DarkWind: 2nd Book, WindDemon Trilogy (29 page)

“Never!” Cree bellowed.

Rushing toward his enemy, the blade prepared for a lethal strike, Cree stepped from warm sunlight to the blackness of cold space. Wind whipped brutally at his long hair and blew it wildly about his head, freezing his flesh like a glacial wall of ice. The keening sound drove straight through his heart.

“Bridget!” he screamed as he began to fall through the limitless pit. “Bridget!”

He let go of the dagger and clawed at the ebony space engulfing him. His claws shot out of his fingertips, digging at the nothingness through which he passed, striving for a talon hold in the black cloth of space and gaining no purchase as he dropped-screaming in rage and despair-through the Abyss.

“Bridgettttttttttttttt!”

Dorrie jerked awake
as the scream penetrated her uneasy sleep. She bolted up from the cave floor, throwing off the thin blanket she had been allotted. “What’s happening?” she yelled at the guard down the corridor, but her words were lost in the running footsteps of the Amazeen called Chanz.

“Open her cell!” Lt. Chanz barked and the guard hastened to do the officer’s bidding.

“What have you done to him?” Dorrie accused, her hard-edged gaze boring into the Amazeen.

“I have no time to explain,” Chanz snarled. “Come with me. He needs you.” She turned and started back down the corridor.

Her heart thudding, Dorrie ran behind the Amazeen, scraping her shoulder against the rough stone corner as they turned down a different corridor.

Cree’s screams of agony made the hair stand up on Dorrie’s arms and she felt sick to her stomach, wondering what evil these women had thrown at him this time.

At the door to the containment cell, several Amazeen guards were poised with laser pikes at the ready. The door was shut; the heavy bar in place as Chanz and Dorrie skidded to a stop before it.

“Open!” Chanz ordered.

As one guard gripped the bar and pushed it out of the holders, the others pointed their laser pikes.

“Is he loose?” Dorrie asked, fearful of going inside the room if that was the case.

“He is chained but out of his mind with pain,” Chanz took time to say as she walked through the now-opened portal.

“What did you do to him?”

“We have done nothing. He was bitten by a ghoret.”

Dorrie flinched, knowing full well the destructive power of the viper. She had seen strong men die in the space of a second or two from the potent venom. She had also seen the Reaper Kullen foaming at the mouth from the bite of a ghoret as he stiffened with spasms of acute pain.

“How long ago?” She was shocked to see Akkadia Kahmal hunkered down beside Cree, helping to hold him still.

“Ten minutes.”

Cree was convulsing, his arms and legs stiff as he thrashed about the dirt floor. Though his wrists were plastered tightly to the wall and his ankles locked to the stone floor, he was bucking like a rabid dog. A stick had been jammed between his teeth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. Flecks of black blood spotted his cheeks and chin and trickled down his arching throat. His amber eyes were wild with agony, his breath coming in gasps like those of a drowning man.

“You are a Healer’s assistant,” said Kahmal. “We are in need of your help.”

Dorrie did not deny the charge though that had not been her job on Rysalia. She knelt on the ground. “You haven’t lanced the wound?”

Kahmal shook her head. “I dared not for fear I would strike a major blood vessel.”

Cree’s leg was swelling rapidly where the fangs had punctured his thigh. Even as Dorrie watched, the flesh split farther apart. A glowing blue slime mixed with the Reaper’s seeping black blood gave off a noxious smell as it dripped from his leg.

“Here,” Chanz said, handing Dorrie a pair of Healer’s gloves. “If you get the venom on your flesh, it will make you ill. Get it in your eyes or in your mouth and you’re a dead woman.”

Dorrie nodded, knowing the potency of the viper’s poison. She slapped the gloves in place and took the dagger Chanz offered her. “Move back,” she warned the others.

Kahmal shifted position, but did not get up as the other guard did. She locked gazes with Dorrie for a moment then tightened her grip on Cree’s straining chest.

“God almighty,” Dorrie whispered as she looked at the ugly crimson blotch that covered Cree’s thigh and extended under it and down his leg.

