DarkWind: 2nd Book, WindDemon Trilogy (25 page)

“And our Sisters, as well!” said Melankhoia.

“Our sisters are dead,” Akkadia said in a soft voice. “I feel it here.” She clutched her closed fist to her chest.

“I refuse to accept that!” said Melanchoia.

“Accept it,” Akkadia demanded, her tone brooking no challenge.

The two women locked gazes and when Akkadia did not look away, Melanchoia’s eyes filled with tears.

“Eyiigh!” Melanchoia wailed and turned away, walking, then running as fast as she could from the others.

“Should I go to her?” Sern asked.

“Let her mourn in her own fashion,” Akkadia cautioned. She looked about the containment cell. “As will I.”

The Captain moved out of the Major’s way as Akkadia exited the cell, not daring to put a comforting hand on Kahmal’s broad shoulder for the look of anguish was hard on the warrioress’ face.

“Another crime for which the Reaper and his bloodsons must atone,” Sejm declared.

The Captain touched the Vid-Com on her uniform lapel. “Transport the bodies to the cell’s coordinates then send us the Reaper. I’ve of a mind to hurt him even though he can not feel it!”

Sejm grinned. “Save your anger for when he can, Captain. Why waste good torture on a mindless chunk of nerveless flesh?”

Captain Chakai clenched her teeth. “It would soothe me.”

Sejm shrugged. “Then do what you will to him.”

Light pulsed brightly in the containment cell and the heaped bodies of the dead Terran men materialized in one corner. The smell was overpowering and the women backed away from the stench. Once again the light pulsed and the gurney carrying Kamerone Cree’s unconscious form appeared near the back wall of the cell.

“Get him chained as quickly as you can,” Sejm suggested. “I have no idea how long it will take for his parasite to revive him.”

As her security crewmembers worked efficiently to secure the Reaper’s wrists, neck and ankles to the stanchion buried deep in the walls of the cave, Captain Chakai stood at the cell’s entrance and thought of the brutal things she would like to do to Kamerone Cree.

“He arouses the beastesses within us, does he not?” Sejm inquired as she took in the savage look on the captain’s set face.

“Aye, that he does.”

“By my reckoning, he will be partially cognizant within an hour’s time,” the Chalean scientist stated.

“Sern?” the captain called out.

“Aye, Ma’am?”

“Do we have rods on board The Aluvial?”

Sern frowned. “Only the Inquisition teams have them, Ma’am, and we’ve not found their weapons of office here. The Terrans must have taken them.”

“Too bad.” The Captain smiled nastily. “But you have laser wands, do you not?”

“Aye that we have.” Sern swallowed, looking at the handsome man now lying chained to the wall.

“Then bring me one.”

Kamerone Cree sat
in the blackness of the cell. His legs were splayed, his shackled hands palms up in his lap as he sat propped up against the wall.

He could not move.

He could not see.

He could not hear.

He could not smell.

He could not taste.

He could not speak.

He could not feel.

He could not think for his thought processes had been severely crippled.

There were only bits and pieces left in the files of his damaged brain.

Eventually, a tiny light would spark in his partially deleted mind, then another as the parasite set about to make the repairs that were necessary to re-animate its host, but until then, the Reaper was catatonic.

The smell of burning flesh was thick in the room, but the man whose body was covered with scores of livid burns made no sound at all. Although his muscles jumped with each new application of the laser wand, he made no sound and gave no indication the excruciating pain was registering.

“You said he should be fully awake by now!” the Captain accused. She held the laser wand to the Reaper’s left biceps until the ruby light went all the way through the arm, destroying tissue, muscle and bone.

“Captain, really!” Sejm laughed. She took hold of the Captain’s hand and pulled the wand from the mangled arm. She took it out of the hands of Cree’s tormentress. “You are not accomplishing anything. The brain damage was more severe than I anticipated, but he will fully recover in time. When he does, you can play with him until your heart is content.”

“Bastard.” As the Captain watched, the damaged flesh began to heal. “It is sinful what the Revenant worm can do.” She grabbed a handful of Cree’s thick dark curls and pulled the Reaper’s head back. “Wake up you sorry excuse for a being!”

Sejm gasped as Kamerone Cree’s eyes suddenly flew open. She stumbled back, the laser wand extended toward him, her heart pounding furiously in her chest as the captain let go of Cree’s hair with a terrified shriek and rushed to join her at the door of the cell.

“Weapons on heavy stun!” the captain shouted to the four Amazeen security guards in the cell with them.

Sejm stared at the Reaper, watching as he blinked, tried to focus his amber eyes, but his eyes closed once more. She held her breath as his head fell to his chest, wobbled there for a moment before he tried to raise it. The effort failed and the helpless sound of a sigh escaped his parted lips.

“Wake up,” Sejm whispered.

Cree’s fingers flexed and every woman in the room tensed. The power in those long, tapered fingers had the strength of the hands of twenty men. It was lethal power, unforgiving, and savage. 

“Wake up!” yelled Captain Chakai, her eyes flashing viridian fire.

He grunted and tried to raise his head again. They saw his eyes slowly open. They watched as his broad chest expanded then listened to the soft exhalation of his breath.

Sejm noticed his eyes moving as he took in the vicious burns on his naked chest. She saw him slowly close his eyes and as he opened them, he raised his chin until he was able to look at his captors then leaned his head against the damp stone wall behind him as his gaze slid from one woman to the next before settling on Sejm. He swallowed with difficulty and then licked at his parched lips.

“You will get nothing from us. Not one drop of water. Not one.”

They saw the Reaper’s gaze shift to the bodies piled haphazardly against the far wall of the containment cell.

