Minotaur: Blooded (The Bestial Tribe) Page 8

  She turned it around and looked at the whistle mutely then tucked it into a fold on her shirt. “I’ll remember.”

  “We’re not going back,” he reminded her.

  “Even at the chance of another human?”

  Inhuman screams arose in the distance.

  “I won’t risk the first.”

  The female glanced up at him through her messy hair. He reached up and pulled the vines and half-dead leaves from it.

  “Will... they survive?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She nodded, brow furrowed, and folded hands around the rope at her hips, nodding again but didn’t speak.

  His ear twitched and Vedikus adjusted the grip on his axe. The sound of hooves neared. It was time to go.

  “You’re no longer a sacrifice,” he told her, stepping away.

  He pulled on her leash and moved out onto the path, checking both directions and squinting through the mist. The ground vibrated. Dead leaves fell in waves from the branches above.

  They were soon running down the path in the opposite direction. Aldora clutched at his back and he pulled her with him, jutting his head forward. His stamina was more than enough for both of them. His momentum unmatched. The passageway split into three paths.

  “To the right,” he yelled, yanking on the leash so that she was suddenly up against him and moving with his body. Her feet dragged for a few steps before righting herself. Vedikus heard nothing but the thunder at his back as he picked passages that would slow the centaur stampede, but the more they ran, the closer the beasts came.

  “Halt or die!” one of them roared behind them. Aldora stumbled and he caught her before she fell.

  “How do they know where we are? What are they?” she gasped as he hefted her up, and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “They’re close enough to see the mists clear up by you. They’re looking for it.” He grunted as her leg rubbed over his bulge. “Centaurs,” he sneered.

  “What should we do?”

  “Run,” Vedikus barked, pulling her closer to him just as a spear shot past, narrowly missing her. Aldora clutched his side, her boots digging into his back and hip. He ducked when the whistle of several arrows flew over his head, breezing past his horns.

  He dashed forward and followed the swirling mist where the spear had embedded itself into a hedge wall. Dropping his axe, he yanked it free with his open hand. The female dropped from his side and crouched behind with her dagger back in hand.

  Vedikus readied the spear and waited, waited for Aldora’s stolen dagger to sink into his flesh, and for the first centaur raider to appear.

  “Minotaur! Vengeance will be ours,” a familiar voice shrieked. “We had a deal!”

  Horse hooves, sinewy chest decked in ribbons of metal and leather, followed by long, braided golden hair blowing outward appeared and Vedikus pulled his arm back. Two other studs emerged directly behind, flanking their leader, the same one he recognized from the night before. Aldora huddled behind, using him as the shield that he was as the horsemen charged toward them in full force.

  “The human is ours!” the leader cried.

  Vedikus sneered, knowing the commotion would draw others.

  “Be ready to run,” he breathed.

  His muscles tense, his body balanced, his vision sharpened.

  He flung the spear.

  It sliced through the air and struck the leader in the center of his chest, stopping the stud like a wall. Without waiting, Vedikus snatched up his axe and grabbed Aldora. He could hear the angry roars and furious stomping behind them. He dragged the female along and cut through the paths, the distance between him and the centaurs lengthening each second.

  He glanced at his female, heaving with exertion. The lax glare of the cove still apparent in her eyes. Her slight body is not used to its magic. He was thankful it kept her going, but for how much longer he wasn’t sure.

  Some creatures hunted by smell, by sounds, some by other senses he did not possess. Vedikus could smell her sweat and even to him, it smelled of humanity. Delicious humanity, ripe for the taking.

  My humanity. An erotic taste bloomed on his tongue. His mouth watered, readying for more, and he released a pent-up breath of steam.

  He ran with her until every last ounce of her energy was gone, until her only hope of movement was him, and as the sun began to set, he kept them moving as she sought out his strength and made it her own.

  The need to keep her that way corrupted his soul.

  Chapter Nine

  ***

  They came to a stop at the crest of a plateau.

  Below them lay the old barrier point, once when the labyrinth had been smaller. Back before he’d been born. Each year the mist covered more ground and seeped into the lands of humans, and each year the pathways and hedge mazes—the corrupted growth—sprouted from the dirt and expanded. It was something he nor any other creature could stop. The liches and giants of his world had tried.

  Eventually, the mist would cover the whole of this world and no new pureblood humans would be born. Those with forethought quaked at the idea but most anticipated the final usurpation, and the endless supply of humans even if it was for such a short time. The magic and chaotic frenzy of his world looked forward to that day.

  The Bathyr prepared.

  Vedikus scanned the ocean of fog and jostled the female.

  “Mmh-what?” Aldora struggled and he dropped her feet, keeping one arm around her. He had run them raw through the noontide, and when she could no longer hold herself upright, he’d picked her back up to keep on going. The distant sounds of bloodshed and shrieks had chased them the entire way. Dozens of goblins lay dead in their wake and he could feel their blood beginning to dry within his hooves.

  “Look. What do you see?” he asked, curious. He saw nothing but the grey and the muted colors reflected from the sky. His ears twitched at her inhale of breath.

