The pleasure had him in its grip, too, flowing through his chest and limbs, tightening every muscle, every blood vessel, as desire and pressure built in his cock to a fevered pitch. His body climbed to heights that appalled him until he was driving into her as desperate for the coming explosion as he’d ever been for anything.
His mind rebelled, horrified at the sexual fire
burning his body in the midst of such savagery. But the power in the room was driving him now, driving them both. And there was no fighting it.
With a scream, the witch came. As her hard, rapid contractions drove him to a blinding release, his gaze caught Birik’s. The bastard stood over them, watching Paenther utterly lose control, his face a mask of deep arousal, his eyes alive with anticipation. Crawling with evil.
Paenther snarled. Hatred burned inside him as he spilled his seed.
A roar filled the room, turning the air hot and wild until it singed his lungs and scorched his skin. Pain ripped through his body on a sudden tide of fire.
A scream echoed through the walls from beyond, drawing Birik’s shout of triumph.
Caught in the clutches of the pain, Paenther barely noticed when the chanting ended, and the men rushed from the room, leaving him alone with Skye. He stared up at her, at the face he’d once thought beautiful, now covered in blood, her eyes closed, her expression tight with pleasure…or pain. Hatred burned low in his gut as the sharp pain slowly died away except for a throbbing sting across his left eye.
Skye rose, lifting off him unsteadily as she tried to stand, only to collapse by his feet where she lay on her back, gasping.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, lying in the moonlight and dying embers, amid
the blood, their flesh rippling with the remnants of power.
Neither spoke. There was nothing to say.
Yet again, he wondered what Birik meant to do with the power they’d raised.
Birik finally returned, lightwicks floating above him. He strode to Skye and lifted her into his arms.
The bitch wrapped her arm around the Mage’s neck as he carried her from the room, leaving Paenther chained and alone. With little hope, he strained against his shackles, pouring everything into freeing himself. Useless. He remained trapped as completely as any caged beast.
Outside the cavern room, a single bloodcurdling scream ripped at his eardrums, followed by triumphant shouts and cheers.
Dread knotted deep inside his chest. Goddess help him. What evil had they unleashed?
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Paenther wasn’t sure when they’d enthralled and transferred him, but as the fog cleared from his head, he found himself standing upright outside a glass enclosure deep within the caverns.
The clank of chains and the bite of cold shackles told him he was pinned fast to the wall behind him. Glancing down, he saw that he was wearing pants again. The leather pants he’d worn that disastrous afternoon he’d followed Skye into the woods. How long ago? He’d been out of it too much to know how long he’d been a prisoner.
Last thing he remembered, he’d been covered with blood.
The ritual.
Memory slammed into him, the force of his fury stealing his breath. His mouth tightened, his teeth grinding.
Goddess, but the witch had played him.
His furious gaze scrutinized the glassed chamber twelve to fifteen feet below him, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. In one corner, paint…or blood…had been splattered everywhere, copious amounts of it. His gaze narrowed as he tried to correlate the lit, bloody chamber below with the dark one he’d been in earlier, and failed. No, they were definitely not the same room. The fine hairs rose on the back of his neck. So what had happened here? And why was he chained so he could see it?
He sensed Vhyper even before the Feral rounded the corner to join him.
“Release me, Vhype,” Paenther growled.
“You have to see this, B.P. No one’s seen anything like it in millennia. Watch. The fun is about to begin.”
On cue, four people stepped into sight in the room below, two men and two women, accompanied by a single Mage sentinel. Slowly, little by little, the people blinked and looked around groggily, as if coming out of enchantment.
“Are they human?”
“Yes. Watch.”
The Mage left the room through a far door. Moments later, from an entrance below that Paenther couldn’t see, another figure entered the room. A male, he thought, judging by the breadth of the shoulders, clad in some kind of filmy dark cloak, his back to Paenther. The man’s hair was long and black and sparkled like diamonds. He didn’t walk, but floated upright,
a foot off the ground. And his cloak…A chill slid down Paenther’s spine. Not a cloak at all, but the indistinct lines of his body.
The hair on Paenther’s arms began to lift, his gaze narrowing. The air in the cavern dropped a good ten degrees.
This was no man.
A faint scent of rotting meat met Paenther’s nose. His heart began to race.
The creature turned, revealing a bluish gray face badly contorted, as if made from melting wax, a single set of sharp fangs hanging from its mouth. As it raised its hands, daggerlike claws dripped from its fingertips.
Paenther’s heart pounded with disbelief as he stared at the most fundamentally horrifying sight he’d ever seen.
A Daemon.
A creature gone from this Earth for more than five thousand years, trapped all this time in the Daemon blade.
“The Mage have opened the blade,” Paenther hissed. With the power Paenther had helped raise.
