Blood-Bonded by Force (22 page)

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 why 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 made 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?

Videön dumped the gym bag at Nỵko’s feet again and checked his chains. The links were inch-thick, probably the type of chain used to moor large boats. Obviously these guys knew what it took to hold a Vârcolac.

“Fancy that,” Videön drawled. “The big’un’s still secure in his swaddlin’.” He glanced over his shoulder at Nỵko’s face-puncher. “Told ye, Kevin. I can always recognize a bloke who’s as off his tree as the rest o’ us.”

“All right.” Kevin nodded at Shọn, apparently approving of him being off his tree.

“Anyroad, back to business.” Videön unzipped the gym bag and pulled out a pair of pliers. “I’ll give ye one chance, half-Rău, to tell me where the secret entrances o’ yer lair are. Fess up, and I’ll leave ye be and get back to my evenin’. Keep yer gob shut, and”—he brandished the pliers at Nỵko—“I’ll have a go at yer happy sack.”

Nỵko gave the tool a dull look. The grade of the metal was cheap. He had much better tools at home.

“Naught? Brilliant. Get behind the tonk, Kevin,” Videön ordered. “All o’ ye are about to see what kind o’ griff a bloke will spill when his ballocks are bein’ torn from his body.”

Kevin moved behind Nỵko, two others planted themselves to either side of his chair, and the last of the four stayed by the door.

Shọn lounged at his radiator, his expression conveying nothing of what he thought of his big brother about to be castrated.

Nỵko met Videön’s brutal black eyes with an empty look of his own. These next few minutes were going to go very poorly, and he was beyond caring.

Videön reached between the chains at Nỵko’s waist, fumbling for his belt.

Nỵko hunched his shoulders and curled his hands into fists on the armrests of his chair. He was done with all of this. Done with threats of torture, done with pain, done with this night’s confessions. Done with disillusionment. Done. A growl rolled like thunder out of his chest.

Shọn came to attention off the radiator

Smiling sadistically, Videön snapped the pliers’ jaws,
tick, tick
, as he yanked open Nỵko’s belt.