Soul Enslaved (Sons of Wrath Book 3) (64 page)

She kicked her legs and hunched over, bit down into the impenetrable carapace, but froze when a needlepoint stinger lifted her chin. The slightest move would pierce her throat, and its poison would mean instant death.

The creature tipped its head as though curious, and its clawed finger brushed her shirt from her shoulder. She whimpered, growling a useless warning.

The claw fell to her breast, and as she bit down hard on her tongue, her eyes locked on the creature.

At once, its beady eyes grew wide, before it released an ear-shattering hiss, dropping her to the floor.

Stood at its right flank, Gavin held a dagger lodged into its abdomen. He wasn’t Gavin, though. His body had darkened to a deep red, his eyes, raging like red thunderstorms. Horns protruded from his head, and his muscles bulged.

Like a red Hulk.

While slicing his dagger upward, Gavin twisted in time to catch its swaying stinger and jabbed it into the beast’s own torso. Squeals and hisses bounced off the walls, and Gavin moved like a red storm, overwhelming the beast with his quick moves and surprise attacks. Like observing pure rage and chaos, watching the two vie for domination. Gavin finally stabbed the murderous blow to its heart. and the beast dropped. He finished it off by tearing the tail away from its body.

Then it finally hit her.

Gavin was alive.

He spun to face her, looking nothing like the sweet Gavin she knew, but a beast. A wild, angry beast, fiercer than she’d ever seen him, headed right for her.

What the hell had she injected into him?

What if he’d hurt her? The fucking rat had bitten her, after all.

She backed herself to the wall and slid to the floor, as he closed in. His chest rose and fell, eyes flaming red, nostrils flared. Terrifying yet beautiful.

He collapsed in a heap across her lap. His muscles twitched against her legs, but his eyes remained shut. Sabelle hesitated a moment, then stroked his hair.

Ferno appeared first, glancing around the room before he stepped over the scorpion creature lying in a heap. He hefted Gavin over his shoulder and reached out an arm for Sabelle. “This place is crawling with them. I’ll have to burn it down.”

In the hallway, they met Logan, Xander and Maddox. Aeguza was slung over Logan’s shoulder, covered by the Brother’s shirt. They prowled through the hallway toward the open floor, where they’d first entered the building.

Six scorpions lay in a heap, with nearly a dozen more swarming. Blast after blast of hellsfire burst from Ferno, coating each of the beasts, until they were flaming fireballs scrambling across the floor. They spun around and scurried toward the direction from where they’d come, but still, Ferno backed himself into the hallway, keeping a steady stream of flames that caught the wood.

Maddox lifted Gavin from Ferno’s arms and hoisted his older brother across his own shoulder.

Two more creatures lurched from the shadows, blocking Logan’s route, and Ferno directed his flames on them, forcing the group into the adjacent room. Kicking the rest of the glass out of the already broken window within there, Logan gave a quick glance outside and leaped through the opening.

Once he’d hit the ground, he set Aeguza beside him. At his Beckon, Sabelle sprang straight into Logan’s waiting arms.

Maddox and Xander followed, and maddening seconds passed while they waited for Ferno.

A burst of brick fell like fireworks, as Ferno crashed through the wall with the scorpion creature kicking its legs through the air above the demon. Like a film set to slow motion, they crashed to the ground.

Xander hoisted Gavin’s body from Maddox, and the Brother hooked his arms beneath Ferno’s, sliding him away and to his feet. One more blast of flames set fire to the creature, as its stinger struck the ground, just missing Ferno. Crumpling into itself, it hissed on its retreat back into the building.

***

Once they’d all piled in the SUV, Sabelle stroked Gavin’s hair and neck, while he lay motionless across her lap. Tears coated her eyes, as she lightly brushed a finger across his closed eyelids. How badly she wanted him to open them. To look back at her with that shrewdness he wore so well, and smile. She’d almost lost him. Sickness churned in her stomach at the thought.

In the back seat, Aeguza seized and grunted, blood trickling a steady stream from his body, Maddox holding him to keep from hurting himself. Aeguza coughed a gurgling, choking sound that crimped Sabelle’s lip.

“We’ll have to get him checked out by Drechler.” Maddox held up a syringe. “This was lying next to him. We’ll have the doc take a look.”

