“Petros?” Lucien called out.
“Aye, my Prince?”
“What is her name?”
Petros shrugged. “We don’t know. I’ve been calling her Alecto for it seems to fit her sweet and gentle personality.”
Lucien smiled grimly as sleep overcame him once more.
Petros footsteps lagged as he dragged himself over the short distance between his room and his friend’s. As the Lord of Security, he was always close at hand, never more than a hundred feet from Prince Lucien at any given time. Not only the prince’s friend but his personal bodyguard, Petros was in charge of his leader’s safety.
“Alecto, the worst of the Furies, the unrelenting,” he mumbled as he tiredly pushed open his door and staggered to the bed. Already, the rays of the sun were reaching like fiery fingers upward from the eastern horizon and Petros’ world was slowly shutting down.
Dragging the covers over his chilled limbs, Petros wrapped himself up in the cocoon of his blanket and huddled down so that no stray emission of daylight could find him.
“One of the damned Furies she is,” Petros mumbled.
“Are you just going to turn over and go to sleep, Petros?”
Despite his weariness and the encroaching lethargy caused by the rising of the sun, Petros opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. His companion of seventeen years glared back at him and he sighed.
“Do you know what time it is, Alexa?” he asked, his lethargy cocking a tiny little head to pay attention.
“Time for you to service your woman,” she said and snaked out a hand to grasp his cock.
Sighing again, Petros turned to face his lady. Her fingers were squeezing his cock, her fingernails grazing his balls.
“Alexa…” The lethargy was definitely paying close heed to the fingers plying his tool.
She was up and over him, pushing him flat to his back, her shapely legs straddling his. He was stiff in her hand as she settled her cunt along his hard length, stuffing him inside her like sausage into a casing. Withdrawing her hand from between them—took hold of both his nipples and twisted lightly.
“Ah…” Petros said and flung his arms out wide as though being sacrificed to Alexa’s need. His lethargy raised its little hands in surrender, an itty-bitty little tongue began to waggle with interest.
“Who were you talking about?” she asked as she began rotating her hips.
“Hmm.” Petros was fast losing himself in the velvety warmth of her moistness.
“Who were you calling Alecto?” she demanded as she stretched out atop him and flicked her devilish tongue into his ear.
Petros shuddered. “We found a woman for Luc,” he said and wrapped Alexa in his brawny arms.
“Oh,” she said then slid her tongue from his ear to his lips. She claimed his mouth, thrusting her tongue between his teeth.
Alexa’s cunt was as tight as a virgin’s, and had been all the time Petros had known her. She wielded it as a warrior would his finest weapon and with an expertise that brought a shiver to her lover. Petros had often commented to Lucien that it was like having another set of lips nibbling at his rod as she rode him.
Petros reached down to grip her curvaceous bottom and helped her to rise and lower herself upon his staff. Their tongues were dueling, their teeth nibbling at vulnerable bottom lips, licking at the sensitive corners. With a chuckle, he slipped his thumb in her ass and wiggled it.
“Oooh!” Alexa shrieked.
“You like that?” Petros challenged. His lethargy was jumping up and down now.
Alexa sat up, dislodging his thumb from her anus, then took her lover’s hands and pressed them tightly to her lush breasts, throwing her head back as Petros’ thumbs circled her hard nipples.
“Is she pretty?”
Petros groaned. He did not want to think about the woman in Lucien’s bedroom because to do so would be to remember Magdalena and he tried hard not to do that when he was with Alexa.
“Is she pretty?” Alexa repeated, squeezing Petros’ hands hard against her bosom, swirling his palms over her nipples.
“Aye,” he mumbled then flipped over so his lady was squirming beneath him, his cock seated as far inside her as it would go. “Now, shut the fuck up!”
He drove into her as hard as he could for he knew the way Alexa liked to be taken. He was long and thick—though not as well-hung as Lucien—and knew how to wield his own weapon effectively.
