Christopher: Blood Brotherhood – Erotic Paranormal Dark Fantasy Romance (11 page)

When he woke he was alone in the bed. Sitting up, he could see Kate sitting in the window seat. She had a pillow or two behind her and a blanket wrapped around her body. When he said her name, instead of turning and talking to him, she spoke while looking out the window.

“When I was created long ago, the woman told me that someday I’d meet a man that would change my life. That he would, in one night, create things within us that no one had ever dreamed possible for me. And that through it all, I would have doubts about not him but myself, and the fact that he loved me.” She turned to him then. “I do. Have doubts about myself. I’m afraid that, once you get to know me, you’ll want to go away and leave me.”

“I won’t. I can’t. I need you. Not just as my mate, but everything about you. I love you very much.” He started to continue telling her that when she shook her head, but he decided on another path. “When I was growing up, my parents, along with about all my friends’ parents, were divorced. It seemed the norm rather than the unusual. Even as mates, my parents were not suited to each other. My mom was just as vicious as him, and they let it spill over into our lives too much for us to feel good about life in general. Then this family moved in down the street. There were three kids, all of them older than any of the kids that I hung out with on our block. Jade was the girl and the boys were Stanley and Markus.”

“The Huston’s.” He nodded, forgetting that she would know this about him. “Their parents were an oddity. Nice and sweet, but it was odd that they were still married for that time frame. People would divorce and marry like they changed their clothing, making no effort to try and work things out. Disposable was the way I thought of it back then.”

“Yes. And as the months went on and me and my buddies grew braver, we started to see that while we thought them odd because they were all still one big happy family, they really weren’t. Odd, I mean. Mrs. Huston didn’t work outside the home—another first—but she stayed at home and baked cookies and made dinner for them all every night. Mr. Huston was a lawyer, a very nice man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and a tie, even on the weekends.” Chris leaned back on the headboard and thought of them. “Jade babysat when my mom needed someone to watch us. Even for a couple of hours if Mom was working late, Jade would come over, bring her homework, and hang out with me and my younger brother. She didn’t treat us like we were messing up her plans for the night, but showed us things of wonder, like popcorn that had its own pan. How to make real hot cocoa and not mixed with water. Silly things that my parents never showed us because they were too busy hating each other. Jade’s mom would send us cookies and pies. Sometimes when there were leftovers at her house, we’d have meatloaf and ham slices so thick that a bite was too big for your mouth.”

He knew after a few years that his mom was struggling terribly. There were times when he knew she wasn’t eating dinner or any other meal when there wasn’t enough to go around for the three of them. His dad had been required to send them money each month, to help with the bills, school supplies, and even winter coats. Chris remembered his mom arguing with his dad on the phone, and her crying at night when the power would be shut off because her checks would only go so far with two growing boys.

“That first Christmas the Huston’s were on the block, we got an envelope of cash in our mailbox. I don’t remember how much it was. I’m sure it was a lot for us. My mom cried then too, telling us that someone was watching over us.” He’d known even then that it was the Huston’s…that they had seen how they were living and what they were going through. They’d had a feast that Christmas, their first in all his life that he could remember. There was turkey and a ham, potatoes and gravy. They’d had fresh bread that they hadn’t had to pull the mold off of. And butter. The creamy kind, not the kind that seemed to be more water than cream. He remembered being at home with his brother and mother on New Year’s Day too.

“Then, a week after Christmas, Mr. Huston came to our house. It wasn’t quite dark out yet, but it was slick with snow. He had on this coat that I thought looked warm enough to keep us all from freezing.” Chris thought it strange the way memories of things seemed so silly after a time, yet seemed so right when you first thought of them. “Mr. Huston came into our house that day and asked to speak to us. He had a thick envelope in his hand and a police officer with him. When we were all seated in the living room, the television muted, Mr. Huston started speaking. My father was dead, he told us.”

