Guardians of the Portals (12 page)

Caitlin swung her right leg over the cantle and dropped heavily to the ground. Her ribs felt like ground glass in a blender, swirling and slicing every shred of tissue in her torso. She grappled with the stirrup, using the cool metal to steady and adjust her battered body into a normal walking position. He quickly pulled tack and settled the animals for the evening, dispensing what little grain and concentrated hay pellets remained in the panniers.

“Don’t give them too much of that,” she cautioned.

He looked up and frowned.

She explained, “We have no water. They could choke on the dry feed.”

He nodded and removed a portion of the hay pellets from each animal. The mule dug in with gusto but the two horses turned away from the grain, sides still heaving from the effort of negotiating the wicked terrain. Assessing each with a critical eye, he shook his head and approached Caitlin with a puzzled expression. She tried to shrink away, fearful that he would somehow blame her for the sorry state of their transportation.

“Good call.”

Caitlin nodded, dumbstruck, as he slid past her, disappearing into the bowels of the shallow cavern. The smaller moon had already risen out of the northeast quadrant, if she understood direction on this strange world to be similar to what she would recognize on Earth. Pale yellow ambient light poured through the opening, illuminating almost the entire interior. Caitlin heard her captor setting out bedrolls and their meagre stash of camping supplies. They were down to a few bits of dried jerky and one precious tin of fruit in heavy syrup made with some exotic sweetener she couldn’t identify. It was the last bit of fluid they had, and they would need to hoard it carefully. The man had said nothing about when they would find water, possibly to taunt her, but more likely because he had little or no knowledge of the area they traversed as if the devil himself were after them.

“Come.”

Caitlin limped with an odd rolling gait, her inner thighs a mass of abrasions from losing her grip in the saddle during her ill-timed nap. She settled onto the bedroll and shivered in the rapidly cooling night air. She recalled that caves often stayed in the fifty-degree range, though this one, being so shallow, should have had at least some residual heat from the furnace of midday.

The man handed her a piece of jerky but she waved it off. Her jaw and cheekbone still stung from his strike, and she doubted she could swallow anything without suffering a great deal of pain from her cracked ribs. Depression and shock gripped her with a vengeance and she collapsed onto the thin cover, shaking violently.

The man crouched low and gently touched her brow, moving the lank strands off her face and running a fingertip around the abused eye socket. She barely felt the touch for the swelling and soreness.

“I can help you,” he said, not unkindly, “if you will allow me.”

The strangeness of that offer hardly registered as he slipped beside her and began to slowly unlace the bodice that bound her ribs. Caitlin thought her insides would tear apart as the leather released the ribs from relative stasis into a new, excruciatingly painful configuration. She moaned softly, conscious of their situation and the need for absolute quiet but the agony tripled as he pulled the lacing through the final hole. Unable to bear it any longer she choked back the scream, releasing it on a low growl that crescendoed and echoed around the walls.

Before she blacked out, she sensed his hot breath on her face, imagined his full lips tracing a path along her chin, his tongue trailing heat and moisture over her cracked lips, probing gently, and finally demanding.

––––––––

T
rey cursed under his breath as he assessed the woman’s injuries. He despised what he had to do to keep her under control. He cursed his father and his brothers and his gods for the ease with which he connected with the anger and hate he’d tried to bury. The violence rose like bile, sharp, acrid, throat gagging; yet he embraced it with almost a sensuous joy. It was familiar, an avowal of his worth and a measure of the respect accorded his status and bloodlines. He had entered manhood with scars on his back and blood on his hands.

Take her; she is ripe.

She calls me Aiden.

Take her.

I haven’t the right.

Smell her desire.

Only fear.

She wants you.

I know.

Take her ... now.

Trey gasped at the overpowering rush of desire, the descent into madness that would drive him insane with greedy hunger, for he longed to touch her. Not with the healing strokes that would restore balance to her chi but with passion and power and dominance, shared pleasure, a release from the constant pangs of loneliness and the emptiness of his tortured existence.

