Blood Bath, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series Book 4)

by Rawlings, Rachel

  Wake up, Maurin. You've got to wake up. I fought off the henbane by sheer will. Open your eyes. Open your eyes damn it. My right eye twitched. That's it, a little more. My right eye fluttered open, followed by the left. Searing light assaulted my retinas. I couldn't make out anything through the blinding white at first. As my pupils adjusted to the horrific amount of light pouring in I made out the silhouette of the Blood Countess.

  Bathory coated her body with a deep red cream, lathering it on like sunscreen. She hissed with each stroke across her skin. When my eyes could fully focus I noticed the smoke coming off her body. It was made of my blood. Whatever she coated herself with contained a lot of my blood and it still contained enough silver to cause a reaction.

  Conry stirred across the hall, barking, howling and then barking more. He crawled to the edge of his cage, careful to avoid the bars and bayed like a new werewolf on their first full moon. Something or someone was coming down the hall.

  Elizabeth was in a frenzy slathering more of the bloody cream on her face. The sound of footsteps grew louder. She screamed, something about no one having me. I was pretty sure her sire would have something to say about that.

  Conry wasn't snarling or growling at the owner of the boots I heard pounding against the stones but I wouldn't allow myself to hope it was someone other than Caligula.

  I hadn't figured a way out of this hell that didn't involve being released from the iron shackles and off the henbane, yet. But I would. One of my captors planned to move me and I was certain they wouldn't do it with me strapped mostly naked to a metal table. I needed to be ready to make my move. I didn't struggle or do anything to draw attention to myself. I had to conserve what little strength I'd gotten back and it wasn't much.

  Something rattled the bars of my cell. Someone screamed my name. The voice was familiar but I couldn't place it. Why couldn't I place it? My brain said I knew that voice, knew it and the person who commanded it but I couldn't pull the name. There was a loud bang as something connected with the door. I rolled my head to face the hall. Taking my eyes off Elizabeth was a risk but I needed to know who was out there. A single tear ran down my cheek as relief and embarrassment washed over me.

  My father and Mason Hunter were in the hallway. It was stupid given the circumstances to care if my father saw me without my clothes but I did. It was yet another humiliation I would have to endure at the hands of the Blood Countess. Mason kicked the iron bars again and this time they buckled. There was a rush of fabric, a shoe scuffing against the stone floor and I knew Elizabeth had spun around to see the intruders. I didn't take my eyes off of my rescuers until genuine fear flashed in my father's eyes and Mason stepped forward, his palms upturned, sword about to drop to the floor.

  "Kill her." I mouthed the plea, hoping he would understand it was more important for her to die than for him to stop her from whatever she was about to do to me.

  "Noooo!" Two letters but the hunter roared them with a ferocity that rattled my ribcage. I turned, it felt like an eternity to complete that one physical act but I knew only a second had passed. Horrified and stunned I watched as Elizabeth plunged a piece of wrought iron fencing, the kind with arrow shaped tips, into my chest. My heart sputtered, blood spurting from my between my breast bone. She drove the makeshift spear through me with enough force to penetrate the steel table. It was impossible to breathe. Each attempt to pull oxygen into my lungs was excruciating. I was racked with coughing, blood filling my mouth.

  I heard Aidan running down the hall screaming my name. I wanted to call out to him, shout his name until he felt all the passion and despair I heard in his voice but it was impossible. I reached out to him, my wrist twisted, fingers extended straining to touch him despite being cuffed to the table. Mason rushed forward, Aidan on his heels. Aidan tried to shove him out of the way but Mason didn't budge, not even an inch.

  He barked orders at Aidan to remove the iron spear so he could apply a special salve to the wound, increasing my natural healing abilities. Aidan dropped a soft kiss on my lips before grasping the metal rod. His breath caused the sweat beading on my face to chill. If I had the strength I would have shivered.

  "On three. One." He pulled and if my lungs weren't filled with my blood I would have let out a scream that would have curdled theirs. What the hell happened to two and three?

