For her. To spare her life and save her soul. And this even though his worst fear had been to die alone and have no one mourn his passing.
Again.
But she refused to mourn him now, because she refused to let him stay there in torment, in her stead.
We’re coming for you, Kalder. Hold on.…
Hell or high water. Ain’t none what’ll have you on our watch.
* * *
Vine attacked the Dark Seraph as soon as she returned to the cell that made up their vile cage of a home. “Why did you call me back? I had them!”
Clad in her ancient bloodred armor, Gadreyal laughed in her face. Her wings flared out to punctuate the anger in her eyes as she towered over Vine with a twisted expression that said she was imagining the taste of Vine’s blood on her lips. “He was kicking your scrawny arse, Deruvian whore. Make no mistake about it. Another minute and all that would have been left of you was a stain upon the floor. You should be thanking me for saving your putrid life, such as it is.”
“I had it under control.”
“Until you let your arrogance take over, and outed yourself to him. Why did you tell him you live when we were planning to use that to our advantage? Why?”
“To rattle him.”
“Rattle him? Are you insane? Nothing rattles that beast. He feels nothing. Of all creatures, you should know this.”
Those words struck their mark and brought a wave of unexpected pain to Vine’s heart. Damn the worthless trollop for it! And for the reminder that for all the years of her marriage to that black-hearted bastard she’d never once been able to make Bane love her. No matter how hard she’d tried or what spell she’d used, the beast was forever devoted to her sister.
Her sister!
Never her.
His wife. She was the one who was his equal in brutality and cunning.
And beauty.
Not Mara, the milksop. Duel should have loved her more than any other.
Instead, Mara-the-hag had ranked first in his affections.
Damn them both for it!
It’d never been fair that, in spite of her greater beauty, grace, and intelligence, Vine had never been able to win him over. That he’d pined for Mara even while he’d been in her bed and body. And the last thing Vine wanted was a reminder of her failings. In her past life.
And especially this one!
Shrieking, she blasted the Irin and knocked her back.
Gadreyal returned the blow with one of her own that caught Vine across the face and left her on the ground with her entire cheek stinging. Her eyes watered until she could scarcely see.
“Care to continue?” she taunted, arms akimbo.
Not really. Especially given how much the blow burned and ached through her entire being. More than that, Vine wanted to wipe the smirk off the Irin bitch’s face. But Gadreyal had made her point. She was the warrior who had spent centuries battling the Sarim and the Light Seraphs of the Kalosum army they fought against.
Vine wasn’t.
She’d never been a fighter of any kind. It was why she’d married Bane. He’d been her attack dog that she’d unleashed on others whenever they displeased her. And before him, she’d relied upon her first husband and her sister for such unpleasantries, as they were far more vicious and accomplished in a fight than she was.
Nay, she preferred a much more elegant means of vengeance.
Deception and betrayal.
Treachery.
Poison.
So she smiled in the face of her enemy, and retreated. “We shouldn’t be fighting with each other. Not when we have another to worry over.”
Suspicion hung deep in her enemy’s eyes, letting Vine know that Gadreyal didn’t trust her. But then, given that Gadreyal was the first among her kind who’d turned against the Sephirii and tempted them to betray their own brethren into the hands of their enemies, hence why she was now known as an Irin and not a true Seraph anymore, it made sense. Gadreyal knew how quickly betrayal came. And how likely and unlikely the source of it.
Crossing her arms over her ample bosom, she narrowed her gaze at Vine. She would get this bitch back in time. Patiently, and on her own terms. “They’ll be on guard now. Ten times harder to defeat.”
“Aye, but we still have what they want.” She lifted the chain from around her neck that held the medallion they’d both risked their lives to collect. “And another secret I didn’t say a word about.”
Paden Jack’s Seraph medallion. Something Vine had pinched from Cameron while they’d held the chit in their custody. Neither Paden nor his sister knew she possessed it.
Nor did they know what she’d traded out for it—that was going to be a great surprise if Paden Jack attempted to use his enchanted family sword against them.
And with the soul of the Jacks’ ancestor in her possession—the direct link to Michael—she could control them both. Corrupt them much easier now.
Aye, Duel had no idea what was coming for his crew. But she did, and it was about to get fun.
Vine smiled at Gadreyal. “There’s an old wizard we needs see.”
“I don’t follow.”
Laughing, Vine clutched the medallion tighter in her fist. “Of course you don’t. You weren’t born to our world. But there’s history between Duel and the Myrcians. Legends of Tintagel you’ve never been told. I will have him and my bitchtress sister yet for what they’ve done to me. Before our masters are set free from their prison realm, I will take what I want and none shall stop me this time.” Not when she was so close to having everything she’d ever wanted.
Nay, none indeed.
She hadn’t thwarted death itself and defied all enemies to fail now.
Gadreyal and her masters might have thought they had her quelled, but they didn’t know her resolve or the source of her powers.
Nor the bargain she’d made …
Beat to the quarters, dearest. I’m coming for you, and this time, I’ll be dancing on your grave.
And she knew the perfect vengeance on them all. One Duel would never see coming, and one not even the mighty Thorn could thwart …
3
Beware the course of faith.
