Blood Oath: What Rough Beast

by Kari Gregg

  “Ten now.” Garrick groaned.

  “Seven,” Kate said, her touch whispering in his hair. “He’s only asking for seven.”

  “It’s not too vast a number.” Peter’s forehead furrowed. “Seven is attainable.”

  Garrick tipped his head back and howled mirthless laughter. “The rebels are a minority, Peter. Why do you think I chose to build Pridemore in a swamp? To hide from dark masters and rogues.” He swiveled his gaze to include Kate. “To hide all of us.” His shoulders slumped. “You speak of freedoms I don’t possess.”

  “Seven new alliances and Luc’s eight will win your war for you, vampyr. That’s almost ten of your kind strengthened by were blood.” Peter paced, excitement glittering in his eyes. “And we can fight. We want to fight. Imagine it, Garrick. Headhunting elders fueled with were blood, joined in battle with hundreds of beasts.”

  “You’ll fight by the hundreds.” He blew out a dispirited breath. “And die by the hundreds.”

  Peter shrugged a diffident shoulder. “We die anyway.”

  “Your blood is valuable to us, Peter, but it doesn’t make you impervious. Your bodies are fragile. Against the masters? Their servants? You’d be slaughtered and draw their attention back to you. Have you considered that? Your numbers rebounded after the masters focused on the rebellion, but they’d hunt you again. Not just your warriors, your women and children too. The were population recovered thanks to the war, but not enough to join it. The risks are too high.”

  “Better to die for hoping too much than be killed for fearing it.” Peter shook his head. “No. Some of us will hide among your kind. We won’t all be out in the open as we were before. We’ll survive.”

  “We aren’t headed to Arizona because they suck at staying alive, Garrick. If not for their ancestral grounds, we would’ve been trapped in whatever Aidan had planned for us. You said so yourself.”

  “I designed the bug-out when Pridemore was still an empty bog, love.” His lips twisted to a crooked smile. “I selected the cave complex in Arizona because of its comfort value to the pack. Not because I was desperate and had no other place to go.”

  “Still. On their own ground, they’ll know how to take care of themselves.”

  Garrick’s heart hurt. “I planned that too. If Pridemore fell, I needed to give my weres the best shot at surviving my loss. I owe them that much.”

  Peter scowled. “Weres have little to lose by joining the war and the world to gain. Why can’t you see that? Together, we can make a stand against your dark masters. We can defeat them.”

  Kate worried her bottom lip. “It could work, couldn’t it?”

  “I’m counting on that, but it’s too soon.” Garrick raised a hand. “You’re assuming I’d find vampyr willing to tolerate a were pack. Notice I said tolerate. Not welcome. You’ve spoken to Aidan, seen his prejudices, and he’s our prince. How likely is it that I’ll be able to net you seven new alliances?”

  The alpha’s lips thinned. “If we can change Aidan’s mind, the rebels will follow. They always do.”

  “Results persuade the prince. Results and little else.” Garrick stood, snaked his arm around Kate to pull her close. “If the seven alliances you speak of succeed, if they show the council that were support strengthens headhunters for the fight and adds a layer of safety while we mate, Aidan might bend, but he won’t promote pacts with weres among our kind until then. He won’t help us.”

  “Your prince won’t bend, but you did. You can’t be the only one, not after so many generations have lived and died at Pridemore.” Peter aimed a vicious kick at one of the jeep’s tires. “Do you not know any of your damned vampyr brothers who’d take us?”

  Beseeching, Kate reached out to him. “Peter.” Kate move from the cradle of his arms to Peter to ease the worst of his temper from him.

  “You forget what I am. What I’ve been.” Garrick glanced away, unwilling to meet the questions in Kate’s gaze. “I fought for the rebellion. They allowed that. But I never fought with them. They accepted Luc, but not me. Never me.”

  When he peered through dark lashes, Kate had laid her cheek against the were’s shoulder. Her fingers smoothed up and down his arm, quieting him. Peter’s body vibrated with anger, but he’d reigned himself in. For her. “I was tolerated, Peter. But only tolerated. If not for Aidan, the rebels would’ve killed me before I met your forebears. They don’t trust me. How could they? I was never one of them.”

