Chapter Twenty-three

"Ah, here you are. Thank you for coming so speedily."

Divine pulled herself from her thoughts and glanced to the door as Abaddon said those words. Her heart leaped and then sank when she saw Marcus walking calmly into the room, two more of Damian's sons on his heels.

Leonius, she corrected herself. They were Leonius's sons. He might have been Damian as a boy, but he was no longer. He had chosen his path, and he had chosen his name. He was Leonius Livius II now, and she could never let herself forget that.

"Come, sit down," Abaddon said jovially, gesturing to the chair he'd vacated just moments ago.

Marcus crossed to the chair, his eyes moving over Divine with concern as he settled across from her.

"I'm fine," she whispered sadly, really wishing he hadn't come.

"Of course she's fine, Marcus. Do you mind if I call you Marcus," Abaddon asked, gesturing to the men, who immediately retrieved more chain and began to padlock Marcus to the chair. "And you, of course, should call me Abaddon. Or Abby if you like."

Marcus ignored him, as well as the men chaining him up, and merely stared into Divine's eyes as if she was the only one there. She could see the silver swirling through the black of his eyes and was sure his emotions were a tumultuous mix of anger, worry, and some softer feeling she didn't dare call love. But she didn't know if he was angry at her or Abaddon. Probably both, she thought unhappily and then glanced toward Abaddon as he ordered the two newly arrived men to go out and keep an eye out for company. The two men left, leaving just Abaddon and the grandson who had stayed behind her all this time. He had remained leaning against the wall, looking bored, since she'd been chained to the chair.

"Well," Abaddon said, settling into the seat at the end of the table. "We have just been sitting here chatting about the good old days."

Marcus finally tore his eyes from Divine to acknowledge the other man by saying, "Divine told me you were one of the first Leonius's men."

"His friend," Abaddon corrected. "We were great friends."

"I'm surprised you had anything in common. You're immortal, not no-fanger, aren't you?" Marcus murmured, narrowing his eyes as he peered at the other man.

"Oh, yes, well that's true, but despite that we had a lot in common," Abaddon assured him.

"You like raping and torturing women too, do you?" Marcus asked grimly.

"I'm more of a watcher than a doer," Abaddon admitted with a little laugh. "Leo liked to cut them up, and I liked to watch them scream and squirm. It worked out very nicely."

Divine glanced at him sharply. She'd always thought she was alone with Leonius when he'd done the things he did. Now she wondered if Abaddon had been there somewhere, watching through a peephole the entire time. The thought just added to her humiliation.

"Only the first time," Abaddon said suddenly, apparently reading her mind. "And he threw me out after the first few minutes, which he never did with any of the other women," he added resentfully, and then forced a smile and said, "Leo was oddly jealous of you . . . which I can understand completely, of course," he added, running a lascivious gaze down her body. "He and I always had similar taste in women."

Despite his ogling her, all Divine felt was relief that Abaddon hadn't witnessed her humiliation, at least not past the first few minutes of it. Although she supposed it was silly to feel that way when all he had to do was read her mind to enjoy every second of it.

"Enough of that though," Abaddon said suddenly, sitting back in his chair and turning his gaze to Marcus. "Before you got here we were talking about Basha's baby. I was telling her how pretty she was, and that she looked just like a mini version of her, but kind of plump and roundish as babies are." His gaze shifted back to Divine. "You should have seen her, Basha. She really was adorable."

"What happened to her?" Marcus growled.

Abaddon addressed the answer to Divine. "I cut off her head outside the tent while you were still inside panting from the exertion of birthing her. Leonius had no use for daughters."

Divine closed her eyes, but Marcus growled and tugged uselessly at his chains. "You—"

"And you gave me Damian in her place?" Divine said quickly, interrupting Marcus. Abaddon might claim he enjoyed watching rather than doling out torture, but he was just as cruel in his way, and had been known to lash out. She wouldn't have him lashing out at an incapacitated Marcus.

Abaddon's expression was amused when he turned to her. He knew exactly what she was doing, but all he said was "I know you like to think you named him Damian, but really, Basha, he was a day old and already named Leonius II when I placed him in your arms."

He let that sink in and then laughed and added, "Although, I must say it's ironic. Your name choice, I mean. Don't you find it ironic . . . especially now? I mean, you must think he's the devil's spawn."

When Divine just stared at him with bewilderment, he sighed with disappointment. "Of course, you don't do anything as plebian as go to movies or watch television, do you? So you've never seen The Omen? No?" He shook his head. "Such a shame. I think you'd really enjoy it."

