Lucien's Khamsin (2 page)

“And if you can’t?”

Lucien drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. The pain had intensified as they spoke. It was almost as though he could feel Sibylline’s wicked hand twisting the blade into his skull just above the right eye. Soon, the brutal nausea would begin and he would be forced to take to his bed. Such weakness infuriated him.

“Better to have Petros send you one of the new arrivals now and get it over with,” Christina said from the door.

The men looked over at the dark-skinned healer, each feeling the tightening in his groin as he took in her sultry beauty. Both looked away, ashamed of their physical reaction for Christina embraced only women in her pursuit of relationships.

“Do you have a suggestion?” Lucien growled, knowing she did.

“The one who has the antibody is a quite lovely specimen. Intelligent, too, from what Marcus said.”

“I hear she is very pretty,” Petros agreed.

“And very spirited,” Christina said.

Lucien leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “That might prove interesting.”

“This one will give you a run for your money, Luc,” Christina laughed.

“If you don’t want her, I’ll take her,” Petros suggested. “Sight unseen.”

Slowly switching his gaze to Petros, Lucien smiled nastily. “Is that a challenge, Demakis?”

Petros cocked a shoulder. “You can take it as such if you like, my Prince.”

“Oh, ho!” Christina said with a chortle. “When he calls you that he has thrown down the gauntlet, Lucien!”

“Aye and he’s done it twice in one night,” Lucien complained.

“Oooh, how interesting! So what’s it to be?” Christina asked. “Will you accept his challenge or take to your bed until you realize you can no longer endure the pain?”

“I am surrounded by peasants aching to know the kiss of the cat,” Lucien grumbled.

“As though you’d order it,” Christina scoffed.

“I might surprise you one day, Healer.”

“She has blonde hair,” Christina told him. “And blue eyes.”

Lucien sighed. “All right.”

“A tiny waist and large tits. Long legs and…”

“I said all right!” Lucien growled. “Don’t belabor the point, Tina!”

Christina and Petros exchanged a triumphant look.

“If you high-five him, I’ll have you flayed, Liatos! I swear I will,” he warned the healer.

“Promises, promises.” Christina laughed as she headed for the door. “I’ll even make sure the little bitch is bathed, shaved and perfumed for you, sweet Prince. How’s that for service?”

“You’re becoming a regular procurer, Tina,” Petros joked.

“Better a procurer than a horny Revenant who hasn’t sunk his cock into a female in the gods know when,” she responded.

Petros started to chuckle but broke off into a pretend cough when he saw the murderous glower shooting from Lucien’s eyes. He put his fist to his lips though his hazel eyes were snapping with humor.

Christina wagged her lush gray eyebrows and exited the room, laughing as she went. She had no compunction about showing disrespect to her prince.

“One of these days I’m going to hammer a stake through that witch’s black heart,” Lucien swore, rubbing at his temple.

“Why don’t you take a cold shower instead?” Petros asked. “Doesn’t that usually help?”

“I don’t think it will tonight,” Lucien answered. “I’m starting to see that damned aura thing.”

“Then go lie down,” Petros admonished. “I’ll go find this new one and bring her to you.”

Lucien didn’t reply to the light command. He simply turned and went into his bedchamber, closing the door quietly behind him. That he didn’t slam the portal was a good indication the man was in acute pain.

Petros gave orders to the guards outside Lucien’s door that the prince was not to be bothered again that evening. Making sure the men were well-armed—their pikes as sharp as a needle—he left in search of the new addition to the herd.

The pens were on the lowest level of the keep, enclosed within the inner bailey. The compound smelled rank. As Petros passed through the main gate into the women’s corral, he wrinkled his nose for the scent of unwashed bodies and the tart odor of menstrual fluids made his belly turn. He’d never noticed a smell before and grew a bit concerned.

“How many are having their flow?” he asked one of the herders.

The man looked at a list hanging upon the wall of the guard hut. “Five are just starting, eight are in the middle of their cycle, and two are on their last day if all goes well.”

“What of the new ones? Any of them bleeding?”

“No, milord. Of the nine, two have had their female organs removed and five are nearing their cessation time. The others are of childbearing age but are supposedly weeks from their cycle.”

“Five nearing cessation,” Petros said, shaking his head.

“We harvest what we can find, milord,” the herder apologized.

“Aye, well, blood is sustenance and we take what we can while we can, eh? How many are in the herd now?”

“Fifty-nine, milord. That includes the ten we were able to rescue from Prince Stavros.”

Petros waited for the herder to open the gate to the pen, casting a practiced eye about him at the females huddled along the high barbed wire fence. Most turned away, hiding their faces from him, but two glared back at him with impotent, undisguised rage. Neither of the angry women had blonde hair.

“Where is the blonde woman just brought in tonight?” Petros asked.

“Lord Nikos is questioning her,” the herder replied.

Petros frowned sharply. “Where?”

“In the exam room.”

A violent curse exploded from Petros’ lips and he hurried toward the door that led into the exam room. Not bothering to knock, he pushed the door open and entered, his lips pulled back from his teeth.

But what he had expected to find, he did not. Instead of a quivering woman being raped by a man Lucien had nicknamed the Dog Lord, Nikos Carrus was plastered against the wall, his eyes wide in terror. The woman with her back to Petros was slowly advancing on the quivering Dog Lord.

“She is contaminated!” Nikos blurted, pointing with a trembling finger. “She has the sickness!”

Knowing Christina would never have allowed a human into the compound who was infected with the plague, Petros stood where he was and advised Nikos he had better leave while he still could.

“Quickly, Carrus. I will deal with this one,” Petros stated.

