Demons End (Tremble Island) (15 page)

Trundle was dragging downed trees into a spot where the Amazons were cutting the branches off them, and establishing an impressive stack of logs. Morlien Hall’s soldiers tried to assist the females and were promptly sneered at. Nord vowed to send several candidates to Hawk’s Nest for training.

The cleanup and repair in the village took three days of intense physical labor for everyone healthy enough to assist in whatever way they could lend hand or shoulder to the cause.

Chapter Thirteen

Leroi caught up with Wensel after she deposited the creature inside the shelter. She changed back to human form to use the waterfall he had made use of earlier. He watched her as he approached, noting the weary set of her shoulders and the way she continually rubbed her hand over her right breast and shoulder. His mouth watered as he finally reached her side and laid his lips to hers.

His hands ran over her naked frame, and he pulled her from beneath the flowing water. “Take what you need, it is your turn to be fed, dear one. You provided for us, and now it is time for your mate to provide for you. Come, I feel your hunger, and I am certain you have no doubt that I have need of certain portions of your anatomy.”

She pulled his energy into her being as a trickle, they still had no idea where they were, or how long they would be there. The boy child would need Leroi for protection. She had taken only enough to quiet the painful need, and he knew it. The scowl on his face told her more than he thought it did. “I rarely take more from any being, Leroi, I am not being coy. We will need your strength to keep us safe until we can determine our whereabouts. I can change into the cat when my energy is depleted. She will be swift enough to capture the food we need for a time.”

They went to the shelter without further intimacy between them. Leroi felt she had no appreciation for his skills as a provider as well as their protector.

Peter woke to the smell of meat cooking over the fire and tore into the small haunch Leroi tore from the carcass for him. He looked to where Wensel was lying against the wall asleep and whispered to Leroi, “Why couldn’t she be a cat still? I liked the cat better. The cat was pretty and I liked it a lot.”

Wensel opened her eyes and smiled. “The cat likes young boys,” she paused, licked her bottom lip, and finished with, “a lot.”

His eyes widened, but he must have seen the laughter in hers, because he started giggling. Leroi was laughing too by the time the boy realized he was being teased, and it felt good for the trio to enjoy a small joke, given their circumstances.

Once the food was gone, and the fire extinguished, they set out to explore the place they had landed. It made sense to go back to the coastline and follow it around until they discovered inhabitants or a village. The storm had downed trees and vegetation everywhere. On the beach, sea life had been tossed onto the sand and left there to die. Peter spent many minutes staring at the beach littered with proof of the storm’s fury, before he began to gather what he could lift and throw it back into the water. The body of a long thick bodied sea animal that sported whiskers and tusks, required Leroi’s help to go into the water. The creature was huge, and he felt its heart still slowly beating, as if it was fighting death. Peter was crying over the grey skinned animal, patting it and saying he would miss him. The name Waller gave Leroi the answer for the boy’s distress.

“Peter, I want you to stand back from your friend for a moment. Allow me to try to help him. If he is so loved by you, then he is worthy to live.” Leroi placed his hands on the large head, and pushed energy into the ship’s cook. He felt the pain in the creature’s head, and understood the injury. He must have abandoned ship and took on his second nature, but still had been slammed against the rocks of the coast.

Within moments, Waller opened his eyes and let out a throaty bellow. Leroi turned his head away to avoid the scent of the creature’s breath. Rotting fish was expected on a beach after a storm. Purposefully having your face up close to the source of such a smell almost gagged him.

They waited for Waller to insure he would live and be all right before leaving him alone. Peter refused to abandon his friend. Leroi refused to leave the child alone with a shifter until the being could actually shift into his human form. The child must be protected. An hour passed, and Wensel told them she would continue to move forward along the beach. They would easily catch up with her.

The male changed while Peter was helping Leroi feed small sticks into a fire almost at the tree line, due to the chilly wind blowing onto the land. He dropped to his knees beside the happy young man and gave him a hug. “It is glad I am to see you, boy, and I see you made friends with the man that saved you. Did I hear the lady? Or was that another illusion I suffered when I hit my head on the rock.”