“Woman, hurry!” Kahmal snapped. “Once the venom reaches his parasite, there will be no controlling him!”

“Turn your head.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Kahmal did as she was told. The hot splash of fluid spraying the sleeves of her uniform as Dorrie slit the puncture wounds made her cry out, but she did not open her eyes. The smell made her gag.

“Get me some cloth to wipe this mess up. Unless you want venom on you.” Dorrie almost smiled as one of the guards leapt into action. She gently kneaded Cree’s swollen, fiery-red flesh, relieving the pressure of the venom and blood gathered there. She looked at Chanz. “You have a suction device?”

Chanz blinked. “On The Aluvial,” she said, among those who had not thought of needing something so vital.

“I suggest you get the gods-be-damned thing and quickly, bitch!”

Chanz spun around and pointed at one of the guards. “Go!”

Kahmal cautiously opened her eyes and turned her attention to what Dorrie was doing. It was getting harder to hold Cree down for his thrashing was increasing in violence.

“He saved my life,” said Kahmal.

Dorrie didn’t reply. She was staring at the wound that was closing even as she watched. She groaned, knowing she’d have to slit it open again the suction device arrived.

“According to our tribal laws,” continued Kahmal saying. Dorrie wished the woman would shut her mouth, “Attribution has now been declared.”

“Where the hell is that suction pump?” Dorrie snapped, glancing at Kahmal. She did a double take. Tears streaked down the Amazeen Major’s face.

“Attribution has been declared,” Kahmal repeated so quietly her words were a mere breath of sound.

“What are you talking about? You’ve found a new way to torment this man?”

Kahmal shook her head. “My life belongs to him,” she said, her face pale and strained. Dorrie realized that some of the venom from the Reaper’s wound had penetrated the fabric of the uniform and had entered the Major’s bloodstream. It was not enough to kill her, but enough to make her very ill.

“Attribution is rare,” Kahmal said. “Unheard of in this day and time.” She licked her lips. Her eyes rolled and she began to shiver. “Why do you suppose he saved my life?”

Dorrie gasped then twisted around to look at one of the guards. “Get that uniform off now! She’s got the venom on her!”

The guards rushed to Kahmal just as the Major’s eyes rolled up in her head and she began to convulse.

Kahmal had been
taken to The Aluvial and placed in sickbay. She did not return to the caves for two days. On the third day, she appeared pale and weak, her skin mottled with a pebbling of dark purple bruises where the venom had touched her arm.

“How is he?” she asked Dorrie.

“He would have died if your friend Melankhoia had not interceded on your behalf,” Dorrie replied.

“I was told she went to the Captain to remind her of the Attribution.”

“I don’t trust your Captain any farther than I can see her ass.”

Kahmal squatted beside Cree and stared into his wild gaze. “Does he know who you are?”

Dorrie shook her head. “He doesn’t even know who he is. He keeps calling for Bridget.” She smoothed the Reaper’s limp black hair from his sweaty forehead. “When he speaks at all between the bouts of screaming.”

Kahmal looked around the cell. “The bodies have been removed.”

“The stench was overpowering. Melankhoia had the corpses burned.”

“Despite the Chalean Healer’s demands they be left here,” one of the guards said in a disgusted tone.

“They were Sustenance for him. Now, there is nothing to feed him.”

“We can feed him Sejm,” said Dorrie in a bitter voice.

Kahmal smiled. “There is more poison in that old witch’s heart than can be found in a nest of ghorets.”

“I heard that.”

Kahmal eased to a sitting position on the floor then glanced at Dorrie. “You look tired, Sister. When was the last time you slept?”

“Not since you were taken ill, Major,” the talkative guard remarked. “She feared for his safety.”

Kahmal nodded then caught Dorrie’s eye. “Go, rest. I’ll watch over him.”

Dorrie hesitated, chewing on her lip.

Kahmal waved her hand. “Go, woman. I owe the Reaper my life. No harm will come to him. On my honor as an Amazeen warrioress, I swear this to you.”

“I trust you,” Dorrie said, getting wearily to her feet. “It’s just I don’t want to leave him.”

