What Rough Beast [Blood Oath 1] (6 page)

Lucien's jaw clenched.
"Damn it, Garrick, where are you?"

"Behind him. Keep talking."

"Hurry."

"I am not so long from the stables that I don't remember it.” He inched forward. “I'm not as close to turning as you wish to believe."

"Now, who speaks prettily?” Tobias held his ground. “Do you lie to me—or to yourself?"

He angled his jaw and waved a dismissive hand to mask the movement of his next furtive step. “Have you collected them yet? Have you tried? Not successfully. If you had, you'd have sent servants to finish me years ago.” Lucien forced a condescending chuckle, horrifically aware of the certainty of that. “And you call me the liar.” He shook his head. “You need to transition slaves to become a master, Tobias."

He hissed furious warning.

Lucien laughed. “You can't, can you? There's still too much of the stables left in you that won't stomach building one of your own. You've tried, but dark as you are, you can't stand to enslave our young as they do."

"I can. I will.” Rage made Tobias's voice shake. “You've been in the stables and lived to escape them. We both watched lesser, weaker vampyr die.” He dipped a finger in the blood spilling from Kate's neck and brought a red smear to his lips to sample it.

A growl worked from Lucien's throat. His muscles tensed, preparing him to strike.

Tobias smiled malicious satisfaction. “The stables are brutal, but nature often is. Only the strongest survive. Only the strongest should.” He shrugged a diffident shoulder. “Which is why you will turn. Unlike that muscle-bound fool Garrick, your formidable intelligence will lead you to the truth: the rebels are losing this war."

Lucien's eyes narrowed. “Our numbers are increasing. Every night more slaves are freed."

"Every night more of you die.” Tobias sniffed his contempt. “Are you not weary of your life in hiding? Do you not tire of running from us? Of constantly bending knee to the precious humans and the weakest of our kind?"

Lucien schooled his feature to a blank mask, fought to disregard the cajoling pitch of the rogue's voice.

He would never reveal his despair to the enemy.

Never.

"I know your frustration, your weariness. I felt it once too.” Tobias tapped the dagger's blade against Kate's neck. “End your torment, my brother. Stop fighting your true nature. There is no need. Together, we can share the female. Join me. Tur—"

Garrick's sword sliced into Tobias's throat.

Blood jetted from his neck to spray his shirt viscous black.

Lucien jerked.

Kate cried out.

His eyes rounded in shocked horror. His mouth worked to complete the dark soliloquy his severed vocal cords could no longer finish. Tobias's grasp on the dagger slackened.

It tumbled from his nerveless fingers to spear into the ground between Kate's feet.

She shuddered, scrambling from the carnage.

Garrick's arm drew back, biceps bulging with the weight of his sword and the strength of his next blow. The blade he wielded hatcheted into Tobias's mangled neck until the rogue's body dropped, his head hanging on to the stump of his neck by tattered bloody sinew. Sheathing his sword, Garrick bent to snag Tobias's hair. “Tend to your ward.” He bunched the fabric of the rogue's shirt in his fist and dragged his crumpled body upright.

Lucien's pulse pounded.

His heart thundered.

Not with the adrenaline rush of battle—with agony.

He'd never admit his hopelessness to the enemy, but he couldn't deny it to himself. Tobias was dead, and thank God for it, but his former partner had been right. Lucien
was
tired of running. He was sick of hiding. He
did
despair of winning the war. He mourned each loss as vampyr after vampyr—good men and headhunters—fell to darkness or the battle's slaughter.

How long could they keep this up?

How long could he?

The urgent demand in the blackest corner of his soul prodded his bleak misery, whispered to him to end the struggle. Every hour, every minute, his every breath urged him to forget the war. Forget hope. Seize whatever pleasure he could find in both greedy fists.

He closed his eyes, but Tobias's words echoed in his mind.

"You mistake the lure of turning for true danger of it. At three hundred, we become increasingly aware of the temptation. That is what Tobias scented on you, your growing awareness. My blood runs inside you, none know you better.” Garrick tossed Tobias's head over his shoulder by the nap of the dead vampyr's hair. “You are not as close as you fear."

"It taunts me,” Lucien whispered, shaken.

