Текст книги "Blood Kiss"

Автор книги: J. R. Ward

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

By sundown the following evening, Peyton had decided he didn’t like any of them.

Look, it wasn’t that he thought he was better than the other five trainees. There was just something off with each one.

Axe, that outlier with the punk/Goth, yeah-we-get-it-you’re-a-hard-ass style? Obvious. The bastard was one kitchen knife away from being a serial killer. Boone, the Adonis with those muscles? Uh-huh, we know you can walk on your hands and throw your ass around like it’s attached to your throat with a rope—but who cares. You’re here to fight, not slap on a tutu and try to get into the Cirque du Soleil. Anslam? Nothing but an also-ran in the glymera, not even from a Founding Family. Irrelevant, and a shock that he’d made it as far as he had.

The one he really didn’t like, though, was that Craeg guy—although that was actually more because of the way everybody, even Paradise, treated him like he was the anointed leader of the group.

Not that Peyton was looking for that job, but come on. Nobody had a lock on any of this yet. There was no reason to be getting out the pedestal so soon.

And that wasn’t the only thing that bugged him about the guy. There was something else about the male, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. An instinct, maybe? A sense of some kind of threat?

He didn’t know—but he was damn sure going to figure that one out.

And then there was that Novo female.

Stretching in his chair in the break room, Peyton surreptitiously glanced in her vague-ish direction. She was laying out on the sofa to the left, her long, long, long legs crossed at the ankles, her hands clasped over her flat stomach like she was dead. Her hair was iris-black, stick straight, and plaited tight as a rope. Her skin was honey-brown, and he had never, ever in his fucking life seen a female built with that kind of muscle.

He’d spent most of the day trying to avoid measuring her breasts—mostly because he wasn’t sure whether she’d cut his balls off if she noticed.

Rubbing his eyes, he wanted a blunt so badly he was shaking from it.

Maybe Paradise had a point about the drug use.

Then again, it had been one long frickin’ night and one weird frickin’ day. After he’d made sure Paradise was awake and eating, the rest of them—except for Craeg the Great Fanged One who was better than everybody else—had gone for a wander around the facilities, found a doggen and asked for more food. Then they’d come back here to find Paradise once again in the bunk room asleep, and Craeg sitting up in a chair with his eyes closed.

Probably contemplating how superior his belly lint was to everyone else’s.

At that point, without a lot of conversation, they’d each picked a spot in the unadorned room and proceeded to not sleep very much or very well. Much as he hated to admit the weakness, he was still jumping at any sound that was out of place, his adrenal gland on hyper-alert even though the nurse who’d examined him had told him that the trial was over and nothing else of an electrical-shock/throat-punch nature was going to come at them—

Without warning, Paradise stuck her head out the bunk room door, like maybe she was expecting to find herself left behind.

As Peyton opened his mouth to say her name, he caught Craeg’s eyes shifting over to her … and pulling the classic head-to-toe males did when they were frickin’ man-whore sonsabitches.

It was his own signature move, for fuck’s sake.

Before he could bark at the guy to back off, the door to the outer hall opened wide, and two enormous males walked in like they owned the place.

Brothers.

Talk about coming to attention. All six of the loafer trainees were up and out of their whatevers like someone had goosed them in the ass. By the bunk room door, Paradise straightened and pulled her robe lapels even closer.

The Brother on the left was dressed in jeans and a black shirt—and he was quite possibly the largest living thing Peyton had ever seen outside of an elephant. He was also so good-looking, you had to wonder why the Scribe Virgin had dumped all that hotness on one guy—as opposed to spreading it more evenly over a cast of thousands.

And next to him was a slightly shorter male who was built like a bulldog, drinking a coffee, and wearing a Boston Red Sox sweatshirt.

“The beauty queen next to me is Rhage,” the guy in the sweatshirt said. “I’m Butch. And we already know who the fuck you are. The time is currently six o’clock in the evening. You will have one hour to shower in the locker rooms, dress in the uniforms that will be brought to you, and come back here to eat. After that, we want you lined up outside in the corridor. Anyone who is late is out of the program.”

