Dreams of a Dark Warrior

come. …
    “And don’t forget when I tortured you. The poison was so strong that you dislocated your shoulder from your seizures. Oh, and that vivisection? I must have ordered them on hundreds of your kind. Maybethousands. And I never once doubted that I had every right to.”
    “Because you believe immortals are unnatural?” she bit out. “That we’re animals?”
    “
Less than
animals.” As if he was quoting someone, he intoned, “Abominations walking among us, filled with untold malice toward mankind. A perversion of the natural order, spreading their deathless numbers uncontrollably. A plague upon man that must be eradicated.”
    “Then why save me from those vampires tonight? Why allow the vivisection, then turn around and rescue me? You could’ve stopped what Dixon and those fucks did to me!”
    “You want to know why I didn’t stop them? Because I was high in my room, Regin. With a needle jammed in my vein. While you were getting butchered, I was knocked out, oblivious to the world.”
    Her lips parted wordlessly.
    “Think of everything I’ve done to your friends and allies. That’s what I do—I hurt your kind. I take them from their homes, from their families.” His eyes were haunted, his lashes spiked with moisture. Voice hoarse, he rasped,
“Put me out of my fuckin’ misery, woman. Do it.”
    Gods, he was so damaged, so … ruined. As she gazed at his eyes, dim impressions arose in her mind. Her face wet with warm tears? Why couldn’t she remember?
    Suddenly, he gripped her shoulders—to yank her into him.

FORTY-ONE

    N o!”
The Valkyrie raised her leg at the last minute, kicking him back, then threw the sword across the clearing.
    She hadn’t run that steel through Declan, though he’d all but forced her to.
    “Why can’t you do it?” he bellowed.
    “I don’t know!” She sounded dazed. “Do you really want me to? You’re that miserable?”
    When he’d been staring down that sword, he’d accepted death. But now he realized that if he died, she’d have one less protector. He had to get her off this island first.
    “You don’t deserve my mercy,” she said, her voice breaking. Tears welled in her eyes. The sight of them pained him far worse than that sword ever could have.
    “No. I don’t.” Still, he had the mad urge to explain his actions, to explain why he’d grown so callous to immortals, why he’d believed her kind had to be controlled. Why it’d fallen to him.
    The training that made me a monster.
    Yet he knew he could never make her understand.
    “I’ve been tortured before, Chase. But never like this. They talked about golf and movies whilethey …”—she bit back a sob—“while they played with my womb.”
    Warring impulses raged inside him. Declan wanted to yell with wrath, to comfort her, to annihilate any who’d dared touch her.
    “You promised me I’d beg. Oh, how I did. And I will always hate myself for that. I begged
you
to make it stop! You can’t comprehend what it’s like! The
violation
…”
    “Maybe I comprehend more than you think!” Seeing Colm’s throat slit, watching his parents being eaten alive.
Feeling the flesh peeled from my goddamned body.
    His words seemed to enrage her. “If you’ve witnessed it a thousand times, then you’re an expert at it? Is that it?” Her lips were drawn back from her teeth. “You
disgust
me. You know nothing.
Nothing
!”
    For her to discount what he’d been through? “I know everything!” he roared as he tore off his shirt.
    She gasped, blinking rapidly as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.
    “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t comprehend!” He turned to show her his back. When he faced her again, her expression was horrified. “I know what pain is, Regin! I know what it feels like to be powerless.”
    Lightning struck again. She stumbled back a step, then another.
    Slipping away from me forever.
He reached for her, but she shook her head slowly.
    “You stay away from me, Chase. Whatever you want me for, whatever you think might be between us, forget about it. It’s just …
dead
between us!” She turned backtoward the bunker, covering her mouth as if she was going to be sick.
    As he watched her hurrying from him, he had a flash memory from long ago. From the day the Order’s physicians had removed his bandages.
    His first thought upon seeing what was left of his chest had confused him, had made no sense in the context of his life.
    When he’d gazed in horror at his skin,