The Relentless Warrior (17 page)

While the rest of the crew crawled into their cars, Jericho walked over to me and
tipped my chin up with two of his fingers . “Are you alright?” he asked in a low,
careful voice.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “I just didn’t…” I cleared my throat and changed directions,
“You guys are really efficient.”

His mouth curved in a half-smile. “We are efficient.” His eyes gazed down into mine
with unwavering intensity. “Ready to go?”

I felt breathless in my response, not because of his question, but because of the
electrified Magic rolling off him in dizzying waves. His Magic had wrapped around
mine minutes ago or that’s what it felt like. I felt cocooned, pressed against an
invisible chest. I felt consumed.

“Sure,” I answered. “Is that a bad guy then?”

“Terletov’s brother,” Jericho answered in a voice that told me to wait on any more
questions.

He opened the front passenger’s side door for me and I crawled in the car, gawking
at the way the man had been apprehended with his hands tied behind his back, lying
face down on the tiny, backseat floor.

Sebastian kept the gun pointed at the back of his head and Talbott rested his feet
on the man’s prone calves. I turned back around, feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

“They are going to come looking for me,” Alexi’s voice sounded muffled and strained
against the rough carpet.

“I hope they do,” Talbott answered.

Jericho set off into the dimming Brazilian sunset. Nobody acknowledged the man on
the floor after that and he seemed to understand nobody was anxious to hear him speak
again. By the time we pulled to a stop in front of the house we were staying at, tension
had ignited into a blazing wildfire of danger.

I had no doubt that this man’s life would probably end tonight. I couldn’t say why
I felt that way, but instinct and something innately Magical echoed in my brain over
and over again, as if warning me… or maybe preparing me for what could happen tonight.

Jericho jumped out of the car and helped Sebastian and Talbott extract the man, since
his hands and feet had been bound with some kind of handcuff system that carried a
live-current. Or maybe I could just sense the Magic that sparked inside the metal.
Either way, the man looked in utter discomfort and misery.

However, after hearing that he was Terletov’s brother, I couldn’t exactly feel bad
for him.

We marched him into the house; Sebastian and Talbott took him directly to a door that
opened to steps, apparently a basement. Jericho waited at the doorway while Xander,
Xavier, Titus and Roxie disappeared down the steps.

I stood awkwardly in the entry way, waiting for some kind of direction.

I didn’t think I wanted to be a part of what was about to happen downstairs.

Jericho closed the door after Roxie and walked over to me. His eyebrows were drawn
low on his forehead and his eyes had smoothed out- no more happy crinkles.

“Are you alright?” he asked in a low voice.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I challenged.

“Because you just watched us kidnap a man and hold him at gun point.” Jericho took
another step toward me.

I snorted. “I didn’t sign up for this because I thought you guys passed out lollipops
and balloon animals.”

“Always so tough,” Jericho murmured in that amused tone that drove me crazy. “Well,
whether you expected this or not, this is about to get very real. We are going to
torture that man until he tells us what we want to hear. Probably, Talbott will kill
him afterwards.” Jericho cleared his throat and looked away for a moment. “I hope
Talbott kills him afterward.”

“Because you can’t?” I didn’t believe Jericho couldn’t. I believed Jericho would be
capable of whatever he needed to be. But maybe the thought of murdering an unarmed
man bothered him.

“No,” he turned back to me, meeting my eyes and holding my stare. He was letting me
see all of him… opening himself up so I could see this part of him along with all
the others. “If Talbott doesn’t want to, I have no problem finishing this.”

“Oh,” I answered weakly. “Good.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me, but changed the subject. “I need to go down there with
them.”

“Do you want me to go, too?” I asked uncertainly .

“No.” His fingers came up and gently traced a line along my collarbone. “There’s not
enough room. It’s not a full basement. More of a… storage room. I’ll probably send
Roxie up too.”

“I don’t think she’s going to like that,” I told him.

He smiled, his full, bright, blinding smile then. God, this man was perfection.

“I’ll come find you in a little bit, alright?”

“Sure.” I stepped away from him, the tenor of his voice changed and I didn’t think
I liked the way it made me feel.

“We should talk,” he said.

“Sure.”

Yeah, definitely did not like where this was going.

