So be it, he resolved. These beasts would get to Sonja over his dead body.
Throwing back his head, he let out a tremendous roar.
And other wolves stopped in their tracks.
Lucian couldn’t believe his eyes. He held his breath as a hush fell over the werewolf horde. Their leathery snouts crinkled and they cocked their heads to the side. They lowered their eyes in submission. Lucian tried to understand what was happening. Although it seemed inconceivable, he would have sworn that the pack was obeying him.
One by one, the werewolves backed away, disappearing back into the forest. They leapt into the sheltering tree branches or else slunk away into fog. Within moments, to Lucian’s vast astonishment, he and Sonja were alone upon the pitted roadway. Gaping cavities in the earth were all that remained of the marauding horde.
He looked down at her, fearing her reaction to his grotesque appearance. Even though the change had been their only hope, he had never wanted her to see him like this. What if she stared back at him in horror or revulsion? Now she knew that he was truly a beast and not a man. He wouldn’t blame her if she never loved him again.
But, to his surprise and relief, he saw only awe in her beautiful chestnut eyes. She looked just as dumbfounded by the pack’s abrupt departure as he was.
What happened there? he pondered. Why did they listen to me?
A large figure stumbled out of the fog, and Lucian immediately tensed for battle once more. Perhaps not all of the werewolves had abandoned the hunt after all? Then the figure stepped into a patch of moonlight and he saw that it was not a werewolf but rather the towering dark-skinned slave he had noticed before. The one who had slain a wolf with nothing more than a broken length of chain. A veritable mountain of a man, the bald warrior contemplated the werewolf and the vampire noblewoman from a safe distance. The sword Lucian had shared with him was still in his possession. Lucian wondered just how much the mortal had seen.
Does he understand that I saved us all?
The clicking of crossbow triggers intruded on the silence. A volley of silver-tipped bolts came whistling through the fog, thudding into the trunks of trees and striking sparks off the armored carriage. The clamor of pounding hooves preceded the sudden arrival of four more Death Dealers, who immediately took aim at the sole remaining werewolf before them.
Lucian.
Wait! he tried to call out, throwing up his paws, but only an inarticulate snarl escape his canine snout. Blood dripped from his claws. He realized to his dismay that it no doubt looked at though he was attacking Sonja. You don’t understand. I’m not one of them!
The crossbows fired again. A silver quarrel zoomed toward his head with lethal precision.
Sonja leapt from the ground with blinding speed, swiping the bolt from the air only inches away from Lucian’s skull. The lethal silver had no effect on her; only werewolves were poisoned by the precious metal. She flung the offending missile away from her.
Alas, a second bolt zipped below her arm and struck Lucian in the thigh. He howled in pain and grabbed for the arrow, but his clumsy paws could not take hold of the shaft. The silver arrowhead burned inside his thigh like a red-hot coal. He dropped to his knees, even as the metal stole his lycanthropic strength and stature from him. Sable fur receded from limbs and his bones contorted back into human guise. Wolfen claws retracted. Cobalt eyes dimmed to brown.
A third bolt stabbed him in the leg.
“No!” Sonja shouted. She threw herself in front of Lucian. “Stop!”
The lead horseman lowered his crossbow. A cruel chuckle revealed that he was none other than Kosta. A crooked smile showed through his Corinthian helmet. He watched with obvious satisfaction as the wounded werewolf turned back into Lucian. The naked slave writhed in agony upon the ground.
More riders emerged from the mist. Viktor rode past Kosta. Unlike the armored soldiers, the Elder wore a stately black robe and cape. A nervous-looking Tanis followed after him, riding a pale gray palfrey instead of a proper warhorse. The scribe held aloft a blazing torch. His eyes anxiously searched the woods around them. He clearly wished he were anywhere else than this treacherous crossroads. He flinched at the sight of the overturned carriage and the ravaged bodies surrounding it.
