Blurred Memories (27 page)

“
Kate?”

“
What the hell are you
doing
?” she asked, pushing herself to her knees.

When Blake started to shake
and blinked twice, Kate remembered what he had said about not
liking seeing her on her knees. At that moment, however, she didn’t
care. All that mattered was that he had stopped hitting Marc. She
reached for Marc, but when she touched his arm, he merely turned
his battered face toward her.

“
Hey. Are you okay?” she
asked, her voice trembling with each word.

He nodded once. Her gaze
turned to Blake, and she wished she hadn’t known exactly what was
going on in his head.

“
We came here to
help
Marc, remember? It’s Marc. Not…” She swallowed hard.
“Not your Master. Just Marc.”

A beat passed in silence
before Marc closed his eyes and murmured, “There isn’t much of a
difference anymore.”

Kate’s stomach dropped. She
thought her heart might just stop. “Why would you even
say…”

She couldn’t finish. She
knew why. Simon had told them.

“
You remember,” she said,
and her voice croaked on a sob. She rubbed at her cheeks, furious
with herself for not being stronger. Both of them had been held by
demons and tortured; what right did she have to cry?

Blake had pushed himself off
Marc and just sat there, his bloodied hands at his sides, his gaze
going back and forth between Kate and Marc. After a few more
seconds, Marc sat up and pulled back until he could lean against
the wall. Neither said a word. Kate crawled forward until she was
in between them and held out a hand to each of them. Marc took her
right hand first. Two heartbeats later, Blake took her left hand.
Kate let out a strangled chuckle.

“
God, how did I manage to
fall in love with the two most stubborn men in the world? In the
entire universe, for that matter.” She shook her head. “This is the
wrong place for it. The wrong time. But there’ll never be a right
place and time. I know you love each other. I know the last thing
you want is to hurt one another. So stop fighting. Stop hiding or
running. Just talk.” She held on tighter to both their hands.
“Please.”

* * * *

Kate’s hand had never seemed
so warm in Blake’s own. He looked at those delicate fingers, then
looked at her other hand, curled just as tightly around Marc’s.
Very slowly, he raised his gaze until he met Marc’s. Even with
bruises in full bloom on his face, he still managed to give Blake
that infuriating look of concern.

“
How much do you remember?”
Blake asked quietly.

Marc licked his lips before
answering, which meant he was trying to decide what answer to
give.

“
Just tell me,” Blake
insisted. “How much?”

With a sigh, Marc finally
said, “All of it. It’s a bit jumbled but—”

“
The bed,” Blake
interrupted curtly. It was taking all his will not to reach for the
hilt of his sword. He didn’t know what he would do if he pulled it,
though. Simply hold it for comfort’s sake, or follow every
screaming instinct in his body and kill his Master.

Not Master, he kept
repeating to himself. Kate wouldn’t have been holding their
Master’s hand like this. It was Marc in front of them, even if he
had their Master’s memories.

“
What about the bed?” Marc
asked warily, his eyes flitting to the back wall against which the
bed had once stood.

“
Was it…” Blake swallowed
hard, but the bitter taste at the back of his throat remained
there. “Was it to taunt me with what I couldn’t have? One more way
to fuck with my head?”

Marc frowned for a moment,
like he didn’t quite understand what Blake was talking about. But
after a few seconds, he answered.

“
At first, it was just
that.” Guilt was thick in Marc’s voice, and he closed his eyes to
hide from Blake. “And then, he…he started thinking that if you came
to him willingly, he’d let you sleep in it.”

Blake frowned, shaking his
head. “He never let me.”

Marc’s mouth twisted in a
grimace. “He didn’t have time. They took you away before he could
try.”

Every time Marc said ‘he,’
Blake heard ‘I.’ He knew it wasn’t Marc who had tortured him, that
his Sire would never hurt him or Kate. So why was he interrogating
Marc about his Master’s intentions, like they were Marc’s own? Marc
sharing his jailer’s memories made everything more
complicated.