“Alright.” He took another step forward so that we were only inches apart. I felt
my breathing pick up and that damned Magic instantly react.

“Alright,” I repeated brightly. I playfully punched him in the bicep. “Go get ‘
em
, champ. Show ‘em who’s boss.”

“Me,” he laughed lightly, but the sexy atmosphere he’d been bringing with him disintegrated
into the air around him, fizzling out with my mood-killing strictly-friends desperation.
He took a few steps back and reached for the basement stairs. “I’m the boss,” he called
out confidently and then descended into unseen basement.

I shook my head and muttered to myself. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

I stood there, unseeing and lost in thought until Roxie popped into the doorframe
a few minutes later.

“Hey,” she greeted me. I snapped out of my funk and met her amused eyes. “Want to
go for a swim? You look like you need to cool off.”

I scowled at her words but almost winced at how good her offer sounded. “I don’t have
a swimming suit.”

“I’ve got a few,” she told me. “And you better take me up on this offer.”

“Why?” I asked, following her down the hallway to her room.

“Because I’m not usually nice to people. For you, this is like the equivalent of seeing
a white unicorn in the flesh.”

“Do those really exist?” I asked sincerely. It was a legitimate question. I didn’t
think Witches, Shape-Shifters or Psychics were real either until a few months ago.
For all I knew, this meant Sasquatch, the Lochness Monster and Elvis were all really
alive.

Roxie snorted a laugh. “Obviously not.”

“Obviously,” I echoed weakly.

Swimming with a girl that hated most people while a stranger got tortured in the basement
of a mansion that belonged to a priest… At this moment, I was pretty sure my life
could not get more f-ed up.

Chapter Fifteen

Jericho

Blood. Gore. A man, pulling against his constraints so that he can fall to the floor
and die.

Yeah, typical.

While my stomach for this kind of information-torture-marathon was strong, my soul
still managed to get the deathly ill feeling that this kind of activity would send
me straight to hell.

And it probably would.

“He’s unconscious,” Titus grunted, wiping his blood slicked hands against his jeans.

“Well, that’s what happens when you hit a man in the face,” Sebastian lectured studiously.
“Repeatedly.”

“I thought it would encourage him to talk,” Titus shrugged.

“Me too,” I admitted.

The three of us stood staring down at Alexi Terletov with mingled disgust and pity.
This was a man somehow connected to Dmitri’s plan of world domination. But at the
same time… not tied to it at all.

I remembered back to the fall, when I had been out hunting with Avalon. All of the
men we’d captured or found had been murdered seconds after we found them. There was
always a contingency plan with them. They knew too much, so Terletov could not risk
them spilling their guts, in a metaphorical sense.

But nothing had happened with Alexi when we’d caught him. Although he had the faint
putrid smell that the other captives had, he hadn’t reeked of that deathly, pungent
evil odor. Nor had a sniper taken off his head before we could load him in the car.
He had a gun but hadn’t shot any of us.

Was this a trap?

Or had Alexi been abandoned by his brother for reasons unknown?

I squatted down on my heels and peered up at the slightly younger version of Dmitri
Terletov. Alexi’s hair was just barely salt-and-peppered, but as dark as Dmitri’s.
His aristocratic nose was bloodied and healing from a severe break dealt not a half-hour
ago. His black and blue eyes were also struggling to heal, but there was a tiredness
about them that would remain, a deep gray that tainted the bags under his lashes and
made his cheeks sallow and sunken. He was a mess before we got to him.

Something was up.

I slapped at his sagging cheek, hoping to rouse him. His Magic was constricted because
of the cuffs we’d put on his wrists and ankles, but he was still Immortal.

Or, mostly, anyway.

He groaned as the palm of my hand connected with his face again. This time I hit him
a little harder, needing him to wake up and confirm my suspicions.

“Hey,” I called loudly in his ear. “Wake up, you geriatric bastard!”

More groaning sounds rattled his chest, but his heavy eyelids wavered open. He stared
at me with a deadly kind of malice, one that promised retribution and pain.

He spit into my face; the mucous-filled, bloody spray hit me all over and I reflexively
slammed my eyes and mouth shut. I wiped at my now-tainted skin with the hem of my
t-shirt and then broke into a wide smile.