Butch? Peyton wondered. The Brother’s name was Butch?

As in from the human world…?

Wait a minute.

“You’re the Dhestroyer,” Peyton heard himself say. “Holy shit, I know who you are. You’re mated to Marissa, blooded daughter of—”

“Any questions?” Butch talked over him. “Good. I didn’t think so. One hour. That’s all you got.”

With that shutdown, the male turned and left.

The Brother Rhage gave them a smile. “Try the tenderloin. It’s fucking awesome. And the lamb, too. Oh, and the mashed potatoes. Skip the salad. Waste of chewing. Later.”

At least he didn’t seem to want to kill them, Peyton thought as the door closed once again.

“Wonder what the uniforms look like,” Paradise said.

“This isn’t a fashion show,” Craeg bit out.

Peyton bared his fangs at the guy. “Do you want a problem, asshole? ’Cause I can arrange that.”

Craeg’s head swiveled toward him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Peyton had no clue what got his feet moving, but before he knew it, he was nose-to-nose with the SOB. “Let’s get this straight. You don’t look at her. You don’t talk to her. And you really, totally fucking do not disrespect her. Are we clear.”

The male’s eyes shifted to Paradise. “Think your boy over here is a little territorial. You mind calling him off before he gets hurt?”

Annnnnnnnd it was on.

Peyton had no conscious thought of going for the motherfucker, but next thing he knew, he was on the male like a coat of paint, fists punching, arms grappling, legs kicking.

He’d actually never been in a fight before, but for some reason his body seemed to know what to do—not that he didn’t get his ass kicked. Craeg was taller and heavier, and his reach was like Stretch Armstrong, those punches coming from every direction, reaching his face, his gut, his chest.

People were shouting around them. Furniture got knocked over. He was slammed against the wall—and then paid that back by spinning Craeg around and pushing him into the door to the corridor so hard, he busted the panels clean apart, wood splintering as the pair of them ended up brawling out in the hall.

And still they fought.

For being half-dead only twelve hours before, Peyton found himself with plenty of goddamn energy.

It was like watching something from Maury.

As Paradise followed the fight into the corridor, she was having an out-of-body experience. Half of her was in the drama, trying to grab onto a flying arm, or yell in the hopes of getting through to one of them. The other half was in the land of OMG!—because she could not believe this was happening in front of her, on account of her.

Peyton was a lot of things, but never violent.

And Craeg—well, she didn’t know much about him, but he’d seemed so much more self-controlled than this.

“Come on!” she barked. “Just stop it!”

The male bodies careened into the concrete wall, some horrible crack suggesting something had gotten broken on one of them—no, actually, it was a cinder block. Meanwhile, blood went flying from Peyton’s nose, splashing brilliant red on the white paint, and Craeg’s shirt got ripped in half, falling free from his—

Okay, WOW. The guy was lean, but built, great fans of muscle flaring out from either side of his spine, his shoulders bunching up and releasing with every fist he threw, his incredibly tight waist—

Right, this was inappropriate.

But damn.

Shaking herself, she lunged forward in another attempt to catch hold and slow things down, and she aimed for Peyton’s right arm, because all that nakey was way too much to handle—

Novo grabbed her and dragged her back just when she would have gotten hit in the face.

“Let ’em go,” the female said.

“Someone’s going to get hurt!”

“Better them than you.” Novo rolled her eyes. “Males are idiots. They’re just fighting for dominance. Personally, I’d rather save my energy for the real work, as opposed to this social-posturing bullshit.”

Paradise panted and cursed. “They’re going to get themselves kicked out!”

“If they do, that’s on them.”

Next to the combatants, Anslam laughed and clapped his palms. “Smack him like a bitch, Peyton!”

