Taken to Lemora

by Elizabeth Stephens

  “I never thought I’d find them. And then we met Ashmara but she…” She shakes her head.

  Essmira snorts lightly and it soothes my soul. I ease into my stance, letting my muscles melt down my bones. “She doesn’t much count. Ashmara is Eshmiri, through blood and soul.”

  “Exactly. But aside from myself and Darro, we haven’t managed to find any of the missing until you.”

  “Darro?” Essmira asks.

  “I think, mee-lawv,” Raku says, interrupting and calling her by a moniker I’ve never heard before, but that sounds like an entirely different language — perhaps, human?

  He steps up behind her and touches her hair while Essmira looks at me over her shoulder, searching for strength. I see calm fill her eyes when I go to her and take the poof at her side. I take her hand. She laces her fingers through mine.

  “Hexa?” The Rakukanna says when it sounds like her Raku will no longer continue.

  He smiles, “Apologies. I was distracted by the way the light from the Dark Flats reflects off of your eyes.”

  “Stop trying to distract me. I’m trying to tell a story,” she says, feigning an exasperation that is betrayed by the large, goofy smile on her face.

  Raku takes a seat next to her, across the low table where food and drink sits ready, enough to last us the lunar and then some, and fat candles burn bright. He lays his kit across the poof beside him and covers her with a blanket. He absently strokes her hair and I squeeze Essmira’s hand twice as she makes a soft sound, a happy sound.

  Raku smirks, “I was just going to say that Essmira doesn’t know any of this history, so I suggest that you start where all good stories start, milawv.”

  “And where is that?”

  “The beginning.”

  ___________________

  Thanks so much for joining Essmira and Raingar on Lemora! I hope you enjoyed their story! Reviews, even the one-liners, are very much appreciated on Amazon or Goodreads.

  To get access to future books filled with hot, possessive alphas and the resilient, warrior women they worship first, not to mention freebies, exclusive previews and more, sign up to my mailing list at www.booksbyelizabeth.com/contact.

  Until the next time,

  Pagh!

  Elizabeth

  Continue the journey and be…

  Taken by the Pikosa

  Warlord

  Warlord Ero was beginning to suspect that one among the new captives would be a problem. Halima spoke his language and it seemed she intended to wield it as a weapon. He’d have to kill her first, but the signs spelled out an edict too dangerous to ignore: Mine. She was his. But was she his salvation or his downfall?

  Taken by the Pikosa Warlord: A Barbarian SciFi Romance

  Xiveri Mates Book 7 (Halima and Ero)

  Amazon US | Amazon Other

  1

  Halima

  A ripping sound. No. It isn’t a sound, it’s just ripping. Ripping the world. Ripping me. Crrrrrack. Right down the middle.

  The pain of it shocks my whole body, like I’ve been punched in the chest and that fist tastes like metal and blood and is screaming my name. It must be my name because even through the warped pronunciation that my ears reject, I recognize that name. I know it on a deep, fundamental level. Just like I know that I have a soul and that soul is pulled together by skin and this combination of soul-wrapped skin is what makes me human.

  I’m human and my name is Halima.

  “Halima!”

  Her pronunciation is all wrong. It’s a deep haa — not a short ha — followed by a laam, yaa, meem and rounded off with a ta’marbouta. But the woman screaming can’t help her pronunciation because she’s speaking English and my name is Arabic.

  English. Arabic. Huh.

  “Halima, can you hear me?”

  Yes, I can hear you, but my name is not ha — with a flat a — limb-uh, my name is hhhaah-leem-a, as my mother once spoke it.

  Mother.

  I can place the word’s meaning, but can’t seem to conjure the memory of the mother who first told me my own name. The mother who was once mine. When I reach for her, all I see is a hand drawing a ha so elegantly, that flattened roof over the generous curve below — but it’s only drawn in this way when the letter exists in isolation…

  The hand rustles the paper beneath it as it draws the ha again, but this time with a pointed roof that slopes down before reaching back up to form the laam that is the second letter of my name. Yaa, meem, and ta’marbouta follow. It’s light brown, this hand. The same light brown as mine. Halima, she

  writes for me.

