Chapter 36 #2
Down below was an ocean of black, an army of staff and soldiers clad in armor, their hair tied back in knots.
A swelling noise, like breakers pounding a rocky shore, as they moved through their drills with relentless precision.
Amidst the sounds of grunts and swift footwork, the clack of quarterstaffs came from the training pit where Caidan and Jett were overseeing sparring sessions.
Up in the courtyard, Kenton stood behind Penn to correct her form with the blunt-edged sword, while the Weapons Master called out a series of movements for the group to respond to.
My sister bent like wheat in the wind as she spun with a flurry of sidekicks, the staff mirroring her movements beside her.
Nelle’s hair fluttered in the breeze as she rose on her toes to lean over the balcony railing. “Jett!”
My younger brother jerked around, lowering the end of his quarterstaff to the sand.
He held a hand over his eyes, frowning and looking up.
His lips parted as if he were about to shout something, but Nelle didn’t give him a chance.
Whatever was in the bag struggled against the canvas, and it looked as if it was growing bigger.
A tearing sound followed as talons ripped through the material.
Shit, shit, shit!
I lunged for the bag but was too late. Nelle hurled it over the balcony. “This is for you, asshole!”
The bag flew through the air and, as it descended into the training pit, the material exploded into shreds and whatever was inside erupted outward.
All I caught was a glimpse of a beast the size of Sage, with a fanged maw, curled tusks, and razored spines flaring outward like a porcupine before it twisted into movement so fast I could barely see it.
It moved like a ferocious tornado, touching down in the training pit, striking out with lethal claws, before disappearing so swiftly it caused sand to billow upward in a gigantic dust storm that hid everyone from view.
There were screams and shrieks—
Sounds of striking quarterstaffs—
An enraged, beastly roar.
“What the hells is that?” I bellowed, jabbing my finger at the pandemonium below.
Nelle leaned an elbow casually on the stone railing as she briefly peeked down below before returning her gaze to mine and blinking innocently. “It’s a brunnie.”
I raked a hand through my hair, tugging fiercely, before flinging my hand outward. “That’s not a brunnie!” Brunnie’s were harmless otherworldly creatures. Tiny and cute and shy. They spent most of their time in the undergrowth hunting grubs and raising their young in burrows beneath the trees.
“I changed its life cycle into something else,” Nelle replied.
My teeth gritted together. “Define: else.”
She hitched a shoulder and spoke in her favorite go-to duh voice.
“It’s still a brunnie, Crowther, just more of a predator than a cute little critter.
Bigger and meaner. And pretty bloodthirsty right now because it’s starving.
It’ll stop after it takes a chunk out of someone and fills its belly with their bones, unless… ”
“Unless?”
“It takes a liking to them and lays claim instead.”
“Lay claim?”
“It’s a little like a skunk.”
A loud farting sound erupted through the air—POOOOOOOOOOOF!
My brows slowly rose as I stared at Nelle, and she stared back wide-eyed.
Below us came horrified choking sounds of revulsion and dry retching.
A plume of musty air filtered upward, and it stunk like a heap of rotting garbage left out in the baking sun.
Nelle cleared her throat. “It lays a claim by marking them with its scent.”
“That jacked-up brunnie doesn’t smell so good,” I replied dryly.
“Neither will whomever it imprints on.”
Or anyone else within the vicinity, judging by how Jett buckled over, gagging and frantically waving the putrid, dirty air away from his face with his hands.
The sandstorm the brunnie had stirred had settled.
Caidan was on his back, his body covered in a grayish film of brunnie claiming stink, struggling against the ferocious creature which had him pinned down.
It growled as it slathered his cheek with a fat, wet tongue dripping with saliva.
“Get it off! Get it the hells off me!” Caidan wailed.
Nelle peered over the railing, then slapped the stone with a palm. “Godsdammit, I was hoping for Jett.”
Superficial wounds bloodied half of the warband.
Most of the quarterstaffs had been chomped into pieces.
And splintered wood riddled the pit. The Weapons Master had rallied an attack, the small army charging forward to drive off the beast with what weapons they had left.
In a blur of black speed, Kenton swung a broken quarterstaff like a bat, knocking the creature off Caidan.
The brunnie struck the adamere wall, only to land on its paws.
Razored spines vibrated with deadly intent as it let out a blood-chilling roar.
Bunching its muscles, it leaped for Caidan, who was scrambling away on all fours.
But the brunnie disappeared into a black whirl of wind, and then chaos ensued as it ripped a path through our soldiers.
