The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (18 page)

But now she knew that it would be so like
Petrof to put the wrong men at her mercy for his own gain.

Used. She’d been used. First by Petrof, and
now by Kyam. And she kept letting it happen, so whose fault was it? She kept
expecting there to be a clear line to cross between loyalty to Petrof and
betrayal, but if there ever had been, it was too hazy to see anymore.

Kyam still waited for her answer.

“I had a vision,” she said. “I saw every ugly
incident building on another. The Ponongese wanted blood. If they couldn’t get
it from the werewolves, they would have turned on the Thampurians in reprisal
for the lenient sentences. The Thampurian government would have sent troops to
slaughter the Ponongese. So I did what was necessary. I did what no one else
would do. I sated the mob’s blood lust before it got out of hand.”

“Are you sure you had the right wolves?”

“Quit asking me that.” Guilt and uncertainty
made her angry. “What does it matter now? The past is past. I’m done with it.”

“It might not be done with you,” Kyam said.

Behind
the fortress’s
iron doors was a stone foyer dimly lit by green
jellylanterns. The walls were damp and smelled strongly of the sea. QuiTai
tried not to flinch when the doors clanged shut behind her.

A soldier stationed
in the foyer led them to a solid metal inner door. He put his palm to a biolock
to open it. QuiTai saw a hallway beyond.

The solider saluted Voorus, turned on his
heel, and returned to his post.

QuiTai stepped in.

A man with world-weary eyes sat behind a
barred window several feet away. He barely looked up as he held a pen poised
over a stack of papers. “Name?”

“Colonel Kyam Zul of His Majesty’s
Intelligence Services.”

The man’s sigh echoed against the stone
walls. “The prisoner’s name.”

“She’s not a prisoner.”

The man peered through the bars. “She’s
Ponongese.”

Voorus stepped to the window. “She’s QuiTai, the
Devil’s whore. She’s here for the execution.”

They weren’t even going to pretend to give
her a trial? It didn’t surprise her. Fear’s icy fingers clutched her lungs and
squeezed.

“What execution?” Kyam’s voice echoed off the
stone walls.

Voorus arched en eyebrow. “That werewolf you
had us arrest earlier today for killing the harbor master’s brother.”

QuiTai couldn’t stop her legs from trembling
even though it was Ivitch who would hang. She had no friends here, but Kyam at
least had a reason to help her escape, so she lifted her gaze to him. His brows
drew tight together as he stared at the floor. She wished she knew what he was
thinking.

“You better hurry if you want to see it,” the
guard said as his pen scratched across a sheet of paper. “The chief justice
signed the order of execution already.”

“Wait at the gate.” Voorus pointed to the end
of the hallway, where floor to ceiling bars covered an arched opening in the
wall. “You’ll be able to see it from there.”

Through the bars, she could see the bare
grass yard in the center of the fortress. Her pulse pounded. She had a feeling
that matters were about to take a turn for the worse.

With his hand on the small of her back, Kyam
steered QuiTai to the bars.

“Mister Zul, if I may make a request,
whatever you do, don’t let them separate us.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Kyam whispered. “So
with your permission...” He clamped his hand around her upper arm.

A soldier in a captain’s uniform crossed the
grass toward them. Voorus and his men surrounded QuiTai and Kyam.

The captain saluted Voorus. “If you would
follow me, sir.” He placed his hand on a biolock. QuiTai heard the lock click,
but the gate didn’t open until the admitting guard came out from behind his
window and placed his hand on a copper plate on the wall beside them.

The amount of security was daunting. She
could handle the individual guards at the inner and outer doors; however, with
biolocks on both sides of the gate, and two guards needed to trigger them,
there was no way she could open it. The uneasiness in the pit of her stomach
grew stronger.

QuiTai forced her mind to focus on details.
From the outside, the fortress appeared round, but inside it was hexagonal.
Barracks for the soldiers were on the harbor side. Three sets of stairs led up
to the ramparts. The hairs at the nape of her neck stood up when she saw a man
in a black hood at the top of the center stairs. He held a noose in his hand.

The captain spoke to Voorus as he led them
across the courtyard. “He’s been a talker. Mostly about the whore.”

