Chapter Seventeen
Topside
Pre-dawn
Nicolae Lazăr threw his dagger. It flipped end over end, sparks of moonlight leaping from the metal blade, and found its target. The haft bonked the jackrabbit on the skull, and the animal plopped over dead.
Nicolae strode over and picked up the limp body, adding it to the others—he had eight—then navigated over to the camp cook fire with his kill.
At a large, flat stone, he made neat work out of skinning the beasts, filleting flesh from bone, then chopping the meat into chunks.
Andreea came up to him and gave him a quiet look.
He nodded to the un-woman.
She scooped the meat into a bowl and took it over to the stew pot.
Nicolae strode to the water pump, still functional even though this tourist vacation site of log cabins had long ago gone bankrupt—according to information found on an internet site called Yelp. He cranked water into a bucket, then crouched down and cleaned his knife of blood and fur, first scrubbing, then caressing his fingers over the blade. Perfectly crafted for both fighting and the meaner tasks associated with hunting, this knife was an extraordinary weapon. He used it with all the reverence it deserved, although he would’ve surrendered it in an instant and carried some fossilized dirk instead if it meant getting his father back. If Lucien was still alive, he would be the one wielding this blade.
Ten years the man had been gone, and Nicolae still hadn’t put his feet all the way back on the ground.
But then, the center of Nicolae’s world—his older brother’s, too—had been his father, a big, dark, smiling man who could knock a charging boar senseless with a single blow from his fist, dodge a lightning-fast strike from one of Zalina’s Amazon-sized warriors, and make a longsword sing on its way to carving flesh.
Nicolae and Vasile had loved their mother, of course, missed her dearly, too, but she’d kept herself on the fringe of the men in her life. Cătălina married Lucien only to save herself from becoming an un-woman after her first mate died. She never loved him, so there’d been no place for her among the tight-knit Lazăr men.
Fathers and sons weren’t supposed to be so close. According to American television—and other men’s conversations—sons were supposed to be plagued by competitive distance, struggles to please an impossible-to-satisfy man, and disillusionment when the son learned of his father’s imperfections, the discovery sending the father toppling from his lofty and heroic perch down to the earth of mortals.
Nicolae and Vasile never knew any of these troubles.
Distance? Never. To survive the prejudice of others, the Lazăr men banded together and depended on each other.
“You’ll always have to be twice as good as everyone else in order to achieve one quarter of their regard,” Lucien told his boys.
And so he taught them to be the best—the greatest protectors against the enemy factions of the Patru Puternic, the most skilled hunters and providers, the strongest in moral character. Lucien set difficult tasks before his sons to train them, ones Nicolae and Vasile worked tirelessly to conquer. And whether they succeeded or failed, Lucien was always proud of their efforts. He was never impossible to please.
How could a man like this topple from his valiant status? He never did. Lucien had forever been their hero: large, unstoppable, invincible…until the day he wasn’t. The day the Lazăr men decided to go outside the safety of the ward to hunt—food had been scarce for several weeks—and Savatina appeared from nowhere, just nowhere, her longsword already swinging downward in a lethal arc.
Savatina’s blade cleaved Lucien nearly in two, slicing him from the left shoulder in a diagonal cut down to the lower right side of his body, and in the next blink, she skewered Vasile through the side of his waist.
Flung back onto his butt during the half-second melee, Nicolae threw his dagger from where he sat, missed Savatina, crawled over to his dead father, jerked the knife from the belt-sheath, then thrust upward with the blade right as Savatina was bending over to deliver a death blow to Vasile. Nicolae drove the steel straight into the witch’s black heart, although Savatina didn’t die. A pierced heart couldn’t kill one of Zalina’s daughters. It only sent her into a Sleep.
As the warrior witch dropped to the ground, then disappeared under one of Zalina’s protective spells, Nicolae hunched over his father, covered his face with his palms, and wept.
