Page 77 of Map of Pain
His forced himself to stand, his fist clenched.“What is going on? How does that connect to the Society?”
Before Ophelia could answer, Marcus and Vincent began raising their voices at each other in a way that made Nick’s combat instincts scream warnings.
“You said he was dead!” Marcus snapped. “Why is this symbol there?”
“I said the situationwashandledand that I left him for dead!”Vincent shot back, his fangs still visible as he spoke, his voice carrying dangerous undertones that made Nick’s skin crawl.
Luka stood up from his chair and began signing at Vincent in an aggressive way thatwasdifferent from anything Nickhadseenbefore. When Lukapulled Marcus off him or fought the operatives at the hospital,he’dbeen controlled, purposeful. This looked like a wounded animal charging, raw and desperate and furious.
Ophelia glanced between them and began translating with clinical efficiency for Nick.“Luka wants to know why that symbol is with their dead friends—the peoplethey’dhelpedset up.”
Vincent turned to face Luka’s aggressive signing, his expression earnest but still heated, still dangerous.“I don’t know! It doesn’t make sense! If it’s Society massacres, then that symbol shouldn’t be there!”
“Well they’re fucking there, so why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Vincent!”Marcus replied, his composure completely shattered.
Nick watched in growing horror as the family imploded around him. Lukawasstill signing at Vincent, movements sharp and wounded. Vincent kept responding“I don’t know, Idon’t know,”looking increasingly panicked, his vampire features making his distress even more unsettling.
Vincent’s grip tightened on Adam, whostopped trembling for a moment. Some of the colorreturned to his face, but hehada vacant, far-away look of someone whose mindretreated somewhere safer.
Adam said something under the shouting that Nick couldn’t hear, but every vampire at the table immediately turned their attention to him with sharp focus. Enhanced hearingwasboth blessing and curse, apparently.
“What did you say?”Marcus asked, his voice gentling.“Repeat it.”
Adam touched the bridge of his nose, stroking it like hewasremembering whatbroke it, still with that distant look in his eyes.“He said something badwascoming,”Adam said, his voice hollow.“That he could help.”
Ophelia looked sharply at Adam, her bored facade gone.“What are you talking about?”
Adam seemed to snap back into himself, still rubbing the bridge of his nose like a talisman against the past.“When Vincent and I left him to burn at Ghost Town, he tried to get me to help him by saying somethingwascoming and that if we saved him, he would help.”He looked at Vincent with tears in his eyes, his voice breaking.“What’s worse than a vampire cult?”
The question hung in the air like a death sentence, and Nick felt the pieces clicking together in his mind with horrible clarity. Someone Vincent and Adamleft for deadwarned them about something coming. Something worse than a vampire cult. Someone who carved symbols into people and now those same symbolswereappearing at Society massacre sites.
Deep inside Nick’s mind, he could hear that jingling sound—Marcus’s entrance at the trailer, the sound that always preceded terrible revelations. He felt a weight pressing down on himas the submissive whispered with terrible certainty:The Daylight Society.
Then the world went black.
Chapter thirty
How to surrender to two different masters...
Luka
Luka felt it before he saw it—something wrong in the air around Nick, something that made his beast recoil with instinctive dread. Nick’s familiar scent, the concrete and vanilla that was as essential to Luka as breathing, twisted into something that made his stomach lurch. Crushed flowers mixed with rotting earth, the sick-sweet smell of a swamp where beautiful things went to die. It muddied everything about Nick, turning his natural warmth into something fetid and wrong.
Luka’s head snapped toward him just as Nick’s eyes went vacant, pupils fixed on something none of them could see.
“Nick?”Caleb reached toward his brother, voice tight with concern.
Nick dropped to his knees so fast his chin cracked against the table edge with a sound that made Luka flinch. The sharp crack of bone against wood echoed through the sudden silence, followed immediately by the sight of blood welling from the split skin, trickling down to drip onto his shirt. Nick’s teeth bitinto his tongue—more blood filling his mouth, staining his lips crimson.
He didn’t react to the pain at all.
Move. Do something. Help him.But Luka found himself frozen, watching in growing terror as Nick folded himself into a position that made his beast howl with recognition and rage.
Chin bowed toward the ground, shoulders pulled back in rigid military precision, spine straight as a blade. His legs folded beneath him in perfect perpendicular lines, ankles locked together with mechanical precision. The blood continued to drip from his split chin, landing on the floor in small, dark spots that looked black in the club’s lighting.
Most disturbing of allwerehis arms—crossed behind his back, his hand grasping the opposite elbow in a pose that looked formal until Luka’s mind supplied what it reallywas. The position someone’s arms would be in if theywerebound. Restrained. Zip-tied or rope-burned until they learned to hold the position on their own.
This isn’t like the others. This is something else. Something worse.
