Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (9 page)

A piercing shriek tore Snow White’s gaze to her left. Cauliflower Nose writhed on the ground, every part of him covered with locusts. A mass of locusts thicker than her hand attacked the growth on his nose, penetrating it to the bone. Metal Hat tore his hat off. Insects crawled out and flew to rejoin their brethren. With a roar, Gorm swiped at the locusts and grabbed bunches of them with his huge fists.

“Come and get me!” he thundered. “I am Gorm the Merciless. No six-legged beast will get the better of me.”

Ignoring the locusts, Gorm hoisted Snow White across his hefty shoulder and ran for his horse. Lifting her head against the buzzing cloud, she saw that Metal Hat had done similarly to Aein. The swarm now resembled a green mist. Only Cauliflower Nose was left jerking spasmodically on the ground.

Snow White was thrown belly down across the horse’s withers, followed by a rapidly mounting Gorm. He dug his heels into the shrieking horse and they were off, chased by the plague.

CHAPTER SIX

Only a few locusts were left when they rode through the walls of a broken castle after what seemed like hours to Snow White. She was sick, rocked into throwing up her stomach’s contents by the galloping horse. Every bone in her body ached. Clods of earth and dust, thrown up by the horse’s hooves, clumped on her face and hair.

She craned her extremely sore neck to survey the castle. Ivy snaked across its crumbling walls as the horses thundered into a courtyard filled with rubble and cracked paving stone. The dormant fountain in the courtyard was covered with leaves and dirt. Battlements were broken off like teeth from a comb. Ravens perched on the walls and eyed the newcomers with baleful, suspicious gazes. The stink of rotting things rose from the middens outside, or perhaps it was the ravens, which had bloodied flesh strung from their beaks.

Gorm dismounted. Roughly, he dragged Snow White from the horse. She fell, skinning her knee on the stones, her hands still bound behind her. Her tunic flapped open where it was torn, and the curve of her white breasts peeked through, exposing a strawberry pink nipple. She had never been so maltreated. Her mind was numb –
this is not happening to me
. Anytime, she expected to wake up from this awful nightmare.

She was deathly afraid now. Afraid for all the things that would happen to her, afraid of dying, afraid of never really having lived.

“Witch!” Gorm backhanded her right cheek. Snow White’s ear rang with the blow. “What did you do, witch? You should be burned at the stake. Because of you, Ferkin lies dead on the ground, his eyes filled with those accursed insects.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Snow White cried.

“Leave her be,” Aein said. He too was flung to the ground. Metal Hat kicked him in the ribs so roughly that Aein tumbled several feet.

“Pick on someone who can fight you back,” Aein continued, barely winded. “If you must find fault with someone, it was I who called the locusts. I am the witch, not she.”

“Both of you are witches and should be boiled alive,” Gorm growled.

“We shall feast upon your flesh on a bed of turnips tonight,” Metal Hat put in slyly. His tongue peeked from the side of his mouth like a wet slug.

Gorm turned away from Metal Hat in disgust. “Your human flesh eating habits will kill you yet. We shall make them both wish they’ve never been born. Bring them to the dungeons!”

Snow White and Aein were hauled by their hair and dragged into the castle keep. The jagged stones abraded her flesh and caught the torn pieces of her clothing, ripping them further apart. They were half-pushed down a flight of stone stairs. The temperature dipped and goose bumps formed on Snow White’s arms. Around them, water ran in sluices down the grey stone walls.

At the stairway bottom was a passage flanked by several cells. The smell of decay lay heavily on the cold stone floor. Snow White caught glimpses of what was behind the iron grates – decapitated skeletons still chained to walls, screaming skulls.

Gorm was right. She was beginning to wish she had never been born.

