Page 2 of Consumed
The orcs were shirtless, and two of the six had slightly rounded breasts that might have meant they were female. They were all shoeless, revealing large, long-toed feet with thick claws that matched the ones on their fingers. They wore pants—or maybe they were more like thick leggings, made of a fabric that shifted colors, chameleon-like, to match the surroundings.
Now they crouched around him, silent and staring.
Con tried to move away, but even if he hadn’t been firmly restrained at ankles and wrists, he wouldn’t have been capable of more than a feeble crawl. His entire body was now one giant knot of agony, with extra-sharp pains in his face and legs and chest, and the sensation of a deep pit in his hungry belly.
“Stop staring,” he rasped. “Leave me alone.”
They didn’t listen; not that he’d expected them to. He had no idea whether they even understood him.
On top of his pain and hunger and fear and despair, there were additional stupid layers of shame and humiliation. Since early childhood he’d been taught that nudity was wrong—that he should avoid looking at his own body and should certainly never let anyone else see him unclothed. “Except your wife,” his father had said, but he’d looked unhappy even about that. And now here Con was, naked as the day he was born, lying in his own waste, spread-eagled like an obscene offering.
Con couldn’t tell whether he was blushing, because his skin felt alternately ember-hot or icy cold from the fever. His wounds were badly infected, adding to his overall reek. Not that the orcs seemed to care. They leaned over him, watching.
Then one of the orcs said something. He might have been addressing Con, since the orc looked intently into Con’s eyes while speaking. And it was probably the delirium, but Con thought he saw empathy in that gaze, as if the creature wanted him to understand that he was sorry for his plight.
“Then let me go,” Con said.
The orc responded with more words in his own language. Then he leaned back a bit, broke eye contact, and spoke again. More loudly this time. It sounded like a command.
All six orcs crouched lower… and bit.
Two on each leg and one on each arm, and the fresh agony cut right through the established pain, making Con howl. He wanted to be brave and stoic, he really did, but he was being eatenaliveand it hurt and he was terrified and he didn’t want to become just another pile of bones waiting for the next victim to arrive.
The black wave of unconsciousness was a mercy.
* * *
More water in his face, but this time Con could barely swallow, and he didn’t bother to open his eyes. The pain was still there, mostly as a throbbing ache, but it seemed less important somehow. As if it belonged to someone else. His hunger was gone too. He felt fuzzy or floaty or maybe both, a flesh balloon tethered to life by a single weak thread.
Tattered memories floated by like clouds. The living room in his childhood home, where paintings of Jesus gazed down at him sternly and his mother’s cross-stitched Bible quotes reminded him he was a sinner. A pretty dark-haired boy named Marcelinho, who’d worked with Con on a highway road crew and whose shy smiles suggested he wouldn’t mind some private time together; Con had never been brave enough to pursue that. The classroom at the Bureau’s East Coast HQ and the stacks of notebooks that Con had filled with his careful script. The first human corpse he’d seen, a homeless man who’d been drained by a vampire. The studio apartment in Arlington, with gay porn mags tucked under his mattress even though nobody else ever visited there.
Oh God. The magazines. Once the Bureau figured out that Con was dead, someone would empty out his apartment and surely find his somewhat worn copies ofHonchoandBlueboyandMen.
As if dying full of orc bites wasn’t bad enough.
Con forced his eyes open.
Only a single orc squatted beside him. The orc didn’t have one of those glowing things around his neck, but since it was daytime, Con could see well enough. The creature held something small and metallic in one of his hands, and Con instinctively flinched, assuming it was a weapon that would finally finish him off.
Instead the orc whispered something in his own language as he touched the metal thing with one finger—and the chains at Con’s wrists and ankles clicked open. The orc seemed to be waiting for something, but all Con could manage was to blink in confusion.
“Go.” The accent was thick, but the word unmistakable.
Con almost laughed.
After another moment or two of silence, the orc muttered something, stood, and scooped Con up, settling him over broad shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
The agony of movement was unbearable.
The last thing Con saw was his friend the skull, still laughing as the orc bore Con away.
CHAPTER2
Bureau East CoastHeadquarters
Washington, DC
September 1994
