Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Pleasure's Foehn (25 page)

“After you and I have done what we can to start the peace process, I’ll take him and my lady and we will go looking for Tariq’s world,” Cair stated.

“Your people might have something to say about that.” Ryden arched a brow.

“From what I know of her, your mother will have something to say about it. She will not allow the King of Amhantar to risk his life on such an adventure as you intend.”

“Until she dies, she is still Queen of Amhantar. I won’t be forced to take the scepter until then.”

“Do you think that will make a difference to her?” The Burgon demanded. “Does she not rule your life?”

“She tries,” Cair snapped.

“She does more than try, my friend,” Ryden Bakari disagreed. “She pulls the strings and you dance her merry tune, do you not?”

“I never asked to be king,” Cair told him. “I don’t want the damned title or the responsibility!”

“One of you has to take the position,” the Burgon reminded him. “Your people will demand it.”

Ask him about your little brother, warrior.

Cair flinched, hearing the strangely accented voice in his head. Though Tariq’s lips had not moved, Cair had heard him clearly.
Liam?
he questioned silently.
He’s alive?

He is
, Tariq replied.

Astonishment flashed across Cair’s face and he spun around then reached out to grab The Burgon by the front of his shirt. “Is my brother in this evil place?”

Ryden pulled free of Cair’s grip and with his eyes sparking dark fire warned the other man to never lay hands on him again. “I could have you beheaded!”

“Where is he?” Cair snarled. “Where is my brother?”

“He is safe, warrior, and at this moment awaiting your visit, but we have other things that need to—” The Burgon began but Cair cut him off.

“I want to see my brother!”

Ryden touched the Vid-Com link on the shoulder of his uniform and when Drae answered, he ordered his personal guard to bring Liam Ghrian to the meeting room.

“Satisfied?” he barked at Cair.

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“When Liam is standing before me and I’m assured you haven’t turned him into—”

He stopped, his eyes wide. Fury shot across his face.

“He likes being one of my kind,” Tariq said, forgetting to send the words mentally in his hurry to reassure Cair.

The Burgon stepped back, hearing the voice of the prisoner. His hand went to the dagger at his side in case the Amhantarean prince decided to engage him in battle.

“Liam believes the changes in him will be of benefit to your people,” Tariq stated. Cair’s lips peeled back from his teeth and he would have leapt at Ryden Bakari but at that moment a piercing klaxon began to sound, making all three warriors cover their ears against the deafening sound. “What’s happening?” Cair yelled.

“Security has been breached,” the Burgon replied. “One of the prisoners has gotten outside!”

Tariq heard the reply and began shaking his head. “Not one of mine.”

“Avatás!” The Burgon snarled and almost immediately the Vid-Com pinned to his shoulder trilled. He reached up to tap it. “Where is he?”

“Scurrying across the dunes, Your Excellency. We cut off his escape to his ship and his crew is under arrest. We were already suspicious of them for the
Kady
’s 2-I-C had the ship on line and ready to depart,” Drae reported.

“Where are you now?”

“On my way to you with the Amhantar prince.”

“We’ll never find the skink out in all that sand,” The Burgon said. “He’ll burrow under it until hell freezes over. Don’t even bother sending a search party during the storm.”

Tariq let out a roar that made Cair and the Burgon jump. When they turned to look at him, they found him pressed against the plexigon, his balled fists slamming at the shield, his eyes wild. “Bring her to me!” he yelled and the shield shook beneath his fury.

“Now! Before it is too late!”

“Davan?” Cair whispered.

“The bastard stabbed her!” Tariq shouted. “She’s dying!”

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Pleasure’s Foehn

Chapter Seventeen

Cair’s hands were trembling as he reached out to touch his lady. She was as pale as parchment and the front of her gown was soaked with blood. Barely breathing, her eyes were closed and dark circles were already forming beneath the sweep of her lashes.

“Please,” Cair said, his voice breaking. “Don’t let my lady die.”

Dr. Gruber said nothing as he tried desperately to staunch the flow of blood from the gaping wound in Davan’s abdomen. Though he was a skilled surgeon as well as a top-notch research scientist, he feared he was beyond his depth and there was but one procedure that could conceivably save the young woman’s life. He looked up at The Burgon.