They were thrown into a medium-sized chamber. She noted the instruments there with mounting dread – a torture rack, an iron chair with its seat hollowed out, a stone pyramid with a blood-stained iron tip, a garrotte, and many other iron devices too terrible to contemplate. A brazier sat in a corner along with a bin of coal. She now understood what it was like to be filled with so much fear that she was completely emptied of everything else. The pervading stench of rotting meat flooded all her other senses, and every crevice of her skull was filled with the red glow of terror.

Gorm and Metal Hat stripped Aein of all his newfound clothes. Just when he was getting used to wearing them too, a part of her brain noted abjectly. They strapped Aein to an upright rack, stretching his arms and legs to the limits before securing his wrists and ankles in leather bonds. Snow White felt her own joints popping as Aein’s face contorted.

“No,” she whimpered softly.

They ignored her.

Milky Eye poured coals into the brazier and lit a fire. Another man, whom Snow White christened Scarface for his bad acne scars, wrenched her arms painfully behind her back. He half-carried, half-dragged her to the iron chair. He threw her down on it, and chained her arms to its back as she tried to maintain her balance above the hole in its seat. She could only thank her lucky stars that there weren’t any spikes embedded in the chair.

Scarface turned her to face Aein’s bruised and stretched body, his washboard stomach heaving with each breath. Sweat beaded on Aein’s face. Milky Eye stoked the coals in the brazier with a poker. They began to glow a dangerous red.

“No,” Snow White cried despite herself, “don’t hurt him!”

Aein’s eyes arrested hers. His muscles were tensed and yet he held no terror.

Scarface ran a hand across Snow White’s throat. “And what would you do for me, my beauty, if we don’t?” His breath was sour as he whispered in her ear. He worked one calloused hand into her torn tunic and squeezed her breast.

My maidenhood is just a piece of flesh.
If she had to give it up to save them, she would gladly do so. But on the other, what was to stop them from raping her, torturing Aein, and burning them at the stake thereafter for witchcraft? She had been warned about men like these by Hanna Cherry, who avowed that anyone who lived beyond the Enchanted Forest were brigands, thieves and murderers.

“They would taste your flesh,” Hanna said, “then leave you with child. And cut the babe from your belly before you are due.”

Seeing these men firsthand, Snow White could well believe that.

“Please,” she said, tears blurring her eyes. It was now time to play her trump card. “I can make you rich.”

Milky Eye picked up a glowing piece of coal with a tong. Aein flinched as he regarded the red-hot piece approaching his genitals. His thighs were clenched, braced for pain. He hates fire, Snow White abstractly remembered.

“Keep talking,” Scarface said, his lips brushing her ear, “or your boyfriend loses everything that makes him interesting to you in the first place.”

“I’m a princess,” Snow White said in a rush. “I’m a princess of Lapland. If you take me back there, the King will reward you greatly.”

“If you’re a princess,” Gorm sneered, “what are you doing in these woods?”

“Not to mention she speaks like a Bavarian native,” Milky Eye added.

“Good try, my beauty,” Scarface said, his hand sliding down her belly and worming its way into her pants. “But it won’t save your boyfriend.”

Aein’s glittering brown eyes held hers. He said, “She may not be a princess of Lapland, but she is right. We can make you rich.”

Snow White caught her breath in surprise. She couldn’t recall telling him who she really was. Was this a ploy? She opened her mouth to say something, but his eyes shot a warning:
Trust me
.

“This better be good,” Milky Eye growled. The glowing coal hovered just inches away from Aein’s rather impressive manhood.

Scarface slid his hand out, much to Snow White’s relief.

“You love gold.” Aein’s tones were measured. “The kingdom I come from has streets that are paved with gold. Every brick in a worker’s abode is made of gold. Gold is plentiful, strewn everywhere like pebbles. What you crave, we do not treasure. If you let the girl go, I can bring you there and you can fill every cart and chariot with gold.”

Snow White almost bit her tongue in shock. She had not believed Aein when he told her about his gold-paved home. Was it possible he was telling the truth? And oh, she had been absolutely beastly towards him. Why then was he negotiating with these killers to save
her
life?

