Vampire's Hunger (14 page)

“What I want doesn’t matter?” She rose from her chaise and glided down the steps. She wore form-fitting black leggings and a dark purple top that fell off one slim shoulder. Her long hair fell in loose curls over her shoulders. For all that she was a beautiful woman, he never forgot that she could be deadly. “You forget yourself. What I want is all that matters.”

He clenched his jaw so tight the muscles in his jaw flexed. Calling upon all his reserves of diplomacy, he said softly, “At what cost, my queen?”

Her full lips thinned. “And you’re the one to determine the cost?” She slashed a slim hand through the air, forestalling his reply. Her dark eyes glittered with emotion. If he hadn’t known her as well as he did, he might have thought she battled back tears. She flipped her hair over her shoulder with a quick flick of her elegant fingers. “You know how much Eduardo means to me. How can that not matter?”

“It’s not worth the havoc you may wreak trying to revive him.” As she stopped in front of him, he lifted his hands and placed them lightly on her shoulders. Had he been anyone other than her second in command he would never have dared be so familiar. “Maddalene, listen to me, please. Kimber has said there’s something wrong with the Unseen, and I believe her. When her friend Bishop was bitten, she tried to draw the infection—that part of the Unseen that is powering these undead things—out of him, and it nearly killed her. What you ask is too much.”

Her nostrils flared. “Who are you to defy me?”

He gave her a little shake. “I’m your friend, damn it. Believe it or not, I am trying to help you.” He needed her to believe that. If she suspected his only motivation was to keep Kimber safe, Maddalene would never agree to leave her alone.

“Are you?” She knocked his hands away and took a few steps back. “I think you’re less concerned about me than you are about your little human. Has she let you fuck her yet?” His answer must have shown on his face, because she trilled a laugh. “Oh, I see she has. And it has strengthened your noble desire to protect her.”

“Even if Kimber and I hadn’t become intimate,” Duncan said, “I would still counsel you against this action. Maddalene, it can’t be done.”

With a flick of her wrist she summoned the guards. Duncan allowed two of them to take his arms in their hold. The only thing he’d accomplish by fighting them would be to use strength he might need later. “What is this?” he asked.

“I cannot allow disobedience and treachery in my own enclave.” She grabbed the neckline of his T-shirt and with preternatural strength ripped it down the front. She brushed the ruined material aside, baring his chest and stomach. “The disloyalty you have demonstrated must be answered.”

She walked behind him and ripped at his shirt until it was in tatters. She pulled it off him, leaving him naked from the waist up.

“Since when is it disloyal to counsel you against taking action I believe to be unwise?” Duncan kept his voice even, though anger simmered below the surface. If she thought to intimidate him, she could think again. “I’ve done it before. And I’ll do it again.”

“Yet you’ve always bowed to my wishes in the end. Except now. Why?” She studied him, her eyes steady on his. “Why now? Why her?” Those dark eyes widened. “You have feelings for her.”

To admit he cared for Kimber would put her in more danger than she already was. He wouldn’t give Maddalene anything more to hold over his head to force his compliance. Enough was enough. “No,” he denied, keeping his voice as even as the gaze he leveled on his queen. “She is a means to an end.”

“What end?” Her suspicious eyes remained fixed on him.

He debated telling her, and decided he wouldn’t get anywhere by remaining silent. As much as he didn’t want to bare his soul, if he even still had one, in front of her guards, he didn’t have much of a choice at the moment. “We’ve often wondered if the Unseen is what makes us what we are,” he began.

She nodded. “Yes. If necromancers can use it to reanimate corpses into zombies, perhaps that same essence is what allows vampires to exist.”

Nerves dried his mouth. If she didn’t believe him, or didn’t care, he knew she would take out her anger at his defiance on his body. Like he’d told Kimber before, she was a cruel and harsh mistress. “I want…” He drew in a reflexive breath, a holdover from those long ago days as a human when extra oxygen could somehow lend extra resolve. “I need to feel again, Maddalene. I need…to feel a connection to the living.”

