Secured Mail (20 page)

“What will you be doing?”

Sven smiled grimly. “I’ll be checking the concealed cameras Thea insisted we had installed in the palace hallways so that I can see exactly what is going on.” He turned toward the stairwell and Harlan grabbed his sleeve.

“I’m sorry, Sven. You don’t think they’ll harm the child do you?”

“I doubt it. This is probably all about money or power.”

Harlan nodded, his expression more purposeful. “I’ll make sure I tell the king before anyone else does.”

Sven ran back to the security center in the center of the palace. By Thor, he hoped he was right and that the cameras had captured the intruders on film. He watched intently, noting how little time elapsed after the woman first entered the suite and returned carrying the prince. He stiffened as Thea’s image appeared on the stairs and challenged the woman. Wincing, he watched her fall. She must have hurt herself on the steps, but she didn’t let it deter her from chasing right after the woman. Part of him raged that she hadn’t waited for backup; the hunter in him recognized her instinctive urge to go after the thieves.

He watched a while longer, half-hoping to see Thea reappear. A sick feeling grew in his belly. Had the gang taken her as well? He knew from bitter personal experience 112

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what happened to women who were stolen. They were used for sex by any man in the settlement and forced to breed until they died of it.

Despite Marcus’ best efforts there were still males on the planet who wanted to hold to the old ways of stealing women and children rather than settling down and trying to produce their own. Sven rewound the tape and stared at Thea’s frozen image on the screen. He couldn’t let another woman suffer like his wife had. He noted the passageway Thea had disappeared down and got to his feet. Time was on his side. The kidnappers were unlikely to suspect one man would come after them, especially when the king’s son was involved. Perhaps the element of surprise would work in his favor.

He quickly assembled his weapons and enough rations and water to see him through the next forty-eight hours and went to find Harlan. His fellow bodyguard stood on guard in front of the king’s empty suite, keeping out the curious and the rest of the palace staff. His head was bandaged but he still looked pale.

He nodded when he saw Sven and then winced. “I’ve sent a message to the king.

I’ll await his return.” He gestured at Sven’s pack. “Are you going to take them out alone?”

“I’m going to try.”

“Good luck. I’ll tell the king. We’ll make sure to follow through on any contact or negotiations on a bigger scale to buy you some time.”

Sven took the stairway Thea had used and followed it right to the bottom. As he approached the hollowed-out storage bay, he caught the distinctive smell of blood in the fetid air. He stopped and studied a bundle of clothes on the dirt floor. Was that Thea? He went forward, crouched down to poke the pile and heaved a shuddering sigh of relief. His fingers trembled as he wiped them on his thigh. Nay, just the discarded robes the woman had borrowed from one of the palace servants.

He stood up, circled the cavern and noted how many pairs of feet had trampled the sand. He reckoned there were at least five of them, if not six. He walked across to the narrow mouth of the cave on the far side of the hollowed out space and smelled brackish water. Had they followed the narrow tunnels formed by one of the underground rivers? Thea had warned them that these waterways might be a security risk.

A small mark in vivid red caught his attention. He crouched down to look at it.

Someone had marked a crude arrow in the direction of the tunnels. He straightened as hope flooded through him. Thea was definitely with them and was trying to help him track her. The only down side was that he had to assume she’d made the mark with her own blood.

Thea hated enclosed spaces. Hell, she’d tried to pretend she didn’t care about them during training exercises with the police and security forces on Earth. She’d suffered in silence and dealt with the nightmares afterward alone and in private. But she still didn’t 113

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like them. And here she was, traveling with a band of kidnappers through a rapidly narrowing series of tunnels beneath the immense weight of the Valhallan palace.

The stench of spoiled water was bad enough, but combined with the sweat pouring off the unwashed men around her it was enough to make her retch. She kept moving, her gaze on the little prince who seemed to be sleeping peacefully in the woman’s arms.

Had they drugged him? She frowned and hoped they hadn’t overdone it.

Somebody was bound to notice the king’s son and heir was missing pretty soon.

