What Rough Beast [Blood Oath 1] (2 page)

"Then I'll take it from villagers inside the keep."

Alarm fought boneless lethargy, but Garrick could only seethe at the unease birthing to life within him.
"Human blood lacks—"

"Shut up.” Luc strapped Garrick's sheath to his own waist. “I won't kill you, even to take that whoreson's head. I won't trade your life for his. So just shut up."

Dread shivered down his spine.

They
must
kill Nathaniel, no matter the cost. Not that Garrick wanted to die. He didn't. But he'd give anything—gladly—to gain Nathaniel's destruction.

Luc tested the balance of Garrick's sword by swinging the blade in a graceful arc, oblivious to Garrick's mounting panic.

He'd prepared to die.

He was meant to die!

"You're
meant
to show me how to stay alive. You're meant to keep others like Master Nathaniel from recapturing me. You're meant,” Luc said, shifting his hard gaze to Garrick, “to repay them for every man they've corrupted."

The sword swung.

The tip bit into Garrick's neck, where his pulse struggled to beat. Feral satisfaction burst inside him.

Finally!

It'd be over.

The madness, the pain, the torture and degradation. Countless months and years of it, his own and the horror visited upon the slaves who hated him.

Ended.

Merciful God, he needed it to end.

But the weight of the sword lifted from his neck.

Thick, hot wet trickled down the column of his throat.

Luc bent to his ear. “You're meant,” he murmured, the heat of his breath washing over Garrick's skin, “to atone."

The young vampyr traced the thin white line that bisected Garrick's cheek with one finger. Then he delivered a mocking slap.

Rage exploded.

White-hot.

Soulless.

Innervating.

In spite of his blood loss, Garrick's fingers twitched. Fury clawed inside him so rabidly that if he'd had the blood to feed life to it, the slave's head would already dangle from his fist. Garrick would tear his arrogant heart from his rib cage and—

Luc chuckled, the egotistical bastard.
"That's the Garrick I know and love."

He sucked in a sharp breath.

Love?

Everything inside Garrick halted. Just stopped.

"If plotting my protracted and no doubt painful death gives you the will to survive this, so be it. Far better to focus your bloodthirsty schemes on those who've earned it, though. Devise a few to destroy more masters.” With a fond tap to Garrick's cheek, Luc heaved to his feet.
"The rebels won't accept you, but I will. We've work to do, you and I."

Luc slipped from the stables and into the predawn shadows.

Garrick lay motionless in the crude prison cell while his mind reeled.

Luc loved him.

With his blood inside the young vampyr, Garrick knew it was true. He felt Luc's affection every time the slave diverted a slice of his attention through their shared link to confirm that Garrick was okay. He sensed Luc's underlying worry that he had taken too much blood—he hadn't. He recognized Luc's faith in him in the knowledge that the young vampyr hadn't once suspected that Garrick might've obeyed Nathaniel's command.

Luc loved him. Not the warped illusion of love that Nathaniel forced on him—he truly cared for Garrick. As a brother and friend.

No matter who he was or what the masters had chosen for him.

And the young vampyr needed him.

Too young to hunt, an easy target for any rogue vampyr who'd slipped his master's leash, Luc wouldn't last on his own. Few escaped slaves did. The masters wouldn't let him slip away, either. Blaming Luc for Garrick's death, masters would pursue Luc relentlessly and when they found him?

Dizzy with blood loss, Garrick nonetheless shuddered.

He wouldn't wish that fate on anyone.

But Garrick needed Luc too.

He wouldn't yield to the temptation to turn with the young vampyr to steady him. Tending and training Luc would force him to endure the madness that gripped him tighter with each passing day. Luc would comfort him during his wait for a mate too, ease Garrick's loneliness and despair.

He might last centuries.

Awe streaked through the deadweight of his body at the opportunities opening before him, the possibilities of what could be.

Luc was right. The rebels would never accept him, but with the other vampyr as his partner, they'd let him fight. His heart struggled to quicken with his zeal to destroy the masters who journeyed to this damned and forgotten place, drawing nearer by the moment. Masters like Nathaniel who callously killed and discarded the youngest and weakest of their kind.

