Chapter SIXTY-NINE

Ehlena's eyes refused to process what she was looking at: They just flat out no-way'd the situation.

It couldn't possibly be spiders. She couldn't possibly be looking at thousands upon thousands of spiders...oh, God, spiders and scorpions...covering not just the walls and floors, but...

In horror, she realized what was hanging in the center of the room. Hanging from ropes or chains. Hanging and covered with the teeming masses that blanketed every square inch of the cell.

"Rehvenge..." she moaned. "Dearest Virgin...Scribe."

Without thinking, she lurched forward, but Xhex's strong hand pulled her back. "No."

Struggling against the iron band locked on her upper arm, Ehlena shook her head violently. "We have to save him!"

"I'm not suggesting we leave him," the other female said tightly. "But if we go in there, we're going to be attacked like something out of the Bible. We have to figure out how to-"

A brilliant glow flared, cutting off Xhex and bringing Ehlena's head around. Vishous had removed the glove on his right hand, and as he lifted his palm up, the planes of his harsh face and the swirls of the tattoo around his eye stood out in sharp relief.

"Bug Be Gone." He flexed his illuminated fingers. "The Orkin man only wishes he had this kind of shit on his truck."

"And I have a buzz saw," Z said, grabbing a black tool from his belt. "If you can clear the way, we'll get him down."

Vishous crouched by the sharp edge of the swirling insects, his hand spotlighting the tangling, surging horde of small bodies and twitching, spinning legs.

Ehlena clapped her palm over her mouth, trying not to gag out loud. She couldn't imagine that all over her body. Rehvenge was alive...but how had he survived? Without being stung to death? Without going mad?

The light from the Brother's hand spiraled out in a straight line, singeing its way to where Rehv hung, leaving nothing but ashes and a burning, wet stench that made her pray for nose plugs. Once extended, the burning illumination split and spread, creating a path.

"I can hold it, but move fast," Vishous said.

Xhex and Zsadist leaped out into the cave, and the spiders on the ceiling responded by spinning threads and dripping down like blood seeping from a deep wound. Ehlena watched the two of them bat the invaders away for only a moment before she whipped off her backpack and dug in.

"You smoke, right?" she said to Vishous as she unwrapped her scarf and put it over her head. "Tell me you brought your lighter."

"What the hell do you..." V smiled when he saw the aerosol spray can of topical antibiotic in her hand. "It's in my ass pocket. Right side."

He shifted so she could work the heavy gold weight free, and as soon as she got the thing, she stepped out into the chamber. The can wasn't going to last long, so she didn't use it until she was standing right behind Xhex and Zsadist.

"Duck!" she said just as she depressed the spray button and fired up the lighter.

The two of them went low and she vaporized the air guard from above in a blast of flame.

With the way momentarily clear, Xhex got up on Z's shoulders and reached forward toward the chains with the buzz saw. As a high-pitched whirring noise filled the cave, Ehlena kept up her offensive, letting out bursts of fire that kept most of the bastards on the ceiling and not on the pair's heads and necks. The saw helped as well, sending sparks that further repulsed the arachnid guard, but as if in payback, spiders landed on the sleeves of Ehlena's jacket and crawled upward.

Rehvenge jerked. Then moved.

One of his arms reached out toward her, scorpions dropping off of it, spiders shuffling to stay on. The limb lifted slowly, as if the burden of its second skin of insects made it nearly too heavy to move.

"I'm here," Ehlena said roughly. "We're here for you-"

From over where they had come in, there was a thud. And abruptly the light Vishous was emitting went out, plunging the chamber into total darkness.

Giving what jailed Rehvenge free access to everyone in the cave.

From beneath the horrid masses that covered him, Rehvenge's fragile consciousness woke him the moment Ehlena came into the chamber's doorway. At first, he didn't trust what he sensed, however. In the thousand years he'd spent suspended in a living hell, he'd had many dreams of her, his brain hanging on to its memories, using them as food and water and air.

But this felt different.

Maybe it was just the break with reality he had been praying for? After all, although he had lamented that things had to come to an end when his mother had passed, he wanted only an end now-whether that was mental or physical, it didn't matter to him.

So perhaps he'd finally been granted one mercy in his wretched, fucked-up life.

Besides, the idea that Ehlena had actually come to get him out scared him more than where he was or what other tortures the future held.

Except...no. It was her, and there were other people with her... He could hear their voices. Then he caught a glow of light...and smelled some kind of rancid stench that reminded him of the nasty smell of a beach at low tide.

A high-pitched whine followed. Along with a series of...popping blasts?

Rehv had been unable to move since those first couple of days, his body growing weak fast, but he needed to reach out now and try to communicate, try to tell Ehlena and whoever she had come with to go away from this terrible place.

