B00T3PMJTS EBOK

by Tracy Tappan

  So Nỵko was finally meeting Videön.

  Three other men were in the room, smelling like regulars, but kind of not, too, like the guy who’d punched Nỵko.

  Their odd group appeared to be gathered in the living room of a condemned building. The windows were closed off with crisscrossed boards, drywall had crumbled away in sections, exposing the bowed and splintered wood frame beneath, and there was a fire-charred hole in the middle of the floor, revealing part of an empty apartment one floor below. No electricity equaled lanterns set up around the room. Wisps of black smoke curled up from their glass chimneys, adding a distinctive kerosene stink to the stench of Videön’s caustic acid blood.

  Nỵko concentrated for a second on the sort-of-regulars. To a man, they were big, their bodies covered with a staggering variety of tats, and their eyes were narrow and mean. Probably ex-cons, the kind of men who asked questions, maybe, after all the killing had already been done. They didn’t seem like the type to wear jewelry, but necklaces glinted at each man’s throat. Nỵko squinted. Not necklaces, amulets. He nearly shivered from a feeling of evil enchantment.

  “Ye havin’ a brown-trouser moment, fella?” Videön asked, then smiled cruelly. “If not, ye should be.”

  Probably so. The advantage-disadvantage ratio was fairly obvious. Nỵko was currently chained from ankles to collarbone to a chair that felt bolted to the floor, and even though he was bigger than Videön—because Nỵko was bigger than every man—in this case, it wasn’t by much. “What do you—” want? The last word dropped off the end of Nỵko’s sentence as Shọn sauntered into the room.

  His little brother crossed to a rusted-out radiator and sprawled against it, crossing his arms, his eyes cold, black ice. Just watching.

  Videön indicated Shọn with a nod of his head. “Yer brother here says he don’t know where the entrances to yer lair are. Says he gets transported in and out in a vehicle with blacked-out windows.”

  Nỵko glanced at Shọn again. That was true. The community doled out information about their secret entrances on a need-to-know basis only. The Travelers knew, of course, since they brought supplies into the community, and the Special Ops Topside Team, as they did their own driving on missions. The Dragon women had found out, too, because once they’d engineered an escape from Ţărână. But no, Shọn didn’t know.

  “Says ye know, though. So ye’ll be tellin’ me.” Videön grabbed a gym bag and dropped it at Nỵko’s feet. “I couldn’t break that fuckin’ mare o’ yers tryin’ to get the information out o’ her. What was her name?”

  “Candace,” Shọn supplied.

  Bile brewed in Nỵko’s throat. Candace was the Traveler Videön had tortured to death, which had led to Marissa getting captured, which had led to Pändra letting Marissa go—a whole chain of events had been set in motion by Videön’s brutality.

  Videön rolled his neck, cracking vertebrae. “Goin’ to get it out o’ ye, though.”

  “No,” Nỵko said. No, you won’t break me and also, No, I won’t let you hurt me. Covered all over with marks that had come from torture, he was done with that. Plain and simple. There wasn’t a man on this earth, regular, demon, large, or larger, who could make him endure it anymore. Death would come first.

  Videön’s laugh was coarse and grating. “I was hopin’ ye’d be full o’ piss about it. Funner that way.”

  Nỵko shifted against his restraints. They were tightly secured. “Why do you even care about our entrances?” he asked. “You’re not after Tonĩ.”

  “But Raymond is,” Videön answered. “And since I’m gettin’ myself into a bit o’ a war with that scunt, I’m acquirin’ what he wants.”

  Another ex-con entered the room. It was the guy who’d punched Nỵko. He was also wearing an amulet. “Preston’s ready,” he told Videön.

  So these jerks had succeeded in capturing Dr. Preston. An ache speared through Nỵko’s throat. It was his fault the team had failed to save the plastic surgeon. If Nỵko wasn’t such a freak of nature, then he and Thomal would’ve made it up to the sixth floor in time to help Dev and Gábor fight the bad guys, and the outcome would’ve been different.

  “I’ll be there in a tick, Kevin,” Videön answered, an ugly grin still aimed at Nỵko. “I ain’t finished with this tonk, yet.”

  “I don’t think Preston has much life left,” Kevin said. “He’s bleeding out fast.”

