The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (26 page)

He had interrupted her story. How very rude.

“You expect mercy from me?”

The fool had a faint glimmer of hope.

“I warned you who I was when we first met.”
Her face drew into an awful smile. “I am vengeance.”

He whimpered as his eyes followed the
machete’s moving blade.

Now she could finish her story.

“The flies will find you first, and take
little nips of your skin while they plant their eggs in you. Birds will peck
out your eyes. The land crabs will find you, and when the wind spreads the
stink of your blood and fear, the small predators will slink out of the
darkness to dine on your flesh. This island will devour you over days, Petrof,
and you’ll feel every second of it. But before any of that happens, the ants
will find you. Millions of them.”

His memories crowded into her thoughts as a
jumbled rush so violent she almost fell from his chest. Thampurian soldiers
laughing as he struggled against a net. A small timbergrass cage at the edge of
the jungle where he liked to hunt. Shifting into his human form to plead for
mercy. A man Petrof didn’t look at holding a bowl of water just beyond her
reach. Her tongue felt thick and dry. She wanted that water more than she’d
ever wanted anything.

“You promised me the Oracle, Petrof,” the man
with the water said.

“I need more time.”

“Zul is making his move. Bring us the Oracle
now, or kill your whore.”

“Just a little longer!”

Petrof looked at his arm. It was black. The
black moved. She gasped and drew back even though she knew it was his arm, not
hers. Her skin prickled under tiny crawling feet. She wanted to tear off her
clothes and run. She took deep breaths. It was his fear, not hers. She wasn’t
the one in danger. It wasn’t real.

She brought the blade down on his forearm.

He screamed and screamed as she hacked
through the bone. His pupils, once large, imploded to pinpoints. He convulsed
and sputtered bloody foam.

When he spoke, it was in the voice of the Oracle.
And it only confirmed what she already knew.

~ ~ ~

QuiTai stumbled toward the Devil’s den with the hem of her
sarong gripped in her hand. Blood dripped through the fabric onto her toes. Rivulets
of sweat pasted her hair to her face. Petrof’s rage and fear coursed through
her. She wanted to cry from the exhaustion.

The Thampurian
military would continue to hunt her down. If Kyam were still alive, he was
probably in chains, because they had to blame someone for the Ponongese escape
from Cay Rhi. Oh, and someone in the colonial government wanted her dead and a
Zul was somehow involved; she mustn’t forget that. Still, her heart was curiously
light as she crossed the timbergrass bridge.

Despite the stink in
the Devil’s house, she drew in a deep breath and smiled with satisfaction. It
was good to be alive.

She pushed back the
sliding door that led to Petrof’s room. She climbed onto his bed and balanced
on the pillows as she faced the intricate puzzle on the headboard. She had all
night to move the hundreds of pieces in the right combination to reveal Petrof’s
safe. The puzzle really was a marvel of craftsmanship. She’d enjoyed working
out its secrets over the past year.

Piece by piece, the
picture formed. Blonde and dark woods combined to form the Devil’s chop. He was
predictable.

The panel slid away
to reveal the safe.

She took Petrof’s
dismembered hands from her sarong and pressed them to the biolock.

The lock opened.

Someday, I’ll tell Kyam it
worked...
 
No. It’s the Devil’s
business.

Gold and jewels spilled onto the blood-splattered pillows under her
feet. She tossed aside his hands and gathered his fortune together: It wasn’t
enough to do everything she planned, but it was a good start. Petrof never had
any vision; hers was as vast as the sea.

QuiTai
sank into
Petrof’s ornately carved high-backed chair. It felt good to sit.
She was so weary.

She heard the
footsteps of a lone person on the timbergrass bridge. Relief spread through
her. Still, she propped the machete handle-first into the corner of the chair with
the point behind her heart, so she would only have to push against the blade if
her visitor were a Thampurian soldier. She would not be taken prisoner.

LiHoun stepped into the
room. His eyes widened when he saw her on Petrof’s throne.

“Greetings, favored
uncle. Have you eaten?” QuiTai asked.

His gaze darted
around the room, pausing briefly on the discarded hands. No matter where he
tried to look, though, his eyes seemed drawn to the blood smeared down her
blouse and sarong. “I have, auntie. And you?”

