Unfortunately, I had no idea whether they’d even be able to find me. There was a lot of swamp, and the Valentines had spent a lifetime not being found.
It wasn’t long before I realized there was a downside to feeling things other than pain. Jerilee had ripped my shirt to shreds and taken my boots and socks so she could “treat” me, and December was not a warm month. Even in the southern swamps. The pre-dawn temperature was probably somewhere in the forties, but to me it was starting to feel like winter in Siberia. I was already shivering almost constantly.
The shivering made the pain worse. At least that meant I’d stop feeling the cold eventually.
I’d almost managed to make myself black out again when a rough kick to my shin jolted me back. The sight of Hodge and Morris didn’t surprise me. “You look like hell, pretty-boy,” Hodge said. “I gotta say, that makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.”
“Great,” I managed. “We aim to please.”
He didn’t laugh. “Think I like you better when you’re pissing yourself and running away.”
“Yeah, well I’m not sixteen anymore.” Sure as hell felt like it, though. More than anything about this whole living nightmare, it was killing me that I’d fought so hard to escape all this, to make sure I’d never be at their mercy again—and here I was. Helpless. “Did you want something, Hodge?” I said. “Or did you just want to see my pretty face?”
He looked like he’d hit me again. But then he smiled, and that was worse. “It’s getting late,” he said. “We’ve still got time, though. How about a little road-haul before we turn in? For old time’s sake.”
I glared at him. “Oh, gee. Could we?”
“You hear that? I knew he missed us.” Hodge grinned as he nudged Morris. “Unhook those chains, and let’s get him over to the truck.”
Morris didn’t exactly jump at the idea. “If we kill him, Pa’s gonna kill us,” he said. “He’s worth a million. Maybe more.”
I wasn’t going to think about how much I was worth to Milus Dei. And I wouldn’t do anything to suggest that the cult would probably pay a lot more. The Valentines might know about the Fae, but they didn’t know about the DeathSpeaker.
If they did, they would’ve turned me in already.
“He won’t die.” Hodge waved a hand at him. “You said it yourself, remember? He’s Fae.”
“Yeah, I guess. But…” Morris furrowed his brow. “How can he be Fae, if he’s our brother? I mean, we’re not Fae.”
I’d wondered if anyone was going to pick up on that.
Unfortunately, the revelation didn’t slow Hodge down. “Who goddamn cares,” he said. “We’re gonna have to turn him over for the money soon, and I want to put a real hurting on him first. Gimme the keys.”
Damn. I didn’t think I could take much more punishment, especially road-hauling. It was one of Hodge’s favorite pastimes—he’d chain me to the trailer hitch on the back of his pickup, and then drive around dragging me over the roughest terrain he could find. That might actually kill me at this point.
They didn’t know I was only half Fae. I probably wasn’t as immortal as they thought.
And I didn’t want to learn just how mortal I was the hard way.
Hodge circled behind me and unlocked the chains holding my ankles, and then my wrists. My legs didn’t even try to hold me up. I slid abruptly down the drying frame and landed on my ass, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. A blinding white flash of pain erased my vision for long seconds.
Of course he’d left the cold iron cuffs on, and the chains connecting them.
When the dazzling white faded, Hodge was standing at my feet. “Come on, little brother,” he said with a sickening grin. “Let’s go for a ride.”
I’m not your brother, you son of a bitch. I didn’t say it out loud, because I had a feeling that would lead to a creatively painful interrogation. No way would I let these bastards hunt down my actual brother, or my friends.
The idea brought me on a train of thought that left me cold. If I really wanted to protect the people I cared about, I couldn’t let Milus Dei get their hands on me. I knew exactly what their plans for me were—the global extinction of Others. But there was no way out of this. I’d escaped the Valentines once, and they’d make damned sure I couldn’t manage it again.
So I’d have to die.
