How Beauty Saved the Beast (Tales of the Underlight)

by Garren, Jax

  Then froze. No, not “since he got back.” They had a video of Hauk in Afghanistan. Ananke had been following him for longer than anyone realized.

  She knew what to look for on the video.

  But first she had a Hand of Atropos to cof ">S deal with.

  Chapter Eleven

  Seven friends dead, all by his hands. Hauk lay back on his bed, studying his fingers and the scars etched across his palms, the ones he’d worked so hard to get supple and functioning again. What else had his hands done that he didn’t know about?

  He could’ve been on a damn murder spree here in Austin. He could’ve—

  Somebody knocked.

  “Who is it?” If it was fuckin’ Brayden again with another fuckin’ platitude…

  “It’s Ashley. Can I come in?”

  Killing friends. He closed his eyes and banished the image. That wasn’t him; it was the thing using his body. He rolled up to sitting and stuck his feet on the floor. He cleared his throat and forced his voice to sound calm. “Of course, Ash.”

  Jolie was the person he really wanted to see. Her smile calmed him like nothing else. It was weird she hadn’t come by to talk after their argument last night. Unless he’d pissed her off so badly she was staying away. But Brayden hadn’t thought she was pissed. Had she heard about the video and changed her mind?

  Ashley came in, and Hauk took a deep breath. This morning she had a more casual look than last night, reminding him of the girl he used to climb trees with. She smiled, but there was something nervous in it. Probably from being in a new place. Ash always liked to have things a certain way, and Austin seemed to have taken her by surprise.

  She patted his knee. “I was hoping we could go on that tour of Austin?”

  Gods, that sounded like effort. He really wanted to lie back down, maybe with a drink, and wait for Jolie to show up. Which could be sometime next never.

  No self-pity. Get out of bed. Keep moving. Hauk stood up and put on the best smile he could muster. “Sounds great. Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Decide to win. Jolie watched the guard standing immobile before her with his arms crossed. He was a bruiser, not as big as Hauk, but still a big guy. And despite Ashley’s threat, she had a feeling he wouldn’t lose too much sleep over knocking her around.

  I’m smarter and I’m faster than him. I can win.

  Every time she tried to stand he pushed her back down. There was no way she could win from her position. But if she couldn’t go forward out of the chair…

  She tucked her knees up into the fetal position, like she was afraid, and gave a big sigh of defeat.

  The guard relaxed. Idiot.

  Ananke wanted to make Hauk just like him.

  Breathing through her building anger, she watched from under her lashes until his gaze wandered to the door. Tucking her head, she threw herself backward. The chair slammed to the ground, and she rolled up to standi fwitch And deng.

  The guard turned back to her and frowned, more like he was annoyed than threatened. She didn’t exactly blame him. “Aw, you stood up. Whatcha going to do now, Red? Like it or not, we got another forty-five minutes together.” He clapped his hands, rubbed them eagerly and gave her a two-fingered “have at me.”

  He had the same tattoo as Hauk on his forearm, a capital alpha with scissors dangling off the base. Most Atropos chose their life in exchange for a fat paycheck, but those assholes in Ananke had given Hauk one without his consent. It didn’t work. She needed to make sure it stayed that way. The idea of Hauk as one of their brainless soldiers made the bile rise her in throat and rage burn. They may want to use him, but she wanted him the way he was—scars and all—more than the whole lot of them put together.

  If she ran to the window while the guard was up, she’d get caught. She had to get him on the ground to give her those precious extra seconds. Thank God Hauk had finally taught her a more interesting move than a block or jab.

  She faked a punch. The guard went for it and grabbed her hand. She spun into him and stabbed her foot on the floor between his legs.

  She was about to find out if Hauk told the truth when he said he didn’t go easy on her.

  The guard tried to let her hand go to grab her elsewhere, but she snagged his sleeve and held on.

  She dropped into a squat, and his body dragged onto her back. Yanking his sleeve, she pushed back up. His weight leveraged him over her and he crashed into the chair. Without pausing to look, she ran for the window and hurtled herself onto the roof.

