Vampire Most Wanted
Page 31
“And rebelliously did what you knew you shouldn’t,” Marcus suggested softly.
She nodded and was alarmed to feel tears glaze her eyes. She hadn’t cried in ages, especially over this, and had no idea why telling Marcus about it would bring back those ancient tears now.
Wiping them impatiently away, she took on a more matter-of-fact tone and said, “I picked the wrong day to do it, and then to add to my folly, I spotted a hare, and gave chase. I planned to catch it and take it home to show Uncle Lucian when he got back, but the damned thing was quick and led me quite a chase. I was so intent on catching it I didn’t even notice when I followed it off our property.” She snorted. “Hell, I ran right into the center of a group of men and horses before I even noticed they were there.”
Divine closed her eyes briefly as she recalled crashing into Abaddon’s horse and bouncing off. She’d landed on her behind and then had simply stared wide-eyed up at the laughing men standing or mounted around her.
“What have we here?” one of the men had crowed, bending to catch her by the collar and lift her to her feet. Peering at her closely then, his ugly yellow-gold eyes had widened. “Why, you’re an immortal. Such a shame. I was hoping for a snack.”
He’d then laughed when she immediately started struggling and kicking.
“Put her down,” someone had growled, and Basha had turned to stare at a man on horseback with long, lank, dirty blond hair, and ugly yellow-gold eyes. It was Leonius Livius, though she hadn’t known it at the time. Despite not knowing, he’d frightened her from the first look she had of him and she’d stared at him wide-eyed until the dark-haired man on the horse beside him had ridden forward and bent to pick her up and set her on the horse before him. Turning her to face him, Abaddon had looked her over and said, “If I’m not mistaken this little immortal is an Argeneau. She has the Argeneau silver-blue eyes. Am I right, little one? Are you an Argeneau?”
Basha had glared at him, refusing to speak. But he didn’t need her to speak. He’d easily read her mind. “Ah, little Basha Argeneau. The long-lost daughter of Felix, so newly restored to the family.” The words had sounded light, but there had been a look in his eyes that had frightened the child she’d been then.
“Divine?”
Marcus’s voice drew her from her memories and she forced a wry smile. “I was duly repaid for my stupidity. The group of men I charged into the middle of was Leonius, his sons, and his right hand man Abaddon. They captured me and took me back to their camp . . . And there I stayed for a year.”
Marcus cursed. “He was trying to build an army of his own sons. He tortured and raped any woman he got his hands on, mortal, immortal, and no-fanger alike.”
“Yes, I know,” she said succinctly and he blanched.
“He didn’t . . . ?”
Divine stared at him unflinching and he shook his head.
“But you were just a child. Just eleven years old.”
“I turned twelve a week after I was taken,” Divine said, feeling as empty as her words sounded . . . which she didn’t understand at all. She’d cried a river of tears over this during her first two or three hundred years, but eventually she’d cried herself out. Divine had thought when she could remember it without an emotional reaction that she had finally got over that period in her life. Yet, here she was now having to shut down emotionally to avoid a rage of pain, shame, and remembered terror.
“The first couple of months were unbearable,” Divine found herself saying, and while she was surprised to hear the words leave her mouth, they were true. Leonius was a no-fanger, which meant exactly what it sounded like. While he was immortal, he had never developed fangs to feed with. He had to cut his victims. Like immortals he could control his victim’s minds and keep them from feeling the pain of his cutting if he so chose, but Leonius’s mind had been sick and twisted beyond comprehension. He’d enjoyed the suffering of others. He’d cut and cut and slice and dice the mortals he fed on, feeding as much on their agony as on their blood until he drank them dry. But while it was bad for mortals, it was worse for immortals, because he couldn’t feed off their blood, so those cuts were purely for pleasure. At least mortals could die and escape him. Immortals healed . . . and then he’d start in on them all over again, raping, cutting, raping, slicing, sometimes slowly cutting a limb almost completely off just to see if it would heal and reknit itself.
“But then I learned how to shut him out,” Divine breathed.
“Shut him out?” Marcus asked, eyes narrowing.
“He enjoyed the pain and suffering. I thought if I stopped giving him that, he might tire of me and just kill me,” she admitted. “So I started trying to close my mind to him. Eventually I succeeded.”
“Is that what you did to me?” Marcus asked quietly, and when she blinked and glanced to him with surprise, he said, “At the end, just before I passed out, it was as if you suddenly weren’t there anymore.”
Divine swallowed and nodded solemnly. “Yes. I tried to use the same technique with you. I didn’t want to pass out.”
“You wanted to stay awake and tie me up,” he said dryly and glanced resentfully to his bound wrists. “And obviously it worked.”
