Lover Avenged (71 page)

All that quiet was not about Trez mourning, though. His emotional grid was marked with anger and frustration, and she had a feeling Rehv, in all his cock-sucking wisdom, had found a way to trap Trez into inaction, too. Like her, the Moor was trying to find a way out, and knowing Rehv, there wouldn’t be one. He was a master at manipulation-always had been.

And he’d put a lot of thought into this exit strategy. According to iAm, everything was all set up, not only on the personal levels, but the financial ones, too. iAm got Sal’s; Trez got the Iron Mask; she got a chunk of cash. Ehlena was provided for as well, although iAm said he would handle that. The bulk of the family estate went to Nalla, with millions and millions of dollars passing to the young, along with all the heirlooms that, according to primogeniture, had been owned by Rehv, not Bella.

He’d exited beautifully, wiping clean ZeroSum’s drug and bookie businesses entirely. The Mask still had girls for hire, but none of the other stuff was going to go down there or at Sal’s. With the Reverend gone, the bunch of them were almost clean.

“Xhex, say something so I know you’re alive.”

There was no way iAm could get through the door or dematerialize inside to check and see if she was still breathing. The room was a steel safe, utterly impenetrable. There was even fine mesh skirting around the doorjamb so that he couldn’t shadow his way in.

“Xhex, we already lost him tonight. You make it two for two and I’m going to kill you all over again.”

“I’m fine.”

“None of us is fine.”

When she didn’t reply, she heard iAm curse and move away from the door.

Maybe later she could help the two of them. They were, after all, the only people who knew what she felt like. Even Bella, who’d lost her brother, didn’t know the exquisite torture the three of them were going to have to live with for the rest of their days. Bella thought Rehv was dead, so she could go through the mourning process and come out the other side and get on with her life in some fashion.

For Xhex, iAm, and Trez? They were going to be stuck in the limbo-hell of knowing the truth and being able to do nothing to change it-with the result being that the princess was free to torture Rehvenge for as long as he had a heartbeat.

As Xhex thought about the future, her grip on the dagger hilt tightened.

And got stronger as she brought the weapon downward onto her skin.

With her mouth screwed down tight to keep her pain inside, Xhex shed her own blood instead of tears.

Although what was the difference, really. Symphaths cried red, in the manner of the vein anyway.

Rehv’s brain came back online in a slow wave of flickering consciousness. Awareness flared and faded and returned, spreading from the base of his skull up into his front lobe.

His shoulders were on fire. Both of them. Head was killing him from when that symphath had sweet-dreamed him with the sword hilt. And the rest of him felt curiously weightless.

On the other side of his closed lids, light twinkled around him and registered deep red. Which meant the dopamine was fully out of his system and he was now who he would forever be.

Breathing in through his nose, he smelled…earth. Clean, damp earth.

It was a while before he was ready to do a look-see, but eventually he needed some other reference point than the pain in his shoulders. Opening his eyes, he blinked. Candles as long as his legs were set up at the far reaches of what appeared to be some kind of cave, the tremulous flames atop each one bloodred and reflecting over walls that seemed fluid.

Not fluid. There were things crawling on the black stone…crawling all over-

His eyes shot down to his body, and he was relieved to see that his feet were not touching the moving floor. A glance up and…chains held him aloft from the undulating ceiling, chains that were anchored by…bars inserted through his torso under his shoulders.

He was suspended in the midst of the cave, his naked body hovering above and below the shimmering, pulsating confines of rock.

Spiders. Scorpions. His prison was teeming with venomous guards.

Closing his eyes, he reached out with his symphath side, trying to find others of his kind, determined to get through the place where he was, to minds and emotions he could manipulate to get himself free: He might be in the colony to stay, but that didn’t mean he had to keep hanging around like a chandelier.

Except all he could sense was a web of static.

The cast of hundreds of thousands that surrounded him formed an impenetrable psychic blanket, castrating his symphath side, allowing nothing into or out of the cave.