Hodge seized the chain between my ankles and started dragging me on my back. He was actually whistling—some inane, cheerful little tune I half-recognized. “Get the truck warmed up, Morris,” he said. “We’ll have ourselves a grand old time. Then we’ll get some sleep, and do it all over again.”
As I tried to focus on anything but the prospect of being hauled to new heights of agony behind a truck, I heard a thought that wasn’t mine.
Gideon? What…oh God, cher, what happened to you?
Senobia. “Not a great time,” I mumbled. The tattered remnants of my shirt rode up and tried to choke me while Hodge continued dragging. “Busy wishing I was dead.”
I can feel it. All this pain. Her voice trembled in my head. Where you at?
“Hell. And I don’t mean the one in Texas.” At least I didn’t have to worry about her hurting me when she talked. That sensation barely registered. But while she was here, there was something I should say. “I’m…sorry,” I rasped. “I’m so sorry. I can’t save you.”
Don’t you worry ’bout me, cher. Let’s worry ’bout you.
I almost laughed. “Yeah. I can’t save me, either.”
Hodge slowed down and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Who the fuck are you talking to, boy?” he said. “You got some invisible fairy friends around here or something?”
I declined to answer him. So he kicked me, and kept going.
Gideon, listen to me. Senobia sounded right on the edge of panic, but I sensed that all her worry was for me. I got no clue what’s happenin’ to you right now, but I know you gonna make it. You remember what I said to you, back on the train?
“Sort of.” I couldn’t manage more than a whisper.
I said there ain’t no keepin’ you where you don’t want to be. And I believe that with everythin’ I ever was, she said. You done got away from Milus Dei more times’n anybody can count. Hell, you slipped the Unseelie Queen.
“You know about that?”
We all know. You oughta hear Reun talkin’ you up like you’s the Second Coming. Her tone took on a smile. Now wherever you at, you gonna get out of there, hear?
For a second I almost believed her. But then, hopelessness sunk back in. “I can’t,” I whispered. “I’ve got nothing. No magic, no strength. Hell, I’m even about to lose my…shirt.”
Holy shit. I did have something. I had my scars—and my tattoos.
The enchanted tattoos Cobalt had given me, the ones on my back, scared off people who intended to harm me. He’d done that because of the scars. The Valentines’ visible legacy of horror had brought me to him in the first place, a scared kid looking for coverups. I hadn’t known that I was half-Fae at the time, but Cobalt did—and he wanted to protect me from whoever did all that damage.
The magic activated when I was critically injured. I was pretty sure this counted as critical.
All I had to do was get Hodge and Morris to look at them.
“Okay,” I said for Senobia’s benefit. “You’re right.”
Course I’m right, cher. You get clear, now. We checkin’ on you later, jes’ to make sure.
And she was gone.
CHAPTER 28
It wasn’t easy lifting my head, but I managed an inch or so. Just enough to see the idling pickup not far ahead, parked in a grass clearing with a dirt road leading away from it, and Morris standing near the tarp-covered bed.
I had to stop them before they got me chained up to that thing.
Damn, this was really going to hurt. It might not even work. I could barely move under my own volition. As the pace of the dragging slowed, I took the biggest breath I could manage. I tried to turn
over the second Hodge stopped.
Didn’t even come close to making it.
“Fuck,” I ground out, inching my trembling arms back. Maybe I could give myself a little push. I rocked slightly to one side, then the other, and lifted about halfway before I dropped back down.
Hodge’s booted foot stamped down on my shoulder—the one with the bullet hole.
And I screamed.
“What the hell are you doing, boy?” Hodge leaned down, eyebrows raised. “You’re trying to turn over. Do you want me to drag you on your face?”
I almost said yes. But then, I had a better idea. “Thought that was your plan anyway,” I said, letting the fear come through in my tone. “I figured if you thought I wanted that, you’d do it the other way.” I didn’t have to work hard for a shiver. “Please…don’t.”
For a second I worried he’d actually catch on. But Hodge thought way too much of himself to even consider that I was faking it. “Well, shit,” he said. “You know, I like the idea of scraping your face all to hell. Thanks for the inspiration.”
