Vindicta (The Liquidator Wars Book 1)

by Kindra Sowder

“You have no choice,” Brynn was hissing, “And I will hear nothing else as your leader! Ye Gods, Tarren, you forget yourself!”

  Tarren, his face flushed darkly with unexpressed emotion, lowered his head. Creed could see that the Stalwart Protector of the Electi Queen had barely touched his food.

  “As my Queen demands it of me, so shall it be done,” he said, sighing deeply.

  “And kiss my ring also,” Brynn insisted, shoving it under his face, “So that I am sure you have acquiesced, Tarren. Right now!”

  Tarren made a noise in his throat but did as she asked.

  “My Queen, Brynn, Daughter of the Electi, I give my word,” he said, his shoulders slumped in defeat just as if she had beaten him in an actual sword battle.

  Creed tapped Brynn on the shoulder, and she turned. Rather than looking distressed, as he expected, she looked pleased with herself.

  “Brynn, what’s up?” he asked, smiling at her. Looking into her beautiful face, he forgave her everything, including using him as a pawn to try to get to his father.

  “Everything is fine,” she told him, smiling beatifically. “Tarren and Gwenyth are to be wed,” she said to him, a knot of barely concealed triumph in her voice.

  ***

  Just as the servants were clearing the table in preparation for dessert, Brynn felt a tap on her shoulder from behind her.

  Her first reaction was to whirl and demand. “Who dares to lay a hand on the Daughter of the Electi?” On either side of her, she felt Tarren and Creed both ready their weapons in response to someone being bold enough to dare touch her.

  It was the Witch Cthonia.

  “Ah, my apologies, Brynn, Daughter of the Electi,” she responded, smiling and giving a mock curtsey, “I was just curious to see if you were as soft as the rest of us females since you are worshiped as a Goddess!”

  “Do you know who I am?” the Witch added, bending down so that she could be face to face with Brynn.

  “I know that you are King Uictore’s Concubine in the Kingdom of the Liquidators. Though we would call you a common whore in the Kingdom of the Electi,” Brynn said crisply, enunciating every word. “And I also know you are rude, as you must surely recognize how crass it is to violate the purity of a Daughter of the Electi with your corrupt touch.”

  Cthonia sneered.

  “Wrong answer, you stupid little pale cow,” she said evenly, “I am the first female that ever fucked your new lover Creed. He couldn’t get enough of me. Huge libido that one!”

  Turning toward Creed she spat, “And you. I can smell Electi bitch all over you. No wonder the King despises you so.”

  The words were barely out of her bright red mouth when Brynn stood up and came toward Cthonia, knocking over the chair she’d been sitting in and drawing her sword.

  “I am sorry for your words, Amazon Witch!” Brynn said, her face instantly flushed with rage, “And so it is my mission to remove that tongue that gave them utterance! But since I am not one to worry about precision I think it will serve me just as well to use a broad stroke to sever your spiteful head from your shoulders!”

  Brynn waited only for a page to run up to Cthonia with a sword before shrilling a war cry that echoed from all four walls and striking with her sword. Around Brynn and Cthonia a large space had been cleared for the fight, with tables pushed back to make plenty of room.

  Creed, Tarren, and Bayn all stood at the ready. If this were to be a one on one battle between the women they had no cause to join in unless it escalated.

  With the first deadly accurate stroke, Brynn partially severed the Witch’s head from her long neck, the blade making a long deep cut from the side nearly severing it and shortening Cthonia’s hair into a more modern style incidentally.

  To Brynn’s horror, rather than toppling over, Cthonia cracked her neck to one side, then the other, healing the laceration instantly.

  The first thing Cthonia did after that was look down on the flagstones beneath her feet. One-half of her long hair lay splayed against the stonework.

  “The bitchtress ruined my beautiful hair!” she shouted, “And will die for it along with her insolence!”

  “And you all seem to forget that you have broken the treaty on more than one occasion, and we have been rather lenient by not showing up here before now. Rather peacefully, I might add.” Brynn held her arms out to the side in a show of bravado. “Because of that, you are free to make the first move but know this. I will kill you and the rest of your Liquidator filth will follow.”