Alexa reached up to grasp the iron headboard of their bed and held on as her lover pummeled her with his love stick. She threw her legs around his waist and gripped him so tightly he grunted from the force.
“You getting tired, little man?” she encouraged, tightening her grip on his waist even more. “Is that all you’ve got?”
Grinning at the taunt, Petros increased the force and the depth of his thrust, working himself like a piston inside her slick, hot box. The slap of their bodies as they met was loud in the dark room.
“Ah, come on, little man!” Alexa laughed. “Great-grandpa Nicholas could do better than that and he has only one ball!” She grunted as her lover slammed into her with such force she slid up in the bed. The top of her head hit the iron railing just about hard enough to split the flesh of her scalp. “That’s better!” she said.
Petros thrust into her one last time and held himself there for he had felt the first spasm of her release starting deep within her cunt. He waited for her to come, to feel the pulses of pleasure gripping his staff, before he released his tainted seed, roaring as the cum shot from him in a thick spurt.
Alexa collapsed atop him then slid off, nestling herself in the crook of his arm, her head on his sweaty shoulder.
“Did he fuck her?”
Petros sighed loudly. “I’m sure he will but I didn’t stay around to watch.”
Snuggling against her lover, Alexa threw her leg over his. “Are you going to fuck her?”
“Not if he claims her,” Petros answered. “That would be suicide.”
“What if he offers her to you?” she asked, yawning.
Petros yawned, too. “I don’t believe he will and even if he did, I’d politely decline.”
“I have told you,” she said, her words slurred, “that you can screw other women.”
“And I’ve told you,” he replied as sleep reached up to draw him into her arms, “that you are more woman than I can handle so why do I need another?”
Alexa smiled as sleep claimed her.
* * * * *
Waking to find her body cramped and sore, her head pressed hard against a musky-smelling carpet, the woman to whom Petros had assigned such a wicked appellation groaned. Squinting against the bright flare of an errant sunbeam shining in her eye, she held up a hand to block the light. Her head ached terribly and that one beam of light that slithered from the very top of the thick drapery caused a bout of nausea to return to the woman. Gingerly, she sat up and put a hand to the base of her neck. The flesh felt bruised and the muscles strained.
It wasn’t the coldness she suddenly began to feel wrapped tightly around her ankle that made the woman remember where she was and what had happened to her. The memory of the guard’s fingers closing around the back of her neck—pinching off consciousness—hit her like a sledgehammer at the same moment the groans coming from above her broke into her awareness.
Jerking with fear, she shot to her feet and tried to run only to be yanked to an abrupt halt that made her lose her balance and go crashing to the floor as the tether of her captivity played out.
Slamming onto the carpet hard, the woman gasped and tried to scramble as far from the bed as the heavy steel chain would allow. Grabbing the thick links with her hands as she strove to bring air into her lungs, she pulled as savagely as she could but knew in her heart she was well and truly trapped.
“No,” she hissed, pulling on the chain and twisting it. “No!”
The groans were louder and made the hair stand up on her arms. Someone was in agony—being tortured bru
tally—and that person was lying atop the bed, thrashing about in what she thought must be his death throes.
Tears gathered in the woman’s eyes as she jerked at the chain, fumbled with the shackle that fit close around her ankle, trying her damnedest to pull the clasp apart. But the metal held—as did the chain—and she moaned almost as loudly as the person upon the bed.
“Magdalena!” The shout was filled with anguish.
It took the woman but a moment longer to realize the person on the bed had to be the creature to which the bastard Petros had brought her.
The woman knew she would suffer in the pens of Modartha Keep. Every human this side of the Divide knew the Revenants kept corrals of humans upon whom they fed. It was rumored only a few ever survived the pens and those who did were considered special. Special in what way, the woman had no idea but it was whispered that those the Revenants kept alive and did not turn were treated well enough, if never knowing freedom again.
