savage 06 - the savage dream

by Blodgett, Tamara Rose

  Surprise was their biggest asset.

  “Now?” Calia asked, searching his eyes like he'd just lost his marbles.

  Jim said, “No time like the present.”

  She frowned.

  He rephrased. “It is to our greatest advantage to use the ploy momentarily.” Jim used that slightly crusty way of speaking, and it must have hit home because both girls took off their tunics in the single-digit weather.

  Now we're talking.

  The leader had been trumpeting something about an exchange, but at the sight of the girlsʼ breasts, barely contained by corset-type underwear, a silence like the tomb shrouded the meadow.

  Calia's undergarments were a screaming red, a flame against skin grown pale from the onset of winter. Elise's looked like an extension of her flesh. The illusion of nudity with clothes on was striking.

  Jim had seen all manner of half-naked chicks in his time. There wasn't a shred of modesty left in the first third of the twenty-first century. But somehow, seeing the women this way was shocking. Jim figured if he felt a little taken aback by all that female skin showing, it'd do what he needed it to for the Fragment.

  Snow began to fall in big, slow-moving flakes as the Fragment charged forward.

  Jim knew that lust and greed drove that car, not intellect.

  The Band roared to their defense but Jim whistled like a bird and they stopped, staring.

  The women ran—straight for Ulric.

  He couldn't have been completely ignorant of their plan, but everyone was winning with this. Unless Ulric had an assload of reinforcements, he'd have his hands full.

  Across the last patch of midwestern prairie and the hills that heralded the sea beyond, Ulric's eyes met Jim's.

  And what Jim saw there wasn't good.

  Challenge accepted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Adahy

  Elise took her tunic off and threw it to the ground.

  Adahy frowned, moving after her.

  He knew his death waited. Adahy also understood that Elise could not be under the rule of the Fragment and the brand of cruelty they would mete.

  If Adahy could not love her in this life, he would meet her in the next.

  Jim had awoken Philip and him as though from a terrible dream—a living nightmare in which they had almost handed the women over to Ulric—only to have the Fragment appear and complicate a possible escape.

  Now Jim, who Adahy had assumed was well intended, had somehow convinced the females to unclothe themselves.

  The action had stirred the Fragment up like a hornet's nest, and they'd chased the women.

  Adahy cut the throats of two before they could take a step.

  He watched indifferently as they drowned in their own blood, then he raced off to stop Elise's slavery to Ulric.

  Adahy had not lost one wife just to have another potential mate snatched away.

  He moved toward the women, he and Philip slashing the back lines of the Fragment.

  They killed five in moments.

  When Adahy heard movement behind him, he glanced over his shoulder, and his guts sank like a stone.

  Another contingent came behind the first.

  There were now over forty of the Fragment.

  Adahy slowed, keeping one eye on Elise as she moved purposely toward the forest. Then he observed the advancing Fragment, oblivious to their foil.

  Finally, his eyes found Jim.

  They looked at each other across the sea of people.

  Jim smiled.

  Adahy grinned back.

  Jim was very clever for an other.

  *

  Elise was so nervous she wasn't cold at first.

  Calia jogged beside her and shivered in her crimson underwear. Elise could feel her eyes bugging at the next ploy.

  “More Fragment,” Calia croaked.

  Elise did not turn. “Yes.” She had not bothered telling Jim there would be more. It was absolutely typical of the Fragment to have two groups. The Band should have anticipated it.

  Ulric was in front of her and beckoned with his hand. His fingers were long.

  Strong.

  When he had held her and she took blood, the fingers had been gentle, but Elise knew they contained strength—violence.

  Ulric had that in abundance.

  Ropes dangled, swinging from midway up the trees, and more of the Tree Men filled the gaps between trunks.

  With the Fragment swarming around them, Elise reached her hand into the forest.

  A shadow fell over her wrist from a branch that blocked the moonlight.

  Ulric seized her limb and jerked her to him.

  He crushed her much smaller body against his, and when the Fragment tried to tear her from him… they died.

  The Fragment filled the woods and began to war with the Tree Men.

  Ulric guided Elise to the base of a tree too wide to wrap five linked men around its perimeter.

  She fell to her knees.

  “Stay there,” Ulric said, his face already changing shape.

  A Fragment screamed and came for him. He had his skull crushed by the very hands that had settled her against the trunk of the mighty tree.

  Elise saw his eyes and clamped her hands over her ears as she frantically searched for Calia.

  There.

  Calia was also at a tree a few horse lengths away.

  Their eyes met, and while Ulric was engaged with the Fragment, Elise alternately ran and crawled to Calia.

  They met in the middle and clasped hands.

  “What say you?”

  Elise hiccupped back a sob. Her terror was so large she felt physically ill. “Jim said we must leave the forest behind the battle.”

  Elise gave a hysterical laugh when Calia rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, but clothing… we do not have it.”

  Calia's eyes scanned their immediate area and, seeing nothing but fighting, gave up.

  “Escape now, and we shall worry about clothing hence.”

  Calia grabbed Elise's hand, and they ran paces, stopping behind trunks then running a few more.

