Over and over, he saw the events that had led them here in his mind and he felt like total shit.
"I'm so sorry, Vane. I swear I didn't mean to get us killed like this."
Vane growled as he fell back from trying to pull himself up. Fang could tell his arms ached from the strain of lifting two hundred pounds of lean muscle up by nothing more than the bones of his wrists.
Fang took a deep breath, trying to ignore the severe pain of his own wrists as they throbbed and burned.
"Don't worry, Fang. I'll get us out of this."
Fang heard him, but the words didn't really register. He felt too bad about this situation. It'd been all his fault. Anya's death, their capture. He should have known his father would pull some kind of bullshit.
Why hadn't he seen it coming?
He could have fought harder. He should have fought harder. How could he have allowed them to be jumped so easily?
Now he was going to be the death of Vane too. . . .
When was he going to learn?
Vane strained against the sharpened cord that held his hands tied together above his head, secured to a thin limb as he hung precariously from an ancient cypress tree over some of the darkest, nastiest-looking swamp water he'd ever seen. He didn't know what was worse, the thought of losing his hands, his life, or falling into that disgusting gator-infested slime hole.
Honestly though, he'd rather be dead than touch that stank. Even in the darkness of the Louisiana bayou, he could see just how putrid and revolting it was.
There was something seriously wrong with anyone who wanted to live out here in this swamp. At last he had confirmation that the Dark-Hunter, Talon of the Morrigantes, was a first-rank idiot.
Fang was tied to an equally thin limb on the opposite side of the tree where they dangled eerily amid swamp gas, snakes, insects, and gators.
With every movement Vane made, the cord cut into the flesh of his wrists. If he didn't get them freed soon, that cord would cut all the way through his tendons and bones, and sever his hands completely.
It would be the last mistake his father ever made.
At least it would be if Vane could get their asses out of this damned swamp without being eaten.
Both of them were in human form and trapped by the thin, silver metriazo collars they wore around their necks that sent tiny ionic impulses into their bodies. The collars kept them in human form. Something their father thought would make them weaker.
In Fang's case that was true.
In Vane's it wasn't.
Even so, the collars did dampen their ability to wield magick and manipulate the laws of nature. And that was seriously pissing him off.
Like Fang, Vane was dressed only in a pair of bloodied jeans. Of course, no one expected them to live. The collars couldn't be removed except by magick, which neither of them could use so long as they wore them and even if by some miracle they did get down from the tree, there was already a large group of gators who could smell their blood. Gators who were just waiting for them to fall into the swamp and make them one tasty wolf meal.
"Man," Fang said irritably. "Fury was right. You should never trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die. I should have listened to you. You told me Petra was a three-wolf-humping bitch, but did I listen? No. And now look at us. I swear if I get out of this, I'm going to kill her."
"Fang!" Vane snapped as his brother continued to rail while Vane tried to manage a few powers even through the painful electrical shocks of the collar. "Could you lay off the blame fest and let me concentrate here, otherwise we're going to be hanging from this damned tree for the rest of eternity."
Fang grunted as he tried to lift himself up too, but he was having even less success than Vane. For some reason he just couldn't manage to lift himself up very far.
Damn them for this. He looked at his brother and sighed. "Well, not for eternity. I figure we only have about half an hour more before the cords cut completely through our wrists. Speaking of, my wrists really hurt. How about yours?"
Fang paused while Vane took a deep breath and felt a tiny movement of the cord coming loose.
He also heard the limb crack.
Fang panicked at the sound of the crack and at the sight of the gator that was waiting below to swallow them whole. Unable to deal with it, he reacted the only way he could. With words. "I swear I'm never going to tell you to bite my ass again. Next time you tell me something, I'm going to listen, especially if it concerns a female."
Vane growled. "Then could you start by listening to me when I tell you to shut up?"