by Marata Eros
“I have never pressed myself during the day as I do now.”
Baird smirks. “Nor I. However, the preceding events were a literal nightmare.”
Kael slides down the tree trunk and peers up at the blazing sun. Steam lifts from his skin.
“Agreed.” Kael's pale eyes meet Baird’s. “Our zombie cousins were unexpected.”
Baird nods. “It is troubling. They are Jessamine's to worry about now.”
“True. I have asked myself that question...”
Baird's eyes narrow. “Which?”
Kael sighs, crossing his legs at the ankle. “Where there are some, there are more.”
A flesh crawl of disquiet settles on Baird.
His mind turns over the events of the past few days. His imprisonment by the male Druid priests.
His subsequent rescue of Siana.
Something tickles Baird’s senses, just out of reach. When it comes, he blanches and jumps to his feet.
Kael leaps to his own. “What the fuck is it?” His eyes scan their environment. Seeing nothing, his shoulders drop. “What have you thought of? There is no immediate threat.” Kael's palm sweeps around him.
Baird gulps in a breath. “We tarry no more.”
“Really? I was not under the impression we lingered for anything other than our health, Reaper.” Kael jerks his square jaw at the late afternoon sun.
A ball of fire in the sky.
We will brave it.
Baird recounts his thoughts to Kael.
Baird loathes Kael, but appreciates his wits. Kael instantly puts together the potential.
“When Altho had a rut with our fair Jessamine upon the Sacred Stone...”
“He might have loosened more than the three dead musketeers.”
Kael snorts, palming his chin. “The priests.”
Baird gives a grim nod.
“I am not familiar with the priests except they enjoy their cocks far too much.”
Baird laughs despite the circumstance. “I might like you, rogue, if you were not after the same female as I.”
“Don't get attached, Reaper. I know when I slit your throat, I will not be lamenting our friendship.”
Baird plants his legs, arms dangling at his sides.
Kael's gaze glitters back at him, and Baird sees death in those Exotic eyes. No matter how much Kael may mimic a Reaper in coloring, he is a mongrel. Though not criminal, he is opportunistic.
Kael claps Baird on the shoulder. “Now, let's go save our female from the undead.”
Baird scowls. Hate isn't a strong enough word to cover what Baird feels for Kael in this moment.
“What can we expect from these priests if they have been raised?” Kael asks as they begin to jog.
Baird answers, “Following through on deeds left undone.”
Kael slows to face Baird. “These evil ones will try to rape and sacrifice Siana on the stone, though they be dead?”
Baird nods slowly. “They are just that spiteful.”
Kael says not a word, showing Baird his back.
They sprint together, Siana's scent is faint yet it permeates Baird's senses like a drug, filling him with purpose.
I will find her.
CHAPTER THREE
Siana
Siana falls gracelessly forward with barely enough time to catch the ground before her face hits it.
The zombie clings to her back, and she rolls to the side, dislodging it.
“Wait!” an indistinct voice rises out of the rotting bodies.
They pull away, their seeking hands trembling along her naked skin.
Her eyes find who speaks, and the first thing she notices are his private bits long gone.
Siana's breath escapes like a popped balloon. Her heartbeat, which had been like a rabbit's, suddenly stops.
It is the priest, the one with the barbed fitting to cover his cock.
The one who would have stuffed the whole of it inside her as a virgin, mutilating her then laughing as she tried to heal herself.
He's not a shambling wreck like the others. He is the one who paced her in the narrow temple corridor.
His face now holds a grin. Only a month dead, he still has teeth in his mouth. His black tongue slips out, sliding along lips mostly taken by rot.
Siana hears a moan and realizes it comes from her.
She crawls backwards on her fingertips and toes—creating distance from the priest who nearly killed her.
His eyes say he still wants to.
*
Siana fights, but in the end, she cannot win against them all. Half the priests remain standing. The others lay strewn around her in a pile of headless parts.
They still twitch.
If a head be attached, they would still be after her.
Siana backs away, horribly vulnerable in her nakedness.
The head priest approaches. His grin is a rancid swipe of black in his face. Hair still clings to his skull. Striations of fine muscle show through rotting patches of skin like stranded islands of flesh.
Siana gulps against the smell, breathing through her mouth.
“We have some unfinished business.” His voice slides over her skin like an oil slick. He puts his nose to the sky. “I can scent your cunt, Druid.”
Siana's palms dampen and she leaps to her feet.
The zombies close in.
“Take heeerrrr,” he commands.
Siana runs, and they leap on her.
She screams, and their rotting hands cover her mouth.
As they drag her off, her thoughts aren't of survival.
They are of unrequited love.
*
Baird and Kael arrive at the temple.
The signs of a struggle are obvious. Glass glitters in the moonlight like fallen hailstones. Baird’s eyes travel to the window that caused the debris. To the left of the solid stone wall is a twisted and warped mess of tangled lead caning.
The shape is vaguely body-like.
Siana.
