Page 9 of Taken
The lovely camp is sprawling, but I can’t see anything beyond the fire’s farthest edge. Whatever there is, I hope I get to paint it at some point.
If I survive the night. But the entrance to the Sucere Chamber is far from me now.
I look up at two females and a male warrior clustered a few paces away, staring right at me, and smile. They giggle and, when one of the females says something to the other two in a tongue I can’t even begin to interpret, they all laugh riotously. The female who made the other two laugh claps her hands together so loud I jump, almost tipping to the side, but forcing my weary stomach muscles to clench because I know that if I do fall, I won’t be able to get back up again.
Goddamn, I should have done more crunches in the Chamber. My lungs are tired, my body’s tired, the sand is grinding into my knees through the fabric of my pants. I’m tired. And all I’ve got to save me is a positive attitude and a robot in my wristwatch who probably hates me now.
Lovely.
The female is very attractive, with dark bronze skin and jet-black hair that falls dead straight all the way to her waist. Like molten onyx, it glitters in the fire’s light when she claps again, and when the crowd still doesn’t give her its full attention, the male beside her pulls out a strange bone and blows into one end. A horribly tinny whistle sounds out into the world, sounding an awful lot like the shriek of that gross worm beast. It’s as the crowd turns its attention to the trio laughing at me that it hits me—thatisone of the jellybean’s bones. All of the items that were being passed out among the warriors were bones.
Yucky.
The crowd settles and the female makes a short speech, her words met with hisses and cheers. Some applaud while others make sounds of disapproval. I want to know what’s being said as it seems like it’s got to do with me, what with the way people are staring and the way she’s pointing at me intermittently, but I don’t dare try to speak to Pam in front of so many eyes.
I wonder if she understands this language. Even if she does, if they take her away, then I’m totally adrift at sea. Not that she’s talking to me anyway. Last we chatted, she told me the Sucere Chamber had been boarded due to my carelessness, that many of the supplies had been ransacked and that the water levels within the Chamber had been compromised—as if humidity was my largest concern as I was dragged across the dry-ass fucking desert.
That’s the only thing she had time to say to me before I was hog tied, thrown over one of the scaled monster’s shoulders and then brought here, to this cluster of tents made of that gorgeous fabric. Dining and dancing started up around a single massive bonfire, though I was offered neither food nor water.
I swallow hard. I’m gonna die tonight.
I mean, was there ever really another option? Only now, I’m nervous. Death may be inevitable, but thehowis what concerns me now.
Maybe, I can negotiate. Because I’ve still got my green bean seeds in my back pocket. People don’t need rehydrated food if we can grow here. I’ll show these beings my green beans and they’ll welcome me with open arms. I’ll grow them a huge and bountiful garden before I convince these people to go back and wake the Sucere Chamber pod people up, and they’ll sing my praises, and it’ll totally make up for the fact that I’ve done every single thing wrong to date and ruined the Sucere Project…
Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. You’re not a murderer you’re not a murderer.
An idiot, maybe.
The female makes a proclamation and the crowd roars and starts looking around. I search with them until my gaze finds the male everyone’s attention is on. He’s seated on a rock near the innermost edge of the dancing circle, maybe thirty paces away from me. He’s got tan skin and the same dark brown hair everyone else has, but he’s also got a pretty hectic-looking bandage tied around his middle and another around one of his legs.
On closer inspection, I’m surprised to find that I recognize him. He’s the male who grabbed me out of the Sucere Chamber. Our gazes lock momentarily, but then he clenches his teeth and shakes his head.
He says something to the crowd, who responds with nods. The female speaker then says something else. She and the male beside her repeat it several more times and people begin to shift, parting until a male becomes visible seated on a log a short distance away from the bonfire.
It’s the same male with scales on his shoulders who received many of the teeth tokens. Even from here, I can see a small stack of them on the log by his hip. He’s not handling them. He’s ignoring them. He’s ignoring everything.
Even though he’s seated between two females in a mixed group, there’s something about his posture that makes it look like he’s sitting alone. Or that he wishes he were. The females are leaning in toward him. One of them has her hand on the log right by his hip and his pile of teeth, but he doesn’t seem to see her.
There’s also something else off about his posture.Porra. That’s not the way he’s sitting. That’s just how he sits. Because he’s not wearing scaled armor…those scales are a part of him, just like his exospine, that makes his posture look hunched from where I kneel.Those are his bones.
His spine is covered in external vertebrae. Thick ivory knobs stacked one atop the other, rough, pokey spikes sticking out of the sides of each vertebra. They’re white, at least they look white from here. They match the twin spikes growing out of his hairline above his temples. Instead, he’s got thick, long, dark hair that falls around his exospine in three heavy ropes. His skin is a dark bronze, except for on his shoulders where the scales glimmer green and yellow when the firelight strikes them…
Porra! It occurs to me then that he’s one of the demon men, only right now, he looks…different. More like the other beings. Huge, sure, but slightly more humanish.
For an only sort of humanish male, he sure is pretty. I wonder what color his eyes are.His eyes are too far to see, even though he looks directly at me and our gazes clash with surprising electricity. But he doesn’t hold my gaze for long, flinching the moment I look at him and turning away from me, as if in disgust.Maybe he’s not so pretty then,I think with a pout.
The female asks him a question, and when she says the same word again she’s repeated many times, I finally understand that she’s repeating a name.Lacchus. Lacchus. Sounds like Bacchus. The thought makes me chuckle. Given the setting, Bacchus would make an excellent addition to this crowd, unlike Lacchus, who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Once Lacchus dismisses me and turns his back on the female to continue his riveting task of staring directly into the darkness, the female poses a question to the other two scaled monster males, who have also shrunk back down into a humanish size and shape.
Shifters. They can shift.
When they both answer by waving their hands in my direction, she directs her next question to the humanish male who grabbed me, the one with the bandage around his waist.
Jiral—that’s the name the female calls him—stares in Lacchus’s direction, a look of momentary shock slathered across his expression. Then he grins. His gaze returns to me, and I don’t like the subtle shift to his expression. I don’t like it one bit.
He says a word. Maybe two. The crowd cheers, and in the next moment, hands are on my arms, holding me too tight not to bruise, and I’m being carted away from the bonfire and my brand-new dancing, fucking humanish besties.
