Calliope's Wings Read online

  It wasn’t an animal, though. There was probably one of the biggest men I’d ever seen in my entire life hovering just inside the doorway. He was the proverbial shitbrick house. Closer to nine feet worth of height. Biceps unnaturally huge, ones I’d have blamed on ‘roids back on Earth, with the rest of him equally cut. His neck was thick and holding up a head that wasn’t hansom at all. His jaw was square and huge, a long cut opening his upper lip on the left side to expose his preternaturally sharp teeth inside his mouth. His double tusks were studded with silver and clear gems. His brow was monumentally heavy and he had a fat, studded bullring high up into his wide, flat nose. His long hair was bound by silver bangles and clear crystals.

  His skin, though, gave me the most pause. The darkest skin I’d seen in this place had been a dark chocolate. Dark, but still brown. Not this guy. Oh no, this guy was fucking black. Like, look out at a starless, moonless sky at nighttime black. He had glimmering silver tattoos and literal crystals imbedded into his skin. From temple to collarbone and all the way down to his barred nipples. Others peeked out over his equally black trou, their incongruously elegant shapes cutting along his sharp hipbones. His whole body clenched, his muscles standing out in stark relief.

  His aura radiated from him in a blue-black cloud that all but swallowed the world around him, snuffing out anything that dared to touch him.

  Jesus fucking Christ. Hulk mad. Hulk smash.

  My slaves crawled away – literally crawled – and huddled together to the farthest wall of the hut. They stayed prostrate like they had with the previous male. The fuck if I was going over there with them.

  “What’re you so pissy about, jackass,” I cursed him in English. Oh yeah, I was a hothead sometimes, but I wasn’t a stupid hothead. Being mouthy in a language people could understand usually didn’t work out so well when you were on the short end of the power stick. I’d take the coward’s way out if it kept me alive and kicking when it suited my purposes.

  It suited me now. I decided I liked my bed. I wasn’t leaving it any time soon and that included to be beaten by Hulk looming over me.

  Hulk didn’t answer me. Instead, breathing like the beast he resembled, he stomped his way towards me. His boots made loud thumping sounds against the rugs and he tracked dirt and sand in with him. He shucked his trou on his way and I was semi-forced into looking at his dick.

  Holy. Shit.

  The man’s cock was huge. Like, that thing’s an anaconda huge. I’d been raped aplenty in my time on Intau. I wasn’t unfamiliar with Tauren dicks being large enough to cause me irreparable harm. I spent more than one night bleeding out from their size and savagery. This guy, though? Fuck no. Nah-ah. He’d kill me with that thing on the first pump. I could imagine it spearing me right up to my lungs and almost cried.

  Almost.

  I changed my mind. Bowing in subjugation with the other slaves wasn’t too bad. He could have the bed all to his fat-dicked self. He’d need the room with that beast taking up more room than a goddamn zeppelin.

  I made to get up and roll away, only to have my back scream at me. She wasn’t having any abortive moves from my ass. I’d only barely made it up to my side and was about to crash back again in failure, but two massive hands propped my shoulder and hip up before guiding me ever-so-slowly onto my stomach. I turned my head, ignoring the ache in my neck, and saw the brute kneeling on the edge of the bed over my back. His dark gaze bore right through my spine like lasers. I was trembling in seconds.

  “Calm, uum kisa-uu.” His voice was uncomfortably deep. Like, what I thought a volcano would sound like if it could talk. Or maybe an avalanche? Either way, it wasn’t normal. It didn’t help anything that I didn’t know what the fuck the end of his statement meant past the word ‘calm’ and the possessive pronoun of ‘uum’. I didn’t like not knowing what was being said. I’d learned no less than four languages since my first awakening and I’d thought I’d learned the Horde’s Tongue, as it was widely known.

  Apparently not.

  The pop of a cork from a bottle startled me from my morose thoughts. I blinked owlishly at the animal-hide container that Hulk set on his lap. One of his hands found purchase on a blade that was easily as big as my forearm, though it looked more like a small dagger in his grip, and brought it to my back. I tensed up, readying for the cut of it into my skin, but felt only the cold edge of it as he easily sawed through the bindings.

  He was cutting the bandages off.

  After he brushed the ruined fabric away, he diligently began peeling what I thought might be gauze off my damaged skin. The bile from earlier bubbled up when I felt the edges of whatever wounds I had reopening from where they stuck to the bandages. Even lying on my busted ribs didn’t hurt as much as the gauze coming off.

  “Easy. Easy.” His rumbled coo could’ve been made to one of the Mahzri for the familiar way he gentled me verbally. It was about as effective, too, because I found my muscles relaxing against my will. Even in that ungodly voice of his, he soothed me.

  Unreal. Maybe I was sick with fever?

  He barked more words I couldn’t understand. I heard the immediate shuffle of the slaves’ feet and knew he must have ordered something of them. Maybe he wanted them out of the hut? Or maybe he wanted something brought to him. Didn’t matter, I guessed. He never once stopped working over my back.

  A cold drizzle sluiced over the expanse of my back and flanks when the bandages were all removed. It smelled borderline musky with a minty hint, not a great odor, but I sighed in relief when the burning pain almost immediately died off to numbness. Air brushed the fine hairs at the back of my neck unblemished by tar when one of the females crouched opposite me to hand something over to the big bastard. He snarled at her and she scurried away.

