Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Prisoners of the Wind (4 page)

Tears running down her cheeks, Marin sat there and went over
and over in her mind all the old tales her mother had regaled her with about
the infamous Tiogar Clan. She had painted gruesome pictures for the little girl
and had brought on many nightmares that had jerked Marin from her sleep
screaming.

“The Tiogars are listening to everything you do, Marin,” her
mother warned. “They are always lying in wait for bad little girls. You
wouldn’t want one to crush your bones between his fangs, would you? What have
you done to bring the beast to punish you?”

Marin whimpered, repeated that
question to herself—
what have you done to bring the beast to punish you?

Chapter Three

Kale McGregor looked up from the computer screen upon which
he’d been playing a video game and quickly reached over to turn it off as his
commanding officer barged into the rec room.

“Are those nit-twits settled in?” Drae demanded.

“Aye, they are,” Kale replied cautiously. The two were more
than commander and second in charge. They had been friends for many years and
had spent four of those years hiding in the barren chill of the high
Contúirtian Alps. “How is Deringnoe?”

“The gods-be-damned woman is so afraid of me I think she
pissed herself,” the Tiogar complained. He slumped into one of the form-fitting
chairs flanking the wide expanse of portal beyond which stars streaked past the
Revenge
and thrust out his long legs. “I thought women of the Madras clan
were made of sterner stuff. Just goes to show they are still women.”

“What did you do to frighten her, or should I ask?” Kale
asked.

“I may have said something about devouring an enemy,” Drae
said with a grunt. “I don’t exactly recall.”

“Depending on how much detail you handed out about the
devouring, I could see that scaring the wench,” Kale agreed.

“I want her afraid of me,” Drae grated as though he hadn’t
heard. A muscle worked in his lean cheek as he plucked at the leather cording
along the chair arm, frowning at the offending material as though it was alive.
“I want her to tremble at the sight of me! I want that flat little belly
quivering with terror and those slender hands clasped in pleading while she’s
on her knees to me. I want those jade eyes of hers shimmering with tears, those
spiky lashes fluttering with dread.”

“Do you really?” Kale asked quietly.

Taegin Drae turned his angry glare on his 2-I-C. “Aye, Kale.
I do!”

Kale relaxed, for when the man sitting there in the rec room
with him used his first name, they were no longer commander and second in
command—they were equals.

Their closeness had been forged in the crucible of war when
Kale’s family had helped to hide the last of the Tiogar Clan from Madras
enemies attempting to annihilate him. Assigned by Fleet Command to be the
Tiogar’s bodyguard when Drae fled for his life with a whole squadron of Madras
close on his heels, Kale had found the job nerve-racking with never a dull
moment. Taegin Drae took risks no sane man ever would, yet McGregor had been
right there beside him, leaping into the precipice of danger along with the
Tiogar.

Because of their months of hiding,
struggling to survive, with McGregor always at his back, Taegin and Kale had
formed a fierce bond each of them treasured—though even under threat of torture
neither would ever admit such a sentimental thing.

“Is that why you’ve been sending out subliminals to her for
the last six weeks?”

Drae waved a dismissive hand. “I wanted to prepare her.”

Kale leaned back in his chair. “For what were you preparing
her?”

The Tiogar started to speak, but two crewmembers ventured
into the rec room, stopping dead-still when they saw their captain.

“Get the hell out!” Drae shouted. “Now!”

The crewmen hurried away. No one intruded upon Taegin Drae
when he was in one of his dark moods.

“Can’t a man have any peace on this gods-be-damned ship?”

Kale hid a smile behind his hand. “What exactly do you have
in mind for the lovely Miss Deringnoe, Taeg?”

“Acet.” Drae spat out the word as though it was a bad taste.
“I believe she only used Deringnoe when she was arrested. The gods only know
who Deringnoe was.”

“Her father, perhaps?”

Drae snorted. “I would wager the little bitch was sired by a
slimy demon from beyond the Abyss. What other creature would mate with a hag
like Neala Acet?”

“I hear she is quite lovely.”

“She is,” Drae said, and his voice softened a notch. “She
has the softest hair and her lips are—” He stopped, realizing McGregor meant
the mother, not the daughter. He narrowed his eyes. “You go to hell.”