  As she shimmied down the porch, the guy appeared at the window. She dropped to the ground. He dashed for the door of the room. She had a few seconds’ lead, but that should be enough to…

  The tires to Hauk’s bike were slashed. He was going to kill her. She had no ride, no phone, no purse. And a Hand of Atropos on her tail.

  Good thing she was just a few blocks from Guadalupe, a populated thoroughfare. From there she could find a way to get to The Underlight and warn Hauk.

  If she wasn’t too late already.

  She sprinted toward Congress, thoughts of Hauk driving her to move faster than she ever had before.

  * * *

  Some days, maybe, getting out of bed actually was a bad idea.

  Hauk halfheartedly rattled the chain on his right arm as his groggy mind tried to make sense of where he was. Shirtless and shoeless, bound hand and foot to a table. That much he picked up immediately. He shook his head to clear it and looked around the room. He closed his eyes again. Tried to rub them, but the cold chains wouldn’t let his hands stretch that far. He opened his eyes again anyway to examine his prison.

  If a mad scientist and an evil wizard had a love child, this would be his lab. A desk of pristine medical equipment was next to his table, and alchemical signs were chiseled into the floor. Shelves contained chemicals, IV bags and an assortment of enough animal bits to stock a hoodoo shop.

  Ashley was nowhere to be seen. They’d been ambushed at the park. Atropos had gotten Ashley at gunpoint, so Hauk had surrendered. The last thing he remembered before they knocked him out was her yelling not to hurt him.

  Poor Ash. Ananke wasn’t cautious wit k ca/span>h human life, but luckily they weren’t intentionally wasteful of it, either. They liked to think of themselves as the good guys. When he surrendered, they had what they wanted. There was a reasonable chance they’d let her go.

  He hoped so, anyway.

  Now he just had to figure out how to get out of here. He tugged on the chains again, testing the strength of their attachment. Firm.

  The door opened. In walked a dumpy guy whose chalky skin said he spent way too much time indoors. At Hauk’s scowl he lifted an eyebrow. “Awake, I see. Sooner than we expected.” He had an oddly cheerful voice for the creepy surroundings. “But then, you seem to have all kinds of tricks we don’t expect, don’t you, Mr. Haukon.”

  He smiled as he snapped on gloves, and Hauk had the unpleasant feeling the man could keep his happy-go-lucky demeanor as he cut somebody apart.

  “You are, of course, hoping I’ll tell you what we plan to do with you. The anticipation is likely killing you. I will put your mind at ease.”

  Hauk managed to lean up on his elbows, giving him less a feeling of prone exposure. “Yeah, I’m sure putting my mind at ease is your top priority.”

  The man picked up a notebook and jotted down notes. “Such hostility. And after we’ve extended so many invitations. But this time, I think you’ll like what I’m offering.”

  “Then unchain me and let me say yes all polite-like.”

  He crinkled his brow. “I’ve been known to make errors when human psychology is involved in the equation.” Of course he had. The guy was likely a psychopath. “You are here so we can study your blackouts. We’d like to understand them and possibly remove them. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It must be hell to lose so many hours of your life to something out of your control.” He looked almost sympathetic as he said it.

  On
the bright side, that plan wasn’t the worst news Hauk had had all day. “Too bad I don’t trust you people to remove them without tinkering around with my brain in other ways, too.”

  “Hm. Shall we get started? I need to trigger a rage state. Do you know how to begin one? Is it a choice on your part?”

  Hauk lay back down and put his hands behind his head in a casual pose. It might’ve worked better if he could interlace his fingers, but he did the best he could under the chained circumstances.

  “Well then, the only way we’ve seen them triggered is in a fight.” The man poked his head out the doorway, said, “We’ll need you,” and came back to Hauk. “Putting you in a fight doesn’t work for my purposes, though. I need to be able to monitor you more closely than that.”

  A man carrying a black bag walked into the room.

  The doctor continued. “Our best guess is the blackouts are triggered in response to pain.”

  The bag opened to reveal an assortment of knives.

  Hauk muttered a curse.

