At least he knew Dancer would be coming in soon. If he could keep them distracted and their attention on him and away from the equipment, it would allow Dancer to get the drop on them.
As one of them came forward to pat him down and his hand trailed a bit too close to his cock, Bastien sucked his breath in sharply. “Hey, hey! Dinner first! No groping till you feed me! Don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m not a cheap date!”
That got him a rifle butt against the back of his head.
Son of a …
The force of the blow dropped him to his knees and almost rendered him unconscious. Only sheer force of will kept him semi-alert. But the ringing in his ears was quite special.
When they came forward to take Thia, she flipped the first one to the ground. Throat-punched the second one. And would have made it to the door had Darice not kicked his opponent into her and knocked her down.
Proving Bastien right with his earlier assessment of their skill level. While Thia had been trained in hand-to-hand, they weren’t trained to fight as a unit. Damn shame, that. With Thia’s skill, they would have stood a chance of escape.
Instead, they cuffed his hands and dragged him away.
Bastien glared at their captors. “You’d best not hurt the kids. You don’t want to know who their parents are.”
“The Andarion we’re tracking.”
“No. They’re kidnapped Sentella children. The blonde belongs to Nemesis. The Andarion boy is his nephew. You harm them and he’ll hunt you to the ends of the universe to gut you bare-handed.”
“What about you?”
Bastien twisted so that he could grin into the older man’s wrinkled face. “I’m just the idiot protecting them.”
He ran Bastien’s head into the desk. “Well then, you won’t mind telling us about the Andarion we’re after. And about this base…”
Was the kn?ttr on something? You never asked a younger sibling anything about anyone. Bastien’s older brother and sister had tutored him early on and well about the one basic sibling principle—snitches get stitches.
“Don’t know nothing about the Andarion you’re tracking. Ain’t telling you shit about Shinola.”
The grimy man stepped back to make room for one of his colleagues who could give Dancer a run for his money on gargantuan size. “We’ll see how long that stubbornness lasts.”
*
Bastien lost all track of time, as well as what it felt like not to be in excruciating pain. But as bad as this beating was, it paled in comparison to the torture sessions he’d gone through while in League custody. Hell, there had been times then when he’d considered confessing to killing his family just to get them to stop.
But he didn’t have that urge tonight. Mostly because he knew that Dancer would arrive eventually.
Though why the bastard was dragging his ass, he couldn’t even begin to fathom.
And then he heard it.…
Granted, he thought he was hallucinating at first. Good bet given the ringing that had yet to cease in his ears.
But there was no mistaking the next shout that came from upstairs. “Hauk!” a Bolodorian called out.
“What?” Dancer answered.
“Surrender or we’re going to kill them all! Piece by piece, until their screams echo in your ears!”
Dancer laughed at the threat. “You do that and I will eat you, piece by fucking piece. The three of them are the only thing keeping you alive right now. Release them and we’ll let you live. It’s your choice on how you leave this place. On your feet or feet first. You have thirty seconds to decide.”
Bastien let out a relieved breath. Finally …
It’d be over soon.
Or so he thought.
One of the assassins came in to take Thia. Bastien went for him, but that didn’t last. Weakened by the beatings, he couldn’t get his body to do what he needed it to.
He hit the deck hard. Get up, you worthless piece of shit! Get on your feet!
It was no use. Instead of rising, he felt the world go black.
*
Bastien wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but when he came to, both Dancer and his woman were in the room. Thia was holding on to Dancer like a lifeline while Sumi untied Darice.
The kid didn’t move at all. Though unlike Bastien, he didn’t appear to be harmed.
“Darice? Are you in shock?”
He blinked slowly as he scanned the room full of bodies and then looked to his uncle. It appeared as if he couldn’t comprehend what Dancer had done. He frowned at Sumi. “But he works in IT.”
She laughed at Darice’s confusion. “He doesn’t work IT, sweetie.” Ruffling his hair, she cut Darice loose and went to check on Bastien.
He closed his eyes as she touched him and savored the gentleness she showed him. He hadn’t felt the hand of any woman, other than the Andarion high priestess, on his body in years. And while he was a reprobate and Unira still attractive even at her advanced age, he wasn’t willing to chance Andarion hell by making a pass at her.
If their Tophet was anything like their real world, he’d take the Kirovarian version of damnation any day over that.
“Is he alive?” Dancer asked.