Taboo Kisses(50)

Gabriel was wheeled in first, trapped in a steel enclosure in his tiger form. He could barely move. Their eyes met and he snarled, ramming the lock with a shoulder, knocking the crate about. The men pushing his crate were caught off guard and tumbled to the floor amid hollers and screams to get him under control. Gabriel continued to ram the door, but it didn’t budge.

A curtain in the corner of the room was yanked down, exposing Maximus. Naked and bound to a cross, his back was littered with oozing lacerations. The bearer of that whip lifted a wormwood tipped flog and laid another set of wounds across the vampyr’s back. Maximus jerked, but only a groan came from him. Knowing he suffered caused her fingertips to sizzle and a buzzing to echo in her ears.

Sameya drenched the room in a serenade so potent it would’ve killed a young mystic. As a result, several of Gryphon’s henchmen dropped where they stood, dead before they hit the floor. The one who wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails plummeted to the floor with a startled yelp after she pointed at him. She turned toward Mondo, who was on his knees at the door sobbing. She’d met children with more bravery. “Bring me the witch immediately.”

The remaining men were reaped without a glance in their direction, the thuds of their dead bodies hitting the floor like dominoes.

“How? You’re in iron. And the Atlantian symbols etched in them are strong enchantments.” Nothing Gryphon could do now except follow her commands, and she could see the resignation in his eyes. He’d already accepted his death.

“Catch up on your history, Gryphon.” She smacked his cheek. “Or get a siren old enough to know the truth of a timerelic’s vulnerabilities. I’m too old for the iron to bother me. As for the inscriptions…they’re my spell.” Which meant someone high up in E’Neskha’s organization was responsible for this treachery because none but the most trusted were aware of the etchings. “The spell can’t be used against me.”

As she released the cuffs from her wrists, she half-ran, half-walked toward her men. “Open the door,” she instructed the only other remaining survivor in the room.

The lock disengaged. Gabriel knocked the guard down and shifted out of his skin in a sparkling array of lights. In the next breath, he had her in a bear hug that choked her with tears at his obvious emotion.

“I’m okay,” she said as he placed kisses along her face and patted her down at the same time. She captured his hands and brought them to her mouth. She kissed his blood-caked knuckles. “Gabriel, I’m okay.”

He crushed her against him, claiming her mouth in a kiss that could’ve torched Texas with the heat coming off it. When the lip-lock ended, he whispered against her ear, “I want to mark you so bad, my tiger is almost feral with the need.”

“Gabriel, you’ve got to get it together. Maximus needs us.”

“I know.” He kissed her temple. “I know.”

And just that quickly, he snapped into command mode. Sameya cracked the wormwood manacles on Maximus’s wrist and neck. Working together, she and Gabriel untied their vampyr and looped his arms over their shoulders.

Kat entered the room with Mondo trailing her.

“Blessed Mother!” She rushed toward them. “He needs blood to heal properly.”

“I’ll sit over there”—Gabriel nodded at the chair near Gryphon, who watched everything with wide-eyed acceptance—“and you both help him straddle me so he can imbibe directly from my vein.”

“You’ve already lost a lot of blood, Gabriel. I can sense the tiredness of your tiger.”

Sameya didn’t comprehend the problem. “I can command someone to offer their vein.”

“He’s too far gone.” Kat stared her straight in the eyes. “The only thing that’ll bring Maximus back is the blood and connection of a mate.”

She peered at Gabriel over Maximus’s lolling head. “Will my blood work even though we’re not mated?”

“A mate is a mate, but you’ll have to open yourself to him and…imitate the mating.” She could tell by the challenge in Gabriel’s eyes he didn’t think she’d do it. And asking her to take this step was a huge sacrifice. It’d be the start of a real mating, a blending of their souls, just without the marking. What did a physical mark matter when her soul would be forever connected to him?

In the end, there was no choice. She couldn’t allow him to die. The idea of losing him terrified her, and she wouldn’t even contemplate the meaning of that at the moment. “I’ll do it. Sit him down in the chair. I’ll straddle him.”