Unchained

  Marius left the table but he began to pace. He rubbed his forehead. He felt dizzy and sick at heart. Maybe he had held back, but he knew why.

  Was Shayna right? Did he need to confess the truth even though he felt ill just thinking about it? Was it possible he had the kind of power Gabriel believed he had, that he might be special?

  Lucian rose as well. “Marius, if what Gabriel is saying is true about you and your abilities, you have to try to embrace who you are. We need you because it sounds like you’d be able to battle Daniel and defeat him.”

  Marius felt panicky. “Maybe there’s something off with the blood-chains. That has to be it.”

  Gabriel was on his feet and Adrien as well. They began moving in his direction and a terrible nausea came over him. His mind flew back to being on Daniel’s table, his skin and muscles split open to the spine. Daniel had forced him more than once, through the terrible pain he inflicted, to betray the plans that his brothers had made to get the three of them out of Daniel’s compound.

  As the men converged, he had to speak the words. His family needed to know what kind of man he really was. When they stood in an arc in front of him, he said, “I betrayed you more than once. Adrien. Lucian. I betrayed you.” He felt like his heart was on fire, like it would incinerate and burn up his entire body because the words had left his throat.

  “What do you mean?” Adrien asked. “When?”

  “Yeah, what kind of betrayal are you talking about? When exactly did you do this?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He could feel the top of the scar, the one that Daniel had created through repeated incisions down the length of his spine. “Three times we were going to escape and each time I told Daniel about it. I couldn’t help it. I betrayed you. I was in so much pain and I told Daniel all about the plans. There, you see how special I am?” He shouted his rage at having betrayed his brothers, who had protected him countless times by taking Daniel’s punishment in his stead.

  “Three times?” Adrien asked.

  Marius knew with every cell in his body that today he’d be separated forever from the family he loved, from his brothers and Gabriel. They’d have every reason to cast him out for good.

  And he’d deserve that. “I’ve tried with every ounce of my strength all these centuries to make up for what I did, hoping somehow that I’d be able to atone for my betrayals. But I know now that nothing can make up for it. Daniel would make me listen to your screams in the hallway. He’d chain me there so I’d have to hear what my betrayals cost each of you.”

  “So you did this three times?” Lucian stared at him, repeating the same thing Adrien had asked.

  Marius straightened his shoulders. “Yes. Three.” He felt empty inside, but the confession also relieved him of the burden he’d carried. Even though he’d have to go forward by himself, at least the truth was out. The python that had lived within his body all this time dissolved and could hurt him no more.

  But a strange thing happened. Both Lucian and Adrien began to smile, something Marius didn’t understand at all. Smiles turned to ridiculous grins and after that his brothers started to laugh. They laughed so hard that tears began to run down their cheeks.

  “I don’t understand.” He turned to Gabriel, who in turn shrugged.

  Finally, Lucian grabbed Marius by the back of his neck, pulling him to touch foreheads. “Marius, I wish you’d said something before now. We all caved. Three times each.” He then drew upright and held Marius’s gaze firmly. “Daniel made each of us give up the truth about our escape plans. Do you think I was stronger than you or Adrien? Think about how sharp that blade was. You weren’t alone. It just had never occurred to me that you believed our earlier plans failed because he’d gotten the truth out of you. In reality, he’d figured things out on his own. And remember, we were kids back then. The servants could have alerted him to our bungling efforts. The final escape just involved being cleverer than before and a little luck. That’s all.”

  Adrien drew close and planted a hand on Marius’s shoulder. “We both thought you knew, Marius, I swear it, or Lucian and I would have said something before now. Damn, I hate that you’ve carried this all these years. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  Marius was in shock as he drew back slightly and shifted his gaze back and forth repeatedly between Adrien and Lucian. “So I’m forgiven?” It seemed impossible.

  Lucian shrugged. “There’s nothing to forgive. Not a damn thing. We were all caught in the grips of that psychopathic monster we had for a father.”

  Marius remained standing where he was for a long time, processing what he’d just learned. Daniel had played them one against the other, yet somehow Marius had been too young to figure that out. He tried to recall if the subject had ever come up before. Even if it had, Marius suspected he’d been deaf to the discussion because of his intense guilt over the betrayals.

  “Be well, Marius.” Lucian sought his gaze.

  Marius stared at him and felt the last of his guilt leave him. This, too, had been Daniel’s fault: that he’d carried something all this time that wasn’t his to bear.

  After a long moment, he planted a hand on each shoulder. “I was sure that once you knew the truth about what I’d done, I’d never see either of you again. I lived with that fear all my life, of losing you both.”

  A joining of arms around shoulders followed, all three brothers together, full of shared love and grace and the bond because each had suffered at the hands of their father in the same way.

  When Marius drew back, he met Gabriel’s gaze. His surrogate father smiled and nodded. “I know what courage that took. Well done. But I’d like to suggest something.”

  “Sure.” Right now Marius would have agreed to anything. He was happier than he’d ever been and the release of all that guilt made his chest feel like it was stuffed full of cotton. He’d never felt so free.

