Blood Destiny (29 page)

Despite his enormous suffering, his inability to speak, Braden's response could be felt clearly. His intention was almost audible: He would succeed in meeting the Ancient Master Warrior's request, or he would die trying.

Kagen spoke next. Do not forget to use your venom, Braden. It will help to stabilize your wounds until I can attend to your injuries. We will be there shortly, so hold on; know that you only have to endure a little while longer.

Nachari came back then, his voice soft, melodic, and unwavering with authority. That is enough blood, Braden.

Release Jocelyn and seal the wound. When I take control of your mind, it will not be gentle, as I have to move quickly, so do not resist my total control.

At Nachari's command, Braden began to withdraw his fangs. As his canines receded, his incisors lengthened—

leaking minute drops of venom onto Jocelyn's neck. The puncture wounds were instantly healed.

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Jocelyn dropped to the floor of the shed. She grasped her neck, trying to massage the pain away as she gasped for air.

She lay there, dizzy, looking up at the cross, watching as Braden's solid form began to shimmer into a translucent outline, and the wounds in his hands and chest began to radiate a pulsating orange glow as his body released itself from the piercing spikes. Like air flowing through space, Braden gently floated to the ground.

And just like that, he was free of the cross.

* * * *

Angry voices.

Cursing. Guttural.

Tristan and Willie.

They were back from the hunt and clearly in a foul mood, obviously unable to prevail in the violent storm. They sounded frustrated but determined...desperate to make at least one kill. And who better to go after in the bleak, limiting conditions than helpless, dying Braden?

Jocelyn was as disgusted as she was afraid, but as luck would have it, Nachari was still merged with his young protege. And he had picked up on Braden's observations.

As Jocelyn and Braden frantically scampered for cover, Nachari quickly built the illusion of Braden still hanging on the cross, staked to the wood, bleeding, and almost dead. They dashed into the adjacent room, just to the right of the one Braden had been tortured in, and they hid.

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Holding their breath, they took cover in the back of the shed.

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The moment Jocelyn and Braden entered the musty back room, they both hit the floor, silently shutting the door behind them. Braden scampered to the far left corner, ducking behind a large wooden crate, while Jocelyn dashed to her right, hunkering down beneath a strange, looming object.

As soon as she was settled, her eyes began to adjust to the pitch black of the room, and the massive object in front of her began to take shape. Jocelyn clasped her hands over her mouth in an effort to stifle a scream—it just couldn't be.

The large wooden device stood like a glowering phantom, a living remnant of evil transported from a dark, revolting past. It was a statue of history carved out of torture and pain...molded by the shadowed hands of inhumanity.

The ancient guillotine stood almost five feet tall, with a heavy iron blade poised at the top of two adjacent square posts, its sides welded into vertical grooves. The massive blade was held back by a long, rusted pin, and beneath the sharp edge was a hard platform...a horizontal wooden bed.

The bed stretched out perpendicular to the blade so that its occupant's head would hang off the end, dangling helplessly beneath the looming steel—facing up or down, depending upon the executioner's desire.

Jocelyn strained to adjust her eyes. Once. Twice. Another time. And then, in absolute horror, she scurried back from the contraption, kicking up dust in her frenzied effort as her heels dug into the ground. Her eyes remained transfixed on the 275

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helpless male lying in front of her, manacled to the wooden platform.

Nathaniel had called the thick head of hair the crown of the King Cobra, but whatever its name, it was unmistakable: red and black bands of wild, wavy tresses, the signature coronet of the Dark Ones—long, silky locks of midnight and crimson, intermixed in a glorious...and terrifying mane.

The vampire's eyes flashed open, glowing like two red embers of fire surrounded by blackened coals, as they smoldered in the back of the darkened room. To Jocelyn's horror, he continued to stare at her as she sat trapped by the wall, no less than two feet away from his protruding fangs.

Jocelyn pressed as tightly against the wall as she could...praying she would disappear from the creature's view.

But his gaze remained steadily locked with hers.

His body was battered and bleeding with what had to be hundreds of flesh wounds—deliberate, shallow cuts made for the sole purpose of bleeding him out...slowly, draining his blood. His arms and legs were shackled with four heavy manacles, two at the ankles and two at the wrists. And a coordinated lock system held the manacles in place, sustained by another large pin, situated just below his right shoulder.

The creature yanked at the heavy manacles, and he growled a harsh, guttural warning as he thrashed around wildly trying to free his tortured body. His cold eyes pierced hers. And then he flashed a look so demonic that Jocelyn froze in place, certain he was about to rip her throat out all the way from the platform...shackled or not.

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Jocelyn scanned the room for a weapon: a pipe, a hammer—anything—just so long as it gave her some defense against the wrathful being in front of her. Although the platform looked secure, and the creature looked weakened, there wasn't a doubt in her mind he was searching for a way to break free. And she was his target.

His newfound inspiration.

All at once, the door to the shed flew open and Tristan's deep voice could be heard reverberating across the distance, roaring with anger. "Jocelyn! Where are you? What the hell have you done?"

He obviously knew she had found the keys. Holding her breath, she followed the sound of his footsteps as he clamored around the shed, furiously tossing things out of his way.

He cursed like a sailor as he smashed objects against the walls, all the while shining the bright oval of his flashlight in a crisscross pattern...over the floor, up to the ceiling, then back down again to the corners of the shed.

"The boy is still here," Willie said, "so she couldn't have gotten far."

Jocelyn shut her eyes. Thank God. At least they didn't know Braden was free. Even as she thought it, Braden made his way quietly along the floor to the front of the blackened room, where he perched in waiting behind the heavy door.

Tristan grunted. "She's not strong enough to free him, or believe me, she would have. Jocelyn!" His voice thickened in anger.