He'd have vengeance. More, he'd have justice.

If he lived.

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Carbondale, Illinois

Present Day

Lucien kicked the dead vampyr's head and cursed.

Two.

He'd killed two so far and had lost track of Malachi, his new partner, twenty minutes ago when he'd chased a third.

How many of the damned creatures had infested this scrap of southern Illinois? And since when did dark masters ally together? The third Malachi hunted belonged to Krystiyan. The Russian vampyr's unmistakable stench permeated the stable, tickled Lucien's nostrils.
"Mal?"

"Stay on mission, Luc. Disable security then free any survivors."

When Garrick had come through with the information they'd needed, Malachi had thoroughly drilled Lucien on their objectives before agreeing to the raid. David's stable had grown fat with humans infected with the vampyr virus, but the dark master had become too unstable to allow his slaves to suffer more than a century before he killed them. His defenses had predictably weakened. When Garrick had revealed a vulnerability in the western fences, Malachi had assigned Lucien his usual task of recovering survivors while the vampyr elder destroyed David.

It had been a good plan.

A solid plan.

A sorely needed victory in the war.

But none of them had anticipated Krystiyan joining David at the heavily fortified estate—Malachi now faced two dark master vampyr rather than one.

Feral warning shivered up Lucien's spine.

Still, he must obey the commands of his new elder.

Turning his back on his screaming dread, Lucien scrambled over the debris that littered the stable's hub and picked his way to the control panel. Malachi was senior headhunter. They worked together well. He and Mal had forged a formidable team, one that had begun to earn as much notoriety as his former partnership with Garrick.

But unlike Garrick, as Lucien's elder, Mal expected his orders obeyed. Without question. Without hesitation. God help him if he failed to meet the elder's expectations, because Malachi wouldn't. His absolute, unbending control grated, particularly since Lucien had fought their enemy longer and under far less supervision with Garrick.

He lifted his sword when he reached the control panel, though. Snarling bitter anger, he slashed down. His arm vibrated as the blade sliced through fragile electronic components to lodge home in the thick wooden struts beneath.

The security system short-circuited with a bright electrical
snap.

He mentally retuned his mind to Mal's.
"Done."

"Search for survivors."

Lucien's lips thinned, frustration birthing foul and malignant inside him. At his new partner. At the inevitable failure of their mission.
"David turned the slaves who were vulnerable. He killed the rest."
He yanked his sword from the wall, none too eager to check the cells for bodies. Scenting the air, he mentally amended that: pieces of bodies.
"We're too late."

"One of them is still alive. Find him."

Swearing under his breath, Lucien stalked from the hub to the narrow corridor branching from it. Doors lined both sides. He ripped the first off its hinges. His nose wrinkled in disgust at the hard-packed dirt floor, rough plank walls, the harsh glow of a bare bulb swinging high from the ceiling. The neat cot and trunk told him this had been the living quarters of one of the now dead servant vampyr.

Slaves hardly received such deluxe accommodations.

He moved on to the next prison cell and jerked the door wide, unsurprised at the emaciated body crumpled on the ground within, nor the head lying several feet from it. Blood dripped from the stump of the slave's neck to a stingy, dime-sized puddle, mute witness to how thoroughly his master had drained him.

"You can't defeat David and Krystiyan both."
He doubted even Garrick would last long against two masters freshly glutted with blood.
"Not alone, Mal. I'm—"

"Krystiyan ran."
Lucien felt Malachi's satisfaction in the triumphant hum of his partner's pulse.
"There's only David now, and he's wounded. Keep looking."

In the next cell, the scattered gobs of flesh that had once been a brother vampyr made Lucien's stomach pitch. David had dismembered him, squashed his head like a ripe melon, torn great chunks from his torso... The slave must have fought like hell to send his master into such a murderous rage.

Which meant he would've made an excellent headhunter.

Lucien tipped his sword in grim salute to the fallen comrade.
"They're all dead."

"Find that survivor or I'll take your head myself."

"Damn it, Mal—"

Lucien staggered. Pain spiked just shy of his suddenly pounding heart, but the pain wasn't his. He breathed through it, rubbed at his unwounded chest.
"How bad are you hit?"

