Lost ... Which made his decision easy.
When he returned to the main exam room, Brandr was cozying up to the fey while Thad glowered in their direction. Lothaire, still atop that cage, looked like he was actual y sleeping. No doubt keen to get to my memories. Have at them, leech. Declan didn't see Regin. "She woke?" Alarm spiked in him. "Where is she?"
Thad said, "She's outside, cleaning up."
Declan turned to go after her.
"I wouldn't fol ow her if I were you," Brandr said. "She's about to blow, and she took a sword. Even injured, she'l kil you."
Natalya added, "Give her some time to lick her wounds in private."
"I can't let her remain out there. No' alone."
Brandr shook his head. "An armed, thousand-year-old Valkyrie fil ed with an unholy rage? Who would be crazy enough to face her right now?"
Me. Declan was already sprinting up the bunker stairs. He pushed out into the gale and sped heedlessly down the treacherous terrain.
Not far from the bunker, he found her in a smallclearing. She knelt in the mud, topless, with lightning exploding directly above her. Her hair was a soaked mane covering her bare back, her pointed ears peeking out.
Her shirt and a sword lay beside her. She was angled so that he could just see her face as she peered down at her chest. With a light touch, she inspected her wounds.
Guilt nearly fel ed him. If he accepted that some members of the Lore weren't evil-like Regin and Brandr-then his commanders had been right.
I am more of a monster than the creatures out there.
First the strain, and now this guilt over the things he'd done? Too much for one man to shoulder. Regin raised her face to the pounding rain, mut-tering to the sky, her expression one of pure fury.
When he saw that, he knew she could never be brought to forgive him. Never.
So it's over.
She slowly donned her shirt, then reached for the sword. In a flash she was on her feet, weapon raised. Lightning struck mere feet behind her; she didn't flinch. "Time for you to die, Chase."
It's long over. ...Chase's eyes were glowing in the night, fil ed with ... shame? "Do what you need to."
"You think I won't?" He was a madman who'd harmed her friends and imprisoned children. Who'd captured her and let mortals cut on her.
He yel ed, "Then do it!"
She gasped at the unbearable pain in his expression, the hopelessness. What in the gods' names had happened to him in this lifetime?
No, it doesn't matter.
He strode toward her across the clearing, growing more incensed with each step-as if he were pissed that she hadn't attacked him. "Swing that f**kin' sword!"
Regin clutched the hilt. "You have a death wish?"
"See-this-done." Getting closer. "Why are you hesitating?"
She didn't know!
"You want to put me down? Aye, you should yearn to. Do it now!" When he was a few feet from her, he lunged forward; she raised the sword point to his chest. Right at his heart.
But she couldn't drive it home.
He shoved his chest against the point until it sank into his skin. "Goddamn it, do it! Don't you want revenge, Valkyrie? all that pain you suffered was my doing! Mine! Directly from the start."
Lightning struck with her frustration, thunder booming instantly. The winds howled around them.
"Do you know what I was thinking before I captured you in New Orleans? That you were just another job to complete before I got to return home. Another detrus added to my personal collection of them. That night, I stabbed you with my sword. Remember how I twisted it inside you?"
She remembered all too well , the pain, the betrayal. One of many to 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. Maybe thousands. 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, fil ed with untold malice toward mankind. A perversion of the natural order, spreading their deathless numbers uncontrol ably. A plague upon man that must be eradicated."
"Then why save me from those vampires tonight? Why all ow the vivisection, then turn around and rescue me? You could've stopped what Dixon and those f**ks 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 all ies. 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 f**kin' 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.
Chapter FORTY-ONE
No!" 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 bel owed.
"I don't know!" She sounded dazed. "Do you real y 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 well ed 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 cal ous to immortals, why he'd believed her kind had to be control ed. Why it'd fal en 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 while they ..."-she bit back a sob-"while they played with my womb."
Warring impulses raged inside him. Declan wanted to yel 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 ..."