Pleasure of a Dark Prince (43 page)

MacRieve was unseeing, his eyes blinded to reality. When Cruach handed him a Cromite sword, he accepted it.

The robed men began chanting,
“To him we sacrifice, for him our cherished… to him we sacrifice…”

“Take her head, Lykae,” Cruach intoned. “To me you sacrifice, for me your cherished.”

“No, MacRieve!” She strained against the bonds, ignoring the pain as the rusted metal cleaved into her skin. “Fight this! I’m Lucia—you don’t want to hurt me!”

With a chilling smile, Cruach added, “I bet we’ll find your meat is tender.”

Blood began streaming from her wrists. She could almost… almost squeeze one hand out of a manacle.

MacRieve crossed over to the altar, standing at her shoulders. Positioned there, because he was going to cut off her head.

“Don’t do it, MacRieve—you can’t do this to me!”

“Do it, MacRieve—you must do this for me!”
Lucia was gazing up at Garreth, pleading for him to end her.

Trying to reassure her, he told her again, “I’m in love with you, Lousha.”

Her eyes were filled with dread, tears spilling over. “If you love me, then why won’t you end my suffering?” She feared he wouldn’t? “End
me
.”

“Aye. I will.” Crom Cruach was bestowing power on him, filling him with the strength to do what needed to be done.

“Do it, Garreth!” she said more urgently, nearly screaming.

He raised the proud sword over his head. It would land directly across her delicate neck. And her suffering would end. “I do this for you.”

She was writhing with anticipation, eyes wide, screaming, “Now, MacRieve! Yes, please!”

“Love you.”
The sword came down, slicing clean.

FORTY-NINE

“MacRieve!” she screamed, watching helplessly as he drove the sword into his side—the sword that had been aimed so fixedly for her neck. In midair, he’d changed his grip, shoving it into himself instead of her.

He staggered back, dropping to his knees, the blade still planted inside him. With his body visibly shuddering, he yanked the sword free, throwing it across the cavern. Then with his hands squeezing his head so hard she thought he’d crack his skull, he roared in agony.

“Garreth, no!”

“That was… fascinating,” Cruach said, staring at MacRieve. “I could control
him
, but not the beast inside him—the one that would rather die than harm its mate. Still, the damage is done. I’d already implanted in his mind the memory of your execution. The memory of his killing you.” The fiend laughed. “Right now he believes he’s rocking your headless body, feeling your skin cooling against his as your blood drains away.”

“Lousha, doona leave me,” Garreth rasped, his breaths ragged. He reverted to Gaelic, uttering anguished words.
So sorry… love you… joining you.
His voice wretched, he pleaded for her to come back to him.
“I’m beggin’ you, lass.”

Tears ran from her eyes as she choked out the words, “Garreth, it’s not real.
Not real.”

He was unhearing, beginning to dig his claws into the dirt around him.

“Oh, now your Lykae’s turning,” Cruach said. “The beast is rising, roiling in horror and confusion, gathering the…
pieces
of you to his body. How touching.”

“Cruach, I will kill you for this!” Lucia lifted up against the chains. “You’ll never leave this place! You belong here.” When Cruach closed in on her, she screamed, “You’re not a god—you’re a worm in the earth, a parasite!” She spat at his face.

His long tongue darted out and collected the spittle from his chin. Ignoring her words, he murmured, “What to do with you? I could reclaim you or dine on your flesh.” He leered down at her with those yellow, slitted eyes. “I know. I will do
both
. At the same time. Take from you as I give.” He stepped back, signaling the four robed Cromites to approach the altar. “And since you’ve become such a slattern, you won’t mind if I share.”

The Cromites neared, their eyes covetous, as depraved as their god—

Suddenly, black claws appeared, projecting from the
front
of Cruach’s throat, then slashing to the side. Cruach yelled, gurgling, trying to hold his head to his neck. As she gaped in bewilderment, his blood spewed over her, into her eyes.

MacRieve had stabbed through Cruach’s neck from behind? Cruach’s slitted eyes were dilated with shock as he stumbled toward the altar.

The remaining Cromites wailed, then drew their swords to attack MacRieve. Cruach lurched ever closer. He was gravely injured, but the wound wouldn’t be enough to kill him.

If she could just free her hands, she could try to get MacRieve out of here. Her gaze darted for something, some tool to help her—

Wait, what the… ?
Struggling for comprehension, she blinked at her quiver.

Inside it was an arrow just like the dieumort, with old-fashioned flights. She swallowed.
Another
dieumort? How… Why…?

Oh, Freya, the never-emptying quiver! Was it giving her another chance, providing one more shot at Cruach? The arrow had been replicated. But would the Banemen’s awesome power follow?

How to reach it?
An idea….
The skin on her wrist was now serrated all the way around. So she took a fortifying breath—then yanked her arm back with all the power she possessed. She screamed in agony as she skinned her hand, peeling it clean to her fingers like a glove.

But she’d freed that arm.

As MacRieve faced off against the Cromites, she gritted her teeth and forced her ruined fingers to close around the new dieumort. Once she’d drawn it free, the same power as from the first surged through her.

When Cruach fell to his knees before her at the altar, her arm shot out, planting the tip right into his black heart.

He stared down at his chest in disbelief. Extending out from the arrow, ash began to replace his scaly skin, spreading like a poison through his monstrous form.

Crom Cruach was dying… truly
dying
.

