Bloodbreeders: Lies Beneath London

by Robin Renee Ray,

  While Tammy finished cleaning the rest of Martin’s wounds, Tanda went to get clean blankets and sheets. I glanced over and saw the note that was rolled up on the dresser and walk over and picked it up. “Have you read this yet?” I asked, walking back to the foot of the bed. Jacob turned and looked down at my hand and told me that he was waiting until Martin had been cared for, then reached over and took it out of my hand. He read it first, getting a slight smile then handed the note back to me, shaking his head.

  I will do anything to get my Alex and Bernard back safe. I have information about your master that you may find very important. I beg of you not to harm the ones you have taken from me. My sister, the High Mistress, will stop at nothing to prevent you from taking her power, even harming the one who created you. If you wish to see him alive, you will bring my boys back to me and I will help you free him.

  I beg this of you,

  Mistress Inara

  “Is she in for a shock,” I snorted, handing the note back to Jacob.

  “Yes, but if we move quickly, we can use her to our advantage.”

  “How so?”

  “Give one of her boys back, with the promise of returning the other safe, as long as she cooperates.”

  “Are you out your mind?” Tammy asked, dropping the pitcher of water she was holding. “You can’t allow either one of them to go free,” she added, bending down to pick the pitcher back up, but never once taking her eyes off of him.

  “They will all be at the gala. We will agree to bring the one that we do not send back, along with us, then whatever happens, happens,” Jacob smiled, watching Tammy glare her disagreement.

  “I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open, much less think,” Tammy said, setting the pitcher on the bedside table. “I’m going to have to go lie down, before the coming dawn has me down right here on the floor.” Then she walked over and kissed me on the forehead. “Rest well. I’ll see you when I wake.”

  “Thank you… for everything.” I pulled her into a hug, and then she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Jacob and I changed the bedding, moving Martin as carefully as we could, rolling him to the side to remove the wet sheet, laying dry towels on the mattress, and then placing a clean sheet on top. Once we had him rolled back over and the other side made up, I pulled my wet clothes off, pulled my gown over my head and crawled in the bed beside him, while Jacob rolled him back to the driest side to keep him off of his back. I held him in my arms, laying his head on my chest. Jacob built a fire and sat down in the high-back chair in front of the fireplace, looked over at me once, then closed his eyes. The last thing I remember was stroking Martin’s hair.

  Chapter Twenty

  I woke the next night just as I had fallen asleep. My hand was still holding Martin’s head, and his head was still laying on my chest. As I had every time I woke, I looked over to see if Jacob was looking back at me, only this time I stayed still until he woke. After a while, he sat up and brought the coals back to life, giving the room a comfortable glow. Martin moved and groaned with the pain that still attacked his body. “Renee?”

  “I’m here, just as I said I would be, holding you when you woke.”

  “Where am I?” he asked, trying to raise his head.

  “Don’t try to move, you’re home where you belong.”

  “How?” he coughed.

  “We went and brought you back,” I replied, smoothing his hair back, noticing some of the swelling had gone down.

  “They told me you were all dead. I thought I had killed you,” his voice was cracking as he tried to look up at me.

  “Why would you think that?” I asked laying his head back and sliding down in the bed so he could see me.

  “I was weak…” he paused as tears slid down the side of his face.

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart, please don’t cry,” I whispered, kissing his eyelids. “You’re the strongest man I know.”

  “I told them,” he swallowed, taking a breath. “I told them you belong to me.”

  I scooted further down so I could wrap my arms around him and put myself as close to him as I could without causing him pain. “I do belong to you, Martin. I always have.”

  “I have been so dishonest with you. My life is nothing but shame,” he tried to say the last but it came out a sob as he fought to hold the sounds inside.

  His shoulders shook as he gripped my arm, pulling me closer to his chest. I tried to talk but my words were held back by my own tears. I heard the door close as Jacob left so we could be alone. We held each other for a long while, until both of our tears had fallen. “I love you more than you will ever know,” he said, moving my hair away from my face. “I have so much to tell you about my past but I have been so ashamed of what my father was, that I just didn’t know how to tell you. The beast who owned this estate was not even the man who I claimed to be my father, Renee. The one who I called my father took this place many years ago and I, alone, took his name years after that.”

  “You have plenty of time to tell me about where you really came from, Martin, if you choose to do so. And I’ve been a fool for not seeing how much you really cared. You’re not your father and it doesn’t matter to me what has happened in your past, because I love you, too, and I always have,” I replied, as the tears began running down my cheeks again.

  “You are so beautiful. I do not deserve such a wonderful creature in my arms.”

  “You just have to get better, so you can hold me for the rest of our lives,” I tried to smile but the quiver on my lips prevented it. “I thought you were going to die when I saw you hanging there. I thought my world had ended and it was all my fault.”

  “I was not going to die until I took revenge for them killing you,” he tried to laugh through his own tears and pain.

  “We are a pair, aren’t we?” I smiled, feeling his breath as he slid his forehead from mine and kissed me on the tip of my nose, causing himself to hiss from the gash on his bottom lip.