The woman moaned softly as he explored her ribcage. How could he have done so much damage? He rolled her thin blouse above her small breasts, each rib protruding through skin like parchment, brittle and dry. Athletic in build when he’d first encountered her, he saw that now she was whip thin, almost skeletal. His long fingers gently manipulated each fracture, adjusting the position, while knitting the bones with brief bursts of energy. Bones were easy. The bruising and severe hematomas would require time to be reabsorbed into her system. He could only give her immune system a boost. The rest was up to her.

Trey traced a thumb along the waistband of the rough cotton homespun of the skirt. He quickly untied the cord belting the fabric about her waist and slid it down over narrow hips, taking care not to dislodge the ribs or to further aggravate the tailbone which was not broken, only badly bruised.

He whispered, “Oh sweet Freyja...” when he saw the damage done to her inner thighs and calves from the weeks of riding without proper protection. At the time he’d given little thought to the mechanics of riding, never having had to consider a woman’s special needs, so he’d gone with what had been handy. That she’d suffered unbearable agony was clear to him now. His face flamed as he recalled how he’d used his power to humiliate her and to feed his own burgeoning lust with glimpses of her womanhood.

He wondered if she were a virgin. Could he be her first? Unlikely, but that thought morphed into a waking dream. He would spread her thighs, ease into her tight heat, and succumb to the tension and quick release as he thrust to the hilt. Cries of pain followed by whispers of pleasure, moans of joy. He ached with need, his desires swamping reason with passion.

With a growl he spread her damaged legs and roughly squeezed the hard muscle, kneading with vicious strokes, until the deep purple and blues and greens faded to a liverish yellow stain. Exhausted he rocked back on his heels, nearly spent from the outflow of energies. He was no longer strong enough to deal with such extensive injuries. While genetically superior to most humans, he still had physical limits. The lack of food and water would eventually debilitate him to the point where he could no longer fulfill his mission. If he did not provide for them soon, he would lose the woman, the final piece on the board—game, set ... match.

He hesitated to touch the swollen inner folds, splotched with open sores, oozing pus. He’d seen worse so the sight did not disgust, though in truth he was taken aback by the frailty of the female form. What he feared was losing the little self-control he had left. The whispers of his mind, the exhortations by his brothers, his father, his cadre mates
take her, she’s yours, take her
roiled through his system, a Greek chorus of self-indulgence.

“Damn you, woman.” Trey lunged to his feet, his body aching and his mind reeling. He stared at her for a long moment. She shivered once, involuntarily, but settled back into a dreamless state. She would heal during this extended moon phase if he could keep her unconscious long enough.

His healing was more problematic. He could never undo the damage to his own soul, never shed the guilt or responsibility for his actions—not now, not for this. He’d extracted honor, respect and admiration for doing his duty, with pain and blood the currency more often than not. Emotionless. More android than human. She’d thought him a devil or a demon. It suited then, but no longer.

Trey staggered to the cave entrance. Distant jagged peaks cradled the small yellow orb, its orbit close, rotation about the planet rapid, lapping the larger, more distant neighbour several times over during the extended moon phase. He watched as the moon slipped quickly behind the ridge, blinking once, then extinguished like a candle flame. The loss of lumens barely registered as the larger satellite loomed menacingly close, its light diamond hard, translucent. If he had a scroll, he could read it easily, but he had naught but his lust and it drove all need for caution from his thoughts. For he had no thoughts, only pulsing energies and whispers.

Trey pulled his worn blanket over top of the woman. He would lay with her to keep her warm, but not yet. Not when his need overpowered good sense. He tended to the horses, unclear what to do to make them more comfortable, but he suspected their usefulness was limited. Her mount seemed in fair shape but his horse looked worn, exhausted, his eyes dulled, almost lifeless. The pitiful animal had born his weight up and down the gods-forsaken mountains for weeks. Even with extensive rest and a real meal and water, he doubted the creature would last out another week of heavy going. That would mean the woman must walk, though after seeing the damage done from the saddle abrading her soft flesh, he supposed that might not be a bad thing.

