Rise to Submit [Rise of the Changelings, Book 4] (Siren Publishing Epic Romance, ManLove) (10 page)

“Try to get some rest,” Rick said as he walked toward the door. “He’ll be asleep for a while. It won’t do you any good to be sleep deprived when he wakes up.”

Mason wasn’t shielding his emotions. He knew Rick and Bryson could scent his protectiveness toward Ian. He wasn’t trying very hard to hide it. “I will.”

Once he was alone, Mason took a seat in the chair next to the bed. It was wooden, and not too comfortable, but he wanted to watch over Ian. He wasn’t sure why. The guy was asleep, harmful to no one, not even himself.

But the desperate plea not to let Ian fall asleep bothered Mason. It was an odd thing for Ian to beg for. He could understand if the man had pleaded for Bryson not to inject him. There were a lot of people afraid of needles. He even knew Ian thought that he might be taken advantage of in his sleep, but Mason had scented that protest as weak.

No, there was something Ian was truly frightened of, something that went beyond Mason’s understanding. He rested his elbows on his thighs, curling his hands into fists and resting his chin on those fists as he watched Ian sleep.

Even though Ian was as thin as a rail, the man was stunning. He had the same color hair as Dorian, maybe a shade darker, and it fell in waves to his shoulders. He looked in desperate need of a cut, but honestly, Mason liked the longer hair.

Ian gave a small gasp.

Mason’s body locked into place, nothing moving, not a muscle twitching when the scent of blood began to fill his lungs. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but he knew it was Ian’s. There was no way Mason could forget that sweet fragrance. It called to him, begging his changeling to unleash itself.

Mason stood so fast that he knocked the chair over and began to back away from the bed as his eyes flickered over Ian’s body. The man was still in a deep sleep, and he didn’t see any cuts or even a bloody nose, but the scent was becoming stronger.

“Bryson!”

Mason held his breath after he shouted for the medic. His entire body was thrumming to life, fighting to change into his jaguar form. It wasn’t something he could allow. The werewolves prided themselves on their strength, their hunting skills, and their leadership, but it was the werecats—the entire feline breed—whose skills for hunting down prey with honed accuracy was unsurpassed.

Mason wouldn’t allow himself to hunt Ian down.

He wouldn’t allow himself to kill a man who was fighting to stay alive.

Hurrying to the window, Mason flung it open and shoved his head out, sucking down the cool winter air, struggling not to go to the bed and lick Ian’s entire body before he took a bite.

A very deadly bite.

“What the hell is going on?” Bryson yelled as the door slammed opened and the werewolf ran in. “Why is he bleeding?”

Mason’s fingers curled into the windowsill, his teeth gritting together as he fought tooth and nail not to shift. This was worse than the first time he scented Ian’s blood. There was more, so much more for his werejaguar to indulge in. His beast tried to show him how much Mason would enjoy—no!

“I don’t know,” he answered as his fingers splintered the wood. “I was sitting there watching him sleep when I smelled his blood. Fix him! You have to stop him from—” Mason shook his head, ridding himself of the images—“bleeding.”

Glancing back into the room, Mason saw Bryson turn Ian on his side. The wounds on the man’s back had reopened, blood dripping from more than one cut. His jaguar yowled, almost forcing Mason to move closer, to sniff, to taste. “How in the fuck did his wounds reopen when he’s been lying there, unmoving?”

Bryson shook his head as he finished turning Ian over. He grabbed the towels Freedman had brought into the room and began to wipe at the wounds, but it seemed the more he wiped, the more Ian bled.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bryson said as he worked diligently to stop the flow of blood. “It’s as if he is being attacked in his sleep. I can’t get the wounds to stop bleeding.”

“Maybe he has some kind of blood disorder,” Freedman spoke, “something that thins his blood and stops it from coagulating.”

Bryson shook his head as he threw the bloody towel on the floor and grabbed a clean one. “If that were the case, then you wouldn’t have gotten them to stop bleeding when he was first brought here.”