  “We are indeed, my love.”

  “You need to feed,” I said, lightly touching the marks on his cheek. “Then maybe drink a bit more wine to ease your pain.” Then I started to get up.

  “You’re all the pain relief I need,” he replied, taking my hand and bringing it to his lips. “Hurry back. I think I will wait here for your return.”

  “Are you sure? I bet you could beat me to the kitchen.” I laughed softly, leaning forward and kissed his forehead and got up as gently as I could.

  “I do not know how your people were able to free me from Angelica, but I see now that you are truly the one to bring this way of life to an end for all bloodbreeders. You have amazed me by what you have done.”

  “We’ll tell ya all about it. When I come back with your meal, I’m bringing the whole crew with me,” I said, walking over to the folded bed covers on the dresser. I covered his mid-section enough for privacy and looked back to see that he was resting as I left the room.

  Jacob was leaning on the wall a few feet down from my door, pushing off when I stepped out. I walked straight up to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him, then kissed him on the cheek before I took his hand and started down the hall. “What was that for?”

  I just looked over at him and smiled. “Because I love ya, Jacob, and I couldn’t have gotten him back without you.”

  Cates opened the door to his room as we passed by, and he and Tammy joined us. I couldn’t help myself. I turned around and gave Tammy a hug and kissed her right on the mouth, then grabbed the big man around the waist. There was no way I could reach his cheek to give him a kiss, so I picked up his hand and kissed it.

  “I would have thought Master Martin would have been too weak to make you this happy,” he smiled, picking me up around the waist, causing me to yelp like a little girl. “Now what will you do?”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Kiss ya, now put me down, you silly ass ox.”

  Tammy was the first to st
art laughing at the ‘ox’ phrase, then Jacob and I joined in. Garvin was coming out of the family room, but Tanda and Derek were still in their room. Fala got to his feet from the pallet that he had slept on in the foyer, pulled his long black hair back into a ponytail, and stretched his arms over his head. He and Garvin, whose hair was sticking up in every direction that the strands of his blond locks could find, went out the front to go fetch the last pig from the stalls at the far right of the estate. By the time they had made it back in, Tanda and Derek entered the kitchen hand in hand.

  “Sleeping in?” Cates smiled, bringing a blush to Tanda’s cheeks and a broader smile from Derek.

  “Just catching up,” Derek winked.

  “A gentleman is silent,” Tanda said, bumping Derek with her hip.

  “Sleep, I was catching up on my sleep, sweetie, that’s all I meant.”

  “I caught up on my sleep right before the dawn took my woman too, Derek,” Cates burst out, getting an elbow in the ribs from his woman.

  “You’ll be catching up on your sleep alone if you don’t watch that mouth of yours,” she said, winking over at me as Fala and Garvin came behind me with the pig.

  “I want us all to have our meal in the room with Martin. He needs to know what’s going on and what we plan on doing at the gala,” I explained as Fala held the pig and Garvin sliced its throat.

  “Do you think it wise in his condition?” Garvin asked, from behind the table, while holding the bowl that was catching the blood.

  “He has to know. I don’t want any more secrets between us.”

  “The note will have to be discussed and the costumes for the gala will have to be found. We have three nights to be prepared,” Jacob explained, taking glasses down from the cabinet.

  “I’m telling ya right now, I ain’t wearing no make-up,” Derek boldly said, shaking his head side to side.

  “Don’t be silly Derek, they have masks for the men. Only the male eunuchs place make-up on their faces and of course those who like the company of men,” Tanda giggled, causing Derek to slant his eyes at Cates, who was now rolling with laughter.

  “Well, I damn sure don’t like men, and as far as I know I ain’t one of them eunuch things,” Derek replied, bringing the whole room into a rolling thunder of laughter. “What? I’m not!”

  I leaned over the table and whispered what I had learned about the word eunuch, and watched the horror fill his eyes. At first I didn’t know if he was going to storm out of the room in a fit of anger, but, as the boy was growing up right before my eyes, his lip raised on one side and he himself broke out in laughter. He looked down at Tanda, who shook her head, saying, “Nope, you are, without a doubt, not a eunuch.” Then she wrapped her arm around his waist trying to hide the blush that she had just brought to her own cheeks. We carried everything into my and Martin’s room and gathered around his bed, with me sliding back up as close to him as I could get. I lifted his shoulders while Tammy stacked the pillows up behind him, then I gently laid him back. The pain showed in his eyes but he tried to hide it with the smile that showed through the still swollen flesh on his face.

  “You look much better tonight, Martin,” Tanda said, leaning over and kissing him on the forehead.

  “I feel much better, little buttercup,” he smiled, taking her hand.

  “I told you Renee would come back for us and she came back for you, too.”

  “I know,” he said, turning his head to look at me. “I know.”

  “You need to feed if you wish to heal this body,” Tammy semi-interrupted, handing me a glass half full to hold for Martin, then handed me a full one for myself, which I drank quickly so I could help him.

