Excerpt of THE KRIE SEEKERS:
"
“What if…,” Mardigan began, “What if
Seekers actually are Krie?”
Boone straightened and blinked at his
partner, uncertain if he understood. “Pardon?”
Before Mardigan could further expound on
his thoughts, Skell came parading out of a nearby alley.
She was vicious and beautiful, inhuman in
the way she had looked when Boone had first seen her in the Ariella Sturgeon. Her mouth and chin
were stained crimson, as were her hands and a good bit of her blouse and
jacket. Her eyes glowed, wide and cat-green. She glanced between the two of
them, stiff and alert, then about the alley – as if searching for something else.
Then her brow creased ever-so-slightly.
Her movement then was like a slow motion,
balletic move to Boone’s mind. Her despairing eyes rolled up into her head and
she fell forward. Unconscious.
Mardigan was the one who rushed to her
side, Boone was still in shock from seeing her blood-stained beauty. He rolled
her over and checked her pulse. “She’s gone into another fit of stasis.”
Boone shook himself out of his stupor. “Where
is Miss Tatty?”
Stiffened by the realization that Skell was
alone, Mardigan shot to his feet and glanced around, searching the road and
surrounding rooftops as if expecting her to be crouched like a gargoyle above
them.
But she was not.
Miss Tatica was missing.
Chapter Eleven:
Alertness came to Tatty one muscle at a
time. She heard low humming. Male voice, young and deep and clear. He was less
than ten feet away from her. He wasn’t moving, but she sensed that his
attention was fully upon her. She smelled coal and dry stone and fire. Where-ever
she was, it was warm and dry. A single room with a low ceiling.
She was laying on a bed of rough-spun wool
and leathery old flesh. She could smell that it was flesh. Human skin. Not
fresh, but it still made bile rise to her throat. She investigated it with her
fingers, noting the seams between the different textures. This had once been
human flesh. But more recently, it had been Krie flesh.
She suddenly knew where she was.
“Took you long enough.”
She went tense at the male voice that
spoke to her, but tried not to reveal it. She was aware of his gaze now
squarely upon her and it made her skin crawl.
“Open your eyes. I know you’re awake.”
She didn’t want to. She was afraid of what
she would see. But she refused to show her fear, so she did as she was asked.
At first, all she saw was an outline, a
lying humanoid shape looming before the colors of fire. She blinked, trying to
clear her vision. She was in some kind of furnace room, a deep heat fire
burning high and bright just beyond the mouth of a metal monster. Before her stood
another monster, but as her eyes adjusted he took on a face of innocence and
gentrification.
Confused, she frowned at him and attempted
to sit up. The effort made pain shoot through her legs and set her head to
reeling. Wincing, she fell backward.
“You’re injured.”
She forced her eyes open again and glared
at him. “You’re human.”
His grin was predatory and adorable, set
into the features of a young man who looked to be just barely twenty. Handsome
and well built, he was dressed as though he were ready to attend a night at the
opera. She didn’t trust the ruse. “Do you like it?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “No. You’re
like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
His fine lips closed over perfect teeth
and the grin became a deep, self-satisfied smirk. He had dimples. And
bottomless dark eyes. She turned away, unnerved, and stared at the wall.
“You wouldn’t believe it. This body
literally fell on me,” he explained. “I was walking along, minding my business
and it just came tumbling out of a pipe. Still warm, the life barely left from
it and totally saturated in fear. It was like Ehleis himself had dressed and
marinated it for me.”
Tatty rolled her eyes at his humor. She
didn’t understand. A whole body? Krie – even Kings like this one -- never took
a whole body…Just pieces. Just bits.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “I
understand your confusion. It’s abnormal, I know.”
Her voice rasped as she said, “Why?”
She saw his shadow shrug against the stone
wall. “Why not? We can evolve. A Seeker knows this most of all.”
She swallowed hard. “We became this way at
Ehleis’ will,” she reasoned. “We were the chosen ones.”
