by E. A. James
Margila’s pulse pounded in her temples. She let go of her rifle to wipe her sweaty palms on her dress. This dress wasn’t the best battle attire. If only she’d changed her clothes before going to the Armory, she would be much better prepared now.
She had no time to regret that or anything else before another deafening explosion shivered the walls. A light fixture fell from the ceiling and shattered on the floor in a dazzling explosion. The sound rattled her nerves, but at that moment, a whole section of the massive stone wall gave way and crumbled before her eyes. A gap opened in it, and soldiers in battle helmets poured through it.
They leveled their rifles at anything on the other side, and the very first thing they spotted was Margila. She barely had time to aim her own rifle before they sprayed the whole passage with their fire.
She squeezed off one shot, two shots before a rough hand dragged her down. Her shots burst through the enemy ranks, and a soldier fell. Tanak hauled her down to the floor behind the bench. “Get down! Are you crazy?”
“I got one!” Nothing else mattered.
Before he could stop her, she stuck her head up from behind the bench and squeezed off another shot. She brought down another soldier, but Tanak pulled her back. “Stop that! It’s suicide.”
“I got another one!”
“Are you listening to me? They’ll kill you. Do you think I want to sit here and watch you get your head blown off? Stay down. That’s an order.”
Her face fell. Why did he want to rob her of all the fun? She was enjoying this. There must be a way to kill more of them without endangering herself.
Just then, she heard more rifle fire from farther down the passage. She waited until Tanak let go of her arm before she took a peek. What she saw gave her an idea. The soldiers were all already inside the passage. No more came in from outside.
Someone, somewhere farther down the passage, fired on the soldiers. The soldiers concentrated all their attention on the resistance around the corner. They must have either forgotten or never known two people were still hiding behind the bench.
The soldiers stood with their backs to Tanak and Margila. She rose up behind the bench and propped her rifle against its back when Tanak grabbed her arm again. “Don’t do it. You’ll only attract their attention, and then they’ll come after us.”
“What do you suggest? Do you say we should hide here while they mow our people down?”
“Of course not. There’s a better way to do this.”
“How?”
He pointed down the passage in the direction of the firefight. At first, she didn’t see what he meant. He looped the strap of his rifle across his shoulder. Very carefully so as not to attract attention, he crawled out from behind the bench and headed down the passage.
Margila copied him, but she didn’t like this at all. Crawling around on the floor was no way to fight a battle, especially when you had a high-powered rifle to fight with.
He led the way down the passage until he was almost level with the soldiers. Then he ducked behind a tapestry hanging nearly to the floor. Margila ducked in behind him. “What now?”
He held his finger to his lips and slipped his rifle off. He handed it to her and put his hand into a secret pocket of his jacket. He brought out a very small, pointed dagger. Margila’s eyes widened. What was he going to do with that?
He stole a peek out from behind the tapestry, and when he came back, he nodded. He crouched down on the floor and peeked out under the lower hem of the tapestry. The soldier at the very rear of the enemy phalanx stood right in front of him.
Tanak waited for an especially loud volley from the Raveniss forces down the passage. Rifle fire rang against the walls, and a few soldiers went down. At just that moment, his hand shot out and he grabbed the nearest soldier by the ankle. He knocked the man off his feet, and the soldier hit the floor like a ton of bricks.
Tanak dragged the man sideways under the tapestry, and before Margila knew what happened, Tanak grabbed him by the head and slit his throat. Quick as a wink, he shoved the twitching body back out into the passage.
Tanak held his bloody knife in a vise-like grip, and he looked around behind the tapestry with wild eyes. No one noticed, though. The other soldiers were all too busy fighting the defenders.
Another burst of rifle fire rattled down the passage. Tanak grabbed another soldier, who soon joined his comrade in a heap on the floor. He killed five soldiers before he wiped his knife on his elaborate brocade pants and put it away.
Margila questioned him with her eyes, but he held up a finger to silence her. He took his rifle from her and whispered in her ear. “Now we do it your way. When I give the signal, jump out and gun down as many as you can hit. They’ll be surprised. Hopefully, we can kill a few before they react.”
She nodded. Her heartbeat quickened. At last! She unslung her rifle and got it into position just in time. He waved her to the rear of the tapestry. He paused until the fire came heavier. Then he leapt out with a shout. “Now!”
They landed side by side behind the enemy soldiers. Adrenaline coursed through Margila’s veins. She never knew the lust for blood like this before. She slaughtered chickens in her father’s yard, but never people. She never thought she would have to, but here she was, relishing the kick of the rifle against her shoulder. She loved the blast against her ears and the spray of blood when her shots struck their mark.