Paradise glared at the male. “This is not cockfighting, you know.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

Adding his name to her growing Jackass List, Paradise looked up and down the corridor. No one had come out of anywhere, but given the number of closed doors, that was not going to last—

Suddenly, Craeg changed places, grabbing Peyton by the shoulders, spinning him around, and shoving him up against the wall like he intended to break through the concrete with the guy.

“This is nuts,” a male voice drawled.

Glancing behind her, she saw Axe leaning against the doorjamb of the break room, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression that of someone watching paint dry.

Paradise narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve got to stop this!”

One of his jet-black brows lifted. “Do I.”

“Yes! They’re going to get kicked out!”

“And that affects me how?”

She deliberately stopped herself from smacking that sardonic expression off his half-pierced face. “You’d want someone to help you.”

“I wouldn’t have picked a fight over you. No offense, but fucking you would be like having sex with a department-store mannequin. You’re beautiful, but going to be totally useless in the sack.”

Paradise’s jaw dropped open. “That is the rudest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Then you’ve led as sheltered a life as I thought. And whether you’re offended or not, the truth is what it is.”

Turning to Boone, she opened her mouth—but he shook his head, all nope-not-me. “What is wrong with you people?” she demanded.

At least the fight was slowing down—oh, yeah, no, it was still going strong: Craeg grabbed Peyton around the waist and took him to the floor, the males grappling now, bare feet squeaking on the polished stone, palms slapping.

And that was when Butch and Rhage came storming down at the group.

Putting her head in her hands, she waited for the yelling to start. If this was anything like the human army she had read about or seen in movies, they were probably all going to get punished for this. Maybe she would get thrown out for being a troublemaker, even though she had done nothing except make a nervous comment.

Maybe just Peyton and Craeg would get disciplined.

After either one or both of them were out of their body cast(s).

When the combat only continued, she glanced through her fingers at the Brothers. The pair of them were standing off to the side, watching the action, talking to each other. And then Rhage nodded … and they shook hands.

Paradise looked around at the other trainees—and found that everybody else had disappeared back into the sitting room.

It was sometime later that Peyton finally lost.

One misplanned head butt sent his forehead directly into the concrete floor. At which point there was a horrible sound, like a bowling ball had been dropped onto a slab of stone—and the guy’s body went lax as if his bones had been liquefied.

Craeg shoved him away and collapsed flat on his back, breathing hard, coughing, wiping blood out of his eyes.

“How much was it?” Rhage asked Butch.

“Fiver.”

“Damn, I thought my boy was going to do better than that.” Rhage shoved his hand into his pocket and took out a black wallet. Withdrawing a bill, he slapped it into Butch’s palm. “We’re going double or nothing the next time one starts.”

Paradise recoiled as they turned away and walked off like absolutely nothing had happened.

“Are you kidding me,” she said under her breath.

She wanted to call after them that Peyton was still passed out cold—no, wait. He was groaning and rolling over onto his back.

At least he was alive, she thought as she walked over to him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded. “You want to get kicked out?”

Granted, that threat would have had more teeth if their two professors had been doing something more stern than betting on the damn fight.

The two males looked up at her with lolling stares. God, they looked as bad as they had the night before—maybe even worse. Hell, they were both going to have black eyes, and Craeg’s lip was split so deep, he probably needed stitches.

“I’m … fine,” Peyton mumbled before spitting blood.

“Yeah,” Craeg lisped. “Just fine.”

Which came out something like Jusssth phine.

“Tell me,” she barked, “how many fingers am I holding up.”

Putting out her middle one, she gave the pair of jackholes a chance to focus on the fact that she was flipping them both off. And then she marched away to find somebody in a nurse’s uniform … doctor’s scrubs …

Goddamn janitor’s uniform.

God knew the corridor was going to need to be cleaned up—and anyone with a broom could start with the two wastes of space that had made the mess.

Chapter Sixteen

Twenty-five minutes, two stitches in his lower lip, and a snatch-and-grab First Meal later, and Craeg was front and center in the gym with the other six members of his class. Well, not front and not in the center of the lineup—he was more off to the side and back a little.

