Redeeming Rue AP4 (9 page)

“You’re going with the mates, Jilly, and it’s not negotiable,” one said.

She opened her mouth to protest but the other put his finger on her lips.  “Don’t, kitten, please.  We’ll come for you as soon as our cousins are safe.  If we’re worrying about you getting hurt, we won’t be worth anything for what comes.”

“Oh, fine,” she huffed.  “I thought Dad was bossy, but you two have him beat in spades.”

“You love us,” the first one chided.

She grunted in annoyance, but the happiness in her eyes told Rue that Jilly really did love the twins and that made her happy for her cousins.

“I’m not bossy.  I’m just a dad,” John said.

“Same difference,” Jilly answered.  She hugged John and then Rue.  “Be safe.  I have a new brother I’d like to fawn over.”

Rue’s chest tightened.  It wasn’t fair to have all this support now, when dawn was coming and her life might be forfeit.  She didn’t want James and John to sacrifice their bodies for her.  They didn’t know what the dekray could do to flesh.  The stories she’d heard of the damage even one strike caused were enough to tell her that even if they split the strikes between them, they would still end up permanently damaged and could possibly die.

She couldn’t live with herself if they gave themselves up for her.

Dag clapped his hands as the mates and kids left.  “You’re here to stand for James and John and their mate, Veruka.  She is my blood and I will speak on her behalf, but your show of support will go a long way in the outcome today.  I know that our ways seem strange to you.  My clan does not support what Gerarli and his clan did to Rue, or how they kidnapped her son.  We can’t change the past, but we can hope for the future.”

Pretty words, Rue thought, but she really didn’t think that anything was going to change as the sun rose.  Someone was going to die; she could feel it in her bones.  If she had her way, she would choose herself.  Dom could have a chance at a good life still, and James and John would move on and find new mates.  Ones who weren’t disfigured with a bounty on their heads.  Her heart ached, but she knew what she had to do.  She would throw herself on the mercy of her clan and hope that they would end her swiftly and allow Dom to live.

It was the only way.

* * * * *

Dom’s whole body ached from being tied up.  The panthers who had come for him had used some kind of wire to bind him.  His hands were tied in front of him, the wire cutting into his flesh every time the vehicle he was in hit a bump on the road.  His legs were bound as well, and he was gagged and blindfolded.  But he still heard everything.  The people who had come for him knew he was Veruka’s son.  He regained consciousness when he was carried out of the hotel room, and he caught a glimpse of a woman who looked at lot like his mom, and he believed that was his grandmother.  Probably one of the men was his grandfather, the other males cousins or members of her clan.  They gagged him so quickly that he couldn’t ask them what happened to his mom.  She was a fighter, but he was afraid that she had been captured and killed already, and they were coming for him to put an end to him as well.

He felt like a total idiot.  He’d encouraged her to see the ceremony, to check in on her family and finally get a chance to say goodbye, even if it was just her whispering the words to herself in the woods.  She had needed to be able to close the door on her past.  Years of nightmares were not fair.  He had thought this was a way to end her torment, but he’d probably just convinced her to skip along happily to her death.  She had told him that her people would kill them both if they ever found out she’d had a son, but he hadn’t really believed that.  Not if he was being truthful.  In his mind, people didn’t just go around killing other people for having kids with different fur coloring.  He loved his white fur.  It kicked ass.

He’d never met another panther outside of his mom, but she said his shifted form was much bigger than any other panther males she’d known.  He liked being the biggest.  When she talked about moving them to Canada, he’d been skeptical, but then she had said they would call themselves white leopards, and he thought that would work and he’d finally get a chance to hunt and spend time in his shift outside.  There had to be a place somewhere where people didn’t care what others shifted into or the color of their fur, and that was where he and his mom belonged.

He wished he could shift.  The bonds were too tight on his body, though, effectively holding him captive in his human form.  He hated the helpless feeling that coursed through him, but unless he got out of his bonds, he was a sitting duck.

The van braked suddenly, and he slid forward painfully on the rough carpet he laid on.  He’d have given his left canine for a knife.  Or some kind of guardian angel who could come down and kick ass and set him free.  The back door swung open with a creak.  Someone grabbed his ankles and yanked him out of the back.  He groaned as his head hit the edge of the van and his body banged against the ground.  Defenseless to protect himself, his head and back had borne the brunt of the fall, and his head spun as pain rocked through him.

He tried to roll to his knees and make a quick escape, but a swift foot to his stomach stopped him dead in his tracks.

A hand fisted in his hair and gave him a rough shake.  “You’re going nowhere, sinner, but to the hell you deserve.”

Two sets of hands lifted him halfway off the ground and dragged him.  The ground under his feet was rough and uneven with tree roots, which made him wonder if they had brought him back to the forest where his mom had been hiding.  The panther clans were staying in the field on the other side of the woods from the big house where the ceremony was being held.  If he could get the gag free, he could yell for help.  Shifters had great hearing, and someone might come to help.  He hoped.

He was dropped to the ground and shoved onto his side.  Chains rattled around him, and he felt them being looped around the ties that bound his legs.  A lock clicked.  Then he felt something cold and metal slide underneath the arm of his shirt and he stiffened.  Methodically, his clothes were cut off his body.  Dread filled him.  Nothing good was going to happen at this point; he knew that for certain.

Where was his mom?  Was she okay?  Had they hurt her?  He wanted to know the answers to his questions more than he wanted to know what was coming for him next from these psychos.

Cold chain wrapped around his stomach, looping several times, and then the blindfold was pulled away.

He stared up at a group of panthers, including the ones who had taken him.  Dom’s eyes roamed around the area quickly.  He was in the woods as he’d suspected, except now he was stripped naked and chained to tree.  Some of the people carried torches; the lights illuminated the area enough so he could see them.