True to Tanak’s word, the soldiers were surprised to be shot at from behind. They stumbled and staggered in their haste to turn around. Margila clenched her jaw and aimed. One, two, three...she counted sixteen in all that fell before her fury.
All at once, a searing pain startled her out of her frenzy. She looked around. Some annoying insect bit her on the arm, and another on her leg. She bent over to take a look and noticed blood running down to her feet.
She looked up to fire again when six soldiers charged toward her with their guns going off. Their shots whizzed around her head. How they managed to miss her, she couldn’t understand.
She raised her rifle, but at that moment, something knocked her off her feet. She hit the floor before she realized Tanak had shoved her over from his side of the passage. “Get out of here! Run for it!”
He scrambled away to the other side of the passage, and she lost sight of him. She took a fraction of a second to understand what was going on. The soldiers had recovered. They were coming after her. She no longer had the advantage of firing on them from behind.
She tossed her rifle strap over her shoulder and headed for the tapestry, but that couldn’t offer her much protection. She ducked under it when a handful of blasts slammed against it. She barely had time to scuttle away and take shelter behind the bench before they shot her down.
Margila pushed her back against the bench and clutched her rifle in both hands. She couldn’t fire it if she tried. Her hands shook with nervous terror. Rifle fire exploded up and down the passage. She couldn’t tell where it came from, and she was too outnumbered to check.
Where was Tanak? Was he alive or dead? At last, the noise of battle moved off down the passage, and she collapsed in exhausted relief on the floor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She opened her eyes hours later. Silence filled the passage. No light came through the gap in the wall. It must be night.
She hadn’t exactly fallen asleep. She’d passed out from sheer nervous overload. The whole sequence of events—being selected by lottery, being bound and left to die on that mountain, being carried off by a fire-breathing dragon, fighting the soldiers and saving Tanak, giving herself to him and finding out he was really a man, coming to this magnificent city and being welcomed as one of their own, being treated like royalty and finding her bliss with Tanak in their bedchamber, only to have it destroyed by the Axis attack—all of it caught up with her now. She couldn’t bring herself to get out from behind that bench. She couldn’t fire her weapon at another human being again, not even to save her own life.
Just then, s
he heard the shatter of breaking crockery. A voice boomed out, “Margila! Where are you?”
She dropped her rifle and scrambled out from behind the bench as fast as she could. “Tanak! I’m here.”
He rushed to her side. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I was hiding.”
He closed her in his arms. “Thank heaven. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I thought they killed you.”
She got lost in his embrace. “Where is everybody?”
“I don’t know about everybody else, but some thirty or forty of our people are down at the other end of the passage. They’ve got a cadre of soldiers pinned down.”
“Don’t you want to go help them?”
“They don’t need my help, and finding you was more important.” He lifted her chin to kiss her.
Faint light from the stars glittered in his eyes. Margila caught her breath.
He murmured so low she could barely hear him. “Where were you?”
“I was always here.”
His voice broke with emotion. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I didn’t know where you were. I thought you might be dead.”
He held her against him. “I never stopped looking for you. I couldn’t let you go. I’ve waited too long for you. I couldn’t imagine losing you now.”
He sank down to the ground, and she sank with him. Their lips locked in rapturous devotion. Her arms went around his neck, and her legs circled his waist so their bodies fit together exactly.
Her ardor blossomed out of the depths of despair. She clung to him in reckless yearning. If she could block out everything around her by holding him as tight as she could, she would bury him inside herself where they would never be separated again. If she could make him her own flesh, she could protect him from all danger. What happened to her would happen to him. She never had to face a future without him.
She held his face between her hands. She couldn’t kiss him enough. She had to consume him, to inhale him into her cells. He represented the highest perfection she could attain. Nothing remained for her life but to find its fulfillment in him.
He devoured her lips with the same single-minded fervor. He grabbed at her clothes with his fists and crushed her against him in an all-out effort to get at her. He flipped her skirts up, and his hands dove under her skirts.
For a fraction of a second, he dared not touch her bare skin. His fingers hovered over her curvaceous rump in agonized anticipation. His hands quivered with pent-up excitement. He caught his breath, and his lips held still over her mouth.
Margila met his gaze, there beyond her nose. She read a depth of meaning there she never believed possible. She saw to the limit of universal understanding in his eyes. She could look through his eyes to the vast cosmic source beyond.
He encompassed the whole galaxy in his eyes. She gazed beyond him, beyond this little war, to the endless reaches of existence. In this fragile moment, she was everything. He was everything, and they were one, forever and eternal. She understood everything she needed to understand. Love and light flowed through them and out of them to the rest of the cosmos, in never-ending ebbs.
Did he see the same thing in her? He gazed into her eyes, but he saw something beyond her. He stared in amazement at something behind and through her, something wonderful.