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Jocelyn held her breath and waited for what felt like an eternity as Tristan's footsteps slowly moved closer...coming toward the back of the shed. As the snarl of his grunts and the hiss of his curses grew louder and louder. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard the door to the adjacent room open...and then close...signaling that the two men were now headed toward the room they were in.

When Braden crouched low behind the door in a predatory stance, Jocelyn cringed: The boy was no match for Tristan or Willie, not if they were the creatures Nathaniel had named them. Her eyes grew wide with fright even as her heart pounded out a beat of fearful anticipation. Werewolves. Such creatures did not exist. They could not exist. But then, neither did vampires until a few days ago.

Jocelyn's arms and legs began to tremble uncontrollably as the heavy wooden door creaked open and death stood in the doorway. Who was she kidding? She was a detective. She had great self-defense skills, but she was in no way prepared to battle the kind of creatures that were now only seconds away.

And Braden?

He was a terrified boy with a huge heart and a whole lot of guts...who was about to die a gruesome, unjust death. A human turned vampire who couldn't even shape-shift into a bat without assistance.

As Tristan's footsteps finally entered the room, Jocelyn resigned herself to the inevitable conclusion: They were doomed. She only hoped it would be quick and painless.

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And then, in her resignation, her eyes swept down to the guillotine, to the creature laid out so heinously before her...the one who would be joining them in death.

And her heart skipped another beat.

What had she learned in all her years as a detective about the nature of a species? Any species. Self-preservation was instinctual...primal...fight or flight. It didn't matter if they were thieves committing burglary, guards watching over inmates, or cops attacked by criminals; in the heat of battle—

the actual moment of sink or swim—self-preservation always took over.

Despite the best intentions, one instinct—and only one instinct—ruled supreme: the instinct to survive. That deep, primal voice inside that screamed, Stay alive!

Jocelyn hugged her arms to her chest, trying to gather her courage. It was true—wolves had been known to chew off their own legs to survive a hunter's trap, and humans had been known to eat their dead in the perils of winter. Whatever the threat was, no matter the obstacle that stood between a living being and their life, pressed far enough...they would go after it.

Jocelyn swallowed hard and forced herself to look at the dark creature before her. The sheer loathing on his face made her wince, but she continued to stare into his hate-filled eyes.

She was not his enemy. Not right now.

Praying he was capable of telepathy, she reached out a trembling hand and placed it cautiously on his head. He jerked. A feral hiss escaped his throat, and daggers shot from his blackened eyes.

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Unless you are set free, you will die tonight, she said, her voice quivering even in her mind. I may be your enemy, and you might want me dead, but we both know that I am no threat to you. Not here. Not now. Not tonight. And neither is the child. He is a victim like you. She drew in a deep, steadying breath, her hand trembling against his hair.

She couldn't help but think of the monster Valentine in the chamber: recall his blackened soul...remember the evil...recognize that she was bargaining with the devil. She pushed the thoughts from her mind and pressed on.

The werewolves have come to hunt the descendants of Jadon and the descendants of Jaegar alike—to destroy your kind without distinction. If we fight each other, we all die here tonight, but if we fight them, we may survive.

The creature stirred and hissed, clearly unimpressed with her soliloquy, his bared fangs resting against his lower lips as his breath came in raspy pants and growls. His eyes narrowed even further until they were nothing but two identical slits of fury.

Jocelyn studied his face, refusing to look away. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. She whispered the words, almost as a mantra. The enemy of my enemy is my friend....

The enemy of my enemy is my friend!

She knew she was trying to convince herself more than the seething creature laid out before her—the battered male waiting helplessly to resume his torture and eventual death.

And she also knew the ugly truth: that this vampire knew nothing of friendship. Or loyalty. Or teamwork with the likes of her. But he was a living, breathing being. And that meant 280

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he had an instinct to survive. They shared a common enemy, and it was clearly that enemy which posed the greatest threat to his life...not her.

Her argument was cut short as Tristan howled and a horrific roar of fury shook the entire outbuilding. The hunter threw a ferocious punch right at the face of the crouching vampire who was waiting behind the door, and Braden ducked with incredible speed. He easily dodged the heavily muscled rocket, but he was completely outmatched in every other way.

His fangs exploded.

His eyes glowed.

He lunged at the lycan's throat, jagged teeth tearing wildly into flesh as a guttural hiss echoed in the night.

Jocelyn froze...terrified.

She watched the scene unfold like a grisly horror film she couldn't turn away from. As if the entire thing were being played in slow motion.

Braden's arms thrashed wildly. His claws slashed and stabbed. He wrenched his head from side to side, snarling like a rabid dog as he pulled, twisted, and tore at Tristan's flesh, trying desperately to dislodge the man's jugular. And then what Jocelyn saw next etched terror into every living cell of her body.

Tristan. Her partner of three years. The man she had known, worked with, and trusted...threw back his wild mane of hair and let out a twisted, unnatural cry—a demonic howl of fury that rocked the foundations of the small decaying shed so hard the building nearly caved in. All at once, his bones 281

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began to lengthen. His joints cracked, and his muscles stretched impossibly. Fur began to ripple along the pores of his skin—wiry, thick, blondish-brown fur—and his jaw jutted forward to reveal a mouthful of daggers, tucked neatly beside a vicious set of canines.

The wolf was positively enormous, standing at least ten feet tall. His muscles rippled in angry waves, and his eyes glowed a fiendish yellow. With one strong hand, he grabbed Braden around the throat and wrenched the boy's teeth from his neck, slamming him straight through the shed wall.

Braden's neck snapped back as his head took the brunt of the blow, opening up and spilling blood like a geyser shooting from a pressured well. And then Tristan sunk his fearsome canines into Braden's shoulder, just above his heart, and tore him open like a wild animal...a lion bringing down a gazelle.