"It torments us all.” Garrick's attention abruptly focused to Lucien's right. The elder's nostrils flared. He sucked in a sharp breath. His eyes glittered like shards of blue ice. He jerked his head to the side, thick lashes slamming shut. “Take care of Kate. She needs you."

Lucien gaped when he spotted her. Naked, skin glowing luminescent in the moonlight, she crawled away from them on hands and knees that shook so violently he wondered that she could move at all.

Garrick towed Tobias's corpse toward the swamp.

Stiffly.

Painfully.

"Kate.” Lucien strode to her. Astounded to find her blanket still knotted in his hand, he wrapped her inside it and lifted her from the cold ground.

"No.” She batted at his hands and the blanket, but starved for blood, she was no match for him. “Get away from me!"

"You think us evil?” He shook her. Hard. “Garrick."

His steady retreat did not slow, but he lifted his arm.

Tobias's severed head dangled from his fingers.

"
That
is evil. Not me. Not Garrick. Certainly not you.” He shook her again when her horrified eyes focused on the blood, oily black in the darkness. It streamed from the stump of Tobias's neck as Garrick marched into the magnolias. “We fight that evil every night. Of that much, Tobias did not lie—we are at war. And
we are losing
."

She froze in his arms, blinked up at him.

He pivoted, furious steps carrying them back to the SUV. “Dark masters enslave young men susceptible to the virus to do their bidding, then slaughter them like cattle to intensify their power. No single vampyr is strong enough to defeat the weakest master, so we fight in pairs. Hide in the day. Attack at night. Always on the move for fear of what they'll do if they find us. When they find us.

"An eternity of time passes with nothing except death, war, and fear to mark its passage. We lack the comfort of friendship because the man you call brother may become the rogue whose head you take tomorrow. Or he may beg you for death to spare you the betrayal of his turning."

He jerked the door of the SUV wide. “And each one of us, to a man, will kill the other at only the hope of finding a mate who will end our solitude, ease our temptation to turn."

"Let me go,” she said when Lucien settled her into his lap in the backseat, her voice a small, desolate whisper.

He exhaled a weary breath. “Ours is a brutal world.” He anchored her to his side when she shifted from him. “But it is one you must accept. Our need for you is too great."

"Please."

He snorted. “Where shall you go, bebe? Dark masters have searched for us since I took you from David's stronghold. To keep or kill you matters not to Krystiyan and the other masters, only that no more of us survive by mating with you. Our fighters, to the last vampyr, will kill each other to reach you too. Both sides of the war hunt you now."

"I don't care.” She pushed against him. “Let. Me. Go."

"And leave you unchaperoned to Garrick?” He tucked her against his chest, where the cut he'd made earlier still seeped blood. “Don't be a fool.” He nudged her mouth to the wound, though she tried to yank her head back. “Drink. Your hunger gnaws at me."

"I'm going to be sick."

This time, when his mind touched hers, he sensed her revulsion immediately. He smothered a burst of relieved, giddy laughter. “Drink."

"I'm not a vampire,” she said, but her body slackened against his. “I'm not."

"You're exhausted. The transition has not gone easily for you.” He kissed the crown of her head. “Just a taste, Kate. To see. To try. Then, you will sleep."

"No.” But she sniffed at the blood trickling from his chest.

He waited.

"I'll throw up."

He smiled. “You won't."

"Oh yes, I will. Seriously. I got beaned in the face with a volleyball once and—"

"You were human then. Now, you are...” He fumbled around the words she was not ready to accept. “You are more."

Still, she hesitated. “What if I don't like it?"

Lucien let wonder spill over him.

He'd forgotten.

So long without intimacy, he hadn't remembered what it felt like to truly connect with another. Yes, he'd had Garrick. For two centuries, Lucien had loved him. He'd trusted his vampyr elder like no other, as a brother, mentor, and friend.

But Garrick had left him.

And this was...different.

One by one, he felt tiny links binding him to her. Caring for Kate, loving her, forged an invisible chain that coiled around all the shattered pieces of him.

She held him together.

She made him feel whole.

"You've fed from these veins for three weeks, ma petite. Trust me. You will not throw up, and you
will
like it."