  “Nothing. I see nothing but white in every direction.” She looked back, her expression bleak. “Except for the growth behind us. The paths have stopped...” Aldora turned to him. “Are we going in there?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  She sank to the ground, wilting like dying vile leaf, and stared over the endless void without expression. Vedikus crouched beside her and pulled off her boots, revealing pale abraded feet. He swept his fingers over her ankle expecting her to jerk back and smiled when she didn’t.

  “Where are we?” Her voice was low. “Where are you taking me?”

  He pointed off into the distance in the direction she stared. “Prayer lies within, a half day’s journey from here, but it depends.”

  “Prayer?”

  “It is a settlement outside the border paths near here, located in the middle of an endless expanse of wetlands that can be followed to the sea.” He didn’t like how close it was to the mountains his brothers called home.

  Aldora gaped at him. “A settlement? Here? People live in this place? How is that possible?” Her sudden shock struck him and he eyed her curiously.

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Yes...”

  “Even beasts need a place to rest,” Vedikus mocked. “It is not a lively place.”

  “Are there humans?”

  A hag. Thralls. Humans? “Not anymore.”

  “Oh.” The abrupt shock eased from her face. “Then what does it depend on?”

  “On where we left the barrier paths.” He propped up her other foot to slide his hands across her skin. Fresh, tough calluses will replace her soft flesh soon. He cupped her sole. They will help. She pulled her feet from his grasp and shoved them back into her boots with a wince. The numbing effect of the cove had run its course.

  He rose to his feet and the female followed suit but stumbled back to her knees. She steadied herself and rose again only to fall back down. Vedikus grabbed the back of her tunic and hauled her up. “You’re dead weight.”

  “Does it make a difference? I can
keep moving.”

  “Perhaps, but you can’t crawl down a cliff...” He led her away, helping her traverse the uneven ground. “And even if you could, you would make a perfect target for an arrow.”

  “I’m a perfect target for everything right now,” she whispered. “I don’t want to stop.”

  “You would travel through the twilight and onward into the dark now? Farther away from all you once knew when you begged me not long ago to go back? I’m not easily fooled,” Vedikus warned. He had expected more of a fight once the dust had settled, once he had shown her the world beyond. It was a terrorizing view, being at the brink of a shrouded world without being able to see into it, not knowing what lay within. Only knowing more horrors awaited.

  It was home to him. He was bred on top of old bones and furs, the mist licking at his newborn body.

  All he knew of Savadon and his female’s world was what he had been told by his mother and the occasional wanderer. That life in the light was easy, that it had a softness to it and that humans brought that softness into the labyrinth where it didn’t belong. He also knew that softness was begotten by corruption and delusion. Oh, the deviousness of humans.

  He could be devious too.

  Vedikus gazed back over the colorless mist, picturing the bog that was soon to be in their future. If he peered hard enough he could almost imagine the toothy, jagged mountains on the other side and even harder still, the green lights that would indicate the trails leading into and out of Prayer.

  “If I stop,” she rasped, “my thoughts will become the thing I focus on and I don’t think I can bear them. I never got to say goodbye to my...”

  “To who?” Vedikus urged. Was there a male in her life? He had not thought about it before and gripped Aldora tighter. Another male. The need to feel hot blood bubble up between his hands quickly overcame him. The ground sloped and he quickened his steps.

  “My family.” Her voice was laced with sadness.

  He heard her say the words but the black cloud filled his skull. It was a dark thing that had a mind of its own. One he easily succumbed to and one he usually only felt in the throes of battle, at the zenith of a berserker rage. The thought of something taking away his prize and claiming it for themselves infuriated him. Not because he felt something for the human female, that anything she had to offer wouldn’t someday be his, but that his power over her might be affected.

  “You have no family now, only me,” he growled.

  “I’m only a means to an end with you. One I’ll accept because you haven’t hurt me, but that will never change the fact that I have a family out there, one that I’ll miss for the rest of my life... however long it is.”

  Vedikus pulled Aldora after him and off the rocky slope and into a circle of boulders and ruins deteriorating on the cliff’s edge. “And yet you don’t want to stop long enough to think about them. Is missing them so painful?” He never missed his brothers, only their usefulness on occasion.

  “Yes,” she breathed at his side.

  He gritted his teeth and moved them deeper into the old ruins.

  Crumbling stones covered in moss quickly surrounded them as he made his way through, listening for any beasts or monsters that may have made camp. There were old tools and broken wares piled up throughout from passing bands, and the deeper he moved into the ruins, the more the old stone walls were covered in symbols and spellcasts. Whether they were put there with paint or dried blood he wasn’t sure and didn’t stop to investigate. There would be leftover magic lingering and if it were dark magic, he did not want to spend the effort to clear it out. Not while he had a female to take care of.

  They stopped short of where the shadows began. “From here and until daybreak you’ll think of nothing but me.” Vedikus picked up the cord that he’d let fall and tugged her close. “Do you understand, female?” Her body shuddered in response.

  “Aldora,” he warned, grasping her hair and forcing her to face him.

  Tears glistened her eyes. Vedikus scrutinized them, appreciating the amber sparkle they made. A feature he wanted his future bull-sons to have.

