Blood Destiny (30 page)

Braden shouted his pain, and Jocelyn impulsively jumped up to go to his aid when all of a sudden, his cries fell silent, and the sight of an enormous gray wolf moving stealthily in her direction tore her attention away from the atrocity occurring behind the door.

Willie!

He was fully transformed and fevered in his rage, his hungry yellow eyes glaring at Jocelyn. He slowly swept around the corner of the room, stalking her in a wide arc, with his teeth drawn back in a snarl so distorted—he appeared to be smiling.

Jocelyn's heart stopped.

Surely, Braden was dead.

And now, so was she.

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Her end had come in the dark corner of a blackened shed, in the middle of the forest...at the hands of a loathsome creature. In the midst of her fear, as a part of her soul withdrew in acceptance of her fate, a calm determination suddenly took hold of her, and she glanced downward. Once again, the thought came...unbidden: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

She said the words aloud—as there was absolutely nothing left to lose. Death at the hands of the vampire would surely be less violent than the rabid wolf.

Without thinking or pausing, Jocelyn reached down and pulled at the heavy pin attached to the locking mechanism: the only safeguard holding the manacles in place.

With a burst of preternatural speed, the creature launched himself from the wooden platform like a ferocious rocket, hurling into space at the lycan. Willie and the Dark One met in midair, their bodies tangled in a desperate struggle for life, and the ensuing carnage that rained down upon the werewolf was like a cloud of volcanic ash hailing from the sky. The vampire's claws and fangs mangled Willie's throat in an explosion of violence and rage.

Flesh tore. Blood spattered. And bones cracked...as Willie's agonized screams pierced the air.

Jocelyn didn't stick around to watch the show.

She was desperate to help Braden, but she knew his only hope—their only hope—lay with Nathaniel and his brothers.

She practically hurtled the guillotine on her way out the door, dodging just outside of Tristan's reach as she raced frantically for the bench where she had seen the flares.

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She was still in full stride as she grabbed a handful of the fiery sticks and a small box of matches...careful not to miss a step as she sprinted out the front door into the frigid night.

The cold wind knocked the air out of her body, and she could hear Tristan closing the distance behind her, growling like a wild animal, yet she kept her focus on the flares...as her trembling hands caught at a match.

He was close. Too close.

"Damnit!" She was trembling. Her fingers refused to work.

The first two matches failed to light, and she dropped them in the snow.

Tristan, the golden wolf, was bounding across the snow now in full stride. A primal scream of terror pierced the night as Jocelyn saw his fangs and turned back once again to the flares.

"Light! Light!" she pleaded, striking the match again.

Once...twice...three times. A small flame flickered delicately in the wind, and she held it under a trembling hand, willing it to stay lit, praying the snow would not extinguish her only hope.

The match held, and she lit the end of the fuse, even as she felt Tristan's warm breath on her neck...searing her skin.

Panting, he caught her arm in his muzzle. As huge teeth sank deep into her flesh, he tried to wrench the flare free, but Jocelyn refused to let go. She knew how to operate under pressure. She had been trained to stay calm under duress, and she poured every ounce of her willpower into shutting out the pain...and getting off that flare. Deftly, she switched the 284

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flare into her other hand, trying to hold back the powerful bout of nausea that was threatening to make her pass out.

As Tristan released her empty arm and lunged at her other hand, Jocelyn quickly turned her back to him and took the full brunt of the blow between her shoulder blades. Her body flew forward, flying face down into the snow. Still, she held the hand with the flare in it up and over her head, like a circus acrobat trying feverishly to prevent a glass of water from spilling...while walking on a tight wire.

Tristan was shape-shifting behind her now, the wolf giving way to the man. His powerful arm reached out to overtake hers, but not before the flare shot free, soaring up into the sky like a shooting star. Red and orange flames exploded like fireworks, snow mixing with phosphorus, as the glowing embers rained back down on their heads.

