Dawn's Path: Completed Work

The place stank of old death and rot. Splatters of dried blood patterned the walls in a riot of rust colored stains and soaked into the grain of the wood floors. And Angel was not surprised to find corpses left to decay casually tossed to the side like abandoned fast food wrappers. There wasn't anything she could do to help these people now. There wasn't anybody to take out vengeance on for the horror of their deaths. And they had died horribly. Body parts mingled until it was impossible without close inspection to determine exactly how many bodies there actually were.

These people had been ripped apart. And although Roark didn't murder them, he was responsible just the same. He had created the animals capable of this type of wholesale slaughter. Angel tore what remained of the curtains free from the windows and used them as a makeshift shroud for the bodies. These people were dead and had been dead for a while. But, it didn't seem right to disregard their remains and just walk right past them on her trip down memory lane as if they hadn't existed at all. "I'm sorry, so sorry."

Angel walked into the heart of Roark's suite, past the shambles of the living room and down a long corridor that housed his private rooms. This area had survived the destruction caused by the rogues. As if even the rogues in their bloodlust fueled frenzy were afraid to breech the inner sanctum. With each step forward, closer to the closed door at the end of the hallway. She traveled back in time. Back to when she was human, so weak and so afraid. She was back in the past. Weak. Powerless. The sound of his laughter, mocking and so cold, echoed in her head. The scent of him lingered in the stale air, mingling with the essence of blood and misery.

Angel rested her palm on the doorknob. The metal was cold against her fingertips. She'd never willingly opened this door before. She wasn't certain she wanted to do it now. Roark was a master of humiliation, pain, and suffering. If she didn't find the courage to turn the doorknob and step inside, he'd get what he had always wanted out of her. She had always managed to fight him. No matter how severely he punished her. She'd resisted. And she wasn't about to let him win. Not now. He was dead. And he would not break her.

The door creaked as she turned the knob and pushed it open. The toe of her boot rested on the threshold hovering mid step. His little chamber of horrors was through the glass double doors at the far end of his study. The fireplace dominating one wall was empty and dark like a toothless mouth hanging ajar. The leather chair he'd sat in was empty. The book he'd been reading rested in its place on a table beside the chair. His place marked as if he'd simply stepped out for a bit and planned to return. The wood floorboards at the base of his chair were worn shiny and smooth from the press of countless knees.

His desk stretched across the wide expanse of a floor to ceiling window. The leather desk chair turned ever so slightly, toward the points of light beyond the panoramic view. The desk and the chair were his perch, from which he viewed the world down below and planned its domination. Dust thick enough to write in with a fingertip coated the neatly arranged blotter and old-fashioned inkwell set on the desk. Roark was an odd mix of old and new, pleasure and pain. Angel had seen him use the quill to pen a thought. And she'd seen him plot some nefarious scheme on the laptop he'd purchased to replace the one stolen by the Sons.

It was in this room that the seduction and the games began. She'd spent hours sitting at his feet like a well-trained dog while he worked. Shivered naked and aching from kneeling on the floor or with her nose pressed into a far corner as punishment for some misdeed he believed she'd committed. She'd stood perched on the balls of her feet, her calves trembling from the strain. Watching as Kayla bore the bulk of Roark's fury in her place. Even with him dead and burned to ash, Angel could not force her body to bend. To take the position required of a submissive. The one Kayla had tried to drill into her head until it became as automatic as breathing. Knees pressed to the floor. Feet tucked tightly under her butt. Head down. Chin pushed to her chest. Eyes focused on the floor. Hands clasped at the wrists behind her back. Mouth open and ready. And her mind empty, anywhere but here, as blank as a sheet of paper.

The real horror Angel had come here to confront wasn't in Roark's study but in the room beyond the closed stained glass doors. Her body responded to the command she issued, her steps carrying her closer to the doors. The glass was cool. The beads of lead forming the design thick and cold beneath her fingertips. These doors were never locked. Roark left them that way on purpose in unspoken dare and silent invitation to anyone stupid enough to interrupt him while he performed his craft. Keene had access to every inch of Roark's inner sanctum. But, not even he, no matter what he heard echoing from the other side of these doors, would traverse the space uninvited. Angel pushed the doors open and bravely stepped into a piece of her past she wished had never happened at all.

