The night-slinker hissed and writhed, its long talons finding his face and leaving ugly, bloody scratches down one high cheekbone.
“Gods damn it!” Thorn snarled. “Son of a bitch!”
Suddenly, something strange happened to his eyes. The flames which she’d seen so often dancing in his mismatched irises seemed to spread outward, licking down his cheeks to the sides of his corded throat and then to his broad shoulders. Neh’sa watched in disbelief as tongues of fire stroked down his muscular arms and forearms, encircled his wrists and suddenly burst from the tips of his fingers.
“Oh my Goddess,” she breathed, scooting back against the wall, her own eyes wide. What was happening? How was he suddenly on fire? Was it some kind of spontaneous combustion? But he didn’t seem to be in pain, at least, not from the fire.
From the face and shoulders down, Thorn’s big, muscular body was wreathed in flames. But though the fire licked all over him, bathing the dim fresher in a savage, flickering light, they didn’t consume him—didn’t even hurt him as far as Neh’sa could see. It was like being on fire was his natural state or fire was his natural element.
The same couldn’t be said for the night-slinker. Scorch marks were appearing on its white hide like black fingerprints. It began to shriek—a high, unearthly, piercing sound that made Neh’sa clap her hands over her ears, fearful that it might burst her eardrums.
Still Thorn held it and wouldn’t let go.
“Die, you fucker,” she heard him growling in a deep, beast-like voice. “Die for daring to threaten my female. She’s mine, damn you! Mine!”
The last word ended in a roar and the fire licking from his big hands began to engulf the night-slinker’s head. It screamed and thrashed harder as its white hide turned black and shriveled up, its long, clawed feet kicking wildly, trying to disembowel its captor.
Somehow Thorn managed to avoid the kicking legs—he kept squeezing and burning until, as Neh’sa watched wide-eyed with horror, his strong hands crushed right through the creature’s wind-pipe and the intense heat of the flames severed its neck in a gout of black blood and ashes.
The night-slinker’s still burning head rolled across the fresher floor to come to a rest in the stall it had originally been hiding in while its long, bony body slumped to the floor, still twitching and spouting the foul, midnight-colored ichor it used for blood.
“Goddess,” Neh’sa breathed, her heart pounding. “Oh my Goddess.”
Thorn was kneeling on the pink marble floor, his eyes still burning, his arms wreathed in flames. He looked at her beseechingly and Neh’sa felt a great wave of painful terror and self-loathing rush through him.
“Neh-sa,” he whispered hoarsely. “Mistress, help me—I can’t turn it off. Can’t quench it on my own.”
* * * * *
It was the first flame-up he’d had in years and it was a bad one. Thorn could feel the fire starting to spread. If it engulfed his entire body it would have no place else to go but the building around him.
She’ll die, he thought desperately, staring at Neh’sa who was staring back at him with wide, horrified eyes. She’ll die because I tried to save her, to protect her. Just like before…
The memories of his past, which he had so often blocked and suppressed, began to flow like lava, seeping through the cracks in his conscious mind, making him feel sick and helpless to stop the fire, giving the flames that lived inside him the upper hand in his struggle to control them.
“A release,” he told Neh’sa desperately. “I need a release. It’s too much—I can feel it spreading…building up. If I can’t fucking control it, the fire is going to explode like a bomb!”
“A release?” She stared at him, uncomprehending for a moment. “Thorn I can’t…I don’t…don’t even have any equipment with me here. The silver wand I used last time is at home. I—”
“Fuck the wand,” he growled, hearing the desperation in his own voice and not liking it a bit. “It’s not pleasure I need now—it’s pain. I need something to focus me—something to help me regain control. Please, Neh-sa!” He stared at her with his burning eyes. “I’m going to burn this fucking club down around us if I can’t reign in the fire. I don’t…don’t want to do that. Don’t want to hurt you.”
Her eyes grew wide with understanding.
“This is what you were afraid of when I asked you to lose control,” she whispered. “This is what you feared would happen the last time when I used the wand on you.”