  Videön growled. “All right. Is Jerry ready for the ritual, too?”

  “’Course.”

  “Let’s crack on, then.” Videön waved his men toward the door. “Shọn, ye guard this bloke.”

  Kevin frowned. “They know each other, Videön.”

  “Aye, they do. So it’ll be another test o’ his commitment to us.” Videön shot Shọn a heavy-lidded glance. “He’ll pass.” Videön left with his men, the gym bag swung over his shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Nỵko let his gaze wander around the squalid living room, looking anywhere but directly at his brother. Not that there was anything much to see in here besides rat poop and mold. After a thick silence, he finally forced himself to meet his brother’s eyes. “What are they doing to Dr. Preston?” he asked, avoiding the real questions. What the heck are you doing here, Shọn? Why are you betraying your people?

  Shọn hitched a shoulder. “Don’t know. I’m not that far into their inner circle, yet.”

  Yet. “Ah. So…” Nỵko coughed. “So how long have you been hanging out with the Topside Om Rău?”

  “A while,” Shọn answered vaguely.

  “And, uh… Well, why are you with them, Shọn?”

  Shọn scoffed. “I’d think that’d be obvious. The community banished me, so I headed where I was wanted.”

  Nỵko’s mouth fell open. Shọn thought they’d abandoned him? “But… No, Shọn. You were sent topside temporarily, to help you get better, to give you a break from the community for—”

  “It was a punishment.” Shọn’s words slammed into Nỵko. “And if the community thinks it can keep my loyalty after a maneuver like that, then the whole damned town should be nuked for its idiocy.”

  “It was partly a punishment,” Nỵko admitted. “But it absolutely wasn’t a rejection of you. You were supposed to come back. Jaċken and I, the whole community, want you to—”

  “I’m not going back.” Shọn sounded bored now. “And don’t worry about my survival, either, when you stop sending my blood donor up. Videön keeps a stable of whores around. I’ll feed off one of them until Videön kills her, then move on to the next.”

  Horror invaded Nỵko’s chest. His brother really hadn’t just said that. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “You’ll hate yourself if you do.”

  Dark, predatory emotions rolled off Shọn. The bones in his jaw moved into a menacing position. “I already hate myself.”

  Nỵko’s ribs squeezed his heart, his own emotions a nearly overwhelming tide—worry, guilt, confusion, fear. “Why?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  Same as at Shọn’s trial. Nỵko drew a breath with difficulty, the chains draping his body suddenly feeling like an impossible weight. “Tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “Bothering me?”

  “Something torments you, Shọn. I…I’ve known it for a long time.” Nỵko wet his dry lips. “You need to get it off your chest. Purge yourself of it. Then you can move on.”

  Shọn laughed. The sound wasn’t pleasant. “You really want to know?” He sprang off the radiator and stalked over. “Okay, big brother, let’s have share time.” Shọn planted his hands on the armrests of the chair and shoved his face close to Nỵko’s. “It was because of you!” he yelled.

  Nỵko didn’t know how he remained still, but he did.

  Shọn straightened, but didn’t move back. “When was the last time you saw yourself in a mirror, Nỵko? You’re covered in tattoos from top to bottom, marred with more teeth than Jaċken, way more than me. And wh
y is that?” Shọn’s nostrils flared. “Because you took Lørke’s torture for us, you fuck!”

  Nỵko blinked hard for a moment, an ache building behind his forehead as too many memories pushed around inside his skull. There was just so much awful stuff he didn’t like to remember, and getting those tattoos was the biggest: the pain, the blood, the knowledge that his agony was being doled out by his own father. Then there was the daily question mark of whether or not he’d even live to see another day in Oţărât, and the horrible realization that if he didn’t, that actually wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He’d survived to look out for his younger brothers. That was the only reason.

  “You…” Nỵko licked his lips again. “I’m sorry, but…” He grimaced. “You couldn’t handle it, Shọn.”

  Another ugly laugh cracked out of Shọn. “You’re right. I couldn’t. Rambo Jaċken could take it. Big Bad Nỵko could. But not Baby Shọn.” A darkness as deep as death took over Shọn’s eyes. “Lørke knew you were taking all those tattoos for me, you ass, so he…” Shọn broke off, his face losing some color.

