The Ring Bearer (22 page)

The friction of every cell in her body simultaneously vibrating.

It wasn’t pain yet, at least not anymore than stretching ones sore muscles is pain. It was the promise of pain: the pressure before the cut, the bend before the break. He couldn’t imagine what it felt like, but if the past was any indication, she now fully understood what he was capable of.    

44

“That was a warning shot, Efrat. I’m an excellent marksman,” Belus called out from the door. “I owe you that much for saving my life, but that’s the only concession I’ll offer you.”

Efrat had ripped his shirt and cinched his bleeding arm. She remembered that he had basic knowledge of first aid. Like all good soldiers do. He didn’t answer Belus, instead he just threw out a bolt over the island.

Efrat turned his attention back to her hands. The ice was starting to melt on its own. She wasn’t sure why. She was in slightly less danger, but not by much.

“I know you don’t want to lose your hands Efrat,” Belus yelled out. Efrat paused noting an appreciation for Belus’s observation. “I saw the disgust in your eyes. I know you wouldn’t willingly handicap yourself, but kidnapping Cori isn’t going to get you sympathy. Danato doesn’t take kindly to threats against his girl.”

“This isn’t about gaining sympathy,” Efrat yelled back. “It’s about freedom.”

“We’ll never let you go Efrat, not like this.”

“Not freedom from you! Freedom from this!” Efrat let out a blast that blinded Cori for a moment, and left the hair on her head standing on end. “I want control and I don’t want to give up my hands to do it.”

“How is Cori going to help you with that?”

Efrat looked to her quizzically. The answer he found on her face, made him smile. “The rings, Belus,” Efrat answered. “Didn’t you ever wonder how all this got started? The time jumping. Jill’s memories. It’s all because of the rings. She’s immune to my power because of them. If they can do that for her, maybe they can contain the power for me.”

“This is the first I’m hearing of this,” Belus said. Cori could hear the condescension in his voice.

“Belus, I can’t take them off! He’s going to cut them off! Come in and shoot this—!” Efrat leapt on her stomach giving her a partial Heimlich maneuver before covering her mouth.

“The doctors will reattach her appendages. She’s the only one that can help me!” Efrat yelled in his defense.

“Wrong,” Belus’s voice was quiet, but he was closer. Cori tipped her head back and found him right in front of the couch unprotected by barriers, with his gun firmly aimed at the floor. “I’m the only one that can help you.”

45

With a degree of difficulty, Daniel released Frederique from his hold. The cool feeling in his body made him shiver, but again, it was nothing to slow his function. The fem-wolf felt the change and took several steps back.

He expected her to continue to retreat with her tail between her legs, but she didn’t. She glanced at Nevia who was still leaning on the wall, though she hadn’t managed to keep her gun holstered. When Frederique turned her attention back to Daniel she was smiling.

“You won’t always be there to protect her,” she growled quiet enough that Nevia may not have heard it.

“Yes, I will,” Daniel said resolutely even though he didn’t really believe he could be.

Frederique stepped forward with the swagger of a woman and ironically a cat, all in one. She stopped inches from him, showing no fear of his eyes. She was the third woman that showed no reaction to his abysmal eyes.

He waited for her to offer up her verbal threat, but instead she reached to his groin. Fearing what he had previously witnessed of her male ministrations, he started to pull away. She wrapped her hand around his back to hold him steady and plied tender but firm pressure to him. He couldn’t begin to formulate the words he needed to question her, but managed to get out a curse before she pushed her lips to his and forced her tongue in his mouth.

Daniel wasn’t the type to push a woman away, but he also wasn’t the type to tongue a complete stranger. Well, yes, actually he was that type, but recently he had grown attached to a certain hand in his crotch, and a certain tongue in his mouth, and Frederique didn’t belong to either of them.

He offered Frederique a push while he pulled himself free of her tongue. She hardly moved away, but she did release his groin. A bitter sweet moment, no matter how much he preferred Nevia.

“I won’t make this offer again,” Frederique purred. “Come with me now and I’ll
let
you convince me not to kill your little friend.”

Daniel wasn’t sure his face could display enough shock for her offer. “Are you bolloxed? I’m not going with a chancer like you.”

“I won’t promise not to bite, but I will promise not to draw blood.” She drew back taking his hand. “Come now,” she glanced at Nevia again, but he didn’t dare look. Even if she didn’t see them, she certainly smelled what was going on. Frederique’s musk was hard to miss. “We can work this out right now and I won’t kill your friend.”

Daniel was about to tell her to go to hell, but a thought occurred to him. The simplicity of it was appealing. All he had to do was shag Frederique and he could be Nevia’s hero. That sounded reasonable: sleep with another woman to protect the woman you really wanted to be with.

Simple.

“She hasn’t stipulated that no one would kill me,” Nevia chimed in from her wall. He looked back at her and found her gun sloppily hanging over the elbow of her crossed arm. She was looking at the floor or from her perspective the blackness that should be the floor. “And she’s only offering not to kill me. She might certainly insist on maiming me a little.”   

Daniel looked back at Frederique who was practically drooling from the snarl she was baring. Nevia was right, and he was a lecherous fool. He ripped his hand away.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Frederique. I don’t give a feck about your werewolf politics. I don’t care if your retarded second niece rules the council. I don’t care if Callin gets his boy or doesn’t.” He glanced back at Nevia again. “But I do care if she lives or dies. I do care if someone tries to hurt her.”

Frederique nodded at him. “So be it,” she said without derision. “Better keep her close,” she added before walking away.

46

“Belus, no!” Cori screamed as best she could under Efrat’s clamped hand.

Belus glanced down at her, but didn’t attempt to protect himself. “This is your last chance Efrat.”