Tristan was enraged. Mindless from the fury of her disobedience and the pain Braden had inflicted upon him. He grabbed her by the back of her jacket and lifted her off the ground with one hand. And then he flipped her over like a rag doll, brutally slamming her back into the hard white ground, her face staring up into his wild eyes.

"He won't make it in time," he snarled. "Your boyfriend.

And when he does, he won't want you anymore." He laughed, his guttural bark an evil, twisted sound. "Vampires are like that. Territorial bastards."

Jocelyn cried out as he straddled her body, his muscles contracting, one knee on either side of her waist. He ripped at her clothes, and the material came apart like paper, 285

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shredding easily into rags as he tossed it aside, glaring hungrily at her exposed flesh.

"Tristan, please...stop!"

She tried to struggle but it was no use. Her head was spinning, and her mangled arm was on fire. And Tristan seemed a man possessed. An animal without conscience or mercy.

He grabbed her by the throat and pressed down, strangling the air out of her with one powerful hand while he ripped away her remaining clothes with the other. Only when she was close to passing out did he release her throat, and then, only long enough to pry open her legs.

Already naked from the transformation—man to wolf and back again—there was nothing to block his enraged arousal from swift, easy penetration.

Jocelyn's eyes teared up as the freezing wet snow clung to her hair, the frigid cold numbing her brain. She could feel Tristan's breath on her face, the head of his shaft pressing against her entry. In a last ditch effort to escape the full impact of the assault, she shut herself off from her emotions and glanced up at the sky. The soft, swirling flakes glittered like a thousand diamonds beneath the midnight canvas, the faint hue of red and orange still glistening in the storm like a fiery rainbow.

She sniffed the air, smelling the wet, the cold, the hot burning metal, and tried to look for a star. A constellation.

Maybe her and Nathaniel's Cassiopeia. Yeah, that would be good. She would search for Cassiopeia. Anything to remove her from where she was.

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But Tristan wasn't about to let her get away with being somewhere else. Feeling anything else but him.

In a pitiless act of domination, he reached for her hair and pulled her head forward. "Look at me when I take you!" he ordered.

His eyes were wild with lust.

His mouth twisted in anger.

He snarled like the beast he was. And then he thrust his hips forward.

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Nathaniel Silivasi descended from the sky like the angel of death, his eyes ablaze with wrath and fury. With a haunting silence, he perched behind the crazed hunter as the monster knelt above Jocelyn.

And then he struck with preternatural speed.

Fueled by rage and vengeance, he unsheathed his claws, drew back his arm, and plunged his hand forward between the hind legs of the creature, seizing his shaft and scrotum with an iron fist of fury.

Nathaniel wrenched back at the same exact moment as the lycan thrust forward, dislodging his flesh in one fluid motion. When he was through, all that remained of Tristan's manhood was a bloody heap of tissue dripping from the enraged vampire's hand.

Tristan never saw it coming.

The assault occurred so swiftly, his apparatus detached so deftly, that there was a pregnant pause between the completion of the attack and his dawning awareness of what had just happened.

Time stood still.

And then the humongous male let out a cry so anguished it shook the ground beneath them. Still in shock, he tried to spring to his feet, to turn and fight, but his body was too weak—gushing rivers of blood. He sank to his knees at the glowering vampire's feet.

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Jocelyn screamed at the horror of what she had just witnessed—the all-consuming rage that burned like an Olympic torch of victory in Nathaniel's eyes—as the vampire stood there watching the bleeding hunter, his dagger-like fangs fully extended, his mouth turned down in merciless contempt. He took a casual step back as if waiting for the brunt of the pain to take hold.

Tristan bent his head forward then and surveyed his private parts. The air rushed out of his lungs, and his face went gaunt. Stunned and disoriented, he raised his head and met Nathaniel's penetrating gaze. He opened his mouth...but no sound came out.

Nathaniel bent his head. "Not quite the party you planned on, is it?"

His voice was like ice: harsh, cold and unforgiving. He brought his face closer to the lycan's. "I told you if you laid one hand on my woman, I would rip the skin from your body." He held up the contents of his hand and frowned in disgust. "I suppose this will have to do."

