Living Nightmare (23 page)

“Like hell.”

Logan looked over his shoulder as if someone was coming. “Now, Nika. There’s no more time.” And then he shut the door.

Madoc spun around to face her. “What the hell was he talking about?” he asked.

“This,” she said as she reached up and grabbed his luceria in her fist.

The band that had been with him his entire life broke open and slithered away from his neck. Nika lifted her arms to fasten it around her slender throat and pointed to the floor. “On your knees, Madoc,” she said as she handed him his sword.

Instincts embedded in him for centuries drove him to his knees as he scored a cut over his heart and uttered the vow, “My life for yours.” He dipped his finger in the blood flowing down his ribs and pressed it against the luceria, grazing her breasts with his forearm.

The pale band shrank to fit close to her throat. It looked so fucking beautiful there, all he could do was stare.

Nika’s shoulders slumped in relief. “About freakin’ time,” she muttered, then in a louder voice said, “You’re mine, Madoc. If you go out to kill yourself again, you’re taking me with you.”

The weight of her vow—such as it was—crashed down on top of him, crushing the air from his lungs. That seething darkness that had woven its way through his soul seemed to freeze in place, cowering at the power in her words.

In that instant, the little sliver of the man he’d been born to be sparked back to life and he realized what he’d done. Her blood was smeared over her inner thighs. He’d taken her hard, ripping her virginity from her as if it were of no more worth than a discarded tissue.

Shame burned hot in his chest. Every selfish moment seared itself in his mind, ripping a low cry of grief from his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed out, knowing the words would never be enough to make up for what he’d done. He’d ruined something beautiful. Destroyed it. She’d given herself to him and he’d ground that gift beneath his heel.

Madoc reached for her, ready to beg for her forgiveness, but it was too late. His world faded and the vision the luceria wanted him to see descended upon him.

 

Madoc was flung into Nika’s mind. He saw her life through her eyes, felt it through her skin.

He felt the claws of the sgath that had hurt her the night her family was attacked. They raked over her skin, making her bleed as the burn of poison entered her bloodstream. He felt the sgath’s slimy tongue trail along her flesh, lapping up her blood.

Around her, he sensed a buzzing movement too fast to see. He tried to slow down the passage of time so he could make out what that movement was, but all he could see was the vague shape of a man pressing his hands against her. It wasn’t one of the Sanguinar, but the feel of what he did had that same kind of tingling quality that healing did.

Someone had saved her life that night. That was why she hadn’t died from the sgath poison.

Madoc wished like hell he could see who it was so he could thank the man for giving him a chance to keep Nika safe.

Time resumed its normal flow. Nika was weak and dizzy. She couldn’t move. A lethargic daze had settled over her, but her eyes remained fixed on her baby sister.

Madoc heard the vow she’d given Tori never to leave her—the vow she’d kept to this day.

Nika’s world winked out and when she came to, she was in a hospital. Fever burned inside her as she fought off the remains of the sgath poison. One of the hospital staff hovered around her, poking and prodding her, injecting her with medicine that did no good. Nika’s sole focus was on Tori, and that was what gave her the strength to keep fighting.

It was days after Nika had been sent home that the first attack on her mind came.

Madoc reached for his sword, only to find he had no sword, no body. He was huddled in a corner of Nika’s memories, unable to do more than witness what happened to her.

Rage made him flail at the boundaries of this vision, but in the end, he was helpless. All he could do was suffer through as Nika had, experiencing whatever it was the luceria demanded of him.

Nika was ripped from her body, flung through space, and forced to inhabit the alien mind of the sgath that had taken her blood. Panic exploded inside her. She knew this was no nightmare. It was real.

She tried to stop it—to pull back into her body—but the creature’s hold on her was too strong and her mental defenses too weak to fight it.

That night, Nika was along for the ride, trapped inside a monster, forced to hunt and kill a teenage boy. She felt like it was her fault—that she should have been able to stop the thing from killing. The stain that failure left on her soul still haunted her to this day.