Unless Blake simply pulled
out his sword and put an end to it all. It wouldn’t be hard, not if
Marc continued not to resist.

“
Blake…” Kate’s voice rose
no higher than a whisper. “Please.”

At her words, he realized
his free hand had risen to clutch the hilt of Seneca. He managed to
still his movement and didn’t draw out the sword, but he couldn’t
let go. Not yet. Centuries of pain, physical and mental, were
weighing on him. In this very room, he had dreamed countless times
of the simple chance to fight back. And now, at his mercy was a man
who remembered the same things Blake did—but from the other end of
the whip. A man who wasn’t fighting back. A man whom Blake had
called ‘Sire’ and ‘Master.’ It was that second incarnation he
needed to destroy. The only thing that stopped his hand was the
certainty deep inside that he would destroy himself if he killed
his Sire.

Marc’s throat moved, his
Adam’s apple moving up and down. When his voice rose, it was dry
and croaky, and Blake wouldn’t have recognized it if he hadn’t seen
Marc’s lips move. “Do you have any idea why he beat you just before
they sent you back to our world?”

Blake frowned, curiosity
prevailing over his need for revenge, at least for now. “Why?” he
repeated. “It wasn’t the first time he lashed out at me without
reason.” It was hard to keep the accusation out of his words, but
Blake hoped he had. He had even managed to say ‘he’ rather than
‘you.’

“
He always had a reason,”
Marc replied, the barest trace of apology in his tone. “I’m not
saying they made sense, but in his mind they were
sufficient.”

“
So why did he beat me that
last time?” Blake couldn’t resist asking despite the fact that his
mind supplied the almost tactile memory of the whip digging into
his flesh.

Whatever Kate heard in his
tone, she held on to his hand even more tightly like she was afraid
of what he might do if she let go.

“
He was angry,” Marc said
slowly and quietly, “but not at you. He was angry they were taking
you away from him. And angry he cared at all. He had no other way
to let that anger out.”

In a very strange, very
twisted way, it made some sort of sense, and Blake was a little
surprised to realize that understanding, if only in some small
measure, made the memory…less. It was still there, lurking and
threatening to take him over if he allowed himself to dwell on it,
but it was also easier to push back and trap in a little box to put
aside, maybe even for good. The need to hurt his Master wasn’t so
overwhelming anymore, and Blake could look over and see his Sire
there rather than an enemy.

He pushed himself to his
feet, one hand still entwined with Kate’s, the other on his sword.
Letting go of Seneca took all his strength of mind. He looked at
his two lovers at his feet, both of them watching him with
apprehension. He pulled Kate up first. She stood but didn’t let go
of Marc’s hand. Blake held out his own to Marc.

“
Let’s go home,” he said
simply, and together they helped Marc to his feet.

* * * *

Something had happened in
that cell, and Kate was grateful they had listened to her plea and
talked.

It scared her how close
Blake had come to killing Marc—except, in his mind, it hadn’t been
Marc in front of him. But Blake hadn’t drawn his sword. He had hurt
Marc, but only until he realized it was Marc in front of him, and
no one else.

Given how stubborn they both
were, she knew she would have to stop them from shutting down about
all of it, but she could be stubborn, too, when she had
to.

The three of them were still
holding hands when they left the cell. Marc staggered in between
Kate and Blake, and when they started down the hallway, Kate wove
her arm around him to stabilize him. They soon came across Simon
and Daniel, both of whom looked relieved to see them.

“
Where have you been?”
Daniel snapped, but his gaze, as he studied Marc’s face, asked an
entirely different question:
What the hell
happened?

“
We’re here now,” Kate
answered. She knew neither Blake nor Marc was up to answering more
questions at the moment. “Did you free all the
prisoners?”

They had, and the squad was
finishing what was left of the demons.