And then he reached down, wrenched Tristan's head back by his thick mane of hair, and plunged a fist like a spiraling rocket into the lycan's gaping mouth. He drove down through his throat, plunging deep into the cavity of his chest, while muscle and tendons ripped, bones and joints exploded...and blood shot out in fountains. And then Nathaniel retracted his arm, pulling at the heart with such brute force that the organ gave way as if it were no more than a yo-yo on a string.

Nathaniel's final words dripped with venom. "And I also promised to remove your heart through your throat."

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Tristan's eyes blinked two or three times as he choked on his own blood and slowly slumped forward, finally landing in a heap of mutilated flesh on the ground. The last sight he saw was that of his own beating heart—and what was left of his manhood—dangling in Nathaniel Silivasi's hands.

Jocelyn gasped and tried to cover herself. Despite her relief at being saved, her first reaction was to try and crawl away: Nathaniel was fearsome, and the sight of him engulfed in so much power—absorbed in such primitive rage—sent terror through her body. He stood over her like a tower of menace: Tristan's dead body slumped at his feet, blood dripping down his arms, his wild black hair whipping in the wind...a long black coat wrapped around his powerful frame like the pelt of a panther. The male was all stealth and power—grace and purpose. He was hell and fury. Awesome in his rage. Frightening beyond anything she had ever seen.

"Jocelyn." Nathaniel spoke her name with reverence. "Do not be afraid, my love. I could never harm you."

He bent to wash the blood from his hands in the snow before scooping her up in his arms. And then, in one smooth motion, he leapt the distance between where they stood and the front porch of the cabin, landing silently on the balls of his feet. He kicked the door open and carried her inside.

Nathaniel glanced around the front room, locating a heavy wool blanket to cover her with even as he laid her gently on the couch. His hands cupped her face, tenderly lifting her head to meet his gaze. "Sweet gods...I have never been so afraid," he whispered. "Were you injured?" The red in his eyes retreated to obsidian.

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Jocelyn lifted her left arm, the arm Tristan had attacked when he had tried to wrench the flare free; it looked bad. Not only were there numerous puncture wounds, but the flesh was torn off to the bone, and there were several obvious fractures along her radius. She had been so caught up in Tristan's attack—and Nathaniel's vengeance—that she had forgotten the pain until that moment.

"Tristan..." She winced.

Nathaniel snarled a low, angry growl. "I'm so sorry, Jocelyn." He took the arm and gently turned it, studying the wounds carefully.

Jocelyn fought not to cry out. "You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm the one who left you." She averted her eyes.

Even now, she had a hard time facing how easily she had turned her back on him. It was obvious he held no hard feelings, and there was nothing he wouldn't have done to get her back safely...yet knowing that only made it worse.

Nathaniel reached out and gently brushed his fingers over her cheek; his touch was like a warm breeze, soft and inviting. "Don't, my love: You did what anyone in your position would do. And you trusted him."

Jocelyn nodded, her eyes glossing over. And then all at once, like a dam breaking free, the last couple of days came to a head—the fear of what she'd witnessed in the chamber with Valentine, the reality of Nathaniel's possession and what it meant for her future, the betrayal of her friend and partner, the attempted rape, and the piercing pain in her arm. She wanted to be strong; she hated her vulnerability...especially 291

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in front of Nathaniel. But the weight of it all was just too much.

Tears began to flow like a river, her chest heaving beneath the weight of such heartfelt sobs. Her body shook and she buried her head in her hands, unable to lift her mangled arm.

Nathaniel grasped Jocelyn's hands and gently pulled them away from her face. Wrapping two strong arms around her, he gathered her close to his heart, careful to keep her injured limb tucked in at her side. His grip was firm and unyielding; his chin nestled lovingly in her thick hair. All at once, a warm pulse of electricity traveled over her arm, and the pain melted away...as if he had simply taken it from her.