Pine Needles (Veil Realms Series) (5 page)

Reminding images of the warrior earlier, with jagged teeth for ripping flesh off of bare bones I refrain from making a noise, for fear I could lose one of my best qualities.  His lips release me, allowing me to take in a vehemence breath, his fantasizing eyes peer into my terror-stricken face. “Your breasts do not taste sweet.”

Baffled for a moment, not fully comprehending his statement and unused to the sound of his voice I gape at him. Pieces slowly pull together for me, if this is some type of procedure for their morbid picking and choosing, then perhaps he was just with a woman lactating.

“I… I don’t have a child...” My voice flutters from my faltering lips, not even sure he can hear me. Swallowing another clump of blood I continue my words, “I’m not giving nourishment to a baby.” His reading stare tells me he’s reflecting on my words, that I have just spoken to him. Then, with no more thought on the matter, he prowls around my body. Gauging, touching, and rubbing my oversensitive skin, and then he explores my hair, watching me while he smells the damp dark strands.

My nerves are almost shot with the edgy silence between us, and his persistent examination of me. Abruptly, he takes a swift step back glances over his shoulder and pivots himself facing the cell entrance.
Once in view, I see what he had heard approaching, a group of girls escorted by the same two guards.

Ten redheads cluster together, crying with grief and pleading to the guards, I catch a glimpse of a familiar fuchsia red hair and instantly I recognize Tiffany, at the same time the realization hits me, she turns and shouts over to me in worry, “Selene!”

The impervious guards begin shoving the girls into the cell, some land head-first in the brumal dirt, others pile on top, but Tiffany bolts back up snatching onto the habitual bars. “Selene!” Seeing her breaks my reserve and tears blur my vision.

“Tiffany!” I yell out noting that all dispirited eyes focus on the virulent warlord standing within my cell. Callously, he turns back to me, enunciating my name as if it’s a sordid word, “
Se...lene
.” In that particular moment, I have the chance to notice his teeth are not animalistic, like the other licentious warrior’s are.  A quick gesture from his hand to the guards as he thunders away, he never looks back in my direction while he fades into the unknown at the end of the corridor.

“Oh my
God, Selene what have they done to you?!” The guard has apparently been ordered to unhook me from my hanging position, and chunks me over his shoulder. Hauling me still bound and unclad down the intricately decorated vile catacombs, as I lift my objecting head up, with a blanket of hair covering my face I call out to Tiffany, “I will find you again Tiffany! I promise!”

Chapter Four

The FEAST

The enormit
y of the passageway far surpasses anything mere humans could ever accomplish, even with the technological advancements that have developed over the years. An entire underground city, with walls embellished in cravings of skull-like images and cryptic motifs.

Everything is symmetrical and precise from the ever-flowing stairways, arched doorways, to the eight column rooms. I’m left alone in a limestone vestibule, an entrance in-between two massive rooms.

A round shaft above shines a wondrous light through, I blink several times not sure how long it’s been since I was hunted down and brought here. Drawn out of my abhorrent musing, I hear someone speaking. Finally emerging into my view are twelve women who shuffle through the halls to where I stand. Guards take a few steps to the side making a path for four of the women. “What’s going on?” A shorter woman with me demands, watchful eyes tensely glance back and forth toward the statuesque guards.

“You are here for the great feasting
. The choosing of the warlords will take place then,” a tall, slender woman with peppery hair answers as she prepares to scrub us down, making gestures to the other women to go on about their business.

“Feasting? What does that mean?”
another concerned voice announces.

B
efore anyone begins ranting madly out, a guard venomously commands, “Silence!” The air becomes thick with his tone, as if he evaporates oxygen from it. Making us almost choke from the tension that surrounds us.

Again, we are washed down and a resin type substance is rubbed generously over our bodies, as gold and pearl fabric is placed before our feet. We are not allowed to dress until flakes of pure gold are buffed on completely overlaying
our skin entirely. Our faces are painted with more preciseness, which conceals any redden, swollen markings on my jaw. The women assist with clasping me in a golden breastplate, a slip of pearl white material drapes the front and back of my hips and tiding down to the stone floor.

“Stop shaking,
” the woman kneeling down commands me as she sews gold beads around my waist, attaching it to the fine fabric.

“Sorry, I just don’t want the thread of beads to be a permanent lavaliere.” I cough into my still shivering hand
and add, “I’ve been told of a woman with lips sewn together here.”

“Ah, yes...Nina.” Her tone never once wavers as she speaks calmly abou
t the torment the woman endured. She places her hands firmly on my hips and peers up to me. “But it was not me that performed the suturing.” Finished with her task she stands.

She’s not as old as the others, maybe even close to my age, strawberry red hair and ocean blue eyes
. The attire she wears is precisely the same as the other slave women. A one-piece dress plebeian, dull terra-cotta colored cloth. I lower my voice to barely a whisper as she adds anklets and bangles to my ankles and arms. “Are we being prepared for the main course, in this... feasting?” I ask.

Briskly, her talented fingers hem and tuck the fabric, making sure she doesn’t leave a single thread exposed
. Flaunting slits run along either side of my bare legs, as if pleased with her work she stands again spinning me around, twisting my hair back she whispers into my ear, “Don’t attract unwanted attention to yourself.” 

She tugs on my hair twining it into a perfect golden spiral down my neck, darting a glance over to the guards I tilt my head slightly, and inquire, “What is it with all the gold
, if I may ask?”

She defines my lips with more
golden paint, addressing me directly as her forewarning eyes gaze solely into mine as she responds, “It's the flesh of the gods.” That is when I notice her hands trembling. The guards advance forward quickly motioning for us to move into the next area. 

