The Darkest Whisper

Sabin cleared his throat and decided to feed her again once her stomach had settled. For now, they could finish their conversation. After all, she’d lived up to her side of the bargain. She had eaten.

“You asked what I needed you to do. Well, I need your help finding and killing the men responsible for your…treatment.” Tread carefully. Don’t rouse her dark side with painful memories. But there was no way around it. “The others, they told us what had been done. The fertility drugs, the rapes. How there were other women once locked in those cages. Women who were raped as well, their babies taken away from them. A few seemed to think this has been going on for years already.”

Gwen’s back was pressed against the sand-colored tent flaps, yet she tried to scoot backward, as though she needed to escape from his words and the images they evoked.

Sabin himself had cringed, hearing the stories. He might be half demon, but he had never done anything as terrible as what had been done to the women in that cavern.

“Those men are vile,” he said. “They need to be destroyed.”

“Yes.” One of her arms fell from her legs, and she drew little circles in the dirt beside her hip. “But I… wasn’t.” The words were so softly spoken, he had to strain to hear them.

“You weren’t, what? Raped?”

Nibbling on her bottom lip—a nervous habit of hers? — she shook her head. “He was too afraid to open my cage, so he left me alone. Physically, at least. He…took the others in front of me.” There was guilt in her tone.

Ah. She felt responsible.

Sabin felt only relief. The thought of this fae-like creature being held down, her legs pried apart while she cried and begged for mercy, mercy that would never have been given…He anchored his hands on his thighs, his nails elongating into claws and cutting past fatigues.

When he returned to Budapest, the Hunters in his dungeon would suffer untold agonies, he thought for the thousandth time. He’d tortured men before, considered it a necessary part of war, but this time he would truly enjoy it.

“Why did he keep you, then, if he was afraid of you?”

“Because he hadn’t given up hope that the right drugs would make me biddable.”

Blood beaded where claw met skin. She’d lived in terror, he was sure, of that very thing happening. “You can avenge yourself, Gwen. You can avenge the other women. I can help you.”

Her lashes lifted, the sand she played with clearly forgotten, and then those amber orbs were probing all the way to his soul. “So can you. Avenge us, I mean. Obviously those men did something to you. You came here to fight them, didn’t you?”

“Yes, they did something to me and mine, and yes, I came here to fight them. That doesn’t mean I can destroy them on my own.” Otherwise, he would have done so by now.

“What did they do to you?”

“They murdered my best friend. And they hope to murder everyone else I hold dear, all because they believe the lies of their leader. I’ve been trying to obliterate them for centuries,” he admitted. The fact that the Hunters continued to thrive was like a dagger in his side. “But I kill one, and five more take his place.”

When she didn’t blink at the word centuries, he realized she knew he, too, was immortal. But did she know what he was?

No way she’s guessed. Like most every other woman in your life, she would despise what you are. How could she not? And look at her now. So sweet, so gentle. No evidence of hatred. Yet. The last emerged in a singsong.

Doubt. His constant companion. His cross to bear.

“How do I know you aren’t one of them?” she demanded. “How do I know this isn’t simply another way to try and gain my cooperation? I’ll help you fight your enemy and you’ll rape me. I’ll get pregnant, and you’ll steal the child from me.”

Doubts. Courtesy of his demon?

Before he could think up a reply, she added tightly, “I watched you fight those men. You hurt them, claim to hate them, but you didn’t kill them. You let them live. That isn’t the action of a warrior who wants to annihilate his enemy.”

As she spoke, an idea sprouted. A way to prove himself. “And if we’d killed them, you would have been convinced of our hate for them?”

More nibbling on that lush bottom lip. Her teeth were white and straight and a little sharper than a human’s. Kissing her would probably draw blood, but part of him suspected every drop would be worth it. “I—maybe.”

Maybe was better than nothing. “Lucien,” he called without removing his attention from her.

Her eyes widened, and again she tried to scoot back. “What are you doing? Don’t—”

Lucien stalked through the front flaps, glancing between them expectantly. “Yes?”

“Bring me a prisoner from Buda. I don’t care which.”

Lucien’s brow furrowed in curiosity, but he didn’t reply. He simply disappeared.

“I can’t help you, Sabin,” Gwen said, sounding agonized. Imploring him to understand. “I really can’t. There’s no reason to do whatever it is you’re about to do. I shouldn’t have yelled at you the way I did. All right? I admit it. I shouldn’t have insulted you with my doubts. But I seriously can’t fight anyone. I freeze up when I’m scared. And then I black out. When I wake up, everyone around me is dead.” She gulped, squeezed her eyes shut for several seconds. “Once I start killing, I can’t stop. That’s not the kind of soldier you can rely on.”

“You didn’t kill me,” he reminded her. “You didn’t kill my friends.”

“I honestly don’t know how I pulled myself back. That’s never happened before. I wouldn’t know how to do it a-gain.” She paled.

Lucien had reappeared, a struggling Hunter at his side.

Reaching behind his back, Sabin withdrew a dagger and stood.

When Gwen saw the glinting silver, she gasped. “Wh-what are you doing?”

“Was this man one of your tormentors?” Sabin asked the now trembling female.

Silent, her gaze moved from one man to another in dread. She clearly knew what was coming, but this wasn’t the heat of battle. It would be straight-up murder.

The Hunter kicked and punched at Lucien. That failed to gain him his freedom, so he began sobbing. “Let me go, let me go, let me go. Please. I only did what I was told. I didn’t mean to hurt the women. It was all for the greater good.”

“Shut it,” Sabin said. This time he’d be the one to show no mercy. “You didn’t save them either, now did you?”

“I’ll stop trying to kill you. I swear!”

“Gwendolyn.” Sabin’s voice was hard, uncompromising, a roar compared to the Hunter’s pleading. “An answer. Please. Was this man one of your tormentors?”

She gave a single nod.

Without word or warning, he cut the Hunter’s throat.

CHAPTER 5

Sabin had murdered a man in front of her.

Several hours had since passed and they’d even switched locations, but the bloody image of that human falling to his knees, then to his face, gurgling then silent, so silent, refused to leave her mind.

Gwen had known that kind of fierceness churned inside of Sabin—the same kind of fierceness that had driven her to murder. She’d known he was hard and harsh and untouched by softer emotion. His eyes gave him away. Dark and cold, utterly calculating. The moment he’d led her out of her cell those two days ago, she’d begun to notice the way he surveyed the scene around him and decided who and what he could use to his advantage. Everything else was debris.

She must have been debris. Then. Now he wanted her help.