Fearfully, Snow White appraised the robbers’ faces. Greed lit up Gorm’s features. Metal Hat, the cannibal, seemed undecided; perhaps gold did not sway his own personal monster. Milky Eye’s milk eye twitched as the tongs wavered in his grasp. At her ear, Scarface nibbled a tendril of her hair.

“How do we know this is not a trick?” Gorm said.

Snow White wondered the same.

“If I do not lead you to this place in three days, you can kill me and leave my body to the insects. But my condition is that you let the girl go now, unharmed.”

Silence weighed heavily in the cell as the robbers considered this. Snow White’s head spun. Her ears had not heard wrongly. Aein was really making a plea for her life at great cost to himself. And she had thought him strange, mad and slightly dangerous!

“You lie,” Gorm finally said.

“I do not lie. Look at my face. Is it not unblemished? Only the softest of creams from the Far East have adorned my body, and such can only come in trade with shiploads of gold. What have you to lose? My life hangs in balance if I deceive you. Even if you do not wish to kill me, you can sell me at the auction for a handsome price.”

“Gold.” Gorm’s eyes gleamed with its fever. Snow White knew he had taken the bait. “Perhaps it’s time to break away from Mother Baron’s clutches and come into our own. We can be kings, not chained to her foolish whims like slaves. Do this, fetch that. Truly, I tell you, there is nothing worse than blood ties!”

Once again, the other men seemed uneasy. Whoever this Mother Baron was, she must be a force to reckon with.

“That talk is sacrilege,” Metal Hat argued. “She has never been anything but mother to us all.”

“Better to be free men than be in thrall to a woman with teats as long as her knees,” Gorm said.

“Who happens to be our mother,” Milky Eye remarked.

“Well, stuff her!” Gorm puffed his huge chest. “You can stay with her and her new world order if you want to, but I’m taking the road paved to gold.” He began to undo Aein’s straps, starting with the ankles, and then the wrists.

Aein was visibly relieved. He massaged his strained shoulder joints. His eyes searched for Snow White’s.

“Are you with me as men,” Gorm roared to his brothers around him, “or are you going to slink back to her with your tails between your legs?”

The men exchanged glances. Nobody moved. For a long moment, the only sound in the chamber was of flames crackling on the brazier.

“I’m coming,” Milky Eye conceded. The coal piece fell to the floor with a clatter.

Metal Hat shook his head. “You will regret this,” he warned.

“Then we best be on our way,” Gorm said. “Culuth, give the boy his clothes. You coming?” he directed this to Scarface.

“Yes.” Scarface left Snow White’s side.

Aein stared into Metal Hat’s face. “A deal is a deal. Let the girl go now.”

Metal Hat glowered.

“Let her go,” Gorm said. Scarface took a knife to Snow White’s bonds. “There is still honor among thieves. Now go, girl, before I change my mind. Run into the forest and never look back.”

Now probably wasn’t a good time to ask them the direction to Lapland, Snow White thought as she planted a last despairing look upon Aein, and ran for the stairs. She took them two at a time, half-afraid Gorm or Scarface would run after her.

#

Snow White hurtled into the forest. A sudden chill descended and she wrapped the torn pieces of her tunic around herself. She didn’t dare stop until she had put some distance between herself and the robbers’ castle. Aein’s face danced like a wraith before her eyes, superimposed against the tree from which the crucified man hung.

“Oh Aein!” she cried in anguish. “Why did you have to do that?”

His eyes burned, accusing.
And you wanted to ditch me by the wayside.

She swung around a tangle of trees and stopped. Metal Hat was waiting for her on a horse.

“Took you long enough to get here,” he said casually. “I had to double back twice to see where you were.”

Snow White took a step back. The blood fled her cheeks. She remembered how Metal Hat had looked upon her flesh, as though she were a juicy calf instead of a human being. She turned and ran back the way she came from, but hooves thundered behind her as an approaching horse whinnied. An arm swept down and knocked her off her feet.