Authors: Cara Lake
Escape
Jaro woke with a start. He had been dreaming as usual but
then the dream had changed. Fuck! He awoke with the distinct impression that
he’d lost something. What was it? Something was missing. Twisting his body back
toward the fire, he realized the redhead was gone. He was no longer attached to
her. The loss slammed into him. Total devastation. He began to panic. Where the
fuck was she? Had she escaped on her own? The chain on his leg was unbroken.
The shackle had been opened either by a spell or with its key. He already knew
she was a witch so maybe she actually had that particular wiccani power. Then
he realized that he was now unattached to anything other than the chain cuffed
to one of his legs. The guards hadn’t bothered chaining him to anything other
than the girl, considering that would be enough to keep them in one place. Lucky
for him, they were wrong.
Jaro managed to stand. The guards were snoring heavily and
his sensitive nose inhaled thick fumes of alcohol heavy in the air. Belial’s
men were morons. They’d been drinking heavily before he’d finally drifted off
to sleep after waiting until they were out for the count to make sure of the
redhead’s safety. But now, something wasn’t right. He quickly counted. There
were only ten bodies. That was when he heard it. The sound of ripping fabric in
the distance, a threatening rasp of anger. Jaro heard the threat. He’d always
had excellent hearing.
“Don’t move, your highness. I will go back and carve up your
guard dog. Jaro will be dog meat you so much as whimper.” Another voice
intruded. “Hey, Halvin, share it out, man! I wanna piece of her!” A second
guard.
Jaro began to move in the direction of the trucks. He could
make out three figures in the faint early-morning light that washed a purple glow
across the landscape. “You’re going to behave, aren’t you, your highness? You
don’t want your pet to be chop suey, do you?” slurred Halvin, forcing the
redhead’s face forward against the side of the truck. Jaro saw her head nod in
agreement. Why would she do such a thing? She should be fighting them, dammit!
He sped up as he charged toward them, fury building as the
second guard laughed, drunk with excitement. The noise of the chains clanking
against the rocky soil betrayed him to the remaining men, who began to wake,
jerked to awareness by not only Jaro’s chains but by Halvin and his companion’s
drunken laughter. He was halfway there; Halvin still hadn’t noticed him, when
he was slammed to the ground by the force of four guards who had roused
sufficiently to take in what was happening.
“Get Rajan!”
“Fucking Halvin! What’s he doing?”
“Get that bastard off her!” The guards clamoring did nothing
to quench the heat that spread through Jaro’s veins, molten lava, a volcanic
explosion that burst forth, scratching and clawing its way upward, itching to
erupt from his skin. Even though he was grounded, he never took his eyes off
her. She was his quarry, his prey and anyone who stood in his way would be
dust. Two seconds later and the guards didn’t know what had hit them.
Jaro had never felt such anger. It was a black, pulsing
living thing that resided deep down inside a place he had never dared to look.
It throbbed now with an urgency that spread, a heavy iron weight he could not
control. The pressure built as he fought against the rising tide but Halvin had
his hands on her again, wrenching her arms backward viciously and pinning her
against the truck. His laughter sliced through the frenzied air, slamming into
Jaro’s gut as he watched the guard joke with his friend about what he was going
to do to the redhead.
The heavy weight combusted, spikes of obsidian unleashing
the full force of his fury. A red veil of hatred coated his vision as the
pulsing throb reached a crescendo. Jaro’s whole body seethed with the dark
force of this power as it surged through blood and tissue, distorting muscle
and bone in a wave that crashed over him so intensely that he was nearly blinded
by it.
His body, trapped beneath the weight of the four guards who
had pinned him down, erupted with a force so strong they were thrown aside,
crashing around him, broken toy soldiers. Jaro had a clear run.
His eyes locked on to the redhead’s fragile form as she finally
began to struggle with the guard who was trying to take her from behind. Blood
boiling, his fury finally spiraled out of control as the darkness inside
consumed every atom of his flesh, shattering and splintering, his heart
thundering, blood roaring in his ears as he collapsed weightless and disoriented,
his body becoming something other, something alien and something completely
unexpected.
