Love Bites (19 page)

Instead he fell into a fist the size of his entire head. The impact detonated stars in his skull, and a high, childish voice cried out in pain. Another fist hit, and then another, beating him viciously. He heard the distinct wet snap of a bone breaking . . .

Voices rose, shouting, cursing, a confusing babble of rage. A few sentences cut through the cacophony.

“Weakling!” a man’s voice spat. “You disgust me, you weakling! You’re no blood of mine!”

“It’s no more than you deserve. After all, you let that priest do it to me, didn’t you?”

Pain shattered his jaw. A woman’s voice screamed. “Tom, stop! You’re going to kill him!”

A noose tightened around his throat, cutting off his breath, making him wheeze. A child’s voice screamed.

“Take the contents of your cursed womb, and get from my sight!”

“Tom!”

“Da! Please, Da!”

Light detonated behind his eyes with the bright agony of his nose breaking.

Claws raked across his skin as the werewolves closed in, their eyes glowing orange with bloodlust . . .

Pain and guilt and shame ripped at him, spun him, seared him.

“Weakling,” the man’s voice growled. “You’re nothing. You’re no one. No son of mine. Not fit to be my heir . . .”

“When Arthur’s dead, you’ll be at my mercy,” another voice purred, somehow seductive and sickening at once. “No one will care what I do to you. They’ll be too busy seeking my favor . . .”

Then another man’s voice spoke, strong and sure and calm. “You’re a leader, Percival. Lead.”

Even after so many centuries, he knew that voice. It was his father.

“Weakling. You’re nothing. You’re no one. No son of mine. Not fit to be my heir . . .”

“Fear strengthens,” Percival’s father said, drowning out the other voices with his calm strength. “Pain feeds courage. Use them to fuel your fire. Use them to drive those who follow you.”

Yes. Yes, his father had been right. Fifteen centuries of war had taught him the power of pain and fear in the battles he’d fought with Cador, Marrok, and Morgana beside him.

He knew them. Knew on some level what motivated each of them, even when he didn’t know it consciously. He knew whose pain was whose, knew who feared what, knew the secret guilt, the seeds of suffering planted centuries before by those who should have known better, by the very ones who should have strengthened them, equipped them for life’s battles.

Percival reached into the swirling chaos of anguish and guilt, ignoring the acidic burn of it against his skin. Searching through the storm, he found Cador, whose father had mocked and criticized until the boy had been easy prey for women who had echoed their lord’s contempt.

“I need you,” Percival said, infusing his voice with hard strength. Cador needed to be needed, needed to know he was strong no matter what he’d been taught from the time he was a child. “Lend me your strength. Help me save them.”

And despite the sense of failure that still dogged him when he let it, Cador came through as he always had. Percival felt him reach deep, drawing on the strength his father had discounted.

The strength Percival had always been able to count on.

They drew together, and the stinging burn of the Mageverse faded. Not enough, nowhere near enough, but any relief from that ferocious pain was welcome.

“Now,” Percival told Cador, “now we get Marrok.”

Fused, strength blended so each reinforced the other, they plunged into the chaos together.

Directly into the blow of a fist. Into the cold fear of death at the hands of an implacable enemy. The crunch of his nose breaking with a familiar blinding agony he’d felt before . . .

A woman’s scream, high and piercing. The crack of a fist hitting a face. Another scream, this one weaker, followed by another thudding blow and an even weaker scream.

“Mother! Mother! Da, stop!”

Marrok knew what it felt like to watch someone he loved die. When his father drank, he raged. And when he raged, his children bled. Died.

Marrok had watched his father murder two of his brothers and an infant sister with those huge, merciless hands. He knew too well the sight of broken bodies, covered in blood and bruises.

So when he walked in from the fields to find his father beating his mother, he did not sit by. He was bigger than he’d been when his brothers and sister died. Not a man grown, not yet, but big enough to fight back. Big enough to defend his mother. Big enough to rage when his father began to beat him too.

Big enough to go berserk for the first time.