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to cooperate?” the psycho doctor asked.

  “Could you start on the right? We could even the scarring up a bit. The lack of symmetry wreaks havoc on photo shoots.”

  Torture-man frowned as he traipsed to Hauk’s left.

  Hauk sighed. “So unaccommodating.” This was going to suck, but at least he’d gotten the g k go/fouy on the side with fewer nerve endings.

  The man raised the first knife. Hauk stifled a shudder as memories of the hospital, of skin-flaying torture in the name of saving him, clenched his gut.

  Recovering from burns sucked worse than getting them. He’d endured that. He would endure this, too.

  But then what were they going to do with him?

  * * *

  Two months of carefully crafted social interactions designed to get The Underlight on her side, and Jolie threw it all away. Hauk’s shirt clung to her with perspiration and her hair had frizzed into a disaster. She’d taken the shoes off her swollen feet halfway back and her legs were Jell-O from the constant impact of the pavement as she ran.

  She’d made it back as fast as she could with no wallet and no wheels. For once she didn’t give a crap about appearances. Lungs screaming for air, she pushed her exhausted ass up onto a table in the crowded common room and wheezed out, “Where’s Hauk?”

  Everyone in the room turned to face her with giggles and a few strange looks before one of the knitters said, “He left with his blond friend about an hour ago.”

  The words felt like a blow. That bitch already had him. Jolie had run as fast as she could, and it hadn’t been fast enough. “Shit!” She dropped to a squat down on the table. She had to go find him. He was probably already at Ananke’s headquarters.

  She had to rescue him from the freaking lion’s den. “Shit.” She didn’t even know if she remembered how to get to the hidden retreat nearly an hour west of town. It wasn’t like she could do an internet search on “Temple of Ananke” for directions.

  “What’s wrong?” Dr. Echelson said. She looked down and realized she was nearly standing in her professor’s lunch.

  Great. Then again, grades, hell, even graduation, didn’t matter right now. Just Hauk. “She’s one of them. Ashley. She’s Ananke.”

  Dr. E frowned as he put down his fork. At least he was taking her seriously. “No. She came as a transfer from the Cincinnati chapter. She knew the right people. Things she couldn’t know unless she was there.”

  Jolie licked her lips. She needed to convince somebody. Hopefully she could do a better job with Dr. E than she had with Ashley. Dropping all pretense, all savvy, all everything but her terror for Hauk and determination to see him safe, she caught his gaze and willed him to believe her. “I don’t know how she did it, but she’s one of them. They sent her here to get Hauk. She stole LaRoche’s sedative this morning.”

  His face blanched as he hopped to standing. Finally somebody believed her. “Are you going for him?” he asked.

  She didn’t know how, but she nodded.

  Her professor stepped up onto the bench and announced in a firm voice, “Citizens of The Underlight. Hauk has been taken. Jolie will lead the rescue effort into Ananke’s temple.”

  Food, games, instruments, everything was forgotten as people gathered around. The crowd turned to her with assessing eyes, a mixture of mistrust and respect in their faces. One person said, “Catrina and I can draw up plans of almost the whole base.”

  With that, the floodgates opened. “Tally has equipment. I’ll get her.”

  “Is your car still at the club? I can get it.”

  “You’ll need better clothes. Give me five minutes.”

  Hope renewed Jolie’s strength as everyone banded together to help. They could do this. They had to. For Hauk.

  * * *

  Hauk clenched his teeth and sucked each painful breath in between them. Blood pooled underneath his hips from shallow slashes across his abdomen. His left shoulder throbbed from the knife still embedded just below his clavicle. But what scared him was his right hand. Two quick strikes with a hammer, and he couldn’t feel it anymore.

  “Stop,” the doctor said. “This isn’t working.”

  “We could try fire,” his torturer suggested.

  Not fire. Anything but fire. Hauk closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing in and out. Whenever pain shattered through him out of control, he could still control his breath. In and out. Slow as he could keep it.

  Please gods, not fire.

