B00T3PMJTS EBOK

by Tracy Tappan

  Beth whimpered, her lips quivering.

  Jøsnic’s voice lowered to impossible octaves. “You owe me three women, Brun. You should’ve paid that debt with ones who didn’t mean shit to you when you had the chance. Ejøhn,” Jøsnic addressed one of the Om Rău behind him. “We have an unwelcome visitor.”

  Goodness, Faith hadn’t even noticed Thomal, he’d moved so stealthily. Now he was at the top of the outcropping of rock, a knife clenched in his teeth like in the movies.

  “Costache!” Dev yelled as the Om Rău named Ejøhn proceeded to step forward and drop a rock on top of Thomal.

  But Thomal had already seen it and was rotating out of the way—unfortunately, the sharp, twisting evasive movement made him lose his grip. He fell.

  Breen reached out to make a grab for him. For his efforts, he was pulled off the cliff face, too.

  Whoom! The boulder hit first, splatting apart against the cave floor, then Breen and Thomal followed, both men landing hard and rolling.

  Shouts erupted behind Jøsnic and the air was suddenly cacophonous with the sounds of combat. Faith’s heart surged forward with hope. The Vârcolac had launched an attack from behind to save Beth and Ellen! She couldn’t see the fight—it was too far back on the outthrust of rock—but she could hear the thuds of blow meeting flesh, ragged breathing, incoherent oaths, and…and then the noises faded.

  Jøsnic threw back his lion’s head and laughed uproariously.

  The back of Jaċken’s neck turned red.

  “We go,” Jøsnic said to his men, then his vicious black eyes bored into Jaċken. “Here’s your woman’s life now, Vârcolac.” Reaching up to the collar of Beth’s blouse, Jøsnic ripped it down the middle, tearing away her bra with it.

  Beth let out a wail and fumbled to cover her bare breasts.

  The women on the second-floor balconies upped the volume of their screaming.

  Faith clasped both hands to her mouth, a wintry rush of panic washing down her spine. Please, God, let somebody save her.

  But no other warrior was high enough on the cliff face to do something. Jøsnic turned around…so did Ellen’s captor. They were leaving! Everything was going wrong too fast!

  “Stop!” Faith called out, raising her arm. “Please! I’ll go with you!”

  Instant silence.

  Jøsnic turned back around. He searched the balconies and found her.

  Faith dropped her hand back to her side and shuddered. She’d blurted those words out of fear for Beth and Ellen’s welfare, but now that she’d spoken them, she felt their rightness.

  Both Beth and Ellen had children, homes, husbands.

  Faith had nothing.

  She didn’t even know how to live this new life she’d been handed, without the rigid discipline of ballet to guide her, without Kacie—now that her twin had a mountain of friends—and without Nỵko. She just didn’t know how to exist in the shadow of so much rejection. And there it was: the deciding factor. It was time to go.

  Her entire body iced with the thought of leaving, never again to see her twin or her aunt. Would they miss her? Yes, of course. At first. But they both had such full lives now. She stood on their periphery, anyway, and that was beginning to hurt just too much. Would she miss them? Immensely. Nỵko, too. But it helped knowing that with this final act of saving two dear women, Faith could go out with courage. She’d been uncharacteristically cowardly for too long.

  She didn’t delude herself about this choice. Wherever that redheaded savage took her, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant place. But she was a practical woman who’d spent the better part of her years dealing with life’s harsh realities. She’d deal with this, too. And the odd truth was, she’d rather go someplace bad, where her unhappiness wouldn’t be questioned and her hopelessness would make sense, rather than continue listening to her sister and aunt incessantly harp on her to try a little harder here in Ţărână.

  She was so sick of the struggle.

  “You have to let both of those women go in exchange for me,” she called across to Jøsnic. “You said that Jaċken owes you three unmated women. Well, I’m an unmarked Royal Dragon, and that’s worth three females, for sure.”

  Jøsnic’s eyes blazed.

  The community as a whole unfroze at that, voices from every direction shouting at her.

  “Don’t go!”

  “Stop!”

  “You have no idea what you’re doing!”

  “Faith, please listen…!”

  Through it all, she heard Kacie’s voice, the loudest, the most panicked and alarmed. But Faith forced herself to block her sister’s protests from her ears. From her mind.