“He’d been in a boating accident. He’d been there on his own boat with a woman and a crew.” He nodded and asked Kate to come and sit with him. When she was beside him, her body wrapped around his, he kissed the top of her head. “He’d been on a boat that he owned with a woman that was carrying his child. The two of them and all of the crew were killed when the boat stalled and your father tried to start it on his own. He had no idea what he was doing, but wanted to impress the woman he was going to marry soon.”

“Yes. Mr. Huston told us that because there was an insurance policy and back child support involved, Mom was going to be able to claim his estate for us. And that he would represent her if it went to trial. He told us that while the woman was not my father’s wife, his family thought that they should be entitled to his millions. Millions, he told us. My father had had millions, and it was going to be all ours, he said.” He often wondered if there had ever been a thought in his dad’s head about him or his little brother. “He said that if there was any cash in the house, it also belonged to us. Mom sat there for the longest time after they left, just staring at the money that had been pulled from yet another envelope that Mr. Huston had brought with him.”

His mom had set him and his brother down the next morning and told them what she wanted to do. Chris thought even now that his mom was the bravest woman he’d ever met. That was until he met Skylar and the rest of the women in this house. But she talked to them that day like she valued them and their opinion as to what she thought they should do with the money.

“She said that she loved us both more than anyone would ever be able to explain to us. That one day, when we were older, a woman would come along and we’d have two choices to make. One was that we would flitter it all away on broken promises and half-baked ideas. Or we could love like there was never going to be another tomorrow, and tell this woman that we loved her every single day of the rest of our lives together. Then she looked at the money.” Kate looked up at him then. He wanted to tell her again that he loved her, but wanted her to know, in his own words, what his mother had done for them. “She told us that the money was all she was going to take from our dad. That he’d made promises to someone else, and since they weren’t as used to him and his lies and broken promises as we were, they should have the rest. Mom said that she loved Dad, despite what he’d done to us…loved him with all of her heart, but he’d never believed her. She said that we needed to make our own way in this world, that we’d never appreciate it as much if we didn’t work for it. And having that money, even the little that we were going to take, was going to go to making our lives better, not used for things that mattered little in the long run.”

Chris lifted her chin up so that her eyes were level with his. After kissing her gently on the mouth, taking as much of her love as he was giving her, he pulled her back to his chest and put her head over his heart.

“My heart only beats for you. My body only lives for you.” He held her tighter. “When my mother told me that I should tell my other half that I loved them without fear, I didn’t know what she meant…until now.” Kate looked at him. He took her hand in his and put it over his beating heart. “You hold within your hand my heart. I give it to you freely. I love you with all that I am and will ever be. I will worship you forever, keep you as safe as humanly or shifter possible. I love you, Kate, and will until my heart no longer beats.”

Chris held her long into the night. He wasn’t sure if she believed him, or if she ever would, but he was going to make it his mission to tell her every day for the rest of their considerable lives together. And when the alarm sounded deep within the house, he held her tighter, knowing that they were next in line after this call. His memories, now risen from the depths of his heart, settled over him like a warm worn blanket.

His brother had died when he was eleven and Chris thirteen. A fall from a swing had broken his neck when he’d been playing in the school yard one afternoon. The teacher, a woman of considerable size, had held his hand the entire time that the ambulance had taken to get there. Chris, also there, never left his brother’s side, even when the medic had told him to move back. This was his brother, and he was supposed to watch over him. He told him that he was there for him and would not leave him. Brent had died three days later without ever opening his eyes.

Chris knew that his mom had taken it hard. Much harder than he’d ever thought. He missed his brother as well, still thought of him every day, and about things that he wished they would have been able to do together. But his mom, with all the losses that she’d endured, had not been able to survive yet another blow to her life.

Two months after Brent was buried, Chris had come home from the same school to find Mr. Huston in his yard again, this time with another police officer. His face was telling. Even before he spoke, Chris knew that his life was never going to be the same, that yet another tragedy had entered his heart. Mr. Huston told him what he and his mom had talked about a few weeks back.

