by T. A. Grey
The crackling of a beast.
It sounded further away now. Was it prowling around the room? A dog, maybe?
A thump came from behind him. Far too close for comfort. How many of them were there? He quickly thought to plan his best chance for survival.
Patrick spun around, blindly, and stabbed forward, thrusting his blade in a perfect lunge. His blade hit something meaty and sank deep.
An unnerving, strangled shriek came from beyond— from the creature who hung in the shadows unseen. Patrick pulled his blade back and moved to lunge again, hoping to find a killing blow—because that’s what this had turned into—a fight to the death. With whatever unknown creature he fought.
He thrust—his sword finding nothing but air. A moment of panic flared at his error.
And then a great, hulking, hairy limb came out of the air, striking him in the head with the power of a hammer’s blow. Patrick crashed into the bookcase, as he hit his leg bent at a wrong angle. Crack!
Like celery snapping, his limb bent. Patrick shouted in pain as his shin snapped clean in half. Books crashed to the floor, loud explosions disturbing the silence. His vision tunneled, turning black and fuzzy.
In the crash, his sword had fallen from his hand. The floor creaked as the beast came closer. Shaking, a nasty mixture of fear and anger sent Patrick scrambling forward on his stomach to reach his blade. Just out of reach! He pushed harder, using his elbow to pull him closer to the blade. Please, Lord, let him reach it in time. He didn’t want to die here. Not like this!
His fingertips scraped the leather handle. A smile curled his lips, victory so close he could taste its sweet, heady essence.
“Kekekekekekekekekekek.”
The rancid odor of dead, eaten flesh breathed a hot cloud over Patrick’s face.
A heavy, hairy paw slammed down on the leather handle. Patrick made one last-ditch effort to grab his sword, his wiggling fingers stretching past the point of agony to reach. The beast growled and kicked the sword away. It tumbled, metal on stone, out of reach and out of sight.
Patrick backed up, his split leg impeding him, making him no better than a toddler waddling on his stomach to crawl around.
The beast stepped over him, and for the first time, Patrick saw what it was up close.
“God, no,” he breathed.
Then, with a soft growl, the beast’s paw clawed across Patrick’s face. Raw agony ensued as blood spurted from gashes. Pain, swelling, blood rushing; then, darkness overtook him.
Chapter 12
“The strongest male possessing greatest wit and athleticism shall endeavor to claim fertile females during the Claiming; and thus sow their fruitful seeds in the womb and bear children for the kingdom.” -From Tarlèan Claiming Law, Article XII, Section 2.C.
Ryon waited in attendance for the ceremony to start with King Lyle, the king’s steward, and the king’s royal guard on top of the podium in the center of the arena. The Claiming Ceremony was set to begin in mere minutes.
Anticipation burned in his veins with fiery adrenaline, the kind he felt in the midst of a fight, pumping him up until he couldn’t remain still. He needed to fight, to explode, to move and expend the excess energy stored up in his body. Bullet wound or not, Ryon was fighting for Penelope today. And he planned to win, no matter what.
They chanted his name from the tops of their lungs. Beer and wine was drank all around in bottomless cups. The celebration had not even started yet, but smiles and laughter went around freely.
Finally, the moment came. Lyle stood at the podium and held up his hands to quiet the crowd. The energy in the building was contagious. Uncontrollable.
“Shall we begin?” King Lyle began in a magnificent speech.
“Aye, aye, aye!” came the crowd’s answer.
Lyle smiled at the audience. “Today, we mark the first day of the Claiming Season, and we do so with a female worthy of regard. You might know her as the dancing queen, a graceful and elegant ballet dancer who has enraptured many us for years with her intricate performances. Tonight, twenty-eight year old Penelope Farris will be offered for Claiming. Any males who wish to claim her as husband, as mate, as partner and as equals—step forward now.”
The crowd roared to such a deafening degree, Ryon wasn’t sure they heard the king’s final, parting words. “And may the rightful champion win!”
