the pain and it took far too long to come back into his body. Far too long.
When the screams started, Steele fought to get the wires off. He was strong, and he had an affinity with metal. Still, it took what seemed like forever. He had no idea of time passing, but it did because Demyan’s screams echoed through his entire body, shaking his bones and imprinting there. He worked frantically to get the wires, pulled tight from all his fighting, off of him.
By the time he was free, the screams had turned to animalistic moans of pain. He broke into the room to find a bloodbath. The room was red with blood and the four men laughing and abusing Demyan’s body were covered in it, as if they had bathed in him. Steele killed them. As weak and as far gone as he was himself, he destroyed them. He didn’t remember how, just that he did. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t clean, and Merhi suffered before he died. That he did remember. Then he went to Demyan.
He couldn’t even hold him as Demyan slipped away because it hurt him too much to be touched. He could only whisper how sorry he was that he allowed him out of his sight. He could only wish he could take his place. It had taken over an hour for Demyan’s strong heart to give out. He’d been conscious the entire time, staring into Steele’s eyes. Never once blaming him. He’d tried to whisper something. It had been important to him. A message for Absinthe, his younger brother, but he wasn’t able to tell Steele.
Steele sank down onto the patio right at the edge of the pool, but he didn’t feel the wet mist on his skin or the rougher cement under him. He was trapped there, in the past with Demyan. The nineteenth survivor. He should have lived to laugh with them. Drink beer and ride in the wind. He should have had a life. A woman of his own. Children. He shouldn’t have died at the hands of madmen because Steele had taken his eyes off him.
“Honey.”
A voice. Soft. Moving through his mind. Moving through his own screams of pain. His body didn’t matter. The skin flailed from his back or the numerous stab wounds. None of that mattered. It was the wounds in his mind that could never be healed. He heard it again. Soft. Insistent. A distance from him. He tried to focus on it.
“Steele. Honey. You’re here. Safe.”
There was no safety for anyone. Those he loved were never going to be safe. He had to watch over them, keep them that way. Never take his eyes off them.
“I understand. I don’t mind the cameras, honey.”
Cameras. He’d destroyed those as well. He didn’t want anyone to ever witness what those fuckers had done to Demyan. They had reduced him to a mindless animal and no one was ever going to see that. Demyan’s death was his alone.
“That’s good, Steele. No one should see that. It’s good that you did that. You need to breathe for me. Take deep breaths. That’s right, honey. Just breathe.”
He hadn’t been able to breathe for months afterward. If he did, if he inhaled too deeply, he dragged the scent of blood into his lungs. It was on his skin. His hands. It was in his hair.
“It isn’t in your hair, sweetheart,” that soft voice said.
It was. It was everywhere, all over him. His blood. Demyan’s blood. The blood of the men he’d slaughtered when he’d seen what they’d done. The monster had been born. He hadn’t known he was capable of that kind of killing, of that kind of rage. He was a healer. He’d been given the gift of healing and he’d slaughtered men. Human beings …
“They weren’t human beings, Steele. They looked human, but they were the monsters. You destroyed them because they had to be obliterated before they hurt others.”
That made some sense. He shivered over and over, unable to stop. He couldn’t go back and face the others. He couldn’t tell Absinthe what had happened. How Demyan had died. What they’d done to him. He just couldn’t face that. But he had to. He had to go back to the others and tell them. Tell Absinthe that he let his brother out of his sight and they killed him.
He found out that Sorbacov’s deal with Merhi included allowing him to kill one of them. Sorbacov wanted Steele alive because