Christopher: Blood Brotherhood – Erotic Paranormal Dark Fantasy Romance (7 page)

In less than fifteen minutes they had their answer. Nate hadn’t gone through the building. Not on his own anyway. He’d been standing just on the outside of it, a few feet away, when Benton appeared. He had snatched him up at that point and taken him through the doorway to the beyond.

Skylar and Remy were on their way to the building as soon as they saw what had happened. Chris and Kate entered the command center just as Davis was getting ready to leave as well. They were all going, it appeared, to see what they could do about bringing Nate back.

He’d driven. While Davis didn’t mind his wings most of the time, he was still having some trouble landing. Nearly every time, his feet would get all tangled up and he’d end up on his ass. Or worse, knocking someone else down as soon as he tumbled. He was getting out more, practicing as much as he could, but lately, he’d been having too much fun with his new mate.

“Now what?”

No one seemed to have a clue as they stood at the point where Nate had been taken. If they went into the building, no one had any idea if they would come back. Remy asked who was going with him. Rick and Hector stopped him just as the big man was ready to go charging through.

“I would like to go first.” Remy was shaking his head even before Rick finished. “Listen to me for a minute. Whatever is on the other side of this can’t be any worse than what we have here. If I die, what are you out? Nothing. I have no mate to leave behind pining for me, nor do I have much in the way of money. I mean, I have some, but I’ve been investing in things. By the way, cool way to get paid.”

“Be that as it may, I should go first. I know the area better than anyone.” Davis thought that Hector had a good point, but he also had a son that would need him. And if anything happened to Hector...well, Davis thought the boy had lost enough for one small lifetime. Skylar pointed that out to him. “I know that he’s in good hands should something happen.”

“I’m going.” Everyone turned to Chris. “I mean, Kate and I are going. We are the biggest of us all when we’re together. And we can pretty much whip Benton’s ass long enough for Nate to be found and him get back to us. I mean, the guy is a pain in the ass, but he’s our family whether he likes us or not.”

“Nay, that will not work. What if he is too hurt to come on his own? I like that you can fight together, but I think there needs to be more.” Skylar nodded and smiled at them all. Remy winced. “I don’t like that look, love. What is it you have in mind?”

“We all go. But Hector.” When he started to protest, she put up her hand. “Listen to me first. You said you know the place better than us. Right, you do. So if we don’t come back quickly, you can come there and get us. You can do that whole invisibility thing and be in and out before Benton is the wiser, making sure that we’re back here in time for dinner tonight. And besides, someone needs to be here in the event that one of us needs to be taken to the medical unit.”

“But I could go in and snoop things out.” Skylar corrected him and told him that he’d try to rescue the man and he knew it. “Yes, I would. But I should also like to point out that I am very good at scoping things out. I did tell you that Dolin and Ward were dead.”

“You did at that. And that really is valuable information. But we need you here. If you’re here, all of us will be safer in the event you have to come and get us.” Davis thought that was a load of shit, but only nodded when Hector looked at them. The man really was a valuable asset, but only in the sense that he knew things about the creatures that were coming for them. He wasn’t good at fighting, nor did he have any abilities that would give him an edge over Benton. Skylar looked hard, her body tense with some kind of anger. “I’m going to need you here, Hector. I know that I’ll feel better just knowing that someone is on this side to help us if we need it. And that someone is you.”

“I think you give me much more credit than I deserve, but I see your point. And I don’t like it, but I see you are set on it happening this way.” He told them how to get to the lab, and like a GPS, told them precisely when they had to turn and what the kilometers were they had to walk. Davis did better with feet and miles, but he knew that at least a few of them knew where they were going.

“We go in all at once. If anyone is left behind, we go on. It might only take a few at a time, so we move as a unit until we figure this out.” Davis held Vicki’s hand as Remy told them what to do. He’d be insane with worry should he go or stay and not be with her. He was sure that the rest of them would with their own mates as well. “Once there, we do nothing more than go to the lab and get Nate. If he’s not there, we regroup where we land on the other side.”

“Weapons? Will they go with us?” Everyone turned to Hector at Leo’s question, and he said that only the things on their bodies could go. “All right. So that means that we’re armed with just what art we have on our body. Which, to my way of thinking, is better than nothing, right?”

