Page 33 of Ruthlessly Mated
“No,” Kita cuts in, her voice ragged with the effort of resisting the pain. “I can’t move the truck yet. He’ll have caught up. He can’t catch up. He needs to realize that he’s not getting it back.”
“He’s not getting what back?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“We’ll leave the truck behind. You and the rest of us are leaving. This city is dangerous. The water is poison to us. We can’t eat. We can’t drink. We won’t survive here. We’ll have to choose between sickness and starvation. And they’ll know. So if you can’t tell me what’s in the damn truck, and why we need to keep it, then I’m taking you from it. Nothing is worth our lives.”
“My life is in there.”
Tailor
I’ve been watching this little show for about long enough. Kita’s strength of will is tremendous. Causing her pain only seems to make her more determined to endure. It’s a character trait that will bring much strength to our pack over time, but in this moment it is about to cause a significant rift.
I tap Conroy on the shoulder.
“Let me take over.”
Conroy may be an alpha and a disciplinarian, but he’s no interrogator. Our mate deserves a thrashing, but it won’t get her to talk. Not on its own. She needs a little more finesse than that.
“Fine. What are you going to do with her?”
“I’m going to take her back to the apartment,” I say. “And we are going to talk about this tomorrow when we have all had some rest, and something to eat.”
“I thought you were going to handle this,” Conroy says.
“You want me to take over beating her? You want me to ruin her completely? You think she’s not obviously endured much worse than this?”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of how she’s reacting to it. She doesn’t care. You could hurt her a lot worse than you’re hurting her right now and she wouldn’t act any different, I can practically guarantee it. If you want to know what’s in the truck, you’re going to have to go about it another way. Now, we are presumably trying to maintain a low profile, and beating the hell out of a girl in public is not a good way to do that.”
Conroy hates this approach, but he’s already done his part. She’s physically sore and mentally tender.
Kita pulls her pants up and gives him an annoyed look. “You will never be able to beat anything out of me. Bigger, meaner people than you have tried.”
“I believe you’re a trained pain in the ass,” Conroy growls.
“Let’s get back to the house and talk. All of us. It’s time we really communicated,” I remind them. “There’s no excuse for this level of feral behavior, and it’s time everyone got honest. There’s too much at stake. We’ve lost too much. All of us.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Kita says predictably.
The two of them bicker all the way back up to the apartment. Conroy is almost acting as though he doesn’t remember that we lost everything and then almost died to the most terrifying creature in the world less than forty-eight hours ago, but I know that’s not an accident. Easier to argue with our cute mate than to face all we have lost in very short order.
We get back to the apartment, which makes me feel a lot better. Whatever is in the truck, I don’t want to be near it. My instincts tell me it is the sort of thing we will want to distance ourselves from immediately.
I want to get Kita out of this city as soon as possible, and I want to start taking steps to rebuild our lives sans evil vampire. The memory of those sadistic eyes burning down at me while every fiber of my being was racked with psychic pain will not leave soon. Every time I try to sleep, I see the vampire’s face, and I feel his malevolence.
I am not accustomed to staring evil in the face, but I get the sense Kita has done it many, many times before. She’s not afraid of the vampire the way we are. She’s managing fear, but not of the kind I experience. Hers is older, muted by repetition. It’s like the difference between scenting fresh blood and blood that has soaked into the ground and become part of the earth, imparting fertility to what grows in around it.
“You’re lucky he stopped me,” Conroy is saying. “I would have taken my belt off, and…”
“Yeah. Yeah. I know. You would have hurt me. Didn’t you see how good I was with the silver?”
“Quiet about the silver. People might hear you.”
“I don’t care what people do.”
I grab Kita and pull her over to me, grasping her hand in mine. It’s a light attempt to control her, and it works. I think she likes the way it feels to be treated with some level of gentlemanly decorum. It’s a change from being thrown around and beaten, I’m sure.
