Then, he picked his opponent up and lifted him over his head, throwing him again a tree trunk.
As his opponent fell to the ground, Andreas pounced. He punched, kicked, and threw his opponent back onto the road and then rolled him down the other side towards the river. More punches, more kicks, more broken bones. It was the bloodiest, brutal beating in the history of brutal beatings, with every blow having Gavriella or Corey’s name on it.
And it went on for some time.
Andreas didn’t even realize when the fighting around him had stopped for the most part. He didn’t see his father’s army roll up from the west, subduing any remnants of the de Soulis resistance. He was focused on his opponent, who had now become his victim. When they ended up almost at the river, Andreas finally stopped throwing punches with his torn gloves and bloodied knuckles.
His opponent lay on the ground in front of him, eyes open but unable to move his body. In fact, the man’s face didn’t even look like a face anymore. It was smashed and contorted.
It looked like death.
“Your name,” Andreas growled, exhausted. “What is your name?”
The bloodied lips formed words. “De… de Soulis, you bastard,” he rasped. “Nicholas de Soulis. You killed my father, you son of a whore. I will kill you for that.”
Andreas heard the man’s name with a great deal of satisfaction. “Not before I kill you first,” he rumbled. “But you and I are going to have a conversation before that event. I am from the House of de Wolfe. What in the hell do you want with the de Leia infant?”
The eyes blinked, looking at him with increasing horror. “De… de Wolfe?” he repeated thickly because his mouth was smashed. “Nay… nay, you shall not emerge the victor. I will! I shall avenge my father!”
He was spraying droplets of blood on the snow as he tried to shout. But Andreas ignored his distress.
“Why do you want the de Leia infant?” he asked again. “That is why you have come here, so you may as well tell me. What’s this about a prophesy?”
Nicholas stared at him a moment. “Prophesy?” he said. Then he tried to smile, but it was all garbled and twisted. “True Thomas said so.”
“Said what? Be plain.”
Nicholas tried to move, to sit up, but he was so badly beaten that his body would not permit it. He managed to lift his head and that was nearly all he could do.
“I will tell you, de Wolfe scum, so you will know that your days in the north are numbered,” he said. “I do not need the de Leia infant. I can have another. I can have many. But all I need is one.”
“For what?”
Nicholas started to laugh, or something that sounded like a laugh. “A child must be sacrificed,” he said hoarsely. “The blood must be spilled at the ring of the nine stones upon the summer solstice. I will bury the body to feed the stones, to nourish the demons of the stones, and they will give their power to the House of de Soulis. We shall rise against the wolf. We will kill you all!”
Andreas was looking at him as if he’d gone mad. “Sacrifice a child?” he said, trying not to let his horror show. “Is that what you wanted this baby for?”
Nicholas’ strength gave out and he fell back into the snow. “A baby of noble blood,” he said. “De Leia’s daughter fought me, but it was of no use. My seed took root, as I had hoped, and the child was born. But I can have more. I can have many more and one of them will fulfill the prophesy. De Wolfe will fall. The de Soulis family was the most powerful in the north until the rise of de Wolfe. You took that from us. You took our dignity, our lands. But we shall gain them back, mark my words.”
Andreas was having a difficult time comprehending what he was being told. “You intentionally impregnated de Leia’s daughter?”
Nicholas started laughing again, a weird sound because his mouth was so swollen. “It was a pleasure,” he muttered. “She is my cousin, after all.”
Andreas had heard enough. A wild store of fulfilling a prophesy by impregnating Gavriella and harvesting the child for evil purposes. It was the wildest thing he’d ever heard. But clearly, Nicholas believed it. He believed it enough to ruin a young woman’s life and attempt to regain the child of that ruinous act.
It was a horrific and vile tale.
One that Gavriella would never know. The woman had already suffered enough.
Although Andreas had lost his broadsword, he had an array of daggers on his body, including a large one on his left hip, next to his empty broadsword sheath. He unsheathed the dagger, its enormous and razor-sharp blade gleaming in the moonlight, and went over to Nicholas as the man lay in the snow looking up at him.
“And she is my love,” he said, his voice raspy. “This is for anguish you have caused her family.”
With that, he tossed the dagger into Nicholas’ left shoulder, where it plunged deep. As Nicholas let out a cry, Andreas unsheathed another dagger from its place along his right forearm.
“And this is for taking that which did not belong to you,” he said. “Her innocence.”
The second dagger flew into Nicholas’ groin. The man screamed as Andreas unsheathed a third dagger located in his left boot.
“This is for Corey,” he said.
Another dagger flew, this one into Nicholas’ left thigh. Nicholas moaned and wept as Andreas removed a fourth dagger from his right boot. This one was long and slender, the blade serrated on one side. It was meant to slit throats silently and efficiently, or any other body part worth slitting. Andreas moved up to stand over Nicholas, looking down at the man as he wept in pain.
The fourth dagger went flying, right into Nicholas’ neck, severing the windpipe.
He wasn’t dead yet, but Andreas knew it would only be a matter of seconds and he wanted to make sure Nicholas de Soulis knew why he’d been killed.
And who had killed him.
“And that is for Gavriella,” he muttered. “For the pain and agony you dealt her, I’m privileged to watch you suffer for it. My name is Andreas de Wolfe. I want you to know the name of the man who bested you, you vile bastard. The day you touched Gavriella de Leia is the day you signed your death warrant. I hope you rot in hell.”
Nicholas’ eyes were wide and panicked as he slowly suffocated to death. Andreas crouched down beside him, watching the life go out of the man and feeling a hollow sense of satisfaction. Certainly, he felt avenged. He felt as if Gavriella were avenged. But he found himself wishing Nicholas’ death had lasted longer.
Loup tueur.
The killer wolf had struck again.
“Dray?”
He knew that voice. In his determination to make Nicholas pay, he hadn’t even been aware of his surroundings. Standing up, he turned to face his father.
Troy was in full battle regalia, sword in-hand, looking at his son most urgently. But one look at his father and Andreas dissolved into tears.
“Papa,” he said tightly. “Corey fell. He tried to save my life and he was struck down.”
Surprisingly, Troy waved him off. “He took a gash to his chest and fainted,” he said, coming to stand next to his son as his attention moved to the body at his feet. “He’s perfectly fine, although I’m not sure he’ll live down fainting in battle. Your brothers are already teasing him mercilessly about it. But you… what in the hell happened?”