It haunts. It daunts.
Most of all, it betrays …
“Kal?”
Weak and aching, Kalder froze at a voice he’d never thought to hear again.
Nay … it wasn’t possible. It was only more torture wrought by the very bastards who’d been mercilessly tearing at his flesh for so long now that he’d lost all concept of time. All concept of reason. Because of their cruelty, his mother had become pain, and punishment his sole nourishment.
Shaking his head to clear it, he reached out to steady himself.
Someone took his hand.
Startled, he clenched his fist to strike out at them, until his gaze focused on the face of the man in front of him. Only he didn’t see a man there. He saw a boy. A boy who’d once run after him with the kind of soul-deep adoration in his sea blue eyes that only a younger sibling could give.
Kal! Kal! Wait for me! Can I come with you? Please, brother! Please!
And in that single heartbeat, he felt himself mentally breaking at the onslaught of memories he’d done his best to bury and forget. “Muerig?”
His brother tightened his grip on his hand as he nodded.
Still, Kalder didn’t believe him. How could he? “You’re dead.”
“So are you.”
“Aye, but I was damned and forgotten.”
Muerig wasn’t. Unlike him, his brother had always been a good and decent man. Honorable. Loved by everyone who’d had the pleasure of his kindness. He’d never whored. Never lied or cheated. Never gambled.
Or broken their mother’s heart.
While Kalder had schemed and drunk his way through life, Muerig had studied and labored hard. Ever sober and serious. Forever generous in all things, especially his heart and with his compliments.
Kalder had only been generous with his i
nsults and scorn.
And Muerig had died because Kalder was a worthless piece of scytel.
Sadness turned his brother’s gaze stormy an instant before a twisted demon grabbed him and flew off.
“Nay!” Kalder jumped up, but was unable to reach them to stop it. Or reclaim his brother from the demon’s clutches.
Feminine laughter rang out around him. “So you do love something.…”
Horror filled him as he realized what he’d just done. He’d betrayed himself once more.
Worse, he’d betrayed his brother. Again. But that horror was quickly replaced by a resounding fury over the trick they’d played upon him.
“Damn you, Vine!”
When he spun to attack her, she tsked. “Strike me and your brother will bleed in ways you cannot imagine.”
She was wrong there. For he possessed quite the imagination when it came to ways to make others suffer. In that, he’d give even the great she-bitch herself a run for her money.
Aye, there were good and sound reasons he’d been damned.
He’d earned it, with both fists, brawling his way straight to the devil’s throne. Not a source of pride. Merely a statement of fact. One he was more than eager and willing to educate her on.
Yet her cautionary words stayed his hand better than any assault ever could. Because Muerig was one of the exceptionally few things in his life he’d ever cared about. One of the exceedingly rare things he’d ever been willing to protect and bleed for. “What do you mean?”
One moment he was in a searing, infernal pit, and in the next, they were both outside a smutched, bleeding, besmottered hole. The odor here was even worse than the Hadean pits where the demons had been chasing him. The walls around them appeared to breathe, and oozed with a viscid substance that could only be blood.
“Kal?”
He heard Muerig’s weak, tear-filled voice, and that tone iced his fury. While he’d been born an angry, intolerant brawler ready to die over any imagined slight, his brother had never been a fighter of any sort.
And in that heartbeat he was taken back to a time and place where everything was simply complicated. Back to the horrors of that haunting nightmare when he’d found Muerig’s battered, lifeless body and everything had coalesced into one single reverberating pain as all the sins of his life had viciously come home to drive a stake straight through that most vital organ that served only to pump venom through his hardened veins.
This … this was so much worse than seeing himself for what he really was.
For what they’d made him.
Held above Kalder’s head, just out of his reach, Muerig was fastened to a narrow ledge. His skin had peeled back from lack of water. Agony bled with every ragged breath he struggled to take. But worse than the torment in those eyes that were so similar to his own was the deep resignation that hovered there.
That unspoken wish for death to end his suffering.
It was a silent, echoing scream that Kalder knew intimately. One his own soul had been shouting since the hour of his unfortunate birth and the one that bitch Mercy had never seen the decency to oblige. Indeed, she took a sick perversion in allowing him to suffer more with every passing year.
With a furious war cry, Kalder tried to climb up the sheer volcanic rock to free his brother, but he slid down the slick, bloody surface that sliced open his hands and left them ravaged.
Muerig cried out.
Too late Kalder realized that somehow his brother’s nerve endings were tied to the surface of the very ground and rocks around him. And every step or movement he made caused his brother more agony. He shuddered at the horror of it all. “Forgive me, Muerig.”
Muerig groaned even louder.
Afraid to move lest he cause his brother even more harm, Kalder held his breath as he considered ways to free him from his prison. Yet every shift in weight drove more agony through Muerig’s body. This was a maniacal lair built by the unholiest of monsters.
Damn the Cimmerian army for their cruelty! They had thought this through far too well. There was nothing to be done that wouldn’t harm his brother more.
And none of it would kill a man who was already dead. So there was no release for Muerig whatsoever.