“Bring out Penelope Farris. All male challengers, step forward now, or forever keep your silence,” Lyle proclaimed.
Ryon stood on the dusty dirt of the arena floor, surprisingly unaccompanied. His gut niggled with apprehension, a tingling sensation that, once stirred, seemed to grow with exponential force. Where was the duke who had so boldly professed to want to fight for Penelope’s hand at the Claiming? After much discussion with Lyle, Ryon had come to the conclusion that it was likely the duke had planned the assignation attempt on his life. Perhaps, after seeing Ryon very much alive, he’d chickened out of the battle. After all, that’s why Patrick had wanted to avoid physical combat. Because Ryon would win.
Seconds ticked by and the trumpeters tooted the Arrival March of the Claiming Progression where Penelope would stroll down the aisle. Ryon finally comprehended that sinking feeling in his gut was earned.
Something was wrong.
Where was Penelope?
The little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, prickling.
He wasn’t the first to notice that something was not right. The crowd grew quiet, more whispers being thrown about than the previous exhausted jubilations. The procession played but no one came out.
“Where is the dancer?”
“Did she run away?”
King Hargrowe had sat back on his throne, but upon realizing Penelope was not strolling out of the passageway as she was supposed to, Lyle went back to the podium to repeat his message. Perhaps thinking she hadn’t heard him?
“Bring out Penelope Farris for the Claiming!”
All eyes went to the narrow, marble tunnel that all female participants of the Claiming used. Not even a shadow stirred.
Ryon didn’t even think. He was past the point of intelligent thought. He ran straight to her dressing room past the two bewildered guards standing outside her hallway.
“Where is she?” he growled, shouting at them.
They shared a confused glance. “Lady Farris?” one of them began. “She’s in her dressing room.”
Ryon might have relaxed under other circumstances, but either way, something was wrong. He ran to her room, the door flying open in his wake. His eyes devoured the room, studying every miniscule detail he could in the span of seconds.
Moments later he heard Lyle and the metal-grating steps of his armor-wearing guards shuffling close behind.
“What’s going on?” Lyle asked, concerned.
“She’s gone.” Ryon announced. Already his mind churning for possibilities.
Lyle peeked into the dressing room to find exactly what Ryon had—a room flipped apart, torn asunder; couch cushions on the floor, the glass table broken into crushed shards, and a shelf that had held a tray of uneaten food lie smashed on the floor. The faintest imprint from a footprint was smashed into an uneaten piece of bread.
Blood splattered on the ground in droplets and smears. Not enough to hint at a murder, but possibly an injury. Was it hers? The thought made his blood boil, and his lip curl. Anyone who dared to lay a finger upon her would face ruthless retaliation.
And there would be much of blood to show for it.
“Send out an alert!” Lyle shouted to his guards. “Penelope Farris is missing. I want her found now!” They quickly dispersed at his orders.
Ryon squatted down next the footprint. Something odd about it caught his attention. He wasn’t sure what was strange about it, but then Ryon slowly stood. “Lyle, what does this look like?”
Lyle, flustered with all the chaos, came and looked. He peered only a moment. “Not quite a footprint. Maybe the attacker wasn’t wearing shoes?”
&n
bsp; Ah, so perhaps that was it.
Studying it some more, Ryon shook his head. No, but that couldn’t be it. It wasn’t that the individual didn’t have a shoe on, but that…it wasn’t a foot.
Ryon froze stiff.
A moment later the sound of pure terror came.
Hard, banging rings sounded from across the kingdom. Their booming rings were a dire warning: they were under attack.
Right now.
Only one creature had ever attacked the Tarlèan kingdom. Now Ryon understood with certainty what he’d been staring at. Not a foot print at all, but a paw print.
“The Avagarians are here,” Ryon said with dead stillness.
Screams, the terrified shouts of mothers and frightened, crying children sounded in the arena above them. Followed by twenty-thousand panicked people trying to rush home to safety. Everyone knew the sickening sound of the war bells. It’d been many years since they had to hear their deafening blows.