  The doctor clicked his tongue. “He’s never been in fire before when he’s raged. No. I think we need a new tactic.” His blurry form stood over Hauk. “Why don’t you just rage for us? It would make this so much easier on everyone.”

  “Go to Helheim, you fuckoff.” He spit blood at the doctor and watched with some satisfaction as the man smeared red across his pristine jacket in an attempt to clean it off. Hauk laid his head back on the table and closed his eyes. “I don’t control it.”

  The schink of a knife exiting a sheath made his body clench again, but he kept his eyes closed. He’d survived worse than a knife wound.

  Besides, it was his hand he was worried about—

  “Stop. He’s welcome to his little tantrum. Go get the girl.”

  Hauk’s eyes popped open. “Ash?”

  The doctor frowned. “Yes, her. If you won’t alter states to save yourself, maybe you’ll do it to save someone else.”

  Hauk struggled against the chains. “No. You should’ve let her go.” The chain dug into his wrist, and feeling shot back through his hand in an agonizing rush.

  Somewhere, Ashley yelled.

  He shoved away thoughts of pain and turned toward the racket. “I came with you. Let her go. She’s not part of this.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” the doctor said.

  The torturer dragged Ashley in.

  She saw Hauk and gasped. “What are you doing to him? My God! Wesley!” She tried to yank away, but the man held her fast. “That’s not—that’s… Let me go!” She burst into tears.

  “Now,” the doctor said. “Rage, or we’ll cut open her face.”

  “What?” Ashley screamed as she struggled in the arms of a sadist.

  He raised the knife and slid the blunt end down her cheek. Hauk’s body thrummed with anger as he reached for the strength to stop them.

  “You people are crazy!” she yelled.

  The blade turned toward her—

  B kt speoplelackness.

  * * *

  Fighting Fate may be a losing war, but I wage it anyway. My soldier’s subconscious gives permission, and I seize the opportunity to engage, sliding into him like a ghost.

  Screams fill our ears. We breathe the stench of dark magics. Our hand is broken. The cider of healing pours from my spirit to his flesh. The bones too-slowly knit.

  The doctor is gleeful. Kill him, we shall. But death goes first to the one with the knife.

  Our m
outh moves in incantation. Our chains unlock. We leap to standing. The doctor smiles no more.

  Fear us, you who worship Fate. We do not submit. We do not go gently.

  Leap down. We rip the boy away from the one we care about. Our torturer whimpers. We throw him to the ground. No mercy for cowards.

  Marching down the hall. More soldiers. More sacrifices in kan>> honor. Glee fills us.

  Magic bursts from a staff.

  We will crumble their bones. This time I will not be cast—

  * * *

  The shredding pain in Hauk’s gut beat out the pounding in his hand for worst sensation. He collapsed to the floor in a mass of agony, just like he’d done the last time his rage had been interrupted with those damn magic sticks.

  His chains were gone. He needed to get up, to move, to get him and Ash out. But most of all, he needed to stay conscious, and that took every last bit of strength he had. They were yelling about chains. Had he broken them?

  Ash dropped beside him, her hot fingers touching his pounding head. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  “Hunky—” He sucked in painful breaths. “—fuckin’—” Just keep breathing, “—dory.”

  Except he was going to throw up. He turned to the side and spilled his guts onto the ground.

  Ashley patted his back in a fluttering motion and repeated “ohmigod” like a chant. He had to get her safe, and he could barely move.

  “What is that?” the torturer said. He rolled up to sitting just a few feet away, his throat bruised and his motions shaky.

  Ashley froze. Her hand was snatched off his back.

  Hauk put his hands under him and tried to push himself up. The boots of four Hands of Atropos surrounded him, and he accepted the futility of trying anything at the moment. They were too numerous, and he was too weak. It would take a few minutes, but he’d recover enough to do…something. He needed to bide his time.

  “It’s a valknut,” the doctor said.

  A valknut? Just before shipping out the first time, Hauk had gotten a valknut tattooed on his shoulder. The three interlocking triangles symbolized Valhalla, Odin’s promised afterlife for warriors who died in battle. It had been his first tat. But it hadn’t survived the fire.