“Actually, no it didn’t. Not as well as I’d hoped,” she confessed. “I left it too long before shutting down and I briefly passed out as well.”
Marcus looked only slightly mollified, but grudgingly said, “Go on. You learned to shut him out. I doubt he was pleased.”
“No,” Divine acknowledged. “It was no fun if he couldn’t feel my suffering. But rather than stop, it just seemed to make him redouble his efforts.”
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said quietly.
“Well, fortunately before he tired of that and killed me, I became pregnant.”
Marcus stiffened. “Your son . . .”
“Damian is a son of Leonius Livius I, yes,” Divine said wearily.
“Damian,” he breathed with seeming relief and then frowned. “You say fortunately, as if that was a good thing? I mean, some women—”
“Some women would loathe carrying the child of their r**ist and torturer and giving it life,” she said quietly. “I understand that, but . . .” Divine swallowed and peered down at her feet, realizing only then that she’d been going to leave without shoes. She was barefoot. Sighing, she raised her head and said, “You have to understand, being pregnant meant an end to the torture and rape for us. Some of us couldn’t bear to carry the child of our captor, but some saw it as a blessing, a gift. So long as we were pregnant or breast-feeding afterward, we held no interest for Leonius. So that baby was precious and we fed as often as they’d let us, desperate to consume enough blood to keep the pregnancy safe.”
“How many of you were there?” Marcus asked with a frown. “I mean, I’ve heard the stories, a hundred women kept locked up in cages, released only to rape, torture, or feed on, but I always thought it an exaggeration.”
“It wasn’t,” Divine said quietly. “I would guess when the immortals attacked, he had about fifty mortal women for feeding on; twenty or so no-fangers he’d turned and was raping and torturing; along with four immortal women, all of whom he was hoping to breed with; and another twenty-four no-fangers plus myself who were pregnant or breast-feeding.”
Marcus breathed out slowly and then asked, “Which were you? Pregnant or breast-feeding?”
“I gave birth the morning of the attack,” she said quietly. “Actually, looking back I think it was an induced labor.”
“Induced?” Marcus asked.
Divine nodded. “We received word the night before that the immortals had formed an army under my grandfather, as well as Uncle Lucian and some others, and that they were marching on Leonius’s camp. The women were all aflutter, half hoping for rescue, half terrified of it.”
“And you?” Marcus asked. “Were you hoping or terrified?”
“I was just confused,” Divine said unhappily. “They were saying all sorts of things. Some thought that the immortals would rescue the women, but purge the pregnancies rather than risk bringing another Leonius into the world. Others thought they might just slaughter everyone, Leonius, his men and the women—”
“Why the women?” Marcus asked with a frown. “They were victims in all of this.”
“We’d been tainted,” she said simply. “A lot of women thought we would be considered damaged goods.”
“What did you think?” Marcus asked with a frown.
Divine shook her head. “I didn’t know what to think.”
They were both silent for a minute, and then Divine continued, “Anyway, I didn’t think I’d sleep that night I was so distressed by everything, but I must have because I remember that Abaddon had to shake me to get me to wake up. It was the middle of the night and I was confused at his waking me, and even more confused when he gave me a tincture to drink. When I asked what it was he simply took control of me and made me drink it. Shortly afterward I went into labor.”
Divine closed her eyes briefly and grimaced. “Damian was born quickly. It all happened much faster than anyone expected. Dima, the mortal who acted as my midwife, said if I had been mortal, I wouldn’t have survived. I was torn up pretty badly.”
“But you survived, and so did the baby?” he asked.
Divine nodded. “Yes. He was fine. He had no fangs but he was a strong healthy baby.”
“Wait, what?” Marcus said with confusion.
“He was strong and healthy,” Divine repeated, and then said wryly, “I wish the same could have been said for me. As I mentioned, I was ripped up pretty badly during the birth and I wasn’t allowed the time to heal afterward. Leonius ordered Abaddon to smuggle my baby and me out of camp through a secret tunnel before the immortals breached the camp, and he did so minutes after Damian was born.”
“Were other mothers and their babies smuggled out too?” Marcus asked at once.
“No,” Divine said quietly. “At least, Abaddon said I was the only one and they were all there when he hustled me out of—”
“Why did he want you smuggled out?” Marcus asked.
Divine hesitated, a little startled by his sharp tone and his interrupting her, but after a minute she sighed and said, “Abaddon said that Leonius thought my uncle might let the others live, but felt sure he’d cut me down where I stood and kill Damian as well when he learned that I’d dishonored my family like that.”