Vasile didn’t die, either, but almost. The puncture wound missed his important internal organs, but both Nicolae and Vasile never recovered as quickly as others did. Once Vasile did finally heal, he ceremoniously gave Nicolae Lucien’s knife. Vasile, as eldest, had familial rights to the weapon, and the blade had become even more exceptional the moment it touched Savatina’s blood, for it gained a mysterious power.
But Vasile said Nicolae saved his life with it. He would hear no arguments otherwise.
Nicolae dried the special blade now on his pants leg, then slowly sheathed it. The knife often brought up memories of his father, but more so at present, what with everything being done in the glen this night. A man was being tortured with a bullwhip, and not because of any personal failings of his own, but in the name of his father.
It was vastly unjust.
Nicolae knew exactly how unjust from personal experience. He himself had spent his whole life paying for having the blood of his forefathers in his veins, and not a single day of it had been fair. A man should be judged on his character, not on the happenstance of his birth. But what could Nicolae do about it?
They were all under the control of Şef de clan, or Chief, whose decisions were uncontested law. And Nicolae possessed even less power than the other men due to who he was, as had been proven long ago when he failed his mother. Despite Nicolae’s passionate argument to Chief on Cătălina’s behalf, she was made an un-woman after Lucien died, the very fate she’d always fought to escape.
If Nicolae spoke out about the brutal, undeserved whipping of Son of Nichita, the only change he’d bring about would be getting himself fired from guard duty and sent to clean the shit pots. And even worse, he would go back to being shunned.
“Nicolae!”
At the shout, Nicolae straightened from the water pump and turned around.
Răzuan stood at the head of the path leading to the clearing. “<Go tend to your prisoner,>” he told him in Romanian, gesturing toward the large oak tree. “<They’re being taken to the cabin now.>”
Nicolae nodded and set off. When he arrived at the tree, the only prisoner remaining was the one with black hair drooping in his face. The man wasn’t showing any traces of pain, even though his arms were blue from wrists to armpits.
Nicolae strode over and unhooked the chain, releasing him to the ground.
As the man dropped in a heap to the earth, his expression broke, his lips pulling back into a tight spasm, exposing savagely locked teeth. It had to be unparalleled agony having blood and feeling rush into those dead limbs, although the man obviously wasn’t going to make a sound…not when Son of Nichita had endured so much worse.
At some point during the brutal whipping, Nicolae hadn’t been able to watch anymore. He’d faded into the shadows of the trees and bowed his head. Crouched only about twenty meters away, though, he’d still heard everything.
Bending over, Nicolae checked the duct tape binding his prisoner’s wrists. The chain had eaten through some of it, so Nicolae grabbed the roll from near the tree trunk and taped a few more strips on. The man’s teeth gritted harder. Nicolae tried not to wrap it too tight.
“Come, come,” he said, gesturing toward the prisoner’s cabin.
When the man didn’t get up, Nicolae helped him stand, then led him by the arm inside the shelter.
Son of Nichita was already lying belly-down on a pallet, looking nearly unconscious. The other two men were seated on the floor at Son of Nichita’s feet, their backs propped against the wall.
Nicolae sat his prisoner down by the wall across from these two.
Nicolae had thought meeting these men would be like reuniting with long-lost cousins, but they were more different than expected. Son of Nichita wore a beard, and he was way too young for that! Another man had whiskers, too, the one with a tattoo on his arm. Not like the warding tattoos Nicolae and Vasile wore, but an evil-looking beast. The man’s left eye was bluish-purple from the ambush fight.
Out of the same battle, the man with light-colored hair had earned a puffed, split lower lip. His body was also splotched with crusted blood, but this blood belonged to Son of Nichita. The curious part about this man was his hair. Nicolae had only ever seen light color of this sort on television or on the Şarpe Pursânge breed. And, yes, this man was giving off a whiff of Dragon, but that would be impossible. A Dragon would never be allowed among these other three men. The hair had to be fake.
Nicolae’s brother, Vasile, entered. He was a tall, strapping man with long, thick black hair, the strands lacking the natural waves that created the tangled mess of hair on Nicolae’s forehead.
Vasile ushered in two un-women, Céline and Eugenia.