  She swung her own sword just as Brynn raised hers to meet it, and a powerful clanging sound rang out. The ear-splitting noise of well-forged metal striking metal could be heard for the next five minutes.

  Frustrated, Cthonia took a swing that caught Brynn on the outside of her thigh, but though her blood ran Brynn could feel the healing of the angel blood she had consumed earliest working its magic. With a fizzing sound, her wounds were closing much more quickly than they normally did with her natural vampire propensity for healing.

  Again Brynn struck Cthonia, this time on the side of the head, slicing one of her ears off, though it instantly wriggled up Cthonia’s neck and back into position, looking like a slug and leaving a viscous bloody trail.

  Brynn shot a desperate look over to Creed, Tarren, and Bayn. Creed seemed to be trying to communicate something.

  He was touching his right eye.

  Sweat soaked from her exertions, Brynn turned back to Cthonia, spinning and sticking the point of her sword as far as it would go into Cthonia’s right eye, then pulled it out before she landed with a thump on the floor.

  For just a moment, the witch teetered, and then reached out blindly in front of her, as if her sight was gone.

  “King Uictore!” she shouted, “Avenge me!”

  Uictore’s features twisted in pure rage and anger as well as something Brynn didn’t think the Liquidator King was capable of. Grief. Immediately, the chamber filled with bodies gyrating and clashing against each other in the ancient death dance of war. Brynn looked around desperately for her Royal Guard that had been waiting patiently behind the velvet curtain.

  They were still there, but she couldn’t have known that they’d been slain to a man several minutes earlier, their bodies dismembered completely, their flesh laying in chunks to be collected by the cook for the next fricassee.

  Altogether, given their superior fighting skills, the Electi were more than a match for the Liquidators even though they were outnumbered three to one. Brynn felt desperate though--being in Castle Crimayne meant there could be thousands of them.

  Calyx cut off the head of the Liquidator standing between herself and Brynn and said, “I have one, yes. Tell me when to throw it!”

  Brynn nodded. She waited until she was sure that all of their backs were facing the exit that the group had used to come in, she then whistled over to Calyx.

  Calyx instantly threw up what looked like a tangled ball of wire into the air. Once aloft, the wire expanded outward in all directions, floating above the sea of Liquidator soldiers for a nanosecond before descending like a shroud over them.

  Then there were sizzling sounds, and unholy screams, flashes of blue lightning emanated off the metallic net.

  “I smell fried Liquidator,” Brynn smirked as they made their escape. It was uncharacteristic of her that she couldn’t see if King Uictore was dead or alive through the soldier’s bodies, but every instinct she had was telling her that if they remained in the hall, they would be slaughtered.

  She had already done the math.

  They ran feverishly for the outside and then beyond the wall that they had cleared when they first ventured in. And then they took to the air.

  Brynn was flying along companionably next to Creed, when suddenly she caught sight of the being on the other side of Creed, his long silver hair flying behind him, glistening in the abundant moonlight.

  The youth turned to smile and nod at her, and she was instantly furious.

  “Dow
n now!” she screamed at all of them, before plunging headfirst down to terra firma, righting herself at the last minute and reaching solid ground before any of the rest of them.

  The first thing she did, since she was too out of breath to speak, was slap Creed across the face as hard as she could.

  “How dare you!” she blurted when she’d caught her breath, “Bring a Liquidator with us! Unacceptable. I don’t care if he is your brother.”

  Having gotten out only half of what she’d wanted to say, and because it pissed her off that she had to pause in speaking in order to catch her breath, Brynn hit Creed in the face for emphasis.

  “What the Hell are you even thinking, mongrel?” she demanded.

  Creed recognized that it was a rhetorical question, but he decided to seize the opening she had given him before she started hitting him again.

  He also wondered how many times he would have to fuck her before she stopped calling him ‘mongrel.' He couldn’t wait to find out.