“You’re to come and stay with us until you think you can move out on your own. I welcome you there, all of us do, into our home, as you are already a part of our hearts.” Chris asked what had happened to his mother, and said that he was a teenager now and deserved to know. “You do, and I’m sorry about this son. But she’s gone. Her heart broke. And no matter how hard she tried to get it to work again, it just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Did she kill herself?” Mr. Huston had told him no, that she’d fallen asleep and had simply not woken up. “But she’s gone now. She won’t have to worry over me again.”

“She will forever worry about you, Chris, even in death. That is our job as parents…to worry forever for our children. Just because the heart stops beating for a time here on this plain does not mean that the love stops being there.”

Chris had nodded and gone into the house to gather what he would need for a couple of days. Mr. Huston told him that they’d take care of the rest later.

Chris fell asleep then, when the memories of that time seemed to fade out. He dreamt of children running up and down a street, of tatted parents standing on the porches watching over them. And when he felt his body warm more, he knew that Kate had pulled him into her arms and that he was safe there. And would be forever. Chris was in love, and knew that she loved him as well.

Chapter 11

Master was surprised when the creature turned and looked at him. Before when he’d tried to create one with just a small part of the stone, the thing had died horribly. Not that he cared, but the thing had flopped around the building floor so much and made such a mess that he’d had to work for nearly two hours to get someone to come in and clean it up.

Tom, the name on the shirt had said before Master had worked on him. It took him several seconds to realize that the man was clueless as to what had happened. Just as the others had been when he changed them.

“You will go out and find me other men. Ones like you, brave and strong.” Tom continued to stare at him. “I give you that order as your new master. You will obey me over all others, do you understand me?”

Nodding, Tom turned and left the building. If he did what he wanted, Master was going to be so happy he might make the man his first in charge. But he turned to the meager amount of stones he had left.

He’d had more than this, so many that he’d had to put them all over the cave to keep them safe. And after finding several of the first creatures—malefactors, Rembrandt called them—and trying to change them, he’d only had little success. Then there had been the trap he’d set for Rembrandt’s people.

Master was sure that he’d had them right where he needed them to be. Five adherents were there, as well as the few malefactors that he’d been able to summon to him. But Rembrandt’s people had come in force, come to his trap armed and ready to do battle, thus killing his creatures.

“And they took what did not belong to them.” His stones had disappeared, along with the men he had sent to kill them. “Nor did they die as they should have.”

No one was doing as he had commanded. The malefactors that he’d turned had died almost immediately when he’d told them not to. Mary would never shut up. Ward and Dolin had abandoned him, even though he had told them over and over that he was going to need their help. His ability to go to the other realm was gone now; he had no idea how to go back there, and he knew that had to do with Rembrandt and the people in the compound. Even though he’d told them several times to die, they continued to try their best to thwart him in all his work to become the ruler of this realm. It was not fair how they were not doing as he wanted them to.

“Had I not been talking to you, you would not have figured out how to make more men to carry out our plans.” He had to agree with Mary on that one. “I’m always correct, Benton. You should know this by now.”

“I do. I do.” He moved to the window of the building he was using. There were several people roaming around. He supposed that he could go and kill them, but he wanted to be sure to have a large army when the time came. And killing the people now would lessen his chances of getting that done. “They think that they are without a leader. I should go and show them that I am here for them to bow before.”

“You’d only make them afraid of you. You need to have Rembrandt dead. That is the only way you can be fully healed.” Master paused in his thinking to listen to Mary. “Yes, you know that as well as I. Once he is dead and the magic that he has stolen from you is yours again, you will heal. You know that it should have been yours. Hector didn’t give it to you as he should have. This is his fault as well. When I was working with Dolin and Ward, I told them not to let Hector pick. We knew then that you were going to be the one to make us very rich. But would they listen? No, they did not.”

“I should have been the one that they gave such riches to, as you said. Now I have to kill Rembrandt so that I can finally have what was mine from the first.” Mary told him that they were being paid to try and kill him. “By who? Who is trying to kill me? I don’t need more people coming for me. I have work to do.”

