Blood Father (Blood Curse Series) (3 page)

Yep
, Nathaniel drawled in acknowledgment.

Kagen chuckled then.
We’ll see you soon. Be well,
b
rother
.

Be well, Kagen
. With that formal exit, the Ancient Master Warrior closed the communication, and Nachari turned to Braden.

“Braden, I have to start working on a spell to conjure and open the portal. Would you do me a favor in the meantime?”

Braden’s handsome face positively lit up with excitement. “Yeah.
Yeah
, of course
.
What?”

“Bring Marquis up to speed with what we’re doing.”

Braden nodded his assent. “Most definitely.” By the self-satisfied look on his face, he clearly felt important. He started to say something else, but Kagen didn’t hear him. He had already launched into the sky, leaving the roof and soaring into the brilliant night, his large glossy wings spread out like an angel’s cloak behind him. He turned sharply to the right, toward the North Star, and then headed for the highest point in the Dark Moon Forest to retrieve the first mystic object.

Arielle Nightsong waited in the shadows until the last of King Thane’s guards had left the meadow. As one of Thane’s four trusted alpha generals, it was Xavier Matista’s duty to patrol Thane’s private grounds each night before heading back to his own clan, the western pack of the Lycanthrope. She was careful to stand downwind as Xavier, the cruelest and most brutal of Thane’s inner circle, passed by, singing a vile, dissonant tune in his harsh, arrogant voice.

She shivered as she watched Xavier stroll into the night, and then she said a prayer to the gods of her ancestors as she gathered her leather pouch under her arm and prepared to slip into Keitaro’s hut. She had no doubt that the slave had been treated horrendously that day, for no other reason than Tyrus Thane, the king of the Lycanthrope, was still enraged as a result of his human wife’s recent adultery; and being a miscreant bully as well as a sadistic animal, he had to take it out on someone. Keitaro Silivasi was as good a choice as any. After all, he was Thane’s favorite prisoner—
favorite
meaning the one he hated the most—and Thane always kept Keitaro in a weakened, defenseless state by bleeding him out on a daily basis, constantly injecting intravenous poisons into the vampire’s veins, some cruel combination of saline solution and liquefied diamond dust, and keeping his ankles chained and his wrists shackled at all times. Whenever Keitaro wasn’t working or fighting, he was drugged so he couldn’t run away or heal himself with his venom.

It was unthinkable.

Barbaric.

And it had gone on for hundreds of years.

Arielle had no doubt that Keitaro would be in need of her various healing herbs and tonics tonight, and that was why she had snuck away from the Rebel Camp.

Holding her breath, she tiptoed silently to the entrance of the small lean-to hut and quickly ducked inside the bearskin flap. Keitaro was lying on a threadbare blanket, the worn skin of a mule deer that had been killed what looked like decades ago, and never properly tanned or cured. His skin was covered in open sores and raised welts that looked like a mixture of a leopard’s spots and a zebra’s stripes, marring every inch of his otherwise immortal flesh. As usual, he had experienced a toxic reaction to the poisonous concoction that always flowed like acid through his veins. Even from ten feet away, Arielle could sense his agony.

Keitaro groaned as he turned on his side, and then he caught sight of Arielle from the corner of his eye. Raising his head and yanking on his chains—both arms were staked in cross-like fashion to the ground; it was how they always made him sleep—he met her gaze with a cautionary stare of his own. “Rielle, you shouldn’t be here.” His voice was calm and paternal, despite his torment.

“Shh, Keitaro,” she whispered. “You know I could not stay away.”

The ancient vampire simply shook his head, his dark, intelligent eyes brimming with regret. “I’m fine, Rielle. I will survive.” He grimaced from the pain of speaking. “I always do.”

Arielle sighed. “Yes, you do, and my wonderful healing herbs have a lot to do with it.” It was a pitiful attempt at cheering him up. At cheering herself up.

Keitaro forced a smile then, however slight, his mature features framing his darkly tanned, handsome face. “Rielle,” he chastised, “one of these days you’re going to get caught, and I’ll never be able to live with myself when that happens.”

“It won’t happen,” Arielle reassured him. “I’m always careful.” She dug into her pouch and removed a pain-relieving poultice of valerian root, skullcap, nettle, and cloves. As she stirred the mixture with a knotty stick, combining the herbs to activate their healing properties before beginning the treatment, she smiled brightly. “I’ll have you fixed up in no time, Mr. Silivasi.”

Keitaro frowned. “Mr. Silivasi? You really are in a formal mood today.”

She chuckled softly. “No, I just need to get in and out quickly.” Her eyes darted back and forth around the dimly lit, circular space, and she shivered. “I’m well aware of the increased danger of being here tonight.”