Tearing from the room as though the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels, Nikos rushed by Petros, not even bothering to shut the door behind him.

“Foaming at the mouth are you?” Petros asked quietly.

The woman turned, and indeed, she was foaming at the mouth. But it was not the soapy residue on her lips that made Petros take a step back.

“By the demons,” he whispered, his normally pale face turning even paler.

“I will infect you if you don’t leave me be, Revenant!” the woman shouted and her voice made Petros stagger back again, slamming into the wall as he stared at her. “I mean it!” She came closer, but not close enough for him to be able to smell the soap on her breath.

“Who are you?” Petros whispered, his gaze roaming over her face as though he was a starving man seated before a table laden with bowls of sustenance.

She took another step closer, her chest heaving then turned and vomited.

At any other time, Petros would have been amused at the woman’s attempt to place herself off-limits to the Coven. Her ingenuity was to be applauded but under the circumstances, his sense of humor had fled and been replaced with a black scowl that boded ill for the one who had brought about the expression.

“I imagine the soap doesn’t taste too well bubbling around in your belly, eh?” he growled. “I imagine it’s swishing around and causing you great discomfort.”

Retching even harder, the woman was bent over, holding her belly.

Petros spat out a filthy word in his native tongue then turned around and went to the door, yelling for a passing herder to bring the healer. He took a seat, dropped his elbows to his spread knees, clasped his hands and stared across the room at the sick woman who had sank to her knees as she retched.

“Damn it, Petros, I haven’t had time to finish processing her,” Christina grumbled as she came into the room. She stopped, took a look at the woman, and then turned a raised brow to Petros. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“This woman won’t do,” Petros announced, continuing to stare at the woman.

“And may I ask why not?”

“Do you have another blonde?”

Christina threw her hands into the air. “Hell, no, I don’t! What’s going on here? Why don’t you want this one? Isn’t she pretty enough? I haven’t personally examined her but I’m told she’s comely.”

The ill woman turned so she was looking at Petros. She was panting heavily, obviously frightened, but her beautiful face was filled with pleading.

“I don’t care if she is prettiest woman alive,” Petros snapped. “She won’t do.”

“Why the hell not?” Christina demanded.

“Look at her! She could be a carbon copy of his wife!” Petros stated.

Christina whistled as she turned to survey the woman. “By the gods I can see the problem. Oh, well, that isn’t good, now is it? I see your dilemma.”

“Then find me another one who…” Petros began but a guard entered the exam room, bowed his head and asked to speak. “What?”

“Begging your pardon, milord, but His Majesty asked me to find out what was taking you so long,” the guard said, wincing.

Christina whistled again and turned her eyes to the ceiling. “I think we fucked up, Pet,” she mumbled.

Petros hung his head, shook it, and then wearily pushed himself up as though the weight of the world was bearing down on him. “I’ll have to tell him the woman is ill. Just find another, Tina.”

“Why is she ill?” Christina asked and walked over to the woman. When she got a whiff of the soapy smell, she began to laugh. “By the goddess, did she ingest soap? Well, at least her pretty little mouth is clean! Oh, this is too much!” She looked around at Petros. “Didn’t I tell you she was intelligent?”

“We’d best move her to Diamhair Keep,” Petros said as he reached the door. “All we need is for him to see her.”

Christina sobered. “Aye, you may be right. I’ll have her sent there first thing tomorrow night.”

“Keep her out of sight until then,” Petros advised. He shook his head in disgust. “He’s going to have my hide for this.”

“I don’t envy you, Pet,” Christina said as Petros left the hut.

Taking the stairs to Lucien’s chamber, Petros used every vulgar word in five languages he could ever remember hearing. His shoulders were hunched and his eyebrows one thick diagonal pointing toward his hawk-like nose.

Lucien was stripping off his shirt as Petros knocked at his door. He called out his permission for Petros to enter. He glanced up as he unbuttoned the fly of his britches. “Where’s the woman?” he asked.

Petros licked his lips. “There’s a slight problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“She’s sick.”

“Sick how?” Lucien demanded. If one of the herds had something contagious, they could all succumb.

Staring at the prince’s naked, broad chest with its wide swath of scar tissue that bisected the thick pelt of hair over his pectorals in five slashing lines, Petros winced.

Lucien sighed loudly. “You do that every damned time you see the scars, Petros. Would you please stop reliving that night?” he grated. “It’s bad enough I have to.”

“If I had only been quicker,” Petros said. “If I had…”

“What is the woman sick from?” Lucien asked, his eyes flashing a warning that no more would be said of what had caused the brutal scarring on his chest.

Petros had never lied to his friend and prince. “She ate soap so she’d foam at the mouth. It made her ill.”

Lucien’s eyebrow crooked. “And she did this because?”

Petros’ lips twitched. “The Dog Lord went sniffing and sent for her. It was her way of scaring him off.”

“Did it work?” Lucien growled.

“Indeed, it did. Old Bark-at-the-Moon ran out of there like his tail was on fire.”

Lucien studied Petros for a moment then reached up to rub at the pain still throbbing over his right eye. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Lucien, just forget about this one. She…”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Lucien repeated.

Petros tucked his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment then blew a heavy breath through his nostrils. “She looks like Magdelena. Except for the blonde hair, they could be twins.”

Lucien went perfectly still. He stared at his old friend, passing his psychic ability gently over Petros’ mind and gleaning the impressions and unspoken thoughts that roiled inside the other man. What he saw with his sixth sense made the pain in his head intensify.

“Let me send her on to Diamhair Keep, Lucien,” Petros offered. “There’s no need for you to ever have to see her. It would bring back…”