QuiTai thought for a moment the captain meant
Jezereet, but he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at her.

“Nothing about the Devil, even though our
best men worked him over.”

“Damn.” Voorus punched his hand. “What about
her?”

“Said she killed the dirt, not him.”

Voorus stopped short. “Oh?” He turned toward
QuiTai.

Kyam’s grip on her arm tightened.

“Two of my men remember seeing him leave the
dirt’s skiff yesterday afternoon. They didn’t see her,” the captain said.

QuiTai shot a warning glance at Kyam as he
drew in a breath. She was certain he was about to say something. Now wasn’t the
time to talk.

“Wolf-slayer!” Casmir’s voice carried across
the yard.

“Come this way.” The captain led them to the
north wall, where rows of thick metal bars stood under archways of stone.

The cell was full of werewolves, but in the
shadowed cell, she could only make out a few faces. She couldn’t take another
step. “Get me out of here, Mister Zul,” she whispered.

Ivitch paced along the bars. Chains trailed
between his legs. “I’ll get you for this, you bitch! The Devil should have
killed you when he had a chance!” He grabbed a jellylantern tube from the wall
holder and smashed it against the bars.

Medusozoa glowed like wet slime on the rock floor.
Shards of glass reflected the sky.

Shards of glass. The image of a single bloody
shard flashed through QuiTai’s mind as pain shot through her hand.

Several big soldiers drew nearer to the cell
as the captain prepared to open it. “All right. That’s enough. Back up, the lot
of you, except Mister Ivitch. It’s your time.”

Casmir lunged at the bars. The other wolves
joined him. They stretched their arms for QuiTai and shouted vile names at her.

“We can just as easily hang the rest of you
too,” the captain barked at the pack. “Back away, or it’s the rope!”

Voorus shoved her toward the cell. If it hadn’t
been for Kyam’s grip on her arm, QuiTai would have stumbled close enough to the
bars for one of the werewolves to grab her. Ivitch’s face pressed against the
bar as he wildly jabbed the broken glass tube at her.

She could see them all now. Petrof was not
among them. The werewolves’ tawny eyes never left her face. They pulled back
their lips in snarls and growled at her. The energy of the pack crackled over
her skin.

“Moon-mad,” a soldier muttered.

The soldiers used long metal poles to push
the werewolves away from the bars. The captain put his hand on the biolock
plate.

QuiTai’s mouth went dry. “Don’t open that!”

The captain laughed. “Don’t worry, miss. We
have them shackled.”

She put her hand over Kyam’s. “We have to get
out of here. They can shift without the full moon. As soon as that door opens,
they’ll rush the soldiers!”

“Come on, get closer. It’s safe,” the captain
said. As soon as he said it, though, she knew that it wasn’t, and he knew it
too. It felt as if she were laced up in her tightest corset.

“We have to go,” she whispered to Kyam. “Right
now.”

Voorus gripped her wrist, and the captain put
his hand to the biolock. The cell door clicked open.

The werewolves dropped to all fours inside
the cell.

Casmir said, “Fuck the Devil. You’re going to
die now, bitch.”

The wolves began to change.

Kyam’s eye widened. He looked from her to the
werewolves. Shackles were made for human wrists and ankles, not slender wolf
legs. He yanked QuiTai away from Voorus and pushed her away from the cell.

“We dreamed about this, Zul,” Voorus said.
“All the Devil’s minions rounded up and ripe for interrogation. We can finally
break his syndicate. But not without her.”

“The werewolves are shifting!” Kyam said. “Shut
that cell, you idiots!”

But only Kyam and QuiTai sprinted across the
grass, while the soldiers stupidly watched the werewolves shift.

“You, amazingly brilliant plan, right now,”
Kyam gasped.

The wolves howled. Fear spiked through her. A
man screamed.

QuiTai ran up the stairs to the ramparts as soldiers
dashed past them down to the yard. The executioner dropped his noose and
reached for her, but she managed to dodge around him. Kyam’s footsteps pounded behind
her. She darted a look over the wall to the rocks and waves below.

Where? Here?

No place looked safer than anywhere else.

