Soul Enslaved (Sons of Wrath Book 3) (33 page)

“This is where the fights go down.” Ginger pointed to a hallway. “Through that hallway is the steam tunnel.

The only other way out of the basement, from what Gavin could see. It had to feel claustrophobic when the place was packed. No windows. Two exits, and one of them led straight into the lair.

He took a few steps, and whispers piqued his ears.

Kane strode ahead of him and opened the door to a room.

Sabelle’s gasp told him she’d moved close.

Within the exposed space, cages lined the walls. From behind the bars, boys of varying ages peered out, aged from what maybe twelve to eighteen, judging their size and muscular development. Some growled from crouched positions, while others lay passive, watching.

Gavin strode forward to open a cage, but paused when the imprisoned boy inside the cage bared his teeth.

“No!”

“I’m freeing you.”

The boy growled a warning, his eyes flickering silver.

“He doesn’t want to be saved.” Ginger’s voice carried across the room. “He’s been chosen.”

“For what?”

“To fight. Only the best are chosen.”

“And this is their reward?” Gavin’s gaze wandered the old, damp and moldy room. No windows, no light—like a mausoleum for the living. “To be caged? Like animals?”

“They’re fed. Housed. Protected. Better than the streets.”

“Protected?” Gavin swung back to Ginger. “I could slay them now, if I wanted to.”

No sooner had the words tumbled from Gavin’s mouth than a rumble carried down the hallway. Growls. Claws on concrete. Lots of them. Coming toward them.

“You can’t just leave them!” Sabelle reached for a lock on the cage.

Kane’s chest heaved. Silver swirls danced in his irises.

As if sensing the much larger threat in the lycan tiger, the lycan boys whimpered in their cages. Ignoring them, Kane, partially shifted, clawed a cage open, sending the boy inside cowering at the back corner.

Gavin unlocked other cages, alongside Sabelle, until all of them were opened.

In the darkness, the large figure of a wolf took up the width of the doorway through which they’d entered the room. Stood on its haunches, it bared razor sharp teeth, and in a sudden act of confidence, the boys emerged from their cages, as more lycans filed into the hallway behind the wolf.

Kane’s final transformation burst forth on a growl, and as the tiger ripped free, he charged for the doorway.

Gavin nabbed Sabelle’s wrist and tugged her behind him, as he swung a fist cracking into the face of an attacking boy. As the body flew backward, two more advanced. Had they been adults, he’d have yanked his daggers and sliced them open. Instead, he herded them toward the back corner of the room.

A loud snap echoed in the hallway, and Gavin whirled to see Ayden had joined Kane outside the room. Her whip zipped through the air like silver lightning, and the yelps that followed assured she’d hit her mark every time.

“What are you going to do?” Sabelle asked.

“We can’t take them with us. There are too many. And soon we’ll have an entire pack on our asses. We ruin this gig, and you won’t be retrieving anything. They’ll pick up and move somewhere else. We need to get out of here. Leave the boys, for now. It’s like the kid said, the streets are no better for them.” Grabbing Sabelle’s hand, he backed toward the door.

A spin on his heel brought him facing a large black wolf, and Gavin nailed two punches then sank his blade into its chest, breaking off the hilt. Silver stunned the wolves. Didn’t kill them, but often bought a few minutes until their sealing wounds pushed the blade out.

“C’mon!” Gavin said. “He’s down for a minute.” Black tarry blood and a pile of fur filled the hallway, where Kane had torn wolves apart, and Gavin trampled over them, no time to be fussy, striding toward Ayden and Kane. “We need to go.”

Stood with claws spread, shifting on his feet, Kane seemed to be spoiling for another fight. His eyes flickered with excitement, as the sound of more wolves advancing echoed down the hallway.

“Now!” Gavin pushed at Kane’s bulky chest, ignoring the warning growl that rumbled in his throat.

“Kane!” Ayden cracked the whip at his ass.

The lycan tiger snapped his head in her direction and snarled, but his cocked eyebrow gave Gavin the impression he’d grown to like the whip. His jaw shifted into a wicked smile as he followed Ayden’s lead, up the staircase, toward the front entrance.

At the sliver of light cast against the church floor, Sabelle slipped through the crack first, followed by Ayden.

