Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) Page 21

  Aidan watched her sway, his heart aching but his face impassive. Ronan moved behind her, big and silent, not saying a word, just standing there, so Lacey could lean back into him as she closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Then Ronan is right, you can’t just go there blindly. I won't lose you both." Her lips trembled, but her voice was determined. "We have to make a plan, to figure out a way, a way you can get in and out. There had to be a way for both of you to get out, Aidan.”

  She knew him well already, Aidan realized. This complex little woman of Ronan's, but she was clueless as to what they were dealing with here.

  “Even if we can dream up such a miracle, which I doubt, tha' may take days! Do ye nae realize what she is gonna through right bloody—“

  “Stop talking about it and start doing something about it!”

  The slap wasn’t surprising, though the power of it was a little. He should’ve known better. This tiny woman had once held a sword to his throat without batting an eye.

  Aidan moved his jaw experimentally, staring down at her. “Ye pack a fair wallop, but Heather hits a lot harder than ye.”

  Tears glistened in her eyes again, but she dashed them away with the back of her hand. “I know. Don’t forget that, she’ll fight every second. It’s who she is.”

  Aidan tried to give Lacey a reassuring smile, but his lips felt numb. That’s exactly what he was afraid of.

  Abhartach dearly loved a fighter.

  She didn’t know where she was.

  Green and grey. Black and silver.

  Mist and forest and sky and moon flashed past in broken bits and pieces. Heather wasn’t sure if they were flying or falling or simply moving so fast her mind couldn’t comprehend it.

  The monster had her tucked against his side. She could smell his flinty breath, strangely hot, even though his body was ice cold. Every breath she took sliced through her chest like her lungs were filled with razorblades. Tears dripped from her eyes and froze on her cheeks.

  He didn't say anything to her.

  It could have been moments or hours later, she was sure she had passed out more than once, but the next time she opened her eyes mountains were everywhere. Great hulking ones that sliced into the sky. The pain grabbed her again and the harsh landscape winked out.

  "Here we are," the demon found his voice she didn't know how long later.

  He lifted her head up by the hair, forcing her to look. A castle had appeared, like a black wound in the side of one sheer peak. "I do so hope you'll enjoy your stay here. I know I will."

  The sound of mocking laughter flickered in and out, like her consciousness.

  When everything steadied again, they were in the castle.

  She was in a huge space more like a cavern than a room. It was stark and cold, but there were pictures on the wall, tapestries, paintings…Aidan? She tried to focus but the figure blurred.

  A sharp slap to the face cleared her vision and the creature smiled at her.

  "Do you like my taste in art? I had it commissioned ages ago, when he was still human. What do you think?"

  Heather forced herself to focus on the painting, staring into Aidan's eyes, eyes of canvas, oil and pigment that seemed to look back at her with an empty hopelessness. She turned away.

  "I can't say I am a fan. I'd rather have the real thing."

  The creature, Abhartach, laughed delightedly. "I quite agree, human, but all in due time. We two, however, will get started immediately. I can't be sure when Aidan will arrive, so we must make sure you are presentable first.”

  From the evil glint in the demon’s eyes, 'presentable' had some hidden meaning. One that she was very sure involved a great deal of suffering on her part.

  Her captor clapped his hands and two figures appeared instantly.

  “Bind her to the table. Then leave us. There will be screaming. Ignore it.”

  Heather swallowed hard.

  Her skin went clammy and her heart started to race. I will not freak out, I will not. But when the two pale humans silently started to untangle heavy chains from under the table, chains that obviously fastened on the underside and had been used many times before, her insides went watery.

  They placed her on the stone as if she were a weightless child. Leaving her clothes intact, they spread her arms wide apart, winching them down tightly enough to make her cry out as her broken ribs protested. Her legs they bound together at the ankles. This gave her some small hope that whatever plans this demon had for her, they did not, at least for now, include rape.