The wolves bounded up the stairs, headed
straight for her. Like the night of the massacre, all she saw was fur and fury,
and all those teeth were coming for her. Petrof had told her that he didn’t
think like a human while in his wolf form, but she knew from the wolves’ eyes
that they knew exactly who they were after. Another Petrof lie exposed.

“What are we doing?” Kyam called out.

“You’re a sea dragon,” she said. “You figure
it out.”
 
She tucked her sarong
into her waistband and climbed onto one of the crenellations in the wall.

The lead wolf sprang.

Praying that she didn’t hit the rocks, QuiTai
jumped feet first into the churning waves of the harbor.

~ ~ ~

Slamming into the water was like hitting a wall. Someone hit
the water beside her with a loud splash. She hoped it was Kyam, but didn’t
waste time finding out. She struggled up to the surface and swam as hard as she
could. Her wet blouse clung so tightly to her arms that she could barely lift
them. The waves pushed her back toward the boulders at the base of the
fortress.

There was another
loud splash nearby. Her toes brushed against something but her vision was too
clouded to see. She forced her inner eyelids to open. A welcoming path of warm
gold led to the last arc of the hot orange sun on the far horizon.

A huge wave bore
down on her. The silhouette of a long, dark shape that could have been Kyam or
a wolf moved under the translucent water.

She gulped in
another breath and dove deeper. Her toes brushed against wet fur. It was like
the nightmares where she tried to run but her feet rooted to the ground. She
screamed as pain shot through her ankle.

Red foam capped the wave
that curled overhead. The sting of salt water on her ankle made her think the
blood was hers. Summoning up her determination, she kept swimming.

Something scaly
undulated past her. Water filled her mouth as she yelped in surprise. The water
near her roiled. Red bloomed. Desperate, she swam for the fishing boats.

A shark fin sliced
through the water between her and the small boats.

Then, thrown by a
wave, a naked, headless body slammed against her. She gritted her teeth to hold
back her scream. A shape moved quickly through the water, headed straight for
her. She braced for the impact and the pain of the teeth.

A creature’s head
rose several feet in front of her. Its eyes were pits of darkness. Long barbs
like whiskers sprouted above the nostrils at the end of a long, thin snout. Thick
bloodied teeth the size of daggers curved from its upper jaw as the head rose
higher above the waves on a strong, thick, snakelike neck.

QuiTai treaded water
as she unwound the silk scarf around her neck. His talons gently gripped her
waist and pulled her closer. She looped the scarf around his long, sinuous body
above his arms and mounted his broad back. “He bit my ankle, Kyam,” she said
through chattering teeth. “It’s bleeding. The sharks are coming.”

As Kyam lurched
forward, she slipped down his body. She tightened her grip on the scarf and
hoped it didn’t choke him. Waves threw her from side to side until she wrapped
her legs around him. His scales were surprisingly smooth. She could feel the
strong muscles beneath her as he surged across the harbor. They wove through
long shadows cast by the towering monolith stones.

Men shouted, but she
wasn’t sure if their voices came from the fortress or the deck of the Zul junk,
the
Golden Barracuda
. She glanced
behind them. The fins of more sharks sliced the tranquil harbor water. The
headless werewolf body jerked, then disappeared under the waves.

~ ~ ~

QuiTai gripped the side of the wharf. Weak with exhaustion, she
didn’t have enough strength to pull herself out of the water. Kyam boosted her.
Gasping and panting, she climbed onto the dock. Splinters tore her clothes.

She rolled onto her
back. Above her, the cloudless lilac sky deepened to indigo infinity.

She felt the heat of
Kyam’s body along her side as he slithered onto the deck, and then the energy
of a shift surging over him. She didn’t watch the change.

Then his bare human
skin spooned against her. He brushed water drops from her face. “Okay?” he
asked.

“I’ll survive.”

“That’s my girl.”

Her eyes narrowed as she turned her head. “Say
that one more time, Mister Zul, and I’ll teach you what it means to be my boy.”

“You assume I wouldn’t like that.” He stood
and offered her his hand.

His thigh muscles were thicker than she’d
imagined. All that swimming must have sculpted them. Her estimation of his
chest hadn’t been too far from wrong, though.