The bed was adorned in the finest of silks and velvet dressings. The entire room was a mockery of finery and opulence. Roark's scent was strongest here. Lingering like an echo in the back of her mind along with the sharp sound of leather striking bare flesh. The four-poster bed, a heavy, oppressive thing out of a forgotten century bore deep gauges and scratches from bindings and the desperate scrape of fingernails against the wood. The dark varnish on the carved posts was worn so thin by the gripping of hands and fingers that in spots the bareness of the wood beneath showed through.

Roark kept the tools of his trade in the vast walk in closet adjacent to the room. And that in itself was part of the game. Standing facing the bed, you couldn't see what was coming. He might stroke you with a light caress of his fingers or bloody you with the sharp hiss of leather striking flesh. Angel stepped forward. The bed was narrower than its modern counterparts. The posts easily gripped by trembling hands. She smelled old blood, human blood, her human blood, faint, and an echo of the past, from the closet. She wasn't certain she was prepared to face this lingering remnant of her previous self. But, what choice did she have? She'd come here for this purpose. To bury Roark and the part of herself she wished didn't exist along with him.

Within seconds of opening the closet door, she wrapped her fingers around the belt and pulled the leather strap from its hook. The leather was stiff, riddled with stains. Wrapping it around the width of her hand, as Roark would have, dried flecks of blood flaked off the leather onto her fingers. She pulled the leather taut with a sharp snap. Her stomach reeled at the sound and her heart leapt into her throat. Instinctively, she wanted to drop the belt, slam the doors to this room closed forever, run and keep running until she felt safe. She would never feel safe. Ever. And because of that, if she gave into the need, she'd never stop running.

This was all that was left of Roark and it amounted to nothing. A hunk of wood burned to char in his pyre. A belt stained with her blood. An empty ruin filled with rotting corpses and moldering hunks of junk. And of her memories, they were just that, memories with no more or less power than what she gave them. She could choose to let them destroy her or she could glean strength from what she'd somehow managed to survive. One did not have to die to be a corpse. To become a shadow of the person they might otherwise become. The living sometimes died long before their bodies did. Death was so much more than physical. And she did not want to die. Not for Roark.

Angel left the belt coiled on the bed and shut the door behind her. She walked out of the study without a backwards glance and closed the door. This place held no fear or terror for her. It was just a sad remnant of a man that could have been so much more. Roark had the capacity for greatness. Instead of choosing to be great, he'd chosen death. And it had come for him in full measure, consuming him in flame and ash.

She paused at a door situated between Roark's private rooms and the main entry. A room, no bigger than a linen closet, had been a makeshift cell. Here Roark had stashed her and many, many others as a form of punishment for sometimes, days at a time. Cramped and suffering, soaked in excrement and reeking of despair without the faintest scrap of light, sip of water, or breath of fresh air, she'd wished she were dead more than once.

The scents of humanity, of blood, sweat, urine, and other things, mixed to form a pungent reek of despair. Her human scent, lingered. Crouching on her heels. Refusing to ever kneel anywhere on this floor, Angel ran her fingertips along the walls. She felt the girls' stories etched into the walls. Marks scraped by fingernails out of sheer desperation. So many of them, so many women, so many stories silenced before the telling. One of them was hers. And unlike so many other women, she'd lived, survived to tell it.

Pulling herself onto her feet, Angel walked bravely through the graveyard of the living room and down the hall to the room she'd shared with Kayla. There was this and only this one last thing to do. Angel had owned so little in her short life. The journal was a remnant of the life she'd lived before. In it she'd inked her story on paper. She'd never gotten the chance to finish it. And now, she knew exactly how it should end.

Her human life had ended. She needed only to make this last entry to finish the story. She knelt beside the twin size bed and fished between the mattress and the box spring. Her scent permeated linens. A lingering memory of what she once was and could no longer be. Human. Her fingers locked around the spine of the journal and she tugged it free from its hiding place.

