Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (29 page)

Kris clenched his teeth and breathed deep, cleansing breaths. He’d been trying to hold it down for hours and thought once his feet hit solid ground that he had succes
s
fully done so, but without warning the rolling
started,
and he felt his blood pressure drop. It was a toss-up of whether or not he was going to vomit or pass out. Thankfully, it was the former because if he
fainted 
like a pansy in front of these two beasts of
men,
he never would have lived it
down.

With the worst of it out of his system and feeling mildly improved, Kris looked up from his hunched position and took in the macho don’t-give-two-shits expression E
r
ias depicted, and sneered. “How can you possibly tell what nightfall is down here?” He swept his hand out to enco
m
pass their surroundings. “There’s no sun,” he said cockily. Straightening, he spun around to survey the area. “No moon,” he observed. “Nope. Nothing but endless plains of red sand beaches and foul smelling stagnated water. We’re in the middle of nowhere, gentlemen.”

“Actually,” Behr tossed over his shoulder as he b
e
gan trudging ahead, “we are
smack-dab in
the middle of Hell.” Unsheathing his sword in one fluid motion, he glanced over his shoulder to the two men. “And you’re about to get a
front-row seat
to the show.”

Getting his attention, Kris looked on past Behr and saw the blur of motion just as the harsh sound of barking dogs penetrated his ears. “Oh, hell.”

Cheyenne nearly sobbed as Atheros was dropped from his shackles onto the dank floor. He had been brutally beaten, savage gashes that ran the length of his arms, legs, and back oozed black blood at an alarming rate. Was that how she looked when Leseot ravaged her body with is whips and chains, knives and claws? She suddenly unde
r
stood why Atheros was unable to look at her afterwards. It was a horrific
sight,
and she wanted to wail and scream her protests, her hurt, her compassion. The man was so strong as to utter not a word as his limp, injured body was dragged to the center of the cell and tossed in a
heap.

What was happening? She thought for sure Leseot was going to take him away for his final attack.
Instead,
he left him lying there in a pool of his own blood and walked away, exiting the cell, whistling a cheery tune as he went. The torchlight extinguished a moment later plunging them into impenetrable darkness once
again.

Cheyenne listened to Atheros’s labored breaths and her own erratic heartbeat. The scurrying of tiny, clawed feet grew louder as they closed in. She knew then what Leseot meant to do with Atheros.

Toeing her feet as far out as her legs could stretch, she searched for Atheros’s listless body based off her memory of where she had last seen him when she’d had the benefit of light. In the cramped confines of the cell, he wasn’t far off. She just needed the right angle…and a few more inches added to her height.

Damn.

“Atheros,” she whispered into the darkness, afraid of calling attention to them. “Atheros, you must hear me. Tell me you hear me.”

Panic roared up inside her when he refused to a
n
swer her. She was terrified of what might become of him if she couldn’t get him mobile. The scurrying became
louder,
and she could tell by the whispers of tiny bodies across the loose dirt floor that their numbers were
many.

“Atheros! They are coming!” she whispered frant
i
cally. “You have to get up.”

A soft moan met her
ears,
and she let out a sigh of relief that he was still with her. She jerked her
chains,
though she knew it would be for
naught. She'd
already been down that road…many times, and she knew it was wort
h
less to
try, but
she couldn’t stand by and let something like this happen to someone she had grown to consider a friend right in front of her. Whether she could see or not, she wasn’t deaf and that would haunt her for the rest of her short
life.

“Atheros, listen to me. The rats, they’re coming. You have to get up now. Come to me. Stand with me.”

Oh, God, they would eat him alive if he didn’t li
s
ten. He had to get up. He had to save himself because she certainly couldn’t. She had seen the extent of his
injuries,
though, and the worry that he wouldn’t be able to find the strength to pull himself together was unbearable. So when she heard his soft reply, it was music to her
ears.

“Just let it be, love.” His voice quavered through his pain, was garbled without use of a tongue to provide clarity to his
words, but
he did his best. “I am utterly weak and feeble in my current
state.”

Atheros heard her silent sobs as she tried to retain that fierce strength and determination he had grown to love and admire in their short time knowing each other. She would cry for him? A man who had done nothing to earn, much less deserve, such kindness and generosity? It made his blackened, unbeating heart swell in his battered chest. “Cry not over me. I am not worth the effort.” Her soft cries grew steadily stronger. “Truly, this fate is much less cruel than the torture I have already endured. I am just thankful that I have seen
the light
through the darkness before death claimed me.” He smiled sadly, knowing that his garbled words were just as lost on her through the pitch expanse as the tight smile he
wore.

The small squeaks became more insistent as the scent of fresh blood caught the humid air and carried it to the rodent’s eager noses. They picked up their
pace,
and Cheyenne knew exactly when they hit their target. Atheros began thrashing, trying futilely to toss them away as they nipped at his tender
flesh.

