Blood Curse (Branded Trilogy Book 2) (15 page)

“Where is the slave?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Dead of course.” Pias wrapped the finger back up and handed it to Cato.

“Why would you kill him?”

“Because I was asked to.”

“By whom?”

“It does not matter.”

“I say it does.” He was going to kill Pias for holding him here, but more importantly for killing the slave before he could talk with him and ask if he knew how Sam was.

“Very well, if you insist. Silas Monroe ordered the slave’s death.”

Kade’s head snapped up, and he tried to stand but the chair wouldn’t allow it. He used all his strength to pull on the twine around his wrists and ankles until his blood ran from the cuts there. His chest pumped with each breath he took, and he squeezed his hands into tight fists.

“You are acquainted with Silas?” Pias asked.

Kade growled. The Renoldi’s must be involved with the Monroes for Pias to know of the plantation owner, but why?

“What does Silas offer you in return for such a large favor?”

“Why protection of course.”

It all made sense now. Silas had been sending men to find the girl for four years, and Kade knew when he’d met Pril he wasn’t the only one out there who searched for the child. He hadn’t thought the Renoldis would be involved with the Monroes. The gypsy clan had been offered a deal they couldn’t refuse; their children’s safety for cooperation when Silas needed it.

“You’re lower than a snake, Pias.”

“And why is that?”

“You’d help the Monroes by betraying one of your own.”

“My niece is not of us any longer. She is one of the Peddlers. They are outcasts. The child is all I seek. She holds a sense of greatness only Pril can understand.”

“You want the girl, too.”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

Pias leaned toward him, and his eyes searched Kade’s face. “You do not know?”

“Know what?”

“This has become most interesting. Tell me again, Mr. Walker, what is the reason you are hunting the child?”

He sighed. It didn’t matter if he told Pias the truth. All that mattered was getting the hell out of here and finding Sam.

“Silas holds my friend.”

“Friend?”

“The finger belongs to him.”

“I see. Tsk, tsk. You are in quite a dilemma, Mr. Walker. One life for another?”

He frowned.

“You are aware that Silas will kill the girl, are you not?”

He wasn’t. The thought hadn’t crossed his mind. He’d never had the chance to ask. His sole purpose for finding Tsura was to free Sam and nothing more. Silas hadn’t divulged what he’d do with the girl when he got her, or why he wanted her in the first place, and Kade hadn’t inquired.

“Why would he kill her?”

“The blood curse.”

The curse Pril brushed off as a myth. She’d never said what it was, and so he asked, “What blood curse is that?”

“Do you know nothing of the woman you are traveling with?”

“I know enough.”

“Yes, so it seems.”

“What curse?”

“Do you believe in magick, Mr. Walker?”

He thought of Pril and how she’d started the fire. He remembered their conversation afterward, of her mother and sister, but did he believe in something he could not see?

“I do not consider such nonsense,” he replied.

“Now, that is a shame. If you do not believe in magick then why are you here?”

“What do you want with the child?”

“I seek nothing but peace.”

“You will hand her to the Monroes?”

Pias smiled and without another word turned and walked away. Bavol and Cato followed.

“You bastard!” he yelled after them. “You filthy bloody bastard.”

He had to escape. He needed to find Pril and the boy. Something told him Pias knew where Tsura was, and time had stretched enough. The Renoldi leader had Tsura, and Kade wasn’t sure if he’d sent her to Silas or not, but he was determined to find out.

Silas buttoned his pants and reached for his waistcoat. The barn reeked of sweat, horses and the honeyed scent of hay. The slave cowered near the short fence that held his horse. Her skirt no longer up around her waist, sat back at her ankles, stained with blood and dirt.

He’d taken his pleasure with Malachi’s wife. The whore didn’t even fight him, and he wondered if she liked it as much as he did. The scratches and bite marks on her back and neck proved how rough he’d been, but he enjoyed it that way. Torture was what made him hard. He loved being in control, relished the thought of inflicting pain and had often come early when they cried out from his rough hands upon them.

He waved a hand to her and watched delighted as she fled the confines of the barn, shame swimming within her black eyes. He’d have her again, and when she realized her husband wasn’t coming back, he’d have to kill her, too. He shrugged. Just one less slave to feed. There were more to be had. They arrived every month from the Africas, and he had his pick of the lot. He’d find another.