“
But reinforcements are on
the way,” Daniel added. “Jen heard their leader tell the rest of
them. We need to go back to the breach, and we need to go
now.”

As they made their way back
outside, Kate noticed that Simon was dropping the small herb
packets he had been working on earlier on the ground every few
steps. She thought about asking what he was doing, but she was
exhausted and she figured he would tell them sooner or later. And,
indeed, after they had rejoined the rest of the squad and were
halfway back to the breach, Simon stopped her, Marc, and
Blake.

“
Wait. I want to show you
something.”

Kate’s arm tightened around
Marc’s waist. He was much steadier on his feet, but she couldn’t
bear to let go of him yet.

“
Simon,” she said
impatiently. “We don’t have time to lose. Demons are
coming.”

“
It’ll only take a moment,”
he said. He was kneeling on the ground, making a small pile of the
remaining herb packets. His lips moved silently, and he extended
his arm in front of him. As he opened his fist, he murmured one
last word –“Now.”—and a ball of pure light shot from his hand,
gathering strength as it sped toward the prison. Before it even
reached it, more light started to emanate from the building,
piercing through the stone walls themselves. Without so much as a
whisper, the light coalesced into a giant dome that enveloped the
entire prison.

“
Do you want to destroy
it?” Simon asked, his voice strangely absent while he focused on
his magic.

For a second—an eternity—the
words made no sense. Then Kate’s breath caught in her throat as she
understood. Judging by Blake’s and Marc’s matching eager
expressions, they understood too.

“
How?” Blake
breathed.

Simon stood and showed them
what he held in his palm: a book of matches from the pub in
Riverton. “Just light these on fire,” he indicated the packets on
the ground.

Blake’s hand shook when he
took the matches. He broke three off and handed one to Kate and the
second to Marc, keeping the third for himself.

“
Together?” he
asked.

“
Together,” Marc and Kate
repeated. They lit the matches and dropped them on top of the herb
packets. The packets started to burn immediately, and as they did,
the light radiating from the dome over the prison grew fiercer and
brighter until Kate had to shield her eyes. When she looked again,
the dome was gone and the prison was a pile of rubble. There hadn’t
been even a whisper of sound. Somehow, it seemed strange that a
place that had seen such horrors could be destroyed so quickly, so
quietly. But the important thing, Kate thought as she looked at
Marc and Blake, was that it was destroyed.

“
Come on!” Daniel shouted
behind them. “Let’s go! Now!”

They turned back toward the
breach and started on the trail again. After a few seconds, Simon
frowned at them over his shoulder.

“
You’re
welcome
,” he
huffed, his pride clearly wounded that his magical feat hadn’t been
properly recognized.

The three of them looked at
each other and shared a grin.

“
Thank you,” Blake said.
“Really. You have no idea what it means that that place is
gone.”

Simon shrugged one shoulder.
“I can guess,” he said, mollified, then hurried ahead where Daniel
was calling him.

They finally reached the
breach and stepped back through, two and three at a time. Once they
were all on the other side, some of the squad started to guide the
rescued prisoners and the wounded toward the truck, while the rest
of he squad—including Kate, Marc, and Blake—remained by the breach
to watch Simon close it.

Kate fought to keep her
voice from wavering when she said to Marc, “If you ever so much as
think
of doing something that stupid again, I
swear…”

Despite her resolve to be
strong, she choked on the words.

“
He won’t leave again,”
Blake said from Marc’s other side. His smile was lopsided, but it
was a smile nonetheless. His gaze turned to Marc, and he added, “He
won’t have to. Not anymore.”

The two of them shared a
look, and there was more in their eyes that Kate could hope to
decipher. She knew they both cared for her, loved her, even if the
words were hard to pull out of them, and she had long ago promised
herself that she would never be jealous of what existed between
them. That bond of blood that linked them was beyond anything she
could comprehend, beyond anything they could explain in words.
Maybe some day one of them would want to share that with her, and
she already knew that she would say yes, if only to have more time
with them.