The heavy manacles weighing down his hands and feet made it hard for the warrior to stand and impossible for him to walk. The two Ordonese warriors who supported him were strong and easily dragged the weakened warrior along between them, his bare toes scraping over the rough tiles.
“At least you can allow me my britches!” Dagan snarled.
“But I like you naked, Beloved,” Neith laughed.
She could hear his muttered curses and marveled at the repertoire of his vulgarities. For a man unaccustomed to the hand of a woman upon him and the raping of one, he surprised her with his plans for her.
“Once you’re healed, you will be able to do that and more, Beloved,” she told him. “Although you will find you will enjoy my rape almost as much as I will enjoy you doing it.”
The Ordonese warriors chuckled and one glanced back at Neith, taking her measure and grinning hungrily at her. When she showed no sign of welcoming his silent suggestion, he shrugged and tightened his grip on the captive’s arm.
Understanding as he never had before how his twin must feel in not being about to walk, Dagan felt like an invalid. He was in no condition to fight what was about to happen to him and could not get the bitch’s words out of his mind, “
when you are healed
”. The connotation of those words put a chill down his spine and worry clouded his vision as he stared at the passing tiles beneath his useless legs.
“Healing won’t take long so don’t let that concern you, Beloved,” Neith informed him. “A day, perhaps two, and you will be better than you have ever been.”
The two warriors had ceased to drag him and he lifted his head to find himself before a wide iron door being opened by a brace of different warriors. The portal creaked open—setting his teeth and nerves on edge—to reveal a brightly lit room, the intensity of which made him squint.
“Over there,” he heard a brittle voice command.
Swinging his head to one side, Dagan beheld a rail-thin man who bore a decided resemblance to the detestable Brother Qutaybah. For that reason alone, Dagan hated the man on sight.
“Lord Khnum,” Neith said. “May I introduce Lord Dagan Kiel of Akhkharu?”
Khnum ignored the introduction. “You!” he called out and the warriors at the door hurried into the room. “Take his legs and hoist him onto the table.”
“Be careful of his arms,” Neith advised.
Dagan felt himself being lifted and was surprised when they laid him down on his belly, his arms pulled over his head. The table upon which he found himself was made of black granite and was cold to the touch, cooling the fever that made his body far too warm.
“Lock the manacles into the stanchions then leave,” Khnum commanded.
The weight of the chains on his wrists and ankles pulled his limbs painfully downward, flattening him to the slab. His cheek was turned away from those present so he lifted his head to view the old man and his tormentress.
“You may go, as well,” Khnum said to Neith.
“I will stay,” she said and met the old man’s angry glower with a steady look.
Khnum gritted his teeth but turned away, telling her to suit herself.
Neith came to stand at the head of the table. She put one hand on Dagan’s shoulder and when he tried to shrug it away, she dug her nails into his flesh. “Behave, Beloved,” she said. “You will need the comfort of my hand once Lord Khnum begins his surgery.”
There it was again, Dagan thought, feeling sweat pop out on his brow. What vile thing was this old man going to do to him? He felt his skin crawling, goose bumps pebbling his flesh. Fear had invaded his soul and try as hard as he could, he could not dispel it.
Neith watched Khnum walk to a workbench and when he turned with a large beaker in his hands, her eyes widened. “That came from me?” she gasped.
Khnum’s grin was horrible. “Aye, Lady Neith. What think you of your little nestling?”
Dagan tried to turn his head, to see what it was that had put such shock in the demoness’ voice but she put a hand to his head and held it down. “Was the one you gave me that large?” he heard her ask.
“Aye,” Khnum lied. He placed the beaker on a stand beside the table.
Neith’s face had creased into a mask of concern. She found the nestling—a thing that had only recently been a part of her own body—disgusting and horrendously terrifying. It glared back at her with menace and she could not stop the shudder that rippled through her body. It was all she could do to tear her eyes away from the dreadful sight as Khnum plucked a scalpel from a tray and placed the tip to Dagan’s flesh.
Dagan opened his mouth to demand he be told what these two demons were about but never got the chance. A slicing pain slid from just under the right side of his ribcage all the way to the pelvic bone and he yelped.
Licking her lips as the warrior’s crimson blood seeped down his side and over the small of his back, Neith watched in fascination as Khnum took the lid off the beaker. Her heart was thundering in her chest as the old man used a pair of tongs thick enough to lift a large rock to pluck the parasite from its glass prison. Her eyes widened in disbelief as Khnum struggled with the hideous eel-like thing then dropped it on the warrior’s bare back.
Both Neith and Khnum jumped back, neither wanting to come into contact with the parasite. Each held their breath as the creature wriggled back and forth for a moment then—sensing the freely flowing blood nearby—opened its mouth and squirmed quickly down into the surgical opening on Dagan Kiel’s back.
At first, the cut on his back had hurt because he had not been prepared for the attack. The initial sting had been replaced with a heavy, slimy weight that made his flesh crawl. That sensation puzzled him but when hell opened up to send a fiery shaft of pure agony into his bound body, Dagan screamed in unrelenting torment.
Surprising herself, Neith felt tears form in her eyes as she beheld the violently struggling, screaming warrior. She remembered well the agony that had accompanied the invasion of the parasite Khnum had placed in her over forty years earlier. The gnawing, tearing misery as the creature had slithered into her back, its sharp fangs clamping down on a vulnerable organ, and the awareness of her own blood being sucked out of her returned unbidden in nightmares that brought her awake in sweaty panic ‘til this day. But watching Dagan Kiel writhing in such immense suffering, she knew her Transference had been nothing compared to this.
“Do something!” she yelled at Khnum even as she covered her ears to block out the warrior’s inhuman screams.
“There is nothing that can be done,” Khnum shouted at her. “You wanted him to be One of us? Well, now he will be!”
