Unforgivable

III. One Step Closer - Part 1 - Rasputin

Mara wished that returning to this house of horror would have left her unaffected. Unfortunately it didn't. The only good thing was that it fueled the thirst for revenge and there was no doubt that soon Gamma Luke would come clean and tell her everything. She was astonished to see the destruction of the room, in which she had spent so many nightmarish hours. She had learned when she woke up from her coma that Sage had made John pay, but she had never imagined the destruction that had followed. She could still tie up her prisoner so in the end that was what mattered. She wasn't going to use the things her father had tortured her with either, and thankfully they weren't there anymore either. Mara didn't really like torturing others, but she was good at it and it had always given her the information she needed. She saw the old hi-fi and remembered that John loved to put on music during the intensive torture sessions. She turned it on and Boney M's Rasputin echoed through the room.

"You know what I have in common with Rasputin?" She asked Gamma Luke.

"He was crazy like you!" Gamma Luke muttered, struggling in vain.

"You know the more you struggle the tighter your bonds will get, if I were you I would stop. Anyway... Rasputin was immune to arsenic. He consumed a small amount daily so when he was poisoned it had no effect on him so his attackers resolved to kill him. Are you making the connection now?" Mara asked him.

"Apparently not... That gives an idea of your intellectual level." She laughed.

"Fuck you." Gamma Luke growled.

"I already have and a lot more than you!" Mara teased him before continuing, "Anyway, I consumed so much wolbane and silver, even though it wasn't my choice, that I created a resistance to both toxins. You understand that your plan was doomed from the start, even without Amaia's presence."

As she spoke, Mara opened the briefcase that had brought Julian to her. It contained her tools to help her to extort information.

"Come on, let's get started. We've got all night, but still, I've got a lot of questions." Mara declared, picking up a vial and a knife.

"Not many know this but our wolf shift is triggered by a nerve point on our back. A little wolfbane on it and no more shifting or connection to your wolf." Mara explained as she thrust the knife into Gamma's back.

As she dripped the liquid from the bottle along the blade, Gamma Luke screamed.

"What did you do to me bitch?!" he yelled.

"A demonstration of the theory. Your wolf isn't there to support you now. You'll be easier to break now even though I can already tell you'll give in easily. Let's start with a simple question: how did you persuade Sophia to help you?"

For all answer Gamma Luke spat, barely avoiding Mara's face.

She smiled at him, "I was hoping for that kind of answer. I would have been disappointed if you had taken the easy way out. Besides, it's time you paid for disrespecting a Luna. You know what they say: "Hand to hand, naughty hand?""

It was a rhetorical question and without waiting for an answer, Mara methodically broke all of Gamma's fingers, one by one starting with his left hand.

"Too bad there's not a gag ball laying around. He's going to give me a headache with his screaming. Talk about a high ranking wolf." Amaia grumbled.

"I know he screams like a little girl." Mara agreed with her friend.

"You are worse than your father! Monstrosity runs through your veins." Gamma Luke blurted out.

"Genetically he's not my father so we don't have the same blood running through our veins. But I can't deny that he taught me everything I know and he was an expert."

"I was right you let him do it because you liked it."

"Not at all. I take no pleasure in torturing you now but it's the quickest way to get the information I need. And I'm good at it. Besides, I get a certain pleasure out of making you pay for the suffering of my pack." Mara answered honestly, pulling a pair of bolt cutters and a long, thin-bladed knife from her briefcase.

She spent the next hour torturing him with general questions about his pack and how it worked. Many of the wounds he had were deep but Mara knew exactly what she was doing, inflicting a great deal of pain with very little irreversible damage, if you didn't count the 3 fingers she had cut off. Gamma Luke had already been crying for over fifteen minutes and Mara knew he was about to break. When he saw the wire cutter approaching his penis, he begged her and Mara knew he was going to sit down and spill his guts.

"Are you ready now? Can we get down to business? Don't lie to me because if you do, what I'll do to you will be much worse than what you just went through." Mara warned him.

He nodded, still crying.

"For starters, who is Sophia's mate? If it's her real mate, after all you have the support of a witch." Mara asked her first.

"Calvin, Mason's little brother and they are really mates. At first he wanted to reject her but Mason saw a golden opportunity. She was almost convinced when you showed up and brought hope back into the pack. In the last few weeks, Calvin tried to persuade her that everything was a gamble and that you were just postponing the deadline, that she was the only chance for her family to stay alive. It was his idea to target Bella and it worked. The attack upset her so much that the idiot would have said yes to anything as long as her family wasn't touched." Gamma Luke explained.

"You had orders to bring her back with you tonight. Didn't you? And what better way to weaken Alphas than to announce her betrayal before you do." Mara urged him to continue.

"Yes. Calvin would never be officially mated to her. She would have just served to keep his bed warm and his balls empty while he found a mate worthy of his rank."

So being an asshole runs in the blood of the whole family, Mara thought. One more on her list of assholes to eliminate, unless she let Sophia choose her sentance... She'd have to evaluate her to see if she was reliable.

"Aside from the blue blood and black night packs. Who is your third ally?" Mara then asked.

"How do you know all this?" Gamma Luke asked surprised.

"Unlike your Alpha, who preaches from overconfidence, I take the time to know my enemies inside and out and I am very meticulous by nature. So I'll leave you to imagine all the details I know about you. Now answer, who is the fourth pack?"

"It's not a pack. It's a coven of vampires called the descendants of evil."

"Interesting... Why did Leah agree to work with you?"

"She's our Beta's mate."

"Beta Jayden, who has repeatedly voiced his disagreement with your Alpha's actions. I imagine you threatened his life to get Leah to work with you. She's known to be a peaceful witch. Besides, it's the house style to threaten, isn't it?" Mara commented.

She added seeing Gamma's wide eyes, "Don't look so surprised. Do you really think you're the only ones with undercover spies. Speaking of spies, besides Sophia, Austin, Kai and Jade, do you have any other pack members giving you information?"

"No that's it." Gamma Luke hissed, his face showing nothing but pain.

"Jade, her older sister is mated to a member of your pack, Kai, you are illegally holding his mate and as for Austin, what exactly do you have against him?" Mara questioned.

The Gamma's eyes closed, soon he would lose consciousness, exhausted from the torture he had suffered.

"Stay with me!" Mara ordered him, pressing on one of his wounds.

"You're quite sure of yourself. How do you know he didn't betray you of his own free will?" Gamma Luke yelped back, revived by the pain.

"Don't play games with me, Luke, you'll regret it bitterly. Alpha Sloan and Alpha Sage have the respect of all their pack members unlike Alpha Mason. Now tell me!"

"Austin has an illegitimate daughter with one of our females. His cooperation is what guarantees that little bastard's survival."

"Good boy!" Mara congratulated him before nodding towards Amaia who approached the Gamma with a syringe in her hand. She injected him in the neck and within seconds he was gone.