Page 122 of Jagged Souls

Thirty-Three

HIM

“I’m not interested in anything you have to tell me,” I say as I slide a knife across Alejandro’s flesh. It’s a shallow cut across the tip of his penis. Number nine hundred and one out of a thousand. He screams for mercy, howling in the chair he’s tied to, the silver chains around his arms and legs draining away his strength, making him weak.

Helpless.

Just like my wife and Rudy.

“Take comfort in the pain of today,” I tell him as I cut a short line down the length of his cock. He offers up more secrets about the Death Hunt, trying to get me to stop.

I don’t.

He has already told me Antonio tells them nothing, so anything he spits out under torture will just be lies said to get the pain to end.

It won’t.

“For tomorrow will be worse,” I say calmly. “As will the day after that.” Another cut, this one around the base of his cock, right above his balls. “And the day after that.” I slice open his sack, following the crease in the middle. “For the rest of your life.” Cupping him, I squeeze a testicle out of the hole I’ve just made. He screams, high-pitched and hopeless, and I meditate to that noise, to these actions.

I normally go nine rounds with a bag when I can’t sleep, but that just isn’t fucking cutting it these days.

Not when I can feel her pain even through the wall I’ve erected. It’s a dull ache in the back of my mind, a constant weight on my shoulders. I want to lower it and feel her fully, to experience it with her so she’s not alone, but I can’t risk using up any more of the blood bond. We already have a deadline of only a few months before it kills her. If I decrease that any further, it could prove fatal. Besides, Antonio needs to think I’ve given up on her, that I have abandoned her like an empty bottle. Otherwise, he’ll take more than just her eyes.

My fingers tighten on the blade, my control slipping as my emotions rear their volatile head.

A week and a half ago, I went to meet one of my capos. After destroying the Death Hunt nearly overnight – with only a few loose threads still needing to be trimmed, Aleric and I have been busy running our expanded territories and businesses. As much as I have wanted to focus all of my energy on finding my loved ones, I am still the Boss, and playing that role has helped me sell the lie that I don’t give a shit about either of them.

But when I came out of that meeting, with Maddox, Enoch, and Stormie beside me, there was a small box sitting on my windshield. Dark teal with a blood-red bow. The colors of the Death Hunt. Inside was a pair of eyes I would recognize anywhere despite how badly they were crushed. I’d never had a favorite color before I’d looked at my wife.

But I knew he would be watching.

Unable to let my grief show, it took everything I had to drop the box onto the pavement and climb into the car. I did not let the others see what it was.

The door to the garage opens. Dayne walks in, unable to sleep either. Ever since we learned that Antonio had taken his breeding women with him, we’ve been in here every night.

When I saw the mess he had left behind at the school – female werewolves with their stomachs ripped open and their babies torn from them, I assumed he had only taken those who were childfree. But according to Jona when we tortured him for info about it thirteen days ago, showing him photos of the dead, he told me Antonio had taken the only women who had successfully given birth to hybrids, all of whom were pregnant at the time we attacked. The others were only carrying full wolf pups; that’s why they were left behind.

Which means my earlier idea of waiting until Micha was pregnant before we rescued her isn’t going to give us the advantage I hoped it would.

“What’s the time?” I ask Dayne as he moves over to Greyson, the wolf with the missing bone in his arm.

“Four-ish.” Pulling out a knife, he starts carving Micha’s name into the man’s flesh. Over and over again. We cut out Greyson’s tongue days ago, and now he’s just a pathetic, whimpering mess.

I continue my count of a thousand cuts across Alejandro. My hand stays steady despite the increase of my pulse. We only have one more hour before we need to go.

Ryker Ezwail’ik, the Boss on the other side of the portal connecting Earth to one of the Seven Planes called Blódyrió, has found me two highly skilled teleporters. It’s taken him fifteen fucking days and cost me a hefty fee five times the normal rate, but I would’ve paid it a thousand times over.

Without them, we have little hope of rescuing my wife and Rudy. Vampires can’t phase to somewhere they haven’t been to if it’s out of sight. I could track her down through the blood bond, but it’ll take weeks for us to catch up to the super yacht (if we manage at all), and they’ll spot us from miles away. I highly doubt their boat will be unarmed either. They could easily sink our ship or teleport her out of there before we ever board.

So we need someone to hijack Eduardo’s teleportation network, but if we hire a witch from Earth, there’s a good chance Antonio will be alerted. Then he’ll know what we’re planning and that I care very much about what happens to his captives. For now, I have managed to convince him that Micha is broken goods, yesterday’s trash, and Rudy is a defective Shadow, unable to kill like the rest of us. A softie, a liability, and Antonio taking him has been nothing but a favor.

If we don’t save them in our next attempt though, they will be cut into pieces.

I jerk my knife as intense pain crashes down the blood bond. Alejandro screams as the shallow cut I was aiming for slices off the head of his penis. I push to my feet, no longer squatting between his legs. My heart pounds hard as I turn northeast. Dayne is in front of me a second later.

“What’s happening to her?” he demands, his haggard eyes full of rage and pain.

Khalid enters the garage, Micha’s soul doll is in his hand. The two of us turn to him, but I don’t need to hear him say the words I already know.