Anger rather than fear fisted in his chest, and he reached over to one of the chains and pulled on it using his massive pectoral muscles. Pain made him tremble head to foot as his body shifted in midair, but there was no budging his tether or dislodging the bolting mechanism that went through his flesh.

As he swung back to straight vertical, he heard a shifting sound, as if a door had opened behind him.

Someone came in, and he knew who, given how strong the psychic block they were putting up was.

“Uncle,” he said.

“Indeed.”

The king of the symphaths came shuffling around with his cane, the spiders on the floor breaking their quilt of bodies briefly to make way for him before swallowing up his path. Beneath those blood-colored imperial robes his uncle’s body was weak, but the brain on top of that curved spine was incredibly strong.

Proof positive that physical strength wasn’t a symphath’s best weapon.

“How fare thee in thy floating repose?” the king asked, his royal headdress of rubies catching the candlelight.

“Complimented.”

The king’s brows lifted above his glowing red eyes. “How so?”

Rehv glanced around. “Hell of a lock and key you’ve got me under. Which means I’m more powerful than you’re comfortable with or you’re weaker than you wish you were.”

The king smiled with the serenity of someone utterly unthreatened. “Do you know that your sister wished to be king?”

“Half sister. And it doesn’t surprise me.”

“For a time, I gave her what she wanted in my will, but I realized that I was inappropriately swayed and I changed everything. That was what your tithes were for. She was using them to transact business with humans, of all things.” The king’s expression suggested this was akin to inviting rats into one’s kitchen. “That alone indicates she is utterly unworthy to rule. Fear is far more useful to motivate subjects-money being comparatively irrelevant if one is looking to gain power. And killing me? She presumed she could best my succession plan that way, which vastly overestimates her capabilities.”

“What did you do with her?”

More of that serene smile. “What was fitting.”

“How long are you going to keep me here like this?”

“Until she is dead. Her knowledge that I have you and that you are alive is part of her punishment.” The king looked around at the spiders, something close to true affection flaring in his white Kabuki face. “My friends will guard you well, worry not.”

“I’m not.”

“You will be. I promise you.” The king’s eyes returned to Rehv’s, his androgynous features shifting into something demonic. “I didn’t like your father and was quite pleased that you killed him. That being said, you are not getting that chance with me. You live solely as long as your sister does, and then I shall follow your fine example and reduce the number of my kin.”

“Half. Sister.”

“So intent you are on distancing the ties between yourself and the princess. No wonder she adores you as much as she does. For her, that which is unattainable will always hold the most fascination. Which, again, is the only reason you live.”

The king leaned on his cane and began to slowly creep back the way he had come. Just before he got out of Rehv’s sight, he paused. “Have you ever been to your father’s grave?”

“No.”

“It is my favorite place in all the world. To stand upon the ground where his funeral pyre burned his flesh to ash…lovely.” The king smiled with cold joy. “That he was murdered by your hand makes it all even sweeter, as he’d always thought you were weak and worthless. Must have stung him rather badly to be bested by the inferior. Do rest well, Rehvenge.”

Rehv didn’t respond. He was too busy poking at his uncle’s mental walls, seeking a way in.

The king smiled, as if he approved of the attempts, and headed on his way. “I always liked you. Even though you are but a half-breed.”

There was a click, as if a door had closed.

All the candles went out.

Disorientation squeezed Rehvenge’s throat shut. Left alone, floating in the darkness, with nothing to ground him, terror seized him hard. To be without sight was the worst-

The bolts through his upper body began to tremble slightly, as if a breeze were blowing through the chains and vibrating them.

Oh…God, no.

The tickling started on his shoulders and intensified in a rush, flowing down his stomach and over his thighs, streaming out to the tips of his fingers, covering his back, blooming up his neck to his face. He used his hands to the extent he was able, trying to brush off the horde, but as many as he cast down to the floor, more overcame him. They were on him, moving over him, coating him with a constantly shifting straitjacket of tiny touches.

