Soul Enslaved (Sons of Wrath Book 3) (59 page)

He could relate in some ways. When Zeke had gone missing, it’d fucked with his mind so much he’d felt sick. No female could’ve stolen those moments of relentless mind fuckery and guilt that’d wracked his brain. Jessica had been a good example. A momentary release, but at the end of it all, he’d made a much bigger mistake and still lamented over Zeke’s disappearance.

One of only a handful of times Gavin had ever felt helpless.

Gavius stood beside the tree, as tall and as straight as he could, and directed his bow toward the hart about a quarter furlong away. He released the arrow, holding a breath as it whizzed through the air and struck the beast broadside.

“A most splendid shot,” Legarrod whispered from beside him, a smile in his tone.

The hart bounded deeper into the woods, and both boys slid from the tree they’d hidden in and crossed to the spot where the hart had been when hit. Blood coated the bracken strewn about the forest floor.

“Lungs.” Gavius said quietly, studying the width of the blood trail. “Let us go.”

“Will thee not wait? Track the beast?”

“Methinks death will be upon him before we.” Gavius led the way, following the trail.

“One day, I hope to be as skilled as thou, Brother.”

Gavius smirked. “More than one day if thou wishes to match mine.” He nudged Legarrod’s shoulder and chuckled.

***

Dusk fell over the woods as both boys trudged back toward the village. Gavius threw out a hand, halting his brother’s step, and lifted his nose at the scent of burning wood. A distant ruckus, screaming, perked his ears.

The boys inched closer, ducking low to remain hidden by the brush.

Horror and panic swirled in Gavius’s gut as he peered over the edge of the woods, to the village—their village—burning in flames.

More screams rose from below.

Bodies scurried about in chaos.

The distinct scent of seared flesh reached Gavius’s nose. His mouth gaped.
Mother
.

“Remain here.” Gavius pressed a hand against Legarrod’s shoulder. “Give me thy word. Do not wander from this place.”

“No, I’m coming with thee.”

“Legarrod, thou will stay. When darkness falls, meet me at the aspen and blow the whistle.” Gavius gave an earnest stare.

The boy nodded. “By my troth.”

Gavius clutched his brother tightly. “No matter what happens, should thou not hear the return call of the whistle, thou art to go on without me.”

He nodded a second time, a tear spilling down his cheek. “I bid you … be safe. Fare thee well, Brother.”

“I will see you anon.” Gavius slinked down the hill toward the village, hiding in brush and shadows.

Gavin flinched at the memory. Thoughts of Legarrod always seemed to mess with his head. He was just a boy. An innocent boy, whose death served as reminder that the terrors of the world didn’t pardon even the pure. It didn’t spare young brothers.

Or sisters.

Gavin turned his attention back to Sabelle. Perhaps atrocities didn’t often bank on life lessons. And death’s hand could remain out of reach—so long as there was someone to push it aside.

The quiet vibration of Gavin’s phone buzzed beside him and he lifted it to his ear. “Yeah.”

“Bossman, we have him.” Xander’s voice always seemed to carry some amusement when it came to exacting vengeance. “We’ll meet you in the catacombs.”

“I’m on my way.”

Gavin gently rose from the bed, careful not to wake Sabelle from her slumber. Looking forward to meting justice where innocence had been viciously robbed, he stuffed his most prized blade into the holster at his hip before slipping from the room—it’d been given to him by a hunter long ago and carried immaculate precision when cutting and severing bone. It also had a nice, curved hook for gutting.

He flexed his fingers as he descended toward the catacombs. Whatever it took to help Sabelle get better. He’d blow her nightmares right out of her head.

At the bottom of the staircase, screams echoed, and Gavin hastened his pace.

Jessica stood clinging to the bars of her cage, but he ignored her, ignored her plea to be set free, and continued on toward what the demons called the morgue. Once a tomb for the dead, the space had been converted into a surgical room.

Gavin headed over to where Logan hovered over a stainless steel table, upon which lay a large male, unconscious and strapped down. His leg had been charred to a blackened stump—no doubt at the hand of Ferno, who stood off in the corner, lip peeled back in a snarl.

“Did you kill him?” Gavin asked.

