His gut churned. He’d helped to cause this. It didn’t matter that he’d been a child and didn’t know better. He did now what he’d done then—used his gift. It was so much more powerful now. So strong. Few could resist his voice when he wanted to influence them. They didn’t use their talents on one another, it was strictly forbidden—especially his talent.
“You certain, Savage?” He had to ask. He hadn’t asked as a child. He’d done it to ease their pain. To make it easier for them. He hadn’t known what he was doing, what he was helping to create. He still didn’t know, if he had a choice, if he knew the consequences, if he still would choose the same path.
“I’ll kill someone, Absinthe. Or really hurt a woman. I don’t want to do that, even if she gives me her consent. I couldn’t live with myself if I did. You’ve managed to keep me going more than once. I don’t know how you do it, but you do.” He kept looking him in the eye. “I know it isn’t easy for you, so thanks.”
Hell no, it wasn’t easy. Taking on those nightmares. Those images turned his stomach. He understood why Savage believed he was lost. Absinthe had spent a thousand hours, more even, looking up the making of a sadist in the library and the unmaking of one. How to cure one. How to make them “normal.” There was no normal for Savage. There never would be. Absinthe accepted his part in creating that monster.
He couldn’t actually label Savage a sadist. That was the closest thing he could come to calling him, yet Savage wasn’t cruel to others. He didn’t like to hurt people, rather he was the first to protect them. When it came to his sexual needs, that was a different story altogether. The things he’d endured and the things he’d been forced to do would never leave him and when the memories were too close and threatened to consume him, as clearly was happening now, rage welled up like a volcano in Savage, making him a very dangerous man.
Absinthe took a breath. “Just breathe for a minute, Savage.”
He deliberately didn’t share how he did this. He never touched his brother when he eased those demons. That way, Savage didn’t realize he invaded his mind in the way he did when he interrogated their enemies. He was familiar with the pathways to every one of his brothers and sisters; he’d been working on strengthening them since his childhood.
With Savage, he always had to prepare himself for the blood and gore. The screams of pain. The scent of burning flesh. The way his stomach churned and the mixture of sexual need that all ran together. Dark and terrible cravings rushed at him like vicious tentacles ready to wrap around him, snakes of brutality struck at him with sharp teeth, biting deep. A little boy with a mop of blond ringlets all over his head curled naked in a corner, his body covered in bright red stripes.
Absinthe saw himself on one side, Demyan on the other, both trying to console that young Savage. There was no place to touch him, no place to keep from hurting him. Everywhere bled. Steele knelt, trying to find a way to make the bleeding stop. Reaper and Czar raged. Demyan and Absinthe both whispered to him: “Accept it. You like it. You like giving the pain. You like taking the pain. Accept the pain. It’s your friend. You know you’re alive.”
Over time that mantra had changed. Savage had been the one expected to please their brutal captors by entertaining them with their whips and brands. If he didn’t, so many would suffer or be killed. He was given little choice if he wanted his brother alive. He became very, very good at what he did, even as a young teen. It sickened him so much that Absinthe would whisper to him continually to help him, both before and after.
“You like this. You need it. You crave it. You have to have it.”
Savage complied with their tormentors’ demands, although it didn’t stop them from beating him or treating him just as cruelly. Absinthe and his brother worked harder to make it as easy as possible on him.
Savage was so sick most of the time he couldn’t keep down food. He cried. He stayed alone. He refused to talk to the others or look at them. Absinthe and Demyan