Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Pleasure's Foehn (23 page)

“
Do it now!
”

There was no denying the imperious order and The Burgon moved as though in a trance, unable to keep from doing so. He stumbled back down the long corridor and stopped at the elevator as though an unseen hand had reached out to block him. He slid down the wall and sat beside the elevator, fear turning his insides to jelly. Davan felt tears stinging her eyes as she looked at the prisoner. Her heart was aching yet she was terrified at what she was seeing. Though she tried to tear her gaze from him, she could not. It felt as though he were keeping her right where she was and not allowing her turn away.

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I have not always been as you see me now
, he said to her and the softness of his voice in her mind surprised her. She had not heard his commands to The Burgon and was stunned she could hear him speaking even though his lips did not move.
I was once a man like he who brought you to me.

Davan tried twice before she could find her voice. “Can’t you change the way you look?” she asked.

There was a faint undulation of laughter through Davan’s mind.
Not without the
proper medications I cannot
,
he told her.
Get me what the Aduaidh call tenerse and I will revert
to the man I once was.

“Tenerse?” Davan questioned and took another step closer to the shield. “Were you addicted to that drug?”

He shook his head, tossing the wild mane that covered him from jowl to shoulders away from the black leather of his muzzle.
Not addicted as you know the term, Pretty One
,

he said.

His hands were huge—tipped with thick, yellowed claws—and covered with a dense matting of dark brown fur. Likewise, his bare feet were misshapen, ending with sharp claws that clicked on the stone floor as he stood.

Davan drew in a breath for he had to be at least seven feet tall as he straightened to his full height. His shoulders were broad, his hips lean and his legs shorter than his trunk. As he walked slowly toward the plexigon shield, he kept his paw-like hands at his sides but when he reached the shield, he placed one leathery palm upon the panel.
Help me, Pretty One
, he asked and in his voice was the pleading of a man who had suffered greatly and still was.

Staring into eyes that glowed with deep crimson color, into a face that was nightmarish and filled with danger, Davan could not keep from laying her palm over his on her side of the shield. Her hand was dwarfed by the immensity of his.

“What can I do?” she asked as warmth flowed through the shield from his palm to hers.

“Once, I had a lady as pretty as you,” he said and his voice was no longer in her mind. His voice was even softer, more sensuous than it had been as it wound its way through her subconscious. “Her name was Bahiya. In my language that means beautiful and she was my mate.” He hung his great shaggy head. “When they took me from her, they took my life.”

“The Aduaidh took you?” she asked.

He nodded and his fingers flexed on the shield over hers. “They landed on my world, thinking it to make it theirs,” he said. “They did not expect to find beings such as I.”

“What are you?” she asked.

He smiled at the great leathery lips pulled back from sharp fangs that glistened.

“That I will not tell you, Pretty One. That is my secret and I will take it to my grave.”

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Pleasure’s Foehn

Remembering The Burgon had told her the prisoner had been there over fifty years, she asked him how old he was.

He shrugged. “Time means nothing to my race. For every year you age, Pretty One, I will age less than an hour. Fifty years in your time is only a couple of days in mine as far as age goes.”

“But you feel our time,” she said gently.

“All too well,” he whispered.

Davan glanced down the corridor and saw The Burgon sitting on the floor, his back to the wall. “Did you make him leave us?”

“I have some persuasive powers now and again,” the prisoner answered.

“Could you not make them set you free?”

“Where would I go? I was unconscious when they brought me to this vile place. I do not even know how to return to my home world.”

Davan’s heart went out to him. She was trying to remember the name The Burgon had called him but could not.

“Tariq,” he said. “I am called Tariq.”

“I am Davan,” she said.

“So your brothers have told me,” he said. “They speak often of you and your little sister Eadan.”

“Are they all right?” she asked, her fingers flexing over his.

“Lorcan is in Transition and will not see you until his cycle is ended. Roman just completed his and is most anxious to see you.”

Davan frowned. “Transition? I don’t understand.”

Tariq placed his other hand on the shield and pressed his forehead against it as well. “They have made your brothers like me, Davan,” he said and she could hear the apology in his voice.

Davan backed away from the shield, horror turning her green eyes dark and her face pale. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “That can’t be. That can’t be!”

“That is what they did on Riezell Nine,” Tariq said softly. “They turned prisoners into warriors like me until Ryden Bakari ordered them to stop.”

Tears were flowing down Davan’s cheeks. “But why?” she whimpered. “Why would they do that?”

He straightened up and looked down at her with what she thought might be pride.

“I am a warrior invincible,” he boasted. “They tried but they could not kill me.” He held up his arm. “They cut me and in the blink of an eye, the wound healed. They burned me and my flesh soughed away and grew again before their very eyes. No matter what they did to me, I healed. Though they tried to kill me, they found they could not.”

“And in the doing they tortured you,” she said. “As they tortured my brothers?”

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Tariq shook his head. “No, Davan. There was no need for them to torture your kin. All they needed to do was give them a part of me. Now, they are more like my race than yours. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

“The Aduaidh were making warriors like you,” she sobbed. “To use against the Coalition.”

“Aye, but making and controlling are two different matters, are they not?” he said with a bitter laugh that made his leathery nose crinkle and his lips pull away from wicked fangs.

“They could not control them?” she asked.

Tariq slapped his hand against his chest. “I control them, Davan. When the Aduaidh attempted to take them from their cells and load them onto transports readying for the war, I ordered my men to revolt. They did much damage before the Aduaidh realized they had created monsters instead of obedient, indestructible warriors for the Alliance!”

“And could not kill them as they could not kill you,” she whispered.

“Oh, they tried, but did not succeed. Riezell Nine became a warehouse for beings like me and seeing no good would come of making more intractable warriors The Burgon ordered all such experiments stopped. For that, I will give Ryden Bakari his due.”