  I reach again through the fog of my memory, past the chasm of so many vocabularies competing for voice — Cantonese, English, Wolof, Farsi, Turkish, Hindi, Korean, French, Spanish, and my mother tongue, Egyptian Arabic — but when I reach, reach, reach to grab it, that hand changes, becoming larger and callused and menacing and a darker brown than it was.

  It stretches towards me from up above, grabs onto the front of my shirt, heaves me upright, and then pulls harder. I fly. I lurch. I gag. I choke. I can’t breathe. My eyes roll back and my stomach pitches as I’m dragged out of some kind of bed or maybe a bath — a glass case full of liquid that’s an unnatural, neon blue.

  “Halima, can you hear me?” The voice screeches over the sound of screeching.

  I clear my throat, draw on my knowledge of English, and answer. No, I don’t. I choke.

  My lungs sear and my torso revolts. I feel like I was reborn in a blue that sticks like sap instead of in the womb of a mother that I no longer know. I squeeze my eyes shut again and reach, reach, reach for the image of that hand drawing an elegant ha and I know that if I can just get there, everything will be alright, but…

  “Haddock!” The woman roars and her dark hand is met with a second one, this one lighter and larger and rougher.

  “Will she survive if you remove the breathing tube?” The woman’s face comes into view on my next blink. Dark brown skin, head just as balled as the man’s standing beside her. Her eyes are bright white and so are her teeth, but when she looks at me, I can see a pupil that’s fully blown, subsuming the brown iris that guards it.

  The man beside her has white skin and is equally, terrifyingly hairless. It makes me wonder what I look like. Am I just as bare and exposed as all the others? Do I, too, lack the visual markings needed to identify me?

  His green gaze roams over my face. His mouth is pursed into a murderous line, lips thin in contrast to the woman’s at his side. An alarm sounds somewhere behind him — another alarm. Something crashes, metal tears, voices scream in so many clashing intonations.

  My gaze swivels listlessly to the corner of the room, following the man called Haddock’s stare to a cluster of bald people standing in the corner. Where are we? The room around us is big and full of tanks that are either open and empty or shattered and full of a liquid that that’s no longer blue, but stained with a darker, more terrifying color. Blood. It’s blood.

  I cough, though there’s something in my mouth choking me that I can’t speak around, and the sound brings Haddock’s attention back to me. He blinks several times and shakes his head quickly.

  “We don’t have a choice, Kenya,” he says to the woman. I’m on my side, on some kind of table. It’s hard and I can hear it bending beneath me. Behind me, hands work at something in my butt and then free it. My butt cheeks clench together. My pants are drawn back up over my hips.

  “She matters,” Kenya says sternly, tone nearly one of reprimand.

  Haddock bites his front teeth together and spits, “We all matter. That’s why we were chosen. But right now, we need to get the fuck out of here before they breach.”

  “I have orders from the general, doctor. Just do it!”

  “They’ve breached!” Comes a new voice, another woman this time. She has no hair and pale skin that seems unnaturally pale. Based on her accent alone, I’d have guessed she was Korean. Without hair or even eyelashes, it’s hard to di
scern anything about any of these beings. We’re all the same bald, wet things, covered in sticky blue on top of grey uniforms that have words stitched into the lapel.

  Kenya Pettis. And then beneath that. First Lieutenant.

  I glance at Haddock’s shirt. Haddock Schwarz. Doctor. Surgeon.

  And then I glance down at my own shirt. Upside down, it takes me a few seconds to put the letters together. They’re written in the Roman alphabet, having been transliterated from Arabic. Halima Magdy. That’s my name. But perhaps, more importantly, is what’s written below. Etymologist. Interpreter.

  I am Halima Magdy.

  I am the interpreter.

  And I can’t breathe.