Goddess help them all
.
“Don’t get your tail in a knot, B.P. The blade isn’t open. Not entirely. We only managed to soften it enough to eke out a few of the wraith Daemons. The worker bees of the Daemon world. They’re basically mindless feeding machines without Satanan here to control them, but it’s amazing, isn’t it?” His voice rose with excitement.
Paenther stared in fascinated horror at the creature of dark legend, a monster the Ferals had
fought to keep from the Earth for thousands of years.
And failed.
“With the power you raise with the little witch, we’ll free an entire army.” Vhyper chuckled. “You’ve found your calling, B.P.”
The words swirled in Paenther’s mind until he had to swallow to keep the bile from rising in his throat. He had to stop this. He had to find a way to keep from freeing more of these things.
But his horrified gaze wouldn’t turn away from the creature. Oddly, though the people were clearly agitated by the sight of all the blood, none of them were reacting to the Daemon itself. They didn’t seem to see him.
Ah, goddess.
Of course they couldn’t see him. Just as humans couldn’t see the draden.
One of the men looked up at the faces peering down at him. “What’s going on here? What in the hell do you people want?”
“They won’t be able to see him until he attacks them,” Vhyper said, his voice sharp with anticipation.
The creature stopped in front of one of the women, lifted a single clawed finger, and ripped open her cheek down to the bone.
With a scream, the woman stumbled back, her eyes widening until they filled her face as she finally saw the creature who’d attacked her. Her scream turned to one of terror as she tripped and fell back onto the floor. Crying and whimpering,
she scuttled back from a monster more hideous than any nightmare.
“He’ll leave her like that,” Vhyper murmured, as if to himself. “They feed on fear and pain. He’ll make sure they all see him before he plays with them.”
“How can you know this?”
“You’ve been out of it a while, B.P. We’ve already fed two of these fiends.”
The blood. No wonder.
As one of the men rushed to the woman’s side, the Daemon circled him, then turned his body horizontal in the air and bit through the man’s hand, tearing it from his body.
A guttural scream rose from the man’s throat.
Humans
. They didn’t regenerate lost limbs or missing body parts. His forehead burned with fury at the rank destruction. Needless, vile…
Paenther took deep breaths through his nose as Vhyper’s words echoed in his ears.
With the power you raise with the little witch, we’ll free an entire army.
Every night the blood and sex, his body used to free more of this evil.
He couldn’t let this happen. With a growl, he struggled to free himself until his body with slick with sweat and his muscles straining.
He could not let this happen.
But no matter how hard he tried to free himself, the chains held him fast. Just as the cage held the humans below. He tried to look away from the carnage, but couldn’t. All four humans were
screaming now. All were bloodied, searching for a way out. But there was no escape.
The Daemon sank his claws into the arm of one of the men, holding him fast. As the man pummeled him with his free fist, the Daemon pulled a strip of flesh from his skull, hair and all. Blood poured down the screaming man’s face.
“What are you going to do with these things, Vhyper? Capture human after human to feed them? You must know you can’t control them. You’ll never contain them once they’re free.”
Vhyper grinned. “Who wants to contain them?”
Paenther forced his gaze elsewhere, sickened by the thought of these monsters set loose on the general population. All around the glassed walls, Mage watched with avid, excited expressions.
Except one. Huddled against the wall, not six yards away, was Skye, dressed and showered. Her hand covered her mouth, tears ran down pale, pale cheeks as she watched the horror unfold in front of her.
Was this another false display of emotion for his benefit? Or had she honestly not known what use Birik intended to make of the power they’d raised?
A growl rumbled low in his throat. It didn’t matter. If he ever got his hands on the vile, traitorous witch…
He’d kill her.
Skye turned from the glass enclosure and fled down the cavern passage, falling to her knees and vomiting onto the rock. After the ritual, she’d fled to the woods and only now returned. She hadn’t known…
Dear Mother, dear Mother, dear Mother.
What had they done?
She’d overheard Vhyper tell Paenther they were to do this every night. Free more of these…
things. This
is what Birik had been trying to raise the power for ever since Vhyper brought him the blade. Never had she dreamed her gift could be used for such evil.
Skye collapsed against the wall, her head back, tears streaming down her cheeks.
In so many ways, Birik used her.
But not for this.
Please, Mother. Not for this.
She pressed her freezing palm to her clammy forehead, her chest heaving with agitation.
She didn’t have a choice. She never had a choice.
But Paenther’s voice rang in her head, mocking her. Goading her.
We all have choices, Skye.
She cradled her head, covering her ears, but the warrior’s voice, deep inside her head, wouldn’t be silent.
Whether we choose to face them or hide from them defines who we are. Whether we choose to let evil live, or we fight to destroy it, defines our lives.
