Page 9 of Taken (After the End #6)

Even though he’s seated between two females in a mixed group, there’s something about his posture that makes it look like he’s sitting alone.

Or that he wishes he were. The females are leaning in toward him.

One of them has her hand on the log right by his hip and his pile of teeth, but he doesn’t seem to see her.

There’s also something else off about his posture. Porra. That’s not the way he’s sitting. That’s just how he sits. Because he’s not wearing scaled armor…those scales are a part of him, just like his exospine, that makes his posture look hunched from where I kneel. Those are his bones.

His spine is covered in external vertebrae.

Thick ivory knobs stacked one atop the other, rough, pokey spikes sticking out of the sides of each vertebra.

They’re white, at least they look white from here.

They match the twin spikes growing out of his hairline above his temples.

Instead, he’s got thick, long, dark hair that falls around his exospine in three heavy ropes.

His skin is a dark bronze, except for on his shoulders where the scales glimmer green and yellow when the firelight strikes them…

Porra! It occurs to me then that he’s one of the demon men, only right now, he looks…different. More like the other beings. Huge, sure, but slightly more humanish.

For an only sort of humanish male, he sure is pretty.

I wonder what color his eyes are. His eyes are too far to see, even though he looks directly at me and our gazes clash with surprising electricity.

But he doesn’t hold my gaze for long, flinching the moment I look at him and turning away from me, as if in disgust. Maybe he’s not so pretty then, I think with a pout.

The female asks him a question, and when she says the same word again she’s repeated many times, I finally understand that she’s repeating a name.

Lacchus. Lacchus. Sounds like Bacchus. The thought makes me chuckle.

Given the setting, Bacchus would make an excellent addition to this crowd, unlike Lacchus, who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Once Lacchus dismisses me and turns his back on the female to continue his riveting task of staring directly into the darkness, the female poses a question to the other two scaled monster males, who have also shrunk back down into a humanish size and shape.

Shifters. They can shift.

When they both answer by waving their hands in my direction, she directs her next question to the humanish male who grabbed me, the one with the bandage around his waist.

Jiral—that’s the name the female calls him—stares in Lacchus’s direction, a look of momentary shock slathered across his expression. Then he grins. His gaze returns to me, and I don’t like the subtle shift to his expression. I don’t like it one bit.

He says a word. Maybe two. The crowd cheers, and in the next moment, hands are on my arms, holding me too tight not to bruise, and I’m being carted away from the bonfire and my brand-new dancing, fucking humanish besties.

Weaving between dozens of tents, we come to a fairly large one and I’m shoved through the tent flaps.

The female and male who’d spoken carry me by the upper arms, letting my body dangle in the painful position I’m tied in, before throwing me onto the circular bed at the tent’s center.

It’s comfortable, lavish, piled high with soft blankets that feel like silk against my cheek as they push me onto my side and remove the ropes roughly.

“Thank you,” I tell them, trying to be pleasant.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, my Grammie Audie used to say.

I haven’t seen her in years, though—technically, thousands of them.

But as far as my memory extends, I haven’t seen her since before the bridge to the former United Kingdom was bombed out by their government.

They had water, a resource no one else did, and thought isolation would be their saving grace.

It wasn’t.

They had water…but nothing would grow. From the reports, they died brutally, wretchedly, a literal Hunger Games all unto their own. The United…well, the Kingdom fell before I even went to ground.

No one responds to me, and, when I sit up, I see the two beings who brought me here standing near the entrance of the tent.

The male wears thick pants that look like they’re made from some kind of animal skin while the female wears a bandeau top with wide straps and a skirt made of strips that shimmer in the light.

The fabric, whatever kind it may be, is beautiful.

“I like your skirt,” I offer, smiling and pointing at her clothes.

She looks at the male, and they exchange a few words before he grabs her ass hard.

She grabs his throat just as violently and they back out of the tent, speaking among themselves and laughing, dismissing me.

Not the first time that’s happened to me today, but I don’t blame them.

I wave and they start to attack each other’s mouths as they exit.