  A quake ran through Nỵko’s jaw. There was leftover blood in his mouth from Kevin’s punch and it leaked past his lips.

  Shọn turned around and walked back to the radiator, staring down at it. His voice lowered. “Lørke had to make me into a man, didn’t he?”

  A rat scratched inside the walls.

  Shọn swung around, glaring. “Didn’t he!?” he snapped.

  “Yes,” Nỵko forced out.

  “But you’d taken away the tattoo option with your heroics, so Lørke had to come up with another way.” Shọn’s chin dipped down. “Do you know what he did?”

  Nỵko’s throat knotted.

  “I’m going to tell you. Not to purge myself, big brother, but because I want you out of my life forever and this will make sure you go.” Shọn slouched back on the radiator and ran his thumb along the side of his nose. “Do you remember the whipping boards set up over by that part of the cave we used to call Death Ridge?”

  Nỵko’s throat closed down another notch. How could he not? He’d had his stint on the boards like everyone else, although by the time he was twelve years old, nobody’d been strong enough to strap him onto them, except for the two Pure-blooded demon leaders of Oţărât, Lørke and Jøsnic. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “There was a table over there, too. We used to try and play a version of ping pong on it when the boards weren’t in use.”

  A better memory. “Yes.”

  “That’s where Lørke did it,” Shọn told him, his eyes like over-polished eight balls.

  Nỵko swallowed heavily.

  “Lørke gathered a bunch of guys around the table and then had Bøllven bring Deborah over. You remember Deborah?”

  Nỵko briefly closed his eyes. He didn’t want to remember. Her loss had messed him up pretty badly. “Krølan’s mother,” he said.

  “Fađe and Ħavel’s, too.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten them.”

  “Deborah killed herself,” Shọn said tonelessly. “Threw herself off Death Ridge. You remember that part?”

  “I…” Deborah’s face flashed through Nỵko’s memory, her eyes unseeing, her neck cranked at a wrong angle. He willed his thick tongue to form the words. “I remember.”

  “Do you know why she offed herself?”

  For a moment, Nỵko wanted to cry uncle: enough was enough already in the memory department. Deborah had been one of the better human women in Oţărât. Many others had only been able to look out for their own survival in their violence-riddled world, maybe that of their children, and that was it. The rare few had managed to be motherly and protective toward all the little ones. Deborah had been in that second category, and life in Oţărât had turned a lot crappier after her suicide. “I suppose I figured that life as one of Bøllven’s women became too much for her.”

  “Oh, it was so much more than that, Nỵko.” Bowing his head, Shọn dragged his thumb and forefinger down both sides of his nose. “You see, Lørke laid Deborah out on that ping pong table and made that circle of guys start in on fucking her. There must’ve been ten of us, one guy thrusting into Deborah while the rest jacked on their cocks to get ready. The next guy would mount her and get going, and the next, and…and I’m standing there with my stomach in my knees as it gets closer to my turn, thinking, what the hell is Mom going to say if I screw Deborah?”

  Nỵko’s stomach convulsed. That was…he couldn’t imagine it.

  “So I come up to bat all nervous-like, Lørke yelling at me to get my cock out of my pants and get on top of Deborah. I’m twelve fucking years old! But I…I yank on my dick like a maniac, right, screaming my lungs out because my loin blockage hurts so damned bad, but terrified of what Lørke will do if I stop.”

  Nỵko sucked in an uneven breath through his mouth and nostrils. Nausea writhed through him as he pictured it.

  “I didn’t know that a Vârcolac had to be blood-bonded before he could get a hard-on. None of us knew, except Mom, but she hadn’t told us that.” Shọn dug his fingernails into the thighs of his pants. “The other men were laughing their heads off at me, of course. They could get boners. But not me, not impotent little Shọn. Lørke didn’t laugh, though. Ho, no. He was humiliated. He was humiliated. Isn’t that rich?” Shọn scraped his nails up and down his thighs. “So back I went to the ping pong table, again and again. Every day for four days in a row, and still no boner. Then on the fifth day Deborah offs herself because she’s…well, I think the reason’s obvious. She couldn’t stand it anymore. The sixth time I’m brought to the Boards, Lørke says to me, ‘You little pussy, if you’re gonna act like a woman, then I’ll treat you like one’. So he…uh, he…”

  Nỵko tightened the muscles in his neck to keep himself from shaking his head at his brother. You don’t have to tell me anymore, it’s okay.