“We could bring in a cot or two,” the guard suggested.

“Aye,” Kahmal agreed. “Do that, then.” The hard ground on which she sat was wearing her down.

For four more days, Kamerone Cree convulsed and screamed as the poison invaded his system and warred with the Revenant worm. It had been a full week since the ghoret’s venom had entered his bloodstream and his parasite had began to produce a toxic venom of its own to combat the poisons trying to destroy the Reaper’s nervous system and major organs. As a result, Cree’s blood boiled and the flesh on his arms and legs shifted and bunched as pockets of contaminants formed under his skin and burst.

On the eighth day, the parasite began coiling and uncoiling around the Reaper’s kidneys and spinal column as it battled the last of the invading poisons. Its movements caused agonizing spasms that lifted Cree’s body clear of the floor.

“Unchain his wrists!” Dorrie demanded. “Turn him over on his stomach. Can’t you see what lying on his back is doing to him?”

“You heard her!” Kahmal watched the guards unlock Cree’s fetters then  helped Dorrie ease him to his belly on the cold stone floor.

“Don’t do that,” Dorrie begged as Kahmal started to restrain Cree’s wrists once more. “Please.”

Kahmal looked down at the strong wrist she had been about to shackle and lifted her gaze to Dorrie. The two women stared at one another for a moment. Kahmal shrugged. She looked to the guards who were holding the Reaper’s ankles. “Leave the bands off for now.”

The guards’ faces paled, but they did as they were told.

“Thank you. Don’t you have a jumpsuit that will fit him? Even a pair of britches?”

Kahmal nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

Cree shuddered, his body jackknifed violently, curled into a fetal position, then his legs shot out, his foot narrowly missing one of the guards. His unearthly shriek of pain reverberated through the containment cell, nearly deafening the women.

“Sweet Merciful Alluvia,” the guard said, pointing. “Look!”

The Reaper’s back was undulating as the parasite writhed under his skin. Watching the alien thing slithering, stretching the fevered flesh of its host, the women got to their feet in a hurry and backed away. When the flesh over Cree’s spine broke open with a loud ripping sound, it brought terrified screams from Dorrie and Kahmal’s throats.

Stumbling against the wall, they watched in stunned horror as the head of the parasite oozed through the gaping flesh and began to weave like a cobra, turning its scaly triangular head to and fro as it glowered at the women.

“By all the merciful gods,” Kahmal whispered, shivering.

Dorrie stared at the parasite, sickened by its phosphoric lime green coloring and slit red eyes. Its long, leathery body bent and twisted as its gaping mouth opened and closed revealing rows of sharp, pointed teeth. A long, forked tongue flicked about, testing the air. The smell of it was ten times worse than any charnel house.

“If it would not do harm to Cree,” Kahmal whispered, “I’d lop the head off that evil thing and rid him of it.”

The parasite pivoted around within the wound on the Reaper’s back until its beady red gaze was locked on Kahmal. For a moment it wavered there, glaring at the Amazeen, putrid green slime stringing from its open mouth. Where the slime landed on the Reaper’s back the flesh bubbled and broke as though struck with acid. Then the creature darted back through the gaping flesh and disappeared, its body moving like a current under Cree’s flesh.

“Raphian,” a voice spoke from the doorway and the women turned to see Sejm standing there, her eyes as ancient as time. The Chalean Healer was trembling, one gnarled hand at her mouth. “The Destroyer has corrupted the Reaper’s body.”

“I have heard of the demon,” Kahmal said. “That thing must be one of Its offspring.”

 Sejm lowered her gaze to the floor. She seemed to be seeking answers from the dirt beneath her feet. Unaware of the guards bringing in cots for Dorrie and Kahmal, the old women just stood there, lost in thought.

“The wound has closed already,” Kahmal observed.

Dorrie knew well the recuperative powers of a Reaper so felt no need to reply. She looked longingly at the cots being set up across the way then at Cree. Seeing him lying there on the dirty cave floor, writhing in pain, she could not force herself to seek the comfort of the cot.