  “I am only to be disturbed when the prince arrives. If anyone so much as breathes against that door before then, they will be killed, and slowly. Understand?" There were twin nods as the two figures backed to the wide doors and out. The sound of a bar falling thunked through the room. Aberhatach was looking at the painting again, rubbing his chin as if deep in thought.

  "I don't think he is going to be happy when he sees you again, not after what I am going to do to you.

  "But I believe he needs to see you as you truly are." He turned back to her and Heather's throat slicked with ice when she saw the knife in his hand. She knew the question was expected, so she forced it out, more to delay the inevitable than anything else.

  "And what am I?"

  "What all humans are. Prey. Walking skins full of blood. You are only a bag of blood with an especially pretty covering." The demon leaned down, his hot, stinking breath at her ear. He twirled the knife until it caught the firelight and glittered as he lowered it slowly.

  “I can change that.”

  You hear of torture, she thought, an hour and a lifetime later. You read about it sometimes in books or newspapers, maybe see a story about it on the late night news.

  Torture.

  What does that mean if you have never experienced it? It’s just a word without depth, a nightmare in someone else's head. A scary story that means little, except maybe a shivery burst of fear and a sick feeling in your stomach. Something easily set aside and dismissed as you go about your day.

  The experience itself was somewhat…

  Different.

  The first cut was not so bad. He traced a line down her arm, thin and scoring. The blood beaded up, scarlet against her smooth olive skin. The pain was bright, but negligible. Far worse was the moment when he lifted her limb to his mouth and licked over the wound he had made.

  Inch by cold inch, his tongue so dark a red it was almost black. Shiny and obscene like a fat leech, his tongue lapped up her blood. She tried not to react, to give him the satisfaction of knowing that his touch was a far worse violation than the knife. In the end though, she couldn't help it.

  She shuddered and the demon smiled.

  He was methodical… and then he wasn’t. Cut after cut, slice after slice. You could almost get used to the slash, burn, slash, burn rhythm of it when he kept the wounds shallow. But then he would startle her by making a deep, scorching furrow that would have her straining against the chains helplessly.

  She started crying by the tenth cut or so, not making a sound, but crying nevertheless.

  He sliced through her clothes, tearing them off as they became ragged and soaked with blood. He worked on her arms first, opening long cuts from shoulder to elbow, then wrist to elbow. Then deeper, crueler ones circling her wrists and forearms. Bracelets of fire that burned hot against the cold stone. But it wasn't until he started in on her torso that Heather began to scream.

  A long while later, maybe an hour, maybe several, Abhartach straightened from the table. Heather's breath was thready and fast. She twitched as he moved away, her skin sticking to the stone as she moved, wet with blood.

  "A breather, I think."

  He said it like a man tired of a slightly boring play. Going to the door, he called out. A word she couldn't understand. The room swirled around Heather as she moved her head to keep him in sight. Everything was tinged with iron grey and red, her vision, the taste in her throat…

  The agony that sank dee
per into her bones with every beat of her failing heart.

  “Ready for more yet? It's rather disappointing he hasn’t arrived to 'save' you yet. Perhaps I misjudged your relationship after all.” A man stood beside the beast now, a human man, she thought, with white curls and a smile that sent ice into the inferno of her suffering. Who was this?

  “Of course you did." She spat the words out, desperate to stall him just a little longer. "Aidan and I don’t know each other, not really. There’s nothing between us. Nothing…lasting.”

  Her fingers scrabbled at the stone as he lowered the knife once more, drawing a thin line up the inside of her thigh almost absently as he watched the man next to him. A man who licked his lips as the demon cut her again. Another shallow one, but bite of the blade made her choke on sour tears as it crossed the others.

  “Maybe not yet, true enough. I think the possibility is there, though. A possibility that wasn’t there before. Aidan knows it, I saw it in him tonight. Bah…even if he didn't care for you at all, he will not be able to help himself from playing the protector.

  "It’s what he is, see? What he’s always been.” He smiled down at her, using the tip of one callused finger to wipe her streaming eyes gently.