Good point. Davis had forgotten about the tats that actually came for them to use. He had a sword and several guns. So did Vicki. He also knew that while they could be dragons, both Leo and Jamey were armed as well. Skylar and Remy had more than the rest of them in the way of tats, but he wasn’t sure other than the swords what other weaponry they had on them. In other words, he thought them as well equipped as they could be, yet not at all. Who knew what they were going to face on the other side?

As one they moved through the break in the building. Davis closed his eyes, not wanting to be looking down the throat of death when he landed, or however it happened on the other side, and nearly wet his pants when someone screamed. He opened his eyes to see three woman standing by a waterway washing their clothing.

It was...normal, he supposed. They’d been sitting there, a picnic basket between them, with what looked like greens and bottled water. Their laundry, not really much of it, was in the water or laying out on the grass to dry. He thought about taking a picture, and realized that he’d not had a camera nor a phone for longer than he could remember being without them before. He tipped an imaginary hat at them both when they continued to stare at them.

“You come from the other realm? Just so’s you know, you scared ten years off my life with you just appearing like that. Don’t do it again.” No one said a word, but they must have guessed the answer. “You here for that monster? If so, he’s in the caves above us. We come here to do the washing when he’s there. Spends his nights there too, most times. If you have it in your minds to kill him, I don’t think it’ll be all that easy.”

Remy asked them what he was doing there. The older woman, she didn’t gather her things like the younger two. He could feel her sorrow from where he stood as one of the younger women spoke up. Davis noticed that none of them looked at the older woman while she continued at her task.

“He’s bringing the others back with him. All sorts of monsters...well, more monstrous than he is—down here to pick over the dead. Some of them creatures, they’ve been gone longer than I’ve been here. Most of them just pick the bodies, or whatever they can find, clean, then move on. Couple of them, they got trapped up in that thing over there. Where you come from. You see them?” Skylar asked them how many were left. “Not many. A couple more, but they already moved on. Three men—they worked in the lab—they usually come looking for a handout and we hide from them, but we haven’t seen them in a bit. I’m thinking one of them works for that monster, but the others, I think they’re dead now…or I hope so. They’re not nice and they steal from us. Heard the monster has a terrible temper. By the way, have you seen Hector there? In that other world?”

“He’s living in our compound. His son too.” The woman nodded at Vicki as if she might have already known that as she continued with gathering her wash. “We can take you back with us should you like to go.”

Not bothering to answer, the two of them took off. Davis watched them, not wholly trusting them, but also wanted to make sure that they made it to wherever they were going all right. Skylar made the same offer to the older woman.

“I can’t go, but I thank you. My husband is buried over there with my three sons. Murdered by the same monster that has killed our world.” She didn’t pause in her washing to continue her answer. “I’ve dug me a nice hole there. Should I be killed too, I’m going to try my best to make it to them, to lay to rest where they are. We don’t normally bury our dead. Never did it before, actually, but I figured if I were to light a fire to take care of them, the monster would know I was about. It’s...I was gonna say safer, but I don’t think any of us would be safe from that. Do you?”

“I’m sorry.” Skylar put her hand on the woman’s shoulder when grief bent her over. “I’m so sorry for your loss. If I could help you, I want you to know that I would.”

“You make sure that you take care of that thing…that is how you can help me. I know that you had nothing to do with that thing and what he’s become, but I would like it if I could rest in peace knowing that he’s dead and gone. He’s done enough here that there won’t be nothing left as it is now. Even the ones that come here now, they don’t stay long. Scared they are.” Remy asked her why there were others coming here and how. “Don’t know the how. But they come for the stones they were promised. It’s a powerful thing I guess, to some. Not to me. We had enough here, and because of the greed of a few, we’ve lost it all.”

Before they left her and the others, she told them there was a big bell nearby. That if the monster came out too soon for them, before they left, she’d ring it to let them know. Then she asked them to please put her in the hole should she be killed like the others.

“They’re all I had in the world, those boys and my husband. All I had. And now they’re gone and dead. That monster up there, he don’t care one fig what he’s done so long as he gets what he thinks is his.” Remy asked her if she’d be all right. “No. Not ever again. But you promise me, you make me a promise that you’ll try to kill it, and if need be you put me in that soft dirt over there so I can rest with my boys.”

“I promise you that we’ll do that. But you be careful, please. We might have use for you again should we come this way.” She told him that she was too tired now, that she was done in. Remy promised her that if it came to it, they’d make sure she was near her family.