Divine had no idea what he was talking about and no interest in movies at that point. She did have a lot of questions though. "Why?" she asked grimly. "Why give me the boy in my daughter's place? Why rush me out of there with a child that wasn't my own? Why not take the mother of the boy instead?"

"To give him a better chance at survival," he said simply. "You are an Argeneau, the boy's mother was just some mortal Leonius turned edentate. With you in her place, if we were caught making our escape, your uncle would have taken you both under his wing and home to his parents, and Leonius's son would have been raised in the bosom of the very family who brought about his father's downfall."

Divine shook her head at once. "They would have known he wasn't my son. He's edentate, an immortal woman can only produce immortals."

Abaddon glanced to Marcus. "I'm guessing you clarified the science for her? You must have. She was never around immortals before you. I made sure of that." Smiling faintly, he sat back and suggested, "Perhaps you should tell her why they would have believed he could be her son."

Marcus was silent for a moment, and Divine was just beginning to think he would refuse, but then he turned to her and said, "He's right. They might have believed he was yours back then. Immortals tended not to mate with no-fangers so there wasn't a lot of experience to go on. Besides, none of the scientists made it out of Atlantis, and it's only been the last couple of centuries that mortal science has progressed enough for us to learn those kinds of things."

"Exactly," Abaddon said triumphantly. "Lucian would have accepted Damian as your son and probably would have helped you raise him too." He sat back with a little sigh and said, "Wouldn't that have been grand?"

"That's what Leonius wanted, wasn't it?" Divine said with sudden understanding, sure the bastard would have enjoyed the irony of that.

"Hmmm," Abaddon murmured with a nod. "And I'm sure he died happily, thinking that would happen. Sadly for him, I had a change of heart as I led you out of the camp and decided not being caught was preferred."

"Why?" she asked at once.

"You mean aside from the fact that I would have been killed on the spot if we'd been caught?" Abaddon asked dryly and shook his head. "I'm afraid I wasn't that loyal to Leonius. I found his behavior entertaining, certainly, but dying for him and his cause was just that one step beyond the call of duty in my mind."

"Then why not just leave us and flee on your own once you were out of camp?" Divine asked at once, thinking how different things would have been had that happened. She would have had family, a home . . . Damian might even have turned out better.

"That's why," Abaddon said.

Divine blinked her thoughts away and peered at him with confusion, but it was Marcus who asked, "What's why?"

Staring Divine in the eye, Abaddon said, "You would have had family, a home . . ." He stopped listing off the thoughts she'd been having and shrugged. "As ashamed as I am to admit it, I'm a vengeful prick. Even my mother used to say that."

"You had a mother?" Divine snapped. "And here I was sure you were hatched like the rest of the snakes."

"Name calling?" he asked with a laugh. "Really? That's the best you can do?"

"Remove these chains and I'll do better for her," Marcus said silkily, drawing his gaze.

Abaddon smiled. "Now why would I do that? I have you both where I want you and I'm truly enjoying this."

"Torturing her, you mean?" Marcus asked grimly. "You might not like to get your hands dirty with physical torture, but you certainly don't have a problem torturing her mentally, do you? You've been doing that every time you've seen her for two thousand years."

"Not as much as I'd have liked," Abaddon assured him. "It was tricky with Leonius there. He's protective of his mother . . . as a loving son should be," he added with a sneer.

"Why?" Divine demanded before Marcus could respond to that. "Just tell me why the hell I earned so much antipathy from you? Why did you want me so fricking miserable all these years?"

Abaddon turned to peer at her. "The truth?"

When Divine nodded, he shrugged.

"Basically it's because I don't take rejection well."

"Rejection," she echoed with confusion, not having a clue what he was talking about.

Abaddon sighed with exasperation. "Here it's been a thorn in my side for eons and you don't even remember it?" he asked with annoyance.

"Remember what?" Divine asked with annoyance of her own. Cripes, if she'd been paying all these years for something, it would be nice to know what the hell it was.

"I offered to save you," he said heavily, and when Divine stared at him blankly, he tsked irritably and reminded her, "On the ride back to camp the night we found you? You were all tied up and on my horse in front of me. When you thought no one was paying you any attention, you started to weep. I chucked your chin and you looked up at me with these big, beautiful, sad silver-blue eyes and I was moved," he added with self-disgust. "I offered to save you from Leonius."

"You offered to save me if I became your lover," Divine said with remembered outrage as the memory came back to her.

"Would that have been worse than letting that animal paw and rape and cut you up?" Abaddon snapped.