  Her body tried to move away from his touch, but there was nowhere to go.

  Her bonds held her fast to the cold stone as he sliced. Deeply here, lightly there. Making her scream and sob and twist as her own blood began to pool under her, warming and slicking the stone. Abhartach paused at one point to cup some in his hand, taking a sip as he watched her writhe on the table, then offering his hand to the white-haired man who sucked the blood from the vampire's fingers as if it were honey.

  Heather was beginning to lose herself to the pain, it was conquering her. Swallowing her whole in a way she'd never imagined was possible. Her ribs ached as she took several shuddering breaths. From her neck down, all was agony, blinding, white-hot and merciless. She needed to make him stop, if only for a moment. Her eyes flickered to the portrait of Aidan and she took a breath.

  Just one precious moment.

  “And you…you wanted Aidan, because of that? Because of who he is?” The sound of her own voice scared her. It was thin and scratchy, like the voice of some ancient, tormented ghost.

  Her stomach clenched. If she survived this, what the hell would she be? Did she even want to survive this? Tears leaked into her hair as she waited for the demon to answer her and coldly considered her options.

  “You’ve a fair lot of cunning for a human. Yes, I wanted that. You should have seen him back then,” Abhartach gestured to the painting of Aidan, fat drops of her blood falling from his thick fingertips, the sharpened yellow nails glistening and red. “Like a god, he was. Perfect and strong and beautiful. His people loved him, his enemies feared him and Lugh himself envied the shine of him.”

  “You wanted to take that away from him?”

  Abhartach chuckled. “You aren’t so clever at that, are you? No! I wanted to spoil it, to darken it, to take that which was bright and sweet and good and pervert it. Turning him was to be my crowning glory, my magnum opus, if you will. I wanted him made cruel and bloody and dark, and I wanted to watch it all! I wanted to create it—to make—“

  “—to make him in your image. Oh, I get it now.” As if from somewhere far away, Heather heard herself laugh. It was agony to even flutter her eyelids, but somehow she was laughing. Choking on blood, but laughing just the same.

  Abhartach glared down at her, those pit-of-hell black eyes, blank and cold.

  “What is it—why are you doing that? Stop laughing!”

  “Stupid demon,” she sputtered, unable to stop laughing even when he raised the knife again. “You’ll never do that, never. Aidan isn't perfect, you perverted bastard. He's a goddamn ass most of the time.

  "But there's one thing Aidan's not. He’s not a monster. He’s not you—and he won’t ever be.“

  Abhartach’s hand closed over Heather’s throat, cutting off her words with one squeeze.

  Her body pitched under his hold, her savaged flesh straining against her bonds uncontrollably. She was unable to scream or breathe. Once, twice she buckled, then blessed darkness slid over her like warmed silk and she smiled as it took her away from him.

  When she went limp, Abhartach cursed himself for a fool. Baited by a human!

  He lifted his hand and held it to her lips for a long moment. Finally, he nodded to the daor as the faintest puff of breath warmed his fingers. Almost gently, he took her jaw in his huge, claw-like hand, turning her blood-stained face this way and that as she lay unconscious. His dark eyes scanned her features as if searching for something that eluded him.

  His eyes trailed down her throat, so pale and white, but smudged already with purpling bruises, then down her torso, the hundreds of knife wounds crisscrossing that once lovely flesh. Some thick as his finger, others thin and delicate as a hair, covering every inch of her, down to the soles of her pretty feet. What a sight she was! Her gorgeous form had been turned into a savage canvas of brutality.

  When Aidan saw her, Abhartach thought with a tingling thrill, he would break. Yes, indeed.

  He would break so prettily at last.

  With a sigh, the demon dropped his hand and frowned, thinking about her last words, words she thought to wound him with. Not that she had, of course. Her words were nothing. They were pitiful and insignificant, just as she was.

  She was wrong.

  Aidan could be corrupted, he would be twisted. And she would be the instrument to do it. He was sure of it. Wasn't he?