The one who seemed to be the boss stood a few feet away from Dom.  He was overweight, with the belly of a man who spent too much time sitting around doing nothing.

The male spoke, “The female, whose name we do not speak, broke our laws by spawning a devil’s child, full of sin and a disgrace to our clan.  He carries the mark of evil with his white hair.  She is the reason our clan has not prospered all these years.  The birth of the evil spawn has stunted us, driven us to the edge of poverty and destruction.”  He spat out the words, and Dom stared at him in surprise.  The guy was a nutcase.  Having a kid who wasn’t anywhere near them caused poverty for a whole clan of able-bodied people?  What the hell?

The clan spoke as one.  “The traitor must die.”

The leader nodded solemnly.  “So she must, and she will at dawn. But we need to purge the evil from our midst through blood and flesh.”

Oh shit.  That didn’t sound good.

The leader looked down at Dom, and his eyes flashed with pure evil.  Dom grunted out a few choice curse words to the male, but the gag garbled them.

“Shift, demon, and show us your true, disgraceful form.”

Dom growled.  He would
not
shift because they said so, and they couldn’t make him.

The male stepped forward and smashed his fist into Dom’s face, making his head rock back and smack into the tree he was chained to.  “SHIFT!”

A hand clamped over Dom’s nose, and he stared up in surprise at the leader.  Coupled with the gag, he couldn’t breathe.  Struggling, Dom tried to shake free of the hand covering him, but the male grabbed the back of his head and held him firm.

Dom’s vision began to fade, and he felt his body start to go limp.  As darkness descended, the hand was taken away, and he breathed in deeply through his nose, struggling to fill his lungs as fast as possible.  Dom was aware that the bonds around his wrists and ankles were loosened.  Not enough for him to get away, but enough for him to shift.  Which he
so
wasn’t doing.  Fuck them.  Fuck all of them.

Another chain was brought forward, and it was locked around Dom’s neck and then locked to the chain around his waist.  Dom worked at the gag in his mouth, but it was tied too tightly for him to push it free of his mouth.

“Shift, demon!” the leader yelled.

With as much clarity as he could, Dom cursed, “Fuck you.”  It came out sounding muffled, but the leader clearly heard the words.

“Bring me the dekray,” the leader said, straightening.  The cold look in his eyes chilled Dom to the very center of his being.  He fought not to panic.  Losing his shit wasn’t going to help anyone.  If his mom were alive and not captured, then she would find him eventually; he just had to hold out.  And if she weren’t alive, which he didn’t want to accept, then someone would discover them.  He hoped.

A male brought forward a long wooden box.  It looked old and made of shiny, discolored wood.  “Faisal and Tania, open the box and remove the dekray,” the leader said.

One of the males who had taken Dom and the female who looked like his mom came forward.  If they were his grandparents, why were they allowing this?  Didn’t they care that he was their flesh and blood?  The woman lifted the lid of the box, and the male pulled out a nasty looking whip.  It was made of leather.  The thick handle was about a foot long, and out of it, many thin strips of leather dangled.  There were knots on the ends of each strip and something shiny that looked like a fishhook was within the knots.  What the hell?

The male licked his lips and darted a glance to Dom, but then handed the whip – what the leader had called a
dekray
– to the leader and turned away.

“Tell your grandson to shift, and I won’t use this on him.  Yet,” the leader said.

The male’s face paled and then his cheeks flamed.  “His is no flesh of mine, Gerarli.”  The male spit on the ground and glared at Dom.

Thanks a lot, Grandpa
.

Gerarli gave Dom a wicked smile.  “There is no one here to save you, demon.  Shift and I will go easy on you.  Force my hand, and you will suffer like no one has suffered in a thousand years, and it will be that much worse for your mother.”

Dom’s heart kicked up a notch.  His mom was alive!  Hope flared within him.  She would find a way to save him; he was sure of it.  He just had to stay alive until she found him.  Closing his eyes, he screamed for help in his mind, hoping that his mom might feel him in some way.  He wasn’t telepathic, and neither was she, but they were mother and son, and surely there was a connection that could be breached.

“So be it, demon,” Gerarli said.  “Let it not be said that I didn’t offer the demon an easy death.  He shall be punished with the full force of the dekray, a strike for each year that his demon whore of a mother caused
our
pain.  And then she will receive twice that.  Their blood and flesh will secure our future.”

The panthers cheered, and Dom opened his eyes in time to see Gerarli raise the whip to strike him.

He let his shift flow through him, pushing the cat to help protect him.  He was more vulnerable in his human form than his cat form, and he would heal faster if he were fur and not flesh.

The whip struck as Dom was mid-shift, each strip of leather sinking into his flesh in different places.  The knots and hooks held for only a brief moment and then ripped free.  Dom screamed through the gag as pain blinded him.  His shift flowed over him, but even the cat was unable to help him deal with the pain.

The gag fell free, but the chains held him securely.  He lifted his head and roared.

The whip came down a second time, ripping through his fur and into the muscle.  Dom’s body convulsed as hot blood welled in his wounds.  The third strike struck bone, his spine embedded with several hooks that pulled him from the ground like a rag doll as they were ripped free.

Blackness covered him as the pain grew too much.  This was how he was going to die, ripped into bloody pieces in the woods.

I’m sorry, Mom
, he thought, and then there was nothing but pain and the acrid scent of his blood.

* * * * *

“Dad?” Henry walked back into the house.  His face was pale, and tears pooled in his eyes.

“What’s wrong, kiddo?”  John pulled Henry into his arms and held him.  His son was no longer a child, but he felt small and frightened.  “Why aren’t you with Alek and the others at Rhett’s?”

Henry lifted his tear-streaked face.  “I made them drop me off.  Someone is hurt in the woods.  We have to help him.”