Fated Hearts (Echoes of Darkness Prequel)

34

Ava

T here are eighty-six scratches and dents in the wooden wall in front of me. I would know. I’ve counted them all. Over and over again. True to his word, Clayton started carving me up like a Halloween pumpkin the moment he ended the call with Logan. Only he grew bored waiting ten full minutes between cuts, so every three minutes, he sinks his blade into me, taking a fresh piece of flesh. The pain scorches me from the inside out. Yet, I don’t make a sound.

Seventy-nine.

Eighty.

Eighty-one.

Eighty-t-two—

Clayton carves into my right cheek with meticulous, slow movements. I can tell this is definitely not the first time he’s inflicting this type of torture on someone. He’s such an expert on the matter he could write a book. I would be impressed if it wasn’t my skin and muscle that his blade splits like a hot knife going through butter. The fiery imprint it leaves behind locks my jaw as my vision blurs slightly.

I breathe in and out shallowly as I stare blankly at the wall. I screamed the first five times he marked me, but now I have come to welcome the pain in some capacity. At least, it means that I’m still alive. Moreover, it distracts me from the silver chains burning through the skin on my wrists and ankles. I also don’t want to give this bastard the satisfaction of coaxing a reaction out of me. I can tell he gets off on it. The only problem is that when I don’t make a sound, he takes it as a challenge, and every time, the blade sinks deeper and deeper.

Eighty-three.

Eighty-f-four.

I think he just hit the bone. This time, I can’t stop the strangled whimper that tumbles free. His lip twitches in the corner of my eye, so I know he heard it.

Eighty-five.

Eighty-six.

One.

I let out a trembling sigh of relief through my nose when the blade stops its torturous glide through my flesh.

“Would you look at that. An hour has already passed,” Clayton says. “Time flies when you’re having fun, huh, little bird?”

It’s only us in the room. The witch left after she drew some more symbols on the walls with my blood and brought in another chair, which she placed in the middle of the bloody circle to my right.

“I have to give it to you, little bird. You’re tougher than you look.” He bends slightly and traces the mark he just carved from my ear lobe to the corner of my lips with his calloused finger. His touch is rough, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming in pain. “Such a shame Marion needs your heart. Otherwise, I would keep you as my pet. Carve your pretty skin and fuck you whenever I want.”

I pull away from his touch, swallowing the bile that rises in my throat at his repulsive words. My wolf growls in my head loudly. She wants to shred him to pieces for what he’s done to us. “What’s in it for you?” I grit out, not being able to stop my curiosity, and wince at the way the skin on my cheek stretches as I move my lips. “I understand her motive. She wants to be reunited with her love, but why would you help her?”

His hands fist at his sides. “Your mate killed my sire, and ever since, I’ve been biding my time to get my revenge. After I kill him, I will take my rightful place as an Alpha of his pack. I’ll take everything from him just like he took everything from me.”

So he was sired by another wolf shifter’s bite. No wonder he is crazy. Or maybe he was already a psychopath before he was bitten—one of those who like to kill animals before escalating to human beings.

I feel the tug of the mating bond. Fuck. Logan is here. I prayed he wouldn’t come after all…that he didn’t care enough about me so he wouldn’t be in danger. Clayton straightens, lifts his nose in the air, and sniffs it. In the next second, a wolfish grin takes over his features, and he leaves the room with hurried steps. There’s a struggle outside before the cabin’s front door opens and closes with a loud thud, two sets of heavy footsteps coming my way.

Logan enters the room with Clayton at his back, who’s keeping him at gunpoint. My heart flutters at seeing Logan before me. He’s naked, so he must have shifted to get here, and even in the state I’m in, the mating bond purrs in my chest like a cat. My eyes flit to Clayton; he has a split lip, and blood trickles from the side of his head. I wish Logan would have done more damage.

“Ava,” Logan’s voice is barely above a whisper, and a ripple of shock passes through his features the moment our gazes collide, and he sees the state I’m in.

He hurries his steps to get to me, but Clayton stops him when he says, “One more step, and I’ll put a silver bullet into your brain. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret: all the bullets are dipped in aconite.”

Logan’s eyes blaze with fury, transforming to burnished gold. A muscle thrums in his jaw as he lets his eyes roam over every inch of my body. When they snap back to mine, they flash with a promise, as if he filed every single injury and will deliver a hundredfold in return. “What did you do to her, you sick fuck?” he growls, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. In the next moment, he spins on his heels and sends one said fist flying in an uppercut that catches Clayton by surprise. Spit and blood dart from his mouth as his head snaps backward, and he loses his balance.

“Enough!” Marion, the witch, screams loudly as she appears in the doorway and extends her hand in front of her. A blast of her power sends Logan flying through the air. His big frame hits the wall behind me with a loud thump and cracks the wood. “I don’t have time for your nonsense.” She takes the gun from Clayton, pointing it at me. “Do as I say, or I’ll shoot your mate. Do you understand?”

