Longing's Levant (18 page)

He put his hands together, lathering his palms with the soap. When his hands were alive with suds, he dropped the bar in the water and reached out to place his palms on his lady’s chest.

It was a delight that sent shivers down her spine and made her quiver as her lover rubbed her flesh in lazy circles, the circuits opposite one another—one to the right, the other to the left as he massaged her heavy globes. Her nipples were in the center of his palms and being worked with a delicate, sliding friction that made her begin to pant. She could feel the sensation all the way to the core of her sex and squirmed. When he began to flex his fingers along the circumference of her breasts, she could not keep the moan of pleasure from escaping her lips.

“You like that?” he asked softly.

“Aye,” she breathed.

As though he were trying to pluck her breasts from her chest, the delicate drawing of his fingers, the faint scratch of his nails upon her flesh as he drew his fingers closer to her nipples, was an exquisite torment that set her nerves to tingling. Even as she ached to have those short nails plucking at her nipples, she did not want to end the heady expectation such action brought. The intimate caress went on for what seemed an eternity to her, with each drawing coming closer to the hardened nubs of her breasts. When at last he gently pinched those turgid pebbles—working them between his thumbs and forefingers—a spasm of delight coursed through her sex and trilled over her body.

Evann-Sin felt her ankles digging into his sides as she climaxed. Her strong legs quivered and he imagined the tightening of her vaginal walls.

Before the last contraction could claim her, he snagged his hands around her slender waist and jerked her to him, his straining cock unerringly entering her deep and hard. He was well seated within her honeyed folds as another round of pleasure rippled through her and carried him along in its wake, his own climax coming strongly.

Tamara threw her arms around her lover and plastered her breasts to his hairy chest. She was sitting atop his thighs—his fleshy sword sheathed inside her. She ground against him as the second round of pleasure began, and rode him as though he were a wild mustang needing to be broken to saddle. Their body parts jammed against one another, they were satiated at the same moment and sat there straining to feel the last errant tug of completion.

“By the Prophet but I love you,” Evann-Sin told her in a throaty oath. His lips were against her cheek but he pulled back and captured her lips with his hungry mouth. Stabbing his velvet tongue into the sweet cavern between her sultry lips, he claimed her once more.

Her nails were flexed into the muscles of his back, scoring his flesh lightly as she branded him her own. As his mouth left hers to plant hot kisses along her neck and shoulders, she threw back her head and pledged her love to him, as well.

“With all my heart and soul and body, do I love you Riel Evann-Sin,” she swore.

Long into the morning they lay sprawled in the bed to which he had carried her, their bodies wet and smelling of lemons. He had made quick work of bathing her—and she him—then they had stretched out upon the soft bed, and he had taken her still once more. Their joining had been as frenzied as teenagers fulfilling lust for the first time, but their third joining had been slow and measured and had dropped them lazily into welcoming sleep.

* * * * *

It was a harsh, unnatural sound that thrust the lovers from sleep and to a sitting position in bed. Beneath them, the floor shook and they were off the mattress and standing at the window to gape at the monster that was pawing at the grounds beyond the palace.

Tall—at least as high as the fourth floor of the keep itself—the persimmon-colored beast roared, blowing plumes of smoke from its ass as it raised and lowered its massive head, taking huge bites out of the earth with a single wide tooth only to turn and spit the dirt away. Thick black veins ran along the creature’s flexing neck and the smell from its foul body was sickening. Ugly as any beast that ever drew breath, it sat hunkered down on a bed of some kind with huge black wheels that looked as though they were padded.

“What is that thing?” Tamara whispered, her eyes bulging from her head.

“I have never seen the likes of it and Kaibyn is riding the damned thing,” Evann-Sin exclaimed.

Tamara squinted against the bright glare of morning and could make out the demon sitting upon the beast’s neck. Nay, she thought, her mind reeling. He was not sitting upon the beast’s neck but rather inside its gullet!

“He is making it gobble the ground,” the warrior marveled.

And surely, that was what the demon was doing. Like a puppet master, he seemed to be pulling strings of some sort and when he did, the beast raised and lowered its gaping jaws and took another massive bite of earth. As it did, the ground shook and the creature emitted a horrendous shriek that set the nerves on edge.

“Get dressed,” Evann-Sin advised. “That thing may not remain so biddable and we might have to put it down.”

“How?” Tamara questioned as her lover began throwing on his clothes. “It looks to be wearing plate mail of some sort.”

“Get dressed!” Evann-Sin repeated. He was searching for one of his boots and was grumbling to himself.

Tamara reached for a pair of britches lying on a chair and as she did, scraped the edge of her palm on an exposed nail. “Shit!” she exploded and shook her hand.

“What did you do?” Evann-Sin asked as he went to her.

She held up her wounded hand. “I cut it,” she murmured.

Evann-Sin carefully examined the cut then clucked his tongue. The warrior took out his kerchief and wound her hand. “It’s little more than a scratch. Be more careful, will you?”

Offended by his tone, Tamara grabbed a shirt and had put it on before her lover had stomped into his missing boot. She found her own and barely had time to snatch them up before Evann-Sin took her arm and pulled her out of the room.

The lovers marveled at the mighty thump that shook the walls of the palace. All around them, people were standing well back from where the mysterious beast was devouring the ground and watching the process with eyes wide and mouths agape. Even Rabin and the king were crouched off to one side, flinching at each chomp the monster took from the earth.

“What is it doing?” Evann-Sin asked the king as he and Tamara reached him.

“Digging a pit from the looks of it,” the Panther replied. “If you think that beast is ugly, look there!”