  Apparently my near death state wasn't enough to keep them from arguing. Before I passed out from the pain Mason informed Aidan there was no fucking way Aidan was drinking my blood. He didn't care if it would pull the drugs and any trace of the iron out of my system so I could heal myself. Not one more vampire would taste my blood. I thought I heard Aidan tell him he's already had my blood. Of course he managed to make it sound scandalously sexual. I didn't remember much after my father ordered them both to shut up and scooped me off the table.

  I woke in the most comfortable bed I had ever experienced in my life. Or maybe it was because I nearly died and needed the rest so badly, a box in an alley would have felt like I was on a Sleep Number.

  The mattress curved and hugged my body, absorbing the weight of limbs that didn't want to work yet. I wasn't sure where I was but I wasn't on a metal slab, I wasn't hooked up to an IV and the room was iron free. I was out of that dungeon. My father had come for me. Aidan came for me. Because Mason heard you, I reminded myself. I wasn't ready to consider what that meant or the ramifications.

  The mattress shifted under someone else's weight. A small smile crept across my face. Sunlight poured in from the open window and I instinctively arched toward it. Once the rays had thoroughly warmed my skin and thawed my brain it occurred to me I was not in bed with my vampire. Again.

  My heart picked up a nervous rhythm I didn't recognize. People always say, “my heart can't take it.” Seriously, after the last few days I needed a cardiologist.

  Both terrified and excited by the idea of being in Mason's bed, I started to roll over. My nerves got the best of me so I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep. I don't know why it mattered that the hunter had seen me so exposed.

  Being a prude was such a human emotion. Most of the supernatural races were as comfortable in their birthday suits as they were a business suit, but it was more than my flesh on display in that torture chamber. He would have felt my fear, my weakness when I called out to him, seen the tracks of my tears.

  No one, not Aidan, not my father, not even my adoptive family who I spent most of my life with, had seen so much of me. For reasons I couldn't explain it mattered. Even though I told myself it shouldn't, it mattered what he thought of me.

  My arm tentatively slid across the sheet, fingers struggling to make contact with the person beside me, seeking comfort I knew I shouldn't. I needed to be sure, as if touching him would make it easier to look at him. Finally my arm stretched far enough my finger tips were able to graze his fur coat. Fur coat, what the hell? A sigh, heavy with relief, escaped my lungs - which were still really sore, ouch.

  "Good, you're awake."

  I went ram rod straight at the sound of his voice. The rough and husky timber electrified my nerve endings but I didn't say anything. I was too busy reveling in the onslaught of sloppy dog kisses. Normally I was not a fan of being licked in the face by a dog. I've seen where their tongues have been and the things they indiscriminately put in their mouths, my Conry was the only exception.

  I heard the chuckle before Hunter cleared his throat. "I'll inform your father."

  I tried to sit up. The wince and small groan had him at my side. His hands slid under my arms and he gently hoisted me. "Lean forward, easy now." After placing a few pillows behind me he helped settle me against the wall. There wasn't a headboard, footboard or even a frame for that matter. The huge mattress sat directly on the floor in the corner of a room and was the most modern fixture in it.

  I think his bedroom was bigger than my apartment. Pelts and cushions littered the floor. The embers of a fire still glowed in the large roughly hewn rock walled fireplace, which at one time had
been used for cooking as well as providing the warmth living in an old farm house required. The walls were limestone, the floor was slate. The thatched roof was different and suddenly a much needed reminder that we were not in the chamber of horrors beneath Caligula's mansion.

  "Thank you." It was barely a whisper, his face was so close to mine. I couldn't ignore the way he closed his eyes, relishing in the proximity of our bodies, my breath a warm caress on his skin. I cleared my throat, still dry from dehydration and from being this close to Mason. "I mean, you know, for coming to get me."