  The sounds of battle grew dim, and Elise's spirits rose.

  They were to the edge of the forest when three of the Tree Men surrounded them.

  Calia prowled in front of Elise. “I am not too sick to not slit your throats.”

  She stood before them, golden hair silvered like shattered alabaster, illuminated by scattered moonlight that had managed to break through the forest canopy.

  “We have no quarrel with you, Pure One.”

  Elise did not wish to trade the Tree Men for the Fragment. Her heart belonged only to Adahy. If she could not have him, she would rather not be.

  A terrible idea began to take shape in her mind, and Elise knew what she must do.

  The first Tree Man came at Calia, and even Elise could see he thought to take her easily without risking injury.

  He lost his arm.

  Calia's blade came away black in the moonlight attached gore from his body. She flicked the mess to the ground.

  Bloodied sinew made a wet splat as she stabbed upward and next charged with a gale of clucking sounds that raised Elise's hackles.

  The noise of the fallen Tree Man brought others. Before long, Calia's knife was buried to the hilt inside of the second Tree Man, and she grunted, shoving it harder.

  The urge to heal brought Elise to her knees.

  Oh no, I cannot.

  It appeared that Ulric had been right about that. She was truly mixed, and all mortal injury of those she shared blood with called to her.

  Weakened her.

  Elise wound an arm around her stomach. She had to escape.

  Calia kicked away the attacker as a third slapped her face so hard it spun her head.

  Elise grasped Calia's ankle and healed the damage instantly. Her touch repaired the fractured vertebrae, and Elise clung as Calia drew strength from her at her feet.

  Elise watched Calia fight the third attac
ker.

  Calia was no match for him. He was stronger, faster, bigger. Yet Elise healed all the damage he did against Calia.

  And more.

  Elise grimly held onto Calia. Each blow from her expert hands was much harder than Calia could have delivered.

  The attacker fell on his side, eyes rolling from head trauma.

  “Witch,” he breathed as Elise hugged Calia's shin, her cheek resting against the other woman's knee.

  Elise felt his life slip away and released the breath she had been holding.

  Calia lifted her by the armpits. “What have you done?”

  “I have made you well,” Elise whispered.

  “It is more than that,” Calia's eyes roamed her face. “You have made me perfect, strong—I was invincible.”

  Ulric's blood, Elise thought a little incoherently.

  There was more noise.

  The women turned, and the Tree Men came. Others were getting the best of the Fragment, their superior numbers not enough to overcome them.

  There would be none who lived this day.

  Calia took Elise's hand and dragged her out of the forest.

  Neither woman looked behind them as the noises of approaching footfalls grew louder.

  They ran for freedom.

  *

  Elise and Calia burst through the edge of the woods like a reluctant birthing.

  They hugged their sides, gasping.

  No clothing warmed their bodies. They were free of the Tree Men yet had minutes before the cold would kill them.

  Elise turned and saw the Tree Men in their environmental prison of thick branches and skyward trunks.

  They appeared to bide their time in the shadows.

  Elise and Calia exchanged an uneasy look and moved closer, putting their arms around each other for warmth. Elise tucked her head underneath Calia's chin, marveling at how tall she was.

  On Elise's side, the closeness was for more than body heat. It was comfort.

  The blood of the dead had broken the call of Ulric.

  Then they had escaped the woods only to succumb to the elements.

  As though she could read Elise's thoughts, Calia said, “Do not despair. We shall prevail over even this.”

  “I fear not.”

  “That is why we do not fear, but aspire. Fear is a robbery of the morrow, and hope is the harbinger of our future.”

  The music of battle continued as if in the inescapable clutches of a nightmare, a savage dream.

  Elise and Calia listened to the familiar sounds of men beating each other to death.

  It was more silent than dying ought to have been.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Adahy

  Slowly, Adahy swiped his first finger and middle fingers across his cheekbones in a deft, practiced motion.

  Stripes of the slain's blood decorated both sides of his face.

  It blocked evil spirits who would suck his soul from his body and should protect him against the Giants.

  If legend held true, dead men's blood was protection against the Giants. The new Band came wearing the blood of others, and the Giants had bowed before it—all except Ulric.

  Adahy tore through the woods, branches clawing at him as though entreating him to stay as he shoved aside Giants and Fragment alike, searching frantically for Elise and hoping he was not too late to thwart Ulric's agenda.

  The Giants were not loftier than the Fragment—they simply had a different method of capture. They used blood and the magic of enthrallment to assist them in the capture of women. Would they abuse them as the Fragment had? Adahy did not know.

  But a thief of freedom was as much a criminal as one who stole treasure. And there was no greater value than the women of this world. Without them, there would be no more people.

  It was a wonder the Fragment still survived at all.

  Adahy's eyes narrowed as he saw the telltale mark that one of the Band had passed this way.

  Three Stone Giants lay on the ground, crumpled in a discarded pile of broken and bleeding body parts. One had lost his arm above the shoulder in a vicious downward strike of some leverage.

  Adahy slowed, looking first right then left. No one lingered.

  He looked up.

