Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Chapter XX - Blood and Lavender Essence

"Calm down! Tis only I," Lucian whispered brusquely, his brutal hand still pressed firmly across my mouth.

"What the devil is she doing here?" I heard Caine's exasperated murmur coming from behind his brother, but his face was not yet visible to me, namely because Lucian filled my vision completely — a vision that was colored in carnage.

I whimpered in revulsion and ripped my palms away from his viscid chest as soon as I became aware that his torso was utterly bestrewn with blood; the coppery tang of it assailing each of my senses. Caine quietly stepped out from around Lucian, shaking his head in displeasure as if I should be ashamed and not he: the assassin bespattered with gore. Caine's eerie blue eyes shot daggers at me all the while I tried to shake his brother's hand from my mouth.

"Go make sure the others have not caught up! And delay Fendrel if they have!" Lucian growled with a terse nod to Caine. The younger man rolled his eyes in aggravation before he left to do his brother's bidding. "Why are you not abed?" Lucian seethed as he released my mouth.

I stepped back and nearly tripped as my enervated legs gave out, but strong fingers gripped me steadily — fortunately not on my wounded forearm — and I was saved from tumbling back onto my battered head. There was an engorged and angry bruise already well established there; a visible and throbbing reminder of the previous evening's awful episode.

"You look hellish. What ails you?" said he, the dried blood cracking across the deep furrows of his brow.

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it! What ails me?! He was the one covered in congealed blood! If ever there was a person who could be deemed hellish-looking...it was he, not I.

"Naught is the matter with me, Lucian!" I held up my bloody palms for him to inspect. "But why are you bleeding?"

He had never looked more diabolical ere this night. Never had he scared me as he was doing now. His hair was wild and clotted with the dark crimson of viscous gore, and was smeared all across his mouth; he wore it as he would a grim, red beard. It looked almost as though he'd been submerged in the tacky essence — from his throat all the way up to the bottom of his ears; there was only a few red blemishes on his peak by comparison.

He was dressed tonight in a pair of brown, woolen hose, a white undershirt and a leather jerkin, which was surprisingly untainted; for the most part. And how was that even possible? I could see blood beneath his shirt, where it was visible at his neckline. Had he bathed in the stuff before donning his raiments? No, he must surely be terribly wounded!

"I s-shall g-go fetch Anne!" I stammered, panicked.

"What the devil for?" He growled, those tawny eyes confronting mine as intractable fingers dug painfully into my flesh.

"You are hurt-" I backed away an inch but no further; my upper arms still seized in his grasp.

"Stay where you are! I have no need of my mother's ministrations just now." His eyes shifted to his hands.

He then released me suddenly, as if only now becoming aware that he was bruising my shoulders. Had I not been standing there shivering from cold, I might have thought my very skin capable of scalding his fingers; so swiftly had he yanked his hand back. He certainly did not move as though he were injured.

"But you're still bleeding, Lucian-"

"Tis not my blood!"

I gasped, appalled, but he merely smirked horribly, like some queer, midnight butcher. Those otherworldly eyes sparked with unhallowed fire as he studied my reaction. I was wont to question him further, but was afeared of what he'd tell me. I knew he would not lie. He might invariably omit what he chose...or disclose the whole of the sanguinary facts, but he would tell me true; and therein lay the problem. At long last, my troublesome curiosity lay quiet and subdued, it had been well and truly scared witless. I needed no more truths!