“Now that I have your attention,” I crooned. “I want to know why your brother abandoned
you. What did you do to piss him off?”

Truthfully, I was chasing instinct. But something he said to me earlier about how
my father had disowned me, struck a nerve. I had told nobody, except Avalon, of my
separation with my parents. I expected people assumed there had been a split because
it was obvious where our differing loyalties lied, but I had never offered a reason
and I highly doubted my father was the one spreading the rumors.

He stared at me without saying a word. I slapped his sagging cheek again, a Godfather-esque
rendition of a man wanting another man to answer the freaking question.

His eyes narrowed, but he admitted, “Maybe we didn’t agree.”

“He left you.” I stood up and his head lolled backwards so he could follow me with
his defeated gaze. “And you ran to my father for help. Is he hunting you, too?”

“He’s my brother,” Alexi spit and his Russian accent thickened until I could hardly
understand him.

“What did he do to you?” I pushed. “Did he experiment on you? He had to have. You
smell as rotten as the rest of them. Is that what’s happening? You’re rotting from
the inside out. He took the Magic that was supposed to be yours and gave you something
different? Is your body rejecting it? Is it painful?”

“Shut up!” he roared. “Shut your filthy mouth! You don’t know what you are talking
about!”

“Maybe not,” I shrugged. “But I think I’m getting close.” I stepped close to him again
and leaned in so that he could feel how intimidating I was, how much more powerful
and in control I was. “I think it is painful. I think you might even wish you were
dead, it hurts so bad. And I think you might get your wish soon enough if Dmitri finds
you.”

Alexi’s eyes grew big, maybe surprised that I guessed this much. What he didn’t realize
was that I had been interrogating for years now. This was what I was good at. This
was what I would do for the rest of my life, all in the service of my King.

He clucked his tongue, but admitted, “But that is what you do not understand. He will
not kill me. He will not let me die.”

There was a confession in his tone, but I didn’t understand why at first. I turned
to Titus and Sebastian to see if they could read through his words.

“You were dying,” Sebastian announced. His entire face lit up with understanding and
he pointed an accusing finger at Alexi. “You
were
dying. Before. That’s why you have the stolen Magic. And that’s why you had a falling
out with your brother.”

Alexi winced and I knew Sebastian was onto something.

“The King’s Curse,” Alexi admitted, although we were all assuming that by now.

“He thought he could save you.” I fell back a step, sickened by the power Dmitri Terletov
thought he had over people- that he thought he could remove unhealthy Magic, take
from someone else and replace it, that he thought there were those deserving of Magic
and that there were those that weren’t. He thought he could play God.

“He did save me.” Alexi’s dull eyes flashed with anger. “I’m alive. He succeeded.”

“At what cost?” Talbott demanded. “You’re sick, just in a different way. And who had
to die so that you could live? How
many
had to die so that you could live?”

Alexi’s anger was immediately replaced with grief… regret… something sicker, something
so soul deep and wretched I wondered if it was that pain killing him instead of the
tainted Magic. “He’s my brother. He would do anything for me.”

“Then where is he now?” Sebastian was in his face this time and I could see his muscles,
his limbs, his body shaking with restrained rage. “Where is he, Alexi? Let us right
this! You ran from him because you know what he is doing is evil. He’s killing people!
And not just Immortals, he’s murdering humans. You left because you knew he was sick.
So tell us where he is! Let us find him and end this!”

“He is my
brother
,” Alexi gritted out. “He is the
only
family I have and you would have me betray him? After he saved my life?” He let out
a dark chuckle and spit at Sebastian’s shoes.

Sebastian stood up and put some room between them. “Believe me,” he told Alexi. “I
know what this is like. The King is like
my
brother. Kiran is
my
flesh and blood. But I have a goddamn conscious Alexi. I know when I should accept
his behavior and when I should burn him. And if he was murdering innocent people,
you’d better believe I would absolutely have done whatever was necessary to stop him.”

“You can’t say that for sure.” Alexi shook his head and seemed to lose some of the
desperation he had a moment ago.

“I
can
say that for sure,” Sebastian confessed. “You forget what side of the war I was on
when Lucan was in control.”