“Like what?” he asked with confusion. “How did you dishonor your family?”
“By having Leonius’s child,” she pointed out softly.
Marcus shook his head. “Divine, you were a child yourself, raped and tortured. Lucian would hardly have held you responsible for the resulting child, and he wouldn’t have killed an innocent baby.”
“He killed all the other women and children they found in the camp,” she pointed out sadly, recalling the women she’d lived and suffered with.
“The immortals did not kill those women and children,” Marcus said firmly. “When Leonius realized he was going to lose the battle, he retreated to camp with six of his eldest sons. They rounded up all the women and children and killed them. The few immortals were tied up with the no-fanger females and set on fire, and while they screamed and burned, he and his oldest sons visited an orgy of blood on the remaining mortals, drinking every last mortal woman dry.”
“But Abaddon said . . .” Her voice trailed off. She’d known all her life that Abaddon could not be trusted. She should have held everything he’d ever told her suspect. But he’d been her only source of news back then, and he’d pretended that she was important, given into his care to be looked after and protected. His lord’s dying wish.
“What happened after this Abaddon smuggled you out of camp?” Marcus asked. “Where did you go?”
Divine shrugged wearily. “The first part of the journey after leaving is something of a blur in my memory. I was weak and in pain from the labor, never given a chance to heal, or even to feed. We had to run and hide and run again.”
“Why?” Marcus demanded. “To keep you and your son safe from your uncle?”
Divine nodded.
He stared at her for a minute, and then said, “You mean to tell me that your whole life has been spent hiding and running from your family because you believed they would kill your son?”
“And me,” she added solemnly.
“Divine,” he said slowly. “Lucian wouldn’t have done that. He would not kill an innocent child.”
“But he was no-fanger like his father,” she pointed out. “And my grandfather and uncle were out to destroy all no-fangers.”
“Your son can’t be—” He shook his head and muttered something about dealing with that later, then said, “Yes, the immortals were determined to put down no-fangers back then. But not edentates.”
“Edentates?” she echoed uncertainly.
“That is an immortal without fangs. They are called edentate. Any child born fangless is considered edentate unless and until they go crazy and show the tendencies of no-fangers, a liking for torturing and killing, etc. But not all edentates turn no-fanger. Your son would not have been killed. And you certainly wouldn’t have been.”
“But I didn’t kill myself,” Divine pointed out.
“What?” he asked with bewilderment.
She nodded and was alarmed to feel tears glaze her eyes. She hadn’t cried in ages, especially over this, and had no idea why telling Marcus about it would bring back those ancient tears now.
Wiping them impatiently away, she took on a more matter-of-fact tone and said, “I picked the wrong day to do it, and then to add to my folly, I spotted a hare, and gave chase. I planned to catch it and take it home to show Uncle Lucian when he got back, but the damned thing was quick and led me quite a chase. I was so intent on catching it I didn’t even notice when I followed it off our property.” She snorted. “Hell, I ran right into the center of a group of men and horses before I even noticed they were there.”
Divine closed her eyes briefly as she recalled crashing into Abaddon’s horse and bouncing off. She’d landed on her behind and then had simply stared wide-eyed up at the laughing men standing or mounted around her.
“What have we here?” one of the men had crowed, bending to catch her by the collar and lift her to her feet. Peering at her closely then, his ugly yellow-gold eyes had widened. “Why, you’re an immortal. Such a shame. I was hoping for a snack.”
He’d then laughed when she immediately started struggling and kicking.
“Put her down,” someone had growled, and Basha had turned to stare at a man on horseback with long, lank, dirty blond hair, and ugly yellow-gold eyes. It was Leonius Livius, though she hadn’t known it at the time. Despite not knowing, he’d frightened her from the first look she had of him and she’d stared at him wide-eyed until the dark-haired man on the horse beside him had ridden forward and bent to pick her up and set her on the horse before him. Turning her to face him, Abaddon had looked her over and said, “If I’m not mistaken this little immortal is an Argeneau. She has the Argeneau silver-blue eyes. Am I right, little one? Are you an Argeneau?”
Basha had glared at him, refusing to speak. But he didn’t need her to speak. He’d easily read her mind. “Ah, little Basha Argeneau. The long-lost daughter of Felix, so newly restored to the family.” The words had sounded light, but there had been a look in his eyes that had frightened the child she’d been then.
“Divine?”
Marcus’s voice drew her from her memories and she forced a wry smile. “I was duly repaid for my stupidity. The group of men I charged into the middle of was Leonius, his sons, and his right hand man Abaddon. They captured me and took me back to their camp . . . And there I stayed for a year.”
