J. Ward - Lover Avenged

In horror, she realized what was hanging in the center of the room. Hanging from ropes or chains. Hanging and covered with the teeming masses that blanketed every square inch of the cell.

“Rehvenge…” she moaned. “Dearest Virgin…Scribe.”

Without thinking, she lurched forward, but Xhex’s strong hand pulled her back. “No.”

Struggling against the iron band locked on her upper arm, Ehlena shook her head violently. “We have to save him!”

“I’m not suggesting we leave him,” the other female said tightly. “But if we go in there, we’re going to be attacked like something out of the Bible. We have to figure out how to-”

A brilliant glow flared, cutting off Xhex and bringing Ehlena’s head around. Vishous had removed the glove on his right hand, and as he lifted his palm up, the planes of his harsh face and the swirls of the tattoo around his eye stood out in sharp relief.

“Bug Be Gone.” He flexed his illuminated fingers. “The Orkin man only wishes he had this kind of shit on his truck.”

“And I have a buzz saw,” Z said, grabbing a black tool from his belt. “If you can clear the way, we’ll get him down.”

Vishous crouched by the sharp edge of the swirling insects, his hand spotlighting the tangling, surging horde of small bodies and twitching, spinning legs.

Ehlena clapped her palm over her mouth, trying not to gag out loud. She couldn’t imagine that all over her body. Rehvenge was alive…but how had he survived? Without being stung to death? Without going mad?

The light from the Brother’s hand spiraled out in a straight line, singeing its way to where Rehv hung, leaving nothing but ashes and a burning, wet stench that made her pray for nose plugs. Once extended, the burning illumination split and spread, creating a path.

“I can hold it, but move fast,” Vishous said.

Xhex and Zsadist leaped out into the cave, and the spiders on the ceiling responded by spinning threads and dripping down like blood seeping from a deep wound. Ehlena watched the two of them bat the invaders away for only a moment before she whipped off her backpack and dug in.

“You smoke, right?” she said to Vishous as she unwrapped her scarf and put it over her head. “Tell me you brought your lighter.”

“What the hell do you…” V smiled when he saw the aerosol spray can of topical antibiotic in her hand. “It’s in my ass pocket. Right side.”

He shifted so she could work the heavy gold weight free, and as soon as she got the thing, she stepped out into the chamber. The can wasn’t going to last long, so she didn’t use it until she was standing right behind Xhex and Zsadist.

“Duck!” she said just as she depressed the spray button and fired up the lighter.

The two of them went low and she vaporized the air guard from above in a blast of flame.

With the way momentarily clear, Xhex got up on Z’s shoulders and reached forward toward the chains with the buzz saw. As a high-pitched whirring noise filled the cave, Ehlena kept up her offensive, letting out bursts of fire that kept most of the bastards on the ceiling and not on the pair’s heads and necks. The saw helped as well, sending sparks that further repulsed the arachnid guard, but as if in payback, spiders landed on the sleeves of Ehlena’s jacket and crawled upward.

Rehvenge jerked. Then moved.

One of his arms reached out toward her, scorpions dropping off of it, spiders shuffling to stay on. The limb lifted slowly, as if the burden of its second skin of insects made it nearly too heavy to move.

“I’m here,” Ehlena said roughly. “We’re here for you-”

From over where they had come in, there was a thud. And abruptly the light Vishous was emitting went out, plunging the chamber into total darkness.

Giving what jailed Rehvenge free access to everyone in the cave.

From beneath the horrid masses that covered him, Rehvenge’s fragile consciousness woke him the moment Ehlena came into the chamber’s doorway. At first, he didn’t trust what he sensed, however. In the thousand years he’d spent suspended in a living hell, he’d had many dreams of her, his brain hanging on to its memories, using them as food and water and air.

But this felt different.

Maybe it was just the break with reality he had been praying for? After all, although he had lamented that things had to come to an end when his mother had passed, he wanted only an end now-whether that was mental or physical, it didn’t matter to him.

So perhaps he’d finally been granted one mercy in his wretched, fucked-up life.

Besides, the idea that Ehlena had actually come to get him out scared him more than where he was or what other tortures the future held.

Except…no. It was her, and there were other people with her… He could hear their voices. Then he caught a glow of light…and smelled some kind of rancid stench that reminded him of the nasty smell of a beach at low tide.

A high-pitched whine followed. Along with a series of…popping blasts?

Rehv had been unable to move since those first couple of days, his body growing weak fast, but he needed to reach out now and try to communicate, try to tell Ehlena and whoever she had come with to go away from this terrible place.

Focusing all his strength, he managed to lift his arm to wave her back.

The light was extinguished as quickly as it had appeared.

Only to be replaced by a red glow that meant his beloved was in mortal danger.

Fear for Ehlena made him panic, his body spasming on its tethers, flopping like an animal in a trap.

He needed to wake the fuck up. He needed to…wake the fuck up!

Nothing. Fucking nothing.

Lash paused and looked inside another cell that was made up of an odd kind of glass. Empty. Just like the other three.

Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes and held still. No sounds. No smells other than the beeswax-and-fresh-dirt combo that had been there all along.

Wherever that group had gone, it was not down here, goddamn it.

Retracing his steps, he returned to where the corridor branched into three directions, and looked down. Someone had just been by: A trail of dark blue dots stretched off in two directions, to the right and straight ahead, meaning someone had come from one of those compass points and gone toward the other.

Bending down, Lash dragged his forefinger through the viscous dribble and rubbed the substance with his thumb. Symphath blood. God knew he’d spilled enough of his female’s to know exactly what the shit was.

Lifting his hand to his nose, he inhaled. Not his female’s. Someone else’s. And it was unclear which way they’d been and where they were headed.

With nothing to go on, he was about to jog right when a bright red flare boiled out of the smallest of the three offshoots, the one that was in front of him. Jacking to his feet, he ran in that direction, following the trail of blood.

As the corridor eased into a turn and the glow intensified, he had no idea what the hell he was going to interrupt and didn’t care. His princess was here, and someone was going to tell him where the fuck to find the bitch.

A hidden hallway appeared with no warning, breaking from the corridor without a jamb or doorstop. From down at the end of it, the red light was brilliant enough to sting the eyes, and Lash headed for the source.

He walked into a whole lot of…What the fuck?

Crumpled at entrance of a chamber was the Brother Vishous, and beyond him was a tableau that made no sense at all:

The princess was standing in what he’d dressed her in the night before, her bustier and thigh-high stockings and stilettos looking ridiculous out of the context of the bedroom. Her blue-black hair was a shaggy mess, her hands were dripping blue blood, her wild, red eyes the source of the glow that had guided him. In front of her, captivating her, was something like a gigantic side of beef that was covered in what appeared to be a lottery-winning load of insects.