As she beheld the end of her nightmare, she sneered, “Do you feel it, husband?”

He faced her. With his last breaths, he grated, “The beast… saved him from me”—blood bubbled at his lips—“and will forever keep him…
from you
.”

Just as MacRieve finished the last of the Cromites, Cruach collapsed, his eyes as lifeless as the corpses’ all around them.

His hulking body disintegrated, becoming a layer of ash atop the blood pooled on the floor.
The Broken Bloody One is no more.

With his death, MacRieve’s infection would eventually burn off. He could be saved—from this. But could Cruach have been right about the beast?

“Garreth, I’m right here!” she cried, yanking on her other hand. “Scot, come back to me!”

MacRieve had told her,
The beast rises too much, maddening its Lykae host forever
. Now his eyes flashed from that white to the palest blue and back. And he never saw her.

Was it already too late?

“MacRieve, I’m alive! You have to come back to me!” Her voice broke on a sob as she cried, “Garreth, I
need
you.”

He gazed back at where he thought her headless body was. As a tear tracked down his blood-splattered face, he dug his claws into his chest, ripping through his own skin.

Though she screamed for him, he ran from this place, yelling from deep within his lungs, a deafening roar of misery.

When Lachlain and Bowen finally spied Garreth in these bleak woods, he was raging, clawing himself. As they closed in on him, Lachlain stared at his brother in shock.

Blood covered him and his tattered clothes. The flesh of his chest was maimed. His eyes were an opaque white and wet. With tears?

“Grab his arms!” Lachlain told Bowen. “Garreth, stop this! What has happened?”

In a harsh beastly voice, Garreth muttered, “Begged me… to leave… said I wasn’t strong enough… her
head
.” He bellowed with pain, thrashing from their grip.

“Where is your mate?”

He roared,
“Dead!”

Bowen hissed in a breath. “Oh, Christ. I know this well. We have to get him out of here.”

“No, this canna be right,” Lachlain said. “He’s been maddened. Look at his eyes. Garreth, why do you think she’s dead?”

Garreth choked out, “Slammed the blade… through her neck. Ah, gods,
her head
!”

“Who did this to her?” Lachlain’s own beast was stirring to avenge his brother’s mate.

Bowen’s eyes were turning as well. “Tell us who!”

“Me! I cut off her fucking head!”

“Ah, Garreth, no!” Fear for his brother gripped Lachlain, like a hand wrapped round his throat. “You could no’ hurt her.”

“I killed… my Lousha.” With a yell, he flung himself free from their grip, clawing at his chest again.

“Damn you, Garreth, stop this!” But he wouldn’t.

The beast wanted to rip out its aching heart.

As they grappled with him, Lachlain saw the milky white of Garreth’s eyes turn to the palest blue.

It’s taking over.
“Fight it, Garreth! You have tae fight this.”

He gazed up at Lachlain. Just before Garreth turned irreversibly, before the beast claimed him for good, he rasped, “Brother…
I’m lost
.”

FIFTY

Into the desolate woods Lucia had run with her bow, her hands still flayed and dripping blood from escaping those bonds.

She’d left behind that lair forever, running from a forsaken past into her future—with MacRieve.
If I can find him… and bring him back.

For two days, she’d searched this forest, tracking him. He’d run in a frenzy, with no rhyme or reason. She might have lost his trail if it hadn’t been for his claw marks on trees.

Lucia couldn’t fathom the pain and loss he was feeling, the confusion. At repeated intervals, her eyes would tear up, and then she’d berate herself for being weak. He
needed
her, needed her to be strong.

Now, at last, a break—his footprints in the muddy ground! And beside them, the prints of two shoed men, two
big
men, as towering as Garreth was.

In her mind flashed the memory of Lachlain standing tall next to Garreth in that cell.

The tracks changed. The shoed men had dragged him away.

Garreth had once told her,
My brother used to get
me out of scrape after scrape.
If the witch Mariketa had given Bowen and Lachlain the coordinates to this place, they could have found him….

Her eyes narrowed. The Lykae had taken Garreth.

They’d taken him home.

Kinevane Castle, Scotland

Lachlain and Emma gaped at the security feed of the mystically-protected front gates of Kinevane. Realization had just dawned on both of them that the rain-drenched female who’d been frantically banging on the impervious gates was—

“It’s Aunt Luce!” Emma cried. “I told you she was alive! We would’ve felt it if she’d died.”

“That is the
reasonable
one?” It
was
Garreth’s mate. If nothing else, Lachlain recognized the bow slung over her shoulder.

“Let me the hell in!”
—two rapid kicks—
“I know he’s in there!”
With a boxer’s jab, she punched the proud Lykae seal in the center.

Lachlain let out a stunned breath. “She
lives
.”

Emma hit the intercom button. “Two seconds, Aunt Luce!”

“Aye, it’s freezing outside, so let’s get her the hell in—” Emma had already disappeared; Lachlain hated it when she traced without him.

Exactly two seconds later, Emma had returned with her sodden aunt.

Lucia wasted no time. “Where is he?” There was a wild glint in her eyes, a dangerous one, and Lachlain felt the tiniest spark of hope for his brother.

Though I know better.
There was no record in their clan’s thousands of years of annals of a Lykae ever coming back from this state. And Lachlain had already had Bowen bring Mariketa, the most powerful witch in existence, to Kinevane. She’d tried to help, but with her magicks bound, she could achieve nothing.