Then the tempest took him. He fell on her with unbridled madness. His hands closed on her flesh with frightening intensity. Margila worried he would rip her apart in his fevered passion.
He pried her flesh apart and exposed the molten slit awaiting him. He fingered her delicate openings and drove her to the brink of insanity. He bounced her against his hips, and the first crashing thunderbolts exploded in her eyes.
He fumbled with his own clothing, but Margila already rocked and beat her own body against his rising crotch. She cantered bareback on the muscled jackhammer throbbing up underneath her to buck her up and down.
He ripped his pants open and released his wicked cock to probe her depths. At last, he unleashed his manhood. She gasped out loud when he penetrated the veil, but the pain of their first encounter no longer bothered her. She impaled herself on his shaft and let him ride her hard with his upward thrusts.
Their lips drifted apart in panted gasps. He growled at her in fury. “Come on, baby. Come on. Give it to me. I need you.”
She lost all control of herself. Her hips bucked against his galloping thrusts with a will of their own. She heard her voice from far away, urging him to greater feats of prowess. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Take me now. Oh, yes. I want it.”
“Is this what you want?” Tanak moaned between breaths
“Oh, yes! Oh, it’s so hard. Oh, it feels so good. Give it to me, please give me more.”
He slammed his hips up into her and knocked her off her moorings with his sharp pubic bone. She fell down hard to bang her clitoris against him. Her voluptuous buttocks slapped against his skin. Her own juice gushed out to wet him, and they stuck together with every stroke. Every bounce tore her free, and down she came again to join with him in ecstasy.
She threw back her head, and he supported her neck. She leaned back and angled his shaft against the sensitive spots inside her. She fought for every inch of his manhood, and it drove her higher, beyond her wildest dreams.
All at once, a flaming jet squirted into her. It sprayed her insides with its exotic perfume and sanctified her for all time to the vapors of love. She flew into wild spasms of frenzied passion. She kicked her legs out to the sides and struggled against his hands. Her voice echoed off the ancient stones in orgasmic delight.
They convulsed together in the throes of their union until the upheaval left them both spent and glowing with pleasure. Then Margila collapsed against him for support. He held her up and sheltered her from her own wild irruptions and his. They lay down on the bare floor, still entangled in their blessed oneness.
Tanak rolled over and wrapped himself around her from behind, but he couldn’t warm her against the night chill. She wormed her back against his chest.
If only he would change into a dragon now, she would nuzzle against his scaly skin. She suffered no more fear or disgust for his dragon self. She relished it. She gloried in her position as his consort.
What would her family and friends back in the village say if they knew she took her delight with a giant lizard, that his rough skin and his massive body brought her the greatest thrills of her life? They would be horrified.
She couldn’t enjoy the thought, much as she tried. That misunderstanding caused this war. It would probably mean the end of the Raveniss if they had their way.
Shouting voices brought her head up. Her eyes snapped open to see the dawn light shining through the gap in the wall. Tanak got up as a cadre of Raveniss strode down the passage toward them. Margila recognized Tanak’s older brother Ralo. His wife Praila followed at his shoulder. “Tanak! Where are you! Are you here?”
He jumped up. “I’m here. We’re both here.”
Ralo clapped him on the shoulders with both hands. “Thank heaven! We didn’t think anyone was left alive.”
“How goes the battle upstairs?”
“Our people are still engaged with the soldiers at every station. Father is rallying anyone left in the courtyard. Come quickly! He’s giving orders to regroup and drive the soldiers out of the city. We’re close brother.”
Tanak followed his brother. Margila fell in near Praila. She was just another soldier in this army. They could share close intimacy in private, but once he took command of others, she became a cog in a much larger mechanism. She dedicated her strength and her spirit to the greater purpose.
The whole group climbed the stairs to the courtyard. The day bloomed all around them into the highest reaches of the sky. The sun touched the mountain tops and set their snowy tips on fire.
The Archduke stood across the courtyard with Katya and Tanak’s brother Waru. The other factions crowded to receive their orders. The Archduke turned toward Ralo and Tanak
coming with their people. His face burst into a brilliant smile of love, relief, and pride in his sons.
At that moment, a phalanx of Axis ships screamed over the parapet. They unleashed their guns on the citadel. Stones jumped out of their places. The parapet crumbled. The spires imploded and folded in on themselves before ballooning out into clouds of dust and debris.
Deafening concussions rocked the whole city. Deadly fire ripped across the courtyard. The Raveniss scattered in all directions. The Archduke roared to his people, “Fall back! Fall back to the fortified keep.”
Margila looked around for Tanak. He stood across the courtyard next to the door leading down to the staircase. He waved people through it. He darted out into the line of fire to help anyone who stumbled or fell or hesitated. She put out her hand to grab hold of his outstretched arm.