“My brothers are immortal?” she asked.

“Well, nearly so,” Tariq agreed. “When it is their time—and only they can make the decision when they will wish to leave this life—they have the means at hand to end it.”

“The Aduaidh doesn’t know?”

“Nor will they,” Tariq said. “I gave my men that knowledge and it is buried deep within their subconscious mind. Only when they have tired of living will it come to the surface. Nothing—not even the most brutal torture—will set that knowledge free before its time.”

“Though they tried to get at that information with you?” she asked.

“Brutally and with great determination, Pretty One,” he said then shrugged. “But my race is stubborn if nothing else. They learned nothing could make me reveal what I did not wish to reveal.”

“If we can find a way to return you—” she began but he was shaking his head.

“You don’t want to return to your world?”

“With every fiber of my being I wish to return to Theristes but the ship that brought me to this hellish place crashed as it attempted to land. All record of where they had gone, what they found there, was destroyed. Only I survived the fiery crash, walking away from it with sixty percent of my flesh seared from my bones. As far as the scientists here believed, I was part of the crew. They gave me copious amounts of tenerse to still the agony burning my nerve endings—never knowing the drug they gave to lessen my pain helped my parasite to heal me.”

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Pleasure’s Foehn

Davan flinched. “Parasite?”

Tariq put his hand to the area over his right kidney. “Here, within me, is a nest of creatures to which I am the host. They make me what I am in exchange for living off the blood that I must consume in order to thrive.”

“Blood?” Davan gasped, her eyes wide.

“It is a tradeoff my race thought nothing of. It is no worse than mistletoe growing on an oak, but unlike mistletoe that damages the oak, our parasite enhances its host.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The male members of my race are born with a single parasite imbedded in the kidneys of their hosts. The parasite extracts nourishment from the blood we consume. The parasite is called an obligate and can only thrive in living tissue. It is also asexual. The mother cell—or the Queen as we call her—gives birth to numerous daughter cells or nestlings and the hive will live off the host body for as long as that host body lives.”

“The females don’t have the parasite?”

“There are no females of my race ever born. The parasite will not allow it. When we seek mates, we go to other races on our world who are willing to join with us. Females of those other races can be given a parasite but she cannot be born with one inside her nor will she ever give birth to a female child, only males. Females are considered unimportant to the parasite and I’ve often thought the parasite is jealous of the female a warrior takes as his mate.”

“Oh,” Davan said on a long breath. “I think I see where this is going. The parasite enhances you as a warrior by giving you the ability to heal quickly, live long lives and be powerful warriors but it would not give that ability to a female that it must think is inferior.”

Tariq smiled. “Precisely.”

“And this is what the Aduaidh did to my brothers?” she asked. “They gave them a parasite from you?”

“I will not lie to you, Davan,” he said. “It was a painful process they underwent but neither of them has regretted it. The first time Roman Transitioned, I experienced it through his mind and he reveled in the shape shifting. Lorcan?” He shrugged. “Lorcan still has a bit of a problem with it but I have told him it can be controlled better if we were given the chance and were free to live as we want.”

“And drinking the blood?” she said, swallowing convulsively at the thought.

“They don’t seem to mind. At least they have never complained to me of it.”

“What can I do, Tariq?” she asked. “How can I help to set you free?”

The man who looked more wolf than human came very close to the shield. “The Aduaidh learned long ago that if they withheld the tenerse or only gave it to us sparingly, they could control how often we Transition. The tenerse regulates our cycles and if we are given daily doses of it, we will only Transition during that cycle—roughly once every four months unless we make ourselves shift.”

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“You can do that at will?”

“I can and so can your brothers. Anger will bring on Transition very quickly so I have taught them all to be very careful of their tempers.”

“But if you aren’t given the tenerse—”

Tariq swept a hand down his tall frame. “This happens. I am frozen in Transition and have been for over forty years.”

“If I could get you tenerse, how much would you need to revert to human form?”

“No less than five hundred milligrams,” he replied. “More if you can lay hands to. The more I can take, the faster it will work.”

Davan glanced back at The Burgon. “Why haven’t you used your powers to make one of the men here get you what you need?”

“What good would it have done me, Davan?” he asked. “I ask you again—where would I have gone? Simply being free on this world is not the answer. My men and I need to be free beyond these prison walls. They need their families. They need mates.”

“And you need a mate,” she said.

“There will never be another for me. My race mates only once and Bahiya was mine.”

Deep sorrow filled Davan and she watched as tears formed in Tariq’s red eyes. She saw his muzzle quiver before he looked down at the floor.

“I am sorry, Tariq, but our family will become yours.”

He looked up, locked his mournful gaze with her pitying one and nodded. “I will hold you to that, Pretty One,” he said softly.

“Tell me what I need to do,” she said.

* * * * *

The Burgon was strangely quiet as he rode beside Davan in the elevator. He was withdrawn and kept plowing his hand through his hair. When the cage settled at the floor on which the meeting room sat, he said nothing to Davan, seemingly expecting her to follow him.

Once they were in the room, he shut the door then pointed at the table. “Sit down, wench,” he ordered.

Davan bristled but she made no comment to the word she so hateful. She dutifully took a seat then waited for him to join her. Instead, he strode to the window and began to pace back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I am sick of this damnable war,” he said. “We have lost millions over the last thirty years and a whole generation of our young is being slaughtered at this very moment. I am weary of the fighting and I am more than ready to put an end to it.”

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Davan remained quiet. She simply watched him traversing back and forth.

“I loathed what the skink did in abducting you but I can see an advantage in having you here. It has brought Cair Ghrian to Riezell Nine and—the gods willing—to this very table where we can begin discussing peace.”