Tall, Dark & Heartless: A Pyte/Sentinel Series Novel

by R. L. Mathewson

  A few more seconds and she would have been dead. He'd been fine with that, more than fine actually. As he shoved her down to the bottom, careful to release her when the electricity flowed, and continued to release surges of electricity into her body he'd actually been relieved that the bastard hadn't muttered a sound in protest. It meant that he was free to finally kill the bitch.

  He knew the Master wouldn't be pleased, but if Caine wasn't willing to help Danni then it was obvious that she wouldn't be useful for their plans. He'd just resigned himself to enjoy killing her and finding another female when an unholy roar shook the room. Before he could turn around he found the arm that had been holding the bitch down torn from his body. As his men fled the room, dragging him behind them, he watched as the cold bastard pulled Danni out of the water.

  "The Master said not to hurt the woman again," Lucan, the Master's right hand, said in a cold tone.

  Greg ground his jaw as he forced his eyes to remain on the monitor. He hated the bastard almost as much as he hated being forced to deal with him since the Master refused to bother with him until he finished this project. The Master didn't deal with minions directly. That was Lucan's job.

  He hated being considered a minion almost as much as he hated being the human child of a Sentinel, but that would end soon. After he completed this project and he was changed, he fully planned on showing the Master the error of his ways and taking Lucan's job. In time, he'd take his rightful place as Master.

  ********

  Why was she in so much pain? Danni wondered as she rolled over onto her side and shivered.

  "Get up, Danni," Caine commanded, but she couldn't. She was too tired and weak, although that's not what stopped her.

  The small sparks of pain going off in her head let her know that she wouldn't be getting up again for quite some time. She turned to bury her face against the soft mattress as the light began to bother her. It didn't matter that her eyes were closed, she couldn't tolerate any light right now. She knew from experience that it was only going to get worse before it got better.

  As much as she would love to find out why Caine decided that she was worthy to speak to again, she decided to give into her exhaustion and pain and go back to sleep. If she was lucky she'd sleep through this migraine. That would only happen if Greg decided to leave her the hell alone.

  The idea of him taking his anger and frustration out on her while she had one of her migraines turned her stomach. She probably would have vomited if her body hadn't chosen that moment to drift off.

  *********

  "Are you going to stay awake this time?" Caine asked tightly as the sounds of chains being dragged across the floor teased her now thankfully, dull headache.

  She slowly rolled over onto her side and frowned at the sight that met her. Caine's eyes were bright red, his fangs were down and for some godforsaken reason, he was prowling back and forth like a caged animal.

  Her eyes shot over to the glass case that was filled with light pink water. Was that her blood? she wondered as she tried to sit up, but couldn't. She was too weak and tired, a nasty side effect from one of her migraines that had only been made worse by starving and the fun little torture Greg had thought up.

  As she tried to find the energy to get up and use the bathroom she looked at the pink watery mess on the floor. When she couldn't detect any pain that would go along with that much blood loss she wondered what the hell happened. She looked back at the tank for a clue and that's when she saw it.

  "Look away," Caine snapped and she was helpless to disobey at the moment. Her stomach was already queasy. She didn't need to stare at half an arm floating in the water to make it worse.

  "What happened?" she asked, proud that her voice sounded normal.

  "Greg left us a parting gift," he answered and she didn't have to look back to know that he was still pacing back and forth. The sounds of his chains dragging across the floor gave him away.

  Her lips twitched despite the nausea that threatened to take over. She curled onto her side, using her right arm as a pillow as she pressed her left hand against her stomach in an attempt to stop the hunger pains that were starting to make their presence known. She just needed a little more rest then she could make her way to the shower and fill up with water while taking a cold shower thanks to Caine, she thought with a heavy sigh.

  "What's wrong?" Cain asked, sounding almost.....concerned?

  Had hell frozen over? she wondered idly as her stomach began to cramp down. As much as she'd love to lay there and rest for a while, if she didn't get to the shower area now she'd probably be too sick to do it later.

  She rolled over onto her side, took a deep breath and sat up as she averted her eyes from the morbid scene to her left since the last thing her stomach needed was dry heaves. Using her trembling arms she pushed herself onto her shaky legs, but didn't get far before her butt landed back on the mattress again.

  "What are you doing?" Caine demanded.

  "Why do you care?" she snapped weakly, hating being this weak, this whole situation, and the inevitable future that she faced.

  She needed to get out of here before it was too late. This wasn't the way she wanted things to end. As long as she'd still been able to work, to function she'd been fine, but this situation was anything but fine.

  Every minute she spent in here was a minute of her life wasted, a minute she would never get back and if things kept progressing the way they were, she wouldn't have to worry about dying of starvation or even Greg killing her because the cancer would. She'd already gone at least two weeks without her medication, medication that was supposed to slow its progress, help her keep her strength up and give her a fighting chance to leave this world doing what she loved doing.