  “Agreed.” Jøsnic smiled, the expression somehow both attractive and menacing. “Krølan,” he said, and a different black-haired Om Rău stepped forward, black teeth tattoos whirling up the entire length of both arms.

  This Om Rău lifted a crossbow, sighted, and shot.

  A bolt zinged past Faith’s head and embedded in the wall of the mansion behind her. A long cord trailed from the end of it, and the black-haired shooter quickly hammered his end into the cave wall. Next he laid a pair of hand-holds over the cord and whizzed them over to her.

  She caught them and climbed up onto her balcony railing. Her pulse pounded into her throat. She gripped the hand-holds so tightly, her fingers throbbed.

  The shouting of the people around her rose to a deafening high.

  Below her, Jaċken looked on the verge of blowing a vein.

  Terror over what she was about to do shrank her stomach. She hesitated, trembling.

  With a lascivious sneer, Jøsnic seized one of Beth’s breasts in his massive fist and squeezed it.

  “Let those two women go now,” Faith ordered in a tremulous voice. “I won’t come until you do.” Sweat trickled from her armpits.

  “One now,” Jøsnic countered. “The other when you get here.” He gestured to Ellen’s captor.

  The red-headed Om Rău took a step back from Ellen and kicked her in the rear end.

  Screaming, Ellen flew over the side of the rock shelf, her arms flailing.

  On the ground below, Pedrr shouted.

  Dev sprang off the side of the cliff and snatched Ellen out of the air, tucking her close to his chest. They spun together, picking up speed. As they hit the ground, Dev angled his body sideways, taking the brunt of the fall onto his shoulder.

  Pedrr staggered over to Ellen and hugged his wife.

  Faith’s attention was pulled away from the scene by movement on one of the balconies adjacent to hers.

  It was Pändra, dressed in…my goodness, some sort of outlandish leather jumpsuit. Leaping up onto her own railing, Pändra started hurdling balconies toward Faith.

  A band of panic clutched Faith’s lungs. No! If Pändra caught her and stopped her, who would save Beth? Not even one warrior was left on the rock face now.

  Someone pounded on her locked bedroom door. The knob rattled.

  No more time. Be brave, Faith! She leapt off her railing. Wobbling on her hand-holds like a drunken acrobatics performer, she rode the cord for only a few feet before bumping into the large steel bars that surrounded the mansion. Wriggling her slender body sideways, she made it through the two-foot space that separated each bar, then crammed her eyes shut as she sped into open air.

  Hundreds of voices rose in horror around her.

  It felt like she zip-lined forever across the cave, until, finally, a large hand curled around one side of her waist, bringing her to an abrupt halt. Her feet happily found solid contact on the cave shelf. She started to exhale in relief…then caught an up-close view of Jøsnic, and the sight stopped the breath in her lungs. With his massive bone structure and body made out of Incredible Hulk parts, the Om Rău leader was even more terrifying than she’d realized. How had she ever thought of Nỵko as big?

  Jøsnic shoved her at Ellen’s former captor, and then she was dealing with a different problem. Her throat pinched off and her eyes watered uncontrollably,
blurring her vision. The red-headed Om Rău exuded a stink unlike anything she’d ever encountered, and she’d been around some very sweaty dancers in her days. But this was like…spoiled meat mixed with a hundred sweaty jockstraps and a swamp of rotten vegetation. Her head swam from the strength of it, almost making her think she was imagining it when she heard Jøsnic tell Jaċken…

  “Think I’ll keep this one, after all.” Laughing that horrible laugh of his, Jøsnic tossed Beth over his shoulder.

  Faith shook her head violently, trying without success to voice a protest. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her parched mouth.

  Zzzzzz…

  All heads turned at the sound of someone else traveling down the zip-line.

  It was Pändra. She’d looped a belt over the crossbow bolt cord and was coming at their group, fast, her focus fixed on Jøsnic.

  Jøsnic’s eyes lit. He handed Beth off to one of his men and prepared to grab his new prize.

  Pändra punched out her legs as she arrived at the platform, landing a two-footed blow dead-center to Jøsnic’s chest.

  Jøsnic hurtled backward, stumbling down onto one knee, his eyes flaring wide.