An explosion blew in the distance. A bomb, detonated.
How clever, he realized. The Avagarians attacked them while the majority of their people were far away from the eastern wall, while most of the guards were here and not there.
He had to focus, get his head and thoughts together. And first, he had to find Penelope. King Lyle was already issuing orders to deploy troops to the region and borders.
“It’s war time,” King Lyle said.
Indeed, it was.
Chapter 13
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Lysse wished she could scream those words from the tops of her lungs. She actually shook with rage, but instead of screaming, she issued her question in a harsh whisper. The last thing they needed was to be overheard by one of the Tarlèans running around in chaos.
God, those ringing war bells. How annoying. She wished someone would shut them up.
Her entourage hadn’t made it far enough away from the arena to satisfy her. They’d taken shelter deep in the woods. This had been part of her original plan. The other little thing, not so much.
Of course, it wasn’t a little thing at all, but quite a big problem.
Penelope Farris, that stupid ballet dancer, lie unconscious on the ground. Her dress was filthy from being dragged through mud and grass and over sharp rocks—none too gently either. She’d have a few bruises on top of the purple and black one already forming below her right eye from where Lazgul had hit her.
Lazgul. Another idiot she had to deal with. Her plan had been complex but simple enough. Yet, trust the Avagarians to ruin things for her. The situation was risky enough as it was without this added complication.
“All you had to do was knock her out at the arena and leave her. Not bring her with you!” She seethed with white-hot fury, breaths panting. Her hands were squeezed into sweaty fists, aching to hit something and relieve the pent-up steam ready to burst inside her. “This wasn’t the plan.”
Lazgul. Hovering at nearly 7’ tall, the hairy creature was built of sinew, with leathery ebony skin covered in short, crisp hairs which tickled to the touch. His black snout snorted at the air, sweat droplets sliding off as he snarled and shook his head like a dog, his long red tongue lolling out of his mouth from between sharp canine teeth.
An Avagarian in the flesh. The beastly creature that made up half of what lie deep inside her. Lysse had never had an easy life. She’d had to fight, steal, and sneak for every scrap of ground she’d ever earned. And earned she did.
Her mother was the by-product of a rape of an Avagarian beast with a human woman. It happened years before the stone wall was erected to divide the Tarlèans and Avagarians. The woman, her mother, a mere seamstress, gave birth to her in the decrepit shed she’d called a home. Soon after the birth, her mother swiftly ended her own life with a gunshot blast to the head. Lysse had been three hours old.
She’d been left there alone for days before anyone noticed. Lysse liked to think that it was during those long hours as a hungry, screaming infant, that she’d grown an iron wall around her heart. She needed to in order to survive. She couldn’t afford empathy. Empathy, she learned, got her nothing but pain in return for her sacrifices. It took thinking differently, it meant being selfish, but Lysse enjoyed her risky life and the rewards it reaped.
She was going to be queen one day.
The ultimate reward for her struggles. For her years of hard work.
Except—Lysse stared down at the prone female—and her jaw ground in irritation.
“Worthless, Ava.”
Lazgul growled, his great, muscular chest heaving at the insult. With each breath the hulking monstrosity took, she could see its incredible pectoral muscles bunching and flexing. So much strength, so deadly.
“Do close your mouth when you’re breathing,” she snapped. “I don’t need to smell your heinous breath from here.”
The beast, a greatly feared soldier for the Avagarians, didn’t back down at her insults, but rather stepped close enough to tower above her. Lysse looked quite petite compared to the beast. She might not be as strong as they were, even in her Avagarian form, but she wasn’t a weak human either.
She was a half-breed. Which placed her somewhere special in between the two powers.
“Why on Earth did you bring her with you? We don’t need her. If anything, you’ve made things worse. The general will want to find her. He’s good at his job, you imbecile. You could lead him right to us.”