Focusing all his strength, he managed to lift his arm to wave her back.

The light was extinguished as quickly as it had appeared.

Only to be replaced by a red glow that meant his beloved was in mortal danger.

Fear for Ehlena made him panic, his body spasming on its tethers, flopping like an animal in a trap.

He needed to wake the fuck up. He needed to...wake the fuck up!

Chapter SEVENTY

Nothing. Fucking nothing.

Lash paused and looked inside another cell that was made up of an odd kind of glass. Empty. Just like the other three.

Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes and held still. No sounds. No smells other than the beeswax-and-fresh-dirt combo that had been there all along.

Wherever that group had gone, it was not down here, goddamn it.

Retracing his steps, he returned to where the corridor branched into three directions, and looked down. Someone had just been by: A trail of dark blue dots stretched off in two directions, to the right and straight ahead, meaning someone had come from one of those compass points and gone toward the other.

Bending down, Lash dragged his forefinger through the viscous dribble and rubbed the substance with his thumb. Symphath blood. God knew he'd spilled enough of his female's to know exactly what the shit was.

Lifting his hand to his nose, he inhaled. Not his female's. Someone else's. And it was unclear which way they'd been and where they were headed.

With nothing to go on, he was about to jog right when a bright red flare boiled out of the smallest of the three offshoots, the one that was in front of him. Jacking to his feet, he ran in that direction, following the trail of blood.

As the corridor eased into a turn and the glow intensified, he had no idea what the hell he was going to interrupt and didn't care. His princess was here, and someone was going to tell him where the fuck to find the bitch.

A hidden hallway appeared with no warning, breaking from the corridor without a jamb or doorstop. From down at the end of it, the red light was brilliant enough to sting the eyes, and Lash headed for the source.

He walked into a whole lot of...What the fuck?

Crumpled at entrance of a chamber was the Brother Vishous, and beyond him was a tableau that made no sense at all:

The princess was standing in what he'd dressed her in the night before, her bustier and thigh-high stockings and stilettos looking ridiculous out of the context of the bedroom. Her blue-black hair was a shaggy mess, her hands were dripping blue blood, her wild, red eyes the source of the glow that had guided him. In front of her, captivating her, was something like a gigantic side of beef that was covered in what appeared to be a lottery-winning load of insects.

Shit, those things were everywhere.

And clustered around the airborne body was that scarred Brother Zsadist, Xhex the security dyke, and some female vampire with a lighter in one hand and an aerosol can in the other.

That bunch weren't long for this world. Spiders and scorpions were on full advance, gunning for the trio who'd invaded their territory, and Lash had a brief, gory premonition of raw skeletons cleaned of meat.

But that wasn't his concern.

He wanted his female.

Who had ideas of her own, evidently. The princess lifted her bloody hand, and in a flash, the crawling bastards that papered the walls and the ceiling and the floor retreated like floodwaters sucked up by the thirsty earth. In their wake, Rehvenge was revealed, his heavy, naked weight strung up by bolts set into his shoulders. It seemed like a miracle that his skin wasn't pitted with a million bites, but it was almost as if he'd been preserved beneath that carpet of eight-legged and two-clawed monstrosities.

"He is mine," the princess shouted at no one in particular. "And no one takes him but me."

Lash's upper lip curled back, his fangs elongating in a rush. She did not just say that. She so totally did not just say that.

That was his woman.

One look at her face, though, and he knew the truth. That sick fixation as she stared at Rehvenge had never shined back at Lash, no matter how intense the sex had been... Nope, that single-minded obsession had never been trained on him. She'd just been marking time with him, waiting to get free-not because she didn't want to be held against her will, but because she wanted to get back with Rehvenge.

"You fucking cunt," he spat.

The princess wheeled around, her hair swinging in an arc. "How dare you address me like-"

Shots rang out in the stone room, one, two, three, four, loud as planks falling on the hard floor. The princess went rigid in shock as bullets plowed into her chest, tearing through her heart and lungs, blue blood bursting out of the exit wounds and splattering on the wall behind her.

"No!" Lash screamed, racing forward. He caught his lover as she fell, holding her gently. "No!"

He looked across the chamber. Xhex was lowering a gun, a slight smile on her lips, as if she'd just enjoyed a good meal.

The princess gripped the lapels of Lash's singed coat, the sharp yank on the fabric bringing his eyes back to her face.

She was not looking at him. She was staring at Rehvenge...reaching out to him.

"My love..." The princess's last words drifted up into the room.

Lash snarled and threw her body against the nearest wall, hoping the impact was what killed her, needing the satisfaction of knowing he was the one who'd fucked her up last.