“Rembrandt and the others. They’re being paid even now. The realm pays them all with riches from my realm. And from what Ward told me, it is quite a sum too. All of them, they get money weekly, I was told.” He asked her if she knew how to stop it. “No. The realm is closed to us. I have told you this before, Benton. We cannot go there and stop anything.”

Master felt his temper rise up, and could also feel the darkness consuming him. He knew, just as he faded from his mind, that when he woke he was going to have killed the people below. They would not know that their master had done it to them.

When he woke he was in his cave. The walls were wet, he could see that, and when he blew on the now cold fireplace, he had a roaring fire within minutes. When it was bright enough to look around the room, he stared at the destruction.

The walls were covered in...he thought it blood, but wasn’t sure whose it might have been until he stood up. The body, or bodies, he found out after a search—not two, but five arms—lying about were more than likely the humans’ from below his building. He wanted to mourn their deaths, but not because he was sorry for what he’d done. More because they would not have the honor of serving him.

As he made his way out into the night, he looked around for more of the body parts. He found a vehicle, a large one, much like the one that Rembrandt and his crew used, and was excited for several minutes. Then he realized that it had no one in it that he knew. Whoever they were and why they were up here on his mountain was of no matter now. They were dead and he was not.

Taking to the skies, Master looked at the world below him. “Stupid people should learn to better care for me. It has been too long since I started this until now.” His head hurt and when he landed, he felt all over himself, looking for the source of the pain. “Must have hit myself.”

“You need more drugs.” He was both happy and pissed to finally be hearing from Dolin. “You know that it’s the kind that must be taken daily or you will die. Find someone to make it for you.”

“No one will work with me.” Dolin told him that he was master and that he could make them. “But to find the right people to work for me is what I do not know how to do.”

“They have a chemist in that building. I would bet that it is one of the ones that worked for me. You should go there now and demand that they come back to you. It isn’t fair that Rembrandt have all the good workers on his side.” Master thought that was true. “He’s been stealing from us all this time, and Hector has let him. He needs to die as well. Do not forget that when you go there to kill Rembrandt. Think of all the things that Hector has done to us as well.”

“I will kill them all.” Dolin told him that was an excellent idea. “Of course it is. It is mine, is it not?”

“You are very smart, Benton. Why did we not see that before?” Master smiled and wondered the same thing. “You should go and see the building. Hopefully that fool Tom has brought you more creatures.”

“I was just thinking that as well. And while I’m there, I should like to set me up a room of my own. Perhaps in the sub levels; that way I can hear when I am being set upon.”

He moved through the town, or what was left of it, and paused in front of a store that he’d not seen before. Or hadn’t really given much thought to. As he moved into it, tearing out the front of the place to make it bigger to accommodate his new size, he noticed that the place had been ransacked. Several times, he thought.

In the back was a chemist’s area. The shelves had been broken down, bottles were all over the place. He picked up several of them and tossed them away. Master could not read, and thought it rude of the person to have put nothing more than words on the bottles instead of something easier for him to figure it out.

There was a large vault there as well, and it looked like someone had tried to blow it open with blasting powders. Scorch marks ran up the walls and had burned a good deal of the roof away as well. Master only had to put his hands on the door and rip it away. Inside he found more of the same…more bottles; bigger, yes, but bottles with words on them. No pictures, which would have gone a long way in helping him with knowing what he had.

“You should eat them.” He looked around for a person that Dolin thought he should eat. “Not a person, but the drugs. Take them. As many as you can fit in your mouth. It’s not like it will kill you. Unless there is a sword in the bottles that will remove your head.”

The laughter made his skin crawl. Master was sure that it sounded just like Rembrandt’s, and even looked over his shoulder to see if he was there. But he was alone in the building, save for the few dead that were there rotting in the corners.

“What if they were to make me sick?” Dolin said that he’d been sick before. “Then what if they do not work and I am still the same?”

“Then you have nothing to concern yourself with. This is the thing you’ve been looking for, isn’t it?” It was. But there were so many. “Take them all.”

