Betrayal (26 page)

William shrugged. “It makes no difference. We stand with you and Miss Elizabeth.

* * * *

Elizabeth had no idea how long she’d been under the church. There couldn’t be much time left before the full moon, yet no sign of Reece or the hunters. Had they abandoned her, or could they just not find her? “Are you feeding the other women? You do know we die if you starve us? You must have learned that much.”

The master lounged against his elaborate headboard. “They are cared for. You humans die so easily.”

“I have not noticed a great difficulty in killing demons. Your minions die just as well.”

“I cannot understand this strange loyalty to the hunters who have abandoned you. They call you a traitor and leave you here to die by my hand, and yet, you will not tell me what I want to know.” With every word, his voice grew louder.

“I know nothing of The Company’s plans.” The falsehood got harder to maintain as did her faith in her friends.

“You lie for them, and they have left you. Why?”

“They have not left me.” Her voice quivered in spite of her resolve to stay strong. She never wanted to feel like a victim again, and victims cowered in corners, crying for mercy. Meeting death shoulders back and chin up would be her personal victory.

“They say you told me how to regain the Blade of Skane.”

“I told you nothing.”

“True. Another committed the crime, but he is still useful, and the fact that they believe you did it is also convenient.”

“It will not matter. They will come for me. No one will believe I betrayed The Company.” Doubt crept in, in spite of her words. Reece said he loved her, but when the evidence was set before him, could he see the truth?”

“It is already a fact in your colleague’s minds. The girl from nothing who cost them everything they had gained. You are a pariah to your kind.”

“You try too hard to convince me, demon. I think you’re lying.” She hoped she was right, but no one came for her.

“I think you do believe me, hunter.”

She sat up straight, pulled her shoulders back, and stared the master in the eye. Reece would come for her. At least she could learn about the demons’ plans. “May I ask a question?”

He closed his eyes. “Ask.”

“How do you make the people in the street disappear?”

That dark gaze locked with hers. “I change the plane.”

“I do not understand.”

He sighed. “Humans live on one plane, and my children come from another. There are many more in between, each with their own realities. Some look just like this one, but they are not. My portal shifts the plane so we can enter without creating havoc.”

“I thought chaos was your goal.”

His laughter skimmed the air like a tenor at the opera. “Not yet, my dove.”

“Why are you so interested in me?”

“You were my peasant, but now you are something else. I have a new peasant waiting for the moon to rise full. I have a noble and a worker. Last time I had the soiled one, but she is dead. You will serve in her place.”

“I am the whore?” Part of her recoiled at the idea, and yet she had liked Connie and mourned her death.

“Not exactly, but she was once an innocent and took a different road. In this way, you are the same.”

“So that is why you expended so much energy to recapture me? It would have been easier to pluck another whore off the street.” His description of the foursome didn’t add up. Last time she had been the peasant. Tally?

“True, but as I said, you are a puzzle. I know all that is and was, and yet, I do not know how you broke the bond.”

“Maybe you are not as powerful as you think. Perhaps there are things in this world you cannot understand.”

He raised his brows. “Things like you mating with the other hunter? I know all. Your coupling should not have broken my connection. Nothing can do that.”

“And yet something did.”

“Hmm… Why do I have the impression you know how you were released?”

“Of course I know. You should know too. It is the same thing that fouls your plans at every turn, demon.”

He sat up straighter. The tritors turned toward their master.

Had she gone too far? She didn’t look forward to him bursting into a rage and killing everything in sight, especially since she was most definitely in sight.

He held up a hand, and the tritors backed off. “How can you know what has delayed my efforts? You have only been a hunter for a short time.”

“First tell me why you make your sacrifices according to the moon.”

“The moon draws this planet and offers light in the darkness.”

“What does that have to do with killing humans?”

“Each of your puny kind is filled with a kind of energy. While in life you can offer only prayers to strengthen me, in death I can capture energy. Some of you have more than others, but regardless, it is stronger at the four corners of the moon.”

“Four corners? I see. And the rituals?”

“Draw energy that would be lost to the ether and focus it toward me.”

All the people who he killed during these ritual sacrifices had fed him with their souls? She swallowed down tears. There was nothing more to say, but it explained why Belinda’s rescue had impaired him so. He must have to be vulnerable to receive the energy. When Dorian’s mother died, he’d expected a large infusion of noble blood. Without it, he’d withered. It all rumbled around her mind while she tried to process the information. Just in case she lived to tell The Company.

“Tell me about this grand power humans have.” He drew out the word grand and crossed his arms.

She had lost her mind, but she couldn’t back down. Not now. Not ever. “What happened that you were wounded during your ascension?”

“The hunters came and pulled away the vehicle for my rebirth.”

“The vehicle. You mean Belinda?”

“Yes, the woman hunter. I honored her with the task of being the mother of my coming forth into this world. She contains energy far beyond most of your kind.”

“And they snatched her away during the ascension. Why do you think the other hunters risked their lives to save her?”

He rose from the bed for the first time since she’d arrived in the cave. The tritor rushed to his side, but he brushed the beast away. Rubbing his chin, he sat in an overstuffed bench at the foot of the bed. “They came to stop me, in a vain attempt to kill me.”

“The hunters who came for her were her husband and her friends. They would have killed you if they could have, but that is only part of why they came. Tullering suffered long nights waiting for help to come so he could recover his wife. He would have died to save her. Can you not guess what motivated his determination?”

His eyes flashed with anger. “Say what it is you mean, hunter.”

Not peasant, not whore, but hunter. Interesting. “He came because he loves her. He defied all logic and risked his life and the lives of his friends to save the woman he loves.”

The master laughed. At first just a chuckle, but soon he laughed harder and louder. “You are a ridiculous creature. You believe this human love can defeat me?”