Sobs wracked her body as the humans’ screams ripped through the caverns.
Choose, Skye.
She couldn’t let this go on. She could not be the cause of so much suffering. So many deaths.
Choose!
Paenther didn’t remember having been enthralled again, but he came back to consciousness to find himself once more on his back in the cell, Skye standing beside him, her cold, trembling hand on his cock as she tucked his distended flesh into his pants. His body still pulsed with the exquisite pleasure of sexual release.
His gaze speared her. She’d used him.
As if hearing his unspoken accusation, she nodded. “I had to unenthrall you fast, and this is the only way I know how.” She faced him with fear in her eyes. “I know you hate me, and I know you don’t trust me, but hear me, warrior, and hear me well.”
The urgency in her voice and in her face set up a drumming in his blood.
“I didn’t know what Birik intended. You told me to choose, and I’m choosing. I’m choosing not to allow another Daemon to be freed. I’m choosing to free you instead.”
He stared at her, his jaw tight, afraid to believe.
“You won’t get out of here without my help. If you attack me, you’ll never leave.”
“Free me.” The sound of a single piteous scream punctuated the quiet of the caverns.
Skye flinched and nodded. “She’s the only one still alive. Once she dies, the crowd will disburse,
and I’ll never get you out of here. The two main entrances to the caverns are in the open, but I know of another one. You won’t find it without me.”
Like hell he wouldn’t find his way out.
After
he got what he’d come for. Vhyper.
She unlatched his ankles then, one after the other, his wrists. His muscles were stiff as he pulled his arms down from over his head and swung off the rock and onto his feet with a rush of savage satisfaction.
He stared down at her from his far greater height, tempted nearly beyond reason to take out his fury on her as he once had Ancreta.
Mage witch.
But the rigid control that commanded his life held his hand. He still needed her.
“Where’s Vhyper?”
“I don’t know, but if you try to find him, you’ll never get away. Your shackles are magic. Birik can call you back through them from a great distance. Throughout the caverns and the forests. Possibly beyond.”
He grabbed her upper arms, squeezing until she winced.
“Remove the shackles.”
“I can’t! I don’t have the magic.” Her eyes beseeched him. “Paenther, there’s no time! This will be your only chance to escape. Save yourself.
Save us all
.”
The need to get Vhyper out of there, to fight his enemies, retrieve the Daemon blade, and kill the Daemons, was a breathing, burning thing inside him.
But if she was right, escaping now, before Birik realized she’d freed him, might be his only option. He’d rally the Ferals, and they would attack as one.
Paenther released her.
She hesitated for one pulsing, wary moment, then turned and fled for the door. “Come.”
Skye led Paenther down the back passage. When she reached the dagger fields, she turned to the menacing Feral towering over her from behind. “Watch your head as you watch your feet. If one of the stalactites crashes, we’ll be caught.”
He said nothing, the only emotion in his eyes the promise of a slow, violent death. Her heart thudded, and she thought of running and letting him find his own way out.
But he’d never find it. And they’d be right back where they were tonight, freeing Daemons.
Choose.
She took a breath and rushed into the uncleared field of stalagmites, leading him through the open to a particularly dangerous patch where the floor and ceiling sloped together, converging until the rocklike daggers hanging from above and rising from below began to resemble sharp, interwoven teeth.
She’d climbed through here enough times to know the only path, but she was much smaller than he was. Still, as she made her way, no sound followed behind her. She turned to find him
moving through the rock as sleekly and silently as the cat that lived inside him.
In the distance, the last of the screams died away, and the sound of excited voices rose. Her pulse began to pound. They were running out of time. Few ever came this way, but she wasn’t the only one who knew the route. If anyone saw her with the Feral, they’d sound the alarm, and his chance at escape would vanish.
Her heart thudding, beads of perspiration rolling between her breasts, she finally led him out of the difficult patch of rock and onto a wide path. Around the next bend was the small opening that led to the forest and freedom. Even from here she could feel the night air wafting in, cool and damp with rain.
With a breath for courage, she turned to the angry Feral. “When you get outside, run and don’t look back. The shackles are magic and will keep you from shifting. I don’t know how far is too far for Birik to call you back.” She stepped back between two stalagmites and pointed. “There, warrior. Around those rocks, you’ll find the opening to the outside. Be safe. Run!”
Paenther’s hand closed tight around her wrist, his expression turning ugly. “Do you really think I’d leave you behind, witch? When all I can think of is taking my revenge on you?”
Skye’s knees went weak with fear. “Please, I can’t leave. He won’t let me leave.”
Paenther jerked her off her feet and into the solid
rock of his chest, his free hand closing around her throat. “Your choices end here, witch.”