Madoc wanted to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault. The death of that boy wasn’t her sin. She had still been a child herself, only twelve. She wasn’t responsible for the acts of an evil monster.

Even as Madoc reached for her to gather her in his arms and convince her to forgive herself of a crime she did not commit, he knew it was futile in this bodyless existence.

As the Synestryn fed on the boy, one of its fellow sgath attacked it, fighting for the kill. A feeding frenzy started, and the sgath that had taken Nika’s blood was attacked, its flesh eaten by its hungry brothers.

Even as Nika’s mind rebelled at such an appalling display, she had the instinctive knowledge that being inside the sgath when it died could kill her as well.

She fought as the thing’s blood soaked into the ground, struggling to get free. The monster didn’t want to let go of her. She made it stronger, somehow. Faster and smarter.

It didn’t want to die alone.

Frantic, Nika forced all her fear into the sgath, using that emotion to propel her out of its weakened mind before it died. She was sucked back into her own body, but by then it was too late. Her blood—the blood that sgath had used to take over her mind—now flowed through a dozen more of its kind.

They all wanted her inside them, making them faster and stronger, too. She felt them pull at her, tugging at her mind as if they were trying to rip it from her. She hardened herself, fighting back, refusing to give up for Tori’s sake.

But she was too weak. She didn’t know how to fight off one, much less a dozen. Her mind cracked and splintered. Glittering shards of what made Nika who she was were cast into the night. Each of the sgath claimed its own piece, ripping her sanity from her.

That was the night Nika went crazy.

Madoc had no idea how she’d survived it—how she’d lived long enough for him to hunt and kill the things that haunted her, so she could reclaim all the fractured pieces of herself. He wasn’t even sure if what he’d done had been enough.

Tori had been the one who’d really saved Nika’s life.

The tenuous connection between the two sisters shimmered like a braid of spider silk. Over the years, it had thinned until only a single strand remained. Nika refused to let that strand break. He felt her determination to hang on to that connection even as Tori worked to sever it.

Why she would do such a thing, Madoc had no idea, but part of him hoped she’d succeed. Nothing could ever harm Nika. Not even her own sister. He refused to even consider letting it happen.

Nika was his lady now and he was honor-bound to protect her with his life, if need be. He could no longer allow her to run around at night, risking yet another attack by a Synestryn who would rip away bits of her mind. He’d managed to slay most of the sgath, but what if one of the stronger Synestryn got some of her blood? What if she couldn’t fight it? What if his sweet Nika was left damaged beyond repair, living in a nightmare, forced to remain forever locked inside the monsters while they killed?

It was her worst fear. He could see the malignant pulsing of that terror echoing through her mind, shaping her every move.

She’d rather die than go back to that world of blood and death and insanity.

Madoc was going to make sure it never happened, even if she ended up hating him for what he now knew he had to do.

N
ika knew that the luceria would give her some kind of vision once she put it on—some peek into Madoc’s life. She wasn’t sure what it could show her that she didn’t already know. She’d been inside him, seen the darkness that plagued him, and bathed in the light of his soul. How could a view of what his life had been like, or what made him the person he was, top that?

But what she saw was no flash from the past, as she’d heard described. What she saw was something she’d never even considered.

The future.

It swirled around her, more a concept than a series of events. Comprised more of emotion than anything, the flow of possibilities was endless, pattering against her like hot rain. With each drop that fell, she saw another possible future.

Some were horrible, tainted with blood and death. Others were so sweet, she could almost feel the tears of joy sliding over her cheeks. She smelled a baby’s skin in one moment; then in the next, she felt the chill of Madoc’s lifeblood leaking through her fingers. The thrill of a battle won surged inside her, only to be cut short by the debilitating grief of both her sisters’ deaths.

Nika was laughing and crying, raging at the world and celebrating miracles. The barrage of emotions kept coming at her, swarming over her until a single one remained.

She felt trapped. Useless. Desperate. Defeated.

Those emotions coalesced into a vision so real, she knew without a doubt that the luceria was showing her more than simply a possibility. It was showing her her future.