“I’m going to kill her!” Jett choked out. “Hellsgate, this is so foul!”
I leaned my forearms on the balcony railing and barked an obnoxious laugh. It actually was pretty cathartic. Finally, my brothers had gotten a taste of what it had been like for me—paranoid hells—for the past year in Nelle’s company.
I stabbed a finger toward my youngest brother. “That’s all on you, asshole. You’re the one who wanted Wychthorn out. I fucking warned you!”
Still laughing, I half-twisted toward Nelle. I mean, it was incredibly clever. The laugh died in my throat. Nelle’s attention wasn’t on the mayhem down in the courtyard—it was on me. She was watching me closely, a little too intensely.
From down below, Caidan gave a high-pitched shriek. “Oh my gods, it’s gotten inside the Keep!”
Widening my stance, I frowned. “What’s it going to get up to inside the Keep?”
“Oh,” Nelle waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, it’ll just find his bedroom, settle there and become a teensy bit territorial.”
I bent my arm back to scratch the sting irritating my shoulder blade as I approached with concern. Because that didn’t sound good. “Become territorial?”
She nodded, her eyebrows nudging together as she made a hmmming noise at the back of her throat as if thinking.
“From what I read, it’ll destroy everything he owns to build a nest out of it all, and then attack anyone that comes within five feet of him…
” She paused, tapping a finger on her chin.
“Or was it, it’ll attack anyone it comes across?
Maybe even Caidan himself?” She shrugged, lifting a hand. “Who the heck knows.”
A wide grin spread across my face. For once, that shit wasn’t happening to me. I was safely tucked away in my abode in the tower.
It was a slow awareness of building heat and an itch here, an itch there, that I realized my fingers were scratching at my neck, then my arm, my thigh, my lower abs…
The grin faded. And an awful, cold feeling curled through my chest to see Nelle’s gray eyes alive with mirth. She wasn’t silently laughing at Caidan, she was laughing at me.
Hellsgate, what has she done?
An intense, scratchy-itchy heat erupted all over my flesh, fiercer than the chili she’d spiked my whiskey with a few weeks back.
My hands were suddenly everywhere, fingernails burrowing into the fish-scale cuts, scratching and digging.
I rolled my shoulders so my inflamed skin could rub against the inside of my armor. Jiggled my leg. Then the other.
Flicking her hair over a shoulder, Nelle flounced into the room.
Storming behind her, I frantically tore at my armor, whizzing down zips and tearing at buckles, stripping myself free from the jacket and pants and boots, flinging them aside.
I balked at what I saw.
My entire body from the neck down to my ankles and to my wrists was a vicious scarlet with ripples of blisters. And everything hurt! It itched! It burned!
I wanted to throw myself onto the carpet and rub my back like a godsdamned dog.
The smell emanating from my discarded armor was woodsy. My head whipped Nelle’s way, and I snarled. For the ever-loving-fuck, I was going to kill her. “You rubbed poison oak on the inside of my armor?!”
Nelle stood in the middle of the room with her hands popped on her hips and a gleeful grin plastered over her lush lips. She rocked back on her heels. “Yep.”
I lost my mind to unfathomable, mind-obliterating, itchy pain.
She’d driven me crazy this past week. It was exhausting always being on edge, trying to anticipate her cruel pranks.
And I’d had enough of her malicious spitefulness.
I kept finding more t-shirts that she’d written shit about me all over their fronts and backs.
She’d cut one arm off all my suit jackets like a crazed divorcee.
Fucked up my laptop. Used my godsdamned toothbrush to clean the toilet bowl.
And now I was officially full-blown deranged because my body was as red as a stop sign and itchier than a mangy dog infested with fleas!
I couldn’t take her abuse any longer, and I. Lost. The. Fucking. Plot!
A haze of red descended, and a strangled roar of outrage ripped from my throat.
She leaped backward, her arms extended to ward me off. “Holy shit, Crowther, chill the hells out!”
But I was on her like a rabid dog.
Her shrill scream cut through the tower when my hands clamped around her forearms and I yanked her off the ground.
Her tiny body dangled in the air. She fought against me, struggling to get herself free, hair flailing as she kicked out to stamp me in the balls. “Let me go!” she shrieked.
“It’s ‘Never Let Me Go!’” I hissed in her face.
I whipped us both around and in one smooth motion flung myself onto the edge of the bed and tossed Nelle over my lap, her ass up in the air. “You’re a spiteful brat!” I roared, jerking my hand high, palm flattened and fingers extended. “And you deserve to be punished like one!”