  “I’d rather be sad and thinking of them than give any more of myself to you!”

  “You’ve given nothing of yourself to me.” He squeezed her flesh.

  She wrested from his hold and he let her go. “I’ve given you my life, my life and my trust, and how could I? You’re not even human.”

  “Your life was never yours to give, only to take, and I have taken it. It is mine, female.” He turned back to the passageway that led deeper into the ruins, deeper into the ledge, letting his rage cool. “You will give your thoughts to me tonight and I’ll ask nothing more from you. Wait here.” He left her to return outside, ripping armfuls of vines and blisterwood from the gnarled overhanging trees before hefting a boulder to block the entrance. When he returned, he found her sitting against a broken wall, rubbing her calves.

  She stood, using the wall for support as he approached. “Follow me,” he ordered, bringing the blisterwood to his lips and lighting it on fire.

  Darkness consumed them quickly and the air grew colder with each step. His hooves clacked against the stone, splitting them as he moved through. Aldora followed behind him obediently and he wondered if she had really given him her trust.

  The ruins veered off into rooms that were covered in webs and nests, some of which he burned down as they passed. The smoke drove the smaller critters away. Aldora clutched his back at one point as they continued through.

  It wasn’t until the trickle of water could be heard that he stopped. Vedikus moved to the source and scouted the small space he had chosen. The room was deep within the ruins, in the ground, which had its advantages and disadvantages, but there was no such thing as true safety at night in the mists. Death prowled the land after dusk in a myriad of forms.

  He placed the blisterwood in the center of the space and well away from the water flowing down the wall. He slipped his hand in the water where it pooled at the bottom before it flowed away into the stones below.

  “Is it fresh?”

  “As fresh as it could be but cold enough to freeze your skin.” He lifted his numb hand away and checked out the rest of the room. It was more of a cave than it was a space created by humans. All the ruins in his land had been created by humans long ago, landmarks of the past. Vedikus looked for ghosts.

  “Do you still have your bone bowl?” she asked.

  He grunted and loosened his pouches, setting them by the fire, and handed her the bowl when it was free. Without pause, she had cleansed it and made use of it to drink. He watched Aldora fill it again and again, drinking deep of the water, her throat contracting with each swallow. The fire casting a soft glow on her skin. His ever-persistent shaft twitched, and he wiped his hands across his leathers.

  We’re safe this nightfall. Some of the tension drained from his muscles and he built up the fire.

  Even the barghests cannot be heard here. He unsheathed his axes and set them aside. His ears twitched when the water splashed and soothing, breathy noises teased them.

  Vedikus shut his eyes and clenched his fists. “Aldora.” Those sounds stopped. He felt her gaze. “Take off your clothes.”

  ***

  She stared, transfixed, at her captor’s haloed outline, the shadows created by the dim light accentuating his horns. They seemed to lengthen with each flicker of the flames, elongating and sharpening. Soon they’ll pierce the ceiling like they do the dark. The sky. Aldora fingered the bowl in her hand, frightened and yet... relieved.

  She looked around at the dark corners as she straightened, feeling the water trail down her arms, clearing her skin of sweat and grime.

  “Fill the bowl with water and bring it here,” he commanded. Each request he made of her caused her to hesitate but she knew, after a day, that each would be answered. Aldora filled the bowl and moved to his side. She placed it before him and stepped back out of his line of sight, bringing her now-empty hands up to play with
the hem of her clothes.

  “You said you would ask for nothing but my thoughts tonight,” she said.

  He emptied one of the pouches of herbs and dunked it into the bowl. “I don’t want your clothes, I want you to take them off.” His voice was gruff, but he did not look her way.

  “And after that?” she asked, hating that her belly coiled sharp enough to make her core ache. She was aware of his shaft, thick and pointed just beneath his loincloth. Her gaze had caught sight of it throughout the day. It had not diminished even when he killed, cleaving creatures’ limbs off, and as she swallowed, feeling a hungering hollowness, a wrongness at what was happening, she was aware that sex would happen. She’d felt helpless all day knowing it was coming, that this horned beast was taking her somewhere far from everything she knew to make her his breeder.

  That she was sick and he had the means to cure her.

  That she had not been able to smell anything since the night before.

  That he had not hurt her once, despite her giving him reasons to do so, when everything about him was violent and relentless. In his presence, she was lucky to be alive.

  “After that, I’ll feed you,” he said, startling her. Feed me? Food had barely entered her mind, not with everything else vying for the space; fighting with all those little haunting thoughts that wanted her attention. Her predicament. Her life. The cruelty of the Laslites and the Master of Thetras severing her from everything she’d known. Aldora fisted her hands into her tunic. The second sacrifice.

  There will be many more to come. The thought saddened her. She only hoped those who came after her were deserving of their fate, and that other innocents like herself would find a captor like—

  Aldora refused to finish the thought, her gaze on Vedikus’s ever-sharpening horns. They danced in the shadows, rising up and falling back down to their normal shape. They were paler than the rest of his body and reflected light and darkness equally back to her.