  “With all due respect, Queen Warrior Brynn, Daughter of the Electi, I sincerely believe that my step brother Tallye will be an asset to us. He has insider information that will give us an edge. He knows what campaigns they have been planning well into the future and what their objectives are in each one. Plus, even though he is a mite shorter, he looks a lot like me, which gives me a particular fondness for him. He is strong and has been aptly trained in the Warring arts. He is prepared to pledge fealty to you and only to you in whichever way you chose to test him.”

  Brynn turned to face Tallye. Though he loomed over her, the energy emanating off of her was so formidable he found himself thoroughly intimidated.

  “Are you prepared to show me fealty by facing any test I might require of you?” she asked the handsome blond man standing before her in a quietly menacing tone, “I might scourge the skin off your back. Will you suffer for me? Will you worship me as my queen? Will you do my bidding always?” she finished.

  Tallye knelt on one knee before her.

  “Yes my liege, Brynn, Daughter of the Electi, I am prepared to face whatever I must to serve you. I have admired you from afar all my life. The tales of your bravery are legendary, your swordplay is matchless, and your beauty is renowned all over the earth. I have prayed to join you since childhood, and I will not disappoint you!”

  As he remained there with his head bowed, a smile began to play around Brynn’s lips.

  “That will do for now,” she muttered, “When we return I will ask our Oracle Natalia to prepare an induction ceremony for you. You will be marked to my service with a permanent mark, one that will designate you the property of the Electi.

  A mark so striking that it will mean your instant death if you ever attempt to return to Crimayne and your vile Liquidator Father. Do you still accept my terms?”

  Tallye raised his head. She was surprised that his eyes were an unusual green color. She had never seen a Liquidator with pupils of such a rare hue.

  “I swear, oath and pledge that I do accept all your conditions, Queen of Warriors. I thank you for your trust in me.”

  Even as she motioned the kneeling lad to rise, Brynn laughed harshly.

  “Tallye, son of Uictore, I have no trust to give you. Only pain and trial by fire. If you survive, you may find that your decision is more curse than a blessing. I may accept you into my service, but I intend to break you first.”

  ***

  They reached the Electi Manse in record time after that. Tallye seemed elated to even be traveling with them, though Brynn, Tarren, and Bayn had insisted that he not be allowed to have possession of even one weapon.

  Creed found himself looking both at Tallye and then at Brynn. He wondered what was going on in her head. He had taken a liking to Tallye, felt instinctive that his younger stepbrother’s motives were pure.

  At the same time, he knew that the legendary propensity for cruelty ran deeply in Brynn’s royal veins, and he shuddered for what she might put Tallye, a Liquidator turncoat through before she was satisfied and assured of his complete loyalty.

  He had claimed her, and it had been a victory so sweet nothing in his existence could or ever would match it. But at the same time, he knew that everyone in Brynn’s Inner circle had endured torture of one kind or another to earn the privilege of being close to her.

  If the truth be told, he feared for Tallye.

  ***

  Despite the two maidservants holding her hands, one patting the withered and gloved hand and the other holding Gwenyth’s perfect one, as Gwenyth sat in a huge armchair in her chambers anticipating the return of her sister Queen Brynn, she was quaking with fear.

  Other emotions took turns within her fragile body. Part of her was furious beyond reason at Brynn for hunting Ryder down like a dog. Another part of her was suffused with guilt that Ryder’s fondness for her had placed him in danger of his life.

  And then there was the deep sense of shame she felt for letting her emotions cloud her reason, for not reckoning the consequences of her wanton passion for the first real male entity she had ever been with.

  Of all of her emotions, the shame ran most deeply, and she knew that whatever Brynn decided her consequence should be she would be forced to bear it without argument.

  Brynn had always been the best role model for her, Gwenyth reasoned. But Brynn had never realized that she, Gwenyth, was cut from entirely different cloth. She had never had the strength of will and self-discipline of a real leader, and Brynn had proven herself over and over to be not only a leader, but also the true savior of the Electi.