  Abhartach squeezed his hands into fists, unmindful when his nails pierced his own skin and drew blood.

  It had taken the rest of the night to come up with a plan that satisfied everyone. By then, Aidan was trapped by the sun. Ronan hadn't destroyed the ghrian siúlóir yet and indeed that had become the crux of their whole plan. There was only one dose left.

  That was their only chance to get Heather away from the beast, instead of just inadvertently giving Abhartach both of them in some forlorn rescue attempt.

  As Ronan had pointed out more than once last night, each time Aidan had been close to bolting, it was Aidan himself that was their best weapon. If Aidan was lost, then Heather was lost. Even with the sword, Ronan was only human and no match for an entire castle filled with vampires.

  As usual, they couldn't count on the gods to be either for or against them.

  It didn't really matter, in Aidan's opinion, because it was very unlikely this would work. At least in the way Ronan hoped. There was a chance for Heather, though.

  Assuming she wasn't already dead.

  Or worse.

  Aidan stared in the blackness, considering what might be happening to her for the hundredth time since he had seen her struggling against Abhartach. Horrors flickered behind his eyes in glowing Technicolor madness, every possibility worse than the last.

  She wasn't dead.

  He was sure of that. Ronan was doubtful. The big man tried to restrain his certainty to spare Lacey, but Aidan could feel it. His friend thought she had died almost immediately.

  Aidan knew Abhartach's nature far more intimately than Ronan. Killing Heather would not be enough. That was easy, and Abhartach didn't believe in easy.

  Whatever she was going through right now, she was probably begging for death. He could hear her voice in his head, that awful scream that had been the last sound he had heard from her meshing macabrely with the sunlit memory of her smiling up at him.

  I’ll even say please. Pretty please, if you like?

  He rolled off the couch that still held her scent and onto the floor. Falling to his hands and knees, his forehead pressed to the hard bare wood as his stomach clenched.

  Her fate was on him. This was the price he paid for allowing her to get too close. Gods, he was a selfish fucking bastard. The price he paid?

  Heather was human, she hadn't asked for this shit. No matter what she thought she understood about his
past, the reality of it was beyond any normal human's comprehension. He had known that, and still he had stayed. It had been his cruelty that had forced her into the night and sent her running straight into Abhartach's waiting arms.

  Even if he did get her free, she wouldn't be the same. The woman she had been would be destroyed.

  He could only hope that there would be something left to save.

  The sun had barely set when Aidan left the library. The pale twilight stung his eyes and skin, but he came into the kitchen anyway. Except for Shelagh, who must be with the children, all the adults were there. It was crowded and for the first time in this house, he felt smothered by all the emotions buffeting him. Fear, blame, anger, sadness, shame, it all covered him like a thick, scratchy wool blanket. He rolled his shoulders restlessly as he ignored everyone else and addressed Ronan.

  "Remember, five days."

  Ronan was frowning, he had argued against waiting that long last night. "I donna know, tha' is an awfully long time—"

  "And as I told ye, brother, we must let him settle before any of ye come near the Reeks. He must see me being compliant, he must—"

  "What if he finds a way to force yer vow before then, eh? What then?"

  "Then all is lost, and ye give us up as dead."

  Ronan was shaking his head, but Lacey put a hand on his arm. "Let it go, Ronan. We went through all this last night. Aidan needs to do this and now. We stick to the plan."

  With a heave of his huge shoulders, Ronan gave in. Aidan looked next to Daire, who was a bit white, but met his eyes straight on. "Donna worry about me, O'Neill, I will do my part. I owe ye."

  Aidan nodded shortly, hoping remorse would steady the man's courage. Daire's role would be the most important, really. He was to play the part of a simple hiker, the Reeks were overrun with them this time of year. But in his backpack he would be carrying the last of the ghrian siúlóir. Aidan couldn't chance carrying it in on his person. He'd be searched. Ronan couldn’t bring it as it was far too likely the vampires knew his smell from his centuries as a werewolf.