He glanced in the direction of the mansion and thought of Beth. He couldn’t force himself on her, using his hands in the manner he’d done with the slaves. Intercourse with Beth was slow and tedious. She was a delicate flower. He frowned at the thought. She’d been a rose with thorns that, as of late, withheld any form of intimacy from him.

He didn’t care. He’d taken what he wanted from the slaves, showing them he was in charge, and he held no remorse over his actions. He owned Malachi’s wife and all the other damn heathens on his plantation.

He frowned.

To hell with Beth and her foolish emotions! What of his? She did not care what he’d gone through each time they buried a child. There was no thought into how he dealt with the devastating situation. She couldn’t be bothered. He’d lost sleep, lying awake for countless nights desperate for an answer from the men he’d sent in search of the child. Beth yearned for a resolution to their problem, for the curse to be broken, and still he’d failed her. She’d grown cold, distant, and he hated her for it. He tried to understand her emotions. He bought her gifts—gave her anything she wanted, but it was all for naught. She’d thrown them back in his face.

He drank more. Frequented the slaves and brothels often, and kept a safe distance from her all in the hopes that she’d come around, but she remained the same. Her indifference toward him, and everything he did, turned him black with rage. He’d caught himself many times from knocking her into the wall.

He looked upon her with condensation, with vile and utter disgust. Love? He had none for her. Instead he was filled with bitterness, revulsion and fury when he thought of his wife.

He straightened his wig, flipping the long curls behind his shoulders and walked toward the fields. He wanted to make sure the schedule would be met for this year’s tobacco crop. He glanced at his home and reminded himself to pay a visit to the man lying on a dilapidated cot below the stairs.

The tobacco was at his knee, a sign that weekly cultivation would be required. He’d need to assemble Isaiah and give orders for the slaves to till the plants once a week to keep weeds and cutworms from killing the leaves.

He met Jude halfway to the main house.

“We need to speak,” Jude murmured.

Silas nodded, and they continued further into the field away from any eyes and ears.

“What is it?” he asked when they stopped.

Jude pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to him.

Silas ripped open the letter and read the words two times before he spat onto the ground.

“He will die for this.”

His chest burned, and his flesh lit with fire as rage boiled within him. He gripped the letter tight in his hand.

“What will you have me do?” Jude asked.

He clenched his jaw to remain from spewing profanities.

“Have one of the slaves give it to him. He must not know we’ve read it.”

Jude nodded.

“We will follow him.”

He’d known all along Hiram was up to something, and damn it he’d been right. He watched as Jude walked toward the slaves’ quarters on the west side of the field. He was sickened at his brother’s betrayal and could think of nothing else but to end his life. He gazed at his home. He no longer needed the merchant or the baggage in the cellar, and what he didn’t need he got rid of.

Pril opened her eyes. A thick rope wrapped around her chest, through the back of the chair and tied her to the seat. Her hands and feet were bound together. She kicked her legs out, trying to wiggle beneath the rope. She struggled against the constricted twine, the lower she inched the harder it was for her to breath, and she squirmed back up exhausted.

She scanned the walls surrounding her. Heat radiated from the large fire in the hearth, and she shivered. The fire was a welcome sight, and the warmth pushed the chill away from her tired bones. Large logs, one on top of the other, formed the small cabin. Two cauldrons sat near the hearth, another three lined the wall across from it. A wooden table with one chair stood in the middle of the room.

She wasn’t surprised to see the glass jars of herbs, wax, roots and oils lined on four shelves behind the table. Her cousins used them for spells. A plant, she suspected to be rosemary, sat on the long counter directly under the shelves. It was here the Renoldis made their balms.

She struggled against the rope again but could not break free. Defeated, her body sagged into the chair when she saw the boy on the floor ten feet to her left. A worn grey blanket was thrown over his body. All she could see were his hands tethered with a rope and tied to a hook on the wall. He lay unmoving, and her heart sprinted as panic set in.

Was he okay? Had Pias and his men hurt him somehow? Did he lay beneath the ragged blanket bleeding, or worse, dead?

“Boy,” she whispered.

He didn’t move.

“Boy.”

Silence.

She wrestled with the chair, pushing it back onto its hind legs. The wood moaned and creaked. She had to get free. She planted her feet on the ground and pressed her back into the wood, using all the strength she had left to force the back of the chair to break. The timber wouldn’t budge, and she was too weak to do anymore. She glanced at the boy again. He needed her.

“Damn it,” she ground through clenched teeth. “Boy!”

The child still did not move, and her heart sunk. She squeezed her eyes shut praying he was okay, and soon they’d be free.
Please let him live.