“Yes,” he ground out. Gods but the fire was strong! And so hungry. He hadn’t let it out for years—for over a decade. And now it was escaping the net he’d built around it, seeping out, getting away, hungry to consume everyone—to consume her.
Just like it did last time…no! Thorn tried to push the toxic memory away but it wouldn’t go. Every moment he felt his control slipping more…
“I’ll help you if I can.” Neh’sa’s voice cut through his anguish. “But I don’t know how.”
“The whip…the fire whip.” It was the only implement he could think of that was painful enough to do the job of re-caging the fire. “Flame…helps control… flame,” he ground out as Neh’sa started to shake her head. “Get the whip and use it on me—use it on my back.”
“I can’t do that!” she protested. “Your back…your limits—”
“Fuck limits,” Thorn growled hoarsely. “You think the fire inside me recognizes any limits? It’ll fucking burn this club and everyone in it to ash if it gets the chance. Please, Neh-sa—I can’t hold on much longer!”
By now he wasn’t even sure he could wait for the time it took her to run get the fire whip. The flames were spreading down the sides of his body, trying to take over.
Suddenly, his wildly searching eyes fell on the branding iron, lying abandoned in the corner of the fresher. It was still cherry-red with heat. Just looking at it made the fire inside him recoil…which was how Thorn knew he had found his answer.
“The iron,” he said hoarsely, pointing one flaming finger at it. “Neh’sa, there’s no time for the whip—use the branding iron instead. Hurry!”
Her eyes followed his and slowly—much too slowly for Thorn’s taste—she walked over and picked it up. She stared at the glowing brand at the end, a look of distaste coming over her lovely face.
“Thorn, I can’t—”
“Do it!” he roared at her. “Do it before the fire kills you! Before it kills you the way it killed her!”
A look of understanding and horror, sorrow and pain, passed over Neh’sa’s lovely features. Then her expression hardened into a determined stare and she stepped forward, the iron held in one hand. She spoke one word.
“Where?”
“Here.” Thorn turned from her, baring his back where he could feel the flames licking, trying to take over. But though they were spreading down his sides, and lapping around the back of his neck, there was still a cool spot between his shoulder blades—the scarred place where the fire whip had fallen during torture.
“I don’t want to do this,” he heard Neh’sa say, her words squeezed tight with tears.
And then the searing pain of the hot iron branding his back drove everything else out of his head. Thorn let out an agonized roar as the fire abruptly went out, fleeing back inside him as the burning catharsis of the brand forced it to retreat.
Gods, he thought, feeling his stomach fist into a knot as cold as the fire had been hot. Now she knows what I really am—what I’m capable of. Now she’ll hate me.
* * * * *
Thorn collapsed on the floor, panting and spent. The supernatural flames that had been threatening to take over his entire body had gone out as suddenly as they had ignited.
He was right, Neh’sa thought with a distracted kind of horror. He did need a kind of release in order to control them.
But it was a release she would have denied him if she could have—not because she didn’t want him to find relief but because she’d felt the wave of pure agony that went thro
ugh him when she placed the hot brand.
She pulled the glowing metal away from his body, noticing with a kind of sick horror how her crest was now stamped into the scarred skin of his back. Those scars which had started to fade and loosen with her nightly application of salve were nothing compared to the angry, red, raised lines of ownership which marred his flesh now.
Goddess, what have I done? she thought, feeling ill. What have I done?
But she’d had to do it—right? He’d said the fire would spread, that the whole club would burn. And he’d been right—if it had spread to the dance floor with the flammable spiked dream-gas…
“What have you done? My night-slinker! My body-slave!”
Lady Wraith’neck’s piercing shriek jerked Neh’sa out of the dreamy horror she’d somehow fallen into. She looked up to see the other Mistress, along with several other attendees of the banquet, staring at the carnage left on the fresher floor.
“I…he…” She motioned helplessly with the still hot branding iron at the body of the night-slinker which lay twitching in a pool of black blood.