“He’s bigger.” As they started away, Sally, the woman that had been talking to them, spoke again. “The monster. Don’t know what is going on with that, but he’s a great deal bigger than he was before. Stupider too, if that was possible. You might want to be a little more careful in dealing with him. He’s meaner too. Destroying things as he moves by them, talking about how he is master of all that he can see.”

As they made their way to the labs, the path riddled with the dead, all Davis could think about was the time that Benton had come to them as his monster and how big he’d been then. If he was bigger—and he didn’t doubt that Sally was telling them the truth—then what were they going to do if he should come back while they were there? He hoped to Christ that they got some sort of warning before he came upon them. He wanted to tell his love that he was glad to have her in his life, and that he loved her with all his heart.

The lab looked like an oversized house…a house that had been hit by a bomb, but a house all the same. The front entrance was broken out, the doors laying on the steps leading to the front of it. Large crocks of flowers, most of them broken, were on each step, the contrast funny to him. Windows were gone, shattered against some unknown force. Davis thought for sure it was Benton, but he knew that a little of it might have been Randall as well. He glanced over at Vicki and wondered if she was thinking about her brother too.

He’s gone.
He nodded at her voice in his head, and he felt her sorrow.
I think about him here, living with these people and hurting them. But I don’t think of him as my step brother any more. He was just a horrible person that took advantage of us. He’s gone. Like the people he killed, gone forever.

I love you.
She smiled at him just as they were to enter the building.
You be careful in here. I cannot lose you. Not now.

And you be careful as well. I don’t want to have to beat your ass because you managed to get hurt. Again.
He kissed her on the nose and she smiled. Davis was pretty sure he could go for days on just that smile. They entered the building as they had this world, as a unit. Davis had never been as glad for these people in his life as he was right now.

Chapter 7

Kate had been in labs before. At one point in her life, she’d been an assistant to some famous, but now gone, people. But this lab was nothing like anything she’d ever seen before. And she was reasonably sure that no one else had either. This was well beyond state of the art…there were pieces of equipment here that she was sure they had no name for. The sound from across the room had her turning with her hands up, her magic dancing at the tips of her fingers.

“Don’t hurt me.” The man—or what was left of him—lay in a pool of his own blood. Part of his leg was missing, and it looked as if he’d landed on something that now protruded bloodily out of his belly. “I guess don’t hurt me is not what I meant. Could you just finish me off?”

Laughter burbled from his mouth, blood as well. As he moved his arm, his fingers missing too, he wiped at it. Kate wanted to tell him that he’d be all right, but it wasn’t in her nature to lie to someone.

“Who are you?” He told her. “Did the creature do this to you, Buddy? He took a friend of ours. Do you happened to know if he was brought here? Or maybe someplace else?”

“He’s a monster. That thing, he’s a fucking monster.” The laughter brought up large amounts of blood from his mouth and wound again. “He ordered me to duplicate this drug. I worked on it with the understanding that he’d let me go. I was sure, somewhere in the back of my mind, that he wasn’t going to, but one can hope, right?”

Kate looked around the room, wondering again what some of the busted and broken equipment might have been. But there were no signs of Nate, nor the drug that this man said he was supposed to be working on.

“What was it supposed to do for him?” Kate stood near Chris when he asked Buddy. “And what is the formula for it? Do you have it?”

“Gone. He drank it all down. And yes, the formula is written down, but I don’t think I can get up and get it for you. I’m a might indisposed in the event you didn’t see that.” Again the burble of laughter that brought up copious amounts of blood. “It changed him. I think for good. At least that’s what it looked like when he left here. He said that I had given him the greatest gift of all, that when he returned from getting someone by the name of Rembrandt, he would reward me. I just want to end this life.”

“There was another man brought here. Do you know where he is?” Buddy pointed, but not well; it was a general direction sort of wave that both frustrated and scared Kate. It meant that Nate had been in this room when all this had happened. “Do you know why he was brought here? What was done to him?”

“He made me.” Remy asked him who had made him do what. “Master. I was to call him Master. He made me give that tatted man the drug first. A test subject, he called him. I don’t think the man faired any better than I did. He was in the cage when Master went a little over the deep end.”

The bell sounded. It rang like there was a hurricane of winds pressing against it, it was so loud and continuous. Everyone in the room froze. But the mewing sound, like that of a soft kitten, had them all turning to the wall and start tossing away scraps of what was left of the lab. They found Nate just as the sound of the bell was cut off.