  "I will always come for you." He put some distance between us. Enough that he could sit on the mattress next to me but still face me. He never took his eyes off mine. "I should let your father know you are awake. He's been keeping vigil since we brought you here."

  "Now that you bring it up, where is here exactly?"

  "My home, a few miles outside of Cork."

  "Cork? Like as in Ireland?"

  "That Bathory woman knows where you live. Your apartment is not safe. Your father feared you would not survive the journey to his home because the wound in your chest wasn't healing fast enough. A combination of the drugs and blood loss. So we brought you here."

  "This is a hell of a commute."

  "You still have your sense of humor, I see."

  "It'll take more than blood loss, my sarcasm is at a cellular level."

  "I have a small apartment in Salem, not far from the station."

  "Mmm, must be all champagne wishes and caviar dreams living in the city proper." I scrunched my face, trying to figure out how a guy who lived in one of the newly renovated and over priced downtown apartments could be this medieval.

  His body shook with the laughter he held back. "It's loud, cramped and insanely expensive but it's convenient. I am a simple creature. I don't need much. Strip it down to the most basic, primal, carnal things. No one needs more than that." His voice dropped an octave, was rougher and hinted at some of those more carnal things.

  Just like that we were back to the lion and the gazelle. I tried not to make any sudden movements. Afraid the hunter would pounce. Afraid to acknowledge the part of me that wanted him to. "Maybe you should get my father now." The look he gave me said he would enjoy every minute he spent hunting me.

  I was surprised when my father knocked, then walked through the heavy, wooden door instead of appearing at my side. It must have shown on my face. "I didn't want to startle you." He brushed the hair out of my eyes before taking my hand in his and squeezing a little too hard.

  It was all the comfort from a parent I had missed growing up. I only had to almost die to get it. I hadn't ever questioned my mother's decision to hide me with mortals until that moment. What would my life have been like, raised with Arawn who was over bearing, old fashioned but obviously loved me as much as any father should love their daughter.

  "You wouldn't be the person you are today."

  "In the dungeon, I thought, when you didn't respond, I assumed you couldn't hear me. That you couldn't see inside my mind."

  "I am afraid that is something I cannot do but I do not need to read your mind to know what is so clearly written on your face. Every time I look at you I am gripped with a sadness for what could have been, what should have been. For all the things I missed. But we must trust that everything unfolds how it is meant to be. We cannot change fate anymore than we should tempt it. We can simply live and allow our lives to progress as gods intend."

  "But aren't you a god?"

  "Everything is created by something else. Like the gods who ruled Olympus were born of Titan blood, we were born of even older gods. That's enough of that topic for now. One shouldn't contemplate the light of creation when their mind is filled with the darkness that seeks to extinguish it."

  I looked at him, certain my face hadn't given me away that time. "I know what hardens your heart daughter but you must not let it consume you. You are my child, born of the Wild Hunt, and because of that your need for justice can easily be consumed by the need for revenge. It is something all who share the hunter bloodline struggle with, succumbing to the darkness when we spend so much time in it."

  "Mason said something like that, about light and dark, the first time I met him."

  "Hunter is a wise man. He will make an excellent instructor."

  Something about the way he said instructor made it sound more like husband. "Where's Aidan?" Guilt washed over me when I realized I hadn't asked about him yet.

  My father's face darkened at the mention of my vampire. Apparently he hadn't forgiven him for the whole marking thing. He spoke in clipped words. "He is with his kind. At Agrona's residence I believe."

  "What time is it with the time difference? Is it night there? I want to call him." Apparently he had developed a hearing problem in the last thirty seconds. "He was there, he came for me. That has to count for something."

  "He's the one who lost you in the first place. Him and that rag tag group you run around with. If he didn't make every effort to get my daughter back I would have staked him myself."

  "Hey, those are my friends."

  "Friends who should have contacted me the moment they realized it wasn't you but instead a glamoured ghoul who came back from Caligula's."

  "How were they supposed to do that? You can't be mad at them for something they didn't have the power to do."

