by Naomi Lucas
She made quick work stashing her sword and finding a grouping of vines against the wall strong enough to hold her weight. As if barghests snapped at her heels, she climbed using the last of her rapidly diminishing energy. The hedge wall tapered at the top and she clenched her jaw, refusing to let it deter her. She hauled herself over it to find a shallow hollow. The foliage thickened and the vines were tangled in mass where it had collected within.
Aldora wasted no time as she crawled inside, forcing the mass to the sides and then in front of her to hide behind. She drew her legs to her chest.
The thorny vines twirled like slow-moving snakes around her frame and penetrated her flesh. She squeezed her eyes shut.
I’ll endure it. Endure it. Just long enough until the horrible sounds go away. I’ve climbed trees my whole life, I can climb the wall.
I need to regroup, to wait, and hide until it’s light out. She would head for the barrier then. It’s not far. Aldora could almost see it through the moonlight and mist. She just needed time to think clearly and come up with a plan that wasn’t fueled by desperation and fear before she made the journey over the tops of the hedges and tried for the other side. Try or die.
I can do this.
She hugged her legs tightly. Time passed in a haze as the vines tightened around her, leaving her skin raw with pain. Her thoughts clouded as her struggling pants softened, her body relaxed a little more with each minute, and she succumbed to the feel of bugs crawling over her skin.
Until something grabbed her foot and yanked her to the labyrinth ground.
Chapter Six
***
Vedikus pulled the female into his arms and gripped her to his chest, pressing his hand over her mouth. She thrashed against him, but her struggles were weak, disjointed. She groaned under his fingers and squirmed as he positioned her to the ground to subdue her. When he had her locked in place, he bent over to meet her wild gaze.
Wildcat. Angry and unthinking. Her eyes narrowed above his hand and he knew she recognized him. The disgust that filled them was only diminished with caution. The female resisted and kicked her legs and he moved to straddle them.
What am I going to do with her? Now that he had caught her, his next step eluded him. Get us away from here. Vedikus looked briefly at the walls on either side. He could see them more clearly, even in the darkness, than he had in years. And he had been on this world for more years than he could count. It’s unsafe here.
It was because of her. His eyes moved back to the female trapped beneath him.
“Do you hear that?” he asked, leaning closer to her ear. She stilled for a moment and settled, her focus apparent. She was obeying him. He grasped her tighter. “Those are the sounds of approaching enemies, the beat of several orc drums. If you can hear them, then you’re too close, but what you don’t hear is far more terrifying.” Vedikus pressed into her, his lips hovering above her ear, and he felt the blood of those he’d defeated drip off him and onto her flesh, christening her first night in the mist.
She had no idea how fortunate she was.
“What you don’t hear are the barghests prowling closer, just down the path, or the goblins that await in the same vines you were in, the ghosts that will as likely kill you as they would possess you. A sacrifice happened here tonight and every creature within leagues will know by sunrise. Those who are addicted to human blood will hunt for you relentlessly. Some monsters never give up. I don’t.” He lifted up slightly. “Will you scream?”
The female shook her head and he removed his hand from her mouth. The soft pucker of her lips, hot and wet, was the last his palm felt before he rubbed it on his loincloth.
“Why are you doing this?” she choked out.
“To keep you alive.”
He should get up, unpin her, and lead her from this place, but he couldn’t yet bring himself to move. She was soft and pliant under his warrior-hewn body and cushioned him everywhere he pressed and touched. So easily breakable, so easily conquered, that it made him question his sanity. How was he going to get her back to the Bathyr alive?
When his sire caught his mother many years ago, he never told Vedikus or his other sons how he had done it, only that it was with unrelenting determination and insatiable need. His sire had been crazed with exerting his control and trained his spawn to be the same way, beating them until it reached the point of evil.
She peered up at him warily, her face now marred with the dirt and blood from his hand. “Alive for what?”
Vedikus clenched his fist, replacing the feel of her lips, and stood, but not before he grasped her and hauled her up with him. He held her upright as she found her footing. He knew how soft and weak human feet were.
“So you can be of use to me and my brothers...” Branches rustled down the path from which they had come, and he raised his hand to quiet the female. A crackle and thump were followed by a groan. Vedikus settled his hand over the handle of his axe. He stared into the darkness from whence it came and waited for the attack.
Seconds passed without another noise. He dropped his hand and looked back in her direction. “No more talking. We need to leave now before the others stop killing each other and start searching for you,” he whispered.
She didn’t respond. He couldn’t see her face in the shadows but he couldn’t afford to wait much longer and assuage his curiosity. He needed to know that she wouldn’t run or scream or fight him every step of the way.
When he was about to throw her over his shoulder, she turned up her face, halting him.
Her hand grasped his arm, but he could not look away from her face in the filtered moonlight.
Why is she touching me? Vedikus narrowed his eyes.
“I want to return home,” she breathed with every last sorrowfully wistful note she had. He recognized the vulnerability in her plea, and it made him want to be a hero for a single sun-glimpsed moment in time.