Perched on the edge of the bed, she flipped through the journal. The entries on the pages, written in messy scrawl and disjointed thoughts were those of a desperate person who no longer existed. She was real. She was here. And her life began now. Nipping her fingertip with a sharp fang, Angel squeezed a drop of blood to the surface. Salvation beaded to the tip of her finger. Earned through pain and suffering, secured in sacrifice, and born of blood, she wrote the final entry on the last page of the journal. It was over. Roark had tried so many times to break her. His attempts only made her stronger, more resilient. She was a survivor. Whole. Not damaged, not scarred, and never, ever, broken.

Chapter 51

"Hey, I hate to interrupt your little whatever it is. But, if you plan on getting out of here in one piece, you'd better do it now." Carter bristled against the strengthening scents gathering in the hallway that announced the approach of the rogues. He had to give them a fair amount of credit. The whirring of the elevator and the light ping as it ascended from someplace deeper in the bowels of the building on its trek up to the penthouse was a ballsy move. The pounding smack of lug soled combat boots against stairs grew louder and louder. And if he had a hope in hell of getting out of here alive and her out with him, although he wasn't sure why he felt the compulsion to save her scrawny ass, they had to move. Now.

Power, more acute and stinging than he'd ever felt tingled up and down his arms, setting the fine blond hairs on end. The woman sat on the edge of the bed blinking up at him as if he'd lost his fucking mind. Her fingers locked around the spine of a journal. As if her secrets were worth dying for. He narrowed his blue eyes in frustration. A handful of remnants he could handle. Even a small army of Roark's finest was not beyond his capabilities. But, the man, the source of that power creeping along his skin, was not someone he chose to try himself against. O'Sullivan was here. He had been here. Carter could smell him, the reek of him, lingering in the rooms. "If the rogues find you here, and they will, if you don't move your ass, you're a dead woman. And probably me along with you."

He huffed glancing over his shoulder. The rogues didn't live on this floor. Roark's former palace was a place of death. And apparently nobody had thought it worth investing the time and energy it would take to clean the place up. The building however, was crawling with them. Once they caught her scent, the scent of A Son, she was as good as dead. And if they recognized her, which, they would, her death would not particularly be a pleasant one. A tangle with the rogues, especially in this big of a number, was something he would rather avoid. The Master, no doubt, commanding them was not one to suffer fools and certainly not one to welcome his presence. Carter had spent the sum of lifetimes dodging that particular bullet. And he had no intention of getting shot in the ass with it now.

"What are you talking about?" Angel asked. The vampire had snuck up on her so stealthily and so quickly, she hadn't even smelled him let alone seen him coming. His appearance was a bit disarming. Built like a Grecian God rather than a man, he was the essence of male beauty and the makings of every woman's wet dreams. So beautiful, he was too beautiful. So much so that it was almost impossible to see the threat he represented beneath his unruly golden-blond spirals and cool arctic blue eyes. His face belonged on a canvas painted by a master artisan's hand. His lush, full lips seemed incapable of lies or carrying stain of curses. He wore the mask of youth. And he wore it well. Used it to disguise the full extent of his power. She deducted he was far, far older and much more powerful than his outward façade suggested.

Dressed in designer wear that would have made Janine cry in sheer joy at the cut and expense of the fabric, his clothing hid rather than accentuated his lethal strength. He was a lean wall of muscle and power, towering over her. His brow furrowed in a scowl as he glanced over his shoulder at the open doorway and turned his head back to her. She saw no hint of a weapon on him. But, he probably didn't need one. His body was weapon enough. His fangs had descended. And it was then that she realized exactly what she was dealing with. That he could hide them suggested he'd had years and years, perhaps centuries of practice of being what he was. And like any sensible person, she should most definitely heed his advice and get the fuck out of dodge.

Whoever he was he'd sized her up and found her sorely lacking. At least it was something that he'd thought to warn her of the impending danger bounding up the stairwells and casually riding the elevator to the penthouse. Instead of saving his ass, he'd bothered to watch out for hers. Not a favor she'd be likely to forget anytime soon. And, she was not as completely defenseless as she appeared either. The dagger she'd tucked into the top of her boot rested in her grip. She had been taking care of herself long before she'd sprouted fangs. And she could do so now.