  I start to shake as I become aware of the reason for my restricted breathing. There’s something in my mouth. The man curses, but his hands are strong and sure as he maneuvers my head and then. Pain. That ripping returns. Ahlan wa sahlan, I think, welcoming it. He pulls and the object comes out from between my teeth, feeling very much like it excoriates my insides as he rips it free.

  My back and chest heave when the tip of the thing finally clunks off of my bottom lip. I writhe and buck on the table, trying to capture oxygen, that elusive dream. My eyes roll back. There are hands on my chest, pressing. I black out. And then I’m awake and there’s a man’s mouth on my mouth. He’s breathing and I’m gasping and he wrenches back at the same time that the woman grabs my hands and pulls me off of the table. I land on my knees.

  “Halima, listen to me.” My head spins. “You are one of three hundred and forty-four people selected to survive the climate apocalypse and subsequent water wars that destroyed the earth. We’ve been asleep for the past four thousand years. It should have been eleven, but we were woken up by a species of humans who survived the wars and what came after.” She shakes her head. Her upper lip is sweating. Her entire face is sweating. I’m sweating. “They’ve evolved.”

  Fear. Her tone is pure fear. I can feel it screech in the breath that scrapes its bloody nails down my nostrils and throat before settling in my lungs and squeezing.

  “They shouldn’t be here. They weren’t supposed to survive. No one was. But they have and now they’re going to take us. They’ve taken out most of our soldiers and, from what I’ve seen, every male commander that we had. Leanna was the colonel, but she’s the highest ranking officer left. She’s our general now. She sent me to get you.”

  She glances over her shoulder, shaking mine as she moves. “Your orders are important. The most important I’ll deliver today, so listen to me, Halima. I know that you don’t know who you are. Memories were wiped when you went into the Sucere Chamber — that’s where we are now. The only selective memories left behind for any unranked Sucere member are those pertaining to your skill. Do you know what you are?”

  I nod, mute, and glance down at my shirt. With a shaking finger, I point to my left breast.

  “Yes. Good. You’re the interpreter.”

  The interpreter because on the Sucere Chamber, there is only one.

  Not mutarjima but al-mutarjima. Meem-taa-raa-jeem-meem-ta’marbouta. Jeem has always been my favorite letter. Just like a haa, but with the dot up above it. A sacred letter. Someone said that to me once, but I don’t know who. My memories no longer carry the sound of their voice.

  “Your orders are to stay silent. Do not attempt to communicate with them. Just listen. Learn. We need to know their weaknesses so we can exploit them when the time is right. It’s our only chance to kill them and escape and we need you for that. Halima, when you…”

  “Kenya,” the male barks, tapping one foot on the ground again and again. He’s barefoot. We all are. “We’re running out of time.”

  “They’re here!” The woman in the corner who I thought might have been Korean shouts. She’s barely finished speaking before the doors explode open and they come in.

  Bronze skin. Inky black hair. Thick belts, dripping with weapons, that lace around their waists. Shoes that lace up their ankles. They come like a storm, holding swords and spears and whips. The whips, they sing. People — my species of people — scream as the frayed leather ends of their whips find our sensitive flesh. Kenya forces me down, throwing her body over mine. I’m in shock for a fountain of reasons, this only being one among them.

  Then, less than a heartbeat later, she’s ripped away from me and I’m ripped up onto my feet by the hair.

  Pain shoots down through my scalp and continues to tear apart my lungs as I’m dragged by a man — by a male creature I can’t see — down tunnel after tunnel. There are bodies everywhere, pressed against me on all sides. Most are the bald humans in the grey uniforms that were pulled from the blue gunk like I was.

  I try to catch the different names, different professions, different trades, trying to build a tower of reason in my mind, but the tower is made of splinters. Reason is too hard to find.

  There’s an architect and an urban planner, a biologist and a geologist, a paleontologist and an anthropologist, an electrical engineer and an aerospace engineer. There’s even a woman with enormous blue eyes whose shirt says artist. I wonder distractedly what kind.

  The rocks under the sensitive soles of my feet are cold and craggy. I stub my big toe and shoved from behind for stumbling as the male that has me pushes me down tunnel after tunnel after tunnel.