Logan pushes up from the floor, rubs the back of his head, and nods, his nostrils flaring.

“Good, now go sit down.” She lifts her chin and points it to the vacant chair at my right.

Logan cuts through the room and plops down on the chair, his eyes never leaving mine. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he tells me.

Marion huffs. “Don’t make her promises you can’t keep.”

She passes the gun to Clayton, who keeps it pointed at my head. She then takes four thick silver chains from the dusty bookshelf and strides toward Logan, securing his wrists and ankles. His skin sizzles the moment the metal makes contact with it. Logan doesn’t even flinch, though. The only indication that he feels some sort of pain is that of a vein bulging on the side of his forehead and the way his jaw ticks.

“Oh, I’m fully intending to keep my promise,” he tells the witch, his tone low, menacing. “And I can make you one right now, too. You’re both going to pay for this.”

Marion cackles as she straightens, lifting a mocking eyebrow at him. “I’d like to see you try, mutt.” She walks to the dusty bookshelf, picks up the copper bowl, and glares at Clayton, who’s leaning on the wall in front of us with a smug look on his face. “Bring my grimoire.”

He simply nods and strides out of the room. Marion goes back to where Logan is seated and takes out the knife she used to cut me earlier. The moment the blade slashes through Logan’s forearm, fury blisters my insides like napalm, and my wolf goes off the deep end as I struggle against the silver restraints, not even caring about the intense pain and the metal singeing me. A menacing growl rumbles out of me with the promise of bloodshed.

Logan swears under his breath. “Ava, I’m okay, baby. Stop struggling; you’re only hurting yourself.”

His words are able to cut through my wolf’s haze of rage, and I immediately stop moving as our gazes lock. I let out a shuddering breath. In the momentary silence without screaming or melting flesh, I feel beads of sweat go down my face and between my shoulder blades like tears.

Marion collects the blood she needs from Logan into the copper bowl and drops to her haunches in between the bloody circles. She starts painting another intricate symbol on the floorboards between our chairs, interconnecting the circles like a three-way Ven diagram as Clayton returns to the room, holding a leather-bound, ancient-looking book.

She stands, wipes her bloody fingers on her dress, and takes the book from Clayton’s outstretched hand. “Bring the hearts. Take them out and place them over the symbol in the middle. Carefully, don’t smudge the blood.”

Like a good little soldier, Clayton does as she instructed, and with each heart that he pulls out of a jar, my stomach constricts painfully. I wonder which one of those is Tony’s.

While Clayton is busy with the hearts, Marion arranges some unlit candles around the circles. As soon as he finishes placing all of the hearts in between our chairs, he steps back, and Marion flits through the pages of the book until she settles on one. “I can’t wait to see you, my love,” she murmurs and then starts chanting loudly in a foreign language that sounds like a combination of Latin and Hebrew, the black veins under her skin pulsing with power and shifting relentlessly.

As her verses reach a crescendo, giant flames flicker to life from the candles, and the floor starts shaking as if we’re in the middle of an earthquake. Deep crevices form in the floorboards and walls. They bypass the symbols completely as wood splinters fly everywhere and the air thickens with a suffocating, black fog.

The witch turns to Clayton and says, “Now.” Then she continues chanting.

He prowls toward me with a predatory gait, and when he reaches my chair, he takes the silver knife out of its sheath strapped to his belt. His demented gaze flits to Logan. “You’re going to watch as I carve her heart out of her chest just as I watched you kill my sire in cold blood. You’re going to feel what it’s like to lose everything.”

I’m already lightheaded with how much blood I’ve lost, and my heart thunders in my ears with the realization that this is it. This is how I die. At least I had a few more months to live on my terms. At least I found my fated mate.

“Ava, look at me, baby! Give me those beautiful greens.”

Clayton plunges the blade into the center of my chest.

As blood floods my mouth, I look one last time at Logan, memorizing his striking features. The slope of his eyebrows over his honey eyes that are now filled with anguish and swimming with regret. The fullness of his wicked lips and the hard set of his jaw. “I wish we had more time,” I whisper as a tear crests over my eyelashes and rolls down my cheek.

“No, no, no, Ava! Stay with me, baby! PLEASE! Don’t you dare close your eyes!” Logan pleads, his voice raw, desperate. “AVA!” He struggles against the restraints, his skin sizzling. “AVA!”

I try to keep my eyes open, I do, but my eyelids are so damn heavy. “I’m sorry,” I murmur brokenly.

I don’t want to die…

I think I’m in love with you.

The last thing I hear is Logan letting out a sound so visceral, so full of agony it hurts more than the blade cutting into me.