Concerned only with tending to Lucian’s wounds, Sonja failed to acknowledge her father’s arrival. Dropping to his side, she gently worked the barbed arrowheads from his punctured flesh and bone. Despite her delicate touch, every motion sent a fresh jolt of agony through his tortured body. Throbbing purple veins spread from each wound. Cramps and nausea gripped his innards. Sonja worked the blood-slick bolts back and forth in order to extricate them without breaking the birchwood shafts. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming. It took all his willpower not to turn and snap at Sonja like a maddened hound.
Viktor observed the tender scene with visible distaste. His icy gaze went from Lucian’s bare throat to the discarded moon shackle lying several yards away. He speared the collar with the tip of his sword and lifted it up for all to see. Anger flared in his eyes and voice.
“What is this?”
Alarmed by her father’s outraged tone, Sonja rushed to explain. She looked up at him urgently. Tearful eyes beseeched his mercy. “He did it to save me!”
The vehemence of her cry only seemed to provoke him further. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, as though an ugly thought had begun to scrape at the back of his mind. Dismounting from his steed, he strode over to where Lucian lay bleeding and grabbed the lycan’s hair. He jerked Lucian’s head back and hissed into his face.
“Am I not the master of my house?”
His armored gauntlet slapped Lucian across the face. The force of the blow loosened the slave’s teeth and sent him tumbling across the road. Lucian’s head rang like a gong. He spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground. A flash of anger burnt brightly amidst the pain.
Was this his reward for saving Sonja’s life?
“Father!” Sonja shouted. She stared aghast at her father, as if she didn’t know who he was anymore. “Stop it!”
“Am I not the master of my house?!” he bellowed, as much at Sonja as at the brutalized lycan. He grabbed onto Lucian’s throat and squeezed tightly. “Answer me, cur!”
Lucian struggled to lift his head from the road. A large purple bruise discolored his face. Blood trickled from a split lip. One eye was swollen shut. His voice was hoarse and barely audible.
“I… yes.”
“Yet you break my law.” Viktor thrust the unlocked collar in Lucian’s face. “After I gave you your life so many years ago.” He yanked Lucian to his feet. “Your days of plush living are over, slave!”
Riding up behind Viktor, Tanis watched the humiliating spectacle with acute interest. Lucian glimpsed the scribe’s sly smile and amused eyes. He seemed to be enjoying this almost as much as Kosta was.
Viktor drew back his hand to administer another crippling blow.
“Father!” Sonja grabbed his wrist. “Leave him be! I told you, he was merely—”
Viktor yanked his arm from her grip. His face was livid beneath his helmet as he spun around to confront her. “Hold your tongue!” Centuries of pent-up anger and frustration boiled over into his voice. “You have defied me for the last time.”
He barked at Tanis. “Get her out of here!” Turning his back on his daughter, he nodded at Kosta and the other Death Dealers. “And take this ungrateful mongrel away!”
The knights descended on Lucian, kicking him in the ribs as they threw him back onto the ground. Rough hands rolled him onto his stomach and chained his hands and feet together. Dazed from Viktor’s blow, and still smarting where the silver quarrels had pierced his flesh, Lucian lacked the strength to put up a fight. He could only hope that Viktor’s temper would abate once they got back to the castle. Or had his desperate ploy with the key condemned him forever?
Kosta got down from his horse and spit on Lucian. Finally seeing his chance, he stepped vengefully on the back of the lycan’
s head. His heavy boot ground Lucian’s face into the dirt.
Viktor did nothing to curb the overseer’s cruelty. Sonja flinched, but seemed to realize that her protests on Lucian’s behalf were only making things worse. Her eyes glistened moistly as she bit down on her lip and let Tanis guide her back toward Hecate, who had somehow come through the massacre with only a few more scars. Lucian watched her go.
At least I saved her life, he thought. That’s worth any punishment.
Viktor muttered darkly beneath his breath. “I will have the skin off his back.” He tossed the discarded collar over to Tanis. Venom dripped from his voice. “Dispose of this.”
Leaving Lucian to Kosta’s untender mercies, the Elder surveyed the ghastly carnage surrounding the carriage. Dismembered Death Dealers lay in pieces, their butchered mounts reduced to bloody heaps of bone and horseflesh. The daughter of a mortal noble was sprawled at the foot of the coach’s open door, her throat torn open, her virgin blood wasted upon the mucky soil. The smell of death emanated from the interior of the carriage, which was now nothing more than an abattoir.