  “He bent me over the ping pong table, bare-assed, and straps me down. I broke three ribs and my wrist fighting not to get tied down like that, but…it didn’t work out, so… Lørke chose Bøllven to do the honors, knowing that the bastard blamed me for Deborah’s death and would make things extra rough for me.” Shọn’s eyes blanked as he stared straight ahead. “Thousands of times I’ve relived the scene in my nightmares; Bøllven moving up behind me, that big cock of his brushing my ass cheek, his fist gripping my hair, and the throaty sound of his breathing. I hate that the most, like he was actually into what he was about to do. I wake up gasping and sweating, tearing at the bedsheets in a panic. But I always wake up before it happens.” Shọn’s gaze dropped back to Nỵko’s. “Because it never did. Mom showed up with her gloves and saved me.”

  The oxygen Nỵko hadn’t realized he was hoarding rushed out of him. It never happened. Mom had stood up to Lørke, the one man she always kowtowed to. She must’ve paid dearly for that.

  “Later Mom got it out of me what happened, and then explained the whole bonding requirement for Vârcolac being able to throw wood, but by then it was too late. I already felt like a total pansy.” Shọn noticed his nails scraping his pants and stopped, pressing his palms flat to his thighs. “What I did with Luvera in Ţărână a couple of months ago…that Blood Ride…” He shook his head.

  Blood Rides were a new invention of their breed, thought up, not surprisingly, by the rebellious Stânga Town kids as a means to participate in some kind of sexual activity outside of a life-bond. It entailed consuming enough blood, usually by licking it off the skin, to temporarily unblock a Vârcolac’s sexual plumbing. According to the community’s Non-Vârcolac-Fraternization-Law, it was an illegal act, and both Shọn and Luvera had landed in court, and then jail, because of experimenting with it.

  “I just…” Shọn faltered. “I wanted to see what it was like to be with a girl, to finally feel like man. I wanted my dick, Nỵko.” Shọn dragged a hand through his hair. “I never meant to hurt Luvera. But…ingesting her blood during that Ride lit off my deepest bloodlust and ma
de me go section fucking eight. I ended up trying to force her.” Shọn’s head came up, his eyes churning with dark turmoil. “Do you understand what I said? I tried to force Luvera. I did exactly the same thing to her that was done to me, the thing that gives me nightmares. There’s no coming back from that.” He pushed off the radiator. “So I’m hanging with the Topside Om Rău now. It’s where a guy like me belongs.”

  “No,” Nỵko croaked, desperation clearing out a hole in his chest. “Please, don’t give up on yourself, Shọn.” He tried to scoot closer to his brother, but, dang it, that’s right, the chair was bolted to the floor. “You’re okay…I mean, you can be okay, if you just give yourself a chance and some time working with your therapist. This is my fault, not yours. You said so yourself, right? If I’d let Lørke tattoo you, then he never would’ve tried to turn you into a man by making you have sex with a woman. Okay? Please.”

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the outer hallway.

  Nỵko clung to Shọn’s stare, his panic wound so tight, it hurt. Had he reached his brother, even the smallest bit? If he lost Shọn, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  Shọn’s face lost all expression. “Glad you agree that it’s your fault”—booted heels rang out hollowly just outside the door—“because you’re about to receive your penance.”

  Videön strode back in, now wearing a knife on his belt.

  He was followed by four of the ex-cons, one dusted with blood. The unfortunate Dr. Samuel Preston surely had a Celtic quaternary knot carved into his forehead now.

  A vast coldness crept over Nỵko while something inside him came apart. Dr. Preston was dead because of him; it was his fault that he and Thomal hadn’t joined Dev and Gábor in time to save the man. On top of that, Thomal had been shot, Nỵko had been shot, both of them by Shọn, who’d joined the bad guys and was sinking deeper into a pit fast. Also all due to Nỵko’s failure. Nỵko’s jaw trembled again. His whole life he’d been everyone’s hero, but now, as it turned out, his “heroics” had done more harm than good. To who else? For how long?