The cheesy musk of his arousal made me heave. ‘I’d rather eat shit.’
‘Filthy.’ He purred. He bent to lick the side of my face, slimy tongue worming into my ear.
I jerked away, repulsed.
He laughed and gripped my neck to hold me in place. ‘Open your mouth.’
My face felt numb where his fishy saliva turned to ice, my head empty. ‘This won’t make a son.’ A stranger had hijacked my body, and my mouth was a hostage. What in the name of all that is holy was I saying? The alternatives were bloody worse.
‘Eager gash has a hungry slit.’ Wyrm chortled. ‘You humans. It will bare its flanks soon enough. This first.’
Sucking air through nostrils wide as pinholes, I looked his weapon over. I glanced at his meaty fist, twitching to strike.
I looked at Grace’s corkscrewed neck.
I remembered Ella.
Quaking with an emotion I was too dazed to name, my fingers loosely circled him at the base. It was like hefting a marrow. I went to wallop him in the sac, but remembered after a frantic search there were no balls on this dick, and I couldn’t reach the bulbs inside. Then it came to me; the nerve clusters either side of his groin.
With a hard press of my thumbs, he would go down.
But I promised.
I wanted to believe it didn’t matter, but Bhyr had promised to free the humans. If his promise mattered, why didn’t mine? Because it wasn’t convenient? Would he find out?
I promised.
Wyrm unsheathed a blade.
He tapped it against the jumping pulse at my throat.
I put my mouth on him, tentative, a light suck, all the while thinking it was nothing. I’d been forced before, by Bhyr himself, and while it had never felt like this, it was nothing. It was a task; a means to an end. I knelt there with a dick in my mouth, next to a corpse, feeling unclean, and couldn’t bring myself to move.
I started crying, gargling and coarse sounds that made things impossibly worse.
I can’t do it.
Regardless if he twisted my neck into a pretzel or not.
Snorting, Wyrm clasped my nape and thrust until I choked and made a burping retch. My hands stopped fluttering stupidly in the air and shoved at his thighs.
Water streamed from my eyes by the time he dragged himself back out. I spluttered and gulped down air.
He slapped that fat thing against my jaw. He stabbed at my lips, wedged back inside when I opened my mouth to gag, then violated me in rough little digs. He angled his shaft into my cheek, snickering and rubbing his cock head through the bulge in my skin.
Floating outside my own head and thinking he was retarded to put his dick in the mouth of an unwilling participant, my teeth grazed him. I froze. He clapped me one, and when I sobbed at the sting, at the all-consuming fear he’d hit me too hard, as he’d done Grace, he absorbed my terror and panted in pleasure. He grew harder, thick veins pulsing on my tongue as briny pre-ejaculate flooded my tastebuds.
I looked up.
He had two fingers in his mouth strumming his tongue.
Sanctimonious sonofabitch.
He was going to cum in my mouth. He was going to cum in my mouth, and then I was going to–
‘Be ready to swallow this warrior seed, worthless gash. Haaa. Yes.’ He hissed and rubbed my throat to feel himself stretching it. ‘It will swallow.’ He throttled me when I made a choking sound of protest. ‘It will drink piss and say it likes it or we will cut its stinking throat.’ He hit the back of my tongue with a savage drive of his bony hips, and deciding I’d rather die than have him dump his load in me, I thought, green banana, and chomped down.
My canines ripped through flesh with a lush tearing. My molars ground together, a popping gush of liquid hitting the back of my throat.
The noise he made….
I reared back, slapping at his thick-skinned hocks.
Banana didn’t spray your face in scalding goop. It didn’t taste coppery, plugging your mouth like a fatty lump.
Dropping the dagger he could have plunged into my neck, Wyrm flailed at his groin.
His knees buckled.
I didn’t see him anymore, lost in my own personal hell.
My mouth was full, molars grinding. I started to swallow, the motion a reflex, but stopped, and then lost my mind. I clawed at my face and throat. I spat the rubbery chunks and vomited.
