Marius, can you slow down? You haven’t gone this fast before.
I can’t, because Daniel’s after us. Just hold on. I’ll be putting us down in less than a minute.
Hurry. Oh, God, the pain. It’s worse than before. She started to scream.
Shayna, I’m so sorry.
He felt nothing but relief when she passed out.
CHAPTER 4
When Rumy came back on the line, he said, I’ve got it set it up and my men are on the way. He then sent Marius a visual.
Marius homed in on the image until he locked onto the exact cavern. Got it.
I’m sending my toughest two dozen. But they’ll come in waves because they were on maneuvers in the north. Just keep Daniel talking. That bastard loves the sound of his own voice.
Thank you, Rumy.
Just stay alive. We need you, Marius. He felt Rumy shut the communication down.
Marius was only seconds out now. Once at Lake Como, he headed into the hills and dipped through solid rock. He could feel the cavern’s pull on him as he held the image fixed in his mind.
When he reached the location, he shifted from altered flight to regular levitation then sought out a stretch of even ground close to the cavern wall. At the same time, he started building the layered shield that Gabriel had taught him to construct. With any luck, Daniel wouldn’t find him right away.
With great care, he laid Shayna next to the rock wall, then rose up, turning to face into the massive cavern space. The area was completely unimproved. The ground was boulder-strewn, with scattered pools of old water, as well as a number of stalactites and stalagmites, the dripstone making it hard to do battle. Rumy had chosen the place well.
He hated that this was the best he could do, but he didn’t have an auxiliary fighting force like Rumy did. Building an army in his world was illegal.
Just as Daniel and his men started to arrive, he pulled two long battle chains from deep, narrow pockets in his leathers, then started them spinning. He still held his disguise, but Daniel took one long look around the cavern and began spacing his men out.
Then he turned to Marius because he could see right through his layered shield. Daniel waved an arm and Marius’s disguise faltered and fell away. Shit. Just when he thought he knew the breadth of Daniel’s power.
“Don’t be a fool, son. I don’t want to kill Shayna or you, but I’m so sick of you boys rebelling. It’s been four hundred years and you’d think by now life would have shaped you up and brought you to serve at my feet.”
“Then you shouldn’t have hurt us like you did. We would have had no reason to rebel otherwise.” Stating the goddamn obvious.
Daniel looked as he always did, like an elegant dictator. He wore an expensive, tailored suit of dark-blue silk and a goatee trimmed close, with his short, dark hair slicked back. He had unforgettable eyes, teal, and flecked with gold. Marius shared the gold flecks but his eyes were a less impressive hazel, a distinction Marius preferred.
Daniel represented everything evil in their world and Marius hated him with a passion. Like all the Briggs boys, Daniel had tortured Marius, slicing the length of his spine and flaying him open again and again in order to preserve the scar for posterity. Only repeated cuts could leave a scar on a vampire. Daniel called it a character-building exercise. That’s how he justified his pleasure in brutalizing his children. How often had he heard Daniel say that the beatings, cuttings, and slicings-up would make men of his sissy-boys.
Daniel hovered forty feet away, levitating behind his line of fighters. He wouldn’t dirty his hands unless he had to.
“You were always my biggest disappointment, Marius. You were the little boy that cried all the time, looking for Adrien and Lucian to protect you. I know how much you used them—and don’t pretend you didn’t. You and I both know the truth. Of course it pleased me to see you writhe in your guilt when one or the other of your brothers would take your pain for you.”
Daniel always got to the heart of things.
“Fuck you, Daniel.” Hatred boiled in Marius, stronger than ever, especially recalling how his father hadn’t even bothered to dispose of all the dead bodies in his most recent torture room. He’d left them there to rot as though even in death they had no value.
Daniel waved his arm and three of his fighters shifted in Marius’s direction.
Marius lowered his chin. His nostrils flared. He’d battled a long time and the adrenaline flowed like fire through his body. With his battle chains spinning, Marius levitated, rising five feet into the air.
The men attacked, one in the front, and one from each side.
Marius flipped his wrist, and the spinning chain in his right hand flipped to wrap itself around that vampire’s neck. He did the same with the left. From his periphery, he could see he’d brought both down and each now struggled to remove the chains.
The center assailant, as big as Marius, barreled down on him. But Marius pulled a dagger from his leathers, shifted to altered flight, whipped behind the attacker, and drove the blade deep into his kidneys.