She was locked inside Dabyr, a virtual prisoner. She recognized the space as Madoc’s suite, but it wasn’t the walls that kept her here. It was a vow she’d made in haste.

She’d promised him she wouldn’t get hurt and that vow had allowed him to imprison her inside Dabyr, where he thought no harm could come to her. It had allowed him to keep her there while the last connection she had to Tori winked out of existence.

At that moment, Nika knew that her sister was dead, and it had been her vow that killed Tori. Nika also knew that her failure would be the thing that killed her. The guilt would eat her whole, leaving her an angry, wasted shell of a woman.

Madoc would suffer watching it happen, being unable to do anything to stop it. The two of them would drift apart. The darkness that lurked inside him would grow.

Andra would blame herself, and Paul’s inability to fix it would gnaw at him, making him angry and afraid. Their relationship would suffer, too.

As their connections weakened, so did their magic. Battles became harder to win. More human children were stolen from their parents. Countless people died.

Nika couldn’t let any of that happen. She was meant to fight by Madoc’s side—to take the same risks he did. She wasn’t meant to be protected from her birthright.

Whatever she did—whatever promises he tried to force from her—she had to stay strong and refuse to give him that vow that would destroy the lives of so many.

“Promise me,” she heard him say outside the confines of the vision.

Nika opened her eyes and looked down at Madoc. Blood ran down his chest. His naked body was shining with perspiration, his muscles knotted with fear.

He gave her a little shake. “Promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to stay safe.”

That was the trap the luceria had warned her about. Her vow given to him now would ruin her life and the lives of so many others.

“No,” she whispered, even as the desire to give him anything he wanted burned inside her. “I can’t promise you that. I won’t.”

Madoc rose to his feet to loom over her. His face was dark with rage, and she could feel the subtle vibrations running through his muscles as if he were holding himself back. “Why the hell not?”

Before she could answer, a hard pounding rocked the bedroom door.

“Nika, are you okay?” asked Helen, her voice tight with worry.

“Out of the way,” came Drake’s deep voice; then he barged into the room, his sword drawn. He came to a dead stop, staring at the naked couple in front of him.

Madoc let out a warning growl and ripped a sheet from the bed, draping it around Nika’s body. She clutched at it, capturing his arm as well to hold him back.

“I tried to tell them you were busy,” said Logan.

Drake averted his eyes but did not put his sword away. “Logan, you know I don’t trust you any farther than I can toss you off the end of my blade.”

Helen put a staying hand on her husband’s shoulder. “We need to get back outside. Their blood will be drawing company here.”

Drake nodded and looked at Madoc. “Get yourselves cleaned up; then get outside and lend a hand. We’ve already saved your ass once tonight. Helen’s tired.”

“I’m fine,” she said, tossing her twin braids back over her shoulders.

Drake’s eyes followed the motion before sliding over her breasts. “Yes, you are. Let’s go.”

The pair of them left, but Logan remained in the doorway, his pale eyes cautious. He looked at Madoc. “Did it work? Did she get to you in time?”

Madoc’s hold on Nika’s body tightened. “Guess we’ll see. If my lifemark buds again, we’re safe. If not ...”

“It will,” said Nika, letting every bit of her faith flow through her tone.

Madoc cupped her cheek, his touch so gentle she had to blink back tears. “You and I have a lot of things to talk about.”

She knew what he meant. He wanted to wrap her up and tuck her away somewhere where her life would have no meaning. That wasn’t going to happen.

But now was not the time to argue about it. Right now they needed to wash off the blood before they were all trapped inside this house, sitting ducks for every Synestryn within miles.

“Later,” she told him. “After we’ve showered.”

 

Something inside Madoc had definitely changed since Nika had put on his luceria; he just wasn’t sure it was enough to turn him back into the man he used to be. All the violent feelings he thought would go away were still there, pounding inside him, demanding release. He wanted to kill Drake and Logan for looking at Nika’s body. The only difference was that now he also felt bad about it.