Covering my mouth with both hands, sobbing, I lay down, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
Barking threats and moaning prayers, Wyrm grasped at the ground with an outstretched hand. He pressed the other to the mangled flesh between his legs. He switched between squeezing and fluttering motions that didn’t do anything but leave his palm smeared in mincemeat, clots of blood slipping through his fingers. For all of this, he was too aware, recovering too fast. A human man would be haemorrhaging, and in the last throes of death. The Aztekan was fighting past the pain. He’d get up and tear the beating heart right out of my goddamned chest.
Numbness receded from my limbs, and fear spangled across my nerves. Get up. I lurched onto my feet, mouth breathing like an asthmatic.
My eyes went crazy when his bleeding slowed to a trickle. I panicked. Screaming through blood-stained teeth, I hiked my leg and stomped on the hand clutching his junk.
Wyrm jackknifed and barfed a stinking greenish-brown soup into his lap.
‘That’ll get infected,’ I said.
For a split second, he stared at me, incredulous, and I gawked at him, terrorised, then he collapsed onto his side and brayed, legs churning.
Pushing out my palms, I backed up. I turned to run, but caught a glimpse of Grace.
I’m not a doctor.
Maybe you could live with your head on backwards. The healing pods changed us in many unknown ways.
I scuttled over to her giving Wyrm a wide berth as he rocked and rolled.
My knees hit the ground at Grace’s waist, and I pressed a hand to her wrist. ‘Sorry.’ I dropped the dead weight. ‘I tried. I’m so sorry.’ I made a mad dash for the cave opening.
Spittle hit my back, and a sour fog of breath rushed past my head. I squealed and dropped. My legs found every jagged pebble and sharp twig on the ground, but I’d ducked the slash of a blade that would’ve cleaved me in two. Arms tucked to my chest, I rolled, face scraping on grit, lips powered with dust. I sprang upright, yelping, sure he was about to tear me to ribbons. I looked left and right, spinning a circle, looking for all those rocks. The mulch blanket covered everything.
I put up my fists.
Is it thumbs in or out?
I looked my abuser in the eye and sneered, knowing I was going to die and jacked with enough adrenaline to make my peace with it. I’d be taking pieces of him with me.
Goddamned pieces.
Wyrm hunched like an ape, gnashing his teeth.
One hand cupped the bloody stump at his groin, the other gripped another dagger.
‘Filthy gash.’
My mouth was dry. My fists shook. ‘Just let me go.’
‘Shut its cocksucking throat.’ His eyes were deranged, skull ridges stark white. ‘Look at this.’ His hand moved. He seeped scrambled-egg-looking pus. The daulm curled like fried worms, exposing the ruptured seed bulbs I’d flattened.
‘Pretty,’ I choked.
‘Ugly shitting slit.’
‘Let me go,’ I screamed.
Bellowing, he lurched, and drew back an arm to strike, but his weight was off balance from his injury, or his leg dragged, or maybe my guardian angel got done pissing about with its sudoku puzzle, because Wyrm tripped. He tripped over poor dead Grace, and as he went flying, his hands shot down to cradle his genitals. He landed on the tuskbeast antlers.
The points spitted him through the belly.
I cawed in shock, slapping myself when my hands flew up to cover my face.
Eyes rolling, he foamed at the mouth. Drooled. His feet scuffed the cave floor, and then with a groan, he slumped.
B
lood pooled beneath him.
A ringing in my ears, I waited for it to end.
Wyrm made a gnarr gnarr noise and resurrected from the dead. His wheeling gaze locked on me. He snarled, lifting both hands to grip the bones spearing his torso. He slid back inch by inch, freeing himself.
‘No!’
Why won’t he die?
Running meant being chased, while staying meant fighting a losing battle.
I skittered on the spot, heart about to burst and felt my heel land wrong.
I glanced down.
Mouth doing an odd curving, twisting thing, I sank into a squat. The edges of my jaw prickled with heat as I kept my eyes fixed on the danger.
I wrapped my hand around the hilt of Wyrm’s dagger. It was heavy. Maybe my conscience added emotional weight. Or maybe it was a size appropriate weapon for the monster I was about to straight up murder.
Only one of us would leave this cave. It had to be me, because I wouldn’t let it be him. I fisted it in both hands like a sword and yowled like a scaled cat. I stumble-ran forward waving it in front of me.