“Aye, that is your feast, Iceman,” Chakai chortled, “and we wish you good appetite!”

Kamerone Cree looked away from the corpses as though the sight hurt him in some way.

“The Major has arrived,” Sejm informed Captain Chakai.

Akkadia Kahmal ducked through the doorway and when she straightened, her emerald eyes grew wide when she saw the condition of her prisoner. “Who authorized this man’s torture?”

“The prisoner has regained some of his faculties,” Captain  Chakai pronounced.

As much as she hated the man she had captured, Akkadia Kahmal was sworn to protect him, to bring him safely to The Great Lady to be executed for his crimes. She pushed into the cell and stood toe to toe with Chakai.

“You were out of line, Captain, you had no authority to do this.”

“I was given a mandate within my mission statement which states I may interrogate prisoners I deem-”

“Interrogate?” Kahmal interrupted. “What information did you think you could get from an unconscious man?”         

“We were trying to rouse him so we could interrogate him,” Chakai said, lifting her chin.

“Really? And just what information do you think he could provide that we do not already know?” Kahmal asked. She turned her scrutiny to the Reaper and found him looking back at her with such a pitiful expression she had to turn away.

“The sight of him disgusts me, as well, Major,” Sejm said, obviously misreading Kahmal’s reaction to the prisoner.

Akkadia Kahmal clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together to keep from taking out her skean, the double-edged ceremonial dagger at her belt, and thrusting it into the Chalean crone. As it was, she narrowed her eyes and locked gazes with Captain  Chakai. “This man is off limits to you and to every member of this crew. He is not to be harmed beyond what is necessary to subdue him and keep him under firm restraint.” A muscle jumped in her cheek. “Is that clear?”

“I am in charge of this ship!”

“And I am in charge of this mission and that man is my responsibility. I was told to bring him back to Rysalia Prime in good condition and I intend to make gods-be-damned sure that will be the way of it!”

“He’s moving,” one of the guards said and lifted her weapon to point it at the Reaper.

The women turned to see Cree lifting a trembling hand to his head. The scrape of the thick iron links of his fetters against the dirt floor was a reassuring sound. It meant there was protection-meager though it seemed-between the Reaper and his captors.

“Get out,” Kahmal ordered, pushing the Captain and Sejm from the cell. “Now!” She was close on their heels, closing the cell door and dropping the thick wooden plank into place behind their departure.

“Post two guards at this door, two at the end of the corridor and two at the entrance to the chamber. I will take no chances that beast might get free,” Captain Chakai ordered.

“He can’t,” Sejm insisted. “I have injected each of the corpses with heavy doses of muscle and neuroinhibitors as well as the triso he requires to keep from going insane with blood hunger between transitions. He will stay in a perpetual groggy state for as long as the meat in that cell lasts.” Her smile was hateful. “I will take no chance where that one is concerned, either.”

The Captain and the Chalean scientist exchanged a look then left together. Two of the Amazeen guards positioned themselves to either side of the door and two more went to stand at the end of the narrow corridor.

Major Kahmal stared at the heavy iron door. Though she could not see through the thickness of the portal, she had no problem imagining the Reaper trying to make his muscles work, to stand, trying to rid himself of the fog clouding his mind. She closed her eyes, picturing him sitting there, his body scored with brutal burns, and she could see the hopeless, confused look that had been deep in his amber eyes.

“Stop it!” She turned from the door and hurrying down the corridor.

But the image of the handsome Reaper was etched in her brain and was with her every step of the way.

Full movement had
not yet returned nor had words. He grunted now and again and made sounds much as a child who has yet to learn to speak would make. Strange sounds frightened him and he would burrow against the wall, shielding his face within the circumference of his shackled arms as the guards slid open the peephole to stare in at him.

Slowly, like a cornered animal, he would lower his arms and stare helplessly at the Amazeen. When they made no threatening move toward him, only stood there glaring at him, he would scramble hesitantly to his knees and cock his head to one side, keening in a low, hurt voice as he rocked back and forth.

“Wah?”  he would ask each time, lifting his shaky hand to them in pleading, but they ignored him and the clink of the peephole panel closing brought actual physical pain for his thirst was great and growing with every passing minute.

The damage to his motor functions and mental skills were more advanced than had either been expected or imagined. What was thought would last only a few hours had now stretched into a day and afternoon and even Sejm was beginning to wonder if irreparable harm had not been done the Reaper. Obviously the damage was more extensive than was first realized and the parasite was having difficulty making repairs. The Reaper’s flesh had healed, but his mind had not.

Except for the memories-locked in his head-that his captors had no way of knowing he was reliving.

“Bridie?” he
questioned upon jolting awake from one of the strange sensations wavering through his mind.

He felt his heart pounding and knew what the organ was and what it was called though he could not seem to fashion the word no matter how hard he tried. He could not wrap his swollen tongue around the sounds. He snorted with disgust at his inability to speak and pushed up to sit slumped against the wall.

Though mentally he could put names to the things around him: floor, ceiling, wall, stinking bodies, he did not know who-or what-he was. He tried hard to give himself a name, an identity, but the reasoning would not surface. To him, it was almost as though the slate of everything he had ever learned about himself had been wiped clean.

The frustration was unbearable.

What bothered him most, though, was the excruciating thirst tormenting him and the memories he could not keep at bay.

The memories plagued him more than the thirst for he did not understand the events he was seeing nor recognize the faces that drifted across his fevered vision.

One face tormented him more than the others: the face of a being very different from himself. More like those who watched him. With the face, came fragments of terrible physical pain, crushing loneliness, and bitter betrayal. When that face appeared, he would moan like a wounded animal and clutch his arms around his chest. His keening brought tears.