The fluttering at his nostrils and around his ears was his undoing.

He would have screamed. But then he would have swallowed them.

Back in Caldwell, in the brownstone he was damn well going to move into, Lash showered with lazy precision, taking his time with the washcloth, going in between his toes and behind his ears, paying special attention to his shoulders and lower back. There was no need to rush.

The longer he waited the better.

Plus, what a bathroom to hang out in. Top-drawer everything, from the Carrera marble on the floors and walls to the gold fixtures to the awesome stretch of etched mirror over the sunken sinks.

The towels hanging from the ornate racks were from Wal-Mart.

Yeah, and they were going to be replaced ASAP. The fucking things were all Mr. D had had at the ranch house, and Lash wasn’t about to waste time driving around Caldwell just to find something better to wipe his ass dry with-not when he had his new piece of exercise equipment to put through its paces. After he got his workout in this morning, though, he was going to get on the Internet and order shit like furniture, bedding, rugs, kitchen supplies.

It would have to be delivered to that POS ranch where Mr. D and the others stayed now, though. UPS men were not welcome around here.

Lash left the bathroom light on and walked out into the master bedroom. The ceiling was prewar height, which meant the damn thing was so high cumulus clouds could form and float around the hand-carved moldings if the atmospheric conditions were right. The floor was gorgeous hardwood with inlaid cherry accents, and the walls were papered in an amazing dark green swirl, like the inside covers of an antique book.

The windows had just been sealed over with cheap blankets they’d had to hammer into the moldings-a crying shame. But like the towels, that would change. As would the bed. Which was nothing but a king-size mattress on the floor, its white, quilted skin laid out bare, like a Midwesterner trying to get a tan somewhere fancy.

Lash dropped the towel from his hips, his erection springing forward. “I love that you are a liar.”

The princess lifted her head, her shiny black hair shifting with flashes of blue. “Will you let me go? The fucking will be better, I promise you.”

“I’m not worried about how good it’s going to be.”

“Are you sure?” Her arms pulled against the steel chains that had been bolted into the floor. “Don’t you want me to touch you?”

Lash smiled down at her naked body-which he now owned, for all intents and purposes. She was his gift, given by the symphath king as a gesture of good faith, a sacrifice that was also a punishment for her treason.

“You are going nowhere,” he said. “And the fucking is going to be fantastic.”

He was going to use her until she broke, and then he was going to take her out and make her find him vampires to kill. It was the perfect relationship. And if he got bored with her or she couldn’t perform either sexually or as a divining rod? He would get rid of her.

The princess’s eyes glared up at him, the bloodred color of them loud as a curse thrown at full volume. “You are going to let me go.”

Lash reached down and started stroking his cock. “Only if it’s to put you into your grave.”

Her smile was pure evil, so much so, his balls tightened up like he was about to come. “We’ll see about that,” she said in a low, deep voice.

She’d been drugged by the king’s private guard before Lash had left the colony with her, and when she’d been stretched out on this mattress her legs had been spread as far apart as possible.

So as her sex glistened for him, he could see it.

“I’m never letting you go,” he said as he knelt down to the mattress and grabbed onto her ankles.

Her skin was soft and white as snow, her core pink as her nipples.

He was going to leave a lot of marks on her whip-thin body. And going by the way her hips rotated, she was going to like it.

“You are mine,” he growled.

In a sudden flash of inspiration, he pictured his old rottweiler’s collar around her slender neck. King’s ownership tags were going to look great on her, and so was a dog’s leash.

Perfect. Fucking perfect.

ONE MONTH LATER…

Ehlena woke up to the sound of china on china and the scent of Earl Grey tea. As her eyes opened, she saw a uniformed doggen struggling under the weight of a massive silver tray. On it was a fresh bagel capped by a crystal dome, a pot of strawberry jam, a scoop of cream cheese on a tiny porcelain plate, and, her favorite part, a bud vase.