Peter began chattering without pause, recounting his adventure. “Wensel is what Leroi calls a banshee. I asked him because when we came out of the water, I saw her glow and she was ugly. Her face was bones, and all I saw was teeth when she smiled. She scared me and I almost pissed myself. Did you know Leroi is a real Demon Prince?”

Smiling at the child’s chatter, and hating to break up the reunion between the two shipmates, he wanted to find his mate and try to help her. “Pardon my interruption, Peter, but we are trying to discover what shore we have landed on and attempt to find a way back to Tremble Island before much longer.”

“Well as to where you are, you are on Tremble’s shoreline. We were blown south of the place that you were taken from Demon, but Tremble is where you are. I thought you knew when we hit the rocks.” Waller instructed Peter to douse the fire. “We need to find a place to stay until another ship comes along needing a cook and his assistant. As much as I like to lounge around here on the beach, darkness comes fast.”

Leroi invited the two to follow them to Morlien Hall. “If we are south of the cove, Wensel is walking in the wrong direction. You start toward the Hall and I will fetch her. It will take little time to catch up with you and hopefully we shall all be safely at Morlien this night.” He was already walking rapidly in the direction she had taken.

He caught up with her as she bent over at the waist, and she seemed to fall into a writhing heap in the sand. He rushed to her and gathered her body into his arms. “You will stop this, I am capable of feeding your Hag and demand you give her allowance to take what I would freely give. Why you wish to deprive yourself of what I can give to you makes no sense. Why are you doing this? We are mated, do you not understand that to hurt you hurts me too?”

She was tired of being strong, so very tired of being alone, yet knowing his friend had mated with her and not told her, and now Leroi was claiming her as his mate also. This was too much. “I never take as much energy from any being as the banshee demands. I killed the only person who would love me and I loved as unconditionally without knowing what I had done until she was dead beside my pallet. I killed my nursemaid. Later, when I followed my heart’s need for a babe of my own, I killed a lover by sucking the very life from his being. I lost control both times. The banshee was not satisfied, she wanted more and more energy. The only two times I have lost control since the death of the male, have been first with Koler, and again with you on the ship. I might not have killed either of you those times, but what of the next? How long can you continue to feed the wretched Hag without dying?”

Leroi wanted to laugh and tell her not to be ridiculous. The sincerity in her cracking voice and black and red tears running down her face made him aware that she was not going to be put off her concerns with a simple show of his abilities, she would always worry that he would die in her passion, and that was something he refused to allow her to worry over. To have her, knowing she was holding her passions back in fear, was not something he would put up with, and Koler would throw a fit if he were to learn she might try while coupling with him too.

“I see the only way for you to grasp the knowledge is for you to see it for yourself. I have no recollection of discussing mated demons with you before, and I believe that now would be the proper time.

“Demons that mate with banshees can produce demon offspring. Without that exact pairing, the children of a demon and other being produce shifter children, most of the time the children are deformed, or have characteristics of the mother’s linage. Only one demon is allowed to be born every seventy years or more. Somehow the forces of the Goddess know when a babe should be born. I am the youngest demon on Tremble Island that we have any knowledge of.

“As for your worry about taking my life, while I share energy with your banshee. You also have a cat shifter inside of your delightful body. How your genetics managed to include such a being, I have no answers for. I have yet to speak to Koler, and if he does not have the answers, I would not know of another creature that would. I would imagine your cat’s nature to hunt also helps feed the banshee. The fear from the prey must help curb her appetite.

“Here is the most important thing you need to know. Demons always share a banshee when one is found to mate with. For the very reasons you have given me, fear from the banshee that she will kill her mate. Koler and I are well-fed creatures consigned to the darkness by our very nature, yet a mate is shared, without jealously or worries. If you tire me out with your enthusiastic lovemaking, you have Koler to enjoy for your pleasure at the ready. Most times we will love you together, if you do not mind having two sweaty males filling your body with our passions and seed. I can hear your thoughts without reading your mind. What of love?