The door opened, bringing with it a nip of evening air, and she shivered. She scowled when Pias walked into the room.

“Ah my lovely Pril. You’ve woken.”

He reached out his hand and took her bound ones in his own.

“Did you hurt the boy?”

He glanced back at the child lying on the floor. “Now why would I do such a thing? He merely sleeps.”

She all but screamed for the child to wake, and he never moved. He was not sleeping.

“He will not wake.”

“Interesting.” Pias walked toward the boy and nudged him with his boot. “Hmmmm.”

The child remained the same.

He threw off the blanket, and she strained in the chair to see around him. The boy’s chest rose and fell in even cadence, a sign he was at rest, but why wouldn’t he wake?

“He will rise soon enough,” Pias said and turned toward her.

She peered at the child and prayed the Renoldi was right.

“What do you want, Pias?”

“To speak with you.”

“Then speak. I’ve grown tired of your games.”

He clapped his hands together, and his jagged face beamed.

“Wonderful. Tell me, how have you been?”

She glared at him. Pias didn’t care about her well-being. He never had. Her uncle had always been envious of Vadoma’s gifts. Before her aunt passed, he tried many times to see the spell book, but Vodama refused. He was jealous, driven by greed for the powers Pril’s mother had passed on to Vadoma and not onto his own wife and daughters. He wanted something from her, and she was determined to find out what it was.

“You know how I’ve been. What is it you want?”

“Must you be so pushy? I am simply trying to speak with you about the past. Ask after my niece.”

“You said nothing of the past. What is it you want to know?”

His green eyes narrowed, and his full lips thinned.

“Now that you’ve asked, where might the book be, hmmm?”

“What book?”

“Why Vadoma’s book of course.”

Pias knew the book would be of no use to him without the talisman. He’d not be able to count the spells if he didn’t have it. So why did he care now? The pendant had been lost.

“It is destroyed.”

His eyes went round, and he tapped his forefinger on his chin.

“When your clan attacked us. The book was in my vardo, and it burned to the ground.”

“Oh my, that is a shame.”

“What do you want with the book? You cannot count the spells inside. You do not have the gift.”

Pias sighed.

“Yes, so you are right, my dear.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“One needs a certain pendant to make the spells come to light, correct?”

Her heart pumped vigorously within her chest, and the room spun. With the pendant she could’ve broken the blood curse. The pendant held magick all on its own, but with the book any female with the gift of counting spells would be unstoppable, and that included Pias’s daughters.

“You’re out of luck, the book is gone.”

“So it seems.”

She smirked, hoping he’d release her and the boy.

“Have you found Vadoma’s child?”

She glanced at him, unsure what he was up to. The leader liked to toy with his victims, and she waited.

“Tsura, that is her name correct?”

She nodded.

“You have not found her?”

“No.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Pias…” she seethed. “What have you done?”

He flashed his white teeth in a brilliant smile.

“A father must try his best to please his children.”

“You will reap what you bind, Pias.”

“Indeed.”

“I am not afraid of you.”

“You are not frightened?”

She shook her head.

“What a shame. What a shame indeed.”

“I know that without the book you are worthless.”

He walked over to a wooden chest beside the unconscious boy and opened it. He reached inside.

“Is this the book you speak of?”

She blinked.
No.
He had her mother’s book. The very one she’d thought burned in the fire. Anger hardened all the softness on her face, and she dug her nails into the wooden chair.

“The book belongs to me,” she growled.

“Not any longer.”

“It is to stay within my family.”

Pias flipped the book and studied the outside of it.

“I see no inscription from the great enchantress to make it so.” He sighed. “Therefore, my dear niece,
you
are the one out of luck.”

“You wretch—ingrate!” She slammed her body into the back of the chair, bringing the front legs off of the ground. “You are worthless without the pendant.”

“Right you are.” He sat on the trunk, the book cradled within his slender hands.

Silence filled the room. She peeked at the boy, lifeless and still. She needed to get to him, steal the book back, find Kade and resume her search for Tsura.

“Let us go, Pias. You have no need to hold us here. You’re after the pendant, and I can assure you it is long gone.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. Please let us go. I need to find my daughter.”

“Have you searched far?”

She scowled.
Why is he asking me these questions?

“How do you know the child is not right under your very nose, hmmm?”

Heat resonated from her toes all the way to her head. She gnashed her back teeth together. “Do you know where Tsura is?”

“I may.”

“Damn it, Pias, where is she?”

