J. Ward - Lover Avenged

Their grids registered in a rush as each one of them presented him-or herself to Revhenge… It was everyone he remembered from long ago, his extended family.

They wanted him as their king. Regardless of his uncle’s will, they were choosing him.

The chains he hung from jerked and then started to lower him, the pain in his shoulders roaring, his stomach rolling in agony. But he couldn’t let on how weak he was. Surrounded by his sociopathic brethren, he knew this respectful-prostration bit wasn’t going to last long, and if he looked vulnerable in any way, he was fucked.

So he did the only thing that made sense.

As his feet touched the cool stone floor, he allowed his knees to buckle smoothly and forced his upper body to sit up straight-as if the classic contemplative pose of the king were exactly what he chose to assume, instead of the best he could do considering he’d been suspended by his clavicles for…

How long had it been? He had no idea.

Rehv glanced down at his body. Thinner. Much. But his skin was intact, which, given all the creepy-crawly crap was a fucking miracle.

He took a deep breath…and drew strength from his vampire side in order to fuel his symphath mind: With his shellan’s life at stake, he had reserves he wouldn’t be able to call on for anyone else.

Rehvenge lifted his head, lit the chamber with his amethyst eyes, and accepted the adulation.

As the candles out in the hall flared brilliantly, power surged through him, a great wave of command and domination rising, his vision shifting past red and into purple. In the base of his gut, he grounded himself and branded every single symphath in the colony with the knowledge that he could make them do anything. Slit their own throats. Fuck one another’s mates. Hunt down and kill animals or humans or anything else with a heartbeat.

The king was the CPU for the colony. The head brain. And these citizens of the race had been taught that lesson well by his uncle and his father: Symphaths were sociopaths with a deep sense of self-preservation-and the reason they chose Rehvenge, a half-breed, was because they wanted to keep the vampires away. With him at the helm, they could continue to live among themselves, sequestered in the colony.

From over in the corner, there was a sloppy shifting and a growl.

The princess rose to her feet in spite of her wounds, her hair a tangled mess around her maniacal face, her lingerie glossy with her own blue blood.

“They are mine to rule.” Her voice was reedy, but determined, her obsession sufficient to reanimate what was or should have been dead. “It is my rule, and you are mine.”

The assembled masses lifted their bowed heads and looked over. Then stared back at Rehv.

Fuck, the mind spell had been broken.

Rehv shot quick thoughts to Ehlena and Zsadist to block their cerebral cortexes by thinking of something, anything, the more clearly the better. Immediately, he sensed them changing their patterns, with Ehlena picturing…the oil painting from Montrag’s study?

Rehv refocused on the princess.

Who had noticed Ehlena and was lurching over with a dagger in her hand.

“He is mine!” she gurgled, blue blood dripping from her mouth.

Rehvenge bared his fangs and hissed like a great snake. With his will, he barreled into the princess’s mind, plowing through even the defenses she was able to marshal, taking over, popping open the lids on her lust to rule and to have him as a mate. Her desires made her stop and turn to him, her mad eyes full of love. Overcome with what she wanted, trembling in ecstatic visions, at the mercy of her weakness…

He waited until she was good and worked up.

Then he slammed her with one single message: Ehlena is my revered queen.

The five words shattered her. Broke her down more surely than if he had taken out a gun and shot another compass into her chest.

He was what she wanted to be.

He was what she wanted to have.

And she was getting the shaft.

The princess put her hands to her ears, like she was trying to stop the buzzing in her head, but he just spun her mind faster and faster and faster.

With a raw scream, she took the knife in her hand and thrust it into her gut all the way to the hilt. Unwilling to let her stop there, Rehv made her turn the weapon with a quick jerk to the right.

And then he called on a little help from his friends.

In a black tide, from out of small fissures in the walls, the multitude of spiders and scorpions returned. Once controlled by his uncle, the hordes were now under Rehvenge’s dominion, and they swelled forward, encompassing her.

He told them to bite and they did.

The princess screamed and clawed at them and succumbed, falling over onto a mattress of what would destroy her.

The symphaths watched it all.

While Ehlena turned her head into Zsadist’s shoulder, Rehv closed his eyes and sat still as a statue in the center of the room, promising each and every one of the citizens before him something worse if they did not obey him. Which, in the twisted value system of symphaths, only confirmed their choice of ruler.

When the princess ceased her sobs and fell still, Rehv lifted his lids and called off the insect guard. In their recession, they revealed her swollen, pitted body, and it was clear she wasn’t getting up again-the venom in her veins had stopped her heart and clogged her lungs and shut down her central nervous system.

No matter how great her desire, there was no reanimating that corpse.

Rehv calmly told his robed and masked subjects to retreat to their quarters and meditate on the display. In response, he got back the symphath version of love: They feared him totally and therefore respected him.

At least, for the time being.

As one, the symphaths stood and filed out, and Rehv shook his head at Ehlena and Z, praying they did what he needed them to-which was stay right where they were.

With any luck, his brethren in the masks would assume he’d kill the interlopers at his leisure.

Rehv waited until the last sin-eater was gone not just from the chamber, but the halls beyond. And then he released the hold on his spine.

As his body slammed into the floor, Ehlena rushed over to him, her mouth working like she was speaking to him. He couldn’t hear her, though, and her toffee-colored eyes seemed all wrong viewed through the rose lenses of his symphath eyes.

I’m sorry, he mouthed. I’m sorry.

Something fucked-up happened to his vision at that point, and Ehlena was suddenly rifling through a backpack brought over by…Christ, was Vishous here, too?

Rehv faded in and out as things were done to him and shots given. A little later, the whirring sound started up again.

Where was Xhex? he wondered dimly. Probably gone to clear the way out after she killed the princess. She was like that, always with the exit strategy. God knew the practice had defined her life.

As he thought about his head of security…his comrade…his friend…he was pissed off that she’d broken her vow to him, but not all that surprised. The real question was how she’d managed to get up here without the Moors. Unless they’d come as well?

The whirring sound stopped, and Zsadist sat back on his heels, shaking his head.

In slow motion, Rehv looked down at himself.

Ah, he was still tethered by his shoulders, and they weren’t having any luck cutting through the chains. Knowing his uncle, those links were made of something stronger than any saw could get through.

“Leave me…” he mumbled. “Just leave me. Go…”

Ehlena’s face came back in front of his, and her lips moved with deliberation, as if she were trying to explain things to him-

Abruptly, having her so close triggered the bonded male in his blood and caused some of his depth perception to return-and he was relieved as her face started to assume its normal contours…and colors.