"Still ... ?" the guy asked after a moment.
"Yeah. It wasn't right for me to ... take that from her."
Oh, God, the idea she could be hurt ...
He couldn't even finish the sentence to himself.
Snapping into action, he stepped out of his place and went over to call the elevator. As he waited, he realized that there had only been silence on the other end of the phone for a while. "Hello? You there."
"Yeah." Her twin's voice cracked. "Yeah. I'm here."
The connection between them remained open as Manny got into the elevator and hit P. And the entire trip down to his car was passed with the two of them saying absolutely nothing at all.
"They're impotent," her twin finally muttered just as Manny was getting into the Porsche. "They can't have sex."
Well, didn't that do nothing to make him feel better. And going by the tone of her brother's voice, the other guy was thinking the same way.
"I'll call you," Manny said.
"You do that, my man. You frickin' do that."
Chapter Fifty-two
When Payne came back to consciousness, she did not open her eyes. No reason to give away the fact that she was aware of her surroundings.
Bodily sensation informed her of her situation: She was on her feet, with her wrists shackled and pulled out to the sides and her back against a stone wall that was damp. Her ankles were likewise tethered and stretched apart and her head had lolled forward into a very uncomfortable position.
When she drew breaths in, she smelled musky dirt, and the voices of males percolated up from the left of where she was.
Very deep voices. Cast with drumming excitement, as if a benefit had fallen into their clutches.
She was it.
As she gathered her strength, she was under no illusions of what they were going to do to her. Soon. And as she drew herself together, she shied away from thoughts of her Manuel ... of how, if these males had their way, they would spoil her many times over before they murdered her, taking what rightly should have been her healer's -
Except she could not and would not think of him. That cognition was a black pit that would suck her in and trap her and render her defenseless.
Instead, she pulled at the threads of memory, melding the images of the faces of her kidnappers with what she knew from the bowls in the Sanctuary.
Why? she wondered. She had not a clue why the one with the ruined lip had set upon her with such hatred -
"I know you wake." The voice was impossibly low and heavily accented and right next to her ear. "Your breathing pattern has changed."
Lifting her lids along with her head, she shifted her eyes unto the soldier. He was in the shadows beside her so she could not see him properly.
Abruptly, the other voices silenced, and she sensed many stares were upon her.
So this was what prey felt like.
"I'm hurt that you remember nothing of me, female." At that, he brought a candle close to his face. "I have thought of you every night since we first met. A hundred and a hundred years afore."
She narrowed her eyes. Black hair. Cruel eyes of dark blue. And a harelip that he had obviously been born with.
"Remember me." It was not a question, but a demand. "Remember me."
And then it came back. The small village on the edge of a wooded glen. Where she had killed her father. This was one of the Bloodletter's soldiers. No doubt they all were.
Oh, she was definitely prey, she thought. And they were looking forward to hurting her before they killed her in retaliation for taking their leader from them.
"Remember me."
"You are a soldier of the Bloodletter's."
"No," he barked, putting his face in hers. "I am more than that."
As she frowned, he just backed off and paced around in a tight circle, his fists cranked tight, the candle dripping wax onto his curled hand.
When he returned front and center afore her, he was in control. Barely. "I am his son. His son. You stole from me my father - "
"Impossible."
" - unjustly - What?"
Into his stuttered silence, she said loudly and clearly, "It is impossible that you are his son."
When her words registered, the blind fury in his face was the very definition of hatred, and his hand shook as he lifted it up over his shoulder.
He slapped her so hard she saw stars.
As Payne righted her head and met him in the eye, she was not going to have any of this. Not his mistaken belief. Not this group of males sizing her up. Not the criminal ignorance.
Payne held the stare of her captor. "The Bloodletter sired one and only one male offspring - "
"The Black Dagger Brother Vishous." Hard laughter echoed. "I have heard well the stories of his perversions - "
"My brother is not a pervert!"
At this point, Payne lost all control, the anger that had carried her through that night she had killed her father coming back and taking over: Vishous was her blood and her savior for all he had done for her. And she was not going to have him disrespected - even if defending him cost her her life.
Between one heartbeat and the next she was consumed by an inner energy that illuminated the cellar they were all in with a brilliant white light.
The cuffs burned away, falling down to the packed dirt floor with a clanking.
And the male before her leaped back and braced into a fighting stance while the others grabbed for weapons. But she was not going to attack - at least, not physically.
"Listen to me now," she proclaimed. "I am birthed of the Scribe Virgin. I am of the Chosen Sanctuary. So when I say unto you the Bloodletter, my father, bore no other male issue, that is fact."
"Untrue," the male breathed. "And you - you cannot have been born unto the Mother of the race. There is none born unto her - "
Payne lifted her glowing arms. "I am what I am. Deny it at your peril."
The male's complexion drained of what color had been in it, and there was a long, tense standoff, as conventional weapons pointed in her direction and she glowed with holy fury.
And then the head soldier's fighting stance relaxed, his hands falling to his sides, his thighs straightening. "It cannae be," he choked out. "None of it ..."
Fool male, she thought.
Kicking up her chin, she declared, "I am the begotten issue of the Bloodletter and the Scribe Virgin. And I say to you now" - she stepped forward to him - "that I killed my father, not yours."
Lifting her palm, she peeled back and slapped him across the face. "And do not insult my blood."
As the female struck him, Xcor's head whipped so far and so fast to the side that he pulled his shoulder in the attempt to keep the damn thing stuck to his spine. Blood immediately flooded into his mouth, and he spit some of it out before righting himself.
Verily, the female before him was majestic in her fury and her resolve. Nearly as tall as he was, she stared him straight in the eye, her feet planted, her hands in fists she was prepared to use against him and his band of bastards.
No ordinary female, this. And not just because of the way she had dissolved those cuffs.
In fact, as she met his gaze full-on, she reminded him of his father. She had the Bloodletter's iron will not just in her face or her eyes or her body. It was in her soul.
Indeed, he had the very clear sense that they could all fall upon her and she would fight them each and every until the last breath and beat of her heart.
God knew she slapped like a warrior. Not some limp-wristed female.
But ...
"He was my father. He told me that."
"He was a liar." At that, she did not blink. Nor did she duck her eyes or her chin. "I have witnessed within the seeing bowls countless bastard daughters. But there was one and only one son, and that is my twin."
Xcor was not prepared to hear this in front of his males.
He glanced over at them. Even Throe had armed himself, and on each of their faces was impatient rage. One nod from him and they would set upon her, even if she incinerated them all.
"Leave us," he commanded.
Not surprisingly, Zypher was the one who started to argue. "Let us hold her whilst you - "
"Leave us."
There was a beat of immobility. Then Xcor screamed, "Leave us!"
In a flash, they peeled off and disappeared up the stairwell to the darkened house above. Then the door was shut, and footsteps rang out from up above as they paced around like caged animals.
Xcor refocused on the female.