Marcus cursed. “He was trying to build an army of his own sons. He tortured and raped any woman he got his hands on, mortal, immortal, and no-fanger alike.”
“Yes, I know,” she said succinctly and he blanched.
“He didn’t . . . ?”
Divine stared at him unflinching and he shook his head.
“But you were just a child. Just eleven years old.”
“I turned twelve a week after I was taken,” Divine said, feeling as empty as her words sounded . . . which she didn’t understand at all. She’d cried a river of tears over this during her first two or three hundred years, but eventually she’d cried herself out. Divine had thought when she could remember it without an emotional reaction that she had finally got over that period in her life. Yet, here she was now having to shut down emotionally to avoid a rage of pain, shame, and remembered terror.
“The first couple of months were unbearable,” Divine found herself saying, and while she was surprised to hear the words leave her mouth, they were true. Leonius was a no-fanger, which meant exactly what it sounded like. While he was immortal, he had never developed fangs to feed with. He had to cut his victims. Like immortals he could control his victim’s minds and keep them from feeling the pain of his cutting if he so chose, but Leonius’s mind had been sick and twisted beyond comprehension. He’d enjoyed the suffering of others. He’d cut and cut and slice and dice the mortals he fed on, feeding as much on their agony as on their blood until he drank them dry. But while it was bad for mortals, it was worse for immortals, because he couldn’t feed off their blood, so those cuts were purely for pleasure. At least mortals could die and escape him. Immortals healed . . . and then he’d start in on them all over again, raping, cutting, raping, slicing, sometimes slowly cutting a limb almost completely off just to see if it would heal and reknit itself.
“But then I learned how to shut him out,” Divine breathed.
“Shut him out?” Marcus asked, eyes narrowing.
“He enjoyed the pain and suffering. I thought if I stopped giving him that, he might tire of me and just kill me,” she admitted. “So I started trying to close my mind to him. Eventually I succeeded.”
“Is that what you did to me?” Marcus asked quietly, and when she blinked and glanced to him with surprise, he said, “At the end, just before I passed out, it was as if you suddenly weren’t there anymore.”
Divine swallowed and nodded solemnly. “Yes. I tried to use the same technique with you. I didn’t want to pass out.”
“You wanted to stay awake and tie me up,” he said dryly and glanced resentfully to his bound wrists. “And obviously it worked.”
“Actually, no it didn’t. Not as well as I’d hoped,” she confessed. “I left it too long before shutting down and I briefly passed out as well.”
Marcus looked only slightly mollified, but grudgingly said, “Go on. You learned to shut him out. I doubt he was pleased.”
“No,” Divine acknowledged. “It was no fun if he couldn’t feel my suffering. But rather than stop, it just seemed to make him redouble his efforts.”
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said quietly.
“Well, fortunately before he tired of that and killed me, I became pregnant.”
Marcus stiffened. “Your son . . .”
“Damian is a son of Leonius Livius I, yes,” Divine said wearily.
“Damian,” he breathed with seeming relief and then frowned. “You say fortunately, as if that was a good thing? I mean, some women—”
“Some women would loathe carrying the child of their r**ist and torturer and giving it life,” she said quietly. “I understand that, but . . .” Divine swallowed and peered down at her feet, realizing only then that she’d been going to leave without shoes. She was barefoot. Sighing, she raised her head and said, “You have to understand, being pregnant meant an end to the torture and rape for us. Some of us couldn’t bear to carry the child of our captor, but some saw it as a blessing, a gift. So long as we were pregnant or breast-feeding afterward, we held no interest for Leonius. So that baby was precious and we fed as often as they’d let us, desperate to consume enough blood to keep the pregnancy safe.”
“How many of you were there?” Marcus asked with a frown. “I mean, I’ve heard the stories, a hundred women kept locked up in cages, released only to rape, torture, or feed on, but I always thought it an exaggeration.”
“It wasn’t,” Divine said quietly. “I would guess when the immortals attacked, he had about fifty mortal women for feeding on; twenty or so no-fangers he’d turned and was raping and torturing; along with four immortal women, all of whom he was hoping to breed with; and another twenty-four no-fangers plus myself who were pregnant or breast-feeding.”
Marcus breathed out slowly and then asked, “Which were you? Pregnant or breast-feeding?”
“I gave birth the morning of the attack,” she said quietly. “Actually, looking back I think it was an induced labor.”
“Induced?” Marcus asked.
Divine nodded. “We received word the night before that the immortals had formed an army under my grandfather, as well as Uncle Lucian and some others, and that they were marching on Leonius’s camp. The women were all aflutter, half hoping for rescue, half terrified of it.”