She supposed it
would be rude to mention how distracted he sounded. “Yes. Thank you for asking.”

He seemed concerned.
“Are you... well?”

“This blood is not
mine.”

LiHoun smiled,
showing his few teeth. “I am greatly relieved to hear that.”

Perhaps she wasn’t as friendless as she’d
thought.

“I take it that the Ponongese reached your
home,” she said.

“Yes. The woman RhiHanya” – he traced a
curvaceous figure in the air – “led me to where they’d left you with the
wolf.” His catlike eyes slid back to the curled fingers of the dismembered
hands on the floor. “I followed the blood trail here.”

“Excellent work, as always. Forgive my
terrible manners, uncle. I don’t even have a kur to share with you. But I
invite you to stick your finger into this rice bowl.” She tossed a heavy bag of
coins to him.

For such a bandy-legged old man, he caught it
easily. “Rice, and meat.”

“Tomorrow, before dawn, the Ponongese in your
house must be spirited away where no one can find them. If they wish to live on
one of the outer cays, so be it. Buy them anything they might need: fishing
boats, food, clothes, cooking utensils, anything within reason. Or if they need
more time to decide, take them to my estate. But do not let them stay on this
island.”

He bowed. “I understand.”

“I have another request, but it has me in a
bit of a personal quandary. The soldiers who tried to stop me and the other
Ponongese from escaping Cay Rhi are still somewhere in the western jungle. As
of this moment, the colonial government has no idea if they found us or not,
and it is to my advantage to keep my enemies guessing for as long as possible.”

“Do you want me to hunt down the soldiers and
kill them?”

QuiTai grimaced. “I gave my word to Kyam Zul
that I would harm no more Thampurian soldiers. An unfortunate promise given the
current situation, but once word gets out that your word is no good, business
suffers. No, I must honor that pact.”

“So you want them taken alive?”

Her forefinger slowly tapped against the arm
of the chair. “Keeping prisoners is too much trouble. They’re always trying to
escape. The soldiers are sea dragons, so we can’t simply maroon them on a
monolith stone fifty miles from shore. They’d make it back to Levapur before
you did. And I have no desire to put you in greater peril, favored uncle.”

He pressed his hands together and bowed.

“So they can’t be killed, can’t be allowed to
report to the colonial government, can’t be held prisoner... Well, you see my
difficulty.”

“It is a puzzle,” LiHoun admitted. His tongue
darted out to wet his lips as he squatted.
 
“While you decide, perhaps you’d like to hear a story? This
is a whole suckling pig for your bowl.”

With a satisfied sigh, she moved the machete
and settled back in the throne. “I do so enjoy your stories.”

“Late last night, the Ravidians locked the
gate of the compound on Cay Rhi and stayed inside the walls. We were able to
sneak over to the tide pools and take the sea wasps without being seen. It was
an elegant operation, to use one of your favorite phrases, auntie.” He inclined
his head toward her. She returned the gesture. “The people at your estate
received two large glass containers of the sea wasps early this morning.”

QuiTai nodded.

LiHoun hesitated before continuing. “I don’t
know if you’re aware, but PhaNyan is dead. Since he didn’t come with us, we
chose to leave his body behind. We were afraid its disappearance would raise
questions, and you said that speed was vital.”

“Of course. I trust you to make wise
decisions. Little brother PhaNyan was careless.” She would miss PhaNyan, but
there was no sense dwelling on his death. The soldiers were a more pressing
concern, and she had to decide now what to do about them.

Her fingers curled over the arm of the chair.
She could understand why Petrof had liked sitting in it. She felt positively
regal in such a throne. Setting was so important for a scene.

Petrof. The Devil. She felt his rage and fear.
He was still alive, and every sound and shadow of the jungle brought him closer
to complete madness. She relished it.

How frightened they all were of the jungle
– the werewolves and the Thampurians.

Her lips curved.

“I have decided how to deal with the
soldiers, uncle LiHoun. Hire a dozen of the swiftest hunters to dress in the
clothes of the escaped Ponongese and lure the soldiers deeper into the interior
of the island along the game trails, keeping far away from any villages and the
coastline. Warn the hunters that they’ll be killed if they’re caught. Offer
them enough money to make it a merry chase that will ideally continue for
several days. Once the soldiers are thoroughly lost, the hunters may leave them
to their own devices. If they find their way back to Levapur, I’ll have enough
of a head start on them that their report won’t matter. If the soldiers remain
lost in the jungle forever, well, I might have promised Kyam Zul that I wouldn’t
harm any Thampurians by my actions.” She steepled her fingers under her chin.
“But the Devil made no such bargain about harm by inaction.”