Keitaro rolled back over. He settled onto his back once more and tried to stifle a moan, unsuccessfully. “Then you should also know that it’s much too risky. Not worth the chance. I’m serious, Rielle.” His already gravelly voice deepened with concern. “You can’t keep coming back here, not just for me, especially not now, considering what’s about to happen to Queen Cassandra.”

Arielle removed a damp white cloth, pretreated with herbal antiseptic from her medicine bag, and began gently dabbing Keitaro’s wounds, cleaning them carefully, one at a time, preparing them for the ointment. When he grimaced beneath her touch, she frowned in apology. “I’m sorry…
I am
…this won’t take long.” She continued to dab at the wounds, taking extra care not to further irritate his already inflamed skin. “And yes,” she added, “I have heard about Cassandra, the fact that she cheated on the king and is soon to be executed for adultery. I can’t say I feel sorry for her, the evil witch.”

Keitaro inclined his head in a serious nod. “Nor can I, but that doesn’t mean I’m anxious to witness the foul event, to see what manner of torture Thane has cooked up for bride number nine.”

Arielle cringed. Every one of Thane’s young brides eventually met with a gruesome fate: If he didn’t accidentally kill them in a murderous rage, he grew tired of them and passed them on to his generals, who already had wives—
correction
, slaves—of their own. And if they managed to escape that horrific fate, he usually had them executed for one flimsy excuse or another. The bottom line was plain: Thane was utterly heartless, needlessly violent, and insanely evil. And as far as the lycan was concerned, women were nothing more than property to be used, abused, and discarded at will. “Hopefully, he will do it cleanly,
swiftly
, this time. Show some mercy for once.”

Keitaro chuckled low in his throat, and the humorous sound was distinctly predatory and raw. “Mercy? From Thane?” He sank further back into the roughened deerskin. “Then you really haven’t heard the latest news.”

Arielle raised her eyebrows in question. She tucked the white cloth back into her bag, scooped a large gob of ointment onto the pads of her index and middle fingers, and began to smooth the healing liniment on Keitaro’s abraded skin. “What news?”

“Thane has decided to execute Cassandra
in the arena
on Sunday.”

Arielle momentarily stopped dressing his wounds and clenched her eyes shut. “In the auditorium?” She blew out an anxious breath. “So he intends to make sport of it for all the other slaves and lycans to see?”

Keitaro nodded. “Yes.”

“And that means—”

“That he will want to use me as the opening act, part of the day’s entertainment.”

Arielle bristled inside and out. She ground her teeth together and continued applying the ointment. Why couldn’t Thane just leave Keitaro alone, just once? By all that was holy, he had played with the male like a prized toy for nearly four hundred years, or at least that’s how legend had it. One would think the king would tire of him eventually, perhaps find a new distraction in one of his human servants, one of the captured rebels, or even an insubordinate lycan. “One of these days, someone is going to kill that evil bastard, and I hope I’m there with a front row seat when it happens.”

Keitaro chuckled despite his pain. “Not as badly as I’d like to be the one to do it.” She pressed too hard on a wound, and he involuntarily jerked his leg in pain.

“Sorry,” she whispered, making a concerted effort to be more gentle.

Keitaro ignored the slip. “If only I could find a way to get to him.” He nodded at the intravenous bag of poisonous fluid, flowing steadily into his veins even as they spoke, and heaved a sigh. “If only I could break free of this poison…for just one night.” His eyes flashed a dangerous crimson red, and Arielle regarded him cautiously. Despite his station and his condition, Keitaro Silivasi was a dangerous predator and an unparalleled warrior; if the male were to ever be given a clean shot at Tyrus Thane, well, it would be hell’s fire and the devil’s vengeance unleashed in one fell swoop. She shuddered at the thought. She stared at the intravenous bag hanging above them, attached securely to a thick lodge pole, and wished like hell she could just disconnect it for him. But it was far too risky. The small monitor was connected to a trigger device of some sort, a detonator. One false move, and everyone would go up in smoke. Besides, the lycans didn’t just booby-trap their apparatus, they also relied heavily on curses and wards to protect their maniacal contraptions—it wasn’t like she could just disable the device or disarm the explosive. It took magic to disarm magic, and Arielle was only human. No one in the Rebel Camp had the skill to unravel a lycanthropic ward. Not to mention, the lycans had one other distinct and profound advantage over the humans born in Mhier: Because they could travel in and out of other dimensions, they had access to modern devices and technologies that the Mhieridians could not even hope to understand or manipulate, like the intravenous apparatus and whatever booby-trap accompanied it. “I’m sorry, Keitaro,” she whispered sadly. “I wish I could do more for you.”