Sabelle checked the fluid. Clear, just like the one that’d been injected into Gavin. She examined his face. Aside from a few lingering beastly traits, there was no bleeding. His wounds had begun to close. She brushed a finger across the one on his chest and rubbed the oily substance between her fingers. Vasoline. Same as she’d used on Zeke’s wounds.

Why hadn’t the poison affected him the same way? Gavin lay motionless. Peaceful. Not seizing and coughing up blood, as Aeguza continued to do in the back seat.

“He did a fine job, protecting his mate.” Ferno stared down at his brother from where he sat beside her.

She stroked a gentle finger down Gavin’s slashed cheek, careful to avoid his open cuts. “I thought he’d died.”

“You thought wrong.”

“I injected him with something. I think it turned him.”

“Only thing that’d turn a demon into his beast is if his woman is in danger.”

“Is this a Savidon thing?” she asked, brushing a lock back from Gavin’s forehead.

“No,” Ferno said, in his usual unforgiving tone. “It’s a love thing.”

CHAPTER 36

Therriun sat in the ruins, the fumes of burnt wood permeating from across the street, where the demons had set fire to the old Globe building. Flames consumed the building, the creatures inside hissing and squealing, and Therriun pounded at his head with clenched fists. “No, no, no, no.”

He should’ve killed her, for the hallucinations he’d suffer the rest of the night. The hallucinations that’d begun the second he caught sight of the whistle clinging to her throat.

The golden whistle.

Therriun focused on the flames, and his mind took him back, centuries, into the past.

The boy watched as the rebels herded the last of the small children into the mill. His heart beat against his chest, throbbing for the unwitting young who had no idea what was to become of them. He knew. Like every other village they’d plundered, seeking out the royal heirs, he knew the horrors of what would be their fate.

Perhaps some of them welcomed it, having watched their mothers and fathers brutally slayed in front of them.

As for the others, perhaps they thought the evil had spared them.

A little blonde girl ushered her toddler sister in through the doors, wiping tears as she spoke softly, kindly, reassuring her in a language Therriun didn’t speak.

The Rogue, so named by his fellow rebels for his merciless kills, wearing leather skins, closed the mill door and locked the children inside.

Therriun’s gaze wandered to the male standing behind the Rogue, holding a torch that blazed with hellsfire. Hellsfire that’d come from Therriun’s own hands.

The Rogue accepted the proffered torch, and his stare fell on Therriun. Long strides brought him standing in front of the boy.

Like a good warrior, Therriun straightened his stance and lifted his chin. A show of pride. Of honor. The Rogue passed the torch to Therriun and stepped aside, a silent invitation that, should he choose to decline, would place him amongst the many who’d soon be begging for mercy.

In ancient demonic, the Rogue reminded Therriun of their charge—no child loyal to the king would live.

Therriun stepped forward, his breaths panting, his feet heavy against the stones he crossed to stand beside the locked mill. Through a small hole in the weathered wood, he saw the older girl’s eye peering out at him.

For one flickering moment, he imagined what it’d be like to talk to a girl. Smell the clean soap in her hair and the sweetness of her skin. To feel her fragile embrace that he could so easily crush in his rough-hewn hands.

Do not pity them.

Therriun clenched his jaw, and tossed the torch onto the dead vine that’d taken root at the base of the mill, kindling that caught quickly. Stepping back, he closed his eyes, as the screams of the innocent filled the blackened air.

His heart hurt. His head pounded. He ran—to the sanctuary of the thick forest. Treading through the foliage, he found solace in the trees—in the silence—where the smoke from below had thinned to the light scent of wet leaves and damp wood from a recent rain.

He wished it would rain then.

Rounding an old birch, he came upon a boy, circa his own age. Black hair, lean and muscled, like a boy who’d been trained with weapons. Trained to hunt game. Strong. Yet, he wept as he knelt beside a younger boy, who lay unmoving, flayed, no doubt, by the very rebels with whom Therriun traveled.

Head bowed, the boy stood and moved around the younger one, carefully lifting his mutilated head and removing a threaded necklace. In his native demonic tongue, the older boy spoke to the younger. Or perhaps to whatever God he worshipped. Therriun didn’t understand any of the words, but he felt the pain in them.