  She thought about telling Caine the truth, wondering if maybe there was enough concern for her left in him that he'd help her escape so she at least had a fighting chance, but she knew he wouldn't. He didn't care and nothing was going to change his mind.

  She was nothing to him, just another human that didn't matter and was going to die someday. It would be foolish to think that he'd care enough to take a risk for her. Not that he would die, but they could torture or starve him.

  "Why the hell did you let that asshole do that to you?" he suddenly shouted, making her wince as a bolt of pain shot through her head. Great, now it was time to lay down again.

  Carefully she lay on her side, facing the room, noting for the first time that her shirt was damp. No wonder she was freezing. She considered pulling the fitted sheet off the small mattress and curling up with it, but it was probably damp as well. Not that it mattered since she didn't have the energy to get up, never mind perform that little feat at the moment. All she wanted to do was lie here and wait for the hunger and pain to go away, but the man glaring at her as he paced the room didn't look like he was going to be very accommodating by shutting the hell up and stopping that damn rattling anytime soon.

  "I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but I wasn't exactly in a position to fight off all of them. I was kind of busy being electrocuted and drowned," she said dryly.

  He waved it off. "I'm not talking about that and you damn well know it. What I want to know is why the hell you let that asshole in your life after I told you to stay the fuck away from him?" he demanded, showing more emotion than she'd ever seen him display. Even when she was a child he never let his emotions get the better of him. No matter what happened he always remained in control, but right now he looked on edge. If she wasn't so damn exhausted and weak she might actually manage to crack a smile at the sight.

  Anyone else would probably be quivering in the corner, pissing themselves at the sight before her, but he didn't scare her. When she was a kid she used to love pushing his buttons to see what it would take to get his eyes to flash red and his fangs to drop. Most of the time he'd given her a little eye roll just before he did what she wanted just to get her to stop. The only times she didn't have to do anything was when Greg came too close to her
. Then he unleashed the monster inside of him.

  A few times she actually thought he was going to kill Greg. After she fell into that pit was one of the most memorable times. She didn't remember much about the incident other than a lot of pain, Caine hovering over her as she tried not to cry too much, but the one thing that she did remember clearly was Caine's reaction when he spotted Greg.

  His eyes turned red as his teeth slid down and he crouched in front of her, looking close to attacking. She wasn't sure if he reacted that way because of the cruel little smile Greg sent her way or what, but she knew even then that he wanted to rip Greg's small throat out. Even then she knew what would happen to Caine if he did and she'd been terrified of being alone again, but she'd been more afraid for him.

  She remembered reaching out and taking his much larger hand into hers before passing out. When she woke up hours later he was by her side so she assumed that he hadn't hurt Greg, but things changed. Before he seemed to find Greg's presence annoying, but after that he eyed Greg as if he was Satan himself. He constantly drilled it into her head that she needed to stay away from him and to never find herself alone with him. Since she hadn't cared for Greg one way or the other she'd listened, but once she was an adult and she no longer had Caine to count on, she allowed herself to welcome Greg into her life, hoping for a good friendship, but apparently that had been asking for too much.

  "You gave up the right to tell me what to do when you turned your back on me," she pointed out, glad that she didn't sound as bitter as she felt about that.

  He'd been her world, her friend, her mentor, her everything and then he wasn't. The way he dropped her out of his life left her hurt, confused, lost and so damn lonely that for the first few months she wasn't even able to be in the same room with him without feeling like she was going to cry. It was a weakness that she forced herself to get over.

  "Is that what this was all about?" he demanded harshly, never ceasing his damn pacing.

  "What?" she asked, fighting exhaustion even as it threatened to take her under again.

  "Allowing that bastard to get close to you, trusting him," he practically sneered. "You did it to spite me because I tired of you?"

  "Yeah, it's really all about you," she said dryly to cover the pain his words caused. Guessing and knowing that he'd gotten sick of her were two very different things and having it confirmed was a blow she hadn't been ready for.

  He glared at her and she thought he was going yell again, but after a moment he looked away from her as if the sight of her disgusted him and she was more than fine with that. She didn't want him seeing her weak like this, and she sure as hell didn't want him to know just how much his desertion had hurt her.

  Her eyes began to flutter shut when the door opened. She watched Caine drop into a crouching position in front of her. She wasn't sure what the hell that was about and wasn't going to allow herself to think that it meant anything. It didn't. If anything it was just leftover sentimentality for the little girl she once was. She also knew that once they threatened his blood supply that she was on her own, once again.

  A low growl vibrated throughout the room as the door opened. Her entire body tensed and she hated herself in that moment for reacting. The last thing she wanted to do was to give Greg any kind of response. Something told her that if she did, the sick bastard would up his game and her situation would get a hell of a lot worse.

