Blood Rites

Chapter Thirty-nine

Lord Raith led us into the cave he called the Deeps, and the Bodyguard Barbie kept her gun on me while simultaneously remaining well out of easy reach. She wasn't any Trixie Vixen anyway. If I jumped her, she'd shoot me, and that would be that. Not that I could have done much jumping, what with the leg irons and all. I had trouble just shuffling along while ducking my head low enough to keep from bumping into rocky protrusions from the cave's roof.

"Murph?" I said. "How are you doing?"

"I'm feeling a little repressed," she responded. There was tight pain in her voice. "I'm fulfilling this hostage stereotype, and it's pissing me off."

"That's good," Raith said. He still had her by the neck, with the knife he held actually pressed a tiny bit into the wound he'd already given. "Defiance adds a great deal of enjoyment to feeding, Ms. Murphy." He put a contemptuous emphasis on the honorific. "It is, after all, a great deal more pleasurable to conquer than to rule. And defiant women can be conquered again and again before they break."

I ignored Raith. "How's your side?"

Murphy shot a glare over her shoulder at her captor. "A little prick like this? It's nothing."

In answer, Raith threw Murphy against the wall. She caught herself and turned, her hand blurring in a short, vicious strike.

Raith wasn't human. He caught her hand without so much as looking at it. He drove her hand and wrist back against the wall, and brought the bloodied tip of his knife sharply up under her chin. Her lip twisted into a defiant snarl and her knee lashed up as she kicked. Raith blocked it with a sweep of his thigh and pressed in close to her, all sinuous, serpentine speed and strength, until he was pressed to her front, his face to hers, raven-black hair mingling with her dark gold.

"Warrior women are all the same," Raith said, his eyes on Murphy's. His voice was low, slow, lilting. "You all know your way around struggling with other bodies. But you know little about the needs of your own."

Murphy stared at him, shoulders twitching, and her lips slowly parted.

"It's bound into you," Raith whispered. "Deeper than muscle and bone. The need. The only way to escape the blackness of death. You cannot deny it. Cannot escape it. In joy, in despair, in darkness, in pain, mortalkind still feels desire." His hand slid down from her wrist, his fingertips lightly brushing the thick veins. A soft sound escaped from Murphy's throat.

Raith smiled. "There. You already feel yourself weakening. I've taken thousands like you, lovely child. Taken them and broken them. There was nothing they could do. There is nothing you can do. You were made to feel desire. I was made to use it against you. It is the natural cycle. Life and death. Mating and death. Predator and prey."

Raith leaned closer with each word, and brushed his lips against Murphy's throat as he spoke. "Born mortal. Born weak. And easily taken."

Murphy's eyes went wide. Her body arched in shock. She let out a low, sobbing sound, as she tried and failed to hold back her voice.

Raith drew his head slowly back, smiling down at Murphy. "And that's only a taste, child. When you know what it is to be truly taken later this night, you will understand that your life ended the moment I wanted you." His hand moved, sudden and hard, digging his thumb against the wound in her ribs. Her face went white, and another, similar cry escaped her. She crumpled, and Raith let her fall to the ground. He stood over her for a moment, and then said, "We'll have days, little one. Weeks. You can spend them in agony or in bliss. The important thing to realize is that I'll be the one who decides which. You are no longer in command of your body. Nor your mind. You no longer have a choice in the matter."

Murphy gathered herself together and managed to lift her eyes again. They were defiant, and blurred with tears, but I could see the terror in them as well-and a sort of sickened, hideous desire. "You're a liar," she whispered. "I am my own."

Raith said, quietly, "I can always tell when a woman feels desire, Ms. Murphy. I can feel yours. Part of you is so tired of being disciplined. Tired of being afraid. Tired of denying yourself for the good of others." He knelt down, and Murphy's eyes shied away from his. "That part of you is what wanted to feel the pleasure I just gave. And it is that part of you that will grow as it feels more. The defiant young woman is already dead. She is simply too afraid to admit it."

He seized her hair and started dragging her, careless and hard. I saw her face for a second, confusion and fear and anger warring for control of her expression. But I knew she'd taken a wound far more grievous than any physical injury I'd seen her sustain. Raith had forced her to feel something, and there had been nothing she could do to stop him. She'd done her best to tear into him, and he had slapped her down like a child. It wasn't Murphy's fault that she'd lost that fight. It wasn't her fault that he'd forced sensation upon her. I mean, hell, he was the lord of the freaking nation of sexual predators, and even weakened and hampered by my mother's curse, he had been able to take apart Murphy's psychic and emotional defenses.

If he got the full measure of his powers back, what he would do to Murphy in retaliation for what my mother had done to him would be worse than death.

The damnedest thing was that there wasn't much I could do about it. Not because I was chained up, held at gunpoint, and probably going to die-though I had to admit, that might make things somewhat difficult-but because this wasn't a fight that someone else could win for Murphy. The real battle was inside of her-her strength of will against her own well-founded fears. Even if I did ride in on a white horse to save her, it would mean only that she would be forced to question her own strength and integrity thereafter, and that would be nothing more than a slow death of her self-reliance and strength of will.

It was something I could not save her from.

And I had asked her to face it.

Raith hauled on her hair as if it had been a dog's lead.

Murphy didn't fight back.

I clenched my hands into impotent fists. Murphy was in very real danger of dying that night, even if she kept on breathing and her heart kept on beating. But she would have to be the one to save herself.

The best thing I could do was nothing. The best thing I could say was nothing. I had some power, but it couldn't help Murphy now.

Hell's bells, irony blows.