Believing there was nothing special about her that the Revenants would need or desire, the woman had known her fate the moment the herders had run her small group of hiders to ground and captured them. Knowing she was going to die wasn’t so bad, she thought as she sat there on the floor shivering. Hunger and sickness had run rampant through those who tried in vain to hide from the Revenant covens. Not once in over three years had she gone to bed without an empty stomach to remind her of all humankind had lost. Death would be preferable to the not knowing, the looking over one’s shoulder, the fear and constant running.
It was said the Revenant’s bite wasn’t painful for there was some kind of potent narcotic venom within in those wicked fangs.
“Once they bite you, you just drift away,” an old one had told her. “It’s better than dying slowly of hunger.”
So death, she thought as she wiped away the tears cascading down her cheeks, wouldn’t be such a bad thing though she would fight it with her last breath.
“Some Revenants keep women for their beastly pleasure,” the old one had warned. “Best you avoid that if you can. Make them think you are plagued for then they will leave you alone.”
To be the plaything of a Revenant, to have his filthy dead hands pawing over her body—his ice-cold cock shoved deep inside her, to endure his loathsome breath, to taste it, upon her mouth—such things made her belly churn once more and she bent over to gag though nothing save dry heaves convulsed her belly.
The groans were loud enough now to bring the guards from outside the door. One came in and cast the woman a hateful look before going to the bed to check on his charge. He stood there for a moment, listening, and then backed away, once more throwing a disdainful glance toward the woman before closing the door quietly behind him.
Her shoulders sagging, the woman drew her legs up and laid her head upon her knees. There was nothing she could do, no avenue of escape. Her only option was to try to make the Revenant so furious with her he would bite her before he had his disgusting way with her. If he took her blood, she would not care and his repugnant touch would not matter.
Staring down at the carpet beneath her crooked knees, she realized she was looking at the stray beam of light that was peering in from the top of the dark draperies. She studied it for a moment then slowly raised her head and turned to look up at that bright shaft.
“Sunlight will kill them,” the old had said. “Sunlight will turn them to ashes if they’re caught out in it. You want to kill one of those creatures, push it into the sunlight!”
The room was dark save for the feeble glow of a lantern that had been left aflame on the table beside the Revenant’s bed. The thick dark drapes covered a single small window so the day’s brightness would not harm the vile creature.
She turned her head toward the bed and the body that thrashed there. The Revenant was lost in some acute torment, for his moans and groans were almost pitiful to hear. Had he been a human, she would have gone to comfort him, to try to bring him out of his nightmarish world, but she could not have cared less that the creature was in mental agony as he lay there.
Twisting around, she got to her knees then quietly stood. Gauging the distance between her and the window then mentally measuring the chain’s length, she knew she could reach the draperies easily. Her one thought—to push those draperies far apart and hope the bright shaft of light would fall upon the bed and incinerate the creature lying there. She slowly and stealthily dragged her feet across the carpet, careful not to make any sound the guards would hear until it was too late.
Very quietly, she approached the window—glancing back now and again to make sure the creature on the bed was lost in his nightmares. As her fingers touched the heavy fabric and wrapped around the coarse material, she drew in a breath and held it.
* * * * *
Lucien was in agony.
Once more he was—as he had ever since the barbaric night he had lost everything he held dear—reliving the attack on his village. His groans were filled with soul-shattering desperation as he battled with the nightmarish beasts that walked his dreams.
Tossing his head back and forth on the pillow, his face and upper body was drenched with sour sweat. It pebbled his flesh in a fine mist and ran in thin rivulets to the damp sheets beneath him.
“Magdalena!” he called out again. “Run, Beloved. Run!”
And once more hell opened and drew Lucien Korvina into its fiery depths.
The Sagittary thundered into the village as an advance guard of their Masters. With bows drawn, arrows nocked to quash any human resistance—the beasts dealt death with accuracy. The hooves of their mounts striking sparks against the cobblestones. The invaders crashed through doors, shattered windows and chased down those who attempted to flee.