  When a tall, lean man with golden blonde hair combed back in a style that befitted a CEO stepped inside of the room she felt herself relax, somewhat. For all she knew this man was worse than Greg, but he didn't have that personal vendetta against her that Greg seemed to have, so for the moment she decided she wasn't going to panic.

  The man stopped just inside of the room. He threw the tank filled with pink water and the floating arm a look of disgust before he looked between Caine and her with curiosity.

  "If you have a moment, I would like to speak with both of you."

  Chapter 9

  Boston Compound

  Boston, MA

  "Again," he said as the two-hundred and fifty pound Sentinel, that could have easily been a linebacker had he been born human, glared at him as he dragged himself back to his feet. "This time guard your left, Cupcake."

  "I am guarding my left!" the Sentinel snapped as he wiped the blood dripping down his chin with the back of his hand.

  "No, you're not," Ephraim said quietly from the sidelines, not even bothering to look up from the intense game of peek-a-boo he was playing with his granddaughter. His precious baby girl of course backed her father up with several excited little coos.

  "How the fuck would you know?" the Sentinel demanded. "You're not even watching!"

  With an annoyed sigh, Chris dropped down and swept his foot out, knocking the big cry baby down on his ass. He jumped back up to his feet before the Sentinel's back hit the sparring mat.

  "Don't swear in front of my precious baby girl," Chris simply said when the large man glared up at him.

  The man opened his mouth to probably bitch some more about Chris' rules, but smartly kept his mouth shut. Since he took over as the compound and Sentinel's regional trainer a month and a half ago, everyone had learned quickly that his rules were simple and not to be fucked with.

  If his precious baby girl, Jessica, was in the room there was no swearing allowed, ever. When someone broke that rule he knocked them down and if they didn't learn that rule quickly, he gave them a lesson in fighting that they would never forget. When it came to his daughter, mate and family Chris didn't play around.

  "Get up and let's do this again," Chris said, gesturing for the man to get up again

  "I've been doing this for over a hundred years," the man bit out as he stood up. "I don't need these training sessions."

  With a bored sigh, Chris backhanded him, sending him flying across the room. The man landed hard on the mat, twenty feet away with a loud whoosh.

  "Clearly you do," Chris said, not even bothering to tell the man to get up since it looked like he was seconds from passing out.

  That was one of the toughest aspects of his job, re-training men and women who had been doing this job for a lot longer than he had. The problem was that they took their natural abilities and the fact that they'd survived the job for this long for granted. Not all of them did. A lot of them trained just as hard as he did. He enjoyed sparing with them, learning new tricks and methods of fighting as well, but some of the Sentinels, like the one currently whimpering on the mat, didn't train nearly hard enough. They firmly believed the training they received back in their day was good enough.

  It wasn't.

  With the war currently making everyone's life a living hell, they needed to get their asses in gear as quickly as possible. The war had been going on for almost eight months now and it didn't look like it was going to end anytime soon. They needed to get their shit together and end this soon before they suffered any more casualties or the damn humans got a clue about the real world surrounding them.

  The war originally started when the Masters, vampire leaders, united with one goal in mind; find Isabella McGuire and get their hands on her computer program Tattletale. Unfortunately for the Masters they hadn't known that Isabella was a Sentinel and his destined mate.

  Sentinels were the natural defense against vampires, demons and shifters. Every ten years, ten Sentinels, five males and five females were born on November 25th to human and Sentinel females. For a Sentinel to be born to a human, the mother had to be carrying twins so that the entwined souls of the Sentinel could move undetected with the soul of the human sibling. Most of the human twins died during the birth, because they were unable to handle the changes that occurred in the womb when the half-human and half-angel soul combined to create a Sentinel. Every destined Sentinel pair shared a human and an angel soul.

  Izzy, his little Munchkin, owned the other halves of his souls and his heart. She was the love of his life and the person who made him whole and happy. Before her he'd li
ved a barely there existence, only living for his family. She'd saved him in more ways than one and gave him the greatest treasure in the world, his precious baby girl.

  He'd do anything for his family and it killed him that they were stuck here in Boston, where his Munchkin couldn't step so much as a foot out of the compound out of fear that a minion, demon, shifter or a vampire might spot her and realize that she wasn't really dead. About a week after his sneaky little stubborn Munchkin wiggled her way into taking a job at the compound to save her beautiful little ass from being shipped off to a Sentinel island where she would have lived a safe, yet secluded life, they faked her death. Not every Master bought it, but enough of them did, so it took some pressure off of everyone.

  The attacks on humans and the searches for Izzy came to an abrupt halt, but unfortunately that didn't stop the war. Demons, shifters, and Masters decided it was time for an uprising. Packs all over the world were attacking each other as well as demons and vampire nests. Pack members were trying to take down their Alphas. Masters were feuding more so than usual and demons were coming in from behind and trying to make a power play while everyone else was distracted.