  His Om Rău brethren gaped, as well. It was probably extremely rare to see their enormous leader knocked down. Most likely never by a woman.

  Jøsnic slowly lowered his head, peering down at his chest in abject shock. Blood was snaking from two holes there.

  Pändra had stabbed him with her high heels.

  Moving in a coordinated blur, Pändra leapt at Beth’s keeper, dealing the Om Rău an uppercut that knocked his feet out from under him. As the man took a trip down to the flat of his back, Pändra plucked Beth off his shoulder, then rushed to the rim of the rock shelf. She dropped Beth as gently as possible into Thomal’s waiting arms below.

  Thomal stared at Pändra, the look on his face as shocked as Jøsnic’s.

  Pändra paused, locking gazes with her husband for a long moment.

  Jøsnic surged to his feet. His eyes flashed red and he bellowed a deafening roar.

  Faith clapped her hands over her ears, swaying in her captor’s arms.

  Pändra straightened slowly, her focus never leaving Thomal. “Be free, love,” she said so softly, Faith almost didn’t hear. Pändra took a step backward.

  An expression of utter panic spread across Thomal’s face. “No!” he shouted. Setting Beth down, he started to claw up the rock face. “Pändra! Don’t!” Rubble cascaded down.

  Pändra turned toward Jøsnic, eyelids sealed, and lifted her chin to his blow.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Nỵko stripped down quickly to his underwear and boots, moving in a precise and unhurried way, even though panic was a hot knot of twisted metal in his stomach. He strapped on a utility belt, briskly filling it with one sheathed knife and two flash grenades. Cylindrically-shaped, flash grenades contained a pyrotechnic concoction that exploded into an intense white flare when detonated, effectively blinding everyone nearby for about five seconds. The accompanying loud blast also caused temporary loss of hearing and messed with the ear’s inner fluid, throwing off balance.

  Not that he had anything against fragmentation grenades. He would’ve used them on the Om Rău in a heartbeat if he could’ve been sure that Faith and Pändra wouldn’t be within the blast radius. But the Om Rău had just grabbed themselves a Royal Dragon and a half-Rău, half-Fey female; they wouldn’t be letting such catches out of their sights any time soon. Already bonded to Thomal, Pändra shouldn’t have been considered one of their prizes, but there was some question as to whether the Topside Rău-Fey race was immune to the procreation block rendered by Vârcolac mating. Which explained why Raymond Parthen still hunted Tonĩ.

  “Stop what you’re doing,” Jaċken ordered.

  He was standing next to Nỵko at the mouth of the Hell Tunnels in Stânga Town, his face reaching record levels of hardness, his eyes fierce. “In over a hundred years of living in these caves,” his brother went on, “a Vârcolac has never made it through the Hell Tunnels. You won’t, either.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Ãlex and I have already mapped over half the Tunnels. I only need to find my way through the other half.” Piece of cake in million-degree heat, right? He might’ve had a fighting chance if it was guaranteed he could get through the first half in a decent amount of time. But with all the sudden dips and sharp turns in those dark passageways, he’d only ever seemed to bump around on his practice runs.

  “Listen to me.” Jaċken grabbed Nỵko by the arm. “I know you’re feeling like shit about losing Faith, same as every warrior in this town felt like shit about losing Gwyn. But do you remember why we didn’t go after Gwyn, even though it was our fault and we owed her? Because there was nothing we could do. If you go in there, you’ll end up dying for nothing.”

  “I have to at least try.” Nỵko shrugged off his brother’s grip. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. This is all my fault.” Once again. “Faith volunteered to go—she left the community—because of me.” Because he hadn’t done a danged thing to help her, just sat back with a bag of popcorn and watched her grow sadder and sadder. Congratulations to him. He’d succeeded in removing himself from hero status.

  Yes, Faith’s sister and her aunt had abandoned her, too, but those two had become too caught up in lives they’d never had before, or had ever hoped to have, to see what was happening. He’d seen, though. Which meant the sole responsibility for this sat squarely on his shoulders.