“Kill me.” Remy told Nate that he could not. “Please. Kill me now. I don’t know what they did to me, but I can feel it moving under my skin. I think they poisoned me. Please, just kill me now.”

“You’ll come back with us. Maybe we can take care of you there.” Remy picked Nate up, his screaming tearing through Kate’s heart even as Leo told them to get out. Remy looked at Leo and told him to take care of it. Even as they were running out of the lab, Nate still screaming to be killed in Remy’s arms, Kate could feel the heat. Leo and Jamey were burning the building down with their dragons. Kate was afraid it was too little too late for the realm.

They could see the monster as he came after them. He was big, bigger than houses that he destroyed in his haste, but he was also clumsier, falling every few feet only to get up and try again. If he got to them, even one of them, they would all be killed, for Kate knew that none of them would leave any of the others here should they be attacked. This creature looked as if he was exactly what they thought of him as. A Monster.

They ran as if the devil himself was after them. In a way, Kate was sure that he was. All of them running for a different, but no less important, reason. One of them bent on killing them, the others running to safety. Even in their haste, she noticed that each of them were careful of their surroundings and that they kept together, to keep each of them safe.

Then she came upon the woman, Sally. Her body was broken. There were no other words to describe how she’d been killed. The bell handle was still gripped in her bloodied hand, her eyes wide open in fear and pain. The bell itself was several hundred feet away, still on the wooden structure that it had been mounted on.

Kate was going to fulfill her promise to the woman who had more than likely given her life to warn them that danger was coming. Picking up her body, no one moved beyond circling her as she moved to where Sally had told them she had dug her hole.

“We must hurry.” She thought that Skylar was telling her to forget it, to leave the body, that Sally would never know, but she continued. “We’ll take her there, but we must hurry. Benton is coming toward us now.”

The hole was just where she’d said it would be. There were four more, each of them covered in a pretty blanket of flowers and crudely made markers that proclaimed who was buried beneath them. Putting Sally into the hole, she heard Benton screaming at them, his long strides eating up the distance between them and him. It was still miles yet, but with his size he was closing quickly. They all watched the earth seem to welcome Sally into her depths and cover her up. Kate was sure that like with her magic, Sally had asked the earth when the time came to help her with this one last task, and it had.

Vicki took the blanket, shook it out, and laid it gently over the small mound of dirt. Flowers immediately began to sprout and grow over the other graves as well as Sally’s. They picked up their fallen man and each of them took off at a pace that frightened her a little. Speed was necessary, but they were nearly blurred with it. Then Remy took to the skies, and Nate with him. Kate looked at Chris, and they came together to be their beast.

Strength powered over them. Benton paused in his haste to get to them, and she knew that they’d frightened him. Vicki raised her hands, Davis at her back, and white magic as pure as the clouds above them danced from the tips of her fingers. Benton only just managed to leap out of the full stream of it, screaming as it tore at his leg as she and Chris leapt at him.

“Be gone with you.” Kate and Chris jumped on Benton again and again, tearing at him even as he hit out at the flames still smoldering on his leg. “Why will you not die? Where is Rembrandt? This is all his fault, he should have died all those years ago. Ward? Help me. You said you’d help me kill them. Where is Rembrandt, and why is he not dead? Ward?”

“Ward is dead and I am here, you fool.” Remy landed not five feet from the creature as Chris and she jumped at Benton again. When he only batted them away, standing up to go after Remy, they stood back, ready to protect him if necessary. “You will regret taking one of mine.”

“Yours? You think you’re master of something? You are not. I am master, and you are to be dead. I will kill you, Rembrandt. Soon too.” Benton moved forward, but crumbled when he put weight on his injured leg. Remy stood his ground as he lifted himself from the earth to be eye to eye with the monster. “I will be master; I am the greatest man alive.”

Davis was carrying Vicki away. Kate knew that with such powers as hers, she would need to rest. As he made his way to the portal, she and Chris stood by Remy and Skylar. The four of them might not be able to kill the monster, but they would be able to hurt him a great deal.

“You are nothing. Not even a very good monster. Do you think you scare me? Any of us?”

Benton lashed out at Remy, who was able to avoid the contact. When someone touched their fur, they turned to look at Skylar, just narrowly catching themselves before attacking her.

