Desire's Sirocco (21 page)

“Walls and canal can be scaled and crossed, milady,” Qasim stated.

“Aye,” she agreed. “But we will route a waterway from our northern coastline to our southern between those two walls, Lord Qasim and on either side of those wall we will plant row upon row of garlic.”

The Grand Master stared at his wife. “The old legends say the Ordonese are deathly afraid of garlic!”

Jameela nodded. “Garlic and running water are anathema to them and we will also have another protection mortared into the walls of our barrier.”

“Which is?” Qasim asked.

“Silver,” she replied. “Molten silver cemented along the tops of each wall.”

Despite his dislike of females, Qasim found himself begrudgingly admiring the plan the Grand Master’s Lady-wife had conceived. His agile mind turned the logistics over and over, compared what he knew to what he had heard since childhood regarding the demon Ordonese, then let out a long breath. “It just might work,” he said.

“We won’t know until we try, will we?” Jameela queried.

Qasim looked at his Master. “You agree with your Lady’s assessments, Your Grace?”

“I do,” the Grand Master replied. “She has abilities none of us suspected.”

“And how did you come by these abilities, milady?” Qasim asked.

“They came to me in my dreams,” Jameela answered. “I know not from where for I have never
seen
such things before.”

“Perhaps because you have never had so much to lose before now,” the Grand Master said quietly.

Jameela looked into the face of the man who was a mirror image of her beloved. Over the last few days, she had come to know great affection for the Grand Master though her love would always belong to Dagan Kiel.

“We both have much to lose if these dreams prove me false,” she told him. “I pray the gods will keep him safe.”

“Bring those two ministers to us,” the Grand Master commanded Lord Qasim. “Let us set into motion this protection my Lady-wife believes we need. Have every able-bodied man, woman, and child old enough to wield a shovel ready to dig the canal.” He held up a hand as Qasim was about to leave. “Either way, Qasim, we will bring my brother home if even it means slaughtering an entire race of people.”

* * * * *

Dagan was as weak as a newborn kitten, not even able to stand without help. The shackles that pulled at his wrists and ankles were useless for there was no strength in his body to fight his captors. The lethargy that sat upon his shoulders like a stone kept him as still as the maddening pain in his head would allow. Every so often, he had to force a trembling hand to his temple to relieve that agonizing throbbing.

“Once Lord Khnum has treated you, you will no longer have such devastating headaches,” Neith told him. She was sitting well back from his bed for he had tried to strangle her after taking the Sustenance. Though he was frail and no more effective than a babe, he had managed to bruise her but more than that, had put a healthy fear of him in her very soul.

Dagan ignored the woman. When he had finally come out of his semiconscious state late the night before and was as himself, he had been stunned to find he was still alive and that she had not drained him as dry as a sand dune. He could not imagine why she had allowed him to live but reasoned it had something to do with who he was. The moment that thought crossed his mind, he had sent his thoughts to Jameela, hoping against hope they would wing themselves to her and she would understand them. Likewise, he schooled himself to hide his thoughts from the demoness across from him for he feared she might be able to intercept them.

“Are you not curious about the treatment Lord Khnum will perform on you?”

Sitting across from him, straddling the chair as a man would, the woman had been taunting him since late afternoon with her questions. She had wanted to know what he had felt when he had consumed the goblet of blood. She had asked if he had heard the spirits singing in his head, had he enjoyed the taste of the Sustenance.

Disgust, he thought as he formed the answer in his brain. Disgust, nausea and an overpowering urge to tear the bitch apart with his bare hands, had been his silent answer. Singing spirits? Aye, he thought bitterly. He had heard the demons whispering vile things into his mind, singing to him of brutality and savagery, of death and destruction and mutilation.

Enjoyed the taste of her blood? By all that was holy and unholy, he had. It had, indeed, been nectar to him and the taste lingered on his tongue, making him want it, need it, crave it as a starving man does a feast of succulent foods placed before him. To his mortal shame, he ached for the taste of it again, the feel of it easing down his parched throat. He knew denying himself such evil would mean fighting the pull of it with every ounce of his will.

“It will only be harder on you if you fight it, Beloved,” Neith told him.

So, he thought, she
could
read his mind. His every thought could be plucked from the air like a raptor diving after its prey. Yet, when he tried to read her mind, all he felt was a thick, miasmic wave that left him sick with disgust.

“We will be equals once the deed is done,” she said. “You will be allowed to return to your people and to that slave you fancy you love.”

He slowly turned his head and stared at his tormentress. She was smiling at him in a way that chilled his blood and as her gaze fell to the twin wounds on his neck, he could not stop the shudder than ran through his body.

“I am not lying to you,” she said. “You will be taken to the border and turned over to your brother’s men.”

“Returned to them as what?” he said through clenched teeth.

Neith crossed her arms on the back of the chair and laid her chin on her right wrist. “As one of us.”

“I would rather die in a fiery pit than go back to my people as one of you!” he snarled.

“Once the deed is done, you will not have such morbid thoughts, Beloved.”

“Stop calling me that!” he shouted at her. “I am no more your beloved than you are mine!”

Neith cocked a shoulder. “My blood pulses through your veins, Dagan Kiel. You belong to me.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to call her every insulting, vulgar name he had ever heard muttered. He wanted nothing more than to get his hands on her and to have the strength to tear her limb from limb.

“You will find when you have the chance to lay hands to me, that you will want nothing more than to thrust your cock in me and spray me full of your life-juice,” she said, a superior look on her face.

“You stupid bitch,” Dagan threw at her. “For all your mind reading, you don’t know that is the last thing that will ever happen!”

“But why, Dagan-love?” she cooed, sweetly. “Because you hate me or because you believe you have no ability to fuck a woman?”

