Married At The Wrong Price

ANGELA VALDES had known her escape from prison was too good to be true, but the suddenness and violence with with

Dios. Was Ramos dying? Was he already dead?

The gag in her mouth kept her from screaming, but her soul cried out in anguish. The blind warrior, a Shadowman from the heavens with a magical wolf spirit, had tried so desperately to save her. He’d been too drugged and injured to fight, and ended up face down in the mud, blood gushing from a knife wound in his back.

What had become of Stefanie, Dr. Annette, Erin, and Megan? Her friends had been kidnapped with her, but taken somewhere different. Were they alive? Had the vampires sacrificed them as they’d threatened?

How could she bear it? It was all her fault. She hadn’t stopped Ramos from being drugged, hadn’t cried out to Dr. Annette that he might not be delirious when he’d pulled Angela from the treatment room, warning of danger. It was true that he’d been in and out of consciousness since magically appearing the day before. Yet just before the vampires destroyed the angel shield and attacked, Angela had had a feeling about Ramos and the threat he perceived, but she hadn’t acted on it.

Even before he appeared to her as a man, she was sure he had tried to warn her. Over the past few nights a ghostly wolf with Ramos' golden eyes had come to her, crying a warning that only she had heard. She hadn’t understood, though, which made her a poor espiritista, despite her grandmother’s claims that she was gifted in talking to the otherworld.

Ramos had tried to save her and she’d failed to hear. Now she was in the hands of a monster and had no one to blame but herself.

She’d been tossed like a rag doll from limo to jet to Hummer. Hours and hours had passed since Hernan Cortes Herrera had leered at her through the limo’s door, yet her skin still crawled as if it had just happened.

He’d laughed, his cruel, dark eyes gleaming in triumph as he spoke. “I am much smarter than Samir, no? He thought he had you and now you are mine.”

Sheik Rashad bin Samir Al Sabah had captured her first at the ranger camp, but Herrera had somehow escaped with her after the others had been taken from the limousine. The fanged, twisted smile on Herrera’s satanic features gave just a whisper of warning about his malevolent viciousness. She’d seen what Herrera had done to animals in her uncle’s prison camp. She’d heard what Herrera had done to women over the years. She believed that he alone, of all Tío Luis’s men, was responsible for her family’s disappearance. And she was sure he’d been the one who killed her brother Rafael when he’d tried to escape their jungle prison several months ago.

“Your home awaits you,” Herrera said, his grin widening as his goatee bobbed. “You are eager to be my bride, are you not, my little novia?”

Bound and gagged, Angela glared her hatred at him. He frowned at her. “You will be.”Reaching down, he grabbed her breast and squeezed until her vision went black with agony. She knew from experience at the brutal hands of her uncle that watching her thrash with pain would give Herrera pleasure, so she fought hard to show him as little reaction as possible.

She kept her eyes closed, bit down on the gag until her teeth ached, and focused her mind on the spirit of the black wolf she’d seen in her dreams. His majestic power as he ran through the moonlit forest. She saw the world through the wolf’s golden eyes, watched his sleek grace, and heard the cry of his heart to the shadowed moon. She imagined what the night wind would feel like upon her face as she raced and what the pine-scented air would taste like as she ran free for the first time in her life.

Then Herrera grabbed her chin in a punishing grip. “Look at me,” he demanded.

She opened her eyes, shuddering.

“You think you can play games with me, puta?” he said. “Think again. If I don’t get what I want when I want it, you’ll pay. In his will, el jefe said you had to be alive and undamned. That leaves plenty of room for all kinds of hell, sí, mi novia?”

Angela glared at Herrera. She’d die before she gave him anything he wanted and he must have read her message loud and clear.

He cursed and slammed the car door.

She hadn’t seen him since. She’d fruitlessly struggled against the numbing ropes binding her hands and feet until her wrists and ankles were raw. She’d been moved about by nameless, faceless men who’d kept her face covered with an oily rag. But she’d had plenty of time to think about what was to come. Soon the Hummer would stop. The door would open and she would enter hell...again.

What perverse turn of fate had caused Herrera and Sheik Samir to be so eager to be her groom? Besides keeping her alive and undamned, what else did Tío Luis’s will say?

Even from beyond the grave her vampire uncle had his hands around her throat, choking the life and the spirit from her soul just has he’d done for years while—

Madre de Dios. She shivered with fear and her heart pounded so hard that her chest hurt.

The car had stopped.

By Logos! Death could not be worse. Submersed in a sea of darkness and pain he’d never known before, Ramos searched for a way out, but his wolf spirit kept drowning in turbulent waves he was helpless to fight against. Weakness was a warrior’s greatest foe. Even nonexistence was preferable to powerlessness.

Aragon’s mortal woman had done something to him. In trying to help—for he’d sensed that intent in her spirit— she’d stolen everything from him. He had no control over his mortal form and he couldn’t seem to conjure either his wolf spirit or his Blood Hunter’s were form. Even after Draysius’s Pyrathian fire had rendered him unconscious, he at least had his wolf spirit. Now he was unable to help anyone, especially the mortal woman who needed it the most. The woman Aragon had called “Angela.”