“No.” Logan answered for Ferno. “Damn near, though.”

“What happened?” Gavin crossed his arms.

Logan’s eyes glowed red, teeth gritted. “We found him with a female prisoner. If that were my female?” Logan punched his fist against the concrete wall, knocking a hole in one of the blocks. “He deserves merciless pain.”

“Sabelle won’t tell me what he did. But the wounds speak for themselves.” Gavin clenched his hands even tighter. “He will not hurt another once I’ve finished with him.”

CHAPTER 31

Sabelle awoke to find Gavin crouched at the side of the bed. Black smudges marked below eyes that looked weary. So broken. Why hadn’t she noticed how sad he’d begun to look?

She reached out a hand to stroke his cheek. “Hey.”

He reached out, gripping tight to her wrist. “I want you to see something.”

She frowned at the seriousness of his tone. “What is it?”

“It’s not something I can explain. I have to show you.” At her nod, he slid his hands under her legs and lifted her from the bed.

“Gavin, I can walk. Please, put me down.”

“I’m not carrying you for you, Sabelle. I just need to hold on to you. For myself.”

“You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

He said nothing as he carried her down the staircase, a hallway, through the door to the catacombs, and down the flight of stairs, where the cold air chilled her skin.

They passed Jessica in the cell. “Why is she …” Sabelle trailed off when screams came into sharp clarity. Still held in Gavin’s arms, Sabelle stared at him, looking for any explanation in his expression. Nothing. Only a stoic mask of indifference stared outward.

The scent of blood hit the back of her throat, overpowered by something stronger, greasy in the air, like cooked meat, as he set her down inside a large domed room. Trembles started at her neck, traveled her spine, and spread to her limbs, as she caught sight of the man strapped to the table.

Her tormentor. The one who’d done the most unspeakable acts, including lie about her children and Gavin. She only recognized the tattoo on his neck—without that, his bloodied, beaten body would’ve left his identity a complete mystery. His limbs had been burned to blackened stumps, as if melted in flames.

Her gaze flitted to Ferno.
Or hellsfire
.

His guts had spilled onto the table, stringing from his open abdominal cavity. Nothing more than a moving, writhing torso, like a corpse that continued to breathe. He coughed, the choking gurgle twisting her stomach.

“This is the one who hurt you. Look at his face.” Gavin gritted his teeth through the words. “I hurt him. For you. I made him pay for what he did to you.”

Tears spilled onto her cheek. She couldn’t look at him. The cruelty in his punishment wasn’t what she knew of Gavin, and she hated that
she
had brought him to such a grotesque level of violence. “Why did you do this?”

“Because I want you to know that I will always protect you. I will side with the devil himself and gladly hand over my soul to keep you safe. Nothing is too cruel or inhumane for what this man owes you.” Nostrils flared, his jaw tightened. “I love you Sabelle. If killing him helps take away those nightmares plaguing your head, if it helps you put those images somewhere they will never hurt you again, then it’s worth all the punishment of the gods. Let them curse me and strike me down for what I’ve done.”

He stepped to the side of what was left of the guard and leaned forward, his lips close to the mutilated flesh where an ear used to be. “I want you to look at her. At the beauty you almost destroyed. Beauty you will never have because beasts like you tear it down and bastardize it. Look at her. How she glows regardless of you. You didn’t win. And she will dance in moonbeams on the ground under which your bones will lay to waste.”

“Fuck … her.”

Sabelle’s jaw trembled. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. The man had robbed her. Stolen so much from her.

Gavin’s chest rose and fell, his lip downturned into a grimace. “Tell me, Sabelle, with what he did to you … what he did to countless others … would you grant him mercy?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks, as a visual of her children lying bloodied side by side flashed through her mind. An image
he
planted there while he ravaged her body. Beat her. Before trying to convince her that Gavin had done those things. The memories resided in a place within her mind she’d come to fear. He’d created a secret door that could never be unlocked, but one she’d always dread. “No,” she ground out.

Gavin came back around the table, blocking her view of him, as he stood in front of her. “From this moment forward, this nightmare is over.”

She nodded, and he kissed her forehead.

“Logan, please escort Sabelle back to her room.”