“You had big plans for the temple you built underground in Edinburgh, did you not?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

He wavered on the bench. Clearly, the effort to sit up became too much for him in his current state. One of the tritors lifted him and carried him to the bed like a china doll. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “It was to be a glorious gateway between the world of man and demons.”

“Why did your plan fail?”

“The witches…”

“No. Not the spell. That is not what stopped you.”

“The hunters deceived me. The woman’s blood was not noble. Your men mate with peasants and call them noble.”

“Yes. That happens when people fall in love. They have no care for titles and bloodlines.”

“It is senseless.”

“Perhaps, but it will be your undoing. Lillian Dellacourt almost died to stop you, but we do what we do to protect the ones we love from what you bring to our world.”

“I bring glory.”

“No, you bring destruction.”

He ran his tapered fingers through his dark hair. “Will love save you from the Blade of Skane?”

“You do not understand. Love has already saved me. Love broke the bond you forced on me.”

“Not possible.”

She rose and spread her arms out. “And yet here I stand. You may scare me, but you do not control my mind. You can only kill me, but you will never own me.”

The master’s eyes bore down on her. When he screamed, the sound shook pebbles from the walls and ceiling.

Elizabeth clutched her ears and crumbled to the floor.

Where his teeth had been perfect, white, and human, now long pointed fangs expanded from his jaw. The sound dwindled. The demon flickered in and out of sight. “Get her out of here.”

One tritor went to the bedside and the other came to her, gripped her arm, and dragged her up the steps.

* * * *

Reece suspected, even before her arrival at the office, Lillian would not approve of his plans. It took every ounce of his restraint to keep quiet while she raged at him. In spite of their long friendship, they rarely agreed. In fact, their bickering had become a joke among the hunters.

“You will ruin your career over a woman who has betrayed us all.” Lillian paced the parlor.

Reece lounged on the chaise and watched her. Lillian was his best friend in the world. He could not count the number of times he’d saved her life or the times she had saved his. It didn’t matter. She was wrong. “I only know that to leave her would be the real betrayal. I made a promise to the woman I love, and I will not break it. Either you will help me or you will not. Either way, I will go after her.”

“I cannot help you, Reece. You are making a mistake, and I will not support your decision.”

Pain, not unlike losing Elizabeth, tore at him. “You must do what you believe is right, Lillian.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Reece, please.”

He stood up. The rest of the group waited for him in the war room. Everything waited in preparation for the rescue, and he’d taken time out to hear Lillian out. He’d heard enough. “I love her, and more than that, I believe in her. I can no more leave her in the master’s hands than I could leave you to such a fate.”

She opened her mouth, but a loud knock at the door stopped whatever she might have said.

John poked his head in. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but a courier just arrived with the document you’ve been waiting for.”

“What documents?” Lillian asked.

“Thank you, John. Would you put it in my room and secure it?”

“Of course, sir.” The footman left, closing the door behind him.

“What documents?”

“I have obtained a special license so Elizabeth and I can marry immediately. Of course, we had not considered she would be captured before it arrived.” The pain in his chest was his heart ripping in two. He swallowed down the emotion.

Lillian touched his cheek. Her cool hand drew his gaze to hers. “You really do love her.”

“More than anything I’ve ever cared for in my life. I will not leave her to the master. No matter what we discover, I will stand with her.”

“And if she has turned to the master?”

“Then it will be my duty to take her from him.”

“What if that means you have to destroy her, Reece?”

“I am prepared for that as well.”

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Oh, Reece, my dearest friend. I’m so sorry I doubted you. I will help you. Right or wrong, Dorian and I will fight with you today.”

The last time Elizabeth had lain across a stone altar drugs marred her mind. The memory, a foggy nightmare she lived with every day. As soon as the master banished her from his lair, the tritor dragged her up the steps and strapped her to the stone. Three heavy ropes cut her at the calves, waist, and across her neck. He’d pinned her arms to her sides. Even turning her head bruised her throat.

The darkened windows gave her no sense of time, but her aching muscles told the tale clearly enough. They’d left her to suffer until the full moon. How long would it be? The vaulted ceiling disappeared into shadows, leaving her nothing to look at.

“Help me.” She hoped one of the other women would snap out of their trance. Pain from the bond crushed her windpipe.

Grunting echoed against the stone walls.

She forced herself not to look. Her flesh could not take additional abrasion from her bonds.

Heavy thudding steps accompanied the sounds of demons approaching.

Two durgot demons in long red robes carried torches. They lit the crucible and chanted in the demon language.

A drugged mind might have been preferable. Her heart pounded blood into her ears.

The demons flanked her. Their bull faces devoid of emotion. One held the Blade of Skane and raised it to the ceiling. Their voices rang above her roaring fire.

Female voices joined the demons.

She suffered the pain of turning her head. Warm liquid dripped down her neck, probably blood. The three women stood at the edge of the crossing, chanting in the demon language. Their eyes stared blindly forward. No emotion rang in their song. Like soldiers waiting for death at the firing line, they stood, mouths opening and closing in time, marionettes with no string visible.

The binding at her throat fell away. She gasped, taking as much air as her lungs would hold. She turned to the priest holding the blade. “What are you doing?” Her voice rasped out through the burning pain.

“You must be once again a part of the master.” His speech grated in more deep grunts than words.

“He said the link could not be restored.”

“We will make you one with the desires of the master.”

“That does not sound good. How about you just slit my throat and be done with it.”

“The next moon has not yet risen. One more moon until you meet the glorious death you deserve.” He turned his face up and took up the chant once again.

“Then…just leave me here. One more day…is no time to wait.” She shook until her teeth chattered. Fisting her hands to will the tremor away only made it worse. She would give anything for a sword. Even if it were only to take her own life, it would be better than losing herself.