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Goddard laughed. "You think I would protect you from them?"
"If it's in your best interest. I go back and say she's dead, that I found the ash pile where you left her in the sun. Game over. Sure, they might spend some time trying to track you down to kill you, but you're Trads. You know these mountains like the squirrels do. They're fucking Council vampires, silver spoons stuck up their asses. They have to have GPS in their fancy SUVs to find a QuikMart."
There was a nasty chuckle or two at that from the other vampires. It didn't signal a warming to Cai, but he'd effectively reminded them of the background they shared, and their mutual contempt for non-Trads.
Goddard appeared to be thinking. After several weighted moments of silence, he crossed the floor to Rand. Rand felt it coming, braced for it, but still snarled when Goddard kicked him in the side. "What about this one? Voltaire said there's something different about him. He thinks he's a shifter. I've never seen a wolf this big, and there is an...otherness to him."
Despite the spike of oh shit, Rand noted the key words, "thinks he's a shifter." Voltaire hadn't seen him shift.
Cai had picked up on it, too. "Voltaire has a vivid imagination," he scoffed. "I saved the wolf's life from a hunter. We bonded. He's a pet, and blissfully silent. We both like the woods, we're both loners."
"Not so much. Voltaire also said you had a servant. He thinks the wolf and the man are the same. If it's not true, where is he? This...servant."
Goddard said the words with revulsion, as if accusing Cai of betraying all of vampire kind.
"I knew you'd damage or kill him, so I didn't let him come along. Wasn't going to waste a good resource. He's my blood supply so I don't have to go into towns as often. It's practical. What do you care? I'm not part of your Kool-Aid drinking anti-servant cult anymore, and I've found having a servant to be damn useful. I can be a lot lazier with one around."
"Hmm."
Rand could feel Goddard's eyes on him. Though he knew it wasn't a sensible thing to do, he struggled to look up, snarl at him again. Like all vampires, Goddard was disturbingly handsome and virile, but his eyes took care of any appreciation Rand's brainless cock would have had for it. Goddard had dead eyes, same as every soulless bastard who thought this kind of behavior was okay. He and Grey were spawned from the same hell demon.
The vampire's lips curved in a very distasteful and unsettling way. His reaction to Rand's aggressive behavior was no different from an indifferent stranger's to a child's tantrum. The dead eyes shifted back behind Rand to Cai. Though his nose was a better sensor than his eyes, Rand still wanted to see the vampire. The blood and the tension in his voice said they'd taken him down hard. Why? Why hadn't he just let them take him down, if he was going to pretend to be an ally?
Because he was Cai. He didn't do anything the easy way.
Now that his concussion was clearing, Rand could sort through more of the data coming to his nose. It said volumes about the Trads' elevated disrespect for personal hygiene, why Rand hadn't picked up one particular scent immediately.
Dovia.
She was curled in the far corner, naked. A collar around her throat connected to chains bolted to the logs forming the cabin walls. Her arms were bound behind her back. The chains were so short she couldn't sit on the ground, nor completely stand up. Having her hands behind her meant her balance was precarious whenever she tried to shift position.
His receptors were sensitive enough to know what blood came from surface wounds and what came from other invasions. They won't be gentle about it, but they won't be physically brutal, either. There was no way a woman being forced, her body unprepped and unwilling, could ever not be physically brutal. But it told Rand what Cai had suffered as a teenager at Goddard's hands, that he could rate unimaginable violence that way.
Rage hazed his vision. Fucking bastards; they all deserved to die. The faces of all their children flashed before him--his own, Fane and Lynn's, Sheba and Sylvan's. Rand wanted to give in to the animal, who was certain that righteous ferocity would be enough to tear them all apart. It didn't make it easier, knowing he had the strength to break those ropes. But Cai had reminded him, several times. They wouldn't win a toe-to-toe fight against four vampires. They had to wait for the right moment. For Dovia.