He was also weaving on his feet.

The last thing his body had needed was another full-on, high-contact, knuckle-cracker of a fistfight, but he wasn’t going to back down from class. And as for Peyton, Paradise’s so called “not boyfriend?” Uh-huh. Riiiiiiight.

Fucker.

Him, not her.

The good news was that as bad off as he himself was, Peyton wasn’t even able to stand. He’d been wheeled in on a stretcher like a piece of meat.

Wheeled in.

Who won that one, bitch?

Oh, and neither of them had been kicked out. Apparently, short of betting on the outcome, the Brothers weren’t going to get involved—

One of the doors to the gym was punched open, and this time, as the Brothers Butch and Rhage came in, they were dressed in the same loose-fitting cotton pants and shirt that everyone else was.

The Brother Butch didn’t waste any time as they came to a halt in front of the group. “So, in light of all the Mayweather/Pacquiao going down, we’re gonna start with hand-to-hand combat instead of book learning.”

“Please note,” Rhage said with a smile, “that your unis are white.”

“It’s because OxiClean is wicked good on bloodstains, but we’re prepared to use Clorox if we have to.”

Craeg swallowed a curse. Just what he needed.

“We’re going to pair you up,” Butch continued, “and get an assessment of how much you know. Since one of you is already on the horizontal, no one has to worry about fighting Hollywood over here.”

“Personally, I’m about to cry over that,” Rhage said. “So let’s put Novo with Boone—Axe, you take Anslam. That leaves Craeg and Paradise.”

“Hold up,” Craeg said. “I can’t … I won’t do that.”

“Hit her? Why? ’Cause you can’t lift your arms up? Not my problem.”

Craeg leaned in and dropped his voice. “I won’t hit her.”

Rhage shrugged. “Fine, you can get your ass kicked again.”

Butch cut in. “Actually, he won that fight, remember. And I got your five bucks to prove it.”

“Only because golden boy over here knocked his own self out.”

“A loss is a loss.” Butch refocused on Craeg. “But my brother is right. You either defend yourself or go back for more of Doc Jane’s thread. Your choice.”

With that, they were told to spread out into different quadrants of the enormous gym, and Peyton was wheeled off to the side.

Craeg watched the others go, trying to think of a way out of this. Funny, when he’d told her way back when that she should enter the program to learn self-defense, he hadn’t considered that he was the one she’d have to be defending herself against.

Even in a “classroom” situation.

“Well,” Paradise said as she came up to him. “Are we going to do this?”

“I’ll wait until one of the males is finished.”

“You’re serious.”

He looked down at her from his much greater height. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You didn’t beat Peyton with ease,” she muttered. “That took, like, half an hour.”

“You’re actually comparing yourself to a full-grown adult male. Who I put on a stretcher.”

“Oh, you’re right. That wouldn’t be fair. Because compared to the two of you, I’m a goddamn genius.”

As she put her hands on her hips and glared at him, he wondered what in the hell else was he going to say to her? He didn’t want to spout the real truth—which had everything to do with the fact that he could still remember what her soft skin felt like … could still picture how small her ankle had been compared to his palm … could imagine so many things he wanted to do to her, absolutely none of which involved violence of any kind.

Absolutely all of which included contact with his fingertips, his lips … his tongue.

Craeg crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not going to fight you.”

“So if I swing at you, you’re going to do nothing.”

He cocked a brow. “I’m not worried about getting knocked out.”

“Oh, really.”

“No. Your lesser endurance aside, you’re not going—”

The next thing that came out of his mouth was a high-pitched scream that left everyone in the gym ripping around to see what the hell had happened.

And he might have told them—but he was too busy covering his nuts with both hands and bending at the waist.

She had kneed him in the groin.

In the groin. With her knee.

“What the fuck!” he sputtered. “Why did you do that?”

