That memory didn’t help, as it caused him to panic as he was struck again and again.
Badly. He was completely unprepared for the surge in emotions this beating caused, especially fear. He couldn’t breathe or think. All sanity fled. The only shred of it he had told him to protect his staff. Shrinking it down, he hid it, but that was all he could manage against the onslaught that left him covering his head so that they didn’t split it open the way his brother had.
Fire exploded close to him. Nibo held his hands up to deflect it.
It didn’t work.
An instant later, he was consumed.
Valynda was completely unprepared for the sight of a wounded Nibo as Acheron appeared out of the blue by her bed with Xuri in his arms. Until now, she hadn’t even known that he could become harmed.
In any way.
Her heart sank and then pounded as she saw him raw and bleeding. “What happened?” She rose from her bunk and pulled the covers back.
Acheron laid him down on her straw mattress. “We were attacked. He wanted me to bring him here.” He met her gaze. “To you.”
Those words brought tears to her eyes. “You should have gone to Masaka. She’s a real healer.” All she could do was bandage him.
Xuri took her hand into his. “She lacks empathy.” Then he gave her a weak smile. “And you’ll kiss my boo-boos.”
Acheron snorted. “Are you saying you don’t want me to heal you?”
Nibo turned serious and his eyes flared as he turned his attention back to the Dark-Hunter. “You better heal me, you arse. This shit hurts.”
Acheron took the insult in stride. “Just checking. Didn’t want to upset you if you were some kind of secret masochist. You know, the gods forbid I should ever interfere withthat.” Acheron pushed the sleeves of his coat back before his hands began to glow.
Xuri let go of Valynda as Acheron placed his hands on the center of his chest. The glow ran over him until it encircled his entire body. With a curse that questioned the legitimacy of Acheron’s birth, he grabbed the Dark-Hunter leader’s coat. “Last time I share rum with you, asshole!”
Acheron laughed. “And here I was actually beginning to like you.”
Xuri shoved him back. “Next time, I’m feeding you to the thing that wants a piece of your sorry ass.”
“Sounds about right. I’m only surprised when I don’t get shoved into the jowls of whatever is coming at us.”
Valynda didn’t speak as she caught the pain that backed those words and realized what really bonded both the Dark-Hunters and Deadmen together. What made them family. The fact that none of them had ever been able to trust anyone in their human lifetimes.
Ever.
Not their families. Their best friends. The people who were supposed to protect them, the ones everyone said they were supposed to be able to put their faith in had all let them down, time and again, in the most brutal of ways.
Never once had they ever come through for them. Not even for the most basic necessity or need. In the end, they’d all been hung out to dry and left to die alone from the worst sort of betrayal.
So in death, they were there for each other. Hell or high water. Because they knew what it was to have no one, they made sure that they never dealt that to those who wore their colors.
It was what had made her love Xuri.
“Call my name, mon amour,and I’ll come. Night or day.”
He’d never failed her, until the one night when she’d needed him most. The night when her soul had been ripped from her body. When she’d screamed out the loudest.
It was what made forgiving him so hard. Because those screams still burned raw in her throat. Echoed in her head and haunted her nightmares. Both waking and sleeping.
Just as he was haunted by the fact that his own twin had brutally murdered him over so petty a reason as hurt feelings that had nothing to do with anything Nibo had done. He hadn’t intended to slight his brother. He’d been utterly innocent in the matter, and it was the fact that he’d been so lackadaisical about the competition, not caring if his brother took the win that he’d have forfeited had Qeenan asked him about it that had angered Qeenan most. Meanwhile Qeenan had been so intent on victory that Nibo’s attitude had driven such a rage inside him that he’d killed him over it. And that had upset Qeenan the most. Because Qeenan had been trying to win and had lost while Nibo hadn’t cared at all. …
That was the worst rub that had driven Qeenan over the edge and made him feel as if Nibo didn’t deserve the praise. Didn’t deserve to live.
Rather than strike out at the ones who’d hurt Qeenan and who had made him feel inferior to his brother, he’d attacked the one person who had actually loved him and who would have protected him. The only person who’d been willing to fight and die for him, no matter what.
