Page 18 of Pack Rage
Still, his lips against my wrist remained shut. I tried to remember the fairy tales my nanny had read to me as a child, before she’d vanished for being “too lenient” with me. Magic numbers, magic words… Maybe he needed to be asked three times?
“Take my blood, Grigor Dimitrivich.”
His lips moved, and I fought not to flinch, but all I felt was an exhalation on my hand. “Noble pup. Thank you for your kind offer, but I will not take your blood. I fear I would take your life, and although I may yet do that, if your answers to my questions are not satisfying, I will wait.” I blinked, unsure what that meant. He exhaled again. “Can you release me from this cloth?”
“Ah, yes.” I scrambled to unzip him entirely, pulling the silver chains away from him, careful to keep my gloves in place. I’d put on thicker ones than the usual wetwork latex, and was glad for the protection, though the silver burned even through the thick leather of these.
I piled the last of the chains beside Grigor, glancing nervously at the camera, glad to see the red eye still dead. The room lights were dimmer than normal as well, I noted as I pulled the zipper down.
“By the moon,” I whispered as the man’s face became visible. He’d been beaten until he was almost unrecognizable, only his dark hair and the gleam in the one eye he could still open familiar at all.
“The moon had no part of this,” he panted, trying to push himself up. Quickly, I kneeled beside him and helped, carrying him to the wall and resting his back against it before grabbing the bag I’d brought down. It had water and food intended for the Hilliers, but Grigor needed it more. I uncapped the water bottle and held it to his trembling, bloody lips so he could sip.
When he was done, the water bottle was empty, and his face relaxed. I let out a shaky breath. “Do I call you Joaquin, or Grigor?”
He almost smiled. “Glen… calls me Joaquin. He says he cannot be bound… to the boogeyman.”
I shook my head. “Sounds just like him. So, you are bonded. Luke told me Glen allowed it to save you. To save Luke, and Flor.”
“He is very brave for one so young. Brave and generous.” Grigor’s eyes narrowed. “You should be stronger than you are. You have almost no magic. Your mother, though… Ah, I see.”
“Magic?”
“You are the child of both lines of magic. Yet I watched you in Northern, and never saw the connection. Even now, there is no magic in you.”
I leaned back, uncertain what he meant. “You think I should have magic from my mother? I was hoping my lack of it meant I didn’t inherit her evil.”
“I’m afraid you inherited mine, pup.” He placed a shaky hand on the wall. “One moment.” While my mind buzzed, trying to decide what he’d meant by me inheriting his magic, he closed his eyes. The light in the room dipped again, and I could smell something like ozone coming from him. He had on black pants, though they were torn in many places, but no shoes and no shirt. As I watched, static lifted the hairs on the few inches of him that weren’t covered with blood. What was he doing? When the swelling in his face receded, and his other eye opened, I had my answer.
Witchcraft.
“You can heal yourself with electricity?”
“I can. Power of any sort, though the easiest for me is the darkest kind.”
“Blood?”
He grimaced. “Blood magic, yes. I don’t drink it, or not anymore. It’s addictive.” He closed his eyes, smiling like he was remembering an especially pleasant dream.
“Youdon’tdrink it, then?”
“I have. But I only need to spill it, and absorb the power in the pain and fear, the life force as it moves, as their eyes close…” His voice trailed off again. I held my face still, trying not to show how much his wistful tone disturbed me.
“Maybe this will help take the edge off.” I reached back into the bag, unwrapped a protein bar, and handed it to him.
“Apologies, pup. I would never drain your blood. Though your mother’s…” He took it and chewed slowly with one hand still on the wall, taking energy from two sources at once. “What was she like when you were younger?”
“As bad as she is now, maybe worse. Every week, she’d bring me outside, or down here, to one of these rooms, if she was worried about the pack witnessing my ‘training.’ Father said she did it to toughen me up, to make me worthy of the role of Alpha. I needed to learn how to bear pain, and how to give it.” I’d spent many of the darkest moments of my life in the lower levels of the Mansion.
“She forced you to kill as well.” He stated it in a compassionate voice, like he knew what it had cost me.
“Killing was the least of it. Once I could defend myself, she made me do things, they made me…” I choked back a sob. “I was their torturer for a while. But I made a far better whore. And if I wasn’t willing to do it, I had a little sister. So I did what I had to.”
The room went silent for a moment, until he took his empty hand and placed it on my trembling one. My mind spun. Grigor Dimitrivich was… comforting me?
“Your mother consumed your pain,” he whispered. “The blood, the sex. All of it fueled her, and drained you.”
“What do you mean?” I leaned forward to hear, and when I did, he raised that hand to my face, cupping my cheek almost tenderly.