“Did you not notice that I sought your warmth from the first time I saw you? I felt your need. When we fucked as deeply as possible, did you not feel the emotions flooding the two of us? Emotional energy is what filled you that day, Wensel. It is the way of demons and their mates. Your confusion with Koler and me should rest, my love, Ko3ler must care to have given you his hallmark on your flank. Mine is on the other side. I did offer to show you.”

She had seen the markings, small tridents with flames and black orbs surrounding the yellow and black marks decorated her outer thighs. The two tridents crossing hilts over the center of her chest was a bit of over kill in her opinion. Would she really be allowed to let the banshee have her way with the demons? Leroi appeared so positive the arrangement as he explained it to her would be not only beneficial to her, but a chance to belong with someone, actually two someone’s. The fact they may be allowed to throw in a baby to love was pure temptation. She nodded. “All right, let us find Tremble Island, and begin to see if a life together can work for three beings such as we are.” It had been four days since she had taken that swim to rescue Koler’s friend. Would he truly be as eager to have another demon involved as Leroi seemed to think?

They reached the village of Morlien Hall as the sun was beginning to set. Entering the Hall was strange, as if they had been gone for weeks instead of mere days. Especially not knowing what had occurred during the time of their absence. It was the first time Wensel had been to the place. Her life had been centered down by the place where the river running behind the village flowed, and the sea met in the cove. She missed Aria fiercely and wondered how the little one had fared in the tender care of Lady Tremble.

Waller and Peter headed for the kitchen to beg a meal from the staff.

After greeting the Lords and Lady Tremble, and recounting a shortened version of their experiences, Leroi begged to be excused, “I have mated Wensel, and wish to take her into Demons End. We both have need of nourishment that cannot be found in the kitchens of Morlien Hall.” Their smiles of understanding and assurances to Wensel that Aria was safe and sleeping fell in with his plans.

He knew they drew the conclusion that he wished to take her away to make love to his mate, and he did, eventually. For the immediate future, she would be fed all of the emotional energy the banshee could glut herself on. He planned to take her into the cavern of the pit. There would be no way for his mate to harm anyone there and she would know it.

Afterwards, his plans for her were purely decadent. His grin made her stop and stare at him, before she resumed walking by his side. Koler would be brought to his knees to see her enter the domain of the demons and he was happy to be bringing his friend their mate as a gift to celebrate their reunion.

*****

Koler was amusing himself by bouncing the five tar colored orbs in his hands as he bounced them from Borland’s fleshy ass, and the cook’s bare belly. Each time the orbs connected with the unprotected flesh he heard a squeal from the former lord. The cook tried to be a hard case in the beginning, he soon learned the Demon Prince was not so easily impressed. Cook was on all fours to begin with, his stoic response to the first few orbs hitting on the stomach, and bouncing back to the hand that launched them, made Koler become more inventive. He moved behind the cook, and aimed the orbs directly at the brown asshole showing between the bully’s hips. He knew the orbs texture was like nettles, and when they lodged from the force of his throw in the small opening, the first two became pounded inside of the creature. The resulting screams were music to his ears. He knew this would become a favorite activity when he felt the least stressed.

He felt them before he knew they were there. The feel of emotional energy rushing past him had his head swiveling toward the room’s entrance. There, standing in the passageway, was his beautiful banshee, followed by his friend. He tossed the orbs in his hands at the bound scraps of evil flesh with unerring accuracy. He ignored the orbs bouncing back to him from hitting the flesh, the screams as they hit the opposite walls were barely registered with his demon smile as he rushed to grab Wensel into his embrace.

He held her tight to his chest, and only heard Leroi’s laugh over his own shout of happiness, and Wensel’s hands holding his jaws, pulling his face to hers for a kiss. That caress told him so much more than words could express at the moment. He felt her banshee drawing in the thick emotions surrounding the three of them and those drifting from the workroom. He loosed one of his hands from her body and reached to clasp wrists with Leroi.