Alexi stared at him with confusion. I kind of doubted Alexi paid any attention to
what Sebastian had been doing during those couple of years, especially because Sebastian
lived in the Citadel the entire time. But Sebastian clearly believed his words and
it was hard not to sense the die-hard conviction that resounded with his confession.

“The point is,” I said. “Whether you support the old Monarchy or the new one, you
know what your brother is doing is a crime against humanity and Immortals alike. No
one can stop him but us. And we will stop him, Alexi. With or without your help, we
will find him and we will end this. You have my word.”

I watched Alexi shut down in front of me, stage by stage; he became a stone-cold wall.
The other guys saw this too. Talbott cracked his knuckles and Sebastian let out a
soul-weary sigh. I needed air. If we were going through round two with this guy, I
needed to take a break.

I met Sebastian’s eye and jerked my head to the door that led upstairs. He nodded
so I took my leave, turning my back on the carnage that was about to happen in that
small room.

At the top of the stairs I had to grapple for self-control and force myself to continue
to breathe steadily instead of gulping in the oxygen I really freaking wanted. This
felt like weakness, even while I clung to the belief that these feelings meant I was
better than this.

It meant that I maintained a moral compass instead of getting lost in the bloodlust
and butchery that accompanied this job.

Alexi Terletov was not the first man I’d tortured, and if this ended how I suspected
it would, he would not be the first man I killed.

But these tasks never sat well with me. I could finish them. But they took a piece
of me with them every time they ended- a good, clean piece. And then they left something
dark and inhuman in their place.

It was only a matter of time before all of the good pieces were gone and there were
only the sinister, malicious parts left.

It was those thoughts that kept me up at night, that haunted me… hunted my consciousness.
It was those thoughts and those ugly deeds that I couldn’t get past.

Maybe that made me less of a man, but I was comfortable enough in my own skin not
to recognize my worth beyond my deeds. If I had to hold a standard to myself, I would
choose to be a despicable man for a good cause over everything else.

Laughter floated in from the backyard and I found myself wandering to a window that
overlooked the patio and pool. Called by the sound of something happy, something so
drastically different from the carnage in the basement, I felt lured by some greater
power, helpless to battle the hypnotic enchantment.

Roxie and Olivia were splashing around in the pool while Xander and Xavier sat at
the edge with their feet dipped into the water. Irrational jealously shot through
me as I looked down at my raw, angry knuckles and blood spattered shorts.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I drifted out the patio doors and walked to
the clear, sparkling water with one purpose in mind. The further from the house I
moved and the closer to the purity of the clean water, the more my spirit seemed to
rise from filthy, gritty ashes and become some remnant of what it used to be, something
whole. This was cleansing to me. This was necessary.

Conversation died out as my presence became known. Xander and Xavier looked up at
me expectantly and Roxie floated to my side to hear an update on our prisoner.

Olivia was the only one that backed to the far side of the bean shaped pool. She ducked
under the water and came up with wet hair that she slicked back and made come to a
point just at the nape of her neck. She looked out into the rain forest that backed
up to Gabriel’s stone wall. She seemed intent on avoiding me again. Unfortunately
for her, she had
all
of my attention. Water-beaded body, skimpy bikini and her Magic already tentatively
mixing with mine… I couldn’t have kept my eyes from her if I wanted to.

And I did not want to.

“How’s the prisoner?” Xander asked effectually breaking the tension that had begun
to crawl up my back and take root in my gut. I had to force myself to stay rooted
where I was when everything inside me urged me toward Olivia.

“Talking,” I told him. “Sort of.”

“That’s good news.” Xavier stood and tapped his brother on the back. “And are they,
uh, coaxing him to keep talking?” He gave a furtive glance at Olivia and then grabbed
a towel to dry off his feet.

I nodded without taking my eyes from Olivia.

She kept her shoulders below the surface of the water and her eyes drifted anywhere
but to me. There was this itchy feeing all over my skin from the way she avoided connecting
our gaze. I just wanted her to look at me. I just wanted her to see me.

But she wouldn’t.

And for whatever reason, her distance made me feel like more of a villain than anything
else.

Did she know what I was a part of in the basement?

Did she think I was the same as those monsters that tortured her?

I hated that I was in a somber mood and that I’d destroyed whatever happiness was
out here before I arrived, but the longer Olivia averted her eyes the edgier I became.