These two both knelt beside Son of Nichita, and Céline began to attend to the injured man’s back with the medicinals from the basket she carried.
Son of Nichita groaned.
The one with the tattoo sneered. “Fixing him up so he’ll be healthy enough for more abuse tomorrow, is that the plan?”
Nicolae didn’t care to answer the question. He hunkered down in front of the light-colored one. “Hair?” He tugged on his own hair and pointed at the other man’s. “How?”
The light-colored one looked him straight in the eyes. “My dick in your ear.”
Nicolae opened his mouth, then closed it. Huh? “What?”
The light-colored one said something else. He spoke in a conversational tone, but Nicolae didn’t quite catch the words. Go…what? Go duck yourself? He sat back on his haunches and ran a hand over his chin. He’d studied English in the manor school as a child, along with the others, but lack of daily practice meant none of them spoke it well—some, like his brother, not at all. Many of them didn’t understand much more than a simple syllable or two. Nicolae understood a great deal because he watched so much American television. But the words this man spoke didn’t make sense at all.
“<They speak nonsense,>” he informed his brother.
Vasile scowled. “<Don’t talk to those two, Nicolae.>” He indicated the prone man. “<Son of Grigore Nichita needs to feed. Tell him.>”
Nicolae peered closely at Son of Nichita’s ragged face. “<I don’t think he’ll hear me.>”
“<He won’t heal sufficiently if he doesn’t feed.>” Vasile gestured impatiently at Eugenia.
She stuck her wrist under Son of Nichita’s nose.
The man didn’t react.
“He’s bonded,” the tattooed one growled.
Nicolae spun around. What? How…?
Vasile closely observed Eugenia, a towering presence, his customarily stern expression growing darker as nothing continued to happen between Nichita and the un-woman. “Eugenia—!”
“<They say Son of Nichita is bonded,>” Nicolae cut in. A bonded male could only feed off his mate, but that was—
“<Impossible.>” Vasile’s brows bunched into a more sharply-drawn vee.
Nicolae shrugged. Why would they lie?
Andreea entered, bearing a tray with four bowls of rabbit stew. She passed these out to the prisoners—Son of Nichita’s was set beside him—then left.
Nicolae shook his head at the tattooed one as he pointed at Son of Nichita. “Bonded. Imposibil.”
The tattooed one rumbled a noise in his chest. “Listen, cracker—”
Nicolae made a stop gesture with his hand. “No discuss.”
The tattooed one leaned over and scooped up a spoonful of stew—he couldn’t pick up the bowl with his wrists duct-taped together—and shoveled it in his mouth. He chewed, then said, “Duck you.”
Nicolae frowned. “<They keep talking of ducks.>”
Vasile waved dismissively at the bowls of stew. “<They will eat what we give them.>”
Exhaling, Nicolae pointed a stronger finger at Son of Nichita, then transferred his finger to Eugenia. “Feed.”
“He can’t, you twat.” The tattooed one glanced at the light-colored one. “Was I unaware that I’d switched to Greek when I said it the first time?”
The light-colored one didn’t answer this question. He concentrated on his stew, his movements rigid and overly precise, as if his arms still weren’t functioning properly. Blood had returned to all the prisoners’ arms, but this didn’t help the appearance of these limbs. From elbows to armpits to ribcage, all four men were marbled with bruises.
Nicolae inspected Son of Nichita again. The man definitely didn’t look like he could feed, but whether from being a bonded male or from his injuries, that remained the question. “What is twat?” Nicolae asked the tattooed one.
He snorted, then curled his upper lip. “A coward.”
Nicolae flushed. “<This one calls us cowards,>” he tattled to Vasile.
Storm clouds lowered onto Vasile’s brow. He stalked over to the tattooed one and loomed over him, his long black hair framing a fierce expression. The circles around his irises spun with his anger, and he made a hammer fist.
The tattooed one set down his spoon and braced himself.
“<He’s right, you know,>” Nicolae said quietly.
Vasile whirled on him.
Nicolae averted his gaze. “<We are cowards.>”