Viktor watched unhappily as his men rounded up a handful of mortal slaves who appeared to have come through the slaughter unscathed. Among them was a large Moor or Nubian who reluctantly surrendered a bloody sword to the knights. The Death Dealers led the prisoners away. Hoods covered the heads of all but the black giant.
Two centuries ago, Viktor would have worried about the murdered mortals coming back to life as werewolves, but, thankfully, William’s curse had grown less infectious with each successive generation. Now only those who survived a werewolf’s attack risked joining their loathsome ranks.
Still, there was no point in taking chances.
“Burn the bodies!” Viktor ordered. “Burn them all!”
Chapter Nine
Despite the imminent arrival of the other human nobles, practically the entire coven had turned out to witness Lucian’s punishment. Burning braziers and flambeaux lit up the courtyard in front of the keep. Vampire lords and ladies, soldiers, servants, and courtesans mingled together, murmuring excitedly amongst themselves. The story of the ambush upon the caravan, and Lucian’s subsequent rebellion, had spread like wildfire through the fortress. Avid spectators waited impatiently for tonight’s entertainment.
Off to one side, the castle’s lycan population had been herded together in the shadow of the unfinished tower and its scaffolding. Death Dealers watched over the restless slaves. Afraid to speak, the lycans shifted uneasily and exchanged furtive glances with each other.
Lucian spotted Xristo among them. The surly laborer, whom Lucian had rescued from Kosta’s lash only yesterday, risked a muttered aside to his companion, a strapping lycan youth named Sabas. The men scowled unhappily at the dreadful spectacle under way before them:
Lucian hung spread-eagled between two vertical wooden posts in the center of the courtyard. Manacles of silver-iron alloy bit into his wrists and ankles. A new moon shackle pricked his neck. Naught but a grimy loincloth protected his modesty. Although the wounds from Kosta’s arrows had scabbed over, his abused body remained in torment. His bare toes barely grazed the cobblestones, so that he was hanging more than standing. Gravity tugged on his depleted frame. His aching arms felt like they were being yanked from their sockets. His lips were cracked and dry. He would have sold his soul for a sip of fresh water.
Or perhaps one last kiss from Sonja.
Viktor strode up to Lucian. The Elder wore a magisterial black robe. His azure eyes dissected the chained lycan, whose life he had spared two centuries before. His gaunt face held a rueful expression. Lucian braced himself for another jarring blow, but instead Viktor cupped Lucian’s chin with surprising gentleness. He lifted the lycan’s face so that he could look the prisoner squarely in the eyes.
“You have stung me, Lucian, with your betrayal. You were like a son to me.” He eyed the brand upon Lucian’s arm, then glanced at the forbidding walls of the keep. The looming gray edifice rose like a gigantic tombstone above the hidden dungeons below. “I gave you life not ten feet from this very spot.”
Under the circumstances, Lucian was feeling less than grateful. His voice croaked hoarsely. “You gave me chains.”
“I would have thought after all these years you would have known that you cannot have one without the other.” Viktor turned to Kosta, who was standing nearby eagerly awaiting his moment. The Elder’s face hardened. “Do it.”
The armored overseer required no further prompting. His gray eyes gleamed with anticipation as he stalked forward brandishing a cat-o’-nine-tails. Shiny silver barbs flashed at the end of the knotted cords. His scar stood out lividly against his face. A smirk lifted the corners of his lips.
“I told you I would be there, when you fell.”
Lucian did not waste his breath pleading for mercy. He knew there would be none forthcoming.
Kosta stepped behind Lucian, out of the prisoner’s line of sight. Lucian tried to crane his head around but the silver spikes in his collar tore at his skin. Unable to see Kosta, he could only wait tensely for the inevitable blow.
He did not have to wait long.
