J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [137]
“His hand. Do it upon his hand as well.” The blacksmith started to shake his head. “You will do it or I will get another blacksmith for the camp, as you will be dead.”
The blacksmith shook all over, but was of care not to touch V’s skin so the marking was completed without incident.
When it was done, the Bloodletter stared down at V. “There is one more necessary task, methinks. Spread wide his legs. I shall do the race a favor and ensure he never procreates.”
V felt his eyes pop as his ankles and his thighs were yanked apart. His father once more unsheathed the black dagger from his belt, but then paused. “No, something else is needed.”
He ordered the blacksmith do the deed with a pair of pliers.
Vishous screamed as he felt the metal clamp onto his thinnest skin. There was a spearing pain and a tearing and then—
“Sweet Jesus,” Jane said.
V shook himself back to the present. He wondered how much he’d said out loud, and decided that, going by the look of horror on her face, it had been pretty much everything.
He watched the candlelight flicker in her dark green eyes. “They weren’t able to finish.”
“Not out of decency,” she said softly.
He shook his head and raised his gloved hand. “Even though I was about to pass out, my whole body lit up. The soldiers who were holding me down were killed instantly. So was the blacksmith—he was using a metal tool, and it conducted the energy right into him.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Then what happened?”
“I rolled over, threw up some more, and dragged myself to the exit. The whole camp watched me go in silence. Not even my father got in the way or said a thing.” V cupped himself loosely, remembering the mind-numbing pain. “The, ah…the cave floor was covered with this loose, powdery kind of dirt that had various minerals in it—one of which must have been salt. The wound sealed up so I didn’t bleed out, but that’s how I got the scars.”
“I am…so sorry.” She lifted her hand as if she wanted to reach out, but then dropped her arm. “It’s a wonder you survived.”
“I barely made it through that first night. It was so cold. I ended up using a branch to help me walk, and went as far as I could in no particular direction. Eventually I collapsed. My will to keep going was there, my body was not. I’d lost blood, and the pain was exhausting.
“Some civilians of my race found me just before dawn. They took me in, but only for a day. The warnings…” He tapped his temple. “The warnings on my face and my body did what my father wanted them to. They made me a freak to be feared. At nightfall I left. I wandered alone for years, sticking to the shadows, staying out of people’s way. I fed from humans for a while, but that just didn’t sustain me for long enough. A century later I ended up in Italy, working as a hired thug for a merchant who dealt with humans. In Venice there were whores of my kind who would let you feed, and I used them.”
“So lonely.” Jane put her hand to her throat. “You must have been so lonely.”
“Hardly. I didn’t want to be with anyone. I worked for the merchant for a decade or so then one night, in Rome, I ran into a lesser who was in the process of killing a female vampire. I took the bastard out, but not because I particularly cared about the female. It was…See, it was her son. Her son was watching in the shadows of the dark street, crouched next to a cart. He was like…shit, definitely a pretrans, and a young one at that. I saw him first, actually, then caught the action across the way. I thought of my own mother, or at least the image I had made up about her, and was like…hell, no, was this little boy going to watch the female who’d birthed him die.”
“Did the mother live?”
He winced. “She was gone by the time I could get to her. Bled out from a throat wound. But I promise you, that lesser