His face turned hard but a blush of shame softened his features. He turned away from her, having no desire to answer her taunt.

“When the deed is done, you…”

“What godsdamned deed, bitch?” Dagan howled, his frustrations getting the best of him. Though he was so weak all he wanted to do was sleep, the constant mention of some nefarious deed lurking in his future demanded he ask.

Neith stood, swinging her leg over the chair seat. She smiled but did not answer. As she turned to go, his growl made her laugh.

Infuriated at her laughter as she left him pulling uselessly and weakly against his fetters, Dagan wished he could loop the chains around his neck and hang himself. He knew he would prefer death to whatever evil thing lay in wait for him at the hands of the faceless Lord Khnum.

* * * * *

Angry at the thing he was being forced to do, Lord Khnum picked the most deadly of specimens from the beaker. Already, this one had devoured half a dozen of its nestlings. Engorged with the blood and flesh of its sisters, the specimen was strong, wriggling furiously in the grip of the tongs pinched around its elongated body. As it was placed into a beaker of fresh-drawn blood, it began lapping greedily at the liquid.

“You want him to be one of us,” Khnum mumbled as he turned to his instrument drawer and began removing those that would be needed to aid the Transference. “I will give him an addiction worse than any Queen ever conceived in her filthy womb!” He held up a shiny scalpel and tested the thinness of its blade with his thumb. He sucked in a breath as the blade sliced into his flesh and a bead of blood oozed up.

The specimen sensed the bloodletting and the beaker clattered along the marble desk. Grown twice the size it had been, the specimen had all but drained the liquid from the beaker and was now squirming around and around inside the glass, its scarlet eyes latched on Lord Khnum as its forked tongue lapped at any stray drop of blood.

“Not me,” the old man chuckled. “It will not be my body you will invade.” He felt a sharp twist along his backbone and knew his own parasite had decided to show him who was Master and who the host.

Lord Khnum was the oldest of his kind though he had not been the first. He had not even been among the first generation of Ordonese warriors to be infected with that which made him what he was now. For centuries he had trod along the barren lands of Ordon, crossed the border into the blood-rich fields of the Conclave and taken his pleasure of thousands upon thousands of his enemy. When human blood could not easily be taken, beef blood would do though it lacked in succulence the satiation his parasite desired. So long ago had been his rebirth that he could not remember the details of the Transference.

He turned his eyes to the Book that perched high upon the tallest shelf of the operatory. Tempted many times to climb the high ladder and take down the Book, his parasite had never allowed it. Should he put one foot upon the lowest rung, the demoness inside him would cause such pain he would be brought to his knees immediately and spend the rest of the day repenting in agony. Even looking upon the Book caused the beastess inside him to turn sharply, causing acute torment to lacerate Khnum’s spindly body.

Khnum suspected the origin of his kind was concealed within the cracked human-leather of the Book. It was a secret the parasites wanted kept hidden.

Turning his attention back to the specimen he had extracted from Neith before her battle with Dagan Kiel’s troop, he was pleased to see it had doubled in size again. Now as large as his hand, the parasite was trying to gnaw at the sides of the beaker with its opposable fangs, searching for any residue of blood left.

“Soon, you can feast on an Akhkharu warrior, my little demoness. You can slither into his strong, handsome body and forever make your home,” Khnum promised.

The parasite stopped moving and appeared to be listening to the old man’s words. Its forked tongue struck repeatedly against the glass; its scarlet eyes pulsed within the triangular planes of its warty head. A milky substance fell in a long thread from the gaping maw of its mouth and sizzled against the glass.

“I want you to hurt him,” Khnum said, putting the scalpel to his wrist. “I want you to bring him such agony that he will wish for death with every breath.”

Slicing a thin line along his flesh, the old man allowed his own blood to flow into a small dish.

“I want you to curse his offspring with the same unrelenting pain and hopelessness so they will rue the day they became One of us.”

Khnum held the dish above the beaker where the specimen had gone into a frenzy of twisting, turning, squirming motion. So violent was the movement, the old man could hear the hiss of the fledgling.

“Promise me,” he said, turning the dish so a small drop of blood fell into the beaker.

Pouncing on the aged blood of the Ordonese warrior—an essence as rare and succulent to the parasite as an aged wine would be to a connoisseur—the specimen writhed and appeared to be salivating, the acid-like white substance dripping from its maw.

“Pledge to me you will bring hell to Dagan Kiel and I will feed you the sweetest blood, the most potent Sustenance of them all.” He raised the dish, grinning manically at the prolonged hiss of denial from the specimen. “Pledge to me or I will give this nectar to your nestlings!”

Snaking its eel-like body halfway up the beaker, the specimen had once more doubled in size. Its forked tongue could almost reach over the glass rim. Its beady eyes locked on the old man, it slid down the glass and coiled around itself, granting as much submission as it ever would.

Satisfied the deal had been struck, Khnum tilted the dish of his ancient blood into the beaker and watched as the specimen went crazy in an effort to devour every drop. As it squirmed around inside the beaker, the old man quickly lifted the beaker and placed it inside a much larger one he knew the specimen could not escape. With the consumption of his potent blood, the demoness would double—if not triple—in size and every precaution needed to be taken until the Transference.

Khnum turned his attention to the beaker that held the remaining specimens taken from Neith’s treacherous body. There were four of the nestlings left from the hive he had excised. By law, he should destroy them but he had no intention of doing so. With a hateful grin upon his thin face, he took up the beaker and placed it in a cubicle, hiding it behind a stack of old texts.

“One never knows when one will need ammunition,” he chortled.

* * * * *

Neith kept well back from her captive as Dagan Kiel was taken from his bed.