But heroes died. They were fools.
He would always choose a hungering, festering life over death. Death meant an end to glory.
The skin where she clutched his arm burned. Vedikus growled out a burst of steam and flung her hand away.
“You have no home now, female, but you have your life and it is now mine. It will be mine until you breathe your last breath, and you will remain mine even when your heart stops beating and your blood is no longer fresh. Because even in death, there’s no escape, no rest, only survival. This world will take it all if the brutal don’t take it first, as I’ve taken you.” Steam escaped his lips as he pointed to the barrier that loomed like a poison cloud above the paths and rotting trees. “The hundred dead behind us will grow until the labyrinth is impassible, do you understand? If you approach those walls, you’ll have to walk over those bodies... and if you fall before the top, you’ll land within their moldering husks and they will have won.”
The female’s mouth parted and he grasped her neck. “Choose your words carefully.”
“I don’t want them to win,” she said, straightening, jerking out of his hold. The sadness from before was now gone.
He waited a moment before accepting her answer; there was no time to read into her response. Already, he could feel the thickening of the air around them, drawing non-sentient and malicious beings closer. He had to get her away before every step became a battle.
“No,” Vedikus laughed softly. “No one wants them to win.”
He reached for the rope around his hips.
***
The numbness that had kept her going seeped out of her all at once. It was a difficult stab of reality. Aldora had seen her life pass before her eyes as she laid flat under the beast, as his musky, sweaty smell crashed into her nose, and his face hovered above her own. The heat of his body pressed against hers had nearly suffocated the life from her lungs.
Now, she was at the end of the rope he’d tied around her waist. She’d pulled at the cord, trying to release herself, had even taken her dagger and tried to cut it, but it wasn’t l
ike the bindings of her world. Her captor had simply chuckled at her efforts.
“It’s made from the wheat grown by where I live and threaded with witch hair. You will not be free of it as you will not be free of me.”
There was barely two feet of give between them and he kept it taut, tugging her forward with every step.
He trusted her as much as she trusted him. Not at all.
They walked for an indeterminate amount of time and she didn’t bother keeping track. She attempted to briefly, but everything around her remained shrouded in darkness, and after she lost sight of the giant wall, she stopped trying. There was nothing but twisted growth and forked passageways with every step and nothing to keep her oriented to their whereabouts.
Aldora held onto the straps across the beast’s back and used them as leverage to keep her moving. When her strength waned, she took advantage of his. There was no sound between them but the crunch of his feet to the ground. She knew better than to speak at a time like this. Not with her ears already filled with every sort of sound that meant monsters were nearby. Even now, the persistent thunder of drums lingered in the distance.
Her eyes drifted to the plumes of dust below, unable to make out what about her captor made him crush the dirt.
Did she want to know what held her? Her nails dug into his buckle. He’d taken her away from her only hope of escape but he had also kept her alive. Her instincts warred, and the more she stared at the moving outline of his horns, the more her uncertainty grew.
He’s not an Orc. Her knowledge of orcs, if the stories had been correct, was that they were muscled, barbaric men with tusks and blunt features. They ate humans, like her, and their hunger for flesh was endless. Orcs travel in groups.
Aldora squeezed her eyes shut and let the shadow drag her forward a few steps.
He wasn’t a hobgoblin. That much was apparent. He had killed many prior to her capture and more as he led her away. Their bodies were half her size and contorted in unusual ways.
They hid in the foliage—like he had said—and also attacked in groups. They were also easily overpowered if isolated from their comrades. Any knowledge she learned now could save her life later.
But it was her captor’s horns and his size that really made him stand out. He was obviously not a centaur or a barghest, and she had not seen another monster with horns since being pushed into the labyrinth, at least she had not glimpsed another in the gloom.
He stopped suddenly and she fell into his back. His wet and torn back. Aldora leapt away.
He placed his hand over the weapon hanging from his side and she sucked in a breath, waiting for another attack. She took a half-step closer to him, her own hands poised on his back, and braced her feet apart in case she needed to move quickly. Minutes went by and nothing happened.
She strained to hear what he sensed.
Nothing. Nothing but the creeping, gruff night noises that had yet to stop. She pressed her lips together. His muscles moved under her palms.
The smell of his flesh refilled her nostrils, accompanied by the thick scent of iron and melted metal that reminded her of the blacksmith’s shop. Aldora sucked it in, so thick it left a residue that she knew would remain for hours. It wasn’t unpleasant—except for the blood—but it was cloying, and the longer she breathed it in, the more it seemed like it was taking away her own smell, eating it up and overpowering it.
She rubbed her nose.
He turned toward her and loosened the leash that bound her, allowing the rope to droop between them. Aldora lifted her gaze to his face while still rubbing her nose.
“We’re being followed,” he said loud enough for only her to hear.
She licked her dry lips. “Is that...bad for me or for you?”
“Bad? No, more an annoyance, but would you risk another at this witching hour?”
