The Last Sacrifice Read online

  That was why five slavers had offered one hundred men a fortune.

  Still, inevitably, Lexx was sure the sheer numbers of slavers were bound to overtake the eleven vile creatures.

  Lexx nodded his head as fifty men with bludgeons and staffs came out from the shadows and took to beating at the He-Kisshi. Furred flesh was cut and bruised. Bones broke. Inhuman shapes faltered and fell. Slavers were thrown aside or slashed open by deceptively sharp claws.

  Still the staffs and clubs did their work. Men panted and grunted and struck again and again as the hellish things curled in on themselves and waited for the beating to finish. In time the Undying were pounded into submission.

  Lexx could no longer give orders. His mouth was flayed into bloodied waste. His hand ached. His eye was very likely a loss. He was dizzy with pain. Still, he felt a certain joy.

  The damned things were wrapped in their nets, bound with iron manacles and dragged through the torrential rains and sleet. They were Undying, perhaps, but he knew they would suffer. Staggering and half-drunk on his pain Lexx still led the way to Ellis’s home and the tender mercies he would offer their unwelcome guests.

  * * *

  Ellis nearly screamed when he saw Lexx. The man was ruined. His face was flayed open, but he came in triumph and brought the Undying with him. The pens under Ellis’s house were dry and ran the length of his estate. They’d cost a great fortune to the previous owner, his father. Part training pits, part hiding place, the ceiling was barely six feet in height and the majority of the wall space on both sides was built of hard wood, well-conditioned and meant to endure for generations. His father had never been a man to spare on the expenses of his business. Ellis was grateful for that.

  Deeta, the best of his people at fixing wounds, was called upon to do what he could for Lexx. The man went calmly but within ten minutes everyone heard his screams. Sometimes mending took a great deal of stitching. Sometimes wounds had to be cauterized.

  By that time Ellis was well into his work. They were called the Undying. He was not there to kill them, but to make sure they could never get free.

  The beasts were left chained and netted. To make certain they stayed secured, Ellis added more chains then ordered them placed in one of the pits he often used to let his more obstinate cases contemplate the cost of being too stubborn.

  Perhaps they could not die. Perhaps that was a true thing, but he intended to test the notion and test it he did.

  Once the bodies were thrown, hissing and struggling, into the bottom of the pit, his men added rocks. A great numbers of rocks. They formed a line and moved the heavy stones from one person to the next before heaving them into the pit. There was a plan to build a stone wall around his property, but that could wait. In the meantime the stones found a better purpose. They settled against the Undying and pressed them harder and harder into the ground.

  The women who were there, the slaves who refused to obey, howled their miseries into the air and the few that could speak the common tongue begged in their hoarse voices for Ellis to free the Undying before it was too late.

  Ellis walked to the closest of them and smiled at her tears. “Perhaps if you obeyed. Perhaps then you could have saved your friends.” He thought about it. “Perhaps if you obey now I will save them yet.”

  “We will obey you. Whatever you desire will be yours.” Her voice shook, her pale lips trembled. She was a lovely thing in her misery. Ellis always preferred a woman in tears.

  Still, he was a businessman. “You are a sweet temptation. Just the same, those things must be stopped.”

  His men sweated and strained, moving stone after stone until the last was dropped in place.

  Damned if he could not hear those hellish things moving down below. Crushed under enough stones to surround his house they continued to make noises.

  Still, they’d not be going anywhere.

  The rains continued outside.

  The thought occurred to Ellis that adding water to the mix might put an end to the things, but that was not the plan. Not yet at least.

  When he was certain that the job was finished, Ellis stretched and looked at his bevy of women. The training would start soon enough, especially now that the creatures were pinned. If they were truly still alive they’d be able to hear the sounds of their pale women being trained to accommodate new men. Ellis rather looked forward to that part of the training.

  * * *

  Ori watched the vile man walk away and resisted the urge to spit. Give them a reason, they would surely find a cause for a beating. She had already endured several attempts to make her subservient and had even agreed to one if the slavers would spare the He-Kisshi.

  In the pens around her, others stirred and stretched. Like her, they had heard the summons of the Undying.

  “What will we do, Ori?” Amira was twelve. She should have been with the children, not penned with adults, but her body looked older and that was enough for the slavers.

  Ori looked to the younger girl. “The He-Kisshi have asked us to free them from their prison. That is what we will do.”

  “But how?”

  In answer to the question, Ori braced her back against the wall of the narrow pen and then planted her feet on one of the boards. The wood was solid. It would not break easily. The nails that held the wood together, however, were old and rusted.

  Ori pushed as hard as she could, her muscles shaking, her face reddening, splinters trying to cut through the calluses on her feet. Walk a few hundred miles and calluses will build.

  She grunted and pushed and strained and finally felt one of the nails loosen and shift. One deep breath, one short pause and she did it again, feeling her spine adjust to the pressure.

  The board popped free on one side and Ori dropped to the dirt, panting. The space provided by the loosened board was small, but it was enough. She slithered her thin body through the way and fell into the dirt on the other side of the pen.