She stiffened in his arms. “Three weeks?” She gasped. “How could I be gone...missing...for three weeks?"

His shoulders jerked in an awkward shrug. “Young women vanish every day. Your disappearance was hardly remarkable."

She stared, eyes wide, her skin ashen. “But people would've looked for me. My mother. The police—"

"The police raided David's stronghold while we were on the run, before Chicago.” His lips curved into a tight smile. “No one is looking for you, Kate. They think you're already dead."

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Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Southern France

AD 1727

He groaned at the sharp jab to his stomach.

Oh God.

"Quiet! One of the masters has arrived. Do you want him to find us?"

Garrick wanted to sleep for the next twenty years. His head throbbed. His muscles shrieked. He couldn't think through the fog of misery.

But he could wretch up a mouthful of the coppery blood that had been fed to him, smearing dark crimson on the rough wool shirt before him when he opened his eyes.

He slammed them shut again.

His limp body bounced upside down and over Luc's shoulder as the young vampyr carried him toward the lake that skirted the stronghold.

Christ save him.

Nathaniel was dead, and everything of the dark master that lingered in Garrick's abused body was dying along with him.

"Stop whining. Part of me is in you now too."

Garrick struggled for equilibrium in the hellacious agony, though Luc's topsy-turvy grasp as he carried him kept Garrick's senses spiraling. He'd survived the loss of a master before Nathaniel. He knew the torturous leech of the dark master's blood would fade. Eventually.

His stomach knotted.

He groaned again.

Luc cursed under his breath and dropped like a stone behind a cart piled high with hay.

Garrick plummeted with him, sliding off the vampyr's shoulder and onto the hard ground of the outer courtyard. His bones screamed in protest. Garrick only wished he could scream too, but pain locked the air in his chest. Rolling into a fetal ball, he sicked up another mouthful of blood and soaked a palm-sized puddle of dirt viscous red.

"I thought we lost the ability to vomit once we became vampyr."
Luc darted a glance at him, then returned his attention to the nickering horses and creaking carriages at the gate.
"Guess not."

Brat.

Garrick could've told Luc that, with the death of his master, Nathaniel's blood had rejected its century-long host—him. He could've said that all the dark master's slaves shared some small measure of discomfort, he the worst only because as eldest, he'd fed from Nathaniel most often. He could've told Luc that sneaking from the stronghold was impossible since the alarm sounded in the blood each of them carried in their veins.

Instead, he gritted his teeth.

And spat out another thick glob of congealing blood.

"We'll have to run for it.” Luc refocused his attention from the gate to Garrick. His eyebrow lifted to an assessing arch. “The marsh isn't far, but we'll reach it faster if you aren't on my back."

"Can you walk?"

Garrick uncurled his aching body. He stretched out his legs to test their steadiness.
"How far?"

Luc glanced over his shoulder. “Half a furlong."

Over open ground?

Garrick would never make it.

Panic glinted in Luc's eyes, so the slave knew it too.

Slave?

Garrick stiffened his spine, though fresh agony jolted up it.

They'd killed Nathaniel; Luc was a slave no more. If the young vampyr could swing the sword that parted Nathaniel's head from his carcass and carry Garrick from the stink of the stables after? Garrick would damn well reach that marsh.

He squared his shoulders.
"Ready?"

Luc nodded.

Garrick pushed himself off the ground. The protesting grind of his knees made his joints feel stuffed with splintered glass. When he would've toppled, Luc draped his arm around his waist to hold him upright. Garrick shivered, fighting another wave of brutal nausea.
"You still have my sword?"

Luc's gaze darted to the sheath cinched to his hip.

"Draw it."

The other vampyr shifted to slip the weapon free.

"If I'm too much of a burden and you're forced to leave me, I ask only that you take my head with you."
Garrick lifted an arm to wipe sticky black blood from his chin.
"Just my head."

Luc's mouth thinned. “Let's go."

They sprinted to the tall grasses of the marsh.

Garrick panted. He swore.

His right leg buckled.

Luc grunted at his weight bearing them down, and fingers clawing into Garrick's side, he dragged Garrick toward the lake. Toward freedom.