She seemed as surprised as everyone else. But she recovered fast—by clamping a hold on either side of his head, bringing up that knee again, and nailing him so hard in the face, he saw more stars than a human Christmas tree had lights.

As he let out another howl and lurched off balance, she locked both of her hands together, extended her arms, and swung around in a tight circle like she was throwing a discus—catching him in the temple with enough force to knock his legs right out from under him.

Boom! Down he went to the blue mats.

Everyone came running as she stood over him, braced for whatever came at her—while he made out with the floor.

Shoving his palms into the mats, he hefted his upper body to the vertical and looked at her. “You really want me to do this.”

“You haven’t done anything yet,” somebody cracked.

“Tell me,” another one chimed in. “Do you take a piss sitting down?”

“He does now,” came a reply.

Paradise just tracked every move he made, each twitch and breath and shift of his eyes. But she had no idea what she was doing. He could tell by the way her hands were trembling, and the fact that her ribs were pumping way too hard for the physical activity she’d just done.

She was also ever so slightly aroused.

Okay, that was straight-up trouble. The scent of her sex triggered the very male part of him—and made him want her to run just so he could chase her and catch her and get her underneath him to take her hard. He wanted her nails scratching his back as she came … and her fangs bared right before she took a vein at his throat.

The lust was so strong, he could have fucked her even if there were people watching—and as if she recognized the change in him, she took a step back.

And then suddenly no one was laughing or joking at him anymore.

Butch stepped in between them. “Easy, there, big guy. How about you come at me?”

The Brother sank down into a fighting stance, his fists up in front of his chest, his eyes narrowed.

But Craeg wasn’t interested in the male. He looked around those mammoth shoulders to Paradise, who was staring at him with an inscrutable expression on her face.

This time, when a punch came at him, Craeg went into full fight mode, something that had not happened with Peyton. With the other trainee, he had given about sixty percent of what he had, holding some of his strength back because he had been afraid of killing the piece of shit, or doing permanent damage—and thereby getting booted from the program. Now? The knife-edge of his arousal cut through all restraint as he went into the hand-to-hand battle, ducking, throwing a fist of his own, ducking again, jabbing. The Brother was viciously quick, mercilessly powerful, eminently trained.

Not like Peyton at all.

And as the fight wore on, as they traded kicks and dodges, grabs and grapples, more people came over and stood around, until there was a crowd of ten, fifteen … twenty in the gym.

It was about fifteen minutes in when the daggers got tossed at them.

The two razor-sharp, black-handled, silver-bladed knives flew through the air from out of nowhere. Butch caught one on the fly. Craeg caught the other. And then they were circling, searching for a way past defenses, weaving the weapons back and forth—lunging, retreating, the stakes so much higher.

Butch wasn’t breathing heavily at all. Craeg, on the other hand, was panting like a motherfucker—sweating like one, too.

First blood was drawn when Craeg misjudged one arc by a millimeter and got his cheek cut open. When he miscalled another, he started leaking at the shoulder. Mistaking a third, he got his thigh sliced.

It was then that he realized the Brother was giving him just sixty percent of what the male was capable of: The precision of the cuts told Craeg that his opponent knew more than he did, was stronger than he was, and was prepared to nick his way to a victory based on incremental blood loss.

But Craeg wasn’t going to give up. Not yet, at any rate. Not until he couldn’t stand, couldn’t see, couldn’t move.

His will would accept nothing less.

Paradise recognized immediately that this fight was a totally different thing than that mad, sloppy scramble that had rolled out into the corridor earlier. In fact, back with Peyton, Craeg had been reining himself in for some reason; he was no longer. His coordination as he faced off against Butch with his fists, and then—oh, God, those daggers—told her, and everybody else in the gym, that he was an incredible fighter, capable of great strength, balance, flexibility, and power.

It was enough to make her entire body light up like a switchboard.

And no, she thought, as much as she respected Novo’s females-can-do-everything-males-can, it was very clear to her that she could not have handled the likes of what Craeg was putting out now. He would have knocked her cold with just one of those knuckle punches. Or snapped her head clean off her spine. Or broken one of her legs with an easy twist.