  Peter’s awkward hands lifted to stroke Kate’s hair. He nodded silently at her. “You will be.”

  “I will be.” He shifted on his feet. “But not yet.”

  “You’re wrong.” Peter snorted disgust when Garrick opened his mouth to argue. “To most of them, yes, not yet. They trust you as much as they’d trust me, which is not at all, but some of them…” He waved an accusing hand. “They are like Luc. You are an example to him, to them, of a new way to fight the war.”

  “They are exactly like Luc.” Garrick threw frustrated hands in the air. “Little more than children!”

  “Too young to be tainted by old prejudices.” Peter smiled. “According to our pack lore, you were the same age as Luc when you approached us with your ridiculous notion to ally.”

  Garrick glowered. “Strengthening our youngest and weakest warriors would aid us in ending the war how?”

  “Your young are paired with your elders. They’ll see the difference we make. All we lack is the opportunity to prove our worth. Little by little, we’ll convince them.”

  Garrick knew what he said was true. He’d spent centuries scheming those same schemes. Alliances with weres would turn the tide of the war. Not win it. Garrick placed a lot of faith in his weres, but he was too painfully aware that much more would be required to end the bloody catastrophe of the rebellion.

  But it was a beginning.

  Something to build on.

  Something to give the rebels sorely needed hope.

  But was it time?

  The idea had come to him in Nathaniel’s stable, when he’d been as trapped in slavery as any other rebel. He’d bided his time, waited. For Luc. After their escape, he’d dared to court and ally with his weres, although Aidan had scrutinized his every move. He’d trusted that the council’s perplexity, their bafflement, would outweigh their sense of danger.

  His risk had paid off.

  The rebels had every reason to destroy him, but ultimately, Aidan hadn’t killed him. The puzzle of what he could possibly be up to with the weres had been too compelling.

  So Garrick had tended his pack. With Pridemore as sanctuary, he’d watched them grow from the four he’d begun with to dozens. The pack had grown too large for Peter, but it had splintered before, many times over. Some had stayed in Louisiana, near the protection of his blood if not his home. He sent others on.

  Those were just the packs he’d nurtured.

  More dotted the globe.

  Would their numbers hold?

  Under the slaughter of war, who could say?

  When push came to shove, the rebels were in more danger of dying out than the vulnerable and powerless weres.

  “Every pack would need remote, rural territory for their hunting ground,” he finally said, “but our kind is safest in cities. The countryside is left to our youngest, those still too weak to fight in the war. None of our soldiers will have homes to offer you.”

  “We don’t need homes. Land, the kind we require, is plentiful and cheap.”

  Garrick chuckled. “Pridemore was not cheap.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “A small price to pay, but a lucrative investment. One that has paid off a millionfold.”

  “I agree,” he said. “They won’t.”

  The were blew out a frustrated breath. “We are not without our own resources. Allying packs can return to their ancestral grounds, as we are, until they’ve proven themselves worth the expense of new land.”

  “What advantage would that hold for the weres? Why should they be tempted to swear lo
yalty to their enemy and go to war to die for them without a land guarantee?” Garrick snorted. “If I’d made such a paltry offer to your forebears, they would’ve chewed me to a bloody pulp. Justifiably. It’s insulting.”

  “Let me worry about that. You worry about finding seven vampyr who will honor their promises to provide land when our packs have earned it.”

  Garrick studied his old friend. “You’re determined, then.”

  “I am.” Peter returned the assessing stare with equal fortitude and resolve. “I know war. My children know it. I want more for my grandchildren. It’s time.”

  “All right.” Garrick dipped his head. “I’ll try.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The jeep lurched through rocky canyons. It raced down dry washes, but theirs was among the most direct of routes. They reached the jagged mountains of Peter’s ancestral home hours before dawn.

