Seize the Night (Dark-Hunter 6)

He shrugged nonchalantly.

"So, why are you here?" she asked him.

"I've been watching the two of you."

She was disgusted at his confession, and the thought of being his personal viewing choice. It made her shiver in revulsion. "You unbelievable perv!"

His gaze narrowed dangerously. "Hardly. I've made sure to look away when you two start the lovey-dovey shit. I've already been blind once in my life. I have no wish to go back to it."

"Then why were you watching us?"

"Curiosity mostly."

"And you're here now, why?"

"Because I'm curious as to why the sister-in-law of Kyrian would fuck someone like Valerius."

She sneered at him. "That's none of your damned bus..." Tabitha trailed off as the room spun around her.

Suddenly, Valerius's library was gone and she found herself in what appeared to be a mirrored hallway. She saw herself reflected in the mirrors with Zarek by her side.

"Where are we?"

"Olympus. I have something I wanted to show you."

The mirror before her shimmered and changed. It no longer reflected them.

Instead it showed her the past.

She saw an ancient canvas tent with a bloodied man tied to a wooden frame inside it, being tortured. His screams rang out as he begged for mercy in Latin while another man beat him with a barbed whip.

Cringing, Tabitha covered her ears until the beating stopped and another man dressed in Roman armor stepped forward.

It was a young Valerius. His dark face was in need of a shave and his armor was spotted with bloodstains. He looked tired and ill-kempt, as if he hadn't slept in days, but still he held that regal air of superiority.

He threw water into the man's face. "Tell me where they're marching to."

"No."

The Latin words echoed in her head along with the sight of Valerius ordering a soldier to beat the man more.

"It was your lover who blinded me," Zarek snarled in her ear as the mirror clouded, then cleared to show her the image of two small boys.

One lay on the ground, curled into a ball while the other beat him with a whip. One of the lashes cut deep into the one boy's eye, causing him to scream as he covered it with one grimy hand.

"I'm the one on the ground," Zarek snarled in her ear. "Valerius is the one beating me mercilessly and you fucked him."

Unable to watch the cruelty, Tabitha turned and ran into someone else.

She started to fight until she glanced up to see Ash looking less than pleased.

"What are you doing, Z?"

"I'm showing her the truth."

Ash shook his head at the former Dark-Hunter. "I can't believe you married a justice nymph and have yet to learn anything from her. There are always three sides to every memory, Z. Yours, theirs, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between the two. You're only showing her a single sound bite to prove your point. Why don't you give her the whole clip?"

Ash turned her back toward the mirror. "I'm not going to lie to you, Tabby, or try and sway your opinion. This isn't Zarek's memory or Valerius's. It's just the untarnished, objective truth of what happened to them."

She saw the child Valerius again as a man in a toga who looked remarkably similar to Zarek stepped forward. He had to be their father.

Laughing, he patted Valerius on the shoulder. "That's it, my son. Always strike where they're the most vulnerable. You'll make a fine general one day."

The child Zarek glared at both of them as if he could kill them where they stood. Their father jerked the whip from Valerius's hand and commenced to beating him again.

His face horrified, Valerius ran from the room, sobbing. He looked as if he were going to be ill as he stumbled across an old Roman courtyard until he fell down by a huge fountain in the center of the atrium. He braced his folded arms on the edge of the fountain and lay his head down.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated over and over again as he cried.

His father came running out of the house, toward him.

"Valerius!" he snarled as he came up to the child. "What are you doing?"

Valerius didn't answer. His father pulled him up from the ground by his hair.

The horror on the boy's face seared her.

"You pathetic little worm," his father sneered. "I should have named you Valeria. You're more woman than man."

His father backhanded him so hard the sound echoed and sent several birds into flight. Unbalanced by the blow, Valerius fell back to the ground.

His nose and cheek bleeding, Valerius tried to push himself up, but before he could regain his feet, his father brought the whip down across his back. The boy dropped instantly.

Still, his father beat him.

Valerius covered his head as the blows rained down on his little body.

"Get up," his father snarled after he'd delivered twenty lashes.

Valerius was crying so hard he couldn't speak.

His father kicked him in the ribs. "Up, damn you, or I'll give you twenty more."

Tabitha had no idea how he managed it, but somehow Valerius pushed himself to his feet, where he shook and trembled. His clothes were tattered, his face covered in dirt and blood.

His father seized him by the throat and shoved him back against a rough wall so that his ravaged back was scraped by it.

She cringed in sympathetic pain, trying to imagine how a child so young could stand there and not collapse.

"You will stand here until nightfall and if you so much as bend your knees to rest them, I will see you beaten every day until you learn to stomach your pain. Do you understand me?"

The boy Valerius nodded.

"Markus?" his father shouted.

Another boy who closely resembled Valerius came running out of the house. It was obvious he was a few years older. "Yes, Father?"

"Watch your brother; if he sits down or moves, you come for me."

Markus smiled as if his father had just given him a present. "I will, sir."

Their father turned and left them. And as soon as he was out of sight, Markus turned to laugh at Valerius. "Poor little Val," he said tauntingly. "I wonder what Father will do to you if you fall down." Markus struck him in the stomach.