Gavin pounded a fist against the particleboard, busting it wide open. “I don’t trust you’ll follow, Brother. You’re next.”

Obeying, Kane squeezed through, and as soon as Gavin stepped out, the four scrambled to their vehicles.

With Sabelle in the passenger seat, Gavin hopped into the driver’s seat, started the engine and threw the car in reverse. Before Gavin slammed on the brakes, lycans bounded toward them, and he spun the car and hammered the gas, leaving the pack in the dust.

Clutching the dash, Sabelle took deep, heaving breaths. “That was … intense.”

“That was only a glimpse of what could happen. Other packs will be there to watch the fight, as well.”

“Will they move the location?”

“Likely not. We never infiltrated their lair.” The empty streets of Van Dyke flew past the window at his left, as Gavin sped toward the mansion. “We won’t get another scouting mission in, though.”

“Will the boy be okay?”

“Ayden will take care of him.”

“And Kane? He could’ve attacked the boy?”

“I think Kane’s instincts are a much smaller fraction to his conscience. He loves Ayden, and he’s too good a guy to hurt a child.”

“What do you think will come of the other boys?”

“They’ve been brainwashed into believing they’re safer where they are. They had an opportunity to be free and they chose to stay. For now, they might very well be safer, but I don’t intend to walk away twice.” He caught a glimpse of blood on her thigh, clearly the boy’s, but Gavin found it a good excuse to stare at her toned legs for a second. “Come Friday, they’ll either follow or die.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to throw us in the middle of a fight. I just couldn’t leave the boy. If that was Thomas …” She cradled her face in the palm of her hands.

“That will never be Thomas. That boy was alone.”

Her hands fell away from her face. “And if something happened to me, Thomas and Jane would be alone.”

Gavin glanced toward the road and back to Sabelle. “No, they wouldn’t. I promise you that.”

“You told me the other night that I was not what you expected.” Her gaze trailed upward until she met his eyes. “You’re a bit of a surprise yourself, Gavin.”

***

Deep within the catacombs of the mansion, Gavin lay across a steel cot inside one of the prison cells, where Xander had
so graciously
chained his arms to the wall. The concrete slab that’d passed for a bed in Obsidius had had more cushion, and Gavin shifted, trying to keep one of the prongs beneath the thinning mattress from scraping his spine—an annoyance sure to summon a raging beast.

At least in the basement, he wasn’t likely to assault any females, though—Sabelle, specifically. Every night the beast became more intense. Each time it surfaced in his dreams, the acts had become more frantic, more violent—hunting Sabelle and forcing her to succumb, an instinct that dated back to very primitive days when demons took what they wanted with little regard for anything or anyone.

Like animals.

Pain sent spasms through his body—pain that desperately sought out a cure. Except, the cure could only be found in the warmth between his female’s thighs and the soft, wet flesh he yearned for.

Gavin tipped his head back to mental visuals of Sabelle, spread naked before him. In his fantasy, he wasn’t chained by morals, curses or self-control—he just broke through those chains to give her what she needed.

Or more accurately, what
he
needed.

His hips circled against the bed, ass flexing with each imagined thrust into her. Each drive’d be so powerful, she’d cry out—scream his name as she shattered around his hungry cock.

An ache in his groin had Gavin’s eyes opening, and he stared down his body toward his raging erection.

Fuck.

He tugged the chains attached to the wall, testing their strength once more, and needles tingled across his skin, raising hairs in their wake. His temperature soared, scorching his insides, until Gavin panted, grunting, as the heat overwhelmed him. Skin throbbed, thickened and hardened. He groaned at the familiar stab of muscles elongating beneath his skin.

Much as he wanted to deny it, Gavin only wanted
one
woman. A tall fiery redhead who set his body to flames. He ground his teeth with the agony of her beauty, writhed against his chains with the frustration that he could never claim her as his own.

He needed her. Only her. A roar beat from his chest as he yanked his bindings in futility.

“Hey, hey, Bossman, bastards can’t get any sleep up in here when you’re going fuckin’ ape in your cage.”

“Release me.”

“Well, see, I would. But I have a feeling this conversation is between me and your dick right now, and not your head. Well, sorta your head, but I mean your
head
, head. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Xander, I’m
ordering
you to release me.”