  “This is unbelievable,” a were shouted from high above when he lowered a rope ladder to them. “Why didn’t you tell me that we descended from the Anasazi?”

  Peter cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Because we don’t, Tim.”

  Kate squinted up at the were’s dark silhouette, a black speck against the starlit sky. She didn’t want to guess how far up the sheer cliff face the were was, how high the ladder rose as she grabbed the first rung. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but the one-hundred-yard climb—or more—intimidated her. Maybe if she distracted herself…

  “Who are the Anasazi?”

  “They were the early Native Americans in the Four Corners region.” Garrick said from behind her, matching her pace up the ladder. “They coexisted with weres centuries before Europeans explorers stumbled across America. The Anasazi and weres traded peacefully with each other at first, but when the Anasazi population exploded and drought hit, resources became scarce. The Anasazi attacked.”

  Peter made his way up the ladder behind Garrick. “One by one, they drove our packs from the homes we’d carved into the mountains, so they could steal our caves to hide their crops while they fought one another for the best land, more water.”

  The dark shape above stared down at his alpha while the three of them ascended. “The Anasazi disappeared in the mid-1200s.”

  “Yes.” Peter laughed. “They did.”

  “And you claim the vampyr are bloodthirsty.” Garrick snickered. “At least we don’t eat the bodies of our enemies.”

  Kate halted, hand frozen on the ladder. She gaped down at them. “What?”

  “What?” Tim repeated from above.

  “We don’t eat humans. Usually.” When Garrick stopped, his progress impeded by Kate’s, Peter shoved at his foot. “The Anasazi should’ve never dared to seize our homelands. Only a fool comes between a were and his territory. They deserved a great deal worse.”

  Kate felt her eyes widen.

  Shrieking alarm warred with her disgust. “You ate them?”

  “I didn’t. My forefathers did.” He glared balefully. “We’re almost to the top. Keep moving.”

  “The weres made examples of a few settlements in Colorado, then set a handful of survivors loose to tell the rest that the weres were coming. The Anasazi didn’t stop running until they hit the plains, or so his ancestors and their pack lore said.” Garrick tapped her ankle to prod her along. “Come on, love. You won’t find any picked-over bones up there. By the time the weres fought their way this far south, the caves were empty. I promise.”

  Kate made herself climb the last several feet, accepting Tim’s hand up when she reached the top. Gasping for breath, she settled on the gritty stone while the younger were helped Garrick and Peter.

  “Archeologists have debated what the evidence of Anasazi cannibalism signified for years.” Tim pulled Garrick up. “I studied each of the theories in my Paleo-American Studies class and earned an A on a term paper for arguing that the cut marks and pot-polishing of bone fragments showed widespread executions for witchcraft.”

  Peter, the last to breach the summit, laughed. “Just goes to show you that fancy degrees don’t trump pack lore, boy.”

  “Have the rooms been readied?” Garrick took Kate’s hand when Tim nodded, leading her to another, blessedly shorter, ladder that guided them higher still.

  “Vampyr take all the fun out of history, Garrick.” Tim scowled up the ladder at him. “You know that?”

  Grinning, Peter slapped a hand on the were’s shoulder. “At least you got the widespread executions right.”

  * * *

  Kate lay atop him, eyes closed, sleepy and sated as he traced his fingers up and down the bumps of her spine.

  They’d climbed, moved deeper into the cave complex, then climbed some more. After the first sets of ladders, they’d used stairs cut into rock that had been weathered by what must’ve been hundreds if not thousands of feet. Her mind still reeled in amazement at the blend of simplicity and ancient sophistication in their new home. Living quarters clustered around a wide gathering area that looked natural, while manmade, or rather weremade, rooms spilled into one another above and around it.

  Far from the burning sun, the room she and Garrick shared was primitive compared to their suite at Pridemore, a cube about ten square feet that had been equipped only with a lantern and a pile of blankets for them to create their bed. But with such fascinating new surroundings to explore, restless after the hours spent rolled in musty carpet in the jeep, Kate hadn’t wanted to sleep. She’d examined the walls by the dull glow of the lantern instead, imagined she could still make out the primitive tool marks cut into the stone.