Efrat’s eyes thinned baffled by Belus’s foolhardy demand. “Chance for what? My future of being an amputee or my future of joining Hirem and Dr. Frank in the afterlife? Neither of them look very appealing.”

Belus shook his head. “No, they don’t, but you’re the one offering those two options, not us. We’ve offered to help you, but that wasn’t good enough. You had to have more.”

“I made that deal for the others. They’ve resigned themselves to their fate. I haven’t—not yet, not while there’s a chance.” Efrat looked down at her with a look that wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as it should have been.

Belus chuckled. “You have no chance. In a few minutes Danato and Ethan will break down that door, and when they see that you’re trying to amputate her hands, you won’t go to jail. You won’t even get a fight, because one of them will break your neck.”

“If they can get to me.”

“Don’t be cocky, Efrat. They will get to you: by gun, by fist, or by pure will, they will kill you.” Belus examined the gun in his hand and smiled. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve fired a gun? I’m not as eager to pull triggers as some.” Belus winked at her playfully.  It almost brought tears to her eyes seeing his charming side in this of all moments. “I’m offering you a third choice Efrat. Put down that cleaver and surrender yourself to me. We’ll look for options to secure your powers, magical or otherwise, later, but we will look for the options, instead of just locking you away in a box.”

“Why?” Efrat growled.

“I think you’re on a precipice Efrat. To everyone else, you’ve already fallen over the edge, but you haven’t. You’re about to, and I think I can stop it. You wouldn’t be the first lost cause I’ve found a path for.”

Efrat removed his hand from her mouth and looked her over. “You’re just like her. You’re living in a fairytale. I can’t go back to being the man I was.”

“Of course not,” Belus said with a hint of condescension. “But being someone else doesn’t exclude being a decent human being.”

Cori could see that Efrat was contemplating this. She knew this would be a hard step for him. He wasn’t the type of man to give up without a fight, but perhaps he was tired of fighting as well. Maybe he could really be a good guy, or at least not an asshole.

Her line of thought stopped cold, when he raised the cleaver. 

47

“That was by far the weirdest encounter I’ve ever had with a female, and I’ve known some wackos.” Daniel helped Callin down the stairs toward the infirmary. Nevia had already run ahead to grab a wheelchair.

“Frederique is a typical female werewolf, but she has power, so take that times ten,” Callin grunted.

Daniel was pretty sure his back had a few slipped discs, his torso looked off center like a stretched out rubber banded figurine. The fact that he was walking wasn’t nearly as impressive to Daniel as the fact that he wasn’t yowling in pain or weeping, just as any man would, after being thrown across the room by a fem-wolf.

“I get that, but was she really serious about offering herself.”

“Of course.” Callin paused to take a labored breath. “She’s never met anyone like you before. Whatever you did to her, it scared the bugger out of her. To scare a fem-wolf is like an instant aphrodisiac. Werewolves may walk among men, but we still function by baser instinct. You are powerful, ergo worthy of her. It’s sexual submission, as simple as that. Unfortunately, you’ve also just rejected her, which means instead of burying her head in a pint of ice cream like a human woman, she’s going to make it a point to hurt you as much as she can.”

“Feck.”

Nevia had the door propped open with the wheelchair when they reached the landing. Daniel helped him into the chair and Nevia wheeled him into the infirmary, which apparently had a separate generator because it was well lit. He followed behind and waited by the front desk while the nurses took over for her. She said something to Callin before he was wheeled away and he nodded to her.

“What did you say to him?” He couldn’t help but ask when she returned.

“Nothing that concerns you,” she said brushing past him. He resisted the urge to grab her arm and pull her back. He wasn’t that guy, and she certainly wasn’t that girl.

“We should get back to the search,” he said changing the subject.

“I’d like to wait and see if he’s okay,” she said sitting down in a plastic chair near the door.

“He’s a werewolf, the only creatures predetermined to survive the nuclear holocaust besides roaches.”

“It will only take a few minutes. Cori has the entire prison looking for her, I think you can spare five minutes for someone other than your friends.”

Daniel looked her over trying to discern how to approach this mood. Nevia had certainly been mad at him before, but this was different. This wasn’t anger stemming from frustration, this was anger stemming from hurt. He had hurt her. It wasn’t too hard to figure out how either.

He cleared his throat and sat across the foyer from her. She was sitting inhumanly prostrate in the chair, but her head was sulking low. He wished he could smell her emotions so he knew if she was more sad or mad. Not that it mattered. He would have felt just as obligated to apologize for either.

“Look, I know I made a bad choice back there. I know you won’t believe me, but I wasn’t thinking with my knob. I was thinking about saving you. I was a fool to even consider it. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She lifted her eyes, but not her head. “I’m not mad about that. Breaking up couples is a fem-wolf’s favorite game. I wouldn’t dream of holding you to a higher standard than other men. Although, I would prefer that you make your best effort to raise your own standards.”

“Good.” Daniel wasn’t sure what to feel about him being held at the same standard as every other man in the world, but he hadn’t really earned her expectations yet. He did however know how to feel about the word “couple.” They hadn’t really had the formal discussion on what their relationship status was, but he thought “couple” was a good word to describe them. “Wait, what
are
you mad about then?”

Her breath hissed out and she rolled her eyes like she was exhausted by the thought of having to walk through the complexity of female emotions with him.

“I’m not psychic Nevia. You’re going to have to help me out here.”

“I’m mad because you have no substance.” She paused to offer him room to comment, but he just shook his head in confusion. “I’m prepared to fight for the equality of werewolves. You made it perfectly clear that you don’t care about anything, including whether a man gets to be a father to his son.”