With dark spiked hair sticking up from his forehead, Lazgul shook his heavy head side to side, much as a dog did in the rain. His mouth moved as he spoke at length. He struggled to form the words while transformed as a beast. Avagarians were different from humans, though they could transform into a human-like state. They may resemble humans, but they clearly were very different.
And the sound Lazgul made was different from a human’s voice, coming from the back of the throat; the words were muffled, unclear.
“Want pretty female. I take,” Lazgul said at length.
“Very succinct,” Lysse replied.
She pondered the situation as she liked to do. She didn’t enjoy making rash decisions, instead preferring to take her time thinking, planning. That’s how she outsmarted people; that’s how she played the game, and thus, played people.
“And what of the duke?”
Two other Avagarians walking on all fours, sniffed the ground near the dancer. The creatures were deadly strong compared to their human counterparts. They could easily pick up a two-hundred-pound man and throw him one-armed with little effort. It was one of the reasons why they were so dangerous. Their venom, if bitten into a human, would turn the human into one of them—if they survived at all. All the more reason the human Tarlèans had built the great wall to separate them. Not that it could keep them out completely.
“Did as ordered. Took him down.”
An imperceptible stiffening of her shoulders almost went unnoticed. “Did you kill him?”
Lazgul might be a beast like this, but he was also a man, older than her and wise enough. His eerie black pupils with yellow irises watched her carefully. “Nay,” he growled.
She looked away, acting for all the world like she was uncaring.
A moan brought their attention to the dancer.
“Great, she’s waking up. You really screwed up with this one, Laz. Kill her now and be done with it.”
Lazgul snarled, growling in warning before he squatted next to the dancer in a protective move. Lysse wanted to rip his rotten head off. “You’re supposed to obey me. Rainer said---”
“Kekekekekekekekekekek.”
Lazgul’s menacing crackling snapped her mouth shut. That was the sound an Ava made before attacking.
“Don’t you threaten me!” Lysse snarled. “If it’s a fight you want, then forget about it. There’s no time. The general, the king, everyone will be looking for this girl. Don’t you see what you did?” This time she did scream the words.
Her voice seemed to be the catalyst that
shook Penelope awake.
Penelope’s eyes shot open. Disoriented, she looked around, brows furrowed.
“Huh?” she mumbled, looking between the creature in front of her, to Lysse.
Lysse rolled her eyes. “Here we go. Shut her up before she screams.”
Too late, Penelope’s eyes flashed with recognition—
recalling everything that had happened to her.
Great.
Except, she took Lysse completely by surprise. Maybe under different circumstances she’d have more respect for the girl. Penelope didn’t scream at all as Lysse had predicted.
Instead, she suddenly reached under her dress, drawing forth shocked looks from the three Avagarians and Lysse. Befuddled like a bunch of school children.
She used that to her advantage.
Penelope lunged forward, the glint of silver flashing too quickly to react.
Lazgul never had a chance. With surprising speed the dancer advanced—and sank the blade deep into his chest.
Lazgul howled, but Penelope, in another surprising move, removed the blade and stabbed again. Blood oozed like black liquid tar dripped from between his foaming lips as he twitched in agony.
This creature, this part-man, who was older than Lysse’s thirty-one years, who’d endured wars and triumphs, collapsed onto his back in violent seizures. He’d just been felled by a tiny ballet dancer with a silver knife.
“Get the knife!” Lysse screeched.
Lazgul gave one last violent shiver, then stopped moving at once. He lie still. His black eyes staring up at the sky. The other Avagarians were stunned for far too long.
Lysse had to take care of this herself. She had to stop relying on others to carry out her plans. Lazgul had messed up her plans by bringing the girl here to begin with, and now she had to put an end to it. She supposed that he received what was coming to him, and at least she didn’t have to do it herself.
With an empowering breath, Lysse called forth the beast inside her. Her other half. The bad half. Or maybe it was the good half of her.
And she transformed.