Dagan’s body arched upon the marble table. He jerked uselessly at his bonds, striving with all his waning strength to pull his hands and legs free. The manacles bit into his limbs, scoring his wrists and ankles, tearing his flesh. The force of his pulling dislocated both wrists but he did not cease to struggle. His screams filled the room, echoing off the walls and his eyes were bulging from his head.
Khnum crossed his arms, savoring the screams, tantalized by the anguished contortions of the warrior. He cocked his head to one side, watching intently as the cut he had made on Kiel’s flesh began to close. “Amazing,” he muttered to himself. In all the Transferences he had done over the years, none had mended this quickly.
Neith swiped at the tears clouding her vision and forced herself to walk over to the anguished warrior. With her hand trembling like that of a palsied ancient, she placed her palm on Dagan Kiel’s head and forced it gently to the table. The heat radiating up to her palm from his flesh stunned her, scorched her, but she kept a steady pressure on the warrior’s head.
“
Listen to me, Beloved
,” she sent to him. “
Relax and the pain will lessen
.”
Hearing the woman’s silent words, Khnum snorted.
“Make it stop!” the warrior howled. “Please make it stop!”
Her heart breaking at the words, Neith looked up at Khnum. “Is there nothing you can do?”
Khnum took great pleasure in shaking his head. He was smiling at her, his beady eyes as hateful as a viper’s.
Dagan was lost in the agony that rippled through his body. It felt as though a shark had invaded his back and was stripping away the meat of his organs. The drawing sensation in his lower back was an agony unto itself, warring with the other pains racking him. He could hear himself pleading, begging for help. Ashamed of such weakness, he tried to control it, to keep the pleas from passing his lips, but the pain was too great. Interspersed among his screams were pathetic invocations to whatever god was listening and would take pity on him.
A streak of intense light passed just outside Neith’s peripheral vision and she jerked, turning her head toward the source of the brightness. She blinked for high upon a shelf was a glowing light, its milky green color ghastly and painful to behold.
Khnum followed the woman’s gaze but saw nothing that could have drawn her rapt attention save the Book. Knowing she could no more access that ancient tome than could he, he turned away. Returning his avid attention to the struggling warrior whose screams had become hoarse shrieks as his vocal chords became damaged, he reveled in the torture of the Akhkharu warrior.
Unaware she did so, Neith moved toward the bookcase. At the center of the sickly green glow she could make out a book and it was to this beacon she walked. She no longer heard the warrior’s screams for she had entered a vacuum where no sound entered. Her entire focus was on the book.
The old man did not see Neith put her foot to the ladder’s rung. That part of the room had become dark, shadowy, blocking off his vision and awareness of what was happening. So alert was he to the misery of the man on the table, nothing else registered with Khnum. He mentally followed what was happening to Dagan Kiel.
As the creature wriggled in warrior’s body, its greedy mouth clamped tightly to his kidney, it began spreading potent juices into the helpless man’s bloodstream. While its oral sucker drew in Kiel’s blood—filtering nutrients from the liquid—it expelled fertilized eggs into the cavity under his liver; these eggs would hatch within the hour to become nestlings. As it delivered its young, the now adult parasite would slither and climb, binding itself to the warrior’s backbone.
“And it will be with you to the end of your miserable days,” Khnum said with a laugh.
Neith paused on the top rung of the ladder and stared fixedly at the glowing book. A part of her was loath to touch the tanned leather but another was so mesmerized by the call of the thing, she could not have stayed her hand from grasping it if she had had the will to do so. Closing her trembling fingers around the spine, she pulled the ice-cold volume toward her, now hearing the screams of countless rebirths chronicled within its fleshly pages. The Book—as she now knew it to be—clutched tightly in her hand, she slowly descended the ladder.
Dagan had ceased to move. His vocal chords stretched by the force of his shrieks, his screams could no longer be heard except in his own mind. The ungodly pain that had enveloped him was now a brittle ache in his back. With fingers arched into claws that dug bloody nails against the marble slab, he lay wide-eyed and staring, listening to the coo of the alien life form that was now irreparably a part of his body.
“
Accept Me, Warrior
,” it commanded in a low, sultry croon. “
Protect Me and I will protect you
.”
“
No
,” he silently denied and crushing pain squeezed his backbone, arching his body from the slab.
“
Accept Me
!” the creature demanded and brought fresh agony to the warrior’s body.
The pain was excruciating, the agony too prolonged. There was hopelessness here and helplessness that could only be overcome with death. But in that part of his mind already being taken over by the excretion of the parasite’s juices, Dagan Kiel knew he would never be allowed to take his own life. He would be as much a captive of the thing inside him as any prisoner had ever been.
“
Accept Me
,” it whispered and the voice was soothing, cooling his heated body with a wash of freshening wind. “
Accept Me and I will punish those who have hurt you
.”
Knowing full well the evil within him would promise anything in order to have him recognize it, to allow it to rule him, Dagan made a counter-demand of his own. “
Give me the means to punish them, myself, and I will acknowledge you
.”
For a brief moment in time, the parasite remained silent. It did not move. It did not increase the pain holding Dagan Kiel in thrall but neither did it lessen that torment. Then…
“
You will be a warrior among warriors, Dagan Kiel
,”
it hissed.
“
I accept you as you accept Me!
”
A gentle numbing began at the base of his neck and flowed slowly down his body. With it, came a cessation of all pain followed by a tremendous thirst.
“
Give Me Sustenance, my love
,” the parasite ordered.
The Book clutched tightly to her chest, Neith walked to the table upon which Dagan lay and looked down on him. He was awake, his eyes turned up to her. She glanced beyond him to find Khnum standing as still as a statue, his head turned to one side, his lips parted.
“He is entranced,” Neith said quietly.