  "They have access to Kellen." He had me there, so I didn't bother arguing. Being in the employ of the Council and holding one of the seats would have granted any of them an audience with Kellen, who in turn would have notified my father of my disappearance. I could forgive them the oversight but my father most definitely would not.

  "Are you going to let me call Aidan or am I as much a prisoner here as I was in that basement?"

  "I will have a phone brought to you." He shook his head. "As much as it causes me grief, I am thankful for your strong will and defiant temperament. It's probably what kept you alive."

  "I didn't feel very strong strapped to that table." I didn't bother to elaborate on the depths of the fear and despair I felt watching my blood circulating through Elizabeth's machine.

  "And still you reached Hunter. There is much to do. Caligula has gone to ground and his monstrous offspring is using your blood to move through the between. I want you to be careful, Maurin. She's tasted your blood and she'll crave it like no other's. Not just for your power, but your essence. Even if you did not have the gift to move through the between she would crave you. You are my daughter, the blood of a fae lord runs through your veins. Which would be enticing enough but unlike other halflings your blood is not diluted with mortal blood. Your mother was a powerful witch and your blood is all the more potent because of it."

  "If I'm so delicious how come Aidan hasn't bled me dry? He's had my blood more than once."

  "I suppose he never took too much? He stopped when his wounds were healed, the moment no trace of the Afrit poison remained in your blood? The urge to drain you dry the night he tried to mark you was only controlled by the fact you would be his forever, to drink from whenever he pleased. I will never understand why you would have bestowed such a gift upon him."

  He sighed, taking my hands in his. "Do not waste strength fighting with me about Aidan. He is not the vampire I am concerned about at the moment. Every vampire Caligula sired was a monster, Bathory worst of all. Six hundred and twenty-five young women died by her hand. Over six hundred wrists and throats slit to fill her baths. All that before she was turned. Eternity with an unquenchable thirst for blood. Eternity spent with demons rooted in her mind. Time has neither curbed her blood lust nor healed her shattered mind. If anything she is worse, more blood thirsty, more demented than ever. Bathory has slipped through our grasp before, eluding the Council for centuries. The Hunt is preparing, we will run Caligula and Bathory to ground. They will feel the breath of the Cwn Annwfn on their neck, but for now you need your rest." He kissed the top of my head and left the room.

  Conry curled up
beside me and I stroked his back. I was about to give him one of the belly rubs he loves so much when my hand grazed the wound in his side. My eyes burned and my throat tightened from the tears fighting to escape.

  I had almost lost my guardian, my friend. I would not cry, I would not cry. Elizabeth may have broken me in that basement but they would be the last tears I shed. We made it out and I would make Elizabeth and Caligula pay for what they did to my dog, for what they did to those girls and what they tried to do to me.

  When their blood soaked the ground, when their ashes were scattered in the northern winds I would bask in the glory of my kill. The Blood Countess would truly know what a blood bath was when she met the point of my sword. Conry bristled at my agitation, stirring to look for what caused it. He needed to rest as much as I did. I ignored the pain in my chest and slid down in the pillows, curling up with my guardian. I fell asleep petting him.

  15

  The temperature dropped and I shivered. Conry had moved away during our nap taking his warmth with him. I tried to scoot closer to him and the heat I felt radiating off his body when I realized we weren't in Kansas- or Cork- anymore. The familiar grey of the between surrounded us. Conry had regained enough strength to stand guard. The comfort I usually felt here escaped me. Even as my body absorbed the energy, healing itself in the process, I was on edge. Elizabeth could find me here and as much as I longed to see my sword glistening red from her blood I wasn't ready.

  The grey began to shift. Stones took shape in the fog. I felt my chest tighten as the light flickered out and the thatched roof gave way to damp stones. I was back in that room. Medical equipment hummed and beeped in the background. Panic momentarily gripped me, rooting me to the spot at the foot of the metal table that I was strapped to hours ago.