Mason stood by the window, fighting his basest reaction, remembering Ian’s pleas. The man had begged not to be put to sleep.

Had he known this would happen?

Mason wasn’t sure what
this
was, but he had a feeling Ian did.

“If we don’t get him to stop bleeding, he’s going to die,” Bryson said. “I can’t stop the flow.”

“Wake him,” Mason snarled from the window.

Bryson and Freedman glanced up at him. “And what good would that do?” the medic asked as he tossed the soaked towel and grabbed another.

“I’m not sure, but wake him. Please, trust me on this.” Because if they didn’t, Mason wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out.

Bryson stared at him a moment longer and then nodded. “I’ll go get my bag.”

Mason watched Bryson leave, and then his eyes snapped to Ian. He prayed he was right, because if he wasn’t, Ian was going to die.

By bleeding out…or worse.

“You come back to me with nothing!” Newman cracked the whip, the air hissing around the metal tentacles of the vampire’s favored flog right before it sliced into Ian’s back. “I told you to find out what they were up to!”

Ian stood there, trying his best to crawl into his mind, to hide from the pain, to hide from Newman, but the whip wouldn’t allow him such reprieve. “I tried!” he cried out as the metal carved his back and made Ian think a torch was being pressed into his flesh.

His hands were above his head, but they were tied and Ian was hanging by a hook. His wrists were throbbing, and Ian could feel the wet, warm blood dripping down his back. The unrelenting pain was merciless. Ian already didn’t have enough padding on his bones. The vampires had damn near succeeded in starving him to death. With his skin paper-thin, Ian prayed the lashes didn’t end up killing him.

But then again, it would stop the torture he knew Newman was gleefully enjoying, even if his tone was brutal.

Newman knew Ian couldn’t withstand this level of pain. This wasn’t the first time the sadistic man had peeled his skin apart.

The whip halted and Newman walked around Ian until he was standing in front of him, his eyes blazing red. “You will get me the information I want or I swear I will kill you. There is nowhere you can hide from me. As you can see, not even your dreams are safe.”

Ian trembled as he hung like a side of meat, Newman walking behind him and letting the whip crack over and over again until Ian felt the edges of his vision blur.

“Get me what I want, human, or you will wish you were dead by the time I am done with you.”

Ian screamed at the top of his lungs as his body flailed about. The pain was so intense that he wished he would hurry up and die.

“The bleeding is slowing.”

Ian lay there on his stomach, crying into the pillow as every nerve ending he owned felt like it was being carved from his body. The pain was melting him, his mind fragmenting, trying to shut down, but Ian fought it. If he passed out, Newman would find him, and he just might make good on his promise. Ian gritted his teeth to the point his entire face hurt. He grunted loudly as he struggled to breathe, tears and sweat mingling.

“Can you understand me, Ian?”

It was Bryson. The voice was close to his ear, penetrating through the pain-filled fog his mind was enmeshed in. “Y–Y–Yes.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to wake you. Do you know why you are bleeding in your sleep?”

Oh, god.
How in the hell could Newman make his dream beatings manifest in the real world? It was impossible, yet Ian lay here feeling the same fire enveloping his body as he had when he was hanging in front of Newman.

It couldn’t be.

Yet it was.

“N–N–No.” If he told anyone what was going on, Newman would surely bring so much pain and torture to Ian that he begged for death weeks before he found his final peace. He didn’t want to be the vampire’s puppet, but he had no choice.

Ian wasn’t a strong man to begin with, and Newman preyed on his weakness like a disease. He was exploiting it and turning it on him.

Ian screamed, trying to release some of the pain through his voice, through his cries, through his tears, but it seemed nothing was working. He lay there feeling like one large exposed nerve.

“I can give you something—”

“No,” Ian cried.

“It will ease the pain, but won’t put you to sleep,” Bryson promised.