Kael looks Baird’s way, and with a nod, Kael sails over the moat.
Baird lands seconds after him.
They move through the huge wooden door together. Kael says nothing, jerking his thumb at the door jamb.
A trail of rot hangs along the wood like black phlegm.
“Fuck,” Baird says with real feeling.
“Yes.” Kael nods.
They race up the curving stone staircase. Baird studies the window, broken like a jagged tooth, at the end of the long corridor.
“They were here,” Kael says, swiping his finger through the rot on the walls.
“They chased her,” Baird says in a voice that vibrates with low anger.
Kael jogs the length, going low and tracing the progression of the undead.
He turns.
“What say you?” Baird asks.
“Gravity is not a challenge.”
“Can you track?”
Baird stands there, wounded and raw. Siana is in the hands of the very priests he had saved her from.
Now they live, though they are dead.
“Baird!” Kael bellows. “Do not lose yourself now, Reaper.”
Baird comes back to himself with a swelling inhale.
“Never.”
Kael rolls his eyes.
“Can you track her or not?” Baird barks.
“Of course.”
“Then let us be off.”
Kael gives Baird a critical look. “Where will they take her?”
I know.
“The Sacred Stone. It will be their hope that those who remain can stir enough black magick to reanimate permanently.”
“Oh goddess,” Kael says, scrubbing his face.
Baird nods. They don't have much time. His nostrils flare once, hard.
Scents come.
Spoilage, rot, and underneath that, a vague floral bouquet.
Baird jogs, Kael at his heels, into Imogen's quarters then through an open door to the washroom.
Siana
was here in this very room.
He and Kael move to the deep copper tub. The very one where Baird shared his essence with Imogen.
Kael crouches, inhaling deeply in the well where the water had been.
“Siana. Blood.” He looks at Baird, continuing, “Underneath that, soap and...”
“What?” Baird asks.
Kael exhales in a rush of frustration. “Exhaustion.”
Baird's chin sinks to his chest. He does not speak his thoughts, but none of them are good.
Siana was tired and lingered here only enough to clean herself.
Then the zombies came—the dead Druid priests.
Baird hits the tub with his fist. It buckles as Baird howls his inept rage into the air. It trembles into a mournful echo.
Kael quietly says, “If you are finished with your simpering tantrum, shall we fetch Siana from the clutches of these perverted devils?”
Baird whirls.
Kael yells over his shoulder as he jogs toward the broken window, “Hate me if you will, but stop acting the part of an infant.”
“Fuck off!” Baird hollers as he leaps through the hole in the wall, avoiding the jagged glass remnants.
“Child!” Kael bellows from the ground.
I loathe him.
Baird bursts through the hole where the window was.
*
Siana's head rocks back against the stone. The priest’s slap numbs her face completely. She can't heal herself as fast as their violence rains down upon her.
She lifts her raw wrists, and the eye hooks jangle against her chains. It is with a horrible sense of déjà vu that she finds herself back upon the very stone that Altho and Jessamine rutted upon the prior night.
The one where, a month ago, this priest had his prick torn off by Baird.
There is no worse remorse than what descends over Siana.
Pride. Her arrogance has put her in this moment. There will be no future with someone as mate.
No king.
These dead priests will kill her, and she will never have known love, only the throes of death and agony.
Hope slips away like a silent thief in the night.
Siana lies beaten, hopeless, and covered in the calling card of the undead. She closes her eyes.
The priest laughs.
Siana's eyes snap open, and her gaze moves to where his dick used to be. She might die, but she will die on her terms.
Her lips curl. “I cannot find the humor of this for you, scourge. You have no prick. You will have to make do with beating me.”
He shakes his head. Siana bites her lip to keep from crying out when a chunk of his face slides off and lands beside her ankle with a wet plop.
“No, breeder.” His words sound like pieces of syllables.
“Harold—come.”
The young man who shambles forward is freshly dead. Except for the terrible vacancy in his eyes, Siana would think him alive.
Her mind frantically turns, struggling to remember his significance. Then it strikes her.
He is the priest who was sexually enslaved by Seraphina.
Siana's eyes whip to his.
There is only one emotion in them now.
Lust.
Mayhap two.
Hate.
Harold the zombie tears his pants off in a jerky motion that brings him to his knees.
Beside Siana's head.
His rotting cock hits her cheek, and she screams.
Harold smiles.
His tongue is as black as a night without stars.
CHAPTER FOUR
Seraphina
Seraphina floats, arms and legs spread, bobbing in the sea of her mind where sleep and wakefulness collide.
She has a terrible feeling of foreboding. Images race through her soft consciousness.
The imprisonment of the Druid priests.
Click, her mind snaps to the next frame of memory.
The phallus the priests used to fuck her.
The tool of her magick used to capture them both.
Click.
The war with the undead, and Jessamine's subsequent sexual enslavement with three zombies. Youth restored, the price high.
Click.
Her payment for all Druids in the form of ownership with Altho the scarred.