Keitaro shook his head sympathetically. Even in his suffering, he sought to reassure Arielle, and didn’t that just make him one of the most endearing beings she had ever known. “You didn’t create this hell,” he said. “It isn’t your responsibility to fix it.”

Arielle chewed on her bottom lip, wishing she had something useful to say, something truly encouraging, not just lip service. After several pregnant moments had passed, she finally returned to the previous subject. “So, if Thane is planning to make a public sport of his latest wife—to execute her at high-noon, so to speak—and if he’s planning to use you as the opening act for his sadistic games, then who, or what, will you be fighting this time?”

Keitaro seemed to actually perk up, if that was even possible. His tortured yet handsome face grew rigid with anticipation. “Cain Armentieres.”

Arielle’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “
Cain
? Thane’s top alpha general? His closest ally?”

Keitaro nodded. “You really don’t know what happened, do you?”

Arielle shook her head. “Rumor has it that wife number nine, Cassandra Villanosa, was caught cheating on the king, as if that crazy werewolf needs an incentive to go off the deep end
again
. They say Thane walked in on her in the throne-room, of all places, and caught her with—” Her mouth dropped open as she put two and two together. “
Cain
was her lover?”

“None other,” Keitaro agreed, and then he frowned. “Although I think
lover
might be too civilized a word.” He winced as she applied another dollop of ointment to his skin and began to rub it into a welt, this time, on his battered chest.

“I can’t believe that the king’s best friend, his right-hand Alpha, would do something so stupid…so dangerous.”

Keitaro actually smiled then, his dark, intelligent eyes alighting with titillation. “At least there is justice now and then.”

“So that’s why you’re going to be paired in battle with Cain—Thane is planning to use you to punish him.”

“To kill him,” Keitaro supplied, “because there’s probably no one else in Mhier, outside of Thane himself, who can do it.”

“And Thane’s too proud—and self-important—to get his hands dirty,” she said.

Despite himself, Keitaro snarled.

“Then you think Thane should do it himself?” Arielle asked, hardly believing her ears. “Kill a female, no matter who she is?” The thought made her queasy inside: Keitaro was far too noble, far too reasoned, to casually sanction a male killing a female, not unless the circumstances were truly dire.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Keitaro said. “But a real male attends to his own house. He handles his own business.”

Arielle shivered, and then she began to think about the upcoming battle, to picture Keitaro, an ancient vampire, legendary for his fighting skills, going up against an ancient lycan, legendary for his brutality and lack of fair play. “This isn’t a sure win for you, is it?” The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them: Keitaro Silivasi was a legend for a reason, a rare, calculated killer, captured from the house of Jadon and forced to work as a slave in the salt mines for two hundred years, before Thane realized he was a prized, undefeatable combatant. He was one of the best warriors the lycans had ever seen: brutal, exacting, and lethal in his swift execution. He didn’t need a human female questioning his prowess, casting doubt on the outcome of the upcoming battle. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean—”

“That I could die in this battle?” His vivid eyes softened. “It is only truth, Rielle. Cain is one of the oldest werewolves in Mhier, and he’s a vicious son of a bitch with nothing left to lose.”

“No,” Arielle insisted, refusing to even consider Keitaro’s death as a potential outcome. “He isn’t your equal—
no one is
—I just meant that you are always in danger when you step into the arena. That’s all.”

Her hand slipped quietly into his, and he squeezed it softly before reluctantly letting go. “It’s okay, Rielle.” He shut his eyes and took several deep breaths as the healing ointment began to work on his wounds, to gently ease the pain. “I know what you meant, and honestly? I have never been more eager to regain my strength, to drink the rancid blood the king will give me right before the battle, no matter how foul and abhorrent, in order to dispatch my opponent.” He tightened his chained hands into fists instinctively. “I have been waiting 480 years to murder Cain Armentieres. It will be a sweet victory, one I will not relinquish to fear of death. Not when it will free us both.”

Before Arielle could respond, a set of heavy footsteps approached outside the door, rustling a pile of dry leaves on the ground. Arielle stuffed all of her healing supplies beneath Keitaro’s blanket, even as the vampire drew to immediate attention.

“Take my hand again,
now
. And. Don’t. Even. Breathe,” he commanded.

The moment Keitaro snatched Arielle’s hand, she felt a visceral infusion of power transfer from his body into hers; and then just like that, she was rendered invisible by the powerful being beside her—and just how had he drawn upon such power in his weakened, compromised state, anyhow? With all the diamond that was flowing through his veins, he should have been incapable of hearing the lycan’s approach, let alone doing something about it. Rielle wept inside. She knew the cost of performing such a feat would cost Keitaro dearly: physically, mentally, and energetically. His pain would return with a vengeance.