I held back a pained grin as he kicked me onto my stomach.
There was a long silence. I started to panic, afraid maybe the magic wouldn’t work after all.
Finally, Morris sucked in a sharp breath. “What the fuck is that?” He said it so fast, it was almost a single word. Hodge moaned a little. Then two pairs of boot-clad feet shuffled into my line of sight, moving slowly backwards.
“He’s fucking glowing,” Hodge said in a high, tight voice. “He can’t do that. Those cuffs…they’re supposed to cancel that shit.”
“Jesus. He could kill us, couldn’t he? If he wanted to—”
“Shut up, Morris.” There was zero confidence left in Hodge’s tone.
I hoped the bastard was pissing himself.
They might be scared now, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I had to terrify them. They’d taken to the conditioning faster, eventually embraced it, but Orville had beaten the fear into them early on—and it would take a lot to overcome the commands he’d lodged in their heads.
I’d have to make them more afraid of me than him.
At least it was a little easier to move from this position. I pushed up with my arms and managed to get on my hands and knees.
Morris was almost hyperventilating. “He’s moving. Hodge. Do something.”
“Shut up! I’m thinking!”
“Yeah, right,” I said. With a tremendously painful effort, I straightened to my knees and glared at both of them. They stood maybe ten feet back, practically clinging to each other. “You’re thinking, shit, I should’ve drank the rest of that six-pack before I died.”
“Hodge,” Morris said desperately.
“Do you have any idea what I can do to you?” I said. “You think you hurt me? You don’t know what pain is…but you’re about to find out.”
“You can’t,” Hodge whispered. “You’re weak. Helpless.”
I summoned a grin. “Am I?”
Goddamn, it felt good to watch him flinch.
I was trying to decide whether I had the strength to actually stand, when a burst of sound and movement erupted from the edge of the clearing to my right. And my gut took a sudden plunge. I didn’t know how much magic the tattoos held, but I doubted it was enough to keep many more of them away.
“Gideon!”
The voice was outside my head, and not a Valentine. I damned near collapsed in relief.
“Denei.” And, I assumed, the rest of them. I wouldn’t bother asking how they found me right now. They could tell me later. I didn’t dare turn to look, either, in case that somehow broke the fear hold over these two assholes. “Look, you guys need to be real careful—”
A bloodcurdling scream of outrage cut me off, and Denei sprinted toward Hodge and Morris with a whopper of a dagger in her hand.
CHAPTER 29
“Don’t kill them!”
I couldn’t believe those words had actually left my mouth. These were the people I’d spent years fantasizing about murdering in countless, horrific ways. And what they’d just put me through was sixteen years of abuse all over again, packed into a single night. Their deaths would be completely justified.
But I was hanging on grimly to my last shred of humanity. Killing them would make me the monster Jerilee had accused me of being.
I refused to be anyone’s monster.
Denei stopped with the point of the dagger at Hodge’s throat, just as the rest of them reached me. She gave me an incredulous look. “What you mean, don’t kill them?” she said. “They ain’t done that to you?”
“Not just them…but yeah, they did.” I tried to avoid the horrified stares from Reun and the other Duchenes. “Don’t kill them,” I repeated. “They’re not a threat right now.”
“So you sayin’ they gonna be a threat.” Bastien moved toward his sister. “Who the fuck these guys is, anyway?”
I stared straight at my so-called brothers. “Nobody.”
Both of them looked away.
“Gideon, let me heal you.”
Reun started for me, and I made a cautionary gesture. “Don’t touch the cuffs, man. They’re cold iron.”
“They are what?” he roared, and sent a glare of his own at the brothers. “I believe Denei is correct. We should kill them.”
“No, we shouldn’t. But I appreciate the sentiment,” I said. “About that healing…”
He shook himself. “Yes. Of course.”