LiHoun glanced again at Petrof’s hands. He
seemed confused. “I thought the Devil was killed tonight. If I am wrong,
grandmother QuiTai, forgive this old fool for telling a poor story.”

In the jungle, after she had taken Petrof’s
hands, he had said in a voice not his own,
You
are the Devil.
The goddess had spoken; the Oracle was never wrong.

QuiTai spread her bloodied hands and smiled
at LiHoun.

“The Devil lives,” she said.

THE END

The
Devil Incarnate
picks up where
The
Devil’s Concubine
left off:

There’s no rest for the wicked,
especially for the Devil. While QuiTai recovers from her last adventure,
Levapur is turning into a police state. The Ponongese are pushed to the brink
of rebellion against their colonial masters, the Thampurians – but who is
behind it, and why? As the new Devil, QuiTai must wield her power and use her
brilliant mind to outsmart her mysterious nemesis before a bloody uprising
erupts.

Chapter 1: A Plan

The
morning QuiTai
awoke completely sane, she knew Petrof was dead.

He’d killed her family. He’d eaten her daughter. And he’d
tried to kill her too. Three days wasn’t nearly long enough for him to suffer,
but it would have to do.

Her arms, legs, stomach, and face were raw where she’d
scratched at imaginary ants that crawled over her skin on millions of tiny,
prickling feet. She hadn’t been taught how to shield her mind from the empathic
connection with Petrof through her venom. Some would call it sacrilege to try.
The goddess Hunt decreed that the Ponongese should feel their prey’s suffering,
so they’d deliver a quick, merciful death, but QuiTai had enjoyed sharing every
moment of Petrof’s horror and descent into madness as the jungle consumed him.

Now that her mind was free of him, she had business to attend
to. The first step was to get out of bed. Her thick, wavy black hair had come
undone from its traditional braid, and every wrinkle in her sarong reminded her
of how sour her skin was, but the steady drum of monsoon rain against the
shack’s tin roof made her want to pull the sheet over her head and drift back
into sleep.

The inland shack she’d withdrawn to was smaller than Kyam
Zul’s apartment, too small to divide into rooms. The shack’s only bed was a
low, wide cot of woven leather strips. The thin bedroll she’d put on top of it
hadn’t done much to smooth out the lumps. Days before, she’d told Kyam that her
bed had countless pillows, each as comfortable as a lover’s lap. There was a
bed like that waiting for her, but not on Ponong. She’d have to travel through
the mouth of the underworld to her hidden estate on the tiny island of Quinong
to reach it. The vision of soft sheets tempted her, but she knew there was far
too much for her to do in Levapur to run away now.

She forced herself
to sit up. Her first step on the bare dirt floor made her wince. The infected
werewolf bite on her ankle oozed pus. If she’d been in her right mind the past
few days, she would have gathered herbs and cleaned the wound properly. Now it
was going to be much harder to heal. Although the weather was soul-sappingly
hot, she suspected the dull ache in her bones was the start of a fever.

Each step sent sharp pains up her leg as she hobbled across
the room. Three low stools sat around the cooking pit, but she forced herself
to stand as she lifted the small iron teapot onto the hook and swung it over
the remains of the fire. The fire looked as if it had died, but as she stirred
it, bright orange embers glowed in the downy white ashes. She added a small log
and a handful of dry leaves. The kindling flamed too quickly to light the log,
but the embers she’d banked against it would eventually catch.

There were signs around the shack that hunters had used the
remote shelter despite the green symbols painted around the doorway. They
hadn’t touched her emergency food and water, though. Taboos against violating
the trust of communal shelters were stronger inland than they were near
Levapur.

