Desire's Sirocco (23 page)

“
He is mine
,” Dagan sent to her.

Neith looked down at Dagan and saw the meanness glowing in his changing eyes. She took in the glisten of sweat on his handsome face and the determined clench of his jaw.

“You did this?” she asked Dagan, cocking her chin toward Khnum.

“
She did
.”

Neith knew he meant the parasite that was now fully mature inside him. Her gaze went to the smoothness of his back where no surgical incision could be detected. A tremor ran down her spine and her own parasite shifted in distress. The warrior had healed quicker than he should have.

Though the warrior was shackled wrist and ankle to the table with links no man could break binding him, he broke the chains as easily as though they were made from paper. He pushed himself from the table and swung his legs off the side. A loud popping sound accompanied his movements.

Startled, Neith staggered back. She recognized the symptoms as Dagan Kiel tore the manacles from his flesh and threw them away. Already his face was elongating, his body coursing with a fine pelt. A guttural growl issued from his throat as fangs descended and talons formed.

“Go,” he grunted, the last human sound he was capable of making.

Terror unlike any she had experienced propelled Neith from the room. She jerked open the door and screamed at the warriors flanking it to bar it.

“Lock it! Lock it!” she shrieked. “He’s going into Transition!”

The warriors gaped at her but the piercing howl that came from Lord Khnum’s operatory thrust them into motion. Dropping a thick iron bar across the middle of the portal, they hastened to add a top and bottom bar as well. They barely had time to move back before a tremendous weight hit the iron door, shaking it.

“Upstairs!” Neith yelled. “We must secure the vault!”

Feet and arms pumping like runaway pistons, the trio made for the stairs, Neith in the lead.

Dagan Kiel was no longer human as he turned slowly from the locked door and latched his crimson glare on Lord Khnum, who stood as transfixed as a granite statue. The warrior growled low in his throat and dropped to all fours, the bones of his body grating against one another as they shifted and re-formed inside him. He no longer felt the pain of his flesh shrinking and growing leathery. He did not feel the thrust of his elongated muzzle or the eruption of more fangs piercing his gums. He did not sense the pelt growing wiry and thick over his flanks and under his growling belly. He was unaware of the talons clicking on the terracotta tiles as he sidled closer to his victim. With saliva dripping from his massive jaws and sparks of red light shooting from eyes now lupine instead of human, he sprang.

Khnum went down under the force of the beastess that crashed into his body. Aware of every bite, every rip, every tear that tore him asunder, he was incapable of preventing his death. The old man knew he had made a bargain with a creature as deadly as he had desired it to be but he had made one unthinking, fatal mistake.

“Pledge to me you will bring hell to Dagan Kiel and I will feed you the sweetest blood, the most potent Sustenance of them all,” he heard himself saying.

In giving the fledgling his own blood, Khnum had given it the means to destroy him.

Aye, he thought as his beating heart was ripped from his body. Hell had been brought to Dagan Kiel; but it was the hell of fury not the hell of torment Khnum had wanted it to be.

As light flickered and went out in Khnum’s eyes he felt the sweetest, most potent Sustenance of them all being sucked from his body as the ancient parasite squirming inside him, shrieked as it was torn out and devoured.

Chapter Fifteen

Dagan hated himself for what he had done. It was the beastess inside him spurring him on. The bloodlust had washed over him with a vengeance and he had torn the old man limb from limb, consuming flesh, sucking the marrow from ancient bones and feasting on Sustenance so sweet, so potent and exhilarating that he had gorged himself until he lay wallowing, licking the crimson stains from his paws. When he woke—his body sore and cramped from its extended fetal position—he had stretched until the kinks were gone from his muscles and sinews. Human once more, he had looked down upon his nude, bloodstained body and known a moment of acute embarrassment. But the embarrassment had passed quickly; replaced by a thirst so acute he began to pant.

And that was when the door was unlocked and the bitch from the abyss dared show her evil head.

Neith did not enter the room. In her hand she held a goblet that she squatted down to place on the floor, keeping her eyes on the warrior every moment.

He knew what was in the goblet and his mouth watered. Growling at the woman who backed further out into the corridor, he advanced on her but stopped to pick up the goblet and drain it. When he was finished, he threw the goblet against the wall and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his gaze as steady on the woman as hers was on him.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Invincible,” he snarled and before she could move, he was on her, dragging her to the floor, covering her with his body and ripping at her clothing.

Neith gloried in the rough treatment with which he punished her. His nails gouged into her flesh, scratching her. His teeth nipped at her bared breasts, scraping her flesh but not going deep enough to cause injury. His knees thrust her legs wide apart and when his cock drove hard and deep, thrusting into her with enough force to rock her backwards along the floor, she brought her legs up and encircled his hips, grabbing handfuls of his hair to bring his mouth to hers.

Straining against one another, he, pummeling into her lush body as a sharp plow through fertile soil and she, arching upward for every forceful drive, the two came in a burst of pulsing finality that brought yowls of satiation from them both.

When the last rapid heartbeat had returned to its normal thump and the last panting breath had slowed to an ordinary intake and exhalation, they lay together on the cold floor with him tightly encircled in her arms.

“I could have killed you,” he growled.

“No, Beloved, you could not have.”

“I
wanted
to kill you,” he swore.

“And you still do,” she said on a sigh. “But we need one another, Dagan.”

One moment he was lying atop here, the next he was on his feet, arms akimbo, glaring down at her with hatred rampant in his dark amber eyes. “I think not,” he disagreed.