Seraphina's eyes pop open. Fully awake, she looks around the room, searching for Altho.
She is alone and sits up in the soft bed.
Bright sunlight streams in through an arched window, thick glass obscuring a wooded view. The trees appear magnified and bent. Straw marks from the making bisect the glass like etched lines.
She takes in the small room. The bed is narrow and tucks underneath a deep eave on one side of the room. Seraphina lifts her hands and caresses the smooth rock of the ceiling. Swinging around, her feet touch a deep scarlet, woven rug.
She walks around the room. A dresser stands in the corner to the left of the window.
A towel, bar of soap, and glass vial with some kind of pearlescent substance inside rest neatly on the top.
Seraphina looks at her horrible clothes. They are filthy with blood, dirt, and the remnants of sex.
Clutching the toiletries, she makes her way to the closest door. She tries the knob, but it does not turn.
Locked.
I am a prisoner.
Seraphina's lips flatten as her gut churns. It is not just from hunger, but fear.
She moves to the only other door, her heart hammering. Its top arches in a mirror of the window. Hammered black brackets puncture both the meat of the wooden door and the stone jamb. She runs her hands over the rough-hewn surface and finally her fingers glide to the handle.
Depressing the thumb latch, she moves forward, pushing the door open as she does.
A large bathroom, as big as the sleeping chamber she was just in, fills her vision.
Every modern amenity is present. A marble-topped vanity with an integral basin with taps for both hot and cold water adorns one corner. The tub, very much like the one from the Druid temple, stands beneath a window twice as high as the one in her bedroom.
She moves to the great copper tub.
Two people could fit inside.
A stool perches beside the head of the tub, and a pile of neatly folded clean clothes lie on the stool.
Seraphina's fingers trip through each thing.
Even undergarments are present. She smirks. Her captor, Altho, is thorough.
She turns the hot tap on full bore. The water steams as it hits the bottom of the basin.
Seraphina looks around the room, searching for bathing crystals, a staple of the Druids. Her gaze catches on a row of glass bottles.
One is marked “Hazelnut Honey.” She stands on her tiptoes and gets the jar down. Using a carved wooden spoon, she scoops out enough to put under the jet of water.
The wonderful fragrance of baked goods reaches her, and she sighs.
She strips off her dirty clothing and steps inside, sinking to her chin.
Seraphina lets the nothingness of her mind take her. Her life is no longer her own, but one Altho determines.
She takes her time, lathering each part of her twice. Twigs and dirt fill the tub. She drains it before beginning from scratch.
After the third revolution, her hair squeaks with cleanliness and her skin is pink from scrubbing. She feels like a new woman.
Echoing footsteps cause her to turn.
Altho stands in the doorway without expression, stark daylight edging around him.
Seraphina covers her pussy and breasts with her hands.
Altho throws his head back, laughing.
The hood he wears stays at his back, and the damage to his face is extensive.
His handsomeness is slashed with scars that ripple with his smile.
“Stare all you wish, Seraphina. This is as good as I will ever present.”
Seraphina says nothing, her eyes moving over each healed wound. Raw and pink, a jagged lightning strike colli
des with an eyebrow, missing a beautiful icy blue-green eye by a breath. His eyes exactly capture the shade of the glaciers of the north.
They stand like ice chips in a face of granite, a jaw as square as it is strong. The scar ends at his cupid's bow mouth, making his lips fuller.
His lips curl in a cruel smile. “Like what you see, Seraphina?”
No, they are some of the cruelest wounds I have observed on anyone.
Altho's face goes neutral. He barks, “Let me look at you—do not hide from me.”
Seraphina has been in many sexual entanglements. Her magick is sexual in nature. It is what she can do to further the Druids. She takes a male within her and he is hers.
Mayhap not him. He is a rare Druid witch.
She drops her hands.
Seraphina has been taken against her will before. She made those who transgressed against her pay in blood and cock.
As her sexual prey.
Altho's glacial eyes travel her body, finally meeting her own. Hers are not beautiful like his. Her eyes rival the moss of the forest floor, not the clear beauty of an icy sea.
She gulps.
He gives her his back and walks away with the command, “Come.”
Altho does not turn to see if she complies.
*
Seraphina anxiously clutches her dress as she enters her bed chamber.
She is alone, and her brows come together.
The door to her bedroom, which was locked before, stands open.
She moves through it and gazes around. A wide corridor, lit on either end by more arched windows, illuminates the pathway and the doors that line the long hall.
One door stands open.
She hesitates then presses forward.
Altho stands with his back to her, hands knotted behind him, gazing out the window.
He knows she is there and turns.
Seraphina is no longer surprised by the scarring. Her eyes move to his impossibly broad shoulders, trim hips, and wide, muscular hands.
He gestures for her to come forward, and she takes an uncertain step toward him.
He moves closer and she retreats.
His hand falls, as does his robe. He flings it aside without looking and it catches on the back of a high backed chair.
Altho paces to stand in front of her. He trails a finger along her jaw, and she flinches.