She couldn’t stand it. Hearing his agonized
grunt
of pain as they attacked him. It tore at her psyche and burned in her chest. She couldn’t let him die like this. It was too horrible, too
monstrous, but
she didn’t know what she could do. As she thought it over, she could only figure one thing, and it wasn’t exactly a way to prevent what was ha
p
pening or even stop
it, but
it was the only way she could ensure that he wouldn’t be
alone.

That neither of them would be alone.

Thinking briefly on her life, the children she would never have, the doting husband she would never marry, her friends and all the good times they’d had together, she r
e
solved herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be making it home.

At least not in this lifetime.

Turning her face into her arm, Cheyenne bit down on her bicep as hard as she could bear until the metallic taste of her own blood filled her mouth, then withdrew, a
l
lowing it to spill down her side and trickle onto the floor.

It didn’t take long for the critters to scent a second source from which to gorge themselves on. The first bite to her exposed toe shocked her to her
senses,
and before she had the thought to reconsider the stupidity of what she had just done, they were swarming up her legs and clamping down on her flesh with their sharp, curved
teeth.

Erias panted, raking his hands down his arms to squeegee the
blood-soaked 
leather clean. He brushed at his pants, ridding them of the corded intestinal remains. It truly was a dirty job he
had.

“Oh, man,” Kris breathed, feeling shaky all over again. “I think I might be sick.”

Behr nearly laughed. The guy had been vomiting for the last several minutes. It was a wonder he had an
y
thing left in him to
chuck, but
the fact that he was strong because he had seen and been through so much, sunk
in,
and suddenly it didn’t seem so humorous. If only he could r
e
turn to a time when he was naïve, when he was reserved, a
gentleman, but
then he almost did laugh. When had he ever been a gentleman? He’d been bedding whores and stealing from every cart and shop he could get his slick fi
n
gers in since he was a small
boy.

No, he wouldn’t laugh at a man who had somehow skated through life as innocent as a wee babe in comparison to the world he had been living in for the past few cent
u
ries. It was enough to spark a hint of jealousy in him.

“Suck it up, boy.” Behr was unusually short with the
guy,
but he didn’t really care. For
some reason,
thinking about the past got him a little surly. “We have ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it.” Guiding his sword back into its scabbard, he stepped over the mounds of se
v
ered hell hound flesh and cut up the ground with long, pu
r
poseful
strides.

Kris wasn’t sure what the hell had crawled up his butt and died, but Behr sure was acting like a…well, bear for lack of a better word. He was moody and uptight all
of a sudden,
and if he wasn’t mistaken, the glances he kept cas
t
ing his way every twenty yards or so were enough to set a man on
fire.

Considering the sweltering heat bearing down on him like a raging inferno, that wasn’t too hard to imagine.

Sweat poured down his temples and soaked into the collar of his shirt. His jeans felt heavy and matted to his thighs.
It
’s
hotter than Hades!
He
thought, swabbing his brow with is shirt
sleeves, then
laughed to himself over the poorly attempted
joke.

“What’s the dopey smile all about?” Erias asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

Kris shrugged. “Just thinking.”

“I can’t imagine what could bring a smile to any man’s face down here.” Erias’s face was grim as he too got lost in thought.

He hadn’t been back here since he first started out as a warrior and needed training. Dehstroy was his mentor. Hard, brutal, unforgiving. He had taken him under his wing, taught him the ins and outs of fighting and how to get the money shot on the particularly nasty beasts hanging around these parts. He never knew the man to smile, but then, what was there to smile about when you were se
n
tenced to eternity in the depths of Hell
itself?

His first battle had been against hell hounds like the ones they had just finished slashing their way through. He had just finished the grueling training the men of the Brot
h
erhood were forced to endure, his skin in tatters and short a few pints of
blood. His
muscles were weak from weeks of endless practice, when he was turned loose.

Dehstroy stood alongside
Persephone,
who had d
e
cided to make an appearance for the first time since the change. Hers was a face he had welcomed at the time, not knowing the foul creature she was beneath the
mask.

A cruel smile lit her
face,
and she waggled her fi
n
gers at him. His mouth crooked, intent on returning the ge
s
ture when a sound of scraping and snarling sounded behind
him.

Erias whirled around with just enough time to and glimpsed several dogs descending on him before he was floored by their massive paws. His back hit the red sand with a
thwap
!
And
he watched in horror as his sword ski
t
tered just out of
reach.

He struggled against their weight, his arms shaking in
protest, their
jaws snapping at his face. Pushing back against their thickly corded chests, he summoned the r
e
serves of his strength, bashing his head into one hound’s face and shoving the beast from
him.

Shaking off the unexpected blow, Erias had just enough time to recover his footing and retrieved his sword before the hounds were stalking him again.

He heard Persephone cheering behind him and thought for a moment that she was rooting him on. He f
o
cused on her words, searching for the strength to continue, but was disgusted with what he heard.

“Get him! Yes! Get
him,
Cerberus! Take a chunk out of his hide!”

“Cerberus?” Erias said on a low breath. Then, with stunned realization, he finally took in what he was up against.