Jaro could only watch, mesmerized, as his fingers stretched
into claws, and thick black fur surged through the pores of his skin with
excruciating pain. Each hair a stab of agony that increased his ferocity and he
found himself on all fours, a feral, slavering beast.
His jaws gaped wide, expelling a growl that thundered over
the parched soil, reverberating with an echo that sent rocks flying. Howls from
the guards as the rocks crashed into them and finally, finally—Jaro found
himself and who he was meant to be. Shrugging off the disorientation of the
shift, he took his opportunity and lunged ferociously toward the guards who
dared to put their filthy paws on her.
How dare they touch her! How dare they force their dirty
hands on her pale flesh! They were scum. Bastards who deserved nothing more
than agonizing death and he would give it to them. For he was rage and destruction.
He was vengeance and fury. He was hate in its purest form and they deserved to
die.
Jaro was running on instinct. His new skin a total shock, he
had no time to flounder in the strangeness of the sudden shift. He was too full
of rage. His fury so great that before he’d even realized what he had done, all
twelve of Belial’s men lay dead or writhing in agony. Total annihilation. He
had no compunction. He felt no shame. They were animals. He was an animal! It
was dog eat dog. Ha! His redhead would be laughing at him now. His redhead!
Where was she? He sniffed at the air. The scent of her invaded his nasal
passages, coating the pores of his skin with strawberries and summer sun. He
lunged after her.
Tani could only watch in horror as Phenex’s fighter, the one
they called Jaro, bellowed an earsplitting roar that threatened to rip the sky
in two. His roars thundering in her ears, she continued to struggle with her
captor as he tried to force himself on her. Then Jaro exploded upward, leaving
the ground, his body igniting at the same time, shimmering and twisting with dark
magick. It spiraled around him, mutating and transforming at a cellular level.
She heard bones cracking as they splintered and restructured and her eyes
widened in shock as dark hair sprouted over the fighter’s body and the
transformation took hold.
From the terrified shouts of the men around her, Tani
realized that this shift was completely unexpected. If they had known Phenex’s
fighter was a saevici they would have taken steps to contain his ability to
transform by drugging him. She was surprised they hadn’t known. Every slave’s
skills were catalogued by his master and if he was a saevici who fought in the
gladiatorial pits this ability would have been known to all. Saevici fighters were
highly prized, especially those forms that were extremely rare.
The shift complete, Tani felt or rather sensed the rising tension
in the men around her. The toothless guard, Halvin, loosened his hold on her as
soon as he realized the danger, his focus shifting from lust to survival. The beast
confronting them was enormous. Its jaws open wide as it roared, Tani only had
time to catch a brief glimpse of lethal canines before it charged toward them
with the force of a bullet shot from a gun. Her assailants scattered. Tani had
no time to move other than to crouch into a fetal position where she lay,
praying her death would be swift.
To her surprise the beast veered past and launched himself
at the two guards who had tried to brutalize her. He leapt over her, lethal claws
slicing through the air just millimeters away. She stayed low, flinching as
screams pierced the air around her, biting into the night sky. She cringed with
every crunch of bone and flesh that cracked loudly against the agonizing
shrillness of futile cries of desperation.
She decided not to look back at the devastation but forced
her body up and forward, racing toward the trees, unnoticed by the remaining
guards who were either frozen in terror or had begun running in the opposite
direction to escape the fury of the beast. Pausing only to grab a bag in the
hope that it might contain weapons, Tani fought for breath as she ran for her
life, her heart smacking into her ribs until she thought her chest would
explode.
As she ran she tried not to consider what she had left
behind. Jaro was a barghesti! A very rare saevici indeed. Barghesti were huge
wolf-like canines, prized for their ferocity and savagery. She knew of only two
other saevici who could shift into that state.
Tani kept running, leaving the sounds of massacre behind.
She knew she was fast and could outrun a lot of things, although that wouldn’t
usually include a shedu in its beast form. Luckily for her the drunken revelry
of last night meant Belial’s men would be unable to shift until all the alcohol
was out of their system. But it wasn’t just them she was worried about. Her
other problem was that she had no idea where she was going. She had headed into
the forest because it gave cover, hoping that she was going in the right
direction. If she could evade any pursuers for long enough, she could get her
bearings and figure out where Serpens was. Really, Halvin had done her a favor.