“So get a dog.”

Irritation roiled through him at her flippant response. “Maddalene…”

She jerked one shoulder up, an unspoken acknowledgment and apology over her trivialization of his heartfelt desire. “This is important to you.”

“Yes.”

Her hard gaze drifted over his face and lower, to his chest. “As is my dream of being reunited with Eduardo.”

He could tell by the unforgiving expression on her face that she had set aside any sense of being in the wrong and was putting her desires above his. It was her right as queen, though a truly worthy leader would look to the betterment of her people over the fulfillment of her own hopes. But Maddalene had always been a selfish ruler.

She threw one arm behind her and clicked her fingers. “Bring chains and the cat o’ nine tails.”

One of her human attendants jumped to his feet and hurried toward the back wall where a number of whips and chains complete with manacles were stored. After he grabbed the requested implements, he rushed to her side and placed the handle of the whip in her outstretched hand. The bits of glass attached at the ends of the lashes glinted in the artificial light of the room.

Duncan stared at them and then looked at his queen. She had never looked as regal and ruthless as she did now. He was fucked, and everyone in the room knew it. If he fought, he might win and get out of the room, but there were dozens of vamps he’d have to battle to get out of the building. He was strong.

But he wasn’t that strong.

Besides, if he allowed Maddalene to work out her frustrations on him, she might be more inclined to leave Kimber alone. For a while, anyway. And, also, he wasn’t ready to play his hand just yet. He’d known for a while that her time to rule needed to end, but he’d been resistant to doing anything about it because of his loyalty. Their friendship. And yet, if she was willing to stripe his back, to mangle it with a cat o’ nine tails, then it was clear to him their friendship was one-sided.

The human handed over the chains to one of the guards standing behind Duncan.

Maddalene pointed toward the central supporting column in the room. “Chain him securely,” she instructed the guards.

They dragged him to the column. Duncan again thought about fighting, and the muscles of his arms and legs tightened as he prepared to jerk the two holding him toward each other to throw them off balance. He forced himself to relax and looked over his shoulder at Maddalene. “I want your word you’ll leave Kimber alone.”

She raised one arched eyebrow. “And why would I do that?”

He held her gaze. “What you’re about to do is because of anger, not because it’s just. And you know it.” But he’d let her do it, because it would be an outlet for her frustration. He’d rather be used as her whipping boy than have Kimber be the recipient of Maddalene’s vitriolic attitude.

Her nostrils flared. Fists clenched at her sides, the knuckles of her right hand showing white around the handle of the whip, she stalked forward. The closer she got, the more he could smell the scorched rubber scent of her anger. She placed the tip of the handle under his chin, forcing his head back so that he had to look down his nose to meet her eyes. Silver glinted in the brown of her irises. “I will give you twenty lashes for your disloyalty,” she said. “Keep trying my patience and it will be forty.”

He turned his head and rested his cheek against the column. “After all this time, I would have thought you’d have more faith in me,” he murmured.

“Forty it is.” Her voice struck like flint in his ear, her breath stirring his hair. “Ask Aodhán some time about how I feel about betraying males.” Before he could question her about that, she stepped away from him.

The guards snapped the manacles around his wrists and attached the other ends to rings high up on the column, forcing Duncan to his toes. They moved away from him and waited in silence.

The first slice of the lashes across his back startled him with the amount of pain. He ground his jaw, determined to take his unfair punishment in silence. By the tenth lash he couldn’t hold back the moans. By the thirtieth, feeling like his back was so much shredded meat, each strike of the individual lashes brought screams to his throat. By the final stroke he sagged against the chains holding him to the column.

“Release him.” Maddalene’s voice came to him through a fog of pain. If the guards on either side of him hadn’t grasped his arms, he would have collapsed to the floor in a heap of misery. Still seeming far away, his queen ordered, “He does not feed for forty-eight hours. Understand? He will bear scars for his disloyalty.”

“Yes, my queen.”