“Your fucking “body-slave” attacked my Mistress,” Thorn growled, raising his head and Neh’sa could see the bright sparks in his eyes beginning to dance threateningly again. “I barely got here in time to save her.”
“Liar! How dare you lie to me, slave!” Lady Wraith’neck exclaimed, turning red in the face. She glared at Neh’sa. “I can see what really happened here—you and your savage beast of a body-slave came in here for some pain-play and my poor Slinker got in the way. So you had your Kindred cut off his head just for fun—just for the sadistic pleasure of killing him!”
“No!” Neh’sa exclaimed, feeling sick. “No, I would never—”
“Then why is the branding iron in your hand and your brand burned into your slave’s back?” Lady Wraith’neck demanded. A slow, cruel smile curved her thin lips. “You claim to be so sweet and kind and tell everyone that pain collars and branding irons are wrong but look at you now, Neh’sanna—your secret perversion is finally exposed!”
“No!” Neh’sa gasped again. The branding iron fell from her nerveless fingers to clang on the fresher floor and she backed away from it, the way she would have backed away from a venomous animal. “I swear, I wouldn’t—”
“Except you did!” There was a vicious kind of triumph in Lady Wraith’neck’s yellowish eyes. “I never thought you’d use that branding iron when I gave it to you, Neh’sanna—not with your pious, goody-goody, saintly ways but it looks like you’re just like the rest of us. You couldn’t wait to mark that big brute as your own, could you?”
“It’s not like that,” Neh’sa protested. “I wouldn’t—”
“She didn’t brand me because she wanted to—I begged her to do it.” Thorn’s deep voice cut through the babble of raised female voices as more and more Mistresses from the banquet crowded into the fresher to see the awful scene. He rose from his crouched position on the floor and faced the crowd fearlessly.
“You what?” Lady Wraith’neck narrowed her eyes. “You lie! No slave asks to be branded. They hate and fear it.” She smirked. “That’s half the fun of it.”
“I’m not lying.” Thorn glared at her, staring her straight in the eyes as a slave was never supposed to do. “I wanted to be marked by my Mistress—to be owned by her completely. Because—”
He stopped abruptly and Neh’sa saw his big hands, so lately wreathed in flames, clenching and unclenching at his side.
“Because…?” Lady Wraith’neck prompted. “Do go on, slave. You’re weaving such an entertaining tale—you must let us hear the end of it. Why would you possibly ask your Mistress to brand you?”
“Because then I knew she couldn’t sell me,” Thorn burst out. “I knew no other Mistress would want me once Neh’sa’s permanent brand was on me. And I…” He cleared his throat. “I would rather die than be parted from her. The pain of the brand was a small price to pay to be certain I would be hers forever.” He walked over to Neh’sa and dropped to his knees before her. “I’m yours, Mistress,” he murmured, bowing his head. “Yours forever now.”
“Oh Thorn…” Neh’sa felt tears stinging her eyes, though she knew he must be putting on an act for Lady Wraith’neck’s benefit.
He looked up at her and for a moment, her certainty that he was acting was shaken. The expression in his mismatched eyes was so earnest, so heartbreakingly real.
“Mistress,” he whispered. “Neh’sa…I don’t deserve to be owned by you but still…I’m yours. Will you have me?”
Neh’sa opened her mouth, not certain what would come out. But just then, a new voice rose above the murmuring of the crowd.
“What’s this? What’s all this commotion?” Suddenly Lady Thrust’much was pushing her way into the crowded fresher. For an older female, she certainly was vigorous, Neh’sa thought wryly.
The Grande Dame of the Council narrowed her faded blue eyes as she took in the carnage on the pink marble floor, now stained red and black with blood from both body-slaves.
“What happened here?” she demanded. “What in the Goddess’s name went on?”
A rush of competing voices rose to try and explain but Lady Wraith’neck’s was the loudest.
“She had her body-slave kill mine! My poor Slinker who I had owned for just a few days. And Lady Thrust’much, this is the second such incident to happen in barely a solar week! This same body-slave also maimed my Clopsian at one of those ridiculous Devotion ceremonies Neh’sanna is always holding at her domicile.”
