Page 60 of Taken By Raider Kings
A sound like a drum being struck resounded through the structure above, a monstrous reeking burrow.The animal knew what it was the moment it reached his ears.
Tribe.Others of his kind, coming here.Perhaps they came to kill the prey as well.He heard their footsteps, their cries, a clash of bodies.There were so manyupir;the sickness had been allowed to spread here, without the Tribes cleansing it.
He could not, now, remember why they had not harrowed this place.It didn’t matter.
Theupirmilled about in confusion, and he waited.He cared very little what they did now, as long as they left his mate alone.
She was so still, so quiet.He couldn’t hear her pulse.The crystalline call, the thread of musk that had led him through the cold slanting rain and successive waves ofupir,was fading, as if she had somehow escaped him.
He didn’t dare glance over his shoulder.Not with the enemies drawing so near.He growled again.
A mass of them surged toward him, the female who seemed to be their alpha screaming in a high piping voice, white head-fur rising and falling in thick tendrils, hellfire dripping from her eyes.
He killed two with a single sweep, and the red rage took him.The enemy surged, champing and slavering, and he knew he was going to die.It didn’t matter.What mattered was standing fast, keeping them away from his mate as long as possible.
There were too many; he went down under the weight, clawing desperately, a last roar of pure defiance shattering what remained of the human in him.The uselessweakness.It vanished, and nothing was left but the pain as their claws tore at him?—
—and the worldstopped.
The enemy scattered like quicksilver as Tribe poured into the cave, Changing and leaping, their howls and cries sweet and ringing over the twisting groans of the bloodsuckers.Confusion reigned.He lay on the floor, his skin running with crimson pain that spurred him even as it drained his will.
Theupirdied.Shrieking, cursing, howling, running or standing to fight, theydied.One of the Tribe—a Bear, his hulking shoulders hunched—halted behind him.
He lay on the floor, knowing the Bear was near his mate.
She belonged tohim.He must keep everything and everyoneaway.It was what he had set himself to do, and he was Carcajou.
But his body would not respond.The rage intensified, beating inside his bones.The rage would keep going until his heart gave out or his brain burst.He knew it—and struggled harder.
Ice and moonlight filled his nose, a soothing smell.“He’s far gone.”The words meant nothing, though the female who said them was Tribe.“Ilona!Help me!”
The smell reached back into memory, tinged with smoke and terrible grief.He had stopped someone else from plunging into the flames to save that smell, because the cold determination of animal survival told him to.
The human in him, all but buried under a landslide of rage, gave one powerful, agonized scream—and vanished again.
He struggled, but they were too strong.Fingers like vises, the cold drugging smell like chloroform, and he was dragged under a breaker of spangled darkness.Still struggling.Still trying to scream a name that had lost all meaning yet still had to be repeated, over and over again, the name beating under his heart ever since he had slipped the chain and gone running into the cold night.Even as his muzzle was clamped shut and hands smoothed along his flayed sides, the name gonged in his head, over and over again.
Sophie!
twenty-five
The spirits cradled her.They spoke to her, in reedy little voices, no longer cricketlike but the soft murmur of whispered secrets.They told her things.
We are themajir, they crooned.And you are one of us.Let us heal you.
They drew the hurt out of her body while she rested, unthinking, in a deep black nest.This was a forgiving darkness, not like the small closet in the cellar where?—
Don’t think on that, they said.Not yet.
They were right.That was an Unpleasant Thing, and she’d had enough Unpleasant Things to last a lifetime.
But something did nag at her.Something she needed to remember.Something important.
Someone.
Was it Lucy?No, her friend was gone.Her grief leaked free, soaking the pillows, and the voices whispered her into deep restful trance-sleep while they worked, insubstantial fingers plucking at her flesh.
Gradually, other voices became audible.She listened from the darkness.