"You"-he pointed to Xhex-"owe me twice now-"

The chanting was quiet at first, nothing but an echo reverberating down the corridors outside, but it grew louder and more insistent, louder...and more insistent, until he heard each syllable spoken by what had to be a hundred mouths. He understood nothing, the language not one he knew, but the shit was reverent, that was for sure.

Lash turned and faced the direction from which the chant came, being careful to get his back against the wall. He had a vague sense that the others were likewise bracing themselves for what was coming.

The symphaths arrived in two-by-two formation, their white robes and long, thin bodies not so much walking as swaying along. They were each wearing a contoured white facial mask, the kind that gave them black holes to see through and left their chin and jaws free. As they entered the chamber and began to circle Rehvenge, they didn't seem concerned in the slightest about the vampires or the princess's body or Lash himself.

Filing in, they gradually filled up the room, forcing the others to step back until all the interlopers were up tight against the walls, as Lash and the dead princess's body already were.

Time to get the fuck out of Dodge. Whatever this was wasn't something he needed to be involved with. Anger made his powers weaker, for one thing. For another, this situation could spiral out of control in an instant, and only part of it was his fight.

He wasn't leaving alone, though. He'd come for a female and he was leaving with one.

In a quick burst, he cut through one of the precise breaks in the symphaths' front-to-back ranks and came around to where Xhex stood. The female was looking up at Rehvenge all awestruck, like the assembly meant something. Which was just the kind of distraction a guy needed at a time like this.

Putting forward both his hands, Lash summoned a shadow out of thin air and spread it wide until it fell to the floor like a cloak.

With a quick sweep, he cast it up and over Xhex's head, disappearing her though in fact she was still in the room. As expected, she struggled, but one sharp fist to the head and she went lax, making the exodus so much easier.

Lash just dragged her out of the cave, right from under everyone's noses.

Chanting...chanting that rose up and filled the air with a rhythmic drumming.

But first, there had been gunshots, too.

Rehvenge peeled open his eyelids and had to blink his red vision clear. The spiders were gone from his body, gone from the chamber...replaced by the assembling masses of his symphath brethren, their ceremonial masks and robes making their features anonymous so that the power of their minds could shine through all the more clearly.

There was fresh blood.

His eyes shot over to-Oh, thank you, Virgin Scribe, Ehlena was still standing, and Zsadist was on her tight as Kevlar. That was the good news. Bad news? The pair was directly opposite the door, with, oh, maybe a hundred sin-eaters between them and the safe way out.

Although given the way she held his eyes, she wasn't leaving without him.

"Ehlena..." he whispered hoarsely. "No."

She nodded and mouthed, We're getting you free.

He looked away in frustration, watching the sway of the robes, knowing more than Ehlena could about what exactly this procession and the chanting meant.

Holy...shit. But how?

The question was answered as he saw the dead body of the princess against the wall. Her hands were stained blue, and he knew why: She had killed his uncle, her mate...the king.

Shaking himself, he wondered how she had done it. It couldn't have been easy-getting past the royal guard would have been nearly impossible and their uncle had been a crafty, suspicious piece of work.

Payback had been a bitch, however. Although she hadn't found death in the manner of symphaths, who preferred making their victims commit involuntary suicide. She'd been shot through the chest four times, and going by the accuracy of the cluster of wounds, he figured Xhex had done the shooting.

She always marked her victims, and the N, S, E, and W of the compass was one of her favorites when she was using a gun.

He refocused on Ehlena. She was still staring up at him, her eyes impossibly warm. For a moment, he allowed himself to get lost in the compassion, but then his vampire side took over. As a bonded male, the safety of his mate was his first and greatest priority, and weak though he was, his body jerked against the chains that held him aloft.

Go! he mouthed. When she shook her head, he glared at her. Why not?

She put her hand over her heart and mouthed back, Because.

He let his head fall loose on his stiff neck. What had changed her mind? he wondered. How was it possible she'd come for him after everything he'd done to her? And who had cracked and told her the truth?

He was going to kill them.

Assuming anyone got out of this alive.

The symphaths stopped chanting and fell still. After a moment of silence, they turned to face him with military precision and bowed low.

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.

Rehv lifted a shaking hand up, wondering if she would let him touch her.

She did more than that. She clasped his palm hard and brought it to her lips for a kiss. She was still talking to him, not that he heard what she was saying, and he tried to concentrate. Stay with me. That was what it looked as if she were trying to communicate to him. Or perhaps he was picking up on that through the way she held on to his hand.

Ehlena reached out and stroked his hair back, and he got the impression she mouthed, Breathe deep for me.

Rehv inhaled to make her happy, and as he did, she glanced at something or someone behind him. She gave a quick nod to whoever it was.

At then pain exploded in his right shoulder, his whole body torquing, his mouth cracking wide to let out the scream.

He didn't hear himself yell. Didn't see anything else. Agony knocked him out cold.