Chapter 18 #4
he called. “Bind her!”
I was lunging for the knotted iron poker at my feet, swinging it up before his men even moved on me.
I managed to smash one of them across the face, but then Yazid ripped the poker from my hands, and the mob shoved me to the ground.
I kicked and writhed like a rabid animal, spit ting in their eyes and roaring with anger.
I kneed one man so hard in the groin that he shrieked and rolled away, and scratched another across the face so ruthlessly, his cheek was left in bloody tatters.
But in the end, there were too many of them and they were too strong. They seized my hands, binding my wrists with rope as
Yazid sat on my legs. They went no further. Falco had a different fate in mind for me, and fully immobilized, I could only
watch in horror as the Frank returned to his cauldron with the copper ladle he had been using to bring up wine.
He stirred its wiggling contents. “Find something to open her mouth. I do believe that threat about biting off fingers.”
True terror surged through me. I clamped my jaw shut as tightly as I could, but with multiple hands prying at my lips with
their unnatural strength, trying to shove sticks into my mouth and pinching my nose so I had no other recourse to breath,
they finally succeeded in shoving the hilt of a blade between my teeth. I tasted metal and blood.
Falco’s expression was condescendingly soothing as he approached with the ladle. I wanted to claw his fucking eyes out and
soothe the pain with salt. Whatever he intended to feed me was the frothy gray blue of a storm-tossed ocean, seething and
moving , shuddering and shifting like a dozen maggots squirmed beneath the surface. I fought best as I could, swearing vengeance
through my gagged mouth, but then it was too late, and the ladle was touching my lips.
If there was mercy, it was that it was quick. There was the awful, gut-churning horror of movement on my tongue, and then
ice poured down my throat. The hilt was pulled from my teeth and a meaty hand clamped across my mouth as the urge to vomit
nearly overcame me. I trembled madly, cold perspiration bursting all over my skin. My head was dizzy, spots dancing before
my eyes. The spots swirled and swirled and swirled, becoming typhoons and roiling waves. My limbs were going weak, my body
distant...
“Do not fear, nakhudha,” Falco whispered as unconsciousness stole over me. “It will all be better soon.”
***
It was so very, very cold.
That was my first thought upon waking. I lay on a chilly beach, damp sand soaking through my garments, and I was freezing,
shivering more violently than I ever had in my life. Shivering so violently that I’d rubbed the skin under my rope binds raw
while unconscious.
And my head ... I might have drunken a dozen casks of Maldivian palm wine. Groaning, I tried to sit up.
A hand clasped my shoulder. “Take care. The potion left the others quite sluggish.”
Falco .
The memory of what he had done ripped through my mind, hatred searing in its wake. I wrenched away from his touch and tried
to strike him but wildly missed, sprawling face-first in the sand. I turned back...
I cried out. The Frank’s men were not right.
They loomed over and about me, their eyes glazed over in the same frothy gray blue as the foul concoction I’d been forced
to drink. A pattern of scales and tentacles traced over their limbs and burst from their cheeks. When Yazid stepped closer,
I would swear his arms had been replaced by giant scorpion claws, his skull capped like the blunt shell of a horseshoe crab.
I tried to scramble away, but Falco grabbed my bound wrists. He alone appeared unchanged.
“Do not fear, nakhudha,” he said again, the same words as before, in the soothing tone one might use with a spooked horse.
“This is only the first step. We offer you a taste of her, but she—she must accept you.” He straightened up. “Bring al-Sirafi
to the pit! We shall call our great ally!”
They picked me up, dragging me closer to the water’s edge.
Dazed, delirious, and desperately attempting to recover my addled wits, I could offer little fight.
I didn’t know what Falco had done to me, didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious.
It was still night... had my companions and the villagers gotten away?
Think, Amina, think! But I couldn’t think. It was like being trapped in a nightmare where no matter how desperately you need to run away, you can’t
move your legs. The black water crashing against the beach pounded in my head, the foul smoke of unnatural torches making
me nauseous. Some of the men had built another bonfire from gathered driftwood; their bodies seemed to undulate and skitter
before the dancing flames, the horrifying spectacle plucked from a wine-soaked hallucination. Others were digging. Digging
with hands and shovels, wet sloshy sand flinging back and landing with heavy plops as they clawed a pit at the tide line.
Falco was chanting in a foreign tongue, a language that did not sound human.
Still they pulled me toward the sea, a place I loved, but had always respected and often feared. Now my terror was beyond
simply that of drowning—drowning might be a blessing at this point. In the scattered starlight ribboning over the roiling
surf, hundreds of small forms were scuttling out of the waves, claws clacking and stingers held aloft.