He could let her ride, he
should
let her, but with any consideration, any comfort extended to ease her passage, he risked losing control over her powers. As it was, she taxed his abilities to block and contain the burgeoning magic reserves. How those powers would manifest was anyone’s guess. Her bloodlines indicated a high probability of prescience, perhaps even—and this was purely theory—the ability to shape shift. Such a gift would prove immensely attractive to the Althing and Greyfalcon clans.

Trey adjusted the hobbles on the mule and gave him a pat. He wandered onto the broad ledge in front of the cave. To the right, the path slanted slightly downhill, but it was open and offered no convenient places to hide. To the left, uphill, large granitic outcrops offered far too many coverts for an enemy or predator to shelter while waiting for him to make a mistake. There was no discernible path in that direction, but that did not preclude a clever adversary from swinging down from ledges farther up the slope. His hope was that he would hear them coming and that meant staying awake. He’d told the woman time had no meaning here and that was partially true. The aborigines measured events in terms of daylight and moonlight. The perturbations in the planet’s orbit and the dissimilar orbital characteristics of the two moons made for an astronomer’s wet dream, but he was no astronomer or mathematician and could only guess when the planet’s wobbling would thrust them back into daylight.

For now all he could do was stay alert. The barrenness of the landscape, the lack of vegetation to support mammalian-like species, precluded any ‘lions and tigers and bears, oh my’. He smiled at his near joke. It was the closest he ever came to humor or irony, characteristics thrashed out of him by his “pater familias” with a quick and lethal hand. Duty and honor rested on the hilt of a sword, writ in blood and vengeance. He fingered his blade and cast a wary eye to the night sky. The danger would come from above on silent wing beats, bearing talons and sharp beaks, large enough to carry away even a horse. The indigenous population worshipped the creatures and built their settlements on the flats, well away from known nesting areas.

He listened carefully but not a sound, not a breath of wind, buzz of an insect, nor even his own harsh breaths penetrated the crystalline light. He existed out of time, out of place on this world—in it, yet not of it. He hoped he’d made a wise decision bringing her here. He’d had few choices at the time. As his uncle said, this time he’d really screwed the pooch. He was more inclined to call it a cluster fuck for the shrapnel had hit far and wide. In this time-space, he had at least a small chance of being the last man standing.

Thinking of her made him hard again. He rubbed the front of the tight jeans but it brought little relief. With a moan he staggered toward a granite outcrop and leaned against it. He glanced quickly around but nothing stirred. He released his straining cock into his rough hand, sighing on each stroke, desperately holding onto the physical sensations only, blocking his fantasies for fear they would transmit to her. The vision of her lifting her skirt, revealing the slim line of her thigh, leaked into his consciousness and the memory of rubbing her muscles hard, harder, drove him into a frenzy. He yanked his glasses off and covered his eyes with his left hand, pressing hard, forcing the visions to parade across a black screen and came on a whimper.

“Was it good for you?” a familiar voice sneered.

Trey inhaled sharply, then froze as the knife blade pierced his still-weeping cock. He turned his head to confirm the identity of the man threatening to castrate him.

“How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy, boyo. But you’ve been getting careless. Leaving blood scent.”

Trey gave the man a curious look then muttered, “Fuck.” He’d forgotten how effective a tracker his assailant could be. “What do you want?”

“It’s not what I want, Trey. It’s what my ... what
he
wants. And I’m here to take the asset back.”

Trey’s head spun. He desperately wished he had his glasses but he’d dropped them somewhere to his left when he’d felt the first stab. For some reason, in this time-space he was intensely myopic. It put him at a distinct disadvantage.

“You know I can’t let you do that.” He flinched as the tip of the blade traced a line across the slit, adding beads of blood to the slick coating. He pulled his right hand away from his cock and wiped it on his jeans.

“I’d rather not hurt you. But, a long time ago, you chose wrong.”

Trey inched his right hand along the waistband of his jeans. He allowed a small mewl of pain to escape as the assailant’s blade dug deeper into his cock. Though he blocked the pain as best he could, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take. Leaning forward, he forced the blade even deeper and stared into the man’s eyes, now widening in shock and incomprehension.