“Untrue!” Neh’sa protested, raising her voice. “Both times in question Lady Wraith’neck lost control of her body-slaves and they attacked me. Look at that creature—” She pointed at the corpse of the night-slinker. “She brought it in here in restraints because it was so obviously dangerous. Where are the restraints now? Somehow it got free and came stalking me!”
“Lies!” Lady Wraith’neck bugled. “She lies with every word she speaks! Lady Thrust’much, I demand a private hearing on this matter. Neh’sanna owes me hundreds of thousands of credits for the property damage she has cost me this past week!”
“I never—” Neh’sa began but Lady Thrust’much’s voice cut her off.
“Enough, the two of you!” She glared back and forth between Neh’sa and Lady Wraith’neck. “I want you both at my domicile tomorrow at midday—don’t be late. We’ll settle this once and for all. Until then, say and do nothing to each other. I will decide this matter.”
Without waiting to hear their replies, she swept grandly from the room and, at one imperious gesture of her hand, most of the other Mistresses followed.
Soon only Neh’sa, Thorn, and Lady Wraith’neck were left in the blood-smeared fresher.
“Well, well…I suppose we’ll see what happens tomorrow.” Lady Wraith’neck was smirking as though she’d already won the conflict.
It occurred to Neh’sa that she didn’t look nearly so outraged and offended now that her audience was gone. In fact, she had a smug, complacent look on her face. Like a feline that had gotten the laska cream.
“I suppose we will,” she said grimly. Gods, so much had happened she felt completely worn out! Looking at Thorn, she realized she needed to get him home and take care of him. There were long, bloody scratches down his broad chest, both thighs, and his high right cheekbone.
Not to mention that ugly brand on his back, whispered a nasty little voice in her head. The one you gave him.
Neh’sa didn’t want to think about that, even though she could feel his pain—the sharp, stinging ache of a deep burn that won’t be soothed.
In addition to treating his injuries, she also needed to get some answers. Things had happened in the fresher tonight that she had no reasonable explanation for. Clearly there was more to her big Kindred than met the eye. She needed to know what he was hiding.
“Come, Thorn,” she said tiredly. “We must go home.”
“Yes, go home, Neh’sanna,” Lady Wraith’ ne
ck sneered. “Enjoy the company of that brute of a body-slave of yours. We all know what you’re going to do with him once you get him alone.”
“I’m going to heal the wounds your creature put on him while he was saving my life,” Neh’sa snapped. “Now get out of my way.”
She pushed past the other Mistress with Thorn behind her, glaring at Lady Wraith’neck, a low growl rising in his throat though he said nothing.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Lady Wraith’neck called after her. “Have him as many times as he can rise for you tonight because it’s going to be your last.”
Her words troubled Neh’sa, but she refused to rise to the bait.
“Come, Thorn,” she murmured, ignoring the other Mistress. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“All right, Thorn—it’s time we talked.”
Those were the words Thorn had been dreading but he couldn’t say he was surprised to hear them. Neh’sa had seen things tonight—things which demanded an explanation.
The question was, exactly how much should he tell her?
I can’t tell her about my mission, he decided firmly. That secret is not mine to tell. But there are other things she must know.
Things he had kept buried and hidden even from himself for years. He felt them, floating to the surface of his mind like the corpses of murder victims that refused to stay dead.
“In fact, I think it’s past time you offered me some answers,” Neh’sa said sternly, interrupting his morbid thoughts as she sponged blood off the long, ragged claw marks on his cheek and chest and began to heal him with her power.
She had put him straight into the bath as soon as they got home, which surprised Thorn—he would have thought she’d be afraid to touch him after what she had seen. But his Mistress was courageous as always.
It’s one reason you love her—her unfailing courage, whispered a little voice in his head. Thorn pushed it away. He couldn’t love Neh’sa, no matter how brilliant or brave or beautiful she was. His mission didn’t allow for love—only for duty.
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