As he hit the bigger man, he felt the vicious satisfaction of striking out against someone who deserved to suffer. Deserved to die. He hit his father again.

And again.

And again.

It was the first time he regained his sanity to find himself surrounded by broken bodies—his mother’s, dead at his father’s hands, and his father, dead at his own.

He’d sat there, numb, lost in pain and guilt, until he realized he had no more reason to stay. He’d buried his parents and left their small holding, wandering aimlessly until he enlisted as a soldier in Arthur Pendragon’s army. Fighting, after all, was the one thing he knew how to do.

During the training Arthur demanded of his men, he met Percival and Cador, and discovered the love he’d never known. The love of brothers in arm
s.

“We need you,” Percival shouted over the roaring blast of the Mageverse storm. “Without you, I can’t save her.”

But Marrok didn’t hear him. He’d already cycled back to the moment he’d watched his mother die. “Mother! Da, stop!”

Percival gathered his will even as Cador poured on his own reinforcing strength, and shot the combination like a crossbow bolt through Marrok’s pain and guilt. The burst of will jolted the knight from his poisonous memories. They sensed Marrok’s dazed awareness through the pelting slap of magic. “Percival?”

“We need you
now
, Marrok.”

“I’m coming!” The big knight asked no questions, just answered Percival’s call, joining his strength to theirs with an almost audible click. Wills melded into one iron unit, just as they’d always been one throughout fifteen centuries.

Then, together, they plunged into the hurricane of magic and madness that surrounded Morgana le Fay.

“Mamma!” the boy shrieked. “Mamma, help me!”

“It’s no more than you deserve. After all, you let that priest do it to me, didn’t you?”

“You may as well admit your crimes, witch. We all know what you are, what black perversion you hide beneath your beauty . . .”

Claws raked across her skin as the wolves closed in . . .

“. . . When you are dead, I’m going to shift and fuck that mate of yours until he dies in blood and agony!”

“Enough!” Percival thundered, drawing on the power and authority he’d built over hundreds of years, using that dominance to cut through the black swirl of Morgana’s memories.

“When Arthur’s dead, you’ll be at my mercy. No one will care what I do to you. They’ll be too busy seeking my favor . . .”

“ENOUGH!” This time the three knights roared as one, their blended voices ringing with the furious strength of dominants.

Morgana responded.

They felt her turn her attention from the pain and madness, the power and the guilt. Percival took advantage of that moment. “You’re mine, Morgana le Fay. You belong to
me
, not to some collection of ragged ghosts. I love you, and I will not share you with them any longer.” He felt his words reverberate through Morgana like the tolling of a great bell, backed by the steely strength of Cador and Marrok.
“I love you.”

Three words he suddenly knew she’d never expected to hear from him. Words she thought she didn’t deserve. “But . . . How . . . Why?”

“Do you doubt me, Oath Servant?” he demanded. “Do you call me a liar?”

“No,” she said, her voice faint, broken. “I just don’t see . . . why.” Not when so many voices echoed with contempt and hate in her head.

“Take the contents of your cursed womb, and get from my sight!” “We all know what you are, what black perversion you hide beneath your beauty.” “It’s no more than you deserve.”

Those voices were destroying her. For years, she’d contained them, ignored them. But now, with the power of the Mageverse ripping at her psyche, its energies eroding her emotional shields to dig at her with the sly, vicious words she remembered too well . . .

He was losing her.

Percival bared his teeth.
Not very damned likely.
He wasn’t going to give up on his witch,wasn’t going to allow her demons to rip her apart with her own power.

Cador and Marrok mentally rumbled assent, echoing his determination. “She may be a bitch,” Cador said, “but she’s our bitch. We’ve got to bring her out of this.”

“But how?” Marrok asked.

Percival’s eyes widened as a sudden thought struck him. “What if we use magic?”

“Vampires can’t use magic,” Cador pointed out.

Marrok smiled
.
“Morgana can. We could reach it through her.”

