Lover Avenged(236)

From over where they had come in, there was a thud. And abruptly the light Vishous was emitting went out, plunging the chamber into total darkness.

Giving what jailed Rehvenge free access to everyone in the cave.



From beneath the horrid masses that covered him, Rehvenge’s fragile consciousness woke him the moment Ehlena came into the chamber’s doorway. At first, he didn’t trust what he sensed, however. In the thousand years he’d spent suspended in a living hell, he’d had many dreams of her, his brain hanging on to its memories, using them as food and water and air.

But this felt different.

Maybe it was just the break with reality he had been praying for? After all, although he had lamented that things had to come to an end when his mother had passed, he wanted only an end now-whether that was mental or physical, it didn’t matter to him.

So perhaps he’d finally been granted one mercy in his wretched, fucked-up life.

Besides, the idea that Ehlena had actually come to get him out scared him more than where he was or what other tortures the future held.

Except…no. It was her, and there were other people with her… He could hear their voices. Then he caught a glow of light…and smelled some kind of rancid stench that reminded him of the nasty smell of a beach at low tide.

A high-pitched whine followed. Along with a series of…popping blasts?

Rehv had been unable to move since those first couple of days, his body growing weak fast, but he needed to reach out now and try to communicate, try to tell Ehlena and whoever she had come with to go away from this terrible place.

Focusing all his strength, he managed to lift his arm to wave her back.

The light was extinguished as quickly as it had appeared.

Only to be replaced by a red glow that meant his beloved was in mortal danger.

Fear for Ehlena made him panic, his body spasming on its tethers, flopping like an animal in a trap.

He needed to wake the fuck up. He needed to…wake the fuck up!





SEVENTY




Nothing. Fucking nothing.

Lash paused and looked inside another cell that was made up of an odd kind of glass. Empty. Just like the other three.

Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes and held still. No sounds. No smells other than the beeswax-and-fresh-dirt combo that had been there all along.

Wherever that group had gone, it was not down here, goddamn it.

Retracing his steps, he returned to where the corridor branched into three directions, and looked down. Someone had just been by: A trail of dark blue dots stretched off in two directions, to the right and straight ahead, meaning someone had come from one of those compass points and gone toward the other.

Bending down, Lash dragged his forefinger through the viscous dribble and rubbed the substance with his thumb. Symphath blood. God knew he’d spilled enough of his female’s to know exactly what the shit was.

Lifting his hand to his nose, he inhaled. Not his female’s. Someone else’s. And it was unclear which way they’d been and where they were headed.

With nothing to go on, he was about to jog right when a bright red flare boiled out of the smallest of the three offshoots, the one that was in front of him. Jacking to his feet, he ran in that direction, following the trail of blood.

As the corridor eased into a turn and the glow intensified, he had no idea what the hell he was going to interrupt and didn’t care. His princess was here, and someone was going to tell him where the fuck to find the bitch.

A hidden hallway appeared with no warning, breaking from the corridor without a jamb or doorstop. From down at the end of it, the red light was brilliant enough to sting the eyes, and Lash headed for the source.

He walked into a whole lot of…What the fuck?

Crumpled at entrance of a chamber was the Brother Vishous, and beyond him was a tableau that made no sense at all:

The princess was standing in what he’d dressed her in the night before, her bustier and thigh-high stockings and stilettos looking ridiculous out of the context of the bedroom. Her blue-black hair was a shaggy mess, her hands were dripping blue blood, her wild, red eyes the source of the glow that had guided him. In front of her, captivating her, was something like a gigantic side of beef that was covered in what appeared to be a lottery-winning load of insects.

Shit, those things were everywhere.

And clustered around the airborne body was that scarred Brother Zsadist, Xhex the security dyke, and some female vampire with a lighter in one hand and an aerosol can in the other.

That bunch weren’t long for this world. Spiders and scorpions were on full advance, gunning for the trio who’d invaded their territory, and Lash had a brief, gory premonition of raw skeletons cleaned of meat.

But that wasn’t his concern.

He wanted his female.