While she waited for
the water to heat, she went to the doorway and leaned against the threshold.
There were no wood screens over the windows. Rain blown inside by gusts of wind
turned the dirt floor to mud in places. She combed through her knee-length hair
and braided it, even though she planned to hobble to the nearby stream and
bathe as soon as she had the strength. She didn’t consider herself a beautiful
woman – not even particularly alluring, despite the many lovers who
spouted such nonsense words during their love-making – but she had her
vanities. She’d never risk being seen with her hair down as if she were a
child, even in this remote place. And she most certainly wouldn’t let anyone
see her in a wrinkled, filthy sarong.

The shack sat on the north face of Ponong’s mother mountain.
According to legend, at night the bioluminescent jellyfish floating in
mountain’s caldera lake cast green light to the stars, but she’d never seen it.

Curious birds with orange heads and bright green breasts
watched her from nearby trees, their heads swiveling constantly. From the
tracks in the mud and piles of little round black droppings, she guessed a herd
of the diminutive island goats had passed this way only a few days before.
Perhaps the hunters had been after them, but there was no sign of a kill.

Through a break in the trees, QuiTai looked down into the
valley. The wide, shallow river winding between the steep mountain slopes was
as gray as the sky. Sheets of rain pocked the surface of the water. She’d seen
children play in the river before and knew of two small villages along its
banks, but there wasn’t a human to be seen there this morning.

Her gaze moved to the smaller mountain across the valley.
Agricultural terraces like bands of malachite carved laboriously into the
mountain’s rock face reached all the way to the peak. The villagers working in
the rice paddies would have blended into the scenery if it hadn’t been for the
pale yellow of their woven hats.

It was a good thing
the Thampurians rarely set foot across the Jupoli Gorge Bridge, although they
claimed to control the entire Ponong Archipelago. Some day, when they grew
brave – or greedier – they might dare to explore the island and
discover these and many other forbidden farms. If they thought Levapur was hot
and humid, they’d melt in the interior valleys, but the Ponongese couldn’t
rely on that to keep the Thampurians from
stealing the food from their mouths.

She wished nature
had provided other deep water routes through the archipelago besides the Ponong
Fangs, which separated the island of Ponong from a much smaller island. Or
maybe if there hadn’t been a natural harbor on the sheltered side of the
island, the Thampurians would have left the Ponongese alone. She’d often heard
her grandmother ask their gods, “Why us? Why not some other people?”

Gifts from the gods
always came with a price.

The whistle of the tea kettle roused her from her thoughts.
Although she knew she should drink tiuhon tea to help fight the fever rising in
her blood, she chose pale leaves that smelled like fresh grass and sunlight.
While it steeped, she went back to the doorway.

Could she be content now that Petrof was dead? Vengeance had
robbed her of too much time already. It had made her do unforgivable things.
She wanted to let it go, to find peace and move on with her life, but she knew
she couldn’t. Once people figured out that Petrof was dead and she was still
alive, the men who’d hired him to kill her might seek another assassin. She
would be foolish to give them the chance. Despite how weary she was of killing,
it came down to them or her, and she definitely chose herself.

Taking inventory of her situation, she put into the negative
column an ankle that had to be tended to and a colonial militia that would
gladly hang her on sight. On the plus side, she was the Devil now. Better than
that, she was QuiTai. If there was one thing she excelled at, it was gathering
information and digging for the truth. The men who’d hired Petrof didn’t stand
a chance against her.

She blew a gentle breath over the surface of her tea. Before
she tasted it, she glanced at the tin in which it had been stored.

“Maybe the people
who stayed here were hunters. Maybe they were hunting me.”

To her ears, her
voice seemed to crack uncontrollably, like a teenage boy’s.

With a flick of her
wrist, the tea flew out of the cup and onto the ground outside the shelter.
Several of the tiny birds flew down to see if she’d scattered food, then flew
back to their perches and scolded her for fooling them.

“How should I find the men who paid Petrof to kill me?” she
asked the birds. “Tell me that, and I’ll give you crumbs.”

Their trust, once lost, seemingly couldn’t be restored. If
they knew, they kept the answer to themselves. What she needed was some sage
advice. A vision. She slumped against the doorway.

Across the valley, mist swirled over the higher mountain
peaks like curls of smoke.

Or vapor.

The corners of her mouth curved.

A plan unfolded in her mind.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The
Devil Incarnate
, Book 2 in the Devil of Ponong series, is available
for sale now. Look for Book 3,
Tempt the Devil
, later in 2013.

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