  “I remember your manners being something quite different,” Martin said, taking a drink from his glass.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m not much of a lady anymore,” I laughed, handing his glass back to Tammy for a refill. “We’ve learned to eat fast.”

  “I saw that in the kitchen the other night,” he laughed, wrinkling his face in pain.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, taking his glass, and gently smoothing his hair from his face. “You can laugh at me all you want when you’re healed.”

  “But, you make it so hard, Renee,” Cates laughed from one of the high-back chairs.

  “And you shut up, no one needs your input,” Tammy snapped, checking the cut on Martin’s face that was seeping fresh blood.

  “There will be a gala at Angelica’s castle in three nights,” Jacob said, holding the note we had received the night before. “We intend to be there.”

  “You can’t,” Martin said, trying to sit up.

  “You want to rip open the stitches in your back, not to mention other areas?” Tammy scolded, putting her hand on his chest.

  “There will be hundreds of breeders there. You cannot go in with a handful and think to kill them all, it is insane.”

  “We have no plans of killing them all, Martin,” Jacob smiled. “We only mean to kill the three with the highest power.”

  “Yeah, then the rest will get the picture,” Derek nodded, with his brows furrowed toward Jacob.

  “Much like a war, one could say. We have a few things upstairs that will insure the help of one sister; the weaker of the two, to be exact.”

  “You are the ones who took Inara’s pets? She came running down the steps where Angelica was…” he paused lowering his eyes.

  “That bitch did this herself?” I asked, feeling the fire build in my gut all over again.

  “Inara wants her pets returned right away. I’m not even sure she believed Angelica when she told her she didn’t have them because she has taken them before as a punishment of sorts.”

  “Doesn’t one of them belong to Angelica?” Sydney asked.

  “Yes, but Inara thinks them to be her own.” Martin coughed so hard that he almost threw up. “She allows them to be one with each other and Angelica uses Bernard and Alex to punish her when she has any form of disagreement with her sister. She has no care for anyone, especially one of her slaves.”

  I fumed as he told us about the argument that the two sisters had, even getting into a slight fist fight, with Inara telling her sister that if she found out that Angelica had her Alex, that she herself would help the demon kill her. All that I could think about was killing the bitch myself. He then told us something that shocked me right back into reality. “The boy, Alex, was an orphan left to die when he was maybe two or three years old. Inara found him wandering, nude and hungry, in the forbidden zone when the last plague took London and took him in as her own. She found a boy close to his age, killed the boy’s parents and raised the two as brothers. Alex was her favorite, and Bernard was his whipping boy, as they called it the days when he was a child. Angelica would take Bernard to her home, saying that she too wanted a child, and Inara shared him. It was a mistake that she has always regretted.”

  “Here I thought his dark secret was knowing that Angelica had planned on killing you in front of the crowd at the gala but this whole time he was keeping the fact that Inara was his mother,” I said, more talking to myself than the rest in the room. “No wonder she said she would do anything to get them back.”

  “You have spoken to her?”

  “No, this was left on the gate out front,” Jacob said, handing Martin the note, who handed it to me to read because of the swelling in his eyes.

  “It was after what I had heard and most of what Angelica and her men had done to me that she told me that they had captured you in the tunnels and dispatched you all in battle. Only then did I fall to the pain and tell her that you were my own.” Martin lowered his eyes.

  “All that matters now is that you are back here, safe with us.” My people gathered closer to the bed, reaching out and touching Martin, showing we all understood. Some saying they would have done the same. Others admitted that they could not have endured as much.

  ***

  Our plan was to send Bernard back, keeping Inara’s beloved son as our trump ca
rd in case she choose to tell her sister anything that Bernard went back and told her. We would make it clear to him that Alex would end up worse than Martin…if not dead…if he didn’t do exactly what we said. While the others went to prepare Bernard for his coach ride home, I told Martin about the night I ran away with Rebecca and the reason that I did. I told him about Johnny, but before he could console me, I added that I found Johnny on my return visit to Cuba, when my four little ones and I took it down…alive and now one of us. The horror in his eyes said what everyone felt when they saw the little four year old breeder, but he was my brother and would remain in his small shell until we could find an answer as how to save him from an eternity in that form, without putting him into the final state of rest. That was not an option open for discussion.

  “What do you know about this doctor’s assistant or the man that did the same work like the one known as ‘the doctor’, Martin? If he can reanimate the dead and create those things, do you think he knows a way to help, Johnny?”

  “He is a sick and evil man, Renee. I have seen his work and it has nothing to do with saving our kind,” Martin answered with more sorrow in his eyes than I cared to see.

  “We found his notes back at his place in the states. There were things on there where the main doctor was working on going into the sun. And he was alive when we went out the night after we hung him on a cross to see if his work had done any good. He was whole and alive. Of course, he burst into ash shortly after.”

  “He was a fool to think such things, and you must not fall into the belief that little Johnny can be saved from this life any more than we can. You will lose your mind trying to find a cure for what we have become.”

  “He’s just a little boy, Martin. A little boy that I brought over.”

  “At no fault of your own,” he recoiled as the high pitched screams of Bernard echoed down the hall.