TARNISHED (Book 5.5, The Caged Series (Novella)) (2 page)

Her seizures started to weaken as did the death grip she had on my arm. She was frightened, undoubtedly sensing that the end was near. Even though I knew it was an exercise in futility, I used my power on her, trying to force whatever ailed her to cease. For a fleeting moment, the tension in her eased.

I held her like a child, not wanting to move her. Nothing could help her, and inflicting any more pain on her seemed cruel, so I sat by her bed and rocked her until death came for her.

* * *

The Healer had fallen. I watched as the life left her eyes and she choked on her last blood-filled breath. Before I was born, Healers fell with regularity, none of us capable of keeping them alive forever, but after I had gained control of the brothers, that stopped. Until that moment.

Disbelief and anger coursed through me. Nothing about her passing made sense. She had been fine when I left her, but she was lying on the ground choking on her blood, the source of which I could not find, when I returned. Someone had targeted her, and the attack was both devious and malicious. To attack the PC was madness, but to go after the one we cherished most was insanity. All in the supernatural community knew this. They also knew that the penalty for such an act was death.

A very painful one.

I held her delicately as I carried her back to the remote village where the brothers lived, her angelic face stained with blood and treachery. It would haunt my dreams for many years.

When I arrived, Ares stood waiting in the great hall where all official PC business took place. His anger was palpable.

“What has happened to her?” he asked, taking Isadora from me.

“She was murdered. Poison was the culprit, I suspect, since there are no signs of injury anywhere on her body.”

He placed her down gently on a long cypress table before turning on me.

“You have failed her, Aniketos. And in so doing, you have failed me.”

I nodded once in a sharp motion. He was right. Had I taken my job more seriously in that moment, she would likely have still been alive. It was a harsh lesson, but one that needed learning. In order to serve as I was designed to do, there was no room for trivialities, jovialities, or anything else of the sort. Lives depended on me. I would not let them down again. From that moment on, I was driven to be only that mindless warrior and nothing more. I felt a shift deep within me smite out any light I still possessed.

Instead, a cold darkness pervaded.

“We must replace her at once,” Ares decreed. His voice was emotionless, and I realized that it was a trait he'd earned after centuries of warring. Casualties occurred. They could not slow you down. “I must go and meet with the keeper of the Healers and assess the candidates. You will bind her to us, Aniketos, and with any luck, this time you'll manage to keep her alive.”

He pushed past me toward the door, not sparing a backward glance.

“What of the body?” I asked, feeling little more than the need for revenge.

“Leave her. She will fade on her own.”

“And what of the perpetrators?”

“This has all the markings of the
elemental ones
,” he sneered, using the most demeaning term for the fairies. “The fey are extremely sneaky, and though they will not have left any trace of their actions, I know this is their doing. Mark my words, Aniketos, they need to be brought down. Not today. Not tomorrow, but they will be put to death. All of them.” With a declaration of war as his parting words, he left me alone with the body of our Healer, to protect her in death though I was unable to in life.

“That is a task I will gladly carry out,” I whispered into the darkness as it swallowed me. “May the wind carry my words to them. I want them to know that death is coming.”

The Poison

Ares returned days later with his only potential Healer. Her appearance was arresting, her beautiful dark hair hanging long and straight down her back in a braid. Her brown eyes were mesmerizing, full of promise and eagerness to serve. Her passion was plain. She was brought before the brotherhood by Ares to be scrutinized by all of us, but I alone would have the say as to whether or not she would be bound to us. Judging by her interest in me, she knew that all too well.

I approached her slowly as she stood, unfaltering in her gaze. The heat that emanated from it fueled me, and I soon found myself standing nose-to-nose with her.

“You are the one,” she said as a statement, not a question. Her self-assuredness was intoxicating. “Say it is done,” she whispered up to me as her fingers ran lightly down my arms. “Say that I will serve you for eternity.”

Her words were right, but their tone held another meaning altogether. It was not just the PC she wanted to serve; it was me in particular. My heart raced at the thought.

“Tell me your name, girl,” I demanded, my voice low and commanding.

“Sophie, daughter of Herodotus,” she replied, her eyes still speaking more than her words.

“And you will serve my brothers and me?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that once bound you are bound for an eternity?”

“Yes.”

“And if you ever fail us, you will be stripped of your bond and die as you should have before your vow of service was taken?”

“I understand,” she said softly, weaving her arms around my back. “And I accept.”

The fire between us raged, and suddenly, I didn't care that anyone else was in that room. I wanted to be in her. Mark her. Mate her. She was a sweet darkness that I needed to explore.

“It seems as though you two are quite taken with one another,” Ares commented from somewhere deep in the room. “I had a feeling that might happen. There's something about her that just draws you in, isn't there, Aniketos?” He came to stand beside us, but I hardly noticed. “If you choose to do this, you may be bound to her personally as well as binding her to the PC. Is that of interest to you both?”

She pressed herself tighter against me and my chest rumbled with approval. Whatever needed to be done had to happen quickly. I wasn't certain I could wait until the officiations were through.

We didn't part through the entire ceremony, Sophie clinging to me as if I were the very air she needed and I counting down the seconds until I could bury myself inside her. My thoughts grew dark while I should have been listening to the goings-on around me, but they could not be helped. My entire focus was on what I was going to do to her the second we were alone. My muscles flexed as I fought against my rapidly failing better judgment.

