The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12)(56)
Author: J.R. Ward

His Marisol had clearly fought for her freedom like a banshee.

Walking around the open floor space, he saw nothing of value or interest—or anything that could detain an individual. But over in the far corner, there were a set of stairs descending to a lower level.

He double-checked on his captive. Benloise remained writhing in the snow just outside the main door, his dark eyes open and blinking unevenly, his upper lip peeled back, his porcelain caps glowing in the ambient light.

Best to take him with.

Assail went over and yanked the man up to his feet. When Benloise failed to stand on his own, it was the work of a moment to drag his hundred-and-forty-pound weight into the interior. Then together, they promenaded over to the staircase.

Down into the underground, Benloise’s useless feet bouncing behind them like balls.

And there was the evil.

The lower floor was made up of a large open space with three cells and a wall of horror. One of the cells was not empty. There was a man with a brutalized face and neck lying on his back, staring at what you could only hope was Hell. His right arm had been pulled through the iron bars, and the bloody stump announced that his was the hand that had been taken.

For a moment, Assail felt his heart sting with desolate pride. Marisol had gotten herself out. No matter what they had done to her, or how few her resources had been, she had triumphed over her captors, bringing them not just to heel, but to their graves …

It was at that moment that he knew he was lost to her.

He was in love with this woman—and indeed, it was sick to feel those depths in the midst of this carnage and violence, but the heart was where it was.

And as Assail pictured his Marisol chained to that stained stretch of concrete wall, he became rageful to the point of insanity, a stampede of bulls racing through his body, their thousand hooves driving him into madness.

Wheeling around on Benloise, he bared his fangs and hissed like the vampire he was—

In spite of being shot, the drug wholesaler recoiled. “Madre de Dios!”

Assail scrummed down, getting in the man’s face. “That is right! I am nightmare come upon you!”

There was only one chain hanging from the wall. The other was coiled on the floor inside the locked cell, the blood that painted the links proving it had been the murder weapon Marisol had used.

It would be put into service yet again.

Assail dematerialized through the bars and picked up the sticky, copper-scented links.

Oh, Marisol, would that you had not had to be so brave.

As Assail dematerialized back out, Benloise was no longer the in-control businessman who was used to holding all the cards. Unlike the dead bodies and the blood or even the loss of his brother and the threat to his own life—all of which he had been able to mostly retain his composure around—learning Assail’s true identity sent him over the edge.

Whimpering, crying, praying, the man lost control of his bladder, urine pooling out of his shrunken c**k onto the concrete floor.

Assail stalked over to the wall and reattached the chain. Fortunately, there was nothing fresh upon the stained surface. There was going to be, however.

Manhandling Benloise’s shrieking, flopping, pissed-on body off the floor, Assail bit through the duct tape tethers at the man’s wrists, and cuffed him to the wall Christ-style by shortening the lengths until his hollow torso was pulled flat.

Assail shucked his backpack and unzipped it. As he looked at the amount of explosive he had brought with him, he knew it was more than enough to blow the facility sky-high. He glanced at Benloise. The man was crying all over himself, shaking his head as if he were hoping to wake up.

“Indeed, you are truly conscious,” Assail gritted. “That shall not last, however.”

Pivoting to face the cell, he pictured his Marisol in there, terrified … and worse.

His heart thumped in his chest. If he blew this place up … Benloise would be home free, dead and gone—mayhap to Hell, but as one could not be sure of the afterlife until one got there, it seemed far more prudent to err on the side of real-time suffering.

He had intended to kill the wholesaler first. Then set the explosives and detonate them from a distance.

But that was not as equitable as it should be. Marisol had suffered—

A growl vibrated up through his chest … as though his very body were protesting at the prospect of being cheated of the death.

“No,” he told himself. “Better this way.”

Too bad only part of him believed it.

Assail rezipped his backpack and strapped the thing on again. Going to first one and then the other of the chains, he inspected them for security. Indeed, they were well and truly placed. The same was true for the cuffs upon those wrists.

Snapping out a hold, he took Benloise’s chin and forced the man’s head back.

With another hiss, he bit into the flesh by the carotid, ripping a hunk out and spitting it onto the floor. The blood tasted good in his mouth and his canines tingled in anticipation of more. Except they would be denied.

The bite was but a symbol of what as a male he was driven by instinct and custom to do in the protection of his female. And he would have torn the neck fully open if Benloise himself had not been into torture.

As his prey spoke in a rush in that foreign tongue, Assail fought the battle to leave the man alive. Cruelty was going to require self-control in this circumstance—and ordinarily that was not a problem.

Nothing involving Marisol had been ordinary, however.

Assail slapped the man into silence. Jabbing his forefinger into that face, he growled, “She was not yours to take. Do you hear me? Not yours. Mine.”

Before he lost his hold upon his temper, he stalked off to the stairs, leaving the lights on so that Benloise was fully aware of where he was: a prison of his own making with naught but the remains of one of his bodyguards to keep him company.

Mounting the steps two at a time, Assail knew there was a possibility someone could come and free the wholesaler, but it was remote. Benloise was notoriously secretive, and with Eduardo dead, the only people who would miss him were guards and staff—and given the cagey manner in which the man operated, there would be a lag before the troops marshaled up conversation and discovered that each individual was not so much out of the loop as that there had been no contact from their superior to anyone on the team.

After that? It was an open question whether any of them would actually look for their boss. People who operated in the underground world scattered when it came to complications like this—no one was going to risk getting killed or handcuffed by the human authorities just to save somebody else’s skin.