She grasped his hair and pulled his head up. He stared up at her, pain and biting betrayal swirling through him. “I. Want. The. Necromancer. She will be more willing if you convince her.” She gave his head a shake. “Submit to me, Duncan, and we can be as we were. Hold to your stubbornness, and you’ll be in chains feeling the bite of that whip again.” She let go of his hair, and his head slumped to his chest. “Take him.”

The guards dragged Duncan out of the room and down the hallway to his own suite. Instead of dumping him on the floor in the living room, as he expected, they took him into his bedroom and placed him face down on the bed.

He was aware when they left but then floated in a haze of muddled pain and anger. Even hatred of Maddalene, which was new. But then she’d never before taken the cat to his back, though he’d seen it done often enough to others.

The air held the coppery scent of his blood and the dark spice of his pain. He lay there in a daze, his back on fire, his entire body aching from the tension he’d held in his muscles.

The outer door opened and closed then footsteps sounded on the carpet. “Well, my friend,” a man’s raspy voice muttered. “You’ve really done it this time.”

Duncan let loose a bark of laughter, then groaned when even that movement hurt. “Atticus. Have you come to commiserate or condemn?”

A blessedly cool, wet cloth draped across his lacerated back, bringing a small measure of relief.

“Commiserate then,” Duncan murmured.

His friend went down on his haunches beside the bed and balanced by placing one hand on the top of the mattress. A haze of pain made it hard for Duncan to focus on his friend. He blinked, bringing the face of the former gladiator into focus.

“We’ve been instructed to stay away from you for two days,” Atticus said.

“So you’re here because…?”

Atticus grinned. “I never have been able to take orders.” His face sobered and he shook his head. “What the hell was this all about?”

Duncan closed his eyes. “She wants Kimber to raise Eduardo.”

Atticus was silent a moment. “She must hope your necromancer will have success where others have failed.”

Duncan’s eyes flew open. “What? She’s tried before?”

“Six months ago. The necromancer failed and lost his life in the attempt.”

“I didn’t know.” He frowned. Agony streaked through the damaged nerves in his back and at the renewed sense of betrayal at his queen’s hands.

“And she obviously still wishes to try.”

With a slight snort, Duncan looked at his friend. “I’ve been telling her for six months to give it up, but she won’t. Tonight she decided to ‘punish’ me for my disloyalty.”

A frown furrowed a deep line between Atticus’s eyebrows. “How exactly have you been disloyal?”

“By protecting Kimber instead of helping Maddalene coerce her into something I don’t think she can do. And even if Kimber could do what Maddalene wants, I don’t think she’d survive it.”

“And her survival is important to you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.” Fatigue and sharp stabs of pain ate at his consciousness. He closed his eyes again. “You know where she lives. I need you to get word to Aodhán that I’ll be…delayed.” He stared at Atticus. “Don’t let Kimber know what happened. She’ll worry.”

Atticus rolled his eyes and stood. “And you think your fairy friend won’t?” When Duncan tried to lever himself up on his elbows, Atticus put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Be at ease, my friend. It will be as you wish.” He shook his head. “I’ll send a messenger and come back to clean your back and put some ointment on it. It’s all I can do at the moment.” He paused. “Maddalene leaves in a few hours for a meeting with one of the queens in the southern part of the state. She should be gone several days. I’ll do more as soon as she’s left the premises.”

Duncan let his eyelids fall closed once more. “I didn’t expect what you’ve done already, so thank you.” He felt his grip on consciousness begin to ravel apart. The last thing he heard was Atticus’s raspy voice as he spoke with someone else. Duncan’s head whirled. He stopped fighting the allure of darkness and slipped into the arms of oblivion.

Chapter Nine

A
fter a night spent tossing and turning, listening for Duncan’s return and never hearing it, Kimber rolled out of bed. Thrusting her arms through her ratty purple terrycloth robe, she wandered out into the main area and saw Aodhán standing in front of the kitchen sink, dressed in his usual cotton T-shirt and jeans. “Didn’t Duncan ever come back?” she asked him.