruel person. I have good reason to do this.”

The conniving trickster sounded sincere. Then again, all professional liars did. “Let me go. You’ve infected me already.” She jumped to her feet and ran for the exit.

Benic blocked her way using his supernatural speed once more. “Not yet. You’ll die without my help.”

“You bastard.” Her heart shattered into sharp shards. She’d probably never see Sorin again. “This is wrong. You’ve violated me on a cellular level.” She gazed at her diseased body. “Most people died from the virus. What makes you think I won’t?” A sob choked her last word.

“We’ve made advances since that time. Come…” He supported her by the elbow. “I’ve had my servants make a comfortable bed for you to recover on. No need to—”

She yanked her arm from his grasp.

“—make this unpleasant.”

“How are you so sure I’ll become vampire and not a shifter?”

“As the disease spread worldwide the virus mutated. Different continents begot changes matching the strains. Europa vampires, Aphreka cat shifters, North Amerigo wolf shifters, Rossiya yetis, South Amerigo incubus, Ch’in dragons—”

“Dragons?” She couldn’t sort through the tangle of emotions knotting her thoughts. “Australia?” Her voice sounded faint even to her own ears.

“You must mean Astralaya. Selkies. Merpeople have settled all the oceans.” Benic gave her a small smile. “You’ll have all eternity to explore this world and solve its mysteries as a vampire.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You know about virus mutation?” Medieval housing with more advanced science than she’d assumed. How the hell did they miss inventing electricity? “I—I can’t figure out how you can know about microscopes and genetics…and—and not other things.”

“I don’t know what other things you hint at, but since we’ve existed blood has always held a fascination for my people.”

A thin layer of sweat covered her skin. She wanted to smack herself in the forehead and kick-start her brain.
Of course, hematology would be a vampire hobby, dumbass.
Shivers ran through her limbs.