Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

W hat was that human saying? Through the woods and across the streams, to Grandmother’s house we drove . . .

Or was it across the woods and through the fields? No streams? And was it a bicycle? Or on foot.

Oh, who the fuck cared.

Knee-deep in snow, Callum stopped to catch his breath, locking his hands on his hips and scenting the air. The acreage all around him was a tangled mess draped in drifts and accumulation: The undergrowth was matted up after decades of neglect, and the trees were packed in tight, alternating between pines that showed some green and oaks and maples that were gray and skeletal. Clearly, even bare minimum landscaping had been given up, and the chain-link fence had also been abandoned, the lot of it nothing but collapsed sections and posts now.

He was finally in range, though.

Through the interlocking bushes, branches, and boughs, the looming, glooming front facade of the Willow Hills Sanatorium was straight out of an eighties horror movie. And as his gut sank, he would have taken a step back if his boots hadn’t been locked into the snow.

Ah, yes. This was why he hadn’t dematerialized.

He’d wanted to reserve the right to turn back.

Looking away, he caught a glimpse of a deer struggling to get out of his sight. Off to the left, a hawk soared over a little clearing, obviously in search of breakfast. Otherwise, nothing moved, and he felt as though the entire layout was a snare trap, luring him in just to snap on a limb and keep him in place for the hunter who was going to claim him.

“Why the fuck did you come here,” he muttered.

In lieu of a verbal answer, his body kept going on its own, his feet lifting high and sinking back down through the snowdrifts once again, his hands reaching up and pushing branches out of his way. When he hit the edge of the forest, he paused once more . . . and then he stepped out onto what once must have been a rolling lawn that ran all the way up to the brick sprawl.

This part of the property had been maintained. Of course it had, because it increased the defensive position of the structure.

Maybe the Brotherhood still owned the place after all these years.

God . . . damn. The degraded building was exactly as he remembered, its central core the anchor for two flanks that had been the real purpose of the place. Back before antibiotics, the treatment for tuberculosis patients had been fresh air, so each of the wings’ five levels was a long, open porch, onto which the afflicted, in their beds, could be rolled.

He didn’t know the full details of the sanatorium’s history. But he was dead clear on the fact that, some thirty years ago, it had been used, for a short time, as a hidden prison for a bunch of vampires. And after the liberation? It had been a clinic for the treatment of said prisoners, who had been, for the most part, falsely caged and used as drug processors. There had been a lot of disease and malnourishment among the males and females, and the Black Dagger Brotherhood had given the survivors everything they’d needed to recover.

Now the facility was apparently back to a steady state of being empty.

At least that was what the departing seasonal staff of the Ghreylke estate had told him back in the fall, when he’d just had to ask.

But he’d never intended on coming for a visit.

Resuming his trek, he closed in on the towering center part. He wasn’t sure what his plan was, and didn’t decide, until he arrived at the entrance, that he had to go inside.

It was like poking an open wound to see how bad the infection was. You just had to mess with your injury.

The double doors were locked, and as he looked up at the facade, he realized strategic investments had been made. Though the surface appearance of degradation had been preserved, the place had been shored up with new windows, and security cameras were mounted all around the decorative frieze that ran between the second and third floors. The Brotherhood had to still own the place. God knew they possessed the financial resources to keep anything forever, even if there was no one inside—

When there was a buzz and a click, he frowned.

This time, when he tried the right side of the doors again, he was able to pull things open. Clearly, he’d passed muster with the security guard, even though he hadn’t been in the vampire world for how long now? Guess those Brothers had long memories—or databases full of identities.

Had they taken his mug shot when he’d been . . . recovering—

Okay, wow. Talk about your reno jobs.

Back when the hospital had been a going concern, more than a hundred years ago, the first floor of the core had clearly been a check-in and waiting space, and courtesy of some serious effort, it was once again sparkling clean, the floor polished, the walls freshly painted, and the ceiling patched.

No furniture, though. Also no people.

As he wandered around, motion-activated lights came on, but he didn’t need them. There was plenty of daylight streaming through the triple-paned glass, and as he went farther in, everything continued to be well maintained.

The next thing he knew, he was down a hall and standing in front of a door that made his blood run cold.

He was exactly where he didn’t want to be.

Except this was the reason he’d come, wasn’t it.

The scene of . . . the crime that had been perpetrated on him.

When Apex and the others had decided to overthrow the head of the guards and free the prisoners, he’d joined in on the attack on the latest in a series of despots. Why? He was used to fighting and he liked it. As a wolven, combat was a way of life, whether it was defending the clan’s territory from other wolven or killing poachers before they killed members of the clan. Besides, pain had never scared him, and he was fast on his feet—and his paws.

Not fast enough that night. Not that time.

In a trance, he put his palm flat on the door. On the other side? The private quarters of that female who had tied him down and used him until he had separated from his own flesh.

Images filtered through and registered viscerally in his body, hands touching him, rolling him over facedown, a male body mounting his own.

In a sickening rush, he remembered that female watching him as he was fucked . . . before she turned him back over and threw a leg across his hips to ride him.

After a while, all he had known was whether his face was in the mattress or he was staring up at the ceiling.

Eventually, he hadn’t even felt any physical sensations anymore.

It was as if a hole had been dug with each session and his soul had sunk further and further down, away from the corporeal world.

Into a prison inside of himself.

At some point, he’d lost consciousness. And he only knew that because, eventually, he’d woken up.

A scent had been what had brought him back.