"Put that fucking dagger away before you nick an artery," Carter hissed. The woman stood barely five feet tall. The top of her head almost cleared the middle of his chest. She was tiny, and while she might have made a graceful ballerina, he doubted she'd be of much use at his back. The pack of bloodthirsty rogues about to barge in on this little introduction would eat her for lunch. And he'd probably get killed trying to stop them. That was, if he were lucky and O'Sullivan didn't spot him before the rogues ripped him limb from limb. "I don't suppose you know of another way out of this place do you?"

Angel cursed at the exact same time as her would be rescuer did. The rogues were only a few flights of stairs below, not even trying to be stealthy as they pounded up the stairs. The elevator hovered somewhere between the forty-fifth and forty-sixth floors. And for some reason the ascent of the elevator and what might be behind those doors when they opened had the vampire more nervous than the threat of the rogues. "Yeah, come on," Angel said, leading them to a service area tucked into an alcove behind the kitchen. She pulled the door open and motioned him inside the narrow chute. "Get in. Goes straight to the loading docks in the back."

Roark wasn't stupid enough to have only one entrance and exit out of the place. The trash-chute though had been one Kayla had showed her. And then cautioned her not to use, unless she planned to get out and never to come back. That was the plan. Whatever it was she'd hoped to find. Whatever she'd been looking for. She hadn't found it here. And she wouldn't. It was at home. Where she'd left it. In the warmth and love of Lance's embrace.

She'd risked her life for answers. Stupidly. The answer had been staring her straight in the face. She just hadn't wanted to admit it. She was terrified, not of a ghost, not of her past, but of her future. And there was only one way of dealing with her fear, to face it head-on. To love Lance with her whole being and everything she was. Dying in this tomb, rotting with the other corpses on the floor, was not an option. And for once, she was ready finally learn to live and to love.

Carter raised a brow and almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of the woman's escape plan. A trash chute how fitting. The stench from the unemptied refuse bins no doubt waiting at the bottom would help to cover their scent. The pinging and the soft hiss of opening elevator doors and the hard thump of boots down the marble corridor had him willing to put his trust in a stranger and in a Son. He wiggled his broad shoulders into the narrow opening and hoped like hell he didn't get stuck somewhere between here and the exit. Going down head first, he tucked his arms tightly against his chest and pushed off.

Angel scrambled into the chute after the man. Not before she caught a glimpse of someone she thought she'd never have the misfortune to see again. Not a rogue though. Somebody far worse and far more dangerous, the Rogue Master Roark had offered her throat and her body to in a feeble display of power. As much as it rankled her and worried her that the bastard was here and that could only mean one thing, she wisely let it go and snapped the small trapdoor shut.

O'Sullivan grinned. Sniffing at the telltale lingering essence of the man he'd spent centuries tracking. The rogues were a bloodthirsty careless lot and the evidence of their handiwork lay in rotting piles just inside the entrance. Someone needed to do something about the rogues. And he would. But, first, he had an old score to settle and a wayward sheep to bring back into the flock. Calling off the men he'd temporarily enlisted into his service. He allowed Carter to escape.

He truly had no interest in this remote patch of urban sprawl nestled in the middle of the heartland. But, the city's offerings and what hid among the maze of buildings and bustling streets was suddenly very fascinating. This was not the time for force. But, rather subtlety would serve his cause far better. This little lamb had strayed far from the master's side. And he would not be coaxed back into the fold easily. A gentle hand was what was necessarily. An almost fatherly touch was sure to call the prodigal home. O'Sullivan had been playing this game with Carter since the day he brought the man across. And they had not stopped since. Time was of no consequence when the prize was so close to being his.

Bianca stepped over the worst of the stains marring the floor and tipped her head at O'Sullivan. The bastard had dragged her out to this godforsaken, flat, winter barren city and left her to do the bulk of his dirty work. Not that she minded. Anything to break up the boredom was welcome. And she'd been in the background of this ever unfolding scenario between Carter and Eric for centuries. It never ceased to be a source of amusement. She tipped her head and followed her counterpart's, for she refused to call him master unless it was lip service, unspoken instruction. He wanted Carter followed. Tracked. And in his lust for capture of his son, the first born of his blood, he'd put the ace into her hand.