Rapture's Etesian (17 page)

Dismounting, Kynthia saw people all around her but no one was looking her way. The fog was not an actual entity but a state of her own mind into which she had enveloped herself and in the doing, removed all traces of her existence from the sight of those around her. She wondered how Cainer Cree had discovered such a marvelous weapon and made a mental note to ask when she could speak with him again.

There were five guards in the main gatehouse. Sitting around a table, playing cards, they were as oblivious to Kynthia’s passing as through the bailey. She moved past them like a feather floating upon the wind and was almost to the stairs when she heard the first scream.

“He’s got a set of lungs on him, don’t he?” one of the guards joked, and the others laughed.

She knew it was Leksi who had screamed and almost let go of her control of the mind-shrouding fog hovering around her. The edges of the fog began to pull back.

He’s as good as dead if you lose it, wench!
the Reaper shouted in her mind.
Is that what you want?

Fear for Leksi brought tears to Kynthia’s eyes, but she reinforced the strength of the fog. She watched it flow smoothly away from her once more and moved quickly toward the stairs.

“There’s a damned draft in here,” one of the guards complained. “Shut that door Lykus.”

See what I mean?
the Reaper cautioned.
Go slowly, wench. You’ll get to him in time.

In time? The words drove straight into her heart and when another scream pierced the walls, she put her hands over her ears.

Steady, wench
,
Cainer Cree said.

“He is in pain,” she whined.

The next scream was cut off in mid-vibrato and Kynthia stopped dead still, her eyes wide. “Cree?” she whispered.

He has passed out. Hurry now, wench. There are no guards between you and where Krull is being kept. Get to him and release him. Now!

“I am not worried about Krull. I want—”

Release Krull, then go after your man. If you wait, Leksi Helios will die and there will be no way to bring him back!

The insistent directions slithering through her mind led Kynthia to the cell where Konan Krull stood with his hands wrapped around the bars, his forehead pressed tightly against the iron. He flinched as she rushed toward him.

“Let go of the bars!” she ordered, following the Reaper’s instructions.

Krull was so stunned to see a woman in that terrible place, he could do no more than gawk. When she took hold of the bars and jerked, he laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding, woman!” he said. Despite the hopelessness he felt having been listening to his captain’s screams of agony, the sight of a mere woman trying to open a locked cell by pulling on the bars was hysterically funny to him.

But the Lord High Commander stopped in mid-guffaw when the door not only sprang open but also came completely off its hinges. He blinked as it was tossed away, as though it weighed no more than a feather.

“How the hell did you…?” he began, but was interrupted as the warrioress grabbed his arm and jerked him out of the cell.

“I’ve no time to answer your stupid questions,” she snapped, and began dragging him down the corridor.

If Konan Krull had been astounded at the strength this woman had exhibited when she’d yanked the cell door, he was dumbfounded when she took on two guards single-handedly and sent them into the hereafter without so much as breaking a sweat. He looked down at the dead Nebullians and whistled silently. Broken necks crooked at opposite angles, the warriors lay slumped against the wall to either side of the torture room door as the woman jerked it open and disappeared inside.

The three torturers applying their trade looked up with quizzical expressions on their ugly faces but none rushed to intercept the virago who had blown into the room. They stood where they were—hot pinchers in the hand of one, a cat-o’-nine-tails in the hands of another—and gaped while the third dropped the dagger in his hand and backed away.

“You fucking bastards!” the woman shouted, her eyes wide, lips drawn back over her teeth.

A naked Leksi Helios lay on his belly, strapped to a low iron table, his wrists and ankles circled with wide, heavy bands. His back was a mass of red and black savagely abused flesh with deep cuts from the whip and seared flesh from the pinchers. The upper portion of his thighs had been given the same brutal treatment and the soles of his feet were deeply blistered.

Krull turned his head from the pitiful sight of his captain and looked into the amused eyes of King Abalam Robeus.