  The pens were not sealed with locks, but with bars that could not be lifted from the other side. They were well out of reach of groping fingers inside the cage. They were also easily accessible from where Ori now stood.

  Perhaps sometimes there were guards here. The men who had carried the heavy stones through the underbelly of the house had strained and sweated enough that it might call for them to rest. Perhaps, as the place where they were being kept was under a house, no one thought they could escape.

  Ori slipped the bars from four of the pens and gestured the women out. None of them spoke above a whisper and little Amira was as quiet as a mouse. They knew what they had to do.

  They moved to the large pile of stones. Even if they were not malnourished there was little they could have done to move the heavy pieces. They had been raised to serve the gods and some of their kind were indeed fearsome warriors, but not all of them had been trained and while Ori could fight, she could have pushed the stones with her legs but never would she be strong enough to lift them.

  Instead she squatted over the rocks and whispered in the proper tongue, “We are here. We wait.”

  They did not wait long. The thick sheet of fur and muscle pushed slowly past the heavy stones until it could touch her foot and leg.

  Ori closed her eyes.

  She would not die, not really. As they had been told all their lives, the He-Kisshi remembered every life they took. She would be a part of the Undying.

  I am Dowru-Thist. You honor me with your life.

  It sang directly into her mind and Ori wept in pleasure, glad to be taken for the gods. Glad to help try to save their people.

  Was there pain? Yes, but Dowru-Thist told her not to struggle and that relaxing would ease her suffering. The Undying was right.

  She did not die, exactly, but became a part of the song that was Dowru-Thist. There were so many voices, so many notes in the complex song.

  * * *

  Within five minutes they were properly reborn. Weakened by the process, yes, but not without their strength.
Freeing the others was a simple matter. A few rocks removed and they could pull the heavy, living cloaks of their brethren from the bodies they had abandoned below.

  The pens were full of willing forms to embrace.

  Once that was done the He-Kisshi adjusted to their new forms and opened the pens of the Grakhul slaves.

  Dowru-Thist looked at the oldest of the remaining women and said, “Find your sisters. Leave this place as quickly as you can. Bogrun-Nisht and Lowra-Plim will go with you.”

  Bogrun-Nisht agreed. “Leave the city. It is time to end this foolishness.”

  They did not walk. They ran. The two heavy cloaks that moved with them opened the barred doors and made certain that their charges were unmolested.

  * * *

  Frankel sat up in his bed and gasped, his hands clutching at his chest. The air felt cold and damp and the great doors leading to his balcony were cast open in the darkness. He could make out the high ceilings of the nearby buildings past the courtyard to his estate. The rains hammered the night and occasional blue-white lightning flares teased out the images of the city around him. The woman next to him in the bed – he could not remember her name – moaned in her sleep, whimpered, really, but did not wake up.

  A flash of silvery light and a horrific explosion of noise made him clutch a second time at his chest. The lights showed something wrong with the room and then it vanished.

  His eyes started to adjust to the darkness, which was when he saw the cloaks gathered around his bed. Surrounded by them, he could smell the wet, feral scent of the unholy shapes.

  “You have deceived us.” The words held no anger. That made them more awful to him. There was simply the explanation, as if they were telling him why he would suffer.

  “I would never.” His voice squeaked a bit. He didn’t like that. He was the king. He was supposed to be strong.

  “They are no longer here. The Grakhul. Most are gone, taken away. We would have them back.”

  “Beron is the one who has them. He was supposed to work out everything with you earlier.”

  “You are the king of this city, of this country. You claim to be the ruler and as such you have let down the gods. They make simple demands. You have allowed your slavers to take the holy people from the gods for your own pleasures.”

  Frankel’s chest hitched and a fine, keening noise came out before he caught himself. His mother had always told him that men did not cry. His father had assured him that even if men did, kings most certainly did not.

  “Guards! To me!” He paid very well for the protection of his guards.

  There was no response much as he’d hoped for a swift one. “They will not come.” That same monotone, soft voice. The woman in his bed did not wake. She merely curled in on herself and shivered. “We are the Undying. Only the foolish would try to face us. Your guards are not fools.”

  Of course they weren’t. The He-Kisshi were the stuff of nightmares. More importantly they were the stuff of nightmares made flesh. No sane being would defy them.

  And yet, he had. He’d made promises to Beron, not because he feared the man. Beron was very large and quite capable, no doubt, but he was also greedy enough to behave himself in the presence of a man who could have him killed.

  The problem was that he was not here, and he was very likely not behaving.

  “Beron. If-if you find him, he can make everything right.”

  “He has left this town. He has taken the Grakhul with him.”

  “What will you do?” Frankel suspected he already knew. They would go after him. But before they did that they would make the king of Arthorne – and by extension of Saramond – suffer.

  “We will find him. He will be dealt with. Before that happens, we will remove our protections from Saramond.”

  “What do you mean?”