“Go to the portal with the others. Leave the doorway open. Once we are finished here, we will follow.” Chris asked her if she was going to kill Benton. “I don’t think we can this time. But we will regroup. Remy is just going to distract him so we can get away. Go, be safe.”

Chris and she separated, their bodies becoming their own. Kate wasn’t sure that they could move any faster, but as they took off, her wings spread from her body, larger than before and stronger. She knew that these wings were because of her mating with Chris. Chris was in flight, too, when they both moved to the gate to go home. Vicki and Davis were just going in as they landed, and the four of them went in together. Vicki was drained, as was Davis, and she worried for them both.

They stood outside the building for an hour, hoping and praying that Remy and Skylar would come through soon. Kate was ready to go back, see what they could find out, when they were suddenly there. In their arms were two men, both of them looking as if they had not eaten in a long while.

“These men will need help. They were at the opening when we got there.” Chris took one man, she the other. Vicki and Davis had taken Nate back to the compound.

Skylar collapsed in Remy’s arms. Leo and Jamey were waiting to destroy the opening once everyone was through. Remy nodded at their plan. “He lives still, but we have harmed him a great deal. I think...we will need to plan better, I think. He is much stronger than he had been, his body harder to hurt. Whatever he had, it has done him better than we could have ever thought.”

“You mean that he might not be able to be stopped.” Kate looked around when no one answered her. “You don’t mean that, do you? That we can’t kill him? That we’re going to be fighting this war forever?”

“Nay, I did not say that. But it will not be easy to bring him down.” Remy looked around, then back at her. “These creatures, the winged ones from before when we first saw you, you killed them with just a wave of your hand. Are you willing now to tell us what you might be?”

No, she wasn’t ready for that. Chris, she was sure, knew, but there was more to her than what they needed to be aware of. But as she was standing there, trying her best to figure out how not to tell them, Cobb came out of the building next to them.

“My lady, you will need to share with them. What you are is going to help them.” Remy cleared his throat and Cobb turned to him with a small bow. “She is stronger than you have yet to realize, sir. And now that she has a mate, her true mate, there will be more power. But she must be protected too. For what she is cannot ever be replaced.”

“More? More what?” Cobb only looked at her instead of answering Remy. Instead of answering him or Cobb, she went to the car and put the man she was holding in it before turning to them. “I should very much like to know, Kate. I think that it will be helpful to us all to know that we have strength in our numbers.”

“I can tell you, but I have to go away for a little while. I’ll return, but I must leave for a time. It’s part of what I am.” Remy started to speak, but she cut him off. “I have things that will help with what we’re doing. Information really. Chris can...he may stay or not, but I will return.”

“I’m going with you.” Kate nodded at Chris, knowing that he would. “Where might we be going? Or are we flying there? Because I have to tell you, that was the only way we got out with our asses, don’t you think?” No one answered him, and he turned to Remy as Chris answered his own question. “I would imagine that it is part of what we are. That once we have found the other half of us, then we become more and whole.” Remy nodded. “I’ll say this again, this is some fucked up shit going on here.”

Kate couldn’t have agreed more. But in order to tell them what she was, she needed to explain it to Chris. He should know before she tried to tell the others what they both were now. Chris’s life, as he’d known it, was about to change. As hers had when she came together with him.

“I have information on what you are as well,” she told Remy. “You are not human, as I’m sure you have guessed, but you and Skylar are all.”

“All what?” She wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she opened her arms wide and let them see her for what she was. A bright light in an otherwise dark world. “Christ. You’re magic, pure magic, aren’t you? You’re the...we’ve heard about you. Through others, we’ve heard about a magical creature that would one day come here.”

“I am. But the others, they would not have known that I would be helping you in this. They would...I think they would think I was there to destroy you all. I am not.” Pulling her magic around her, she looked at Skylar. “You are like me as well, but not as much. On some levels you are stronger, but for the most part, I am the strongest being there is.”

“And you’re on our side.” It wasn’t a question, but Kate told her that she was. “Good, because while I have no idea how I’d kill you, you can bet your ass that I would give it my best if you weren’t.”

“We have to get these men to safety.” She nodded at Leo when he spoke, and moved back from the vehicle when he came nearer to her. “I won’t harm you.”

“You can’t. But I can you. Your dragon...he is part of a larger being…Bob, you called him.” Leo nodded. “It wasn’t until I saw you in the lab that I realized that. He is inside of you and Jamey even now. And when you’re together, he protects you even though he cannot be seen.”