Taken

Chapter 24

It was a joy to kill.

Carcajou were so few. They, among all the Tribes, did not know what it was to retreat or surrender. Their battle rage, when it truly took hold, didn’t stop until muscle was pulled from bone, blood vessels popped, and the brain was shattered.

Even facing a good twenty upir, the idea of disengaging from the battle didn’t even cross the sea of bloodlust serving him for a mind now. The animal in him was unchained, unloosed, and the mate that belonged to them both lay behind him, wounded. Her blood and musk and terror filled this small space, maddening him even further.

He slunk back a few feet, the blood-trill filling his throat. The movement was only to make certain of his footing. The enemies were near, things of foulness and rancid death, more and more of them pressing through the small door.

He could hold them for a long time here, since only a few could fit down the stairs. If they wanted to advance into this room, it would cost them dearly. He had already thinned their numbers above, following the fading, flaring drift of light musk and silver distress.

Of her. She was here, and behind him. His mate was bleeding, and they had made her bleed. Had hurt her.

One of the upir—a female—appeared in the door. “Another one of these things? You’d think they would learn.”

His lip lifted a little. It was all meaningless noise. His growl was not. It resounded from the sides of this little hole.

One of the upir darted in. A young one, and stupid. It was a moment’s work to tear his claws through the sweet-sick rotten skin and spill out the rancidness inside. He growled again, a warning.

“Kill it, you imbeciles!” the female shrieked. She smelled old, and she smelled sick. Not the sickness of a bad batch of blood burning up an upir from the inside, but a clotted smell of pale wriggling things bursting when sunlight hit them, leaving a thin scum on everything they touched.

The upir surged forward, and he showed his teeth. The animal roared. Behind him, his mate had gone silent, even the thin shallow gasps missing. The tortured air was hot and close, his nose stinging, blood slicking his fur down and a sharp, sweet pain spurring him on. It was like wine in his blood, that pain. Strength and invincibility.

They moved forward. He smelled the fear on them. It teased at his nose, smarting and stinging from the thick miasma of death held close and hot in this little bolt hole.

He waited for them to come and die, his lip lifting in a snarl.

A sound like a drum being struck resounded through the bones of the house above, a monstrous reeking burrow. The animal knew what it was as soon as it sounded.

Tribe. Others of his kind, coming here. Perhaps they came to kill the prey. He heard their footsteps, their cries, a clash of bodies. There were so many upir, the sickness had been allowed to spread here without the Tribes cleansing it.

He could not, now, remember why they had not cleansed this place. It didn’t matter.

The upir milled about in confusion, and he waited. He cared very little what they did, as long as they left his mate alone.

She was so still, so quiet. He couldn’t hear her breathing. The crystalline call, the thread of musk that had led him through the cold slanting rain and successive waves of upir, was fading, as if she had moved.

He didn’t dare glance over his shoulder. Not with the enemies drawing so near. He growled at them again.

A mass of them surged toward him, the female who seemed to be in charge screaming in a high piping voice, her white head-fur rising and falling in thick tendrils, hellfire dripping from her eyes.

He killed two with one sweep and the red rage took him. They surged forward, champing and slavering, and he knew he was going to die. It didn’t matter. What mattered was standing fast, keeping them away from his mate as long as possible.

There were too many; he went down under the weight, clawing desperately, a last roar of pure defiance shattering what remained of the human in him. The useless weakness. It vanished, and nothing was left but the pain as their claws tore at him—

—and the world stopped.

The enemy scattered like quicksilver as Tribe poured into the bolt hole, Changing and leaping, their howls and cries cleaner than the twisting groans of the bloodsuckers. Confusion reigned. He lay on the floor, trying to rise, his skin running with crimson pain that spurred him even as it drained his will.

The upir died. Shrieking, cursing, howling, running or standing to fight, they died. One of the Tribe—a Bear, his hulking shoulders hunched—halted behind him. He lay on the floor, knowing the Bear was near his mate.

She belonged to him. He would keep everything and everyone away from her. He had to. It was what he had set himself to do, and he was Carcajou.

But his body would not hold him up. The rage intensified, beating inside his brain. The rage would keep going until his heart gave out or his brain burst. He knew it—and struggled harder.

Ice and moonlight filled his nose, a soothing smell. “He’s far gone.” The words meant nothing, but the female who said them was Tribe. “Ilona! Help me!”

The smell reached back into memory, tinged with smoke and terrible grief. He had stopped someone else from plunging into the flames to save that smell, because the cold determination of animal survival told him to.

The human in him, all but buried under a landslide of rage, gave one powerful, agonized scream—and vanished again.

He struggled, but they were too strong. Fingers like vises, the cold drugging smell like chloroform, and he was dragged under a breaker of darkness. Still struggling. Still trying to scream a name that had lost all meaning but still had to be repeated, over and over again, the name that had been beating under his heart since he had slipped the chain and gone running into the cold night. Even as his muzzle was clamped shut and hands smoothed along his flayed sides, the name gonged in his head, over and over again.

Sophie!