"Let?" she snapped right back, leaning forward in her chair as much as the chains would allow. "I was eleven years old. A child. I had no idea what was in store for me. All I knew was some old pervert was pawing me up and demanding I be his lover or I'd be sorry."

"But you weren't, were you? You weren't sorry at all," he growled. "You enjoyed what he did to you."

Divine slammed back against her chair as if he'd slapped her. Here was the seat of her shame. The reason she'd been sure her family would have turned from her as Abaddon had repeatedly claimed. The reason she'd spent her life running and hiding, even from herself. Most of the time, her captivity had been nothing but terrifying, screaming agony. But there were occasions . . . Divine hadn't understood it at the time, but there had been sessions when she'd seemed to be experiencing Leonius's pleasure in her pain, along with her agony. At first they were brief, just snapshots really, because Leonius had quickly stopped what he was doing and backed away from her when it happened, looking shaken and confused. But after half a dozen sessions like that, he hadn't backed away, he'd continued on, raining a storm of pain and pleasure on her until she passed out. 

That had shaken Divine, shaken her belief in herself. It had made her feel ashamed, dirty, unredeemable. Like there was something wrong with her. In her mind, what he did to her was abominable, inhuman. She'd been horrified and hurting. So how could she at the same time have experienced any pleasure at all?

"You can't deny it," Abaddon accused. "You enjoyed it."

Divine's gaze shot to Marcus and then quickly away when she saw him looking at her with concern. Scowling at Abaddon, she muttered. "Go to hell."

"I expect to," Abaddon said, relaxing. "In fact, I expect to like it."

"This isn't because she rejected your offer of protection all those years ago," Marcus said suddenly. "All the energy you've expended on making her miserable all these years, ensuring she never felt it was safe to turn to her family, ensuring she was always alone, lying to make her keep feeding off the hoof when you knew that was no longer allowed . . . and calling her in to whisk Leonius away when Lucian and the others had captured him . . ." Marcus shook his head, eyes narrowed on the man. "You could have done the saving yourself, but you deliberately called her in to do it because you knew it would make her rogue and ensure she would never be accepted back into the fold. Or you hoped it would."

"So?" Abaddon scowled.

"So those aren't the actions of a man who was rejected," Marcus said calmly, and then added, "Those are the actions of a jealous wife who blames a mistress for stealing a husband."

Divine's eyes widened incredulously and she glanced to Abaddon to see that his face was turning color, reddening first, and then purpling to fury.

"What happened, Abaddon?" Marcus asked. "You couldn't read Leonius and he couldn't read you? You wanted him for your life mate, and didn't even mind that he was busy with torturing his little toys so long as he let you be a part of it. But then Divine came along. How did you know he'd take to her as he did? You must have known that to offer her protection. Although I suspect you only offered that thinking that Leonius wouldn't want her if she went to you willingly."

"It was the way he looked at her," Abaddon snarled and then glared at Divine. "From the moment you ran into the clearing, it was like he was star-struck. He'd never looked at any of the other women like that. I knew . . ." His mouth set and he scowled at Divine. "So I took you up on my horse before he could, and I made that offer on the ride back to camp, but oh no, you wanted Leonius, my Leonius."

He turned to Marcus. "He didn't just ban me from the tent once he started on her, he wanted to stop playing with the others. Not right away, of course, it took a session or two before he started to not bother with the others. I had to remind him over and over again about our plans and the need for an army of his sons. But it was only when I said the Argeneaus would come take her away from him if he didn't have an army strong enough to hold them off that he gave his attentions to the others again. He let me watch again too, but it was obvious his heart wasn't in it anymore. All he wanted was her," he said with disgust.

"She was a possible life mate too," Marcus said with sudden understanding, and Divine glanced at him sharply.

Leonius Livius a life mate? The thought was unbearable. Besides—"I thought we each had only one life mate? You're my life mate."

Marcus shook his head. "Life mates are rare, but not that rare. Others have encountered more than one in a lifetime," he said gently, and then turned to Abaddon and repeated coldly, "Divine was a possible life mate for him too, and he chose her over you . . . and you hated her for it."

Divine remained silent, her mind racing. She wanted to deny what he was saying, but it explained so much. The pleasure she'd felt and fought when Leonius had raped and tortured her . . . it could have been his pleasure in the act. If so, it hadn't been a sign that she was as deviant and dirty as the things he did to her . . . and that had been her biggest fear, what had allowed her to believe his claims that her family would not want her, that she had shamed them, that she had shamed herself.