Standing there in masculine glory—his staff dangling between taut, muscular thighs—Neith thought him a wondrous specimen of maleness. She let her gaze move lovingly over his broad shoulders and wide chest, rippled abdominal muscles and lean hips, and still thought him the handsomest man she had ever beheld.

“Well, you’re no more than a hell-hag,” he spat, intercepting her thoughts.

Neith sighed. “What did you just do to me, Beloved?” she asked, sitting up.

He bent over her, his face close to hers, the fury sparking a challenge in those amber eyes. “Call me that one more time and I’ll pull your tongue out by the roots!” he promised.

Neith managed a shrug although his words both thrilled and bemused her. “Do it and it will grow back.”

“Then I’ll pull it out again!”

“And it will grow back again,” she told him.

Dagan growled low in his throat and straightened up. His hands itched to circle her neck and squeeze.

“I’ll ask you again; what did you just do to me?”

“I fucked you!” he threw at her, his words coming from tightly clenched teeth.

“And how were you able to do that, Lord Dagan?” she asked sweetly.

“I…” he began then stopped, blinking. He stared at her, his lips parted; his brow furrowed then he slowly lowered his head to look down at the juncture of his thighs.

They were there! He thought, shocked to the core of his being. He reached for them, took them in his hand, hefted them, even squeezed, wincing at the unaccustomed pain that shot through them. His head snapped up.

“How?” he whispered.

Neith held her hand out to him to be helped up. When he paid no attention to her request, she cocked her head to one side. “You want the answer?”

Blowing a harsh breath through his quivering nostrils, he took her hand and yanked her to her feet, overdoing it, for her nude body slammed into his. Irritated, he pushed her away, sickened by the feel of her against him.

“You weren’t so bothered by it a few minutes ago,” she taunted.

“
How?
” he bellowed, taking a menacing step toward her.

“You felt the incision the late unlamented Lord Khnum sliced into your back,” she said. “Do you feel it now?”

“Woman…”

“Put your hand back there and tell me what you feel.” She said it with enough authority that he didn’t think twice about obeying.

Try as hard as he could, he did not feel the place where he knew the cut had severed his flesh. He ran his right hand along his back over his kidney but there was nothing there.

“The parasite closed the incision almost as quickly as it entered you,” she informed him. “I have never known it to happen that fast.”

“What has that got to do with my balls?” he shouted at her.

Neith sighed deeply and shook her head. “Think about it, warrior,” she said. “If it can heal your cut, it can heal any damage done your body. That is what it does to keep itself alive and fed.” She grinned saucily. “Even replace needed organs and appendages that have long been missing.”

Dagan staggered backwards, slumping against the wall behind him. He stared at her, the implications of what she was telling him making the wheels turn in his head.

“Aye,” she said. “The nestlings can heal any being into which they are transferred.”

“I can love my woman,” he whispered.

“You can love this woman,” Neith said, her eyes narrowed.

He slowly shook his head. “No. That I will never do.”

Fury sending shards of ice from her eyes, Neith came to him, jabbing a sharp nail into his shoulder. “You owe me, warrior!” She reached down and grabbed his balls. “For making you whole again!”

He stood perfectly still, hating the feel of her hand on him, but willing her to let go. When she did not, he flung a mental command at her that threw her across the corridor to crash into the wall.

Neith let out a loud humph and slid down the wall to land in an ungraceful heap. She stared, eyes wide, and knew he was both stronger and more determined than she. Her shoulders slumped. “What do you want, then?”

“To return home,” he said.

She shook her head. “They will never allow it.”

“Who won’t?”

“Prince Sekhem.”

“Think you I can’t defeat him?”

“I believe you can but at what price, milord?” she challenged. “If you leave without his permission, he will come after you with warriors who will slay everything in their path.”

Dagan lifted his head. “Even as we speak, my people are building walls to keep the Ordonese from venturing onto Akhkharu lands ever again. Thousands of them are toiling away, rerouting the waters from the Sea of Alize so they course between our land and yours.”

“Running water?” she questioned, her eyes wide.

“And garlic and silver,” he stated. “When I woke to find myself alive, not an undead demon as I thought your kind to be, I sent my lady instructions she was quick to set in motion.”

She probed his mind and saw the truth of his words. Her mouth dropped open. “Without slaves or herds in time of famine, we will shrivel from thirst and be forced to feed upon one another. My kind will die out! “

“Aye,” Dagan said. “That they will.”

Neith scrambled to her feet, her hands out in pleading. “Please, milord. You cannot wish that upon me. I…”

“Think you I will leave you here when you have the Book?” he threw at her.

Sucking in a stunned breath, Neith put a hand to her mouth.

“I know you took it,” he said. “I know not what is in it but the beastess within me believes it is important and I will have it if you want to survive this.”

Her eyes shifting from side as she hurriedly thought of the consequences that could come from her having possession of the Book, she tried to keep her thoughts from him but he snatched them from her as easily as candy from a babe.

“The knowledge is there,” he said. “The knowledge of the Transferences.”

“Aye, but…”

“Go fetch it, wench,” he ordered. “And fetch my clothes while you are at it!”

She stood her ground. “I can not allow this,” she said. “It was my intent to one day rule the Ordonese. I will not let my race…”

“I’ll not send good beef to be drained and their carcasses left to waste in the desert, but you can send back ships filled to the rafters with Sustenance taken from our abattoirs if you want,” he interrupted.

“What good will that do?” she shouted. “We can not venture into the sea and…”

“Think you the barrels won’t wash to shore with the tide, bitch?” he countered.

Neith considered his words. The solution, as he saw it, made sense but she was loath to give up the destiny she had carved for herself.