  “Given everything that you’ve said about Shayna, and these latest revelations that seemed to come from her own perceptions, why don’t you keep her with you a little longer? I think we need to know what Daniel’s up to, and it seems to me she can help with that.”

  Shayna.

  Though he couldn’t explain why, he knew that his coming to terms with what had haunted him for centuries would have an impact on how he viewed her. More than anything, he wanted to share what had just happened and that her encouragement to confess the truth had given him that extra push to bare his soul.

  He turned physically, angling in the direction of the guest room some two miles away through the intricate Pharaoh system. He could feel the trajectory of their shared guest room the way he could feel himself breathe.

  He glanced at his brothers, then at Marius and Rumy. He even smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t wait for an acknowledgment, just shifted to altered flight and sped in the direction of the room with all the tablets. Somewhere in the middle of flying, however, he realized he couldn’t feel her at all. He wondered if she’d taken off her blood-chain.

  As he touched down, he touched the matching chain at his neck, but got nothing in response.

  And the tablet room was empty.

  Anxiety flowed through him and quickly turned to panic. “Shayna!” he shouted, turning in a slow circle, reaching for her repeatedly.

  But she wasn’t in the guest suite.

  A tablet lay broken on the floor several feet away from the table, the only sign that something must have happened in this room once he left. Shayna would never have broken a tablet unless something extraordinary had happened.

  He opened up his telepathy but still couldn’t find her, couldn’t reach her, something he’d never experienced with Shayna once she’d put the chain on.

  He returned swiftly to Gabriel’s conference room. The men were laughing, until he arrived. Both Adrien and Lucian dropped into fighting stances then relaxed, but each expression grew instantly concerned. “What’s wrong?” Adrien called out.

  “Shayna’s gone.
I don’t what happened.” He described the emptiness of the rooms and the broken tablet.

  Gabriel spoke Marius’s thoughts. “Daniel has her.”

  Once the words were spoken into the air, Marius held his arms wide and hands upraised.

  How long had the monster had his woman? Had he hurt her already? Would he have had reason not to?

  Rage, both ancient and new, flooded his veins with fire. He let that fire grow, heating up his limbs, his torso, the very center of his soul.

  Daniel had been the creator of all things evil in his life, starting with the murder of Marius’s mother when he was only four, then all that torture both he and his brothers had endured, then the ensuing slavery of both humans and vampires throughout their world, more maiming and murder.

  And now he had Shayna.

  Marius moved in a slow circle, hands wide and outstretched. He reached for something he didn’t understand, except that it had a name: power.

  He lifted his chin and started drawing in what had been gifted to him through his father’s genetics and the latent ability that his mother must have possessed and which Daniel had sensed four centuries ago.

  He took deep breaths, reaching into his gut, opening his soul wide. Power surged through him, filling every cell of his body. His shirt grew tight around the flexing muscles of his shoulders and arms. His thighs expanded, pressing against the leather and the weapons he carried.

  And finally, a roar came out of him, filling the cavern, a roar that would echo throughout the world birthed to the vampires and given to them by the ancient ones, those who had gone before and built this world.

  Ancestral power and something more, something greater, filled his bones, his blood, his muscles. Strength came to him, as nothing he’d known before.

  He opened his eyes and saw the room as though it moved in circles spinning around him, though he was the one that moved.

  When he finally stopped, he saw the stunned expression on each of their faces. But he didn’t have time to process what it might mean. Instead, he moved to stand in front of Gabriel, noting that he now looked down at him from increased height, as though he’d gained an inch or two. He searched Gabriel’s eyes, then his mind, whipping through quickly, something he’d never been able to do before.

  “Gabriel, you’ve built an army, haven’t you.”

  He heard both Lucian and Adrien exclaim from behind him. “What?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Rumy as well. We both thought it prudent and began the project ten years ago. Just when we would have started taking our intentions public, Daniel took over the Council of Ancestrals, gaining control of the courts, then imprisoning the three of you. We waited. We would have come for you, but—”

  “You couldn’t do that. I understand. You weren’t ready to face Daniel and he would have probably killed us and broken your army. You did right to wait. Now is the time.”

  “It sure as hell is and you’re the one to defeat your father. Through the years, I had glimpses of what you could become, but I didn’t see this, and I certainly didn’t see what hindered the process. I also know that what you’ve become was what Daniel wanted to harness. You were the real weapon he’s been after all this time.”

  Marius closed his eyes, and because he was now more than even an Ancestral, he felt the breadth of his ability to communicate. He also understood how Daniel had found Shayna and captured her with no one the wiser. At first, he’d thought his father had been that powerful. But now he recalled that Daniel had done something to Shayna on the land bridge when he’d held her arm in his hand. She’d cried out at the time, but Marius had thought she’d been frightened by his touch. Now he knew his father had planted a tracking device beneath her skin.

  Marius searched for Shayna and found her hidden behind a thick layer of multiple disguises. He couldn’t see her but he felt her. Slipping into her mind, he spoke softly. Shayna, it’s me. Hold steady. Try not to show any emotion right now because we’re engaging telepathically. Just tell me first if you’re okay.

