Annie Nicholas - Catch

Rurik lifted his chin and our gazes met. Fear dawned in his blue eyes. “No,” he whispered.

A tray of bloody instruments stood next to him, which Luckard picked through as if shopping for a ripe piece of fruit. He glanced at my lover. “I understand Tane gave you the drug in Budapest to use on Dragos.” He held a thin, sharp dagger close to his face and twirled it in his fingers.

I could see Rurik’s Adam apple work as he swallowed. “Yes.” He stared at me. “I never asked for its source. I didn’t care.”

Luckard ran the edge of the blade along his thumb. A trickle of blood oozed from the cut. “I believe you.” Twisting to face Tane, he pointed with the blade. “Beg him to tell you.”

“No.” He shook his head. The muscle of his abdomen tensed as if bracing for a blow, however Luckard turned from him.

With slow deliberate steps, he approached me, spinning the blade in his hand.

“Rurik.” I knew he couldn’t help, except his name came to my lips like a reflex.

He’d saved my skin so many other times. Scrabbling on my hands and knees, I scurried away from my nightmare, but the door was on the other side of the room.

“What’s he going to do?” I heard Bel’s soft voice. Searching the room, I saw her next to Archios in the far corner. He held her in his arms.

Rurik shifted in his bindings to face them. “Archios, don’t let him do this. Please, brother.”

I leaned against the wall, nowhere to go, my knees drawn to my chest. The galloping beat of my heart sounded in my ears.

“Brother? Our clan, including you, abandoned me to those inquisition monsters. It’s your fault my Bel suffered and changed.” Archios stroked her disheveled golden hair. “I will never forgive any of you for leaving her in Dragos’s care. Now you can watch your woman suffer.”

“We had no choice. How could we have disobeyed him?”

“We always have choices.” He turned his back to Rurik and blocked my view of Bel.

The Nosferatu snatched my left wrist and yanked to stretch out my arm. He set the knife’s blade on the tender underside. “Let’s see how easy it is to skin you, Rabbit.”

“Tane!” Rurik shouted, his voice straining with desperation.

My blood bound vampire raised his head for the first time since Luckard dragged me into the room. Dark shadows circled his eyes and his gaze wandered from Rurik to me.

The situation didn’t seem to register in his face. “What would you have me do? Offer the world to a madman on a silver platter?” He rested his chin on his chest. “I wish I’d never discovered it.”

In my head, I sensed his touch. “Let me at least take your pain, Connie.”

“Don’t give up. Please, don’t give up.” Anger boiled away my fear. “Colby’s on his way with Gwen and your people.”

Nothing showed on his exterior at my comment, but I felt his tremor of hope. He slipped past my shield and strengthened them with his presence in my head. “You’re strong and stubborn. Outlast him.”

Even with Tane shielding me in his drugged state, a sharp pain shot up my arm as the blade bit into my flesh with a surgeon’s slow precision. A scream tore from my throat.

“No, no stop!” Bel’s shout competed with my cries. She came into my view and grabbed Luckard’s hands. Tugging and pulling, she didn’t move him any. He glanced over his shoulder at her, giving me a clear shot.

Cranking my leg to my chest, I let loose a heel kick to his chin, which knocked his head back. The momentum took him over so he landed on his ass. I rose, but he still gripped my wrist. “Pry his fingers loose,” I ordered Bel.

She worked at them while I rained kicks at every available part of Luckard’s body.

A set of strong arms surround Bel’s small waist and lifted her away. Archios carried her from the room kicking and screaming. She cried out, “She’s my only friend. She came here to help you.”

Quick to respond, Luckard twisted my arm at a sharp angle.

I fell to my knees with a howl, trying to prevent him from breaking it. The muscles in my shoulder wrenched at the rough treatment.

Luckard’s face filled my field of vision. “Have you ever seen a butcher take apart a chicken? People are just as tender.”

I could see in Luckard’s face, the sincere promise to follow through with his threat to dismember me.

Rurik strained at the manacles that held him tight to the wall. He bucked and yanked, every muscle bulging in effort until the right chain pulled loose from the wall. Plaster dust peppered the air and wood splinters rained down on us.

Luckard twisted around with a grin on his face before he flipped me onto my stomach, rested his knee between my shoulders, and pinned me to the ground. “I think we’re getting somewhere, Archios,” he called out, then picked up the blade again.

Terror threaded its way through my veins like ice water. Where the hell were Colby and Gwen? What had only been a few minutes felt like hours. My heart beat so hard it should have jumped out of my chest by now. I stared at my lover, pleading with my eyes.

Rurik wrapped the last chain around his arm. With his legs braced to the wall, he fought to break its hold.

The knife cut into my arm, deeper this time, and I shrieked at the agony. Trapped under Luckard’s knee, I couldn’t get away. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to stand it anymore.

“Rabb—Connie.”

I peeked at Tane. He’d been so quiet and still, I thought he’d surrendered to our fates, but now determination was set in his jaw. With a sharp jerk, he tore his left shoulder from the bar, leaving a huge gaping wound with snapped bones poking out.

Blood oozed as they began to knit back together before my eyes.

His intense pain rolled from him and struck me like a tsunami through our bond.

Blind and deaf to anything else, I couldn’t breathe as I drowned in torment.

Then a wall slammed down, cutting it off.

I stared at Tane and our gazes met. With his eyes, he pleaded for forgiveness as he did his best to shield me, despite the drugs that weakened him.

The sound of a chain snapping caught both of our attention. Rurik moved so fast, I never even saw him until he stood over me. He grabbed Luckard by the back of his t-shirt and hauled him away.

Archios returned to the room without Bel as Luckard spun in my lover’s grip then shoved him across the room toward his accomplice. “Take care of him. I’ll finish her.”

He licked his lips as his gaze fell to my bleeding arm.

I rose to a sitting position and pressed my wound to my chest, trying to stand, but the floor was slick with my blood.

Catching Rurik, Archios spun him around and punched him across the jaw.

Tane roared as he tore his other shoulder free.

“Luckard, secure Tane first. The girl can wait,” Archios ordered.

The Nosferatu hesitated. He grimaced in disappointment and went to his escaping prisoner. “Why can’t you cooperate?” he shouted.

“Leave these mad ideas behind.” Tane pushed Luckard, who laughed at my bald vampire’s statement. “Archios has poisoned your mind. You never used to lust for power.”

“ I went to him , Tane. He only wishes to protect his little bloodthirsty wife from your no tolerance idealism.”

Something finally clicked in my head like a missing puzzle piece. Bel’s hunger, the six dead girls made to look pretty like dolls, her admission of being lonely and my being her only friend. The facts added together equaled Bel as the killer Colby hunted. We kept assuming whoever was trying to assassinate Tane was the murderer too.

The tray of torture tools tumbled to the floor, knocked over by both Archios and Rurik, wrestling like titans in the far corner. A wooden stake skittered close to my feet.