“Bye, see you later! I hope!” My voice is cheery to the point of being hostile, but I have to keep it cheery so as not to break out into sobs.

Again. I’m scared. Shit scared. Scared down in my bones, way, way down where I can’t really feel it.

Because if I felt it in full, it would immobilize me and I can't have that now, can I? I didn’t make it this far just to give up here.

Besides, I’m the only artist in the whole damn Sucere Chamber.

However is humanity meant to survive without my prowess in paints?

Ufff.

I really wish a military commander had woken up in my body and stood now in my place because as the females leave me alone and Jiral enters, I have no clue what to do next.

I smile and sit up where I am in the center of the bed.

I hold out my hand as the male strides into the room, favoring his bandaged leg.

“Hi, I’m Rhen…”

He lunges for me, arriving at the edge of the bed faster than I feel like he should have been able to with a bad leg and a bandaged torso.

He grabs my ankle, wrenches me forward. I fly back, arms flailing to the sides, which is not where I want them given that it leaves my chest exposed.

He grabs for my breasts—the collar of my suit—and pulls it open.

The zipper gives immediately, and my bra comes into view.

He seems momentarily puzzled by it and his brow furrows in distaste, giving me just enough time to gather my wits and scream bloody murder.

He rears back like I’ve slapped him. I use his hesitation to lift my knee to my chest and kick, but he grabs my foot and locks it under his armpit. With his free hand, he frees the ties of his pants and shoves them down until I can see thick pubic hair and the base of an erect penis.

I sit up and scream louder until his face quirks, then scream louder still. That’s when he hits me. He hits me in the face, the back of his hand meeting my cheek. It’s shocking how badly it hurts. I hit the soft, decadent mattress with a bounce and my head spins.

I see stars, entire constellations…I’m looking up through a portal in the roof of the tent at the midnight sky. It’s beautiful. Makes me feel, strangely, less alone. Like there might be humans up there somewhere seeking refuge on other planets much more hospitable than the one they left behind.

And then I’m tossed roughly back into the present by the hard scrape of nails on my neck and the cool way the wind whips against these fresh abrasions.

My eyes flutter open and though I still see in double, I can see that neither Jirals are looking at me.

He’s looking over his shoulder, baring his teeth as if to ward off an invader.

I lift my head, pain streaking through my neck and my cheek, and am shocked out of my mind to see one of the demons from earlier—the big one.

And he looks twice as big now as he did when he was sitting at the fire.

Now, his horns are elongated, pressing at the confines of the tent, nearly forcing him to stoop. He’s shifting again…back into a demon.

He stomps forward, his arms looking far too long for his frame, his three-fingered hands enormous, the claws that tip them yellow opalescent and menacing.

He’s covered all over in dark blue and green scales that shimmer beautifully in the torchlight that rings the inner walls of Jiral’s tent.

Any humanish features he may have had are lost to the slits he’s grown for nostrils and his pale-yellow eyes.

When he speaks, his long, thick gray tongue flicks out to wet his bottom lip.

Jiral and the demon exchange a few words.

The tension in the tent is so thick it could be cut with a pallet knife.

I want to throw linseed oil all over the situation and let them fight each other and escape out the back, but there is no back door to this round tent, and I can’t remember how to move.

My big clunky Pam watch feels like it weighs a thousand kilos, and all my thought processes are oil-based paint, drying so damn slow.

My cheek whistles with pain every time my expression shifts.

I gasp at the speed at which the demon strikes.

His hand takes out a chunk of Jiral’s cheek, but I don’t get a chance to assess how bad the damage is because Jiral is falling to the side of the bed, disappearing from view.

All I can hear are his pained moans. Meanwhile, the demon is coming right to me.

The demon reaches out and grabs me roughly around the waist, tosses me over one shoulder, stomps out into the night, through the camp, my head and arms swaying like a doll’s.

“Porra,” I hiss under my breath. “Fuck,” I add for good measure.

My face stings. My head is starting to throb from being upside down again. I feel like I’m about to puke when finally, we reach a tent that sits all the way on the camp’s outskirts.