“Your Excellency, I see no way past this. We must let him help us,” Dr. Gruber said.

“No,” Cair stated, shaking his head. “I’ll not let you turn her over to that
thing
!”

Prince Liam Ghrian laid a gentle hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Then say goodbye to her, Cair, for that is the only way you will save her.”

His eyes wild, his face strained and nearly as pale as his wife’s, Cair stubbornly shook his head again. “I’ll not let them turn her into a monster!”

Liam hunkered down beside his brother. “Look at me, Cair,” he pressed. “Do I look any different than when last you saw me?”

“Your Grace, we have little time,” Dr. Gruber insisted. “She will bleed out while you sit there and watch.”

“He said you change into a being like him!” Cair countered.

“Aye, that I do, but that is the only difference between the dying man I was when my ship went down and the man you see before you right now,” Liam said. “It was a small price to pay to have survived the crash.”

From deep within the confines of the research facility on Riezell Nine, the bellow of Tariq reverberated through the corridors. The pounding of his fists against the plexigon was a savage sound as he bellowed his appeal to be allowed to save Davan’s life.

“Let him help, Cair, before it’s too late,” Liam begged.

The Burgon turned to Drae and nodded, granting his personal guard permission to fetch the prisoner in Cell Two. Whether or not the Amhantarean prince gave his permission or not, Ryden had no intention of allowing the young woman to die. Turning to his other personal guard and cousin Mazon Be-Rashamon, The Burgon ordered him to bring Roman Shanahan to his sister’s side. “Gruber, do what needs to be done,” he ordered.

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Dr. Gruber exchanged a glance with his emperor then hurried to a locked cabinet from which he withdrew several vials of a lavender-colored liquid and began filling one syringe after another.

Cair looked around at the men gathered over his wife—his youngest brother, The Burgon, two of Gruber’s fellow scientists—and his shoulders slumped. He hung his head, giving in to something he hoped neither he nor Davan would regret. A thunder of feet came rushing down the corridor toward Davan’s room. The click of thick nails on the stone floor was an eerie sound that made the hair on Cair’s arms stand up. It was one thing to see the prisoner behind the protection of a strong plexigon wall and quite another to see him hurrying into the room, leathery lips pulled back from sharp incisors as he ripped at the upper part of his jumpsuit, shredding it as carelessly as though it was a thin sheet of paper.

“Where is the Siegle?” Tariq asked.

Dr. Gruber hurried forward with the syringes he had filled. He injected first one then the others into the thick neck muscles of the prisoner from the unknown world. Cair could tell the injections were painful for the agony shifted across Tariq’s face and the tall man shuddered visibly. He called out to Liam. “What did they give him?”

he asked.

Liam joined his brother. “Siegle is his word for tenerse,” he said.

“He’s addicted to the drug, then,” Cair stated.

“As am I,” Liam said and at his brother’s look of horror, smiled wanly. “Not in the way you think but without it, I would Transition out of cycle and that I don’t want. The tenerse helps to stabilize the shape shifting. Tariq has been denied it for decades and that is why you see him in the form he is now. In a few moments, you will see a very wondrous sight.”

Tariq asked for a beaker and Gruber hastened to provide one. He also gave Tariq a scalpel, which the warrior used to slice across the palm of his left hand. Closing his hand, he held it over the beaker, which Gruber held then squeezed until a measure of black blood dripped into the receptacle.

“I have never seen black blood,” Cair said in awe. He frowned. “What is he going to do with it?”

Liam didn’t answer for Gruber took the beaker, leaned over Davan and placed the rim of the glass container to the unconscious woman’s lips. Cair started to protest but Liam tightened his grip on his brother’s shoulders.

“If you can’t watch this, go out into the corridor,” Liam said quietly. “She must have the Sustenance, Cair, and his is pure therefore the most powerful.”

With his teeth clenched, Cair got up and moved away from the gurney on which Davan lay. He gagged as Gruber tilted Davan’s head back, opened her mouth and then poured the Sustenance down her throat, quickly bracing her chin to close her mouth so the liquid would not escape.

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Davan coughed, choked, but she swallowed convulsively then lay still again.