Her name sounded like a gentle breeze beneath a starry, moonlit sky and he called to her with all of his might, but she didn’t answer. She had heard and reached out to his wolf spirit when he’d been ensnared in the gray edges between the mortal and spirit realms. A vision of the futurehad come to him when he’d been trapped there, a horrible picture of what would happen upon the mortal ground and to all of Logos’s creation if Pathos’s son Cinatas and the Milan Vampires were not stopped. Saving Angela was vital to seeing the evil destroyed.

Yet he could do nothing.

This total separation from his strength and his abilities was more torturous than the solitary limbo his spirit had been caught in since he’d been hit by the fire.

How much time had passed since he’d been stricken? How much time had he spent with his spirit caught between the mortal and the spirit worlds? How long had he watched the evil advancing upon his earthbound Blood Hunter brethren, Jared and Aragon, and the humans with them?

Too long. His heart supplied the answer, which might be why he was drowning in a world of darkness now. Since he hadn’t healed from the Pyrathian’s fire, his warrior’s strength must have weakened greatly. Likely to the point that he would no longer be able to fight against Heldon’s Fallen Army in the spirit realm. He’d no longer be able to fulfill his sworn duty to protect the Elan upon the earth— those Logos had given special blood to. He wouldn’t even be able to help Angela against the horror of the future he’d seen.

By Logos, no! He couldn’t accept such a fate.

Yet, how could he deny the truth of what he’d become? He’d have to leave the Guardian Forces, leave Sven and York, and leave Angela.

He fought with all of his might against that fate, but couldn’t move, couldn’t free his spirit, couldn’t stop the darknessfrom crashing down upon him again, sucking him deeper and deeper into nothingness.

The car door opened, bringing hot humid air rushing into the icy interior of the Hummer and crawling over Angela's skin, reminding her of times when she’d awaken in the night to find either a fat-bellied rat or a vampire bat in her bed. Shuddering, she braced herself for the worst that would follow and Herrera didn’t disappoint her.

“Let me see my blushing bride,” Herrera commanded from somewhere outside the car. Rough hands dragged her out, taking little care in how they handled her body. Muscles trapped in one position for too long shouted in throbbing protest, while other parts of her refused to function. She couldn’t feel her hands or feet and her knees wouldn’t hold her weight when the men stood her up. With her blood semi-circulating again, her bladder sent burning emergency signals to her brain. She would have crumpled painfully to the shelled concrete if the men hadn’t held her armpits. As it was she hung in their digging grip with her arms bent awkwardly.

Dawn peeked across the sky, slashing red amid the black, weakening the night to a dull gray. She could hear a fountain bubbling behind her, as if laughing cheerfully at her imprisonment. A high wall surrounded her on all sides; the shadowy razor wire topping it reminded her of Corazón de Rojo—the compound her Tío Luis had kept her in. There, the white cement wall had been stained in many places from the blood of those who’d tried and failed to escape.

She couldn’t believe she was back in another prison where cruel abuse would control her every move, her every function. She’d rather die first. Humiliation and anger overcame her fear as she stared at Herrera. The gag in hermouth kept her from naming him for the unholy bastard pig that he was.

“She does not look very appreciative of her new home, does she, Carlos? Does she not realize how hard I had to work to steal centavos from her uncle? How many years I was nothing more than m****a under Vasquez’s boot—a blood slave for his perversities?”

“No, jefe,” said the man on Angela's right. He jerked her arm, pulling her painfully upright. “Should I teach her lessons she will never forget?”

Herrera whipped out a knife and held it to Carlos’s face. “Touch her without my direct order and you die. She is my puta and no one else’s.” He swung the knife to her face. “You are still pure, mi novia? You saved yourself for Herrera, sí?”

She didn’t answer, but wished like hell that she wasn’t still a virgin.

“The priest is already here. We marry at dusk.” “Never!” She tried to speak despite the gag.

“You will,” he said. Laughing, he flicked the knife near her ear and the gag flopped loose, but dryness and her swollen tongue kept it anchored inside her mouth. She tried to spit it out and failed. Then Herrera brought the knife down the center of her neck, grinning with malice as its tip cut a slit in her shirt and scratched her skin as he trailed it down her chest, exposing the tops of her breasts. “You’ve grandes pechos for Herrera, no?”

She spat at the gag again, this time dislodging it. Before she could tell him what she thought of him, he sliced through the rope binding her hands. Excruciating pain shot up herarms and she cried out, feeling as if he’d cut her hands off. She tried to lift them and more anguish throbbed through her as blood returned to her hands and fingers.

Tears stung her eyes.

He cut the ropes on her feet next. It was even worse. She sobbed as her vision dimmed and her stomach roiled.

The men snatched her back up as she sagged even more. “She’ll faint at the sight of el jefe’s pene grande.”

Herrera cursed. “Tell Ysalane she will be punished if my new bride doesn’t please me in all ways.” Then he grabbed her chin, snapping her head up. “Until tonight, mi novia.”

“I’ll die first, cerdo.” Angela forced the words out of her dry, swollen-tongued mouth.

“No,” Herrera said, smiling. “You’ll only wish you were dead.”