Not that she couldn’t learn appropriate defenses and counter-measures, she just didn’t know them now—and he had, in fact, been prepared to attack her: When he’d crouched down and bared his tremendous fangs, she had stumbled back—and yet, for some insane reason, she hadn’t been afraid of him. Which was just plain nuts. He had more than a hundred pounds on her, and he’d been out for blood.

So yeah, what was totally insane? She had suddenly wanted to run from him—but not too fast. She’d wanted him to come after her, and catch her on the fly … and …

Well, it was back to that moment they’d shared when they’d been alone in the break room.

But Jesus, I can’t handle him, she thought as she watched him move. And not just in a fight: Any female who set chase to a male like that wasn’t getting a sweet kiss at the end of the running—she wasn’t getting a hand held and a sacred promise of a bonded mating and a conversation with her father where said suitor bashfully asked for permission.

This was not the kind of refined male one was expected to give one’s virginity to on the night of her mating before the Scribe Virgin and her family.

No, he was an animal with only a modicum of higher reasoning.

And the way he’d looked at her in that moment had suggested that his brain had checked out entirely.

She should have been afraid, she told herself again.

Instead, she wanted him to catch her—

All around, the crowd let out a hiss as Craeg took another cut, this time right across the chest. He was bleeding in several places now, his sparring uniform stained red, blood dripping from his chin from the slice on his cheek, dripping from his thigh, dripping from his pecs.

Another flash of the Brother’s blade caught him on the opposite shoulder. Then it was the side of the throat. The other thigh, the abdomen, across the back.

“Stop,” Paradise said under her breath. “Stop coming at him.”

But every time that vicious blade of the Brother’s struck, Craeg went back for more, reengaging over and over again, until he was slipping in the puddles he was making on the blue mats, and his uniform was stained red and plastered to his body.

He wouldn’t relent.

And Butch gave him no quarter except to spare him death.

“Craeg! Stop!” she called out because she couldn’t help herself.

Putting her hand to her mouth, she felt her heart go back into panic mode as she wondered whether he really would keep going until he’d lost so much from his veins there was no coming back.

“Craeg! This is crazy!”

But still he continued, until he started to sag into his knees, and lurch instead of lunge, and wobble when he retreated. Now, the sloppiness came to him.

God, he was too pale.

“Stop!”

From over on his gurney, Peyton sat up and yelled, “Craeg! Come on, man—he’s gonna kill you.”

Ripples of unease passed through the other trainees, but not through all the Brothers who had come to watch the show. The medical people, in contrast, also didn’t look thrilled—however, when the female doctor with the blond hair went to step forward, the Brother Vishous shook his head and made her stay beside him.

Craeg went down for the last time forty-two minutes and many, many liters of lost plasma later.

He just dropped to his knees, swayed for a moment … and then fell facedown in his own blood. Exactly as he had done out on the track.

Paradise rushed to go forward, but Rhage caught her and yanked her back. “No. You allow him his honor.”

“What are you talking about?” she hissed.

Rhage just nodded toward the two combatants. “Watch.”

Butch stood over the fallen male for a moment, giving Craeg a chance to get back to his feet. When he did not, the Brother waited for Craeg to look up at him.

Unfocused eyes struggled in an ashen face to lock onto the Brother. But when they finally did, Butch switched the weapon to his other hand … and scored his dagger palm deeply with the blade.

As Paradise gasped, the Brother extended his palm to Craeg—who, from out of nowhere, suddenly found the strength to reach up and accept what was offered.

The Brother pulled Craeg to his feet … and embraced him. “Good job, son. I’m proud of you.”

Craeg blinked his eyes fast, as if he were tearing up. Then he seemed to give up the fight against his emotions by closing his lids, tucking his head and sagging into the Brother’s arms.

“And that,” Rhage said in a loud, approving voice, “is how you do it.”