“And you?” Marcus asked. “Were you hoping or terrified?”
“I was just confused,” Divine said unhappily. “They were saying all sorts of things. Some thought that the immortals would rescue the women, but purge the pregnancies rather than risk bringing another Leonius into the world. Others thought they might just slaughter everyone, Leonius, his men and the women—”
“Why the women?” Marcus asked with a frown. “They were victims in all of this.”
“We’d been tainted,” she said simply. “A lot of women thought we would be considered damaged goods.”
“What did you think?” Marcus asked with a frown.
Divine shook her head. “I didn’t know what to think.”
They were both silent for a minute, and then Divine continued, “Anyway, I didn’t think I’d sleep that night I was so distressed by everything, but I must have because I remember that Abaddon had to shake me to get me to wake up. It was the middle of the night and I was confused at his waking me, and even more confused when he gave me a tincture to drink. When I asked what it was he simply took control of me and made me drink it. Shortly afterward I went into labor.”
Divine closed her eyes briefly and grimaced. “Damian was born quickly. It all happened much faster than anyone expected. Dima, the mortal who acted as my midwife, said if I had been mortal, I wouldn’t have survived. I was torn up pretty badly.”
“But you survived, and so did the baby?” he asked.
Divine nodded. “Yes. He was fine. He had no fangs but he was a strong healthy baby.”
“Wait, what?” Marcus said with confusion.
“He was strong and healthy,” Divine repeated, and then said wryly, “I wish the same could have been said for me. As I mentioned, I was ripped up pretty badly during the birth and I wasn’t allowed the time to heal afterward. Leonius ordered Abaddon to smuggle my baby and me out of camp through a secret tunnel before the immortals breached the camp, and he did so minutes after Damian was born.”
“Were other mothers and their babies smuggled out too?” Marcus asked at once.
“No,” Divine said quietly. “At least, Abaddon said I was the only one and they were all there when he hustled me out of—”
“Why did he want you smuggled out?” Marcus asked.
Divine hesitated, a little startled by his sharp tone and his interrupting her, but after a minute she sighed and said, “Abaddon said that Leonius thought my uncle might let the others live, but felt sure he’d cut me down where I stood and kill Damian as well when he learned that I’d dishonored my family like that.”
“Like what?” he asked with confusion. “How did you dishonor your family?”
“By having Leonius’s child,” she pointed out softly.
Marcus shook his head. “Divine, you were a child yourself, raped and tortured. Lucian would hardly have held you responsible for the resulting child, and he wouldn’t have killed an innocent baby.”
“He killed all the other women and children they found in the camp,” she pointed out sadly, recalling the women she’d lived and suffered with.
“The immortals did not kill those women and children,” Marcus said firmly. “When Leonius realized he was going to lose the battle, he retreated to camp with six of his eldest sons. They rounded up all the women and children and killed them. The few immortals were tied up with the no-fanger females and set on fire, and while they screamed and burned, he and his oldest sons visited an orgy of blood on the remaining mortals, drinking every last mortal woman dry.”
“But Abaddon said . . .” Her voice trailed off. She’d known all her life that Abaddon could not be trusted. She should have held everything he’d ever told her suspect. But he’d been her only source of news back then, and he’d pretended that she was important, given into his care to be looked after and protected. His lord’s dying wish.
“What happened after this Abaddon smuggled you out of camp?” Marcus asked. “Where did you go?”
Divine shrugged wearily. “The first part of the journey after leaving is something of a blur in my memory. I was weak and in pain from the labor, never given a chance to heal, or even to feed. We had to run and hide and run again.”
“Why?” Marcus demanded. “To keep you and your son safe from your uncle?”
Divine nodded.
He stared at her for a minute, and then said, “You mean to tell me that your whole life has been spent hiding and running from your family because you believed they would kill your son?”
“And me,” she added solemnly.
“Divine,” he said slowly. “Lucian wouldn’t have done that. He would not kill an innocent child.”
“But he was no-fanger like his father,” she pointed out. “And my grandfather and uncle were out to destroy all no-fangers.”
“Your son can’t be—” He shook his head and muttered something about dealing with that later, then said, “Yes, the immortals were determined to put down no-fangers back then. But not edentates.”
“Edentates?” she echoed uncertainly.
“That is an immortal without fangs. They are called edentate. Any child born fangless is considered edentate unless and until they go crazy and show the tendencies of no-fangers, a liking for torturing and killing, etc. But not all edentates turn no-fanger. Your son would not have been killed. And you certainly wouldn’t have been.”
“But I didn’t kill myself,” Divine pointed out.
“What?” he asked with bewilderment.