I sliced off his fingers when he tried to grab me.
Like cutting butter.
I adjusted my hold, hands slippery with tacky fluids.
Wyrm’s middle slid down the antlers and he grasped them, unable to fend me off and keep himself from being spitted further, craters in his abdomen stretching, organs shredding.
‘Shitting bitch,’ he slurred. ‘Beast slut. Murderous piss silt.’
‘Shut up, shut up.’ I slashed into a glaring eye and shrieked when jelly dribbled from its socket. The blade juddered as it hit orbital bone.
I skidded on the runny shit Wyrm pissed when he died, his long body flopping where it hung as I plunged the knife into his meat over and over. I was possessed, wailing until my vocal cords strained, and then broke in a burst of pain. I stopped when the blade got stuck inside the lumpy mess of his skull, lacking the strength to yank it out again.
Wyrm’s mangled body didn’t look human.
Then again it never had.
I fished around his belt pouches until I found it.
My antler knife.
I held it in front of his pulpy face. ‘This is mine, you thieving fuck.’ I staggered back, crying and shaking.
Chittering balls of matted fur and horny scales scurried from an underground nest. They darted around in my peripheral vision. Scavengers drawn by the scent of blood.
The ammonia smell of their scat made me sneeze, sending gore flying off me.
I was alone, chilled to the bone, and surrounded by things that might try to eat me. Weak and lightheaded, I fell to my knees. I braced a trembling hand against the frozen mulch.
My fingers flexed, white with cold around my knuckles.
The heat from my exertions faded. If I didn’t get warmer, I was finished. I needed to keep moving. I crawled to Grace. I reached out a hand, only to shudder and draw it back. ‘She’s dead. You’re alive.’ I exhaled, and my breath crystallised into ice. ‘She won’t miss them.’ I stripped her from her clothes. Her flesh was still warm, so were the furs. I shivered. They felt good layered over mine.
I blinked and was outside.
Patches of sky were bright behind the cloud layer and sleeting. Flakes of ice melted on my cheeks. Wind burned my round and staring eyes.
I blinked again and clung to the back of a lumbering goodbeast, the warrior saddle too big, the animal whining and stressed by the stench of death and my violent shaking.
I don’t know how I navigated the wilderness as the sleet became a swirling whiteout. Maybe the beast knew its business. Maybe the angel felt guilty and called Jesus to take the wheel. Maybe Vishnu looked down and thought, “I’ll lend a few hands.” I ended up at Bhyr’s nest, lumbering like a yeti I was so cold-stiff and encrusted with snow. I didn’t care as to the “how” of things and staggered in croaking his name.
No answer.
I wandered over to the sleeping nook then dropped down next to it. Clumps of snowmelt puddled around me.
I looked down at the muck splattered over my furs.
Exhausted to the marrow in my bones, I dragged a hide off the bed and rolled myself up, nose buried into the fur.
I wept like I was dying then passed out.
32
Indira
The covers were yanked off me. I moaned and groped for them.
‘Are these hers?’ asked a booming voice.
‘They look like the coverings I made for my human ward, Grace.’
‘I care not,’ snarled another. ‘Get them off her before I tear them off. I must tend to what he did.’
I was picked up and lain on the mattress.
‘Indira.’ A rough palm cupped my check. Another hand patted my chest, stroked down my limbs in short, investigative sweeps, and then palpated my middle. ‘Open your eyes and look at me.’
Everything hurt and I wanted to sleep. I tried to tell him that, but all that came out was a broken croak.
A needle pierced my throat. I felt the muscles there burn cold then relax.
‘Needle,’ I cried. ‘Nooo.’
Bhyr leaned over me, his face devoid of expression. His eyes met mine then set on fire.
‘Indira.’ He said my name, and everything felt better. Not by a lot but enough. ‘Are you wounded? Do you bleed?’
I stared like I’d never seen him before. ‘Where were you?’ I demanded in senseless outrage, then burst into tears.
Hands shifted me onto my side and rubbed across my back, pressing, searching.
Bhyr stroked my hair and cupped my aching jaw.
The hands spreading my ass and prodding my anus were not his. I hissed and struggled around with my hands curled into talons.