She sensed him step closer. Heat radiated
off of his host body. The young man the Krie inhabited had once been dead; he
was not now. His flesh was virile and alive. It seemed so odd a thing that a
grotesque, murderous creature could do something as miraculous as breath life
back into dead flesh. “And am I not also a hunter of Krie? Why shouldn’t I also
be called a chosen one? Why am I banished to shifting skin and darkness like a
curse,” he was saying. “Why should I care one whit what the Sun-God deems when
I obviously don’t hold his favor? Why not take a cue from the humans and make
my own fate?”
Tatty tried to wrap her mind around the
impossibility of his words. He’d gone against convention and sought something
different for himself. But what? She didn’t understand. Standing at her back
was a Krie. A King. But he was not the ribboned-together and primal sort she’d
come to know through nightmare and sheer luck. This one was different and he
frightened her even more than the others because of it. He was an enemy she
didn’t know.
Was he an enemy?
She’d
been unconscious in his care. He could have partaken of her flesh in any manner
that suited him -- it was how the Seekers and the Krie worked. But he hadn’t. Why?
She turned back to him then, urgent. “What do you want from me?”
He stared at her for a long moment, dark
eyes possessive and intense. “A partner.”
Jagged ice seemed to skitter up her back
at the words. She tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke. “I already have
a partner.”
He smirked, boyishly impish. “You mean
that monster who threw you to the mercy of a dozen Krie?”
Tatty went very still then, every
protective bone in her body steeling. “Skell is my sister.”
He went on. “Doesn’t seem very sisterly to
me. She’s barely sane. You know that though, don’t you? You must see it in the
wild way in which she hunts. She’s more Krie than Seeker, I think. I sense that
it’s only by your gentle nature that she doesn’t murder left and right. Her
hunger is a desire for the hunt and the kill. The joy of death. Is it not?’
Tatty
resisted the urge to lift her hands and cover her ears against what this King
was saying. It was truth, she knew. Skell was a monster, barely kept on her
leash. But the fact was: she was kept
on a leash. Tatty kept her sane. Which was all the more reason why she had to
remain with Skell at all times.
His eyes narrowed at her. “She almost
killed you back there. A simple noise and she gets so excited that she
basically throws you to your death. I watched you fall and I watched you hit. She
didn’t even waver -- didn’t even realize you were gone from her side. She
didn’t care, she was too intent on that one foolish little Krie that was
following you to realize she’d thrown you to the rest of the Coven. You’re
lucky I was out this evening.”
Tatty remained quiet. She did not want to
believe this King Krie, but she knew he spoke truth. Someone had stepped
between her and the Krie down in that dark cavern and it had been this King. She
knew it in the same way that he could sense her feelings, in the same way Skell
could sense her feelings. They were connected. She didn’t want to be. She tried
sitting up again, gritting her teeth against the pain. “I want to leave,” she
grunted.
His eyes flitted toward the door and he
took a step back. “You’re welcome to leave, Darling. I’d never keep you. However,
I doubt you’ll be able to stand. And even if you could, there are more than a
hundred Krie surrounding us. You won’t make it out alive.”
Sweating against the pain, she glared at
him. “Where are we anyway?”
His eyes drifted toward the pipes drooping
from the ceiling. “Best guess? About seven stories underground? There’s a small
collective of humans who live here.” He smiled, more to himself than anyone. “It’s
like a little underground village, really.”
Tatty continued to scowl. “And you feed on
them, I suppose?”
“On the contrary. I protect them from the
others.”
That was not the answer Tatty wanted to
hear. This King was too offsetting, too full of unexpected surprises. “Why did you
bring me here?”
His delicate brow arched. “Would you
rather I left you lying broken in a sewer? So any Krie that passed could either
rut you or chew you as he pleased?” He lifted his chin, indignant. “What do I
look like to you?”
“You look like danger,” she said, voice
quiet.
"
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