“No can do.” Xander gripped a bar of the cell and rested his head against it. “If that pretty lady you have upstairs got hurt, I think the non-horned up version of yourself would try to kill me tomorrow.”

“
You stay away from her
!” Spittle shot from Gavin’s mouth as he rose up from the bed, arms yanked taut by the chain.

Xander’s palms flew up. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere near her. I promise you that, Brother.”

“You touch her …” Gavin threw himself back against the bed and tugged, furious with the need to kill the Fallen angel. “I’ll slice you open …” The chains didn’t budge, and he grunted, yanking his arms to break the steel away from the concrete.

Unlike most metal that pulled on the grounded source, Diablis steel carried its own tensile strength, meaning it wouldn’t come detached from the wall, because Gavin was actually tugging the resistance of the chain itself.

“Hey, relax. The only place I’m going right now, is back to my own bed to try to get some sleep. If you could keep your suffering down though, that’d be great.”

“Fuck yourself.”

“I probably will, thanks.”

As soon as the angel disappeared, Gavin kicked a tantrum against the steel and springs of the cot, until a roar of frustration ripped from his chest, reverberating off the walls.

***

Sabelle’s muscles flinched at the beat of clanging metal. A tortured outcry echoed down the hall, setting her nerves flaring like livewires, yet she kept on toward the sound, allowing the torch she’d nabbed at the bottom of the staircase to the catacombs to light her way.

It’s Gavin. No matter how creepy, it’s Gavin.

She hadn’t expected to catch Anna carrying linens past the children’s room as she was kissing Thomas and Janie goodnight. Sabelle hadn’t intended to stalk behind Anna, either. While a number of reasons could’ve explained why she carried those linens, Sabelle was only interested in one—knowing where Gavin planned to sleep for the night. When the old demoness had met Gavin at the doorway to the catacombs, insisting that she make his bed for him, it was a matter of assumption that led Sabelle to venture down herself after a long enough pause.

Jesus, though. No wonder he’d told them not to wander into the catacombs. The place looked like the setting for a Rob Zombie movie. Dark. Cold. Decaying, and filled with the sounds of suffering.

No matter how beastly Gavin sounded, how creepy her surroundings happened to be, somewhere in all the frightening details was the male who spun her out with lust—and he needed release.

His fits of rage seemed to be worsening with each night, and Sabelle had a theory that if he could get some relief, he might calm down. A potential mate typically provided that kind of release, and, for whatever reason, Gavin didn’t seem to be seeking out the cure in another female.

She tiptoed closer, muscles tightening when silence filled the hallway.

He could likely smell her getting close. Could probably sense her fear, too.

“What have we here?”

“Oh, shit!” Sabelle swiveled on her heel and stumbled backward, nearly twisting her ankle in the process.

An enormous male stood shirtless in jeans, boasting tattoos and thick muscles. His black hair set against silvery eyes, and the way the shadows hid most of his face, had her pulse hastening.

“You must be Xander. Gavin mentioned you. Earlier.” Somehow, her eyes fixated on the nipple rings that caught the light of her torch, and when he didn’t answer, she said, “I’m here for Gavin.”

A grin stretched across his face, revealing teeth too perfect for the ominous vibe he cast out. “Are you now?” His head tipped. “Not a good idea, unless you’re looking to be chained up in his place.”

“You’re not going to stop me.”

He double blinked like the words had smacked him across the face before his tongue slid across his teeth. “It’s an exciting moment, when the mouse unwittingly falls into the snake pit.”

She lifted her chin. “I can calm him. I’ve done it before.”

He stepped closer. “Yes. I know all about you. Even if the Bossman hasn’t figured it out, yet.”

“What do you know about me?” She couldn’t help the indignant tone of her voice. Fallen angels sat about one rung higher than the succubi on the food chain and were twice as shady. Yet, sometimes, they had insights that no other supe possessed. Did he know something she didn’t? Something that might explain why Gavin calmed so easily around her?

His massive arms crossed over his chest. “I was ordered to keep you away. But I have a feeling you’re exactly the kind of prey he’s craving. Bold. Strong.
Fearless
.” The last word came out on a hiss, his silver eyes flickering. It didn’t go unnoticed by Sabelle that he’d completely ignored her question. “You touch that chain, you’re dead. And not by my hands. Are we clear?”