Page 31 of Cruel Revenge (Jacky Leon #12)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

HEATH

H eath looked at the metal rods still in the wall, the reason he brought Hasan here.

They had to see what damage had been done to Jacky; perhaps they would know more about why it was done.

For a moment, the scene flashed in his mind, making him wonder how Jacky had been trapped there.

What sort of pain she had probably been in. How Carey must have witnessed it.

I can’t keep thinking about this. I must focus on something else.

So, he turned his direction to stare at the others in the room. Living people, right there. Hasan inhaled deeply, smelling remnants of magic that Heath had tuned out his first time here. He didn’t need to smell anything to know magic had been used.

“It’s her,” Hasan said softly, nodding.

“How do you know?” Landon asked, the son of Heath’s who refused to change.

He looked at every threat as a great challenge to overcome.

The world threw a thousand challenges at his son, and Landon had never bent to them, never given up.

He wouldn’t now. He faced this as he faced all things—his chin up, defiant in the face of overwhelming odds, willing to fight alone if he had to.

“It took a long time for me to be exposed to magic to begin identifying the minor differences in the smell, thanks to who cast the spell or directed the flow of magic. Subira’s was the first I probably ever recognized, catching the scent of her magic next to foreign magics, which I later realized was that of my twins.

This one is burned into my memory. There’s no mistaking it.

I caught it when we found Jacky, but I was focused on Jacky.

Now…” Hasan reached out and touched those metal rods, slowly wrapping a hand around one.

He yanked it from the wall, a disgusted look on his face.

“It’s not the only magic; there’s a second that must have confused me initially as well.

It would make sense, considering her voice is apparently coming out of a man Jacky and Davor have seen before. ”

“Have you seen something like this before?” Heath asked, needing answers, needing information, something for him to ruminate on if he wanted to avoid thinking about anything else. If he didn’t carefully pick every single thought going through his mind, he was going to lose it.

“Using bodies as a sign of power and warning is nothing new,” Hasan said, shaking his head.

“They aren’t silver. Purely steel. That’s the most curious thing to me.

Perhaps because silver is expensive and a soft metal.

Perhaps because it conducts magic strangely.

Perhaps because the death was meant to be slow and painful.

Kushim and I know this witch is a particularly cruel bitch.

She would enjoy the idea of leaving someone’s child bleeding out, in severe pain, and with no hope of help. ”

“If it weren’t for the fact that Jacky is Jacky…” Landon growled. “Most supernaturals die up there like that.”

“Yes. Most would die,” Hasan agreed. “These do so much damage. There was no reason for the witches to believe that even Jacky could survive it. Or they just didn’t care.

If it wasn’t for Subira’s charm on her, Jacky wouldn’t have had the strength to do the Change on her own. She wouldn’t have remained a threat.”

“And they’re spikes for the obvious reason of…” Landon waved at the other in the wall.

To pin the victim into place.

“They must be. From Jacky’s explanation, they were trying out a number of new things on this particular assault.

These spikes must be a test weapon for witches powerful enough to send them.

Let’s them avoid silver bullet bans or needing old arms that put them too close to one of our kind.

They have some weight, so the momentum of them must be painful.

” Hasan put it down on the bar. “That old bitch is just being a sadist, like she was back then.”

“Can you tell me more about her?” Heath asked, looking at Hasan’s face, refusing to linger on the spike left on the bar.

Focus on the present. Find more answers. Search for information. Can’t think of anything else right now.

“When she captured me, she treated me like an animal, and people did not treat animals well in those days,” he said, his gold eyes locked with Heath’s.

“If I did not bend to her magic easily enough, she made things hurt.

But the things she asked of me were against my honor.

It was a constant struggle for power that lasted for a handful of months.

I still bear the faintest of scars from those troubling days, knowing that my mate was pregnant, and I was trapped.

“Why didn’t Subira just save you? She’s the more powerful witch, isn’t she?” Landon asked, this question softer than his previous. “That’s what Kushim said.”

“While Subira was pregnant, she didn’t perform magic, not wanting the flow and power of it to impact the twins.