Aldora wasn’t sure if she would. “I don’t know,” she said behind her hands. She still could not smell herself.
“You don’t want to know.”
“No, I don’t want to know. I want to go home,” she agreed, turning her head to the side. “I don’t want to know you or anything else about this place. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“And yet, here you are, already losing your sense of smell.”
She flinched and looked back at him. “How do you know?”
“It happens to all humans after breathing in the curse. Your blood is already tainting. We must keep moving.”
His words filled her with dread. When the mist spread into Savadon’s lands, all was lost within them. It would consume all that it touches and change it, twist it, make it into something new and unnatural. Was she going to lose herself too? It hadn’t occurred to her until now that there could be more to its spread, that there could be dominion.
The beast turned its back to her and pulled on the rope, tugging her whole body forward. Aldora was forced to drop her hands to his belted cord and follow.
“I don’t understand. What’s happening to me?”
“You’re adapting, degrading, and fast. Soon, your blood will be as corrupted as mine. Given a month’s time, you’ll be nothing more than a thrall.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“Yes.”
Aldora tightened her grip and tugged when he kept walking. “Will you stop it?”
“I don’t have the right supplies on me.” He continued to pull her along and she tripped after him. “But I will stop it.”
His words gave her pause. She had expected a fight, had expected him to make her beg or worse, and for a few steps, she followed him meekly, wondering at his game. He had not hurt her, but he had lured her in with his voice, had not threatened her except with the unknown but had taken her far away from the barrier and kept her from returning home.
He was the only thing she smelled now.
Aldora stared at his back, resolving that she had no choice but to stay tied to his body.
They continued walking through the night, sometimes stopping to hide in hidden alcoves and brush, and her thoughts wavered between what was following them, and what was going to happen to her now. The land took a different shape and texture under her boots, becoming more sodden with each step. They passed piles of bones and fresh corpses, and the farther they traveled from Savadon, the denser the mist became. The creatures that she had seen hours prior had not re-appeared but she could still hear them.
When the darkness began to fade and a filmy, almost burgundy and violet vapor lit the labyrinth around her, her endurance suddenly vanished. The wounds that had been inflicted upon her drained what was left inside, and she could still feel blood trickling from the backs of her wrists where the clots had reopened. Aldora could no longer pick her feet up, and she had given in to lean against her captor, pressing her cheek, sometimes her forehead to his spine. There was a line of hair that traveled it that tickled her nose.
She wasn’t aware that she could see until he stopped and lifted her into his arms. It wasn’t comfortable—his body was too hard—but she had no complaints; nothing left her mouth but a short gasp for fresh air as she found his face. Aldora inhaled.
Their eyes caught, but only briefly.
Her heart threatened to burst from her chest.
He was no longer a horned shadow but a flesh and blood being that appeared human, but not. His features were animalistic and blunted, as if he’d been born malformed, part beast, part man. Like a centaur but with features that blended rather than split right down the middle.
His ears stuck out under where his horns met his scalp, jutting out from the sides of his temple. They rose up slightly until they tapered into points. One flicked under her perusal.
He watched her as she studied him, too shocked to do anything else. If she cared for stealth it would’ve made her uneasy, but they were way beyond that now. Her booted feet swung with each of his tumultuous steps. No, the time for stealth had vanished with the dawn.
His forehead was large and wide to fit his horns and
his nose swept down between two very human eyes. His nostrils flared and small puffs of steam released.
She’d felt it last night but now she knew where it came from. His face. Her insides squirmed. She was suddenly aware of how he clutched her to his chest.
Aldora tore her eyes from his face and moved to his shoulders, where their differences only grew. He had no real neck, or what there was of one was less defined. She blinked out the blurring in her eyes. It was either too thick and sinewed to be mistaken as part of his shoulders or his shoulders started from the back of his head and swept into a bulging, rippling cord of overlapping muscle.
What is he, if not a demon?
There was no way her hands would ever wrap around his throat, not that she would ever try. If she had to kill him, she’d go about it in a more effective manner. The straight, sharp edge of the dagger she had looted came to mind, solid within the side of her boot.
“Your eyes match your hair.”
Aldora stiffened, thought his words over, and then nodded. “Yes.”
His were black.
“Not all humans share the same features,” he continued, his thick lips straightening. She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“No. We’re all different,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“I-I don’t know. We get our looks from our parents and their lineage.” She reached up to cup her neck, still stuck on his lack of one. “Both my parents have brown hair and eyes, so it would make sense for me to be born with brown hair and eyes.”
“I’ve seen a human with blue eyes.”
Another human? “You have? There are others alive, here in the labyrinth?”
He grunted. “Killing you is detrimental. There are others, but far away and far from us.”
“And what about the one with blue eyes?” she asked, hopeful. “If you’ve seen them once, surely you can see them again. You killed countless last night...”
His nostrils flared for an instant then receded. “No.”
Please. “No?” Her brow furrowed.
“They’re dead,” he snapped. Her gaze drifted back to his face.