Tall, Silent & Lethal (Pyte/Sentinel #4)(64)

He’d also wanted to kick the shit out of Chris for rushing after her and making a grab for the knife, startling Cloe and making the cut a hell of a lot worse than she’d probably intended. At least one good thing came from this experience. Cloe now knew that she wasn’t invincible and that she could still experience pain. It would hopefully stop her from doing something stupid like climbing to the roof and doing a header in an attempt to escape. She’d survive, yes, but by the time she’d hit the ground below she’d be wishing that she hadn’t.

“Seriously, what are you doing?” Cloe asked, absently waving that stake at him as she ran her eyes, hungry eyes, he noted, down his body.

He ignored her question as he shoved his pants, along with his boxers, down and stepped out of them. “Come on,” he said, reaching out and taking her empty hand into his. With his other hand, he reached over and gently plucked the stake that was more splinters than anything, out of her hand and tossed it aside.

“I don’t want a shower,” she protested even as she allowed him to lead her into the bathroom. “I just want to leave.”

“You don’t think you’ll be noticed dressed like that?” he asked, pointedly looking at her blood stained shirt and pants.

She frowned down at herself. “But I don’t have anything else to change into,” she murmured, sounding a little lost.

“Ephraim had our stuff sent here while we were recovering,” he told her, pushing the bathroom door open and flicking on the light, making sure that she followed him inside before he closed the door behind them.

“He did?” she mumbled with a frown, looking deep in thought and a little confused as she asked, “What do you mean by when ‘we’ were recovering?”

Deciding that now was not the time to inform her that Ephraim had been forced to shoot him in the back of the head to stop him from killing his son because he’d lost control, he instead gestured towards the shower. When she threw a hesitant glance at the door, he knew that she was worried about the others coming in.

“They’ve already left,” he gently explained, lying his ass off, but he knew that one of the Pytes in the other room would hear him and take the hint.

He knew that they were eager to continue explaining things to Cloe, but not tonight. Tonight she needed a break, some time to relax and accept what happened to her. Tomorrow……

Tomorrow they could finish destroying what was left of her world.

Chapter 27

“Tell me that you really didn’t start with the whole, ‘you’ll heal from anything,’ bullshit,” Caine grumbled, rubbing his palms down his face while Danni wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him.

He dropped his arm around his mate’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head as he closed his eyes and savored her touch, welcoming the peace that just being near her gave him. The last couple of days had been grueling and he was starting to feel it. Right after they’d come back from patrol on Monday morning, the ass**le, a.k.a. Kale, had barked orders for them to hurry their asses up and get in the van.

After telling the bastard to go f**k himself and he’d finished explaining exactly where the shifter could shove his orders, he’d taken Danni, who’d been dragging ass by that point, inside. He’d badgered her until she’d finally given in and drank the demon blood the Council supplied her with. Once he’d made sure that she’d consumed enough demon blood and he’d managed to consume five bags of bagged blood, he’d pulled her into his arms and held her while she took what she needed from him.

It hadn’t been enough, not nearly enough, but Danni, stubborn as always, had been in a rush to get on the road. She’d needed to rest, but she’d refused to listen, promising him instead that she’d sleep on the drive. He hadn’t exactly been surprised when she’d broken her word to him.

Instead of doing as she’d promised, she’d spent the entire ride going over the files that Izzy had sent to their iPads. He had to admit that he had as well. The files the Nazis had left behind of what those sick f**ks had done to Christofer and his sister had turned his stomach and had him seeing red the entire ride. His own captivity and torture was hard enough to deal with, but Christ, he didn’t have shit on what they’d put Christofer through.

Ephraim hadn’t said anything, but the way his jaw had clenched tightly every few seconds and his eyes had glowed red as he’d read through the file lead him to believe that Christofer’s time spent in the lab had been just as bad as Ephraim’s time spent in the dungeon. The sick f**ks had cataloged absolutely everything that they’d done to Christofer and Marta, everything.

There’d been pictures of doctors smiling while they’d congratulated each other on a job well done as they’d stood over Christofer’s eviscerated body, of them looking at a loss when their experiments had failed, but mostly, there had been pictures cataloguing every humiliating moment that Christofer had endured to keep his sister alive. The worst pictures, the ones that had him wishing that he could hunt every last one of those sick f**ks down, were the ones where Christofer had been forced to watch as they’d experimented on his sister.

The pictures had been bad, but the journals and notes they’d kept……

There were no words to describe the revulsion he’d experienced when reading over everything that they’d done to Christofer. The way they’d detailed everything from Christofer’s reaction to being dipped in acid to having his balls cut off with a straightedge razor was almost as bad as the pictures. One thing he’d realized early on in the notes, the doctors performing the experiments had gotten a kick out of making Christofer react.