Ian doubted there was any drug out there that could ease his pain. Not the pain that was tearing him down and leaving him a husk of a man. In that moment, it was the worst of Ian’s life, leaving him as helpless as a babe around not vampires, but men who looked at him as weak prey, as a junkie, judging him and breaking Ian’s spirit quicker than any of the vampires ever could. For these men were the epitome of strength and courage, neither of which Ian possessed.

“You should be feeling a little better in a minute,” Bryson said. “I didn’t give you a high dosage, and the meds should only knock the edge off, but I’m assuming that’s better than what you are feeling now.”

“I just don’t get it,” Mason said, his voice coming from across the room. “How can he bleed from sleeping?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Bryson said.

“Can I talk to you downstairs?”

Ian glanced up to see Rick staring at Mason. His heart beat a little faster, wondering if Rick had any clue of what was going on. There was no possible way, but Ian wouldn’t bet his life on the confidence that Rick was clueless about Newman was visiting him in his unconscious state.

Even if the man did know, Ian was going to die, because he couldn’t stay awake forever.

Eventually he would fall asleep, and when Ian did, Newman would be waiting for him.

* * * *

Mason watched as Rick paced the backyard, his chestnut-brown brows pulled down into a deep frown. He paused, shook his head a few times, as if working out a problem in his head, and then paced some more.

Sasha, the alpha of the leopard changelings, was leaning against the house, his arms tucked over his chest, watching Rick with intense green eyes. “Did you call us out here to watch you fret?” Sasha finally asked.

Rick drew up short, giving Sasha his full attention. “How can a man be hurt while he sleeps?”

From Sasha’s confused expression, Mason concluded that the man hadn’t been told of Ian and what had happened to him. He looked like he considered his answer before he spoke. “Someone sneaks in and attacks.”

“No.” Rick shook his head and then glanced at Mason. “Ian was guarded. He was given a chemical mixture that put him into a deep sleep. All of a sudden his wounds began to open. They were bleeding and Bryson couldn’t get the bleeding back under control until he woke Ian.”

“And then his bleeding eased?” Sasha asked, his tone a mixture of disbelief and puzzlement.

Rick nodded. “It was as if he were being attacked while he slept. No one was standing there beating him, yet it looked as if his wounds were being reopened like a whip scoring his back. How in the hell is that possible?”

Mason turned the scene over and over in his mind, but he couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation. He had seen the wounds literally slice open, more than one at a time. Even the knowledge that Ian had to wake up still stumped Mason. It was more of a feeling than any concrete idea.

“It’s the vampires,” Omar said from the porch. Mason had been so entrenched in thought that he hadn’t noticed the werewolf walk onto the back porch.

Sasha finally pushed away from the house, giving Omar a look that questioned the man’s intelligence. “How can they attack the human in his sleep?”

Omar maneuvered around the railing and descended the steps, eyeing each man with a stern look as he walked. “What do we know about vampires, other than the basic facts? We are well aware that looking one of them straight in the eyes can enthrall us. That’s a proven fact. We also know they don’t breathe and their hearts don’t beat. Their saliva is an aphrodisiac even to us changelings, although vampires don’t care for the taste of our blood. Beyond that, we are pretty clueless.”

“So you think they can what, dream walk?” Sasha asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“The Greeks believe in Morpheus, a god of dreams. Ancient Egyptians believed in the power of dreams to bring messages from their many gods. It was referred to as dream scrying. Ancient societies in the bible saw dreams as prophetic. So, would it be too farfetched to think a vampire could use those same dreams to enter into Ian’s mind? Why is it hard to believe that they could make the vision so real that Ian’s physical body reacted to anything the vampire did to him?”

“Like whipping him,” Mason concluded. “You’re saying if his mind believes that it is happening that it will manifest itself in the real world?”

“The mind is a very powerful thing.” Omar tucked his hands into the front pockets of his trousers. “I do believe that if Ian thinks a vampire is truly harming him, then his body is reacting to whatever the vampire is doing to him.”