“Did you come to take a look at our Pretty Boy, Milord Krull?” the king asked with a smirk. “I can guarantee you he is no longer as tight as he once was.”

One of the torturers dared to try to stop the woman from getting to the king. That man met his end when the woman’s hand thrust into his chest and the very heart was pulled from his body. At that sight, the second torturer’s eyes rolled up in his head and he crumpled to the floor like an overcooked noodle. He did not feel the foot that came down hard on his throat to crush his windpipe.

As the Lord High Commander would later remember, it was the sounds that followed which disturbed him the most. Not the sight of a vengeful woman rushing at the king with hands arched into claws or the sight of her snapping off the head of the remaining torturer who dared stand in her way. Nor was it the sight of that bodiless head being tossed away as though a piece of refuse. It was the sound that would linger in Konan Krull’s mind and wake him on dark, bitter nights and propel him to a sitting position, sweat dripping from his handsome brow.

Popping. Creaking. Rasping. Scraping. The sinewy squeal of flesh and cartilage moving—bones breaking and elongating. Jawbones thrusting in a shriek that made the flesh crawl and the hairs stand up on the arms. Fingernails growing at an alarming rate only to become thick, horny plates curved with viciousness and as sharp as a dagger’s blade. Bristling fur popping out in squeals of expansion that moved in waves down a body dropped to all fours. Legs shortening, hips and shoulders re-jointing until there was no longer anything even vaguely human about what now stood in the woman’s place. With sharp fangs glistening with dripping saliva and red eyes glowing with unspeakable cruelty, the low growl would forever remain in Konan Krull’s nightmares to underscore all the sounds that came before.

King Abalam Robeus stared at the transformed woman, his eyes glazed, and his lips trembling. Slowly, he pushed himself from the chair. He took a step to the side and when the beastess did not spring, he braved another. Then another. A faint glimmer lit the king’s steady gaze. His chin came up.

“Nice wolfie,” the king whispered. “You don’t want to hurt Abbie.”

Krull switched his attention from the king to the beastess hunched a few feet away. The hackles on the creature’s back were standing straight up. Her head was lowered, glaring at the king from under thick, bushy brows. Another low growl came from deep within the wide, furry chest.

“No, you don’t want to hurt me,” the king repeated. He took another few steps. He jerked his eyes toward a battle-ax hanging upon the torture room wall then looked back at the beastess.

Krull, too, glanced toward the battle-ax but made no move to go after it to keep it out of the king’s hands. Instinct had warned him that he would distract the creature from its objective should he move so he stood where he was, drawing in quick, shallow breaths, his hands flexing at his side.

“Nice, nice wolf,” the king said. Then he turned to lunge for the battle-ax.

The beastess sprang up on her hind legs and propelled herself forward. Her front legs closed around the king’s hips and brought him down—a foot away from the protection of the weapon hanging on the wall.

Backing away from what he thought was about to happen, Krull realized his captain was awake and, with his head turned toward the scene about to unfold before him, smiling weakly.

With infinite care so as not to mar the flesh, the beastess ripped at the clothing of the king and bared his backside. His plump ass lifted into the air as he scrambled to break free. Screaming with fear—his dirt-packed fingernails scraping the stone floor in an attempt to gain purchase—Abalam Robeus was striving to move away from the danger behind him.

But the avenging creature pinning him had no intention of letting him go. With one savage swipe of its mouth, she tore off both the king’s nether cheeks. The agonized shriek that followed reverberated through the torture room and a sickening stench wafted through the air as the lower intestine pulled free of the man’s body along with his flesh.

“Gave new meaning to ripping him a new one,” Krull would later joke.

Aye
, Krull thought as he watched the unbelievable spectacle playing itself out—it was the sounds that would forever remain in his consciousness.

The yowls of agony ripping from the throat of Abalam Robeus, the snarls of the beastess as it devoured the thrashing man.