The second the pact was sealed, I threw her over my shoulder and ran to my home. She laughed wickedly as her head bounced off of my back. I had no concern for her comfort on the way, and once we arrived, I had none either. The things we did to each other were beyond depraved. Nothing was off-limits between us, and it seemed the more we did, the lower we sank.

When I awoke the next day, starving and exhausted, I looked up to find her preparing something for me, that same wicked smile painted across her face.

“You need to eat,” she told me, bringing me a bowl of various fruits. “You must keep your strength up for the trials ahead.”

I lunged at her, scooping her in my arms and pinning her against the wall.

“I must keep my strength up for you,” I countered, pushing her robe up well above her waist.

“And you will, but first there are things that require your attention. Ares told me of your power, your abilities...your birthright. But he is concerned for you, Aniketos. He fears that what softness you still possess will be your undoing.” Her eyes averted mine for a moment while she collected her words. “I know how the last Healer was lost...”

A growl came from me, low and warning.

“You will never speak of her again, do you understand? Never. The man that allowed that to happen no longer exists. He is dead. Gone. Your concerns are a waste of breath. There is no longer light burdening me.”

“Good,” she replied with a sinister stare. “Now, let's prepare you for what is to come...”

* * *

“Prepare” had been an odd choice of words. I had not planned to fuck my enemies to death, but as we tore apart my home in a sex-driven rage, I felt myself settling into a brutal place in my mind. One that I had rarely ventured to before Isadora's death and had scarcely shown to the outside world—only doing so when the situation warranted it. But more and more of him slipped to the forefront with our every encounter; Sophie was like a dark siren, calling him forth with every touch.

Ares could not have been more pleased to see my transformation and was quick to praise Sophie for the exemplary influence she had on me. “A true warrior's mate,” he called her, and it seemed as though the other brothers approved of her too. At first.

As violence pervaded my bedroom, it also surrounded my life. There was great unrest in the supernatural world, leaving my brothers and me very busy. And there were many casualties. Sophie struggled to keep pace and proximity to the numerous battles we faced, but even with all her talents, we lost many. It became apparent that having one Healer would no longer suffice as the otherworldlies spread throughout the broadening lands.

Ares and I strategized at length, trying to come up with a suitable solution. After a great time, we decided there was no choice but to place brothers in locations permanently, far away from the rest of the PC. Those assignments would leave them isolated and without the services of Sophie, so we sought out Healers who were willing to serve, though they would receive none of the advantages that Sophie did. They would not be bound to us. They would not gain immortality. They would live on the outskirts of a war and likely become casualties of it themselves. Only a very few accepted those circumstances, but those that did became the changing tide that we needed to better protect the human world from those that were not and keep the death toll of the PC brothers to a minimum. Ares had not been in a fathering way for many years. Our numbers seemed finite until that fact changed.

From that point on, the brothers were spread wide across the world. Elders, guardians and warriors of Ares from his days of reign, were stationed with them to report back to Ares and maintain a hierarchy. None, however, were ever assigned to me. Ares looked at me as his protégé and I answered only to him, and those in my company all answered to me. The power was intoxicating.

Wherever I went, so did Sophie. For well over a century, I fought and fucked my way through life, reveling in the routine. They both fueled me equally, and I eventually couldn't remember what life was like before they consumed it. It was apparent that any goodness I'd once had in me was long gone, utterly consumed by the depravity that then filled me.

The PC's reputation grew within the supernatural community during that time. What they once viewed as a peacekeeping organization quickly became known as a virtual terrorist group. They all feared us, though some did their best not to let that fact become known. The more formidable ones had a nasty tendency to want to overthrow us, which never ended well for them. Eventually, they learned that their efforts would only be in vain. The feeling of walking into a coven, a pack, a seethe, or any other paranormal family, and sensing their terror did nothing to stop my tendencies. It only encouraged them.

While they all cowered at the mere mention of the brotherhood, they feared me above all the rest.

They would soon see why that was wise.

The Attack

I only left Sophie for a moment―hardly long enough for someone to make an attempt on her life. But they did. And they paid for it dearly.

There was unrest in the werewolf community, infesting the far eastern lands. I had been dispatched to help those who were permanently stationed there, knowing that a war was on the brink and that human casualties would be exponential if it were allowed to occur. In light of that knowledge, Sophie traveled with us. Despite our reputation for ruthlessness, our numbers continued to be an issue. Had a battle been waged between the PC and the werewolves, we would have been greatly outnumbered. Undoubtedly, the PC would have diminished as a result, even with Sophie and me present.

So, with her in tow, we made the long journey east to rendezvous with Jerzyr and the others. Upon our arrival, we devised a plan to subdue the wolves before it came to a bloodbath. Though I desperately wanted to shed my share of theirs, Ares warned against it before we left, exposing a side I hadn't seen for a century or two―a cautious one. Heeding his words, we demanded a meeting with the alphas involved in the feud. I felt it best to leave Sophie behind with some of the brothers, expecting to return before sundown.

I never made it far.

A shrill cry split the cold winter air around us, and I wheeled in the direction it came from―Sophie's shelter. In seconds I was at her side, ready to kill anyone or anything that posed a threat. And I found one.

What appeared to be a young boy stood beside her, arm outstretched, with a low glowing light emanating from it.
Fey...
Sophie cowered in the corner, her eyes rolled back in her head as her body convulsed violently. He was killing her, just as the fey had killed Isadora. There was no more conjecture about their guilt in that murder once I saw what was transpiring before me.