She couldn’t save me until after the twins were born.

I refused to miss the birth of my children.

I found my own escape. I made it home to my mate and wife to watch my twins come into the world. ”

“You are being sparse on details,” Heath pointed out, catching how Hasan was telling them broad strokes of a story that was certainly more interesting than they were getting.

“There are some things I will take to my grave. Not even Subira has heard them, and she never will, which means no one else will ever hear them.” Hasan grabbed the spike, then ripped the second out of the wall.

“She is as Kushim and I have said. A cruel woman. A sadist with a god complex.” He looked at the spikes, his gold eyes radiating fury.

“The reality is, Jacky should have died, but this witch likes pain too much. She played with Jacky, and when she was out of time, she hadn’t done enough damage in her mind to justify ending the torture early with a death. ”

“How are we supposed to combat a witch powerful enough to throw us around and torture us like this?” Heath demanded. “How did you?”

Hasan met his gaze, no more heat in his eyes but cold fury.

“I took her by surprise while she was in a vulnerable position. She didn’t redo her control spell in time to contain me, thanks to her own distraction,” Hasan answered, a sick-looking smile spreading on his face. “Since that won’t help us this time… that is all you need to know.”

Heath inhaled, taking all of what Hasan was feeling and decided he was going to end his line of questioning about Hasan’s history with the witch.

There was a sickness in those emotions Heath had encountered similar before.

Like an old festering wound smelled terrible, Hasan’s emotions were pungent and pointed to a disease that could be fatal.

“How did she curse you? I saw the pictures of the witches and the moon cursed from Alaska. They had runes and shit carved into their skin…” Landon trailed off, probably catching the same spike in Hasan’s anger that came from Landon’s questions.

“She painted it onto my skin. This was before anyone really understood the silver weakness of moon cursed, so she would have been unsuccessful in carving it into my skin. Would have healed scarless. So she painted it and had to repaint it every… few days, I believe. It was some time ago, and some days of it blurred together.” Hasan started walking away.

“If this is all, I shall head outside and check on the women.”

Once he was out of sight, Landon made a noise.

“The women. Like he reverted to a few thousand years ago,” he muttered. “Grunt caveman energy.”

“He wasn’t a caveman,” Heath said dryly, not finding the same humor Landon was getting.

Without the conversation with Hasan, with nothing to focus on, he was hard pressed to find anything to think about except for the smell of Jacky’s blood, and worse, the faint scent of Carey’s fear still lingering in the room.

“I believe we have everything we need here. We should go.”

“Wait.” Landon held up a hand, moving toward where Carey must have sat with Courtney. He was sniffing the air and paused at a chair that wasn’t knocked over.

“What is it?” Heath asked, watching his son with a frown.

Heath had footage of the room, and he couldn’t stay in here too long.

He couldn’t linger on scents without becoming distracted by the pain Jacky must have been in or considering how afraid his daughter had been or still was, wherever she was.

“Courtney smelled desperate,” Landon said softly, kneeling next to the chair. “It’s faint now, but she smelled desperate.”

“Jacky explained that,” Heath pointed out. It wasn’t new information, so he was uncertain why Landon was interested in it now. “What are you thinking, Landon?”

“There are different types of desperate. Well, different reasons people will feel desperate, and it changes the way it smells,” Landon explained softly.

“There’s desperation to fix a relationship because you love someone.

Right. We’re feeling desperate because we want to save Carey.

The assumption would be that Courtney felt desperate for the chance to have a relationship with her daughter, and this was her only chance. ”

“The assumption, but not the reality?” Heath crossed his arms. Werewolves could smell so much more than werecats.

It could be finicky, thanks to the fact that there were so many smells in the world, and it was easy to miss something.

Landon was focusing very hard on one individual, who hadn’t been there for hours.

He had to catch and ignore every scent that wasn’t her. There were hundreds .

But Landon was clearer minded than Heath, and Heath was grateful that his son was handling this better than himself. At that moment, Heath found it difficult to smell anything other than Carey and Jacky in the room.