The Darkest Seduction

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

HE’D BEEN ABUSED, his skin like pretty pink ribbons curling from a Christmas box.

Violated in the worst ways.

But Kane never gave the female minions what they wanted.

He was ashamed that he couldn’t fight his way free, that his demon had somehow taken him over and held him down as surely as the chains shackling his wrists and ankles. He was a warrior, thousands of years old, with experience honed on the bloodiest of battlefields. This should be child’s play to him. He should have escaped long ago.

More than any of that, however, he was humiliated by all kinds of other things he wasn’t ready to acknowledge or face. The things they’d done to him…

Later. He would deal with it later. Maybe. Right now, all he could do was distance himself from what was happening to his body, as if it wasn’t actually his body enduring the abuse. As if someone else had teeth in his thigh, hands where no others had been.

Drip, drip went his blood.

Kane had been tortured before. Many times, in fact. This was just more of the same, he told himself. Yeah. Right.

Disaster laughed, a cruel, happy sound echoing in his mind. If only that were the first time, but no. Disaster had laughed and laughed and laughed, a never-ending stream of amusement.

Hate utterly consumed Kane, kept him conscious. Every time he felt himself slipping into darkness, he thought about the demon High Lord inside him. Despite his instinct to remain distanced, he wanted to know every deed done to him. One day, he would return the favor in kind—a thousandfold. His demon would suffer this way. His demon would die this way.

Yes, one day.

His gaze pulled from the blood-spattered cavern wall above him and slipped down his body. He was a raw slab of scarlet. Dripping…dripping… Were those his ribs? Yes, he thought hazily. They were, one of them even pointing in the wrong direction.

One. Day.

Distantly he heard the pound of…horse hooves? Maybe. Whatever it was caused the minions on top of him, under him, even those around him who were awaiting their turn, to scatter in the winds, leaving him atop the boulder, naked, still bleeding…still dripping. Crimson, such a lovely yet horrifying color. Life and death, bound together.

He should be in tremendous pain, but there was nothing. Only a strange, welcome numbness.

A horse’s whinny. Booted footsteps. He should care. Someone was here, looking at him, seeing him at his worst. He did care, but there was nothing he could do about it. No way to cover himself or hide what had been done to him. He wanted to kill this newcomer the same way he wanted to kill the minions and Disaster. Anything to wipe away all knowledge of this day. Forever.

A shadow fell over him, then someone was leaning down and peering into his eyes. Dark hair, eyes of the cruelest blue. “I know you. You are Kane, keeper of Disaster. Had a bad day, have you?”

Kane gathered enough strength to turn his head away. The action, small as it’d been, zapped every bit of that strength, leaving him cold, hollow. He had nothing left. Of course, the guy reached out and turned his head for him, forcing his attention to return.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Silence.

The guy grinned, and it was not nice. “Once, I could not have paid a Lord of the Underworld to visit me here. Now you guys keep popping up for free. By the way, your friend Amun called me Red while he was down here. Well, he thought it. Boy doesn’t speak much, does he?” He gave a genuinely amused chuckle, and yet, there was bite to the sound. “Wish I’d picked up on that thought while he was in front of me, but then, I didn’t have these, a gift from Amun before he left.”

Red held up two hands—and they weren’t attached to his body or any other. They were dark-skinned and held together by a strap of leather. A strap of leather he had wrapped around his neck, as if he were carrying boxing gloves. The insides of the hands had been scraped out, the flesh leathered.

They were gloves now. Human gloves.

Acid bubbled in Kane’s stomach. Amun had come down here to rescue Legion and in the process had been infected by hundreds of demon minions, evil becoming a slick oil over his skin. The only solution had been to send him back down here to release them.

The gloves were the same mocha color as Amun’s skin, possessed the same lines.

“What do you mean…gift?” Kane managed to work past his shredded throat. A throat scraped raw when the minions had stuffed things into his mouth. They hadn’t cared that he’d tried to bite them, and hadn’t tried to prevent him from doing so. They’d actually liked that. They had just— You aren’t thinking about this yet. You’ll become as crazy as Amun was.

“I won the mitts in a poker game,” Red said, his tone casual. “You play? Wait. Don’t answer that. Let me learn your secrets with my new, favorite toy.” Grinning his not-nice grin, he stuffed his hands into the skin gloves and reached out.

Contact.

Those hands pressed against Kane’s temples, cool and tough. Red closed his eyes, his entire body jerking as if hooked to a car with a lot of stallions under the hood. A moment passed, the only sound that of his heavy breathing.

Then another round of hoofbeats reverberated. Booted footsteps came next. A blond male with a similar toothy grin was leaning over Kane. “Whatta we got here? Another demon warrior?”

“Looks like.” Red straightened, his blue gaze boring into Kane. “He’s quite the mess.”

“Will he heal?”

“Don’t know.” A shrug as if the answer wasn’t important either way, then, “The man beside me is my brother. Amun called him Black. I call him Asshole. You may use whichever you prefer.”

“Let me use the hands,” Black said, rubbing his own with anticipation.

“Hell, no.” A growl sprang from Red, an animalistic warning. “I just got them today, and this is my week to own them.”

“I just want to borrow them for a minute.”

“Please. You’ll keep them, claim it’s your turn already.”

“Will not.”

“Will, too.”

I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming. At the very least, hallucinating. Feral killers—and they were killers; they possessed the same hard edge as his friends—were not arguing like children.

“Fine. Just tell me what you learned,” Black said, clearly sulking.

“He was with the Dark, and recently.” Love and hate bathed Red’s tone. “The Dark thinks this one will take White from us. The pair of them were captured, brought here and marked for death. A cave-in separated them. He doesn’t know where the Dark is. The minions brought him here, tried to mate with him.”

The Dark? Only person who thought Kane would take someone named White was William. And how did Red know—the hands, Kane realized. Those hands had belonged to Amun, then. Amun, the keeper of Secrets. Red had put those…gloves on, had touched Kane and dug deep into his mind, ferreting out information. A handy little weapon to have. He should be enraged, but he was still too numb.

Black popped his jaw. “White will have sensed your joy at finding a new demon, as did I. She will be here soon. We cannot allow her to meet this keeper.” Emerald eyes bore into Kane. “You will not take her from us.”

I don’t want anything to do with her, dude.

“Shall we kill him and be done with it?” Red asked as if he were contemplating what to serve for dinner.

Black rubbed at the golden stubble on his jaw. “That would put him out of his misery. A good deed on our parts.”

Kane wanted to help him with the answer. Hell, yeah, you should kill me. Because when this numbness wore off, when his body shrieked with the pain and his mind merged with his emotions, he was going to suffer. He was going to scream. He was going to rage.

Vengeance, he told himself. He could not have vengeance if he was dead.

“No, no killing,” Black finally decided. “Not until I’ve had my turn inside his head.”

“Agreed.”

Then they would kill him a week from now, after Black had his turn. Seven days. Kane didn’t know whether to laugh, thank them or just go ahead and start screaming and raging now.

The two freed him from the chains, but he didn’t have the strength to move. He could only lie there, waiting, helpless to their whims.

“Green is going to rip into us for saving him,” Red said. “You know how protective he is of White.”

“True that.” Black hefted Kane over his shoulder, unmindful of his exposed rib cage. “She’s the only female he can tolerate.”

The action disrupted some of the physical numbness, shooting sharp lances of pain through him. His mind began to fog, oxygen a faraway dream.

“But by then,” Black continued, as Kane faded…faded… “I will have had my turn, so that is a moot point.”

Kane didn’t hear Red’s reply. For him, it was finally, blessedly lights-out.