“Yes . . . yes, that might work.” Testing, Percival closed his eyes, reached out to the swirling forces that tore at them. And turned his will on Morgana.

At first she fought, bucking against his control, sending painful jolts through all three of them. “Morgana!” he snapped. “Stop that, Oath Servant. You will use your power as
I
command.”

Her mental voice breathed, “Yes, Lord Percival.”

Percival opened his eyes, withdrawing from the psychic stage he’d occupied with his lover and his friends. Once again, the four of them stood surrounded by the jagged shapes of fallen trees impaling the corpse of the dragon under the moon. His gaze fell on Morgana, standing slim and gorgeously naked in the silver light. Her face looked pale and beautiful—and intensely alien.

If I don’t get her under control, she’ll kill us all—and herself.
He envisioned what he needed—what he’d last seen lying on the grass beside the bloody bodies of four women and a dazed dragon. Reaching out his will, he called it to his hand with her borrowed magic. As the nullification collar appeared in his palm, his fingers curled around it in a hard, instinctive grip. “Morgana le Fay!”

She opened her eyes then, and looked at him with those burning blue irises. He could feel the dark emotion that seethed in her, a fury that seemed far outsized for her fragile body.

Morgana looked at the collar in his hand, and her eyes widened. “I didn’t even . . . think of that.”

“Likely because you couldn’t think. Not once the madness kicked in.” Percival studied her face. “Kneel, Morgana.”

She bit her lip. He felt her struggle to control the madness that clawed at her. “Without my magic . . . I won’t be able . . . to sustain a Truebond.”

Percival frowned. Now that he had bonded with her, he didn’t want to lose that connection. “Can you add a spell to the collar to maintain the link?”

Morgana considered the idea. “I . . . Yes, I think so. Maintaining a Truebond doesn’t take . . . much power.” He felt her struggle to concentrate past the savage blasts of Mageverse energy. With an effort, she managed it. Her voice steadied. “I had always intended that the collars be able to allow varying amounts of magic so the Majae could learn to manage it.” She shot Cador and Marrok a look. “Especially if you two don’t want to remain part of the Truebond.”

The knights exchanged a look. Percival tensed as his inner wolf suddenly awoke with a possessive growl. “I think we accomplished what we needed to,” Marrok said.

Cador nodded. “Like you said, Truebonds are supposed to be for two.” He grinned. “Not a psychic orgy—not that I don’t enjoy the occasional orgy.”

“Then I will do as you wish.” Morgana gestured. Magic swirled around the collar. Gracefully, she sank to her knees and looked up at Percival.

He leaned down to take her mouth in a searing kiss, letting his tongue swirl around hers, then sucking her lower lip into her mouth for a slow, sensual nibble. “You’re mine, Morgana. By your Oath. By my love.”

She met his gaze. “I love you, too, Percival. I always have.”

Warmth seemed to burst through his chest at the words until it seemed his ribs couldn’t possibly contain it. He smiled at her brilliantly as he opened the collar, settled it around her throat, and snapped it closed.

And the burning, vicious power that had battered them simply . . . winked out, along with the connection to Cador and Marrok. All four of them sighed in relief.

Cador sank down on his haunches, raking his hands through his braided hair. “Thank Christ.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” Marrok leaned a shoulder against one of the broken tree trunks. “Ahhhh—how are we going to get home?”

“I should be able to help there,” a familiar voice said.

They looked around and found Soren standing behind them in human form. He’d evidently been busy while Morgana, Percival, and the team had Truebonded. Four women stood around him, looking whole, healed, and more than a little bewildered. More than likely, he’d not only healed them, he’d also altered their memories so they wouldn’t recall the horrors they’d suffered at Huar’s claws.

The ambassador jerked his chin at Morgana’s collared throat, giving Percival a smile. “An elegant solution to the problem. I should have thought of it myself.”

“As I told Morgana, we were all a little distracted.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Soren said with a snort. He swept the knights a level stare. “You saved me from a particularly horrific death, gentlemen. Any thanks I can give are pitifully inadequate, but I assure you, I will not forget.”