Agony washed his partner's mind in tumultuous waves.
"Doesn't matter."

Lucien pivoted, sword at the ready.
"I'm coming."

"David's dead—I'm not. Find that slave. He's important. Don't you feel it?"

He hadn't sensed much since he'd fought beside Garrick, didn't expect to without his old partner's aid. Lucien had lived only three hundred years, and his vampyr hadn't matured enough to draw that kind of power. Not yet.

Still, in the past decades, he sometimes caught vague flashes if he concentrated, a fluttery sensation at the base of his spine. Never consistently and his feelings had never been distinct enough to act upon. He'd try, though. If nothing else, to shut Mal up. After seeing the carnage David had left in the stables, Lucien knew that any slave who had survived would beg for the mercy of death.

His new partner, in the meantime, sprayed blood like a fountain from the hole in his chest and would die within the hour without immediate attention. Mal wouldn't ask for the swift end that a newly freed slave would plead for.

And the rebellion needed Malachi.

Badly.

Lucien closed his eyes, fought to tune his senses.

His brow furrowed to a deep V.

Garrick.

With his mind wide open and searching, his old partner's presence—close, drawing nearer still—flooded his mind.

Luc frowned.

Garrick had surrendered the field of battle almost a century ago, when the blood and sweat of war had proven too rich a temptation to him. Yes, his old elder maintained a loose connection with him and helped Lucien whenever he could. Garrick fed him information that had many times saved lives. Including his.

But he'd done so from afar.

Even Luc wasn't sure where.

Certainly no closer than Mexico. Perhaps Colombia. Or Brazil.

Luc's heart thudded.

What, in the name of holy Christ, was Garrick doing in Illinois?

"Focus, Luc. Don't think. Feel."

He bit back a moan, part relief at Garrick's whisper in his mind, so close Luc felt he could reach out and touch him. Part bone-jarring terror.

Because if Garrick was in Illinois...?

Something was wrong.

Brutally wrong.

Hell was about to descend on them.

With Malachi gutted, hell already had.

"Concentrate!"

His gut knotted. “Malachi—"

"Will survive. I'll not reward him for partnering you by watching him die, but you must heed me, Luc. Time is short."

Lucien shoved a shaky hand through his hair. “All right."

"Close your eyes. Narrow your senses."

Though anxiety thrummed in his veins, Luc trusted Garrick so his eyes squeezed shut at Garrick's familiar litany, but nothing came to him. No shiver of awareness, no shrieking shadow of dread.

"Use our link to tap into my power. As you did when we fought together."

"I remember.” He relaxed the bunched muscles of his shoulders. Sucking in a cleansing breath, he released his tension and worry when he slowly blew it out.

The shiver running up his spine provided only a moment's warning.

He abruptly paled. “Dear God."

He tried to swallow but his mouth had gone bone-dry.

"I couldn't tell you. You would've stepped aside for Malachi."

His stomach rolled and pitched. “You've killed me. The masters will never stand for it. They'll hunt us. You. Me. Mal. They'll pick the flesh from our bones for daring to—"

"I'll pick the flesh from your bones if you don't follow that scent. Now!"

Anger exploded inside him, and thank God for it, because rage at his old partner's deceit lent Lucien the burst of strength he needed to sever the connection with Garrick.

That bastard.

That sneaky, conniving bastard.

Malachi would have never agreed to the assault on David's estate if they had known.

Garrick couldn't have missed it. Not this. No, the elder vampyr would never have mistaken it and had cleverly maneuvered him and Mal into place...

With or without Garrick's prodding, the scent was driving him crazy.

Lucien shook his head to clear it. So he could think. With Garrick evicted from his head, Malachi's more ephemeral presence returned, and with it, his new elder's agony, his weakness.

Garrick had promised not to abandon Mal, but his old vampyr elder was yet far—too far—away.

And their position too vulnerable.

"Get out of here, Mal. Move!"
Luc raced to the hub, stumbled across the room. Reaching the other side, he ripped away a desk he'd tossed against the far wall while fighting the two servant vampyr.