She imagined what Sven would do when he found her and the baby gone. Would he come after her? She sure hoped so. With a choked cry, she pretended to stumble and came down on one knee. The knife she’d liberated from her first downed opponent was stuffed down the side of her boot and made her fall more awkwardly than she’d intended. Before she was pulled to her feet, she scratched at the cut on her throat, allowed a drop of blood to stain her fingertips and smudged it onto the nearest rock.

“Get up, woman.”

She cried out as she was viciously hauled to her feet by the man called Raven. She cowered away as he lifted a hand to her. She hated to appear weak in front of him, but it was essential that he began to think of her as no threat.

“Don’t hurt me, please.”

He roared with laughter. “Earth women are obviously weaklings compared to our females. Maya here doesn’t beg until she’s been fucked by at least five men and knows there are more to come.”

Maya didn’t answer him, her attention fixed on the baby she carried and the rocky path ahead of her. Thea allowed herself to be pushed along the passageway, fighting the instinct to shove at the ever encroaching walls and scream to be set free. The ceiling lowered until they all had to crouch. She started crawling, her hands scraping on bare rock. God, Sven had to find her.

The sunlight hurt Thea’s eyes, but she headed for it anyway, the faint gleam of an escape from the underground river worth every torturous movement toward it. She slithered through the hacked out hole in the rock and collapsed onto warm purple sand.

Rolling onto her back she sucked in great drafts of the warm air. A
wulfran
neighed in alarm and kicked sand into her face. Raven pulled her to her feet.

“Come on, woman. We still have a long way to travel. “

She tried to scrape some blood from her throat onto the sheer rock wall behind her.

The cut had dried up and she resigned herself to more pain. She pivoted and tried to claw at Raven’s face like a girl would, using her nails and screaming at the top of her voice. He laughed as he backhanded her and she fell against the rocks leaving a fresh trail of blood from her busted lip on the surface. It took all her strength to stand up and move away from the incriminating marks. Sven had better see them and hurry up because either she’d run out of blood soon or be beaten to a pulp.

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Sven frowned at yet more evidence of a bloody encounter on the scattering of rocks in front of him. A mess of footprints and the tracks of one lame
wulfran
were all that remained to mark the kidnapper’s flight. What was Thea trying to do? Get herself killed? She probably had no idea how close he was behind her. Not that he didn’t appreciate the clues she’d left him, they’d certainly made his task of tracking the marauders a whole lot easier. He just wished she hadn’t endangered herself to help him. With a curse, he wiped the sticky residue of blood off on his leather pants, a sick feeling still in his gut.

From his vantage point on the ridge of one of the low hills, he shaded his eyes and focused on the small pinprick figures on the desert sand ahead of him. He estimated, they were only an Earth hour or less ahead of him now. He’d been able to contact the palace stables and provide himself with the king’s best
wulfran
. The robbers had two women, an ancient
wulfran
and a baby to slow them down.

Sven checked his weapons and clicked to the
wulfran.
The suns would be setting in an hour or two, and he wanted to make sure he was close enough to see if the robber band decided to camp for the night or push on. He smiled grimly as he mounted the
wulfran
. Whatever happened, Thea and the young prince would no longer be with them by morning.

“Can we stop soon?”

Thea tried to sound as weak as possible. For the last hour she’d been sitting behind Raven on his decrepit
wulfran
, leaning as much of her weight on him as she could. He smelled like distilled yak but she had no choice. Baby Thor had started wailing a while ago, the sound rising and rising as he realized he wasn’t with his mother. His cries tore at Thea’s heart. She wanted to hold the little prince in her arms, rock him and tell him everything would be okay.

“We’ll stop when I say so.”

To her secret delight, Raven sounded as rattled as she felt, his gaze endlessly sweeping the vast empty purple horizon, his mouth pinched.

“There’s shelter up ahead on the left, Raven.”

Olaf, one of the other men pointed to a shadowed bank of hills surrounded by rocky outcrops.

“All right, we’ll stop.” Raven cast a furious glance at the nursemaid. “And if you don’t stop that brat crying I’ll cut out his tongue.”