  Then Garrick had taken her into his arms.

  She still hadn’t been interested in sleep, but she also hadn’t cared about examining tool marks either.

  “I love you, Rick.”

  His lips curved to a smug smile when she looked up at him. “I know.”

  She laughed, twisting her finger around wispy chest hair to give it a sharp tug. “You’re still a jerk.”

  “Yeah, but I’m your jerk.” Grinning, Garrick fisted his hand in her hair, urging her lips to his. “Come here.” She sighed when his mouth covered hers, his tongue tangling lazily with hers. “Tell me again.”

  “I love you.”

  His body rolled her beneath him, his talented lips never leaving hers. “Again.”

  “I love you.” The weight of his hips pushed her into their blankets. His hard cock slid against her clit, birthing new lust inside her, licking like fire in her veins. “I love you.”

  “Show me.”

  * * *

  When she woke, Garrick had gone, but vague voices echoed nearby.

  The weres.

  Through the long, delicious night, when Garrick hadn’t been making love to her or she to him, he’d spoken of how he’d lived among them before she’d come into his life. He’d hunted the swamps with them, talked around their campfires, wept at the deaths of too many of their babies, and celebrated with the pack when their few children survived. Garrick himself had trained Peter to battle opponents on two legs rather than four, with first bare hands, then sword.

  “Peter came to me when I couldn’t fight the war anymore, years after I was forced to abandon Luc. So long without Luc, I didn’t want to live anymore. Peter wouldn’t leave me, though. He came, night after night, until he finally cut his own throat and made me feed. And when it was over, we cried like little girls.”

  Male laughter filtered down the dark tunnels to her.

  Garrick would be with them now.

  He loved them.

  “I love you as well.”

  She smiled, inhaling his scent and the heady scent of their sex from the comforter he’d finally pulled around them at dawn. “Garrick.”

  His answering chuckle reverberated through her mind. “Insatiable wench.”

  “Yeah, but I’m your insatiable wench.” Laughing softly, Kate rose from the bed, searching for some sort of clothing and finding none, wrapped the comforter around her instead. She ignored the c
amp lantern Garrick had left for her. Flicking shadows from the were’s central fire beckoned through the rabbit’s warren of rooms.

  She recognized familiar voices in the steady murmur of the pack as she crept near. Garrick’s low rumble. Peter’s sly laugh. Nearer still, she smelled the pack: the woodsy aroma of the central fire flavored with mesquite, the primitive tang of were blood recently spilled for her and Garrick both, his unmistakable earthy scent.

  Kate’s pulse skittered and raced at only the smell of him.

  Garrick.

  Rick.

  Her lover, her mate.

  How had she ever lived without him?

  Her life before seemed a pale shadow, a vague memory, as though that life had belonged to someone else, someone far removed from who she was now.

  Toeing carefully over loose gravel on steps leading down to the main cavern, Kate supposed that was essentially true. That other life was far behind her because the old Kate was far behind her. She was someone else. Something else. She was vampyr, and though Luc had finished the transition that Master David had started, Garrick had shown her the beauty of what she could be, the awesome miracle they were together.

  He was her life.

  He was her everything.

  “I’m so grateful for you, love. And proud. You’ve accepted so much of our world and in such a short time. But I’m greedy man, and I waited too long for you. Come to me, Kate. Come just a little farther.”

  She stepped from the dark corridor, into the light of the were camp.

  Her jaw dropped as hot embarrassment flooded her.

  She snapped her eyes shut.

  At least, she did until Peter’s bark of laughter tickled her ears from across the cave. Pride jerked her chin up, her eyes opening so Kate could glare at him.

  But Peter wasn’t laughing at her.

  He hadn’t noticed her.

  Snickering sly mischief, the were wrestled a grimy seven-year-old to the ground and tickled the boy’s side in wild abandon. “Say Uncle, you ill-bred beast, or I’ll sic your alpha on you.”

  “You’re my alpha, Uncle Pete.”