  The trees were unadorned with ropes.

  His eyes took in the surrounding light. Adahy was near the forest's border, and the Giants did not roam or bed down closely to that perimeter.

  He sank to his haunches, feeling the cooling skin of the three dead.

  It is not cold enough. He snatched his hand away, standing and backing off with an instinctual wariness.

  One of the dead opened his eyes. His arm was not attached to his body, but as Adahy watched, the severed appendage crawled to endeavor reattachment.

  Adahy retreated farther, creeping unease flooding his bowels.

  Their bodies twitched on the ground, and a thread of memory tickled Adahy's brain. He wished he had remembered it earlier, when the knowledge could have assisted them all.

  What had Chasing Hawk said as he recounted tales of the Stone Giants? Adahy's mind worked as the surreal presented itself at his feet: the impossibility of the dead coming to macabre life.

  Their food is blood.

  The sun their enemy.

  The trees their sanctuary.

  Dare not fight the Stone Giant.

  Their power transcends even death.

  Adahy could not fight this. Them.

  The Giants were as unnatural as the Traveler, yet Adahy's human mind could reconcile itself to Jim and not to the Giants.

  Adahy could kill the Giants, but then they would repair what he had destroyed.

  As the limb spliced itself back to the arm, and the dead rose, Adahy's nose found Elise's scent.

  Relief swept him.

  He would not have to ask himself the question of what might happen if he stayed in this dark forest.

  The forest of the damned.

  *

  Adahy wrenched himself free of the desecrated wood. Immediately he caught sight of Elise in the arms of Calia. He did not turn to see if his undead pursuers were close.

  He ran to the females.

  Elise disentangled herself from Calia and slammed into Adahy.

  He crushed her to his body.

  Adahy had never felt the need to weep as much as he did in that moment. He had never wept, even when Onatah had lain in his arms gasping her last breaths as he ended her misery.

  Elise's skin was ice underneath his fingers, so Adahy tore off his outer wrap of leather and slung it around her shoulders.

  It was lined with fur and would warm her.

  Adahy gathered her close again, pressing a kiss on the top of her head while his eyes met Calia's.

  “We need coats,” Calia said. She shuddered, and her teeth began chattering.

  Her bravery was moving. Adahy knew Calia had to think of Edwin, who most likely lay dying by the hand of the Fragment. Philip's whereabouts remained unknown.

  And yet, her resilience and will to live she wore as her only covering, even as tight clusters of gooseflesh bumped rose underneath the red of her undergarments.

  “Let us reconnoiter to where—my brother—” Adahy watched her breathe slowly, deliberately. She was trying for order, for a stilling of her spirit so she might conquer what lay ahead. Adahy recognized the mark of survived trauma on her. He wore one as well.

  Adahy nodded and pulled Elise along.

  They moved as quickly as two women recovering from grave illness and almost frozen to death could force themselves to move.

  But Calia somehow found the strength to run when she saw the still form of Edwin.

  Adahy knew what had happened before the women did.

  Calia's sure graceful gait slowed. When she halted at Edwin's body, she dropped to her knees, heedless of the snow and her lack of proper clothing.

  “No!” she wailed.

  Calia lay her head on Edwin's chest as though listening for a nonexistent heartbe
at, then she thumped it with her fist.

  “Do not leave me, treacherous man!” she bellowed into the still night air while their enemies watched from the forest.

  Her fists rained down on a chest that no longer pushed and pulled the air of this world, but that of the next.

  Adahy's head hung at her despair.

  *

  Jim

  Jim staggered around, his ass having been thoroughly handed to him. His fingers bit into his fifteenth tree trunk as he clung, gasping for air from fighting for his life for the second time in the space of days. The furrowed bark was hard and brittle from the winter.

  Light entered the forest from the open meadow beyond the woods, and he let go, looking neither right nor left, his eyes searching for the path of escape.

  Jim walked forward, tripping over a body. Falling to his hands and knees, he pushed into it, and his palm sank into a fresh wound. He shuddered, pressed harder, and stood.

  Jim wiped the gore on his jeans.

  He would never come back here—if he could even get out. It was a tough place.

  Vamps.

  Cave guys.

  Motivated Criminals. Not to mention other Travelers who—unlike Jim—were a carload of assholes.

  Yeah, this place had it all.

  Every part of his body hurt except his big toe. There's still time, he reflected.

  Jim reached the border and pushed himself to stride the remaining two paces to exit the hell he'd just survived. He gradually became aware that Calia was beating the shit out of a body.

  Jim did a limping run-walk to where she was and tossed himself at her.

  They rolled away from the body, and she rose like a zombie, the upper part of her body plank stiff.

  She was howling and flailing.

  Hysteria.

  Jim knew the cure and slapped her across the face.

  A handprint appeared on her pale skin.

  Guilt swamped Jim like a slow drowning. He was not really a fan of chick beating. But he couldn't have her alerting the media to their location. Jim didn't think he could kick a tick's ass right then.

  “Calia!” he yelled, shaking her. Gold hair flew back and forth, and Jim received a kick in the ribs that made him rethink breathing. Ever.