"You don't plan on keeping to the bargain and letting Divine go," Marcus said suddenly and Divine glanced to him again. He was no longer looking at her. His gaze was now firmly on Abaddon as he said, "You can't. She knows too much now, and she'll tell Damian all of it. How you've manipulated her and ensured she was alone and lonely all these years. How you kept them both from her family when his father wanted him to be raised among them. And the reason why, that she was his father's life mate."

"She shouldn't have been. She wasn't good enough for him. She was a stupid little child and—" He paused and glanced down to his pocket with surprise as it gave off the foghorn sound again. Letting his breath out on a slow sigh, he reached for his phone and stood to move away from the table as he read it.

"How will you explain killing her to Damian?" Marcus asked idly as Abaddon began to type an answer into his phone.

"I'll tell him that you convinced her he wasn't her son and told her what he's been up to. I'll tell him that she wanted to turn him in. I had no choice," Abaddon murmured, still typing away.

"If you thought he'd accept that as reason enough to kill me, you wouldn't have arranged to meet me on the sly," Divine said, pushing all other issues away for the moment. She'd learned long ago to compartmentalize when necessary, and sitting there fretting over the fact that she had probably been a life mate to Leonius Livius wasn't going to help them get out of there alive. When Abaddon didn't respond, she added, "Damian won't be happy I'm dead. As you said, he has mommy issues. And my knowing about him now won't be a good enough excuse for killing me when all he has to do is stop giving me his address. He already has Lucian and all of his Rogue Hunters after him; hiding from me as well would hardly be a hardship."

Abaddon heaved a long-suffering sigh and tore his gaze from the phone to glare at her. "Then I'll have to tell him your uncle caught up with and killed you both and we found you here."

"Oh, right. Well, make sure you take the chains off our bodies before he sees them then," she said dryly and followed it up with a short laugh as he returned to typing.

"What?" Abaddon asked, scowling at her.

"What what?" she asked innocently.

"You laughed as if you thought of something, but I was distracted with my phone and wasn't reading your mind. What were you thinking?"

Divine shrugged. "I was just thinking that Danny here behind me, or number Seventeen as I think I've heard Damian call him, isn't likely to keep his mouth shut about what happened here today. Neither will the others. They were always greedy little boys. Every time they want something, they'll blackmail you with this, and good Lord, don't say or do anything to piss them off or they'll tell their dad about this just to spite you."

Abaddon stared at her blankly for a minute and then shifted his gaze to the man behind her. She didn't turn to look, but if she were to hazard a guess, Divine would have said Damian's son must have been grinning and nodding or something stupid like that because Abaddon suddenly pulled a gun from the pocket of his joggers and shot Danny.

Divine did turn then, and just in time to see that he'd been hit dead center in the middle of his forehead. The young no-fanger dropped like a stone without even enough time to look surprised. He was no-fanger, however, and not dead. Given time he'd heal, his body pushing the bullet right out of his head. Or he would have except Abaddon then slid his phone in his pocket, opened one of the cupboards along the wall beside the refrigerator, pulled out an axe, hefted it, and then walked over and cut off Danny's head with one blow.

"There," he said, straightening with satisfaction. "Now Danny won't tell anyone anything, will he? I'll take care of the others later, when their usefulness has worn off. Leonius can always make more. Lord knows he works at it hard enough. He's worse than his father for rutting. He seems to actually enjoy that as much as, or more than, causing them pain. Something I was hoping he'd grow out of, but so far no luck," he muttered, pulling his phone from his pocket as it made the foghorn sound again.

Divine tore her gaze from the dead man she'd thought of as a grandson and peered at Abaddon. Danny's death had reminded her of the other boys, the ones she'd raised as grandsons, and she asked abruptly, "Who killed Luc?"

Abaddon glanced to her with surprise. Apparently she'd caught him by surprise, but after a moment, he admitted, "No one. He didn't survive being turned."

Divine nodded. "And the others?"

"A couple died when Leonius tried to turn them, but the rest—" He grimaced. "They were edentate, weak, wouldn't hurt a fly. It made them useless to Leo, and he worried they'd tattle to you, so—" He gestured to Danny. "They went the same way he did only without the shooting part first."

Divine closed her eyes and bowed her head at the thought of all those lovely little boys, and then glanced up sharply when the phone actually rang rather than make the foghorn sound. Abaddon cursed, took a deep breath for patience, and then answered his phone.

"Hello?" he said pleasantly. "Yes, Leo. I know. I'll be there as quickly as I can, but I have some business— No, I know, but— Yes, but— Fine," he finished a little snappily and hit the button to end the call. His teeth were audibly grinding together as he announced, "It would seem I have to go for a while. The other boys will be here to watch you though, and I'll be back."

"Thanks for the warning," Marcus muttered as A