“Apex . . .” he whispered.

The vampire’s presence had been his beacon to return to the physical world, and he’d followed it back for reasons he hadn’t understood. And at first, he’d refused to open his eyes—because he wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing the male he had been so attracted to.

Lying there on that bedding platform, he’d gotten stronger with the passage of days, his body rebounding thanks to the nourishment Apex had forced down his throat. And that hadn’t been the only thing provided to him. His wounds had been carefully looked after, his base bodily functions attended to with diapers, his skin ever so gently cleansed and rebandaged on a regular schedule.

As he’d noted the contrast with the way his body had been treated by that female, that was when the first claw of sorrow had dug into him.

So he’d refused to think about it again.

Instead, he’d concentrated on the sounds of the voices, the comings and goings of the medical staff, and where Apex was—which was never far. Through his eavesdropping, he’d learned that the liberation of the facility was sticking, that the guards who had been commanded by that female had all run off or been killed, that the site was secured by the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and that the prisoners who hadn’t died of starvation and disease were being treated.

He’d also known Kane was around. Lucan, too. And their mates, especially Nadya, who was a nurse.

He’d memorized the schedule, knew when darkness fell because that was when Apex always brought in the first round of food—and then the male would leave for a stretch of time, returning freshly showered with something that Callum, until he’d finally opened his lids, had assumed carried a spritz of perfume.

Not perfume, though. White blooms.

The night he had decided he was strong enough to leave, he had waited until Apex left to go get the first of the meals. Then, he had finally opened his eyes.

He’d been on his back, and the sight of that ceiling? It had ripped him back to that female riding him—for a split second, he had blinked and seen her straddling him again, felt the sensations, jerked at binds that no longer existed.

He could still remember the battle it had been to stay in the present. And his wonder at the flowers had helped him focus.

All around the bedding platform, set in little glass containers, there had been roses and carnations and sprigs of baby’s breath.

It had been spring in his sorrow.

And that was when he’d cried.

Not for long, though. He hadn’t had a lot of time if he wanted to avoid a goodbye he didn’t have the strength for . . .

A goodbye he still didn’t have the strength for.

“Apex,” he whispered—

“No, I am afraid that is not me.”

Callum spun around. The male who had come up behind him was a striking figure, tall and lean, dressed in a black robe that fell to the floor, his black hair long and straight. At first glance, you might mistake him for some kind of ascetic, a religious figure who wafted through the physical world doing good deeds. Not it. Those gleaming dark eyes were calculating in a banked-nuclear-bomb kind of way.

Funny, how appearances could be deceiving.

The male’s nose flared and there was a flash of surprise. “Oh, it’s . . . you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I know you.” The figure drifted forward as if he were floating, bypassing Callum and pausing at the door. “Come in. Join me for a meal. It’s the least I can do to pay you back.”

Callum blinked. “For what?”

“Your hospitality.”

Shaking his head, Callum blurted, “You must have me mistaken for someone—”

“Oh, no. I haven’t.”

“Who the hell are you?”

The male bowed. “Blade, blooded brother of Xhexania. And it’s true, you do not know me, but I know you.”

As the entrance was opened, Callum’s entire body was suffused in fight-or-flight, echoes of the past whipping at him.

The male regarded him steadily. “You were hurt here, then?”

“Yes,” he replied in a rough burst.

“And you’ve come back to see if the pain is still with you?” The smile was part sly, part soulful. “Hard to get stains out of the soul, isn’t it.”

“How do you know me?”

“I stayed in your cave. Up on Deer Mountain.” The male touched the side of his nose. “I recognize your scent.”

Lights flared in the interior, and even though Callum didn’t want to see, his eyes locked on what was revealed.

The exhale that came out of him was not relief, per se. But it was a release of some kind.

Nothing was the same. There was no bedding platform. No weapons on racks on the walls or lying about on tables. No combat clothes, no combat rations, no combat-clad guards waiting for a turn with him.

No female watching him get violated with hungry, angry eyes.

Just a lot of elegant, sleek furniture—and a white shag carpet that he had the absent, stupid thought was absolutely inappropriate in the middle of an abandoned goddamn sanatorium.

The bitch would be hard to vacuum, too.

Callum stepped forward without thinking, as his brain was too fucking busy trying to figure out what he was looking at.

“I have redecorated,” the male said dryly.

“You have,” Callum blurted.

There was even a white marble and brushed steel kitchen.

The male walked over and opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator. “I was going to pan-fry some scallops and steam my asparagus. I have a fresh loaf of French bread—and for dessert . . .” That calculating stare shot over his shoulder. “I’m feeling naughty. I have Ben and Jerry’s mint chocolate chunk.”

Callum walked around, putting his hand on a chair that was slipcovered in cream and white. And the back of a sofa that was done in the same damask pattern. He touched a cashmere throw blanket. Lingered at the foot of a king-sized bed that was draped in fine white and cream cotton covers.

“Not what you expected?” the male prompted.

Callum turned around. There was something . . . different . . . about the male. But he didn’t feel threatened. “That cave you stayed in hasn’t been mine for years. I’ve just moved back to the area.”

“That makes two of us. I’ve been here for about a year.” The smile that flared offered more of that sly warmth. “I stayed in your cave a long, long time ago.”

“Me, too,” Callum whispered.

“Well, aren’t we two peas in a pod.” Blade motioned to his stove. “And you either stay for dinner or depart, it’s your choice. Either way, I need to eat.”