Including myself, I count twelve of us smothered in gold we
aring the same fine habiliments. Standing with raging, heart-pounding fear, completely unaware of what unforeseeable horrors lay near as we stand in front of a stone solitary table. 

The floor seems to be remain
s of an extensive mosaic paving. Torches enliven the eight belletristic columns. With more brightness displaying, I can see this area is entirely enshrined as a banquet room, limestone slab couches line other tables which are flanked with chthonian engraved semi-columns.

A gust of burnt human flesh murmurs through the air as platters of meat are carried in, younger women and men arrange the carcass along the tables. Each haggard face reveals a lifeless glaze simply doing what they are told to do.

As soon as the somber men and women sit everything on the tables they abandon the room, leaving an eerily silent atmosphere until three women down the line faint. Covering our mouths from the repulsive smell a couple of the women still standing, kneel down to check on the unconscious. Swallowing hard I can feel the bile battling back inside me, making my mouth water bitterly, the scene consuming us doesn’t help.

Two women stand
ing beside me vomit profusely, and the potent, acidic aroma practically has me on my knees, somehow saving me from following the same reaction. A scheming female voice crawls within the room. “Leave them be... then the weak shall lie beneath our feet while we feast.”

Little by little my unwilling eyes drift up to seek out the voice
. A rather tall humanistic woman brusquely strides down the main paving and seats herself in a marble throne, with bones arching in a semi-dome above. This now makes the focal point of the room, five stone hands rest on the bottom of the throne chair.

She settles herself and inclines her head
. I’m unable to tell where or whom she examines, because she has pure colorless eyes, and horns cradling around the frame of her demonic face. Granite hair splays along her backside masking the stone she is perched in. Leather bands wrap her upper body and a similar fabric outlines her gold branded legs.

A flick from her talon-like claws and the war
lords loom into the area. “Join them if you feel fit enough to do so, if not you shall starve.” Rationalizing the obvious, she, the queen of the horde, is inviting us to the flesh eating feast.

Another pale looking woman pukes and I instantly feel myself become vapidly clammy, turning three shades of white under the gold paint.  Regardless, I remain upright staring vacantly at the warlords tearing into the meat as if it would be their last meal. Tal
king, mumbling among themselves and drinking from fluidic mugs containing a substance I have no desire to learn about.

As they crudely gorge themselves the queen stands and gravitates in our direction. She disturbingly lingers over the women, inhaling their scents, licking the malodorous expellment from their lips. My knees buckle beneath me as I begin to sway, warning myself that if I pass out I could be next on the menu.

The leader’s weighing gaze confirms my thoughts. I seal my eyes shut, hoping,
no
... Praying this is some horrific nightmare and once I reopen my eyes I’ll be home, curled inside my own bed in a cold sweat from this vision of hell. I slowly open my eyes to find her, the queen posed before me.

Her visage h
angs gruesomely close to my own, claws expand out and clutch my sore, distended jaw. Forcing my mouth open she sweeps inward oddly sniffing my breath, pressure from her needle-pointed nails embed deeply into my flesh.

Releasing her
probing grapnel of a hold I can sense through her milk-like eyes a slow and painful death-wish. Talons swirl sleekly caressing my face. “Tangible you are, yes that you are.” She hisses as her body strays away, but her voice stays hidden deep within my mind.  

Before she enters the threshold of the room, she throws a command out that detonates the warlords into action
, “Sirius, it is time to claim your property, remember what one must do, in order for it to survive.”

The leader which now I understand holds a name, sta
nds, and stalks over to me. My horror-stuck expression upon my face never distracts Sirius as he ensnares a possessive grip on my upper arm. Renouncing screams infest the corridors as one by one we are taken. 

Chapter Five

Possession

Alone and unprotected,
Sirius’s predatorial stare tracks my every move as I scramble back from him on the elongated stone slab. His ample hands brace around each column which bounds the limestone I have been deposited onto. He questions me while watching my body coil back from him, “Do you fear me,
Selene
?”

Words grind through my turbulent mind, but only a g
aping, frightened weep escapes my mouth. One stout hand embraces my ankle and drags me closer to him; strenuously I try to resist him. Battling with the last resources I have, punching his hardened steel-like chest, clawing, lashing despondently at him.

Sirius, the lord of all warlords, quickly proclaims his summoning over me, raiding my body as if a depraving beast hungered for
a vital sustenance. Fixating my burning, watery eyes away from him, he breaths out with a heavy penetrating tone, “Do not fear me.”

I
turn my head away and silently watch the shadows suspend in the corners of the dark and dismal chamber. His paramounting possessive form stretches across my own, shards of my self-preservation are now unguarded and raw. Distant desiring images of Rayden revolve over in my thoughts, clicking through like a loaded gun, until I disengage myself. He was my life, my lover, my world, but no longer because now I’m only an empty shell.

Days fill with Sirius and hi
s repetitive appetite for sexual transgressions, and each day he commands the human slaves to bring in fresh meat to us. “Selene, you will need to eat,” he declares shoving the layered flesh in front of my paling face.

Drearily, I push the foul heinous atrocity away
and refuse, “I can’t,” I swallow a knot of disgust down. “I won’t eat that. Can I just have some more water?” A displeasing sound rumbles from within him as he passes a wooden bowl of brackish water over to me. My thirst overrides me and I guzzle down every last relishing drop, with a tight-fist not truly willing to release the bowl, I grudgingly hand it back to him.

The days pass and one
tedious day after another I follow their routines without words. Even though questions rise and fall from my lips I never voice them. Sirius orders the meek slave women to come scour me and shroud my spiritless body in gold. I now bear the five similar golden bands Sirius wears on his left arm, I passively view the bands noting that they are some kind of sacramental engravings. Placing the last band around my wrist I curiously ask the glabrous woman, “How do you survive here?”