Master started opening the bottles and decided that there were just too many, so he began simply putting bottle and all into his mouth and chewing them. As the drugs, a great many of them he thought, began to take their hold on him, he finally had to sit down, for dizziness swamped him. As things blurred and faded in and out, Master thought perhaps this had been a mistake.

~~~

Rick sat on the chair and waited for Nate to wake up. He’d been meaning to talk to the man for several days now...well, he’d really been putting it off. Not that he was afraid of the shifter; no, he just didn’t want to get into a fight with him. And Rick was sure this was going to be epic.

“What the fuck do you want?” Rick smiled at the man’s tone. “Go away. Don’t you think I have enough shit to deal with without you in here trying to drink from me? If I thought it would kill me, then I would let you. But we both know that it won’t.”

“You certainly do whine a great deal.” Nate rolled to his back and Rick, using very little of his own magic, lifted him from the bed and smashed him hard against the wall three times before he smiled again. “Now, this is what we’re going to do. You are going to listen to me, then if I think you might have an opinion that I want to hear, I will let you speak. Until then, you are silent.”

Nate cursed him. A great deal, if the mumbling coming from the magic that held his mouth closed was any indication. But Rick just let him. Struggling against what held him was futile, and Rick let him wear himself out.

“You came here against your will. Well, boo hoo for you. Most of us had a life before this, and yet here we are working to get this place back to where it was before. So what if you had to give up a life that you loved? Who the fuck cares now? You think the malefactors give a shit that you have several golden trophies to tell others what a wonderful person you were?” Rick laughed. “Let me let you in on a secret, big guy. Do you think if you were dead now, any one would care anymore? I know about your friend’s wife and kids. Tough break that, but do you think they would have suffered any less at the hands of the malefactors? Doubtful.”

Rick snapped his fingers and Nate started cursing aloud. He let him. It was one thing to be pissy with everyone here, but to him, it mattered little. Rick had been around a long time and had heard it all. When he had heard enough, Rick held his hand up to snap his fingers again and Nate shut up.

“Good. Now, I’d like to ask you a few questions. And so you know, I’ll know if you lie to me.” Nate said nothing. “Won’t get you any brownie points with me if you don’t speak, ass hole.”

“I want you to go away and leave me alone. I didn’t ask to be here, and I—” Rick snapped his fingers and cut him off. When he waited a full minute and snapped them again, Nate started speaking again. “I’m not going to go out on any fucking missions or whatever the fuck you’re calling them. I just don’t give a flying—”

Rick cut him off again and sat there for several minutes, trying his best to get his own temper under control before he spoke. He supposed that if Remy or the others knew what he was doing he’d be in trouble, but things had taken a turn, and Nate was going to help out or Rick was going to remove his head.

“On the day that you were kidnapped by Benton, did you know that we had all decided to come for you? Not just Remy, but all of us. And it was hard to get Hector to stay behind, too. Goes to show you that no one cares for the way you’re treating them, but they didn’t want you there, in the hands of Benton, either. You are part of his family, Remy told us, and the fact that he and Skylar were beat up pretty badly saving your ass mattered little to him. Getting you home was all of our priority, and look how you repay us.” Nate said nothing, not even a mumble of a word. He captured the man’s eyes and used some of his compulsion to get the answers he was sure that he’d never get otherwise. “Why are you really not helping us?”

“I don’t fucking know how to fight.” Nate had struggled hard against admitting that, but Rick asked him if he thought any of them did. “I’ve seen you. Even though you think I’m stuck here all the time, I do get out and about.”

“You mean when you went out and got yourself caught.” Nate only glared at him. “What were you doing there? Didn’t you know that it would be dangerous?”

“I did. But I thought that if I could do this one thing on my own that you’d all leave me to my peace. I didn’t know that that thing was coming out the other side until he had me. All I wanted to do was make it so you would leave me alone once and for all.” Rick didn’t move. He’d not used compulsion on the man. What he was saying now, he was admitting on his own. “There’s something else too. Something that I think I got when that drug was put in my body. I have these tats all over me, like you guys I guess, but I also have this thing that I can read. I can...according to this part of my tat, I can command computers.”