But then again, it was Jaro’s distraction that had given her a chance to
escape. She smiled as a thought crossed her mind. He really was the dog she had
said he was. She wondered how he felt about that. Then she decided she must be
delirious because really—why would she care what Jaro thought at all?
Her heart beat faster. A wave of the same furious energy
that had washed over her in the truck overtook her from behind, followed
closely by the thundering sound of four sturdy legs pounding toward her. The barghesti
was in pursuit. Chaos, he was persistent! What could she do? There was no way
she could outrun him. Damn him! Did he really think she would let him take her
to Phenex like some prize cow? She was no one’s chattel!
Darting through the trees, Tani cut a zigzag path, hoping to
throw him off track. Sunlight glittered through the breaks in the trees,
flickering past. An opening ahead. Tani propelled herself forward as the
pursuing energy crashed over her head. She charged toward the gap, gasping for breath,
desperate to escape the fury raging at her heels. She had almost made it to the
gap in the trees when she suddenly realized her internal compass was flawed.
Her momentum was too strong. Tani couldn’t brake quickly enough and she cursed
at her mistake as her foot left the solidity of the ground and floundered in
midair. She began to fall.
Tani was falling one moment, but the next she was encircled
by a hard solid mass that carried her forward across the chasm she had failed
to spot. She landed with a thud on the other side of the deep gorge, having
been propelled thirty feet across its width. Although the impact was hard, Tani’s
body was protected by a dense bulk covered in silky black fur that lay panting
beneath her, a cushion to her fall.
Suddenly she was shivering. Perhaps it was the shock of the
near rape, the near-death experience of the fall or the sudden close contact
with this saevici barghesti. Tani couldn’t be sure. The warm body beneath her
began to shimmer, cracking with the bone-crunching sounds of a shift. Fur
became flesh and Tani again found herself pressed up against a hard male form
she couldn’t seem to get away from.
She froze, expecting him to shove her away. His heart was
pounding in her ear. “Are you all right, Red?” His voice was thick as if sore
from the roaring of his barghesti self. Tani scrambled off him as fast as she
could. Something inside had heated as he lay beneath her and a sudden urge to
run her fingers all over him and explore the hard contours of his flesh had her
heart rate spiking. What the hell? She couldn’t move away fast enough.
Rolling onto her side, Tani sat up, gasping for breath. “I’m
fine,” she said, studying his battle-worn face carefully from under her lashes,
trying desperately not to let her eyes wander further down.
Jaro was still lying on his back, knees bent, naked, his
eyes closed. Something about this male had her hormones buzzing. She looked
away, suddenly horrified by her body’s heated response to the sight of all that
hard male sinew and taut muscle. Her nipples tightened, aroused by the sight.
What the hell? It was just shock. It had to be. He was a rough criminal, a
rapist, totally amoral. His battered body bore the scars of the battle that was
his life and while she could thank him for his help, she shouldn’t be feeling
anything else. Tani resorted to good manners. “I guess I should thank you for
saving my life.”
“Don’t get any ideas that I care. I’m just protecting Phenex’s
property.” He sat up, legs still bent, his brooding gaze sweeping over her. “You’re
just an errand, Red, and for that reason, I’ll see you safely back to Serpens
as my master ordered.” He gestured toward the bag she was still carrying. “Don’t
suppose there are some clothes in that?” Tani turned away blushing, still
confused by the churning sensations induced by the sight of his muscular frame.
Yes, Gaia help her! It would be so much better if he were clothed. Sighing in
relief after a brief search that revealed some food and a couple of knives, she
was able to drag out a pair of black combat pants and a T-shirt that looked to
be his size. She threw them in his direction, still averting her gaze. Keeping
her eyes shut as he moved to put them on, Tani only chanced opening them when she
heard him jump to his feet and watched with irritation as he strode off as if
nothing untoward had happened.