  He felt her calm her mind. I’m fine. But this is a trap. Don’t come. Do you hear me, Marius? Don’t come. He intends to bind you and somehow use you in his takeover plans, though I have no idea how any of that would work.

  Marius grew very quiet, because as she had from the first, Shayna stunned him. Daniel had abducted her, but instead of Shayna begging him to save her, she offered a warning: “Don’t come. It’s a trap.” Who else would have been thinking not of herself, but of him?

  God, he loved her.

  And there it was, the complete revelation of the true state of his heart, nothing hidden or held back because of misplaced guilt.

  He loved her.

  You’re not to worry about me, Shayna. All I want you to do is to send me an image of where you are, of your current location. I can’t see through your eyes right now, because Daniel has this place heavily disguised. But if you’ll place an image within your mind, of the widest panorama possible, I will find you.

  No, please don’t, Marius. All he can do is kill me.

  Shayna, I’m coming whether you help me or not. It would be a helluva lot faster and easier if you would do as I ask, but it’s up to you.

  I don’t want you to get hurt.

  His heart swelled at the words. Can you trust me right now, Shayna? Because I’m telling you that’s not going to happen.

  Of course I trust you. I have almost from the first, even when I was flying through the air out of Seattle. He felt her mind settle into its usual determination. Here goes.

  A jumble of images rushed at him, but eventually one came forward with perfect clarity and Marius couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

  Stay calm. I’m coming.

  He felt Daniel’s telepathic approach and shut down the communication so that his father couldn’t read it.

  Opening his eyes, he stared first at his brothers and Rumy, then Gabriel. “You won’t believe this, but Daniel has built a massive arena large enough to hold fifty thousand troops, in an extremely well-disguised system. And every seat is filled with men shouting triumphant war cries. Looks like they’re preparing to go to war.” He glanced from Daniel to Rumy and back again. “Either of you got an army that large?”

  Rumy grinned, his fangs pressing into his lower lips. “Hell, yeah, and they’ve been itching to go after Daniel and his men for a long time now.”

  Adrien asked, “So where are we going?”

  “To the Himalayas.”

  Where it all began.

  * * *

  Shayna stood very still on the central black stone platform of the arena. Daniel had made it clear that if she moved, he’d hurt her using his blade, and he’d enjoy watching her blood flow. She had no choice but to stay put.

  She tried really hard to hold it together, but her fingers trembled and nausea boiled in her stomach.

  Earlier, he’d taken her from the tablet room in the Pharaoh system after she’d instinctively, but without effect, thrown one of the ancient clay tablets at him. He’d brought her straight here, into one of the dressing rooms, then turned her over to several of his slaves.

  They’d dressed her in a light-green floor-length gown, split up both sides to the waist. She’d fought them, of course, but they’d finally given her a shot of some kind of fast-working paralytic. She’d never been so frightened in her life: She wasn’t able to move even a muscle. She couldn’t even blink.

  Minutes later, with several vampires working on her, she was given another shot and the feeling in her arms and legs slowly returned. But oh, her head hurt. And she couldn’t siphon Marius’s power, so right now she’d reverted to a fairly fragile human state.

  A glance in the mirror told her she’d been dressed up for either a stage performance or to be put to work in one of the Dark Cave system’s upscale clubs. The front of the dress was cut halfway to her navel, and her breasts were squeezed together with the most uncomfortable bustier ever created.

  Her blond hair now sat hig
h on her head and dressed with pheasant feathers and she had teal glitter on her cheekbones that fanned upward to her temples. Thick false eyelashes weighted her lids.

  She even wore five-inch stilettos, a nightmare all on its own.

  Marius was also on his way, which made her sick with worry. How could he battle and defeat either Daniel or the tens of thousands of his seasoned soldiers now cheering their leader maniacally?

  Daniel stood in what appeared to be a throwback to ancient Rome, with a shiny black breastplate over his chest and a black velvet robe trimmed with silver hanging from his shoulders all the way to the floor. But he’d kept the leather pants and glossy boots.

  She had to admit, he looked the part of a man intending to rule two worlds. He kept turning in a circle and every time he raised his arms, the soldiers’ cries rose and swelled to a deafening roar.

  His sons Quill and Lev stood off to his right side in similar attire, except in burgundy, and of course the capes were much shorter. All three men wore snug leather pants and black boots laced up the front.

  But beyond the central depression of the stage, the arena rose like a massive football stadium. She couldn’t even see the height of this cavern or the length.

  Most frightening of all, however, was the simple fact that Daniel had gathered what looked like a full-blown army into the black stone seats of the arena. Tens of thousands of vampires, all in uniforms that bore the hawk emblem and the ancient symbols for “One Earth, One Race, One Ruler.” They shouted so loud that even Shayna’s less sensitive ears ached.

  Off to the side on a raised platform, a vampire sweating rivers and waving his fists and arms kept urging Daniel’s army to cheer. She’d listened to a few lines, but it seemed like typical propaganda with phrases like The good of the few must be sacrificed for the good of the many, which usually meant that individual freedoms would be eradicated at the whim of the dictator until Daniel had full control of everything and everyone. From what she’d learned, the entire vampire culture embraced the rights of the individual above everything else.