Her eyes turned to him, dull and hopeless, so young. He wouldn't have recognized her from Leona's portrait, except for the red hair. But as he gazed at her, he saw the brown eyes like her father's. She had her mother's sweet bow mouth, pale skin. It appeared they'd hacked at her hair with a knife, burned some of it away.
She looked at him, too. As they continued to stare at one another, he looked deeper, and saw more than hopelessness. There was a spark there, life. If given the opportunity, she would fight for her freedom, to get away. She was biding her time. The greatest battle she was fighting--and it was formidable--was against the despair, terror and pain, that could numb her mind to opportunities for escape.
Things were not looking good, but if she could keep it together after what she'd been through, she'd get no less of an effort from him. They weren't leaving without her. He would get her out of here or die trying.
"I've never liked you, Cai," Goddard said abruptly. "You may be here for exactly the reasons you say, but it doesn't really matter. I'm tired of your existence. Your belief that you don't have to account to us or anyone else. You aren't powerful, a vampire strong enough to fight off other vampires. You care for no one but yourself. You don't want to be part of the Trads, so you contribute nothing to our society."
"Society?" Cai barked a harsh laugh. "Hate to break it to you, Goddard, but living like a bunch of survivalist wackos in the woods, kidnapping helpless girls to rape, and believing indoor plumbing is the road to hell hardly qualifies you guys for a NatGeo documentary. Even other Trads think you all are the looney fringe. Don't be throwing stones in glass houses."
Goddard ignored him. He faced the trio of waiting vampires. Their appearance continued the tree theme. With identical round bowl haircuts, dark eyes, swarthy skin, knotted muscles and varying heights, they looked like an assortment of cypress knees. Rand wondered if they'd all been made by Goddard, and he'd chosen them for their similar features.
"Take Cai out and stake him," Goddard ordered, snapping Rand's attention back to him. "You can amuse yourself with him until sunrise. Then he can become the pile of ash we send back to Voltaire to show his master and claim it's his daughter. Thank you for that idea, Cai."
"Anytime," Cai said dryly, and spat. Goddard was rolling something back and forth in his palm as he spoke. Rand realized it was the metal prosthetic fang Cai wore. Goddard or one of his minions had ripped it from his mouth.
"Let that piece-of-shit traitor think we've helped him in his grand plan," Goddard mused. "He may prove useful later, if he succeeds and doesn't want it exposed that he helped Trads depose his overlord. But you know what I think, Cai? Voltaire is many things that wear on my nerves, but he is also observant."
Goddard moved behind Rand. From the difference in pitch and direction, Rand suspected Goddard had squatted next to Cai. The intensity of his next words suggested he had his full attention fixed on the vampire.
"I think Voltaire may be right. That your servant and this wolf are one and the same. We hear rumors of them in these parts, often enough I've begun to question if shifters are truly the myth we believe them to be." Goddard's voice settled into a disturbing mildness. "A human brain locked in a wolf's body as he is taken by each of us. That would be interesting."
Cai spoke in a flat voice. "Bestiality, Goddard? Really? I know Trads are backwards mouth-breathers, but that seems barbaric and crude, even for you."
A grunt as Cai was kicked, probably by one of Goddard's men. Rand's lip curled.
"Is it bestiality, if there's a man trapped in an animal's body?" Goddard asked. "It's merely a costume."
He rose. "Take Cai out of here, take care of him. Then we can return our attention to the female. And while we may not care
to test Voltaire or Cai's honesty about this beast, there are other ways we can amuse ourselves. I've never skinned something alive before."
The men started to rise, the boards vibrating under their feet. The wave of cruel anticipation, a sharp, volatile smell mixed with their other revolting odors, would have made Rand's human form gag.
"You kill me, she never conceives."
Cai's tone was colder than a blast of displeasure from Lady Lyssa.
A weighted stillness, then Goddard's heavy boots crossed the floor. The cabin shuddered as he apparently picked Cai up and slammed him against the wall.