“Safe.” He stood and went to her, the book still in his hands.

“What do you mean?”

“I need the child as much as you do, dear Pril.”

“You touch one hair on my daughter’s head, and I will kill you.”

“Oh, I will not harm her, but I cannot be sure they won’t.” He shrugged. “I shant worry over it.”

“Why?” She leaned into the rope around her chest, the twine indenting her skin. “Why are you doing this?”

He leaned in close, and she could smell the deceit on his breath. He stank of arrogance, greed and lust for the power he did not have.

“Why, for the talisman.”

“No one has the pendant. It is lost—gone forever,” she shouted shaking the chair on the verge of insanity.

“Ah, that is where you are wrong. He has the talisman, and we shall trade.”

“Who has the pendant?”

“Hmmm?”

“Who has the pendant?”

“It does not matter.”

“Answer me damn it!” Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked releasing them to fall onto her cheeks. “Whom are you giving Tsura to?”

“Now, now, Niece, do not cry.” He wiped a tear from under her eye.

“Get your filthy hands off of me you bastard.”

He bent and gazed at her. No emotion played out within the green pits. Instead, they were empty, emotionless. She shuddered seeing the lack of feeling there. He came closer, and she pressed the back of her head into the chair.

His lips almost touched hers when he whispered, “My dear sweet Pril.”

His tongue slid along her lips. Her stomach revolted, and she twisted away from him.

“Go to hell.”

“Tsk tsk. So vile for such a pretty thing.” He tipped his head to the side.

“You will bleed for this.”

“Nonsense. I will succeed, and you my dear…will not.”

She strained against the twine, pulling her limbs as far as she could until the skin tore. She’d kill him for this. She tugged again. The rope still tight, she shrieked—gasping, her chest inflated, and her throat ached. She hung her head. Imprisoned by the blasted ropes and the bastard in front of her.

“Do not worry so.”

“Give me my daughter,” she pleaded.

“Ah, I do love to see you beg.”

“I will do anything, Pias. Please, please hand me Tsura.”

He considered her. Minutes passed, and she prayed he’d changed, that he wasn’t the merciless man she’d known.

He shook his head and smiled.

“None of this will matter by tomorrow.”

“And why is that.”

“Hmmm?”

“Why will none of this matter?”

“Because, my sweet girl, you will be dead.” He patted her head. With the book tucked under his arm, he walked toward the door.

“Noooooo,” she screamed. “Pias, you rotten bastard. Come back. Please, please! I will do anything you ask. I will teach your daughters. Do not take Tsura. Please, I beg of you.”

He stopped and turned toward her. “Tsk. Tsk. So sad.”

He closed the door behind him and on any hope Pril may have had of finding Tsura.

She cried out. Her flesh burned, and she rubbed her wrists against the twine, feeling the pain bite into the open wounds. She inhaled the anguish and misery into her soul. The emotions festered, too much for her to take. Sorrow filled her, and she gasped, drowning in her own despair. Nothing mattered anymore—not life, not death and not survival. Tsura was gone. Pias had won. She dropped her head and let the tears wash her face.

Her body trembled with each inhale. She fought the pain, trying to remain strong. Anger and resentment covered her, and she couldn’t breath—smothered by her own denial—by her own shame. She wheezed, her throat hurt, her chest compressed—her body ached. She’d been beaten by her own cause, by her own hand. Pias had betrayed her, toying with her emotions, and she allowed it.
Tsura.
How she yearned to see her once more. She was to protect her. She was expected to defend her from any harm, and she’d failed. She sniffled. Pias had played her for a fool, and now her daughter would suffer for it.

She glanced at the boy. He’d not woken or even moved from the awkward position. There was something wrong. She skimmed the herbs on the shelf and the plant on the counter again. What was she missing? The plant looked different, when it struck her. The boy had been poisoned. She squinted to try and make out the leaves on the shrub. She assumed it’d been rosemary, a common plant used by the gypsies for its scent, brewed in a tea for stomach ailments and burned to cast off infection. When she looked closer she realized it wasn’t rosemary at all.

She gasped. Small green berries flowered on the plant known as Witch’s berry. It was used for many things but mixed in the right amounts could cause paralysis, slurred speech, unconsciousness and even death. Pias had given it to the boy, but why?

Tsura was a Chuvani. Pias feared her as he’d feared Vadoma. She looked at the boy again. How would Pias get Tsura to trust him enough to travel? The answer rang in her ears. He’d use the Witch’s berry to make it so.