  That black patch in the darkness of the night moved closer. He could feel the terrible heat of the beast. How had he ever believed they were cold?

  “We have not brought the storms that surround your city. We have held them at bay. The gods are angry, King Frankel. They seek to destroy the world. We were your one chance at salvation. You might have been spared if you had merely complied with our wishes.”

  “What? No! Wait!” Frankel rose naked from his bed and rushed at the closest form. His hands sought to grab the cloaked shape and succeeded only in clutching hot flesh and rough fur.

  “You dare?” The voice was different now. Still soft, but it hissed.

  “Spare me! Spare my people! We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Had you stated the truth, you might have survived.”

  Without another word the cloaks shuffled toward the open doors leading out into the night. Frankel watched as they spread their massive wings and caught the howling winds, rising into the storm. Lightning showed the shapes sailing higher and higher until they were specks.

  And then the storms let loose.

  The girl finally woke to the sound of thunder shaking the stone walls of the palace. The winds slammed the doors closed, but that was not enough to hide the cacophony. Despite himself, Frankel rose and moved to the closest window, looking out at the sheets of rain lit by the electrical outrages above.

  He bore witness to the tongues of white light that drove down like a thousand spears and struck each building he could see, including the one he was in. The window exploded inward, sending slivers of glass and lead frame hurtling toward his naked form. He tried to cover his face and felt blades open his stomach, cut across his privates, and burn into his neck and chest.

  Frankel fell back, dying, confused and in pain, but no longer afraid. The girl on the bed moved, arching her body, feeling the deep cuts from the glass that found her in the explosion.

  By rights it should have stopped, but the lightning came again, a fury of light and sound and then fire. The walls glowed with heat as the lightning lashed out at the very stones that had built Frankel’s family home.

  By the time the walls started to fall, Frankel was already dead.

  All hail the king.

  * * *

  B’Rath looked back in the direction of Saramond and knew he had done the right thing. Buildings shattered. The very ground looked like it was boiling in the electrical assault.

  He’d seen the slavers on the move, taking hundreds of ghostly white women with them into the plains, heading south, away from the city. He had seen them and thought hard about the Grakhul that had come to the slavers’ capitol.

  And then he had calmly gathered his family together and stolen all the horses in his stables. He needed them to save his family. That was all the justification he felt necessary. There were wagons. He loaded them with supplies and essentials, with extra barrels of water, then he forced his family out of their beds and took to the roads as soon as the sun was down.

  They did not ride in a fury. They did not overtax the horses. Instead they moved slow and steady. That was the secret to fishing, according to his grandfather, and that was the method he used to determine most of his choices in the world.

  Slow and steady got them away from Saramond before the gods took their vengeance.

  Slow and steady did not work for the horses. They heard the thunder shatter the night, saw the sheets of lightning come crashing across the plains, and they bolted as one unit. And because he valued the idea of living through the ride, B’Rath let them have their way as much as he could, calling out to the others to control, not tame the ride.

  Despite his fears they survived the run. The horses scattered a bit, but after they calmed down enough, the family brought them together. There was a stream nearby where they camped for the night. By the time the morning came, it was a river. The waters raged and snatched at the banks, overflowing into the dry earth.

  B’Rath gathered his family, his lovely wife and his children and his brother’s family and they all worked together to get their caravan back on course. They would head west for the present time, away from the slavers. They would go to the
base of the mountains and from there they would travel south until they found a place that suited them. There was enough coin, carefully hidden away, of course, and there were enough supplies if they were careful and they would be. There were three crossbows, and enough arrows to make anyone approaching very uncomfortable or possibly even very dead. He preferred the former, but he would accept the latter. Whatever he had to do to protect his family, B’Rath would do it.

  They traveled. They rode. They ate and they rested and at the end of a long day, B’Rath’s reward was to see the Grakhul falling from the sky, landing around and near the small caravan. Well and truly, they were surrounded by the cloaked demons.

  One of them walked closer, moving with angry, twitching motions.

  “We have need of your horses.”

  “I have none to spare. I have to take care of my family.” He was very apologetic. He shrugged his shoulders and did his best not to flinch. When his brother, Uto, reached for one of the crossbows, B’Rath gestured for him to stay his hand.

  They were called the Undying. He did not intend to test the name.

  “Look back toward your city.”

  Rather than argue, B’Rath looked back already knowing what he would see. There were hundreds of women heading toward them in the distance. They were underdressed, malnourished and moving in a slow column.

  B’Rath sighed. “You must take care of your people. I must take care of mine.” He looked at the cowl and saw hints of what lay beneath it. He saw that the cloak was what he had noticed before: a living part of the Grakhul. “I will keep my horses and my wagons. I will share them with you. Is this acceptable? We will travel together, wherever you wish to go. If some among you are too sickly, they can ride the horses or in the wagons. That is the best I can offer you.”

  He did his best to stay calm, knowing too well that his life was forfeit if the demons did not agree. He would fight to defend his family, even if it meant dying.