The smacking. The crunching. The wet sloshing noises that turned the stomach. The resonance of veins snapping and heart snatched from a splintered rib cage.

When the last agonized scream had faded and what was left of the king lay oozing upon the floor, it was the loud, piercing howl of conquest that broke from the creature’s throat that would become the stuff of nightmares for the Lord High Commander of the Venturian Forces.

And it would be many years before he could free himself of the sight of woman turning to beast then turning back again in the blink of an eye. As he stared at her, Kynthia transformed. Hunkered down before him—naked as the day she had been born and covered in the blood and gore of her vanquished enemy—she turned her head and looked up at Krull.

As brave as any man to walk the face of the earth, Konan Krull knew the only moment of sheer terror he had ever experienced as he stared into the brutal eyes of Leksi’s woman.

“Is…he…alive?” she managed to say, for the fangs had not yet retracted into her mouth.

Krull shifted his gaze from her to Leksi. “I think so,” he whispered.

Wearily, she got to her feet and padded over to her lover. She knew before she ever laid hands to him that he was dying. His eyes were open but were fixed, the pupils dilated.

“Come here, warrior,” she told Krull.

The Lord High Commander swallowed hard before taking a few steps toward her. When she glanced back at him with impatience, he felt his bowels threaten to loosen.

“Come here!” she ordered.

He would later tell his beloved Isabell that it wasn’t fear that propelled him forward as though shot from a cannon. It was the look in the woman’s eye.

“Take up that dagger,” she said, “and make a cut here.” She put her hand on Leksi’s back. “Not too deep. About half an inch.”

“What?” Krull questioned, his forehead creased.

“Just do it, fool!” she thundered.

Stooping to pick up the dagger one of the torturers had been using on Leksi, he took a quick look at the warrior and knew he was beyond help. Nevertheless, he did as he was ordered though cutting Helios hurt Krull’s heart.

Astounding Krull further, the woman stretched out on the floor on her belly. “Now cut me in the same place, but deeper.”

His mouth open, eyebrows raised, Krull was about to protest but again the look she shot him stopped him. He squatted down beside her and used the blade on her smooth back, wincing as she flinched from the pain.

“Spread the flesh apart until you can get your fingers inside the cut.”

Krull would later tell Kratos that he thought the woman had lost her mind. He would have balked at her demand if she had not been glaring up at him with eyes that dared him to disobey so he did as he was told. He told Kratos—

“
I had to make the incision wider to get my hand inside. I knew I was hurting her but it was what she wanted, what she demanded I do. She instructed me on how to pull the flesh apart and what to look for inside her. When I found that grayish-green honeycomb of wriggling bodies nested inside her, I had to turn away and throw up.
”

“Pull one out and be quick about it, Krull. He’s dying!”

The writhing thing he drew up from the woman’s body was the most disgusting, hideous thing he had ever seen. It lashed against his hand—its spiked tail slashing at his flesh—and the triangular head whipped back and forth. The slit of a mouth with its fierce rows of tiny teeth tried to bite him.

“Drop it on the warrior’s back,” she ordered. “Now!”

Krull did not give himself time to question that order. He wanted to get rid of the thing in his hand so he took a quick step to the table upon which Leksi lay bound and practically threw the loathsome creature onto the dying warrior’s back.

Staring with shocked eyes as wide as saucers, Krull watched the beast lift the upper portion of its body then dive into the warrior’s back, disappearing quickly.

“Is it in?” she asked weakly.

“Aye,” Krull replied, the gorge rising in his throat.

“Then leave us,” she said. “You should not be here when he Transitions for the first time.”

“Transitions?” he questioned.

Forcing his eyes from Leksi to the woman pushing herself up from the floor, Krull could not believe what he was seeing. The wide, deep cut he had made into the woman’s back had closed up as though it had never been made. Despite the caked blood around where the wound had been made, her flesh was as unblemished as the rest of her.