“Turn her over,” Tariq commanded and the two scientists hastened to do as he bid. Cair leaned against the far wall—his attention locked on Tariq as that one reached down and tore Davan’s gown from neck to waist and pushed it aside.

“Do what you need to,” Tariq snarled at Gruber. He was shivering uncontrollably and leaned heavily against the wall, his arms wrapped around his body. His fangs were clicking together and a heavy scent of musk rose in the air as sweat glistened on his hairy face.

Dr. Gruber took a scalpel from one of his assistants and laid it down on Davan’s back, over her right kidney, and prepared to make an incision. Cair started forward, but Liam grabbed him. “It’s necessary for the Transference, Cair.”

So intent was Cair’s gaze on Davan he almost missed the fantastical transformation that was beginning near her. If it had not been for the popping and snapping sounds, he would not have seen Tariq metamorphosing from wolf-like creature to a human male so imposing, so daunting and commanding, he felt weak in comparison. The thick pelt of dark hair seemed to be drawn down into Tariq’s heavily muscled arms—the wiry strands like tentacles retracting into the flesh. The leathery muzzle shortened, the jowls became high cheekbones, the red eyes faded to a strange mixture of gold and crimson—almost orange in color—then settled to a dark honey gold. Hands that once resembled paws reduced and where once the trunk of his body was longer than the legs now broadened and widened and became a powerful torso with hardened pectorals and a deeply striated abdominal without an ounce of fat upon them. From prominent pap to prominent pap, thick chest hair rippled down the lean, muscled frame and dipped below the torn waistband of the jumpsuit. But it was Tariq’s face that held Cair absolutely spellbound. He stared at the striking visage and could not tear his eyes away. Even when Tariq came to stand beside Davan’s gurney and offered his smooth bare back to Gruber’s blade, Cair could not stop staring at the man’s imposing profile.

Dr. Gruber had opened a two-inch incision in Davan’s back and now reached out to make a similar incision in Tariq’s.

Cair winced for the pain had to be immense yet Tariq made no sound nor did he flinch at the cut. He was staring down at Davan’s still face. It wasn’t until Gruber thrust two fingers into his wound that Tariq showed any sign of discomfort. His shoulders rolled and he bent forward a bit with a slight grunt as the scientist poked around in the incision.

“What is he doing?” Cair asked his brother.

“Retrieving that,” Liam answered quietly.

The thing Gruber removed from Tariq’s back was an abomination. It was about six inches in length, its electric green flesh covered in hard, iridescent scales that looked 145

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

like warts. The head was triangular in shape and the tip of its tail was forked and covered with sharp crimson spines. Fierce red eyes, elliptical in shape like a viper’s, glared at the scientist as it whipped its body back and forth in Gruber’s grip, trying to break free. Something thick and milky white dripped from its fangs and Gruber was careful not to let the fluid touch him.

“It’s a very caustic acid,” Liam explained. “It can burn a whole through titanium.”

“What is that thing?” Cair whispered.

“Tariq calls it a Revenant worm. He has a whole hive of the parasites growing inside him in a honeycombed sac attached to his kidney.”

Cair’s knees gave way beneath him when Gruber dropped the parasite on Davan’s back and Liam had to hold him up. He stared in horror as the thing lay there for a moment—whipping to and fro—then its pointed head lifted and its forked tongue shot out to taste the air. Before the Amhantar warrior could scream his denial, the thing wriggled over to the incision on Davan’s back and slithered into the opening. Almost immediately, the incision closed, sealing the vile creature inside the young woman’s body.

“No,” Cair cried, covering his face with his hands. “What have I allowed? What have I
allowed
?”

Davan’s eyes popped open and she screamed as the creature began gnawing its way into her kidney, the acid oozing onto the tender flesh inside her, spiny barbs piercing her. She began to writhe on the gurney.

“Leave,” Tariq commanded as he went to the gurney.

“I’ll not leave my lady!” Cair shouted. He tried to get to his mate but Liam grabbed one of his arms and The Burgon grabbed the other. Between them, they began to manhandle him to the door through which Gruber and the other scientists had already exited.

Struggling fiercely, Cair’s head was twisted around as he tried to see what Tariq was doing. He bellowed like a man possessed as he watched the warrior from the unknown world ripping the clothes from Davan.