Men died in great pools of blood as they helplessly watched their womenfolk and children being raped and torn asunder by the creatures who fell upon them in drunken glee. But not even the dead escaped the horror of that night.
On the piercing blare of myriad trumpets, the Sagittary’s Masters galloped behind them into the village. Gray eyes flashing, razor-sharp teeth gnashing, swinging their weapons of spiked balls on the end of a thick chain, the Manticores descended upon the villagers in a hellish hoard. Devouring the flesh of their victims, the evil one grinned manically. In its haste to feed, to lap even the smallest drop of blood from the trampled ground, growls filled the night air amidst the skirl of the Manticores’ trumpeters.
Lucien took up his sword and entered the fray in a futile attempt to protect his wife and child. All around him, the village was burning as the Sagittary torched the thatched roofs. In the wavering glare of the soaring flames, Lucien was the only villager to draw blood from his enemies. He managed to gut two of the Sagittary and lop the head from a Manticore. His face was streaked with ash, his shirt torn and bloody from the innards of the beasts splashed upon him. He whacked and cut a swathe through a circle of beasts—taking a hand here, a paw there—until he heard Magdalena scream.
“Magdalena! Run, Beloved, run!” he yelled as something hard hit him in the small of the back and he went to his knees.
Before he could gain his feet, the creatures were upon him. Hooves pressed against his upper arms, shattering bones, dislocating both shoulders. A thick rope was looped around each ankle, his legs pulled savagely apart, and he was staked to the ground in spread-eagled agony.
“See what comes of killing one of us?” a Sagittary brayed.
Lilly—his sweet and precious child of eight summers—was carried from Lucien’s home in the arms of a Sagittary. Screaming and kicking, his little girl had been tossed from one set of vile hands to another, flying through the night air like a butterfly in her pale yellow gown.
Magdalena was dragged from their home, her gown ripped from her body as vicious, grasping fingers pawed at her breasts, staining the lovely white skin dark with brutal bruises. Bloody streaks appeared on her chest and as they did, Lucien’s beautiful wife of ten years screamed in agony.
Just as
the rest of the menfolk of his village had been forced to do, Lucien was made to watch his wife raped and savaged by the centaurs, her flesh torn away in great strips as the Manticores’ fed. She died in agony, her lovely blue eyes wide and staring at the horror of her only child being torn apart.
Lucien went mad as Lilly’s little arms and legs were pulled from her body like petals from a rose. Her tender flesh was no match for the needle-like teeth that stripped it from the bone or the serpent tongues that sucked out the marrow when those small bones were broken in twain.
Howling in his demented state, Lucien barely noticed the Manticore who came to stand astraddle of him. In his agony, he did not see the brutal smile on that humanlike face. Nor did he feel the swipe of the weapon called a scorpion tail as it raked across his bare chest to leave behind a stinging bloody quintet of cuts.
“Remember this day, peasant,” the Manticore ordered. “If you survive the blood loss!”
Staring up into the night sky where sparks from the burning village sailed, Lucien was beyond sight, or sound or feeling. His mind had shut down and he was simply there. He did not hear the galloping hoofbeats as the Sagittary careened on their drunken way—satiated and ready to sleep. He did not hear the argument among the Manticores who demanded his flesh as dessert for the evening’s meal nor hear the vile laughter of their leader whose weapon had done such lethal damage to Lucien’s chest.
“Let him bleed to death as he thinks on the slaughter of his loved ones,” the leader guffawed. “This is one peasant who will not challenge us again! We’ll draw cards to see who will come back for his carcass tomorrow!”
Blood was cascading down Lucien’s chest from the five deep gashes. He felt nothing as his life force seeped away. Lying with his ankles still anchored to the ground and his useless, broken arms stretched out to either side of his head, he stared wide-eyed into the dark sky.
Though his mind had gone where the savagery and pain could not reach it, tears fell down the dirty cheeks of Lucien Korvina, and a low keening moan shuddered from his throat.
Lucien's Khamsin Page 3