Chapter 13: Taken
The slam of his father’s voice against the cabin walls was a physical blow. JT jerked as if struck, the fragile peace of moments before shattering into lethal shards. Kane was already moving, a shadow detaching itself from the bed, his naked form fluid and unhesitating.
“Stay,” Kane growled, the word barely human. He snatched his pants from the floor, stepping into them without breaking stride. At the door, he paused, a monument of coiled violence carved in the firelight. He turned back.
JT had scrambled up, his body aching with the fresh proofs of Kane’s possession, his mind reeling. “Kane, don’t—”
Kane crossed the room in two swift strides. He framed JT’s face with hands that could splinter stone, his talons carefully sheathed. “Wait inside.” His voice was low, a promise etched in bedrock. “No harm will come to you tonight. None.” He bent his head, and where a man would kiss, Kane offered a slow, deliberate lick from JT’s brow to his hairline, a wet, primal seal. It was claim and covenant.
Then he was gone, the heavy oak door closing with a soft, definitive click.
Silence. Then the forest erupted.
JT rushed to the window, peering through a gap in the pelts that served as curtains. Outside, torchlight and the cold blue-white glare of hunter lanterns turned the clearing into a stark stage. Marcus Thompson stood at its center, a broadsword etched with elder signs gleaming in his grip. He looked older, the lines on his face carved deeper by a week of hell. But his stance was the same unbending pillar JT had known all his life.
Surrounding him were eight hunters, their faces set in grim masks. Tara was there, tucked behind Marcus’s left shoulder, her eyes scanning the cabin windows, a serrated dagger in each hand.
“Kane!” Marcus’s voice boomed again. “Face me, you filth! What horror have you poured into my son’s head? What torture have you inflicted on him?”
The shadows near the porch deepened, and Kane stepped into the light. He was bare-chested, his skin gleaming, a smile on his lipless mouth that held only contempt. “Horror? Torture?” Kane’s laugh was a dry, scraping sound. “I’m giving him what you never could, Marcus. A home. A purpose that isn’t just an extension of your frown.”
Marcus’s face purpled with rage. “You’ve poisoned him! You’ve twisted his mind with demon tricks!”
“I’ve shown him his own worth. Something you were too blind, too proud, and too fucking cold to ever do.” Kane spread his arms, a dare. “So come. Try to take back what you never truly owned.”
“Take him!” Marcus roared.
The hunters moved as one, a well-oined machine. Blades flashed. Holy water arced through the air, sizzling where it landed. Kane moved like the wind given form and teeth. He was a vortex of dispassionate violence. He didn’t roar or grandstand. A twist here snapped an arm. A backhand there shattered a jaw, sending teeth skittering across the frozen ground. He caught a descending sword by the blade, the blessed steel screeching against his palm, and wrenched it free, driving the pommel into its owner’s throat with a wet crunch.
It was too easy.
JT watched, his breath fogging the glass, his heart a frantic drum. Kane was winning. No, not winning—toying. Dispatching them with brutal, effortless grace. Marcus yelled orders, but didn’t advance himself. He just watched, his expression strained… and calculated.
A cold trickle of understanding seeped into JT’s gut. This wasn’t a rescue. This was a cull. These hunters were fodder.
He turned from the window, his eyes scanning the dark cabin. The fire had sunk low. The silence inside was a stark contrast to the screams outside. He heard the soft scuff of a boot on pine needles, not from the clearing, but from the side of the cabin.
Too late.
The window on the far wall exploded inward in a shower of glass and splintered frame. Two figures rolled through, landing in crouches. Tara came through the main door a second later, kicking it open, her knives up.
“JT!” she barked, her eyes wide, taking in his nakedness, the marks on his skin, the possessive sheen of sweat and other things. “Oh, god. What has it done to you?”
“Tara, no! You don’t understand!” JT backed away, hands up. The other two hunters—Callum and Rhea—fanned out, their movements cautious, professional. They saw a victim, confused, covered in the filth of the enemy.
“We understand perfectly,” Callum said, his voice tight. “It’s ensnared you. Broken your will. We’re getting you out.”
“I’m not ensnared! I stayed! He lets me go! I chose this!” The words sounded insane even to his own ears.
Tara’s face softened with heartbreaking pity. “It talks through you, JT. I hear its voice in yours. Don’t worry. We’ll get you cleaned up. We’ll get you right.” She nodded to Rhea. “Now.”
JT fought. He used moves Kane had taught him, raw and efficient. He broke Rhea’s nose with a sharp head-butt, felt the cartilage give. He kicked Callum in the knee, hearing a pop. But he was outnumbered, still aching from Kane’s passions, and they were not trying to kill him—just contain him. Tara slipped behind him, the cool edge of her blade pressing against his throat, not to cut, but to threaten. A syringe appeared in Rhea’s hand.
“This will help you sleep,” Rhea said, her voice nasal with blood.
The needle bit into his thigh. A cold rush spread through his veins. The world softened at the edges. He struggled, but his limbs were leaden. “Kane…” he slurred, his plea fading as they dragged him toward the broken window. “He promised… no harm…”
“We’re not harming you,” Tara whispered fiercely in his ear as they manhandled him out into the freezing night, away from the clearing’s light and noise. “We’re saving you from yourself.”
Outside, Kane drove his fist through the chest of the last standing hunter, ripping the man’s heart free with a sound like tearing velvet. He let the body drop, turning his blood-slathered gaze to Marcus, who still had not moved from his spot.
“Your tactics have grown weak, old man,” Kane spat, taking a step toward him. “Sending children to die for your pride.”
Marcus said nothing. His image flickered.
A cold, atavistic dread seized Kane. He lunged, his talons passing through the projection of Marcus Thompson with a burst of static and dissipated light. A hologram. A sophisticated, magic-laced diversion.
The entire, shouting, bloody confrontation—a lie.
A distraction.
A hollow, roaring silence filled Kane’s head. He whipped around toward the cabin, his senses flaring out. He could smell JT’s fear, his desperation, the chemical tang of a sedative. He could smell the interlopers—Tara, two others—and their trail, already growing cold, leading east, toward the society’s fortified grounds.
A sound escaped him then, a noise that had no place in any world. It was the shriek of a mountain tearing itself apart, of a star collapsing in on itself. The rage was infinite, all-consuming.
From the tree line, three more hunters emerged, the real rear guard, meant to mop up or report. They never got a word out.
Kane was upon them. This was not fighting. This was eradication. He didn’t just kill the first; he dismantled him, tearing arms from sockets, pulping the skull between his hands before the body knew it was dead. He grabbed the second, using the hunter’s own holy dagger to carve him open from groin to sternum, letting the entrails spill onto the frosted earth in a steaming heap. The third turned to run. Kane vaulted over the carnage, landing before him, and seized his head in both hands. A twist, a savage pull. The spine gave with a series of pops like firecrackers, and the head came free with a wet rip.
He stood panting in the center of the gore-spattered clearing, the head dropping from his fingers. The cabin door stood open, a dark, empty mouth. The bond between them, that newly-forged, brilliant, terrifying tether, was stretched thin, screaming with the distance, muffled by drugs and doubt.
They had taken his mate. They had violated his sanctum. They had made a fool of him.
The rage did not abate. It crystallized into a purpose as hard and cold as diamond.
He threw his head back and roared his fury at the uncaring moon. The trees themselves seemed to shudder.
“He is mine!” The words were a vow spoken to the night, to the forest, to the very bones of the earth. “I will tear your stone halls apart. I will paint my path with your insides. I am coming.”
He turned, his golden eyes fixed on the east, on the trail of fear and betrayal.
The hunt had just been reversed.