‘No.’ Bhyr caught me and trapped my arms by my sides. His face pressed to mine, voice low and urgent. ‘He checks to see if you have been… torn.’
Anger spat venom in my gut. It erupted from my mouth. ‘So what if I am? So what! What then?’ I screeched, kicking and wrestling his arm.
He held me as the impersonal touch moved to my pussy.
It delved inside, and I felt pressure.
I went very, very still. ‘Bhyr. If this part of the exam doesn’t end right now, you will not like what happens next.’
‘I need to know if you are hurt.’
‘He didn’t do that.’
Bhyr tensed. His hands gripped me too tight then eased. His voice was a quiet violence. ‘What did he do?’
I twisted and fought until he loosened his hold only to burrow deeper into his chest.
Firm lips brushed my ear. ‘I will kill him.’
‘No.’ My hand curled around his neck. ‘You won’t. I–’
‘The killing blow is yours but I claim first blood.’ Ohx grated his teeth. He quashed his rage and finished his examination at my feet. ‘She is scratched and bruised. Her holosphere transmitter is gone. Cut out. She will have to heal before I implant another. Her face took the worst of it, but there is no bleeding under the flesh or within her internal organs.’
‘Her voice?’ Bhyr asked.
‘That is permanent. It will hurt to talk unless she rests her vocal cords. A healing pod would repair the damage, but using an aggressive form of healing so often on their species is not advised. Especially after the intensive treatments they endured to optimise their adaptation to our homeworld.’
They talked over my head as if I wasn’t there. I mumbled dark things into Bhyr’s chest.
He mistook my irritation for distress. In his unpracticed manner, Bhyr drew me closer.
He held me with a clumsy tenderness that had my heart thudding.
He spoke over my head. ‘Gather my trusted. The Exile took my breeder. I call Challenge. He will answer.’
‘First,’ Bihter interjected, making me jump. He held the scraps of Grace’s clothing I’d stolen from her corpse. ‘The human female you entrusted into my care–’
‘Not now,’ Bhyr said in a tone
that did not invite further discussion or delay.
Frustration staining the air, Bihter tossed the clothes to the floor. He left with questions unspoken and unanswered.
After muttering instructions for my care in Bhyr’s spiked ear, Ohx inclined his head and went with him.
‘I am capable of hearing about my own medical condition.’ I pressed my forehead to middle of my warrior’s chest. ‘What I can’t do is show you where Grace is. I don’t remember the way.’
‘We can track it.’
‘It snowed.’
‘Even then.’
‘You would have found me.’
‘Yes, but too late.’ He lifted my chin, gaze searching. ‘I must ask. The other human?’
I averted my eyes, breathing shallowly through my mouth. ‘She’s… she’s….’
‘He will suffer, Indira.’
‘It damaged your pride when he took me, didn’t it, Bhyr?’ The words tasted burnt. ‘God forbid the First of the Horde ever look weak.’
He caged my throat in a gentle hold and lowered his face to a hairsbreadth from mine. ‘This is not about me.’ He flinched when I scratched at his hand. ‘Indira?’
‘Stop doing that. I’m not going to do what you want because you’re threatening me.’
Bhyr stilled. ‘What?’
‘You don’t have to do this to me.’ I put my hand over his, still wrapped around my throat.
His face morphed into Wyrm’s.
I squeezed my eyes closed.
When I opened them, he was my Bhyr again.
‘You are wrong.’ He shook his head, his grip loosening. ‘It is not a threat. It is comfort.’ His hand pressed firmly. ‘It is an old thing, a gesture that is used to signal trust. I cover your throat. It is a silent vow to protect you when you are vulnerable.’
I swayed into him. ‘Oh.’
‘Aztekan queens would clamp the throat with their pincers and twist a male’s head from his neck. It was a favoured punishment.’
The way he looked at me then… concerned.
Loving.
It was hard to take.
Flushing, I cleared my throat. ‘Even as an Exile, did Wyrm violate Horde Law by killing a human?’
His gaze flashed at the name. ‘No.’ Disgruntled clicks streamed from his throat. ‘Now it is Law for Horde, but he is an Exile and not subject to the tenets that bind us.’
Bhyr Page 29