“Been there,” McGregor chuckled. When the Tiogar ignored the
remark, he asked again for what purpose was Drae preparing the young woman.

“They wanted to exterminate every last one of us,” Drae
said. His jaw was tight—his words falling like stones from his taut lips. “They
murdered my father then my cousins. They came after us with a single-minded
vengeance, intent on wiping us out. I am the only one left from among the
Tiogar Clan.” He momentarily closed his eyes, took a calming breath and then
released it, slowly opening his eyes as he exhaled.

“By all accounts, Lady Marin had nothing to do with what
transpired on Riochas Prime,” Kale reminded him. “She has been in boarding
school on Laidineach for—”

“I know all about that!” Drae snapped. “I know everything
there is to know about her.”

“Really?” Kale watched his friend catapult himself from the
chair and begin pacing in front of the sweeping portal. It was a sure sign of
agitation in the Tiogar when he started plowing his hand through his thick hair
and tugging at it.

“She is at the head of her class,” Drae recited. “She excels
in every subject, every class and every sport in which she is allowed to
participate. She is only three credits away from receiving a degree in
biological engineering.”

“A worthy occupation,” Kale observed.

“She is saving herself for a gentle man who loves animals as
she does. She wants to marry that paragon of virtue and have a brood of
children,” Drae said with a grunt. “Two boys and two girls.”

“I don’t see how you could find fault with that,” Kale said.

Drae spun around. “Oh, she’ll get at least one of those
boys, but she’ll get no gods-be-damned girls from me!”

Kale blinked. “What are you saying, Taegin?”

The Tiogar advanced on his second in command and grabbed the
arms of McGregor’s chair, leaning over him. “I am going to take her precious
little maidenhead and maybe even give her Tiogar seed in exchange,” he growled.

“You are going to rape her?” Kale gasped. “Taegin, no! You
can’t do that. It—”

“Who said anything about rape, McGregor? Besides, I’ve taken
her many times already, Kale,” the Tiogar asserted. “Even if it’s all in her
mind.”

“Is that what you have been doing to her over these past
weeks?” McGregor asked. “I thought you were simply frightening her with those
sublims. Have you been mentally seducing her instead?”

Drae let go of one arm of the chair and held his hand before
his friend. He waggled his fingers then closed his fist until only one
finger—the middle—remained rigid. “With this, aye!”

Kale groaned. “You are playing with fire, my friend. If you
mate with her—”

“It won’t be mating,” Drae stressed. “It will be revenge.”

“But—”

“But nothing!” the Tiogar snapped. He stood up. “Is the
Sobek
ready to transport her friends to Fiáin tomorrow morning?”

“Aye, but, Taegin—”

“Then make sure they are onboard and dropped off first
thing. I don’t need them onboard the
Revenge
while I’m doing what needs
to be done. It’s best she has no friends here to whom she can turn.”

“Where is she now?” McGregor asked, giving up trying to
argue with his captain.

“In an isolation cell where she will remain until I am done
with her,” Drae replied.

Staring into his friend’s eyes, Kale knew it would be futile
to try reasoning with Taegin Drae. The Tiogar was in charge—not the man—and the
Tiogar would have his vengeance.

“What if they balk at leaving without her? The Tribunal made
it clear they weren’t to be harmed in any way.”

“Sedate them,” Drae snapped. “Use one of the heavy-duty
neuroleptors Healer Tuat devised. That will put their asses out so they can’t
give you any shit.”

Kale sighed deeply. “It will take three days out and three
back for me to transport the women to Fiáin.” He frowned. “How close are you to
Conversion?”

Drae drew himself up to his full six-foot-four-inch height
and stared at his 2-I-C, ignoring the question. “You’d best be hitting the
rack, Mister. I want the
Sobek
out of here by 0500 tomorrow morning. Is
that clear?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” McGregor acknowledged listlessly. He got up
from his chair and headed for the corridor.

“Don’t worry, Kale,” Drae said, slapping his friend on the
back as he walked alongside him. “I’ll see that she enjoys her ravishment!”