The boy who’d been murdered was evidently important to the older male, a brother perhaps, and Therriun tried to imagine any of the men who’d made him one of their kind pulling the same pain from him.

No one. He couldn’t imagine summoning a single tear for any of them.

The boy raised the whistle to his mouth. A death-call, if the rebels happened to hear it.

Before he could blow the first call, Therriun stepped from the brush, placing himself in the boy’s view. In many ways, they looked similar. Yet different. He didn’t carry the same hardened lines or ragged clothes. His pale blue eyes bore the innocence of new horrors, instead of the long-suffered atrocities that Therriun had seen in his short time.

Therriun tipped his head, curious, and from across the space, the two boys stared at one another. He’d be punished for letting the boy go, but he did it anyway.

He walked away.

The first time Therriun had saved Gavius’s life.

CHAPTER 37

The doctor, who’d been introduced to Sabelle as Drechler, stared into the microscope set on the nightstand. Beside him, in the guest bed, Aeguza continued to writhe and cough. Like that of the character Mary Poppins, the doctor’s black bag seemed to carry every medical equipment known to man.

“Juiseppa.” The grim tone of his voice warned that meant it was bad. “A poison found in the Orcosian jungles. In all my centuries of medicine, I’ve only seen one case.” He dared a glance over his shoulder. “Fatal.”

“I believe the same poison was injected into Gavin, and yet, he shows no signs.” Sabelle grimaced when the blood oozing from Aeguza’s mouth began to thicken with
chunks
.

“Unless Gavin happens to be immune to one of the most deadly cocktails of the underworld, I doubt he was given the same thing.”

She lifted the syringe, containing the same white fluid that she’d injected into Gavin. “This is Juiseppa?”

He gave a quick upward glance. “No. It’s a drug called Cardigen. Like epinephrine for demons, it keeps the heart going, pumping blood. Staves off cardiac arrest.” Twisting in his chair brought him facing Sabelle once more, a glass slide in his palm. “It’s quite amazing. You can see the burgundy splotches in the blood I collected from Aeguza’s mouth. It spreads rapidly.”

“Burgundy?” The first fluid Sabelle had seen in the syringe back at the Globe building. “Is there no cure?”

If Drechler’s eyes turned any darker, she’d be staring at two black holes where his eyeballs used to be. “Not of this world.” He tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the sweat from his brow. “I’ve read the venom from certain breeds of serpent can counteract the hemorrhaging effects, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a serpent in the next hour before this man bleeds out all of his organs.”

Sabelle froze.
Serpent?
“Doc, is it possible … perhaps we might … you see Gavin was …”

“Spit it out, woman, I’m a desperate man here.” He leaned forward. “Did you happen to notice the football team of Wrath demons standing outside the door, waiting for me to pull a miracle out of my ass? None of us wants a dead lord on our hands.”

“My son has a Fideluza serpent. A few days ago, Gavin sustained a bite. Is it possible the poison afforded him some protection?”

Drechler puffed a breath. “Anything is worth a try at this point. This man is going to bleed his organs out of every orifice within an hour. Do you have the serpent here?”

“Yes. One moment.”

Sabelle left the guest room Aeguza had been granted and ran past the waiting Brothers without a word, down the hall to Thomas and Janie’s room. She pulled the long scaly serpent from its habitat and carried it down the hall, once again ducking past the frowns of the huddled muscle. Once inside again, she placed Filly at Aeguza’s feet and stepped back.

The serpent snaked up his thigh and coiled itself onto the man’s chest.

Drechler dabbed the lord’s brow again. “Jesus, those things scare me shitless.”

“It’s not biting him.”

“Well, make it bite him.”

“He can’t move! How can I make it bite him?”

“For crying out loud, woman, time is of the essence here!” Drechler lifted Aeguza’s hand and threw it on the snake, backing up when the reptile reared back and bit down on the lord’s arm.

The male’s fingers splayed, back arched, and Sabelle stepped forward and lifted Filly from his body before it could attack again. The serpent nuzzled Sabelle’s neck while watching Aeguza with pointed interest, head swaying back and forth, just as she had with Gavin.