Thea tried to find some solace in the fact that Raven hadn’t threatened to kill the baby but it didn’t help much. She hurried over to Maya as soon as she got off the
wulfran.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Maya glanced at her, her eyes wide with fear.

“Nay, my lady. I have milk to feed the babe. He’ll quieten down then.”

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“I hope you’re right for all our sakes,” Thea muttered. She yelped as Raven yanked her back toward him by her hair. His wet mouth closed on her throat and sucked greedily. She forced herself to go limp in his grasp.

“When we’ve all settled down for the night, you’d better be ready to get properly fucked, Earth woman. We’ll take it in turns to see who can make you beg and plead the loudest.” He bit her neck. “I bet it will be me.”

He shoved her away and she hit the ground, banging her shoulder against the rocks. She curled up in a ball and kept still until he turned away with a satisfied grunt.

God, he was
so
going to die. She’d never been particularly bloodthirsty but he deserved everything she intended to do to him. She touched the knife in her boot and focused her gaze on the hills that led back to the palace. Sven was out there somewhere, she just knew it. If all went according to plan, she’d soon be joining him and returning to the luxurious surroundings of the king’s palace.

After a lot of grumbling, two of the men disappeared out toward the reaches of their camp to act as guards. Baby Thor had gone back to sleep and Raven remained with Olaf and the two women. Maya had bedded down with the baby in the sheltered entrance to one of the larger caves. Thea’s ankles were tied but her hands were left free to eat the meager dried rations Maya gave her. She listened carefully as Raven and Olaf talked through their plans to ransom the young prince. It became apparent that Olaf was the one with a brain and that Raven was simply a bully who got his way through intimidation and fear.

It seemed the plan was for them to journey on another day to the band’s more secure hideout and then send Olaf back with a ransom demand to the king. Thea wanted to laugh out loud and tell them what a bunch of amateurs they were.

Unfortunately it didn’t fit in with her cowed female impersonation. If her plan was to work, she needed them to believe she was useless and weak.

Finally Raven belched loudly and stood up, his gaze resting on Thea who pretended to sleep against a pile of rocks. While Raven was boasting to Maya she’d used her stolen knife to cut through the rope around her ankles and was more than ready for him.

“Olaf, go and check on Maya and the baby.”

Olaf stood too, his uneasy gaze shifting between his boss and Thea.

“Are you sure you want to be alone with her, Raven? She’s an alien. She might be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Raven laughed. “She’s done nothing but complain and moan the whole time. A few weeks spent servicing our war band will probably kill her!” he gestured at Olaf. “Go and check on Maya. I’ll give this alien female a quick fuck, show her whose in charge, and then let you have a turn, all right?”

“All right. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

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Thea watched as Raven’s boots came closer and closer. He knelt down in front of her, one hand fumbling with the buttons of his fly. He slapped her cheek until she opened her eyes.

“Take my cock in your mouth, bitch.”

While Raven shoved down his pants and struggled to release his erection, Thea slid her hand down to find her knife. By the time he grasped her head and tried to shove his cock into her mouth, she had the knife positioned at his balls. He jumped as cold steel grazed his tender flesh.

“Now let go of me, you bastard,” Thea hissed, “Or I’ll slice off your balls.”

Raven’s punishing grip on her head relaxed and then disappeared. He made a sudden lunge for the knife, but Thea was ready for him. She rolled to one side, came up onto the balls of her feet and delivered three quick fast kicks to his jawbone. He dropped like a stone, his head hitting the ground with a deeply satisfying thud. While he was unconscious, Thea stripped him of weapons, used the rope to bind his feet and hands and gagged him.

When she turned back to the cave entrance she found Olaf and Maya staring at her.

She advanced toward them, knife at the ready.

“If you want the king to be lenient, let me take the child back with me. I will personally tell the king that you helped me escape and you will avoid death.”

Maya looked up at Olaf, her expression confused and terrified. Olaf sighed.

“I told Raven it was a stupid plan, but he refused to listen to me. He was desperate for money to buy land in the newly fertile valleys.”