Putting forward both his hands, Lash summoned a shadow out of thin air and spread it wide until it fell to the floor like a cloak.
With a quick sweep, he cast it up and over Xhex's head, disappearing her though in fact she was still in the room. As expected, she struggled, but one sharp fist to the head and she went lax, making the exodus so much easier.
Lash just dragged her out of the cave, right from under everyone's noses.
Chanting...chanting that rose up and filled the air with a rhythmic drumming.
But first, there had been gunshots, too.
Rehvenge peeled open his eyelids and had to blink his red vision clear. The spiders were gone from his body, gone from the chamber...replaced by the assembling masses of his symphath brethren, their ceremonial masks and robes making their features anonymous so that the power of their minds could shine through all the more clearly.
There was fresh blood.
His eyes shot over to-Oh, thank you, Virgin Scribe, Ehlena was still standing, and Zsadist was on her tight as Kevlar. That was the good news. Bad news? The pair was directly opposite the door, with, oh, maybe a hundred sin-eaters between them and the safe way out.
Although given the way she held his eyes, she wasn't leaving without him.
"Ehlena..." he whispered hoarsely. "No."
She nodded and mouthed, We're getting you free.
He looked away in frustration, watching the sway of the robes, knowing more than Ehlena could about what exactly this procession and the chanting meant.
Holy...shit. But how?
The question was answered as he saw the dead body of the princess against the wall. Her hands were stained blue, and he knew why: She had killed his uncle, her mate...the king.
Shaking himself, he wondered how she had done it. It couldn't have been easy-getting past the royal guard would have been nearly impossible and their uncle had been a crafty, suspicious piece of work.
Payback had been a bitch, however. Although she hadn't found death in the manner of symphaths, who preferred making their victims commit involuntary suicide. She'd been shot through the chest four times, and going by the accuracy of the cluster of wounds, he figured Xhex had done the shooting.
She always marked her victims, and the N, S, E, and W of the compass was one of her favorites when she was using a gun.
He refocused on Ehlena. She was still staring up at him, her eyes impossibly warm. For a moment, he allowed himself to get lost in the compassion, but then his vampire side took over. As a bonded male, the safety of his mate was his first and greatest priority, and weak though he was, his body jerked against the chains that held him aloft.
Go! he mouthed. When she shook her head, he glared at her. Why not?
She put her hand over her heart and mouthed back, Because.
He let his head fall loose on his stiff neck. What had changed her mind? he wondered. How was it possible she'd come for him after everything he'd done to her? And who had cracked and told her the truth?
He was going to kill them.
Assuming anyone got out of this alive.
The symphaths stopped chanting and fell still. After a moment of silence, they turned to face him with military precision and bowed low.
Their grids registered in a rush as each one of them presented him-or herself to Revhenge... It was everyone he remembered from long ago, his extended family.
They wanted him as their king. Regardless of his uncle's will, they were choosing him.
The chains he hung from jerked and then started to lower him, the pain in his shoulders roaring, his stomach rolling in agony. But he couldn't let on how weak he was. Surrounded by his sociopathic brethren, he knew this respectful-prostration bit wasn't going to last long, and if he looked vulnerable in any way, he was f**ked.
So he did the only thing that made sense.
As his feet touched the cool stone floor, he allowed his knees to buckle smoothly and forced his upper body to sit up straight-as if the classic contemplative pose of the king were exactly what he chose to assume, instead of the best he could do considering he'd been suspended by his clavicles for...
How long had it been? He had no idea.
Rehv glanced down at his body. Thinner. Much. But his skin was intact, which, given all the creepy-crawly crap was a f**king miracle.
He took a deep breath...and drew strength from his vampire side in order to fuel his symphath mind: With his shellan's life at stake, he had reserves he wouldn't be able to call on for anyone else.
Rehvenge lifted his head, lit the chamber with his amethyst eyes, and accepted the adulation.
As the candles out in the hall flared brilliantly, power surged through him, a great wave of command and domination rising, his vision shifting past red and into purple. In the base of his gut, he grounded himself and branded every single symphath in the colony with the knowledge that he could make them do anything. Slit their own throats. Fuck one another's mates. Hunt down and kill animals or humans or anything else with a heartbeat.
The king was the CPU for the colony. The head brain. And these citizens of the race had been taught that lesson well by his uncle and his father: Symphaths were sociopaths with a deep sense of self-preservation-and the reason they chose Rehvenge, a half-breed, was because they wanted to keep the vampires away. With him at the helm, they could continue to live among themselves, sequestered in the colony.
From over in the corner, there was a sloppy shifting and a growl.
The princess rose to her feet in spite of her wounds, her hair a tangled mess around her maniacal face, her lingerie glossy with her own blue blood.
"They are mine to rule." Her voice was reedy, but determined, her obsession sufficient to reanimate what was or should have been dead. "It is my rule, and you are mine."
The assembled masses lifted their bowed heads and looked over. Then stared back at Rehv.
Fuck, the mind spell had been broken.
Rehv shot quick thoughts to Ehlena and Zsadist to block their cerebral cortexes by thinking of something, anything, the more clearly the better. Immediately, he sensed them changing their patterns, with Ehlena picturing...the oil painting from Montrag's study?
Rehv refocused on the princess.
Who had noticed Ehlena and was lurching over with a dagger in her hand.
"He is mine!" she gurgled, blue blood dripping from her mouth.
Rehvenge bared his fangs and hissed like a great snake. With his will, he barreled into the princess's mind, plowing through even the defenses she was able to marshal, taking over, popping open the lids on her lust to rule and to have him as a mate. Her desires made her stop and turn to him, her mad eyes full of love. Overcome with what she wanted, trembling in ecstatic visions, at the mercy of her weakness...
He waited until she was good and worked up.
Then he slammed her with one single message: Ehlena is my revered queen.
The five words shattered her. Broke her down more surely than if he had taken out a gun and shot another compass into her chest.
He was what she wanted to be.
He was what she wanted to have.
And she was getting the shaft.
The princess put her hands to her ears, like she was trying to stop the buzzing in her head, but he just spun her mind faster and faster and faster.
With a raw scream, she took the knife in her hand and thrust it into her gut all the way to the hilt. Unwilling to let her stop there, Rehv made her turn the weapon with a quick jerk to the right.
And then he called on a little help from his friends.
In a black tide, from out of small fissures in the walls, the multitude of spiders and scorpions returned. Once controlled by his uncle, the hordes were now under Rehvenge's dominion, and they swelled forward, encompassing her.
He told them to bite and they did.
The princess screamed and clawed at them and succumbed, falling over onto a mattress of what would destroy her.
The symphaths watched it all.
While Ehlena turned her head into Zsadist's shoulder, Rehv closed his eyes and sat still as a statue in the center of the room, promising each and every one of the citizens before him something worse if they did not obey him. Which, in the twisted value system of symphaths, only confirmed their choice of ruler.
When the princess ceased her sobs and fell still, Rehv lifted his lids and called off the insect guard. In their recession, they revealed her swollen, pitted body, and it was clear she wasn't getting up again-the venom in her veins had stopped her heart and clogged her lungs and shut down her central nervous system.
No matter how great her desire, there was no reanimating that corpse.
Rehv calmly told his robed and masked subjects to retreat to their quarters and meditate on the display. In response, he got back the symphath version of love: They feared him totally and therefore respected him.