With a fury, Kosta brought down the lash. Nine silver-tipped cords struck Lucian’s naked back, paring the flesh to the bone. Angry red welts crossed his flesh. Steam rose from scalded skin. His spine arched in agony. An audience of jaded immortals oohed and aahed in appreciation. Undead doxies giggled and licked their lips. Tanis kept a tally of the blows on a scrap of parchment.
The pain was unimaginable, yet Lucian endured the blows with stoic courage. Clenching his teeth to keep from crying out, he’d be damned if he gave the heartless vampires the satisfaction of seeing him whimper like a whipped dog. His bloodshot eyes searched the mob of spectators but found one face conspicuously absent. Desperate for something to focus on besides the brutal beating, his gaze lifted to an open window on the top floor of the keep.
But the window was empty.
The terrible reports of the whip invaded Sonja’s private chambers. The opulent furnishings failed to soften the brutal cracks. She shuddered at the sound, almost as though the fearsome blows were falling upon her own immortal flesh as well. She steeled herself for her lover’s screams, but heard nothing but the snap of the whip and the bloodthirsty reaction of the crowd below.
Monsters! The coven’s voyeuristic enjoyment of Lucian’s suffering filled her with disgust for her own kind. It is they who are the animals, not my brave Lucian.
The sheer injustice of it all offended her to her very core. In a better, more honest world, Lucian would have been knighted for his heroism these past two nights. But instead he was whipped and pilloried for the “crime” of doing everything in his power to defend her from the werewolves. Knowing what Lucian was going through at this very moment seared Sonja’s soul more painfully than the brightest sunlight. That he should be tortured so was dreadful enough; that he was being punished for saving her broke her heart.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared forlornly into the bronze-framed mirror above her vanity. Red-rimmed eyes gave away her distress. A funereal black gown fit her mood. Despair beckoned as she heard the cruel whip snap once more. In her minds eye, she saw the caustic silver barbs scourging Lucian’s precious flesh.
Be strong, my love. Know that I am with you in spirit.
Perhaps the hardest part of this ordeal was that she could not even weep openly, lest she fuel her father’s suspicions. The venomous look on his face when he’d caught her tending to Lucian’s wounds had chilled even her cold vampiric blood. For the first time in her two centuries of existence she had found herself fearing what her father was truly capable of… and how much he already knew. Did he even now have an inkling of what had transpired between her and Lucian? Surely not, she reasoned. The harrowing tribulation Lucian was enduring now was nothing to compared to what her father would do to him if he truly knew that a lycan had claimed his only daughter’s virtue. My father must never g
uess our secret, no matter how much it pains me to stand by while Lucian suffers for us both.
Determined to put on a brave front and offer no hint of her inner turmoil, she wiped the salty tears from her cheeks. The face in the mirror froze into an icy mask, little different from the burnished steel helmet that often shielded her features from a dangerous world. Only the faint redness of her eyes bore testament to her tears. She took a deep breath to compose herself, then turned away from the mirror. She walked stiffly toward the window overlooking the courtyard. A whip cracked loudly, but she didn’t even flinch. At least not on the outside.
The whip cracked like thunder. Pain lashed Lucian’s back and shoulders once more, burning like molten steel. He felt like a lump of metal on his own anvil, being tortured by the blows of a red-hot hammer. His skin sizzled every time the silver touched him. But still he refused to utter a single sound, even as his flayed body rocked beneath the impact of Kosta’s lash.
Each blow elicited amused grins and titters from most of the audience. The fall of Viktor’s favorite lycan was a rare diversion indeed. Only a handful of vampires frowned at the proceedings. They glanced nervously at the other lycans, as though worried that Lucian’s public agonies might incite his fellow servants to revolt.
Their concern was not without basis. Among the gathered slaves, Xristo and Sabas could not bear to stand by idly while their fellow lycan was flayed before their eyes. Their faces contorted with rage, they lunged forward to intervene. But the watchful Death Dealers were ready for such an incident. Before the irate lycans could get more than a few steps, the soldiers clubbed them in the head with the butts of their crossbows. The men dropped to the ground, clutching the back of their skulls. Steel-toed boots kicked their ribs for good measure. Enjoying the sideshow, aristocratic vampires applauded.