Gavin brought both of her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Du amec.”

A gentle hand pressed into her back and guided her forward. “C’mon, Sabelle, you don’t want to see this.” Logan’s words were calm and empathetic—she’d never heard him speak so kindly—and he wrapped an arm across her back, coaxing her into the hallway—right before a gut-wrenching scream bounced off the walls, climbed to a disturbing pitch and fractured into silence.

CHAPTER 32

Gavin glanced over at Sabelle, her eyes fluttering with what seemed to be a new nightmare brewing. It’d been almost a week since he’d mutilated her flesh and blood nightmare, but it hadn’t seemed to matter. Her nightmares persisted, which meant his nightmare had only just begun.

Together, they were nightmares. Helpless in the dark. Reaching for something to grasp, but never finding anything more than new torment. Like two planets rotating beside each other in pitch blackness, but never touching.

He needed her sunlight. Her warmth. That smile that he missed—the one that could transport him from his own hell, straight to heaven. As he stared at the pinching of her brows, the tension in her muscles, the silent outcries, a truth slammed into his chest with the force of a semi, stealing breath and leaving a gaping hole at his heart.

Her words from days before, in the art nook when he’d spoken of his mother’s suicide, flashed through his mind.

Sometimes there’s nothing … to eliminate that kind of pain,
she’d said.

He couldn’t help her. Couldn’t fix her. Couldn’t make it right by her. Even though he’d killed the man who hurt her. He’d given her the choice of how he’d die. She still suffered.

No matter how much he told her everything would be okay. No matter how many punches he caught in the jaw, or how much time he let pass, his love simply wasn’t strong enough to save her from whatever hell she suffered night after night.

Gavin had seen the same sadness in his mother. That yearning for death. Sabelle’s might not have been as strong, but it was there. Whatever those bastards did to her seemed to be stronger than he was, gripping her with fierceness.

He glanced down at the bracelet clinging to her wrist. The darkness inside her head was a place from which not even the angels could protect her. Physical wounds healed, but did the mind? Not from what he’d seen. The mind remained locked in that moment of pain.

Gavin couldn’t watch her die that way. Even if she never killed herself, would she ever be the same? Would she ever smile again? Say some smartass remark that forced him to laugh, even if he didn’t want to? Selfish, yeah. So what. He wanted that happiness for her. Wanted her to find her reason for living again. She was slipping from him, and every ounce of lost grip killed him. Didn’t matter how much he loved her. Didn’t matter how much he assured her. Sabelle had to climb from the darkness herself. and no one, not even he, could help her find the light.

But maybe.

If Gavin could deliver on one promise, one glimmer of hope, maybe she would turn around. Maybe she would return to happiness. Rise up from the death claiming that spirit he loved. The fire in her voice and the stars in her eyes that dreamed of something better.

If Sabelle up and decided to release him of enslavement, he’d be a dead man, forced to endure the hell of Obsidius, followed by what would probably be the most painful and miserable absolute death he’d ever witnessed.

What did he have to lose?

Nothing.

The one thing he couldn’t give his mother, he could give to Sabelle. It wouldn’t fill the loss of their unborn son, but it might guide her back to the light. Because Gavin sure as fuck didn’t want to think of her lifeless expression, hanging from a rafter. He sure as hell didn’t want to know any kind of relief without Sabelle in his life.

He leaned in, as she mumbled in dreams. “I will do anything—
everything
—to bring her back to you.”

He’d let Zayne take the case. Only problem there was Zayne himself. His brother lived life drowning in drugs, aside from a short stint when he’d had actually found some glimmer of happiness with Shey. It’d killed the brothers almost as much as it killed Ferno and Zayne when she died. More so, when the brother hopped right back into the downward spiral of depression.

Sending him into the underbelly of the city could’ve been the most illogical thing Gavin had ever done in his life. He hadn’t heard from him since the meeting in his office. If Zayne was alive, or facedown, passed out in a ditch, Gavin wouldn’t know. The brother didn’t play by the rules. Didn’t give a shit about following orders and doing the right thing. Much as he wanted to trust him, Gavin couldn’t rely on Zayne. He had to get Denya back to Sabelle, which meant he’d have to do it himself.