Scorpions . Some sort of sea scorpions. Though only about the size of my hand, their number seemed endless, poison glinting at the end of their tails.
The scorpions poured into the pit, filling it with their wriggling bodies.
The pit I was being dragged to. With great horror, I realized the men meant to toss me in with that horde of creatures.
And though I could scarcely see straight, though I felt half drunk and my earlier struggles had been for naught, I resumed them with great ferocity, punching and biting and lunging at anyone I could as we passed the driftwood fire.
I was suddenly sure that if I fell into that pit, I would not emerge the same.
Falco meant to make me like the rest of them.
A monstrous thrall, a transfigured pawn for a vicious foreign sorcerer.
I snaked my ankle around that of one of my captors, seizing another’s collar as they tried to shove me in the scorpion-filled grave.
The sand began to give way beneath my feet—
A whistling sound spilt the air, and an arrow dashed across my line of sight.
It plunged into the bonfire, and I had just a moment to spot Tinbu’s familiar fletching through the blaze. The arrow’s shaft
was oddly thick. Swollen , like something had been strapped to—
The entire contraption exploded.
It did so with far, far more force than Dalila’s earlier experiment with the black powder, erupting in a fireball that rushed to consume the men
closest to it. They screamed, running away as flames licked down their clothes. In the chaos, the hands holding me briefly
loosened, and I threw myself backward, shoving away from my captors with such force that two of them tumbled into the pit
in my stead.
They shrieked, their cries adding to the mad cacophony. Another arrow flew into the fire and a second explosion ripped across
the sand. My hands bound, I clambered awkwardly to my feet. Still delirious, I spotted Falco among the burning debris about
ten paces away, looking equally stunned. A sword lay discarded near his feet, perhaps belonging to one of the burning men
running into the sea.
Were I brave, I might have made a grab for it. Might have taken the chance to send the Frank to the hellfire he so richly
deserved. But I have not survived this long by confusing courage with foolishness. People may call my kind sea rats, but let
me tell you, rats know when to fucking run.
So I did, fleeing into the darkness of the hills, away from the ocean and in the direction from which Tinbu’s arrows had flown.
I stumbled and tripped, my usual grace gone as I staggered across the rocky ground, desperate for the cover of trees and thorny
scrub. Anything that would put distance between myself and the horror on the beach.
Hands caught me. I tried to wrench free before realizing they belonged to Dalila.
Just past her shoulder, Tinbu was raining arrows down at the beach, his movements dancing shadows in the darkness.
I burst into tears. Another time I would have berated my friends for disobeying my orders and risking their lives, but God be praised, I was just so relieved to be rescued.
“Great plan,” Dalila muttered as she cut the ropes binding my wrists and looped one of my arms over her shoulder. More gently,
she added, “I have you, nakhudha. Tinbu, let’s—”
A grating howl roared from the sea, louder than thunder. The high-pitched shriek ripped across the air, shaking the entire
beach, and sending a knife of pain through my chest. I stumbled and cried out. It was as though claws had grasped my heart,
squeezing tight.
“Amina!”
I fell to my knees, gasping for breath. “My chest... it—” The creature roared again, even louder, and a fresh wave of agony
scorched through me. “Oh, God!”
“Amina.” Raksh had emerged from the darkness to grab my face. “Did you drink anything? Did Falco make you eat or consume anything
at all?” I managed a nod, and he swore. “That fucking idiot. Leave it to a human to try something so dangerous.” He groaned,
sounding more annoyed than anything. “Lay her down.”
Dalila protested. “We don’t have time!”
“Time won’t matter if I don’t get this out of her.” Raksh straddled my waist. Racked with pain, I was only vaguely aware of
the improbable things happening before my eyes. Raksh’s hands shifting to claws, the ripping sound of torn fabric.
My estranged husband slicing open my sternum, reaching his demonic hand inside my chest and grasping ...
A glistening stinger, the same gray blue as the concoction Falco had forced down my throat, surfaced from my skin. It sizzled
and spat where Raksh’s fingers met its wet surface, like fire and water fighting for dominance. He flung it aside with a shudder.
The world cleared, my body and mind mine yet again. I glanced wildly down at my chest, expecting to see my torso ripped open,
but there was nothing but smooth skin.
A final roar rent the air. In the distance, I would swear I saw a vast form rising from the ocean, an enormous armor-plated
body surging forward like a mighty wave. But then Raksh grabbed me again and threw me over his shoulder, obscuring my sight.
“Run!” he shouted.
This time no one argued with him.