Long after McGregor had left, Drae remained in the rec room.
He stood at the sweeping bank of windows and stared out into the black velvet
swatch of space, seemingly mesmerized by the streaks of passing stars on the
fabric of the heavens. His arms crossed over his chest, he stood with his legs
apart, a muscle working in his jaw.

It was the dreams, the sublims, which he had been
transmitting to Marin over the past few weeks that occupied his thoughts. Each
one had been carefully planned, calculated with just the right amount of erotic
content, the most vivid of images and sensations. His intent had been to make
her his willing slave, in need of what her midnight lover could provide, and he
knew he had succeeded his wildest dreams. He had conquered her easily and then
had made her his.

“The Madras don’t need men, eh?” he whispered to the ebon
vista stretching out before him. “They don’t require what a man can give.”

He closed his eyes and sent his thoughts winging through
time and space until it came to a mind seething with hatred, with
all-encompassing power, and there he allowed an insidious tendril to weave its
way through that murky mentality and plant a seed, dropping the kernel in the
seething depths where it would take root and spread.

“Who are you?”
he heard the shout of disgust and
smiled grimly, opening his eyes to stare blankly out the window.

It was a brutal mental image he had sown in Neala Acet’s
enraged brain—an image of her innocent daughter lying spread upon a stained,
disheveled bed, her nude body helpless to disembodied hands that plucked and
twisted her naïve young flesh, left deep scratches bubbling with blood on her
soft belly and breasts. He added sound to the picture—grunting, slobbering,
vulgarities. He added movement—Marin struggling, writhing, her body shrinking
away from her abusers. He added the smell of unwashed bodies, the ripe scent of
spent semen, the coppery odor of blood from a breached hymen.

“May you rot in the Abyss!”
Neala Acet screamed,
trying to force the sights from her subconscious.

He laughed hatefully at the curses being heaped upon him as
Acet flew into a rampage, her mind a quagmire of savage torments she wished to
visit upon her unseen, unknown assailant.

“What do you want?”
she bellowed.

Taegin Drae reached out easily with his mind and placed
another image into the Madras leader’s teeming brain, this time with deliberate
cruelness.

Marin lay in a wanton pose, her legs and arms wide, her
mouth open, sweet tongue flicking across swollen lips. The patch of her crisp
curls at the junction of her thighs was wet, the smell of her need wafting on
the air. She lay there eagerly awaiting her lover, her arms up to bid him come
to her.

“No.”
The one word was a soft denial, spoken with a
breaking heart.

Slowly the image in the Madras leader’s mind stripped the
clothing from his powerful body. The black shirt was discarded, the black
leather pants shrugged from lean hips to display a steely erection thick with
promise.

“No.”
A heartbreak of sound coming from a throat
closing with tears.

Stretching out upon the willing body of her daughter, Neala
Acet’s tormentor thrust himself between luscious thighs and seated his weapon
deep into her waiting channel. Velvet arms closed around him, eager legs lifted
to wrap around his waist, aching breasts pressed close to his hairy chest.

“No!”

He stood there at the window, and as he had done many times
over the past weeks, he let the action play itself out but with one minor
change—the Tiogar let Neala Acet see him for the first time, and he could hear
the quickly indrawn breath that told him she recognized who he was.

“No!”
A stone of a word dropped in violent
refutation.
“No!”

He made sure the Madras leader saw him come deep inside her
daughter. He made sure she heard Marin’s trilling release of pleasure as the
young woman arched into her phantom lover’s body. He made damned sure Neala
Acet smelled his scent oozing from her only offspring before slowly
withdrawing, leaving behind in his enemy’s mind a sadistic seed that had taken
firm root and would grow wildly like a noxious weed, choking out all good
thoughts, sapping the strength from any hope the older woman might have.

A sardonic smile stretched Taegin Drae’s mouth as he broke
the mental contact between him and the woman who had taken his father’s life.
It had cost him dearly to obtain a single drop of Neala Acet’s blood, but it
had been well worth every pay chit he had spent to have that vile fluid in his
possession.

Turning his attention to the younger of his two objects of
torment, he opened the way between him and Marin, his revenge aimed now at her.