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“Live to fight another night.”
“If that is what you prefer, then I will endure what my brother has planned for me tonight.”
“I have other uses for your sibling’s sadistic skills tonight. They can torture you tomorrow,” Deimos said.
Two more black-cloaked figures came in carrying another unconscious person between them, but this one was on his back and covered in chains. It was Nicky. I think my heart stopped for a second, and then two more cloaked Harlequin entered the room holding his legs and I could finally see what was wrong with him. I screamed.
40
They’d driven ahuge stake through his heart, as if they hadn’t wanted to miss. I fell to my knees holding on to the chains above my head because I had to hold on to something.
“He’s alive,” Rodina said; she was on her knees, too.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” I screamed.
“I didn’t do this,” she said, on all fours. She sounded like she was in pain. Good.
“The motorcycle wrecked, remember,” Ru said; his voice sounded strained from being tied up on the floor, or maybe from feeling every emotion in me right that moment.
“I remember,” I said.
“No one put a stake through your werelion,” Rodina said.
“Then what’s sticking out of his chest?”
“The great vampire hunter can’t tell the difference between a stake and a tree,” Mischa said.
“Tree,” I said, and looked back at Nicky’s…body, that’s what I kept thinking when I looked at him.
I tried to see past all the horrible emotions that were stopping me from being able to think. I forced myself to look at Nicky, to really look at him instead of just reacting. I started with the thing that had scared me the most, the wood sticking out of him. No one madestakes that big. It had to be at least six inches around and over a foot long. The top was sharp and pointed like a huge spear, not like someone had done it on purpose, but like it had been broken off and just weathered into a nasty point. I could also now see that it wasn’t in the middle of his chest, and it was lower than his heart, more through his side. The bottom of the tree was at least five inches below the back of his body. It looked like someone had cracked it free instead of cutting it. If he’d been human he’d have died. Hell, a lot of shapeshifters would have died, but Nicky’s upper body was wider than most; his sheer physical size had given the tree extra room to go through him without killing him instantly. There was dried blood all over his clothes, but nothing that looked fresh. They’d wrapped him in heavy chain up and down his body; even as injured as he was, they’d still been afraid of him.
His head hung back loose and at an angle that looked so uncomfortable that I wanted to hold him, cradle his head in my hands. I wanted to check his pulse, feel if his skin was cool to the touch.
The two Harlequin holding his hips and legs started to lower him to the floor, but Goran from the front said, “We can’t put him down.”
“How long are we supposed to stand here and hold him?”
“Scaramouche, you traitorous bastard, I recognize your voice.”
“Once our new king has his way with you, it won’t matter if you know who we are.”
The figure standing beside him sighed, which vampires don’t have to do since breathing is optional. “Until that task is finished, it did matter,” his vampire master, Capitano, said.
“You only need hide your identity from Anita if you doubt me; do you doubt me?” Deimos said.
“No, my lord, of course not” was the only answer he could give.
“We will torture him until you do what I want, Anita,” Deimos said, as if it was just a pleasant suggestion.
Capitano said, “I fear, my lord, that the Rex is unconscious, and beyond pain.”
“Then kill him.”
“If you kill him, I will never give you what you want,” I said.
“If we don’t get him to a hospital soon, he’s dead anyway,” Rodina said, getting to her feet.
“We could take him to a hospital now, Anita,” Deimos said.