It was sickening. Tangled weeds had grown through Muerig’s body, planting him to the underside of the ledge over Kalder’s head. Worse were the demonic hands that held him, particularly the one at his throat that tightened any time Kalder moved closer.
“Whose life do you value more?”
Kalder tensed at the sudden question that came from a voiceless, heartless whore. “What?”
“You heard me, mermaid. You traded your life force for Cameron’s to get here. Tell me whose life you would trade for your brother’s?”
“Mine.”
Gadreyal laughed before she materialized to hover in the air near Muerig’s perch. Her wings fluttered with the memory of when she’d once been on the side of good.
But that had been aeons ago.
Now, she was a soulless, pitiless creature of absolute evil. “You think we’d make it that easy on you? Nay, little fish. Never. Besides, we already have you. What we seek is something a lot more important than your worthless scaly hide.”
Vine materialized at his back. Like the Deruvian monster she was, she wrapped her thorny branches around Kalder and tightened them so that he couldn’t move. They bit deep into his flesh, drawing blood. His arms and legs throbbed even more as he fought against the restraint. He should have known that Vine would be part of this. Her species was grown from the earth. Made up of wood, her sylph ancestors were the worst sort of magical beings once they ceased to be protectors who guarded mankind. Their withered hearts turned black with their Wintering disease and they became predators who preyed on human blood and souls.…
So asking her for mercy was as useful as trying to milk a stump for sustenance. And fighting against her would be more useless still. She had him and there was nothing he could do, except bleed more. Never had he felt more powerless. Or weaker.
And he hated her for it.
This must have been how they’d trapped Muerig. And how they planned to eternally torment him. To tie him here to the ground with her limbs so that she could feed and he could watch his brother suffer and know that he was the very cause of it.
There was no worse hell to be had.
“Vine! Release him. Now!”
Kalder gasped as he heard Thorn’s thunderous voice cut through the air between them. Even though it was sweltering here, that tone sent a chill over his body.
The ferocity was enough to cause Vine to immediately let go and step back. But only for an instant. Then she recovered herself and gripped him again. “You do not command me, you whelp of a whore!”
Thorn appeared right in front of them with an expression on his face that said she had to be the dumbest creature to ever draw breath to challenge him so. “Oh, foulest bitchington, please … in the mood I’m in, you truly don’t want to press this issue.” He smirked. “Or mayhap you do. Please”—he smiled coldly into her face—“tell me that you do. For you, I would be willing to dine on blood. Consequences be damned.”
His green eyes flared to red.
Vine let go one last time and withdrew. Gadreyal started forward, but Thorn quelled her advance with nothing more than one arched brow. A truly impressive feat.
Even so, the Irin shook her head. “You have no authority here, demon. He belongs to us.”
“There you would be wrong. He’s earned his release. Harm him further and I’ll be glad to take it from your hides.” He passed a cold stare to Vine before he returned that glare to Gadreyal. “Care to press my patience further?”
Gadreyal’s breathing intensified as she landed and stepped close enough to stare up into Thorn’s eyes. “I know not what bizarre relationship you have with our masters or what powers you wield here, but the day will come when my hand will not be stayed so easily.”
“Nor will mine. But remember, Gadd
y, when that time comes, I won’t be protecting your back. I’ll be cutting your throat.” He stepped around her to collect Kalder.
Aghast, Kalder couldn’t believe that Thorn was here to liberate him again. The very demon who’d freed him once to serve on Captain Bane’s crew.
The same demon who’d opened his throat to bleed him out so that he could be damned here to this hell and replace Cameron and her brother.
Vine sputtered indignantly. “What? Are you serious? We’re really to free him because this lickspittle says it?”
Gadreyal nodded. “Let the mermaid bastard go. Trust me. You can’t win this.”
Cursing, Vine stepped back, then hissed at Kalder. “This isn’t over, whoreson. I will have my flesh from your bones.”
Thorn snorted. “From the looks and smell of him, I’d say you already have.”
Completely offended by that unnecessary insult, Kalder gaped. “Let’s see how you’d smell and look after they tortured you.”
Thorn cracked an evil grin. “Like blood, piss, and shite. ’Cause I’d be covered in theirs to pay for their attempts at it. And I’d revel in the violence of it all.”
Aye, he was a sick bastard. He most likely would at that.
As Thorn started away, Kalder stopped him. “Me brother’s here. I won’t leave without him!”
Thorn followed his gaze to see Muerig’s tortured body up on the cliff. He winced in response to the grisly sight. “Sorry, lad. I can only take you from here. Not him. He’s not part of my bargain.”
“Then you can keep it. I won’t leave him here, suffering like that.”
“You have no choice.”
Kalder had been told that the whole of his life, and he was done with it. “Nay! He stays. I stay.”
He’d barely finished those words before he found himself on the shores of a foreign beach. Shocked and repulsed, he turned around in a circle, seeking some sight of his brother. “What is this?”
Thorn sighed heavily. “I told you, we had no choice. I was lucky to secure what they owed you. And make no mistake, there won’t be a third time, so please don’t do anything else so stupid with your freedom.”