[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

intrusions, rather than risk having her mind ripped open and forcibly altered,
because of her small son who would have suffered had her mind been too damaged
to care for him.
Those memories made her rise from her bed. Kandaishee left her room and went
to his. Gilzean lay curled on his side, a little stuffed wolf clutched in his
hands. She had made the toy for him herself when they first came to the
valley. The five-
year-old already looked so much like his dead father that it brought tears to
her eyes.
She straightened the blanket around him. The nights lately had turned cool
with the first hint of autumn. Feeling the shivering hands of memories
tightening through her, Kandaishee returned to the main room of the longhouse.
"Why couldn't they have left us alone?" Kandaishee muttered angrily. "Why?
They stick their damned bones into
Fireborn Law [Lycan Blood Vol. II]
by Janrae Frank
137
lycan bitches often enough. What was wrong with my marrying Domhnall?"
She knew the answer. Sa'necari condemned interracial marriages involving their
women. It was all about the bloody gene, their males wanting to hold onto
every female who could produce a sa'necari child. The sa'necari gene was
recessive. When a sa'necari female married a lycan, the children usually were
all lycan as Gilzean was. When sa'necari bred with sa'necari, the result was
always sa'necari. Oh, there were rare exceptions of a human child resulting
and
Kandaishee had heard of a few. She had known a couple in the priesthood who
were rearing their freakishly human offspring as a sacrifice to Bellocar.
A vision flashed through her mind of the farmhouse on fire, and Domhnall
shouting for her to flee. She saw him outlined against the burning house in
his hybrid form, struggling to fight off the six sa'necari males who had
attacked their home.
Kandaishee felt Gilzean's fingers clutching her tightly as she fled into the
forest. Domhnall's death scream echoed through her mind as clearly as it had
Page 64
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
that night, ululating through the darkness.
The heaviness of the flashback brought Kandaishee sobbing to her knees. Beth
had sheltered her in this camp.
She and Gilzean had been the first of the refugees. The
Chieftain Claw had insisted that she be corded and sealed from her powers. So
long as Gilzean was safe, what did that matter?
Fireborn Law [Lycan Blood Vol. II]
by Janrae Frank
138
"Domhnall, if your spirit can hear me, I didn't want this child." Kandaishee
pressed her hands to her belly. "I swore I
would never bear another man's child. Forgive me."
Then she thought of Beth, her only real friend among the lycans. The lycans
had found pieces of her near Iudris
Meadows, but not enough for the Readers to say how she died. Kandaishee
believed that Malthus or one of his allies had rited her.
His coercions, sways, and triggers were now too deeply and well set in her
psyche and body for her to ever be free again. Malthus owned her, as he did
all of the other females in camp, including Clodagh, the camp supervisor.
With his spells lodged in all their brains, he had turned it into a discreet
brothel for his favorites among the lycan youth who flocked to emulate him. At
last count there were nine pregnancies in the camp. They had no access to
contraception, nor to Baroucha Malthus did not want them going to a healer and
the lycans seemed not to care what happened to them. Except Clodagh, but
Malthus' seed was growing in that belly also. Four of them were pregnant by
Malthus, herself, Clodagh, and two other sa'necari, Laleyna and Oliffyia. Of
them, only Clodagh was not conspicuously swollen yet.
Malthus was as freakishly fertile as he was powerful.
Kandaishee wept for all of them.
* * * *
Fireborn Law [Lycan Blood Vol. II]
by Janrae Frank
139
Malthus sat his desk smacking the two letters Preece had brought him against
his palm. The missive from Heironim had had only two lines written in it:
"The bastard prince goes home in a sack. Count on it."
The second letter had come from Flavio and was a list of
Preece's expenses. The only item that Malthus had raised as eyebrow at was the
pound of White Fire. He wondered whether Preece intended to use it or sell it
or both. It was worth at least fifty Double Gryphons more money than
Preece could earn in ten years doing manual labor. If Preece had an appetite
for street drugs, Malthus had plenty to offer him and that would put Preece
more firmly under his thumb.
He slipped from the manor at midnight while the household slept and walked in
the garden as he did each night. Living at the manor made him privy to more
information, but it had its drawbacks. There were too many people to observe
him there, and he needed to be accessible at some point each day in case
messages came from Lord
Brandrahoon.
He shivered at Brandrahoon's name. Malthus had not known that Lord Daemon, who
had hired him to infiltrate the
Red Wolf community and command the conquest of it, had actually been the
ancient vampire brother to Waejonan, founder of the kingdom and the sa'necari
cult from which their race had risen. Brandrahoon had regained his lands and
estates that had been seized four thousand years ago by
Waejonan, who had exiled him. Queen Tomyrilen, who led the
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Waejontori rebellion against the Sharani occupying their land,
Fireborn Law [Lycan Blood Vol. II]
by Janrae Frank
140
rode with him at her right hand as her first advisor above all others.
Brandrahoon ... Merissa is mine. I'll not yield her up to you.
Malthus paced into the trees, letting the deepest shadows envelop him. He
should never have written that letter to Lord [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]