  Eventually, the lights around us change. The air changes. The heat that was so oppressive before dissipates and then comes back with a vengeance and then dissipates again. We aren’t in the Sucere Chamber anymore. Maybe we haven’t been for a while. Somewhere along the way, we descended into the earth.

  We’re in caves. The tunnels are narrow and frightening and hot. Some of the violent warriors carry live flames — torches — but eventually, we get to a point where the hallways widen and there are basins of fire recessed into the walls. I can’t breathe. I’m dripping sweat. My feet are stumbling and staggering over every stone.

  The woman who might be Korean woman stands beside me and rattles like stone in a cage. I glance at her shirt. Jia Kim. Botanist. She’s crying without making any sound and when I reach down and lace my fingers through hers, she holds me back firmly, without question. She doesn’t know me and I don’t know her, but we’re together now. Each one a little less alone.

  As we descend further into the ground, I’m forced to think of Hell.

  In ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumarians believed all souls went to Kur, a large hole in the ground just like this. Maybe this is Kur, I start to think, but when we’re finally forced through an opening into an enormous cavern, I’m no longer certain. Kur is described as a dark, miserable place. But here? This cave? It’s simply beautiful. Zay al foll. As beautiful as jasmine.

  Light punches into the cave through a single opening in the ceiling in strokes of pure gold. I can see sand and dust particles dancing through the light that illuminates the full expanse of the cave in brilliant brown and blue topaz. A river splits the center of the space and on the other side, flat, smooth stone leads up to a single pedestal and to the towering throne mounted on top of it — and the creature occupying it.

  But even Hades was beautiful in some depictions… Maybe, it’s even the beauty of this place that makes it that much more horrible. I’m not sure where I am — I’m barely certain of who I am — but I’m afraid. Perhaps fear is my only truth.

  I’m shoved further into the cave and as I sweep my gaze around, I can see that the cave is full. People — creatures — are everywhere. Everywhere. Men and women with bronze skin, black hair and whips in their hands stand around the perimeter of the massive cathedral. They watch us as we enter and I think fleetingly of Kur and Hell and Dante’s nine rungs.

  Hell is heat and fire and Kur is dreary and miserable, filled with demons and dust. Hearts are weighed on Anubis’s scales in Ancient Egypt and in Tibet, one must serve in Narakas deep in the earth until one’s Karma has achieved its full result.

  How heavy are our hearts?

  How much karma
did we waste?

  What did we do in our last lives that was so wrong?

  Jostling bodies part in front of me and through their curtain I finally catch a glimpse of the man on the throne, and any lingering uncertainty I had about whether or not this is the final Judgement, is erased. Here we are. This is it. Purgatory has reached its conclusion. Because even though I can’t remember the face of Allah, I know the word and its definition. And I know it’s counter in the underworld. Hades. The Devil. Baal the Prince. Azazel.

  He sits in the center of this new world on top of his throne watching us as we’re brought in to face him, waiting impassively to deliver his verdict. Anubis, the devourer.

  I catch a second glimpse of the creature when I’m shoved forward, closer to the river’s edge. It’s the jangling sound that pulls my attention up. He’s holding a chain in his right hand and when he jerks it, the woman caught on its other end flies into the smooth face of the stone beneath his throne. She crashes into it face first and rears back cupping her cheek. She has fire in her gaze that makes me think that, in one past life, she might have been a queen, even though in this one she’s wearing the same grey uniform as the rest of us.

  Her pale head is bald, but her cheeks are flushed bright pink. It stands out against the grey and drags my attention down…down…to the red that covers the rest of her.

  “Is that blood?” Jia, at my side, whispers. “Oh god, what did he do to her?” She’s shaking as we reach the river’s edge — or I am, but I don’t let go of Jia’s palm.

  I don’t know her, but I don’t let go.

  “Gedabegulibetihi pondari tenirodiki!” Comes the shout from behind me. I can’t interpret it, at least not fast enough to avoid the surge of pain that slashes across my back.