Evann-Sin turned to see another beast perched off to one side. Squat and more ugly than the one upon which the demon sat, this one was bright yellow with dark brown markings and carried a long, low shield before it. The shield reflected the early morning sun and blinded those who stared too long at it. It sat low to the ground with feet that were oblong in shape and with bones that ridged the entire circumference of its paw. It had a saddle upon its back and a pommel with what appeared to be handles sticking out from it.

“Is it dead?” Tamara asked.

“Sleeping,” the king avowed. “It has yet to make a sound.”

Rabin took a step or two forward but Evann-Sin put out a staying hand. “Be careful.”

“He brought those creatures here,” Rabin said. “He
brought
them from the past.”

“He is stronger than I thought if he could lift things like that,” Evann-Sin admitted. He glanced at his lady, and a wild notion took shape in his mind—if the demon could lift such beasts as this, could a warrior win in a mortal battle with him or would he lose his love to such awesome might?

Kaibyn intercepted the warrior’s troubling thought and grinned. The pit was almost ready and as soon as it was, he would show that snotty boy what power truly was when he transported the machines back to their time in history.

The sun was high overhead when the mysterious monster took its last chomp out of the earth. Its roar died to a low hum then disappeared altogether as it lowered its head one last time. It sat still as death—docile and calm—as Kaibyn jumped down from its back and came striding up to the warrior and the others.

“They called it an excavator,” Kaibyn remarked, glancing back over his shoulder. “The other is a bulldozer.”

“These creatures came from the past?” the king queried.

“Once,” Kaibyn said, “long ago, there were such things. The Burning War destroyed many of them and when they ran out of diesel…”

“Deezul?” Evann-Sin echoed. “What is deezul?”

The demon shrugged. “A byproduct of the decay of dinosaurs, which these things must have resembled.”

“Die no sores,” Evann-Sin repeated. “You make no sense, demon!”

“Well, no matter,” Kaibyn said. “Now that the pit is deep enough, you can have your men start filling it with anything that will burn. I’ll use the other beast to push the Undead into the pit and then we will have one helluva roast!”

Tamara flinched at the word. She looked at the second beast. “That will push the bodies into the pit?”

“Quicker than a thousand men could drag them there,” Kaibyn bragged.

Evann-Sin shook his head. “This is more than I can contemplate.”

“You don’t need to,” Kaibyn snorted. “Just get that pit filled with anything that will burn quickly.”

Kaibyn was there one moment and the next he was prodding the second beast—the one he had called bulldozer—to shrill, thundering, blasting life. The creature farted smoke as the other had then with a shriek that made everyone cover their ears, moved forward with a horrendous clank that set nerves on edge.

Tamara stared at the beast as it lowered its shield and dug into the earth, pushing beneath the dirt to dislodge the Undead. She marveled as the thing pushed bodies this way and that—piling them upon one another close to the edge of the pit.

Evann-Sin watched the beast trundling back and forth for a moment or two then looked to his father. He shrugged and ordered one of the nearby men to begin a brigade of workers to pour whatever liquid or kindling into the pit to set it ablaze.

Rabin wandered over to the first beast and skirted it carefully, mindful of the thing coming out of its slumber. There was no movement, no sound of escaping breath and the dark man wandered if this creature from the past was as dead as those it had been brought into the future to help destroy. With more bravado than he knew he possessed, he came close enough to the beast to nudge it with his boot but the thing remained inanimate, perched on its rolling bed with head lowered, gaping mouth open but devoid of drool.

The king winced with each clank of the other beast’s oblong feet. It seemed to glide along but left deep indentions in the earth as it moved. The ground shook but not as badly as when the first beast had chewed up the earth. Ordering a chair be brought for his comfort, King Numair kept a close eye on these monsters from the past. How they could be slain should they go berserk and stampede, he had no idea. He only hoped the demon could control them.

As the sun began to lower, almost all of the bodies had been pushed into the fiery pit. Flames leapt as high as the second floor of the keep and ashes formed a black cloud above. The smell of burning bodies was so intense, handkerchiefs were needed to block the stench and everywhere you looked, servants and warriors alike were covered from eyes to chin with whatever fabric could be found. When the last feeble flicker of light on the horizon died out, only a handful of mounds remained unscathed.

“Back inside!” Evann-Sin yelled for he had seen movement off to the east.

The doors to the palace locked into place just as a garrison of Daughters of the Night rode into view.

“They are all of the Blood,” Tamara said from her place beside her lover on the battlements.

“How many?” the king asked. His eyesight was no longer that good in the dark.

“Forty,” Evann-Sin answered. “Another fifty or so risen from the graves.”

“One hundred and five,” Kaibyn counted.

“They will scale the walls,” Tamara warned.

“With what?” Rabin asked. “I see no ropes.”

“They don’t need ropes,” Tamara said quietly. “They can climb the walls like spiders, like bats.” She leaned out and searched those gathered. “I don’t see the queen. They won’t do anything until she appears and that won’t be until the stroke of midnight.”

“They can climb without rope?” Evann-Sin questioned. “Is that possible?”

Tamara merely nodded. “I’ve seen it done, warrior.”

“Let them start their little crawls up the wall,” Kaibyn said. He put a hand on Rabin’s shoulder. “Come with me. I have a couple more things from the past that will settle this once and for all.”

As often as he had seen his friend blink out of his sight, Evann-Sin was no longer amazed at it. He took it in stride as he went about to warn his men that the women warriors might attempt to scale the walls.

Chapter Eleven

Rabin was bent over throwing up and not at all happy with the demon’s amused chortling. The trip back in time had been unlike the hop and skips across the countryside and materializing here and there behind locked doors. This had been a rushing river of bright lights and blaring sounds that had sent shivers of dread and fear through Rabin Jaspyre.

And the past was a place so unlike any upon which he had set foot in his forty-two years.