  There was a knock at the door, startling Gwenyth out of her dark thoughts. She sensed Brynn on the other side and closed her eyes to take a steadying breath before facing her older sister.

  The maidservant to her right looked to her for guidance, never asking the question out loud, only with her eyes. Everyone knew she was to face a punishment handed down to her by the Warrior Queen and Gwenyth knew that because she was her sister, her punishment would be harsher than any Brynn could pass on to anyone else within the Electi. This was the reason she hesitated slightly before replying.

  “You may let her in. Whatever she has planned will happen now or later so it may as well be now,” she said as she rose from her chair. Gwenyth smoothed the front of her dress as the maidservant moved to the door and let Brynn inside the room.

  The scent that came with Brynn was unmistakable. Not only could you still smell Creed’s claim on her, but other aromas mingled with it, making it nearly unpalatable. Brynn didn’t hug her younger sister, which was typical of them. Instead, she stood before her with a hand on her elegantly curving hip and pinned Gwenyth with her crimson stare. Gwenyth scrunched her face as the underlying smell of burning flesh that nearly smothered everything else.

  “It is done, sister. You have been avenged,” Brynn stated proudly with chest pushed out with pride in her accomplishment.

  “You stink of death, Brynn,” was all Gwenyth knew to say.

  Brynn smiled and turned away from her sister to sit on the plush chair across from her, crossing one leg over the other as she sat with her arms resting on the armrests. And she looked like a true queen then. Gwenyth couldn’t deny that.

  “It is an unfortunate side effect of killing that traitor. I’m certain I will stink of it for weeks.”

  Gwenyth turned away from her sister as tears stung her eyes. She wiped them away with a gloved finger and followed suit, sitting in the chair so she could look her older sister in the eye for the first time since the incident.

  “I’m sorry, dear Gwenyth. If I had any other choice…”

  “You had plenty of options. Do not feel sorry for me.”

  “I will tell you this, Ryder’s intentions were not as pure as he led you to believe. When I found him, he was on his way to Crimayne with your parcel in his hand. Taking it to the Liquidator king, Uictore. For what purpose, it is still unclear, but I will get down to the bottom of it. I can promise you that.”

  Shock a
nd disbelief moved through Gwenyth’s frail body in waves, a chill running through her that she fought to hide. She would remain strong in the face of her older sister, Queen, and judge.

  “And I take it you spoke with Uictore?” Gwenyth questioned.

  Brynn nodded. “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Nothing came of the meeting once the witch in his court challenged me. And Uictore completely disregards the treaty of 1514, so we have no choice but to declare full on war against the Liquidators.”

  Gwenyth said nothing, unsure if there was anything she could say to her sister. The war with the Liquidators had always been on the forefront of her mind. That and collecting the Quaji to replenish their ranks. That was until lately even though she was certain the war still raged inside of Brynn with the same ferocity.

  Brynn jumped up and stretched out a hand toward Gwenyth.

  “Come walk with me awhile dear sister,” she said smiling, “We can talk more, and there is something I would like you to see.”

  Gwenyth did as she was told, though she didn’t trust the gleam in her older sister’s eye. She found it odd that Brynn could play the pristine and virginal Warrior Goddess one minute and the next minute let a Liquidator Mongrel ravish her.

  The fact that Creed also had angelic blood seemed no excuse for Brynn’s recent assignation with Creed. And it was her misfortune as the younger Daughter of the Electi that Brynn was allowed to matchmake for her as if she had no right to choose for herself.

  Gwenyth though they might be heading to the labyrinth or the white rose garden. Instead, she opened the massive front door, looking behind her only once to make sure Gwenyth was following.

  The night air was refreshing, the moon turning the treetops to silver as they walked out across the vast marble porch with its stout columns and down the broad steps of the entranceway to the manse.

  Their feet were crunching on the gravel of the circular drive, and Gwenyth wondered where they were going? Down the driveway to the city street? Was she taking her for Starbucks?

  Abruptly Brynn stopped and turned to her, turning her around with her hands firmly on Gwenyth’s small shoulders.