While Reun raised a hand and did his thing, Zoba walked around to my other side, and Isalie moved to join Bastien. Denei backed off a few steps, but she kept the dagger ready to strike. Hodge and Morris didn’t even try to move.
But the fear would wear off when my injuries dropped below critical.
Soon, I felt like I could probably stand up without collapsing. “You should stop now,” I said to Reun. “We might need a little magic to get out of here. There’s a lot more bastards where those two came from.”
He lowered his arm and staggered in place. “By the gods,” he murmured. “I’d not be able to heal you fully, even if I exhausted my spark. What have they done to you?”
“Tell you later.” I tensed, trying to figure out the best way to get off the ground.
Before I could try anything, Zoba bent to help me up. Like he’d read my mind.
“Thanks.” I managed a slight smirk. “For my next trick, I’ll take a step.”
“Lord above, handsome.” Denei relaxed a little. “Ain’t nothin’ but pure will holding you up right now, is there?”
“Something like that.” I glanced past her and caught a hint of anger seeping into Hodge’s face. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to do it fast,” I said, taking a few tentative steps. I stumbled and caught myself once, and sensed Zoba hovering in case I fell. “And I need to get these things off.”
Denei lowered the knife and turned away from the brothers. “Lemme take a look at ’em,” she said.
Behind her, Hodge shifted into full rage mode.
Before I could shout a warning, he started for her. But Zoba was already moving. He sprinted past his sister, drawing back a fist—and plowed it straight into Hodge’s face.
Hodge flew back a good five feet and hit the ground hard.
With a menacing growl, Zoba whirled on Morris and peeled his lips back, showing all of his pointed teeth. Morris raised both hands and backed away slowly. “Hey, man. I wasn’t gonna rush anyone,” he stammered. “Um…please don’t bite me.”
“It’s okay, Zoba. He won’t do anything without Hodge.” I picked my way toward them, trying not to notice the pain every step caused. “Give me the cuff key, Morris.”
He shuddered. “I don’t have it. Pa does.”
“Fine. I guess we’ll get it from him.”
As I headed back to the pickup, Bastien said, “Shouldn’t we get the hell away from here? You said there’s more assholes around somewhere.”
“I need the key. These things are poison.” I rattled
the cuffs, and then gestured at the truck. “Reun, there should be a bunch of rifles under that tarp in the back. Can you grab them and hand them out?”
He gave me a strange look, and moved to get them.
“Hold up,” Isalie said. “You cain’t hardly stand, Gideon. We’ll get the cuffs off somehow. Let’s go, while everybody’s—”
“No.” The strength of my own voice surprised me—and it got everyone’s attention. “You don’t know these people,” I said. “If we leave like this, just sneak off while they’re not looking, they will track us down. All of us.”
Isalie shivered. “So what we gonna do?”
I had no idea what my face looked like right then, but it scared the hell out of them all. Especially Morris. I took one of the rifles from Reun, checked the bolt and magazine, and tucked the butt under my arm.
“We’re going to play a game.”
CHAPTER 30
It was incredibly satisfying to march Hodge and Morris back into camp at gunpoint.
There were maybe three or four Valentines still hanging around outside, near the smoldering remains of the campfire. They took notice of us right away, but they didn’t move. If they had any ideas about letting Hodge and Morris die to get a shot at me, the other five rifles pointed at them drove those ideas away.
I herded the brothers toward the far side of the camp, where it opened up into the bayou. Then I pointed at one of the fire-side people. “You. You’re Garth, right? Vixie’s boy.”
He nodded very slowly.
“Go find Jerilee, and get my boots. Now.”
Garth jumped up like his ass was on fire and sprinted for one of the campers.
I tried to ignore the way my friends were staring at me. “Okay. If you see any movement from anywhere, shoot,” I said. “There’s more of them in those trailers. They might try something stupid.”
“Yeah, will do,” Bastien said. “But shouldn’t we—”
“We should be quiet and do what I say. Come over here and cover these two fuckers.”
Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) Page 11