  “Dammit, Nỵko, stop being—”

  “Faith’s not Gwyn!” he shouted at his brother. “Take two seconds to imagine Tonĩ in Oţărât, Jaċken, and then maybe you can understand what I’m going through. Faith is my woman, but I…I blew it. I let her down, and I’m not going to keep doing that. I’d rather die than do nothing, so if it comes to that, then it does.”

  A vein in Jaċken’s temple pulsed furiously. “Fuck it. All right. If you’re so determined to do this, then I’m coming with you.” He yanked off his shirt.

  “No.” He used his Big Brother voice for that one.

  Thomal jogged up to them. “Hey, hold up.”

  Thomal had disappeared briefly to take Beth to Arc, who’d been in the rearguard battle with Nỵko to squash Jøsnic. Their group of warriors had been waylaid by a new swarm of Om Rău, and both he and Arc had been injured, Nỵko receiving a nasty knife wound to the left shoulder.

  “I’ve been talking to Ãlex about the Hell Tunnels,” Thomal said, “and I made this for you.” He offered Nỵko a large, flat rectangular-shaped something. “It’s a map of the passageways. I drew it in three dimensions, showing all of the hills and turns. It should help you get through the first part faster.”

  “You made this?” Nỵko accepted the map, stunned.

  “Yeah. I etched it into metal so it wouldn’t melt in the heat, then edged the sides in high-grade rubber so you could hold onto it without burning your hands.”

  Nỵko studied the map. Holy smokes, this was exactly what he needed. “This is fantastic.” He gave Thomal another astounded look. “I can’t believe you etched it.”

  Color rose in Thomal’s cheeks. He shrugged. “I used to mess around with carving a while back. Anyway…” He pointed to the map. “See this fork here? Ãlex says that once you reach this point, you should be able to take either the left or right route and get into Oţărât.”

  “Okay.” Nỵko took a breath and said, “Thank you.” Thomal might’ve just saved his life.

  Thomal nodded shortly. “I’d go with you, if I could.”

  But without any Rău in him, he wouldn’t last more than a minute in the extreme heat.

  Thomal’s jaw hardened. “Just get in there and get back, Nỵko, all right? That’s my woman in there, too.”

  Really? Since when? Nỵko grimaced inwardly. Kind of an ungracious thought to have, considering Thomal’s major contribution to the rescue operation, but…true nonetheless.

  “I’m going wi
th you,” Jaċken repeated, then gestured at the map. “There’s a good chance we’ll make it now.”

  “Good? I’d say fair, at best.” Nỵko tucked the map under his arm. “Even though I may have a possible way into Oţărât now, my ability to grab the women then get back out, with an entire town of Om Rău to face down, is still a huge IF.”

  “All the more reason for me to come along and help fight.”

  “No.” Nỵko remained adamant. The mission was still too suicidal for him to bring along his brother. Not with Jaċken becoming a father any day now. Nỵko laid a hand on Jaċken’s shoulder and lowered his voice. “You have a wife and a soon-to-be-born kid who need you a lot more than I do for this mission. You can’t go with me.”

  Jaċken’s lips compressed into a thin line. He stepped back, his hands on his hips.

  “I know you know that,” Nỵko said.

  Turning aside, Jaċken stared off into Stânga Town.

  “I’m sorry, I just can’t allow it,” Nỵko maintained. “I’ll knock you out if I have to.”

  Jaċken scowled, then cursed. “At least feed before you go.” He gestured at Nỵko’s knife wound. “You’ve lost a decent amount of blood.”

  “I don’t have time. Every second that passes puts Faith and Pändra in more danger. Jøsnic and Lørke could be doling the women out to their men right now.” Nỵko aimed his steps toward the Hell Tunnels, but then paused. His chest jerked once. He turned back around, keeping his voice soft enough for Jaċken’s ears only. “You won’t admit it, but you’re worried about what kind of father you’re going to make. We were raised by a complete ass, so we don’t have the best model for that sort of thing. But…you’re going to be a great dad.” Nỵko’s heart folded inward. Dang, he’d really wanted to meet his niece or nephew. “I need for you to know that.”

  Jaċken’s nostrils flared and quivered almost imperceptibly. He recognized a final goodbye when he heard it.

  Nỵko grabbed Jaċken by the back of the neck and squeezed hard, giving him a firm shake. A big brother silent message for don’t mess up your life when I’m not around to kick your butt.