  Whatever she gave him was spongy and soft and he used it to rub the liquid into my skin.

  Oh God, that feels good.

  I lay there placidly for his ministrations. Partially because, where else was I going to go? More because the salve or gel or whatever it was made the pain go away. It wasn’t as good as Mari’et’s magical, healing touch, but it was the the next best thing to it. God knew no one on this forsaken world gave a rat’s ass about my comfort. Even other slaves were out to help themselves. I couldn’t fault them that. If you were lucky enough to get good contraband like food or medicine and not get caught, you didn’t share that shit. Finders-keepers, bitches.

  Once my back was coated, Hulk moved on to the jacked-up parts of my ass and legs that got the same road rash from Hell as my back. I gave the beast credit; he was meticulous and careful with his work. Even when he dipped that sponge slightly into the crack of my ass and I yelped in affront, he kept stoically professional. The only difference in his manner was the way he pressed onto my back midway to keep me from rolling off and away.

  I think he was talking to me, but the language was…animalistic. All deep growls, hard consonants, and one other, quieter rasp of sounds that made it sound like he had two voices. It was kinda cool and really calming, if I was being honest. Although, for the unintelligible dialect, he could’ve been telling me exactly how he was going to flay me alive, fuck me, torture me, or any number of bad things. I was clueless. The only redeeming aspect of this situation was that he was actively trying to take away my pain.

  That could only mean good things to come, right?

  For being such a big-assed motherfucker, he had extremely deft and gentle hands. He used those massive mitts to reapply a new swath of gauze to my backside and, though he snarled at the slaves to get them moving, he never once hurt me.

  Ruune was the one that came up to my side instead of Tan – which was weird, since Tan was supposed to be my ‘first’ slave – and carefully slid her/his arms under my pelvis and knees. This lift had my upper chest and face resting in the pillows and mattress while the two worked together to wrap me back up like a freshly-made mummy. They started with the backs of my thighs and worked their way up to my chest.

  Once the w
raps were ready for my back and ribcage, Ruune braced me with two large hands under my armpits while another slave – I didn’t know who since I couldn’t look all the way behind me and around Ruune’s lean-ish bulk – loosely shackled my wrists, supporting them up and out of Hulk’s way.

  I amended my earlier thought of Hulk being professional, almost clinical, when his abyss-like eyes trained onto my tits. Nope. He wasn’t professional at all. My breasts were more like snakebites compared to the heavy weight of the Tauren women, but his body responded to mine like they were singing his name in a siren-song. How did I know? Because the anaconda, which had been half-hard to begin with, between his legs sprung up in rapt attention.

  Fuck. No.

  Now feeling relatively pain-free, false though it was, I wriggled and squirmed to get away from that lecherous stare. No one let me. Instead, the slaves’ hands tightened on me some while Hulk met my eyes instead of my nipples.

  “Calm,” he repeated gruffly.

  Yeah, why don’t you take your own advice, pig! Jump into a frozen lake while you’re at it.

  His efficiency was back despite his raging erection while he competently wound the bandages around my torso. He was so large, he didn’t even need to touch me anywhere when he brought the white strips around my back. His knees did, however, bracket my thighs where he kneeled and braced his weight on his heels behind him.

  Once the wrappings were secure, he took me from Ruune. One hand cupped the back of my head and neck, his pinky and thumb locking around my throat, while another braced mostly to my middle-back so he could guide me back down to the bedding.

  Again…gentle.

  He pulled the blankets and hides up over me, tender-like, and tucked them firmly around my body. My arms were pressed up against my sides and bound with the rest of me in the cocoon he was making of the bedding. Then, the pillows were fluffed, smoothed, and oriented so that I was essentially penned in by a fort of cushions. He barked and snarled at the slaves, gesturing with an open hand at me and my cushy walls.

  I had a feeling he was directing them on how to tuck me in in the future.

  Unbidden, my brows dropped in a pensive frown. This guy couldn’t be a slave. He just couldn’t. He had all the earmarks of a Zikta, from his gargantuan size to his tattoos. Yet, he tended to me like he was a slave. No warrior would do for me what this guy just did, especially not with his boner. No, if he was a warrior, he’d have raped me bloody – possibly dead – and tossed me out of my wicked nice bed and equally awesome hut.

  So, what the fuck?

  I saw him flick-roll his hand out of my peripheral before he lay down on the bedding beside me, just outside of the pillow-walls he’d erected. I think he knew he was going to be snuggling down with me, though, because he’d left a gap open so he could be on his side and face me fully. He held his head in one hand and just watched me.

  Creepy freak.

  The carved horn for drinking passed over my head and I watched it thirstily. I was wrapped up tight and unable to grab it for myself. The big bruiser emitted a chuckling sound before Tan – there she was – tipped my head up so Hulk could slowly feed the pink juice to me. It had a bitterer taste to it than it did before and I had to choke it back with a grimace. I would’ve refused it if I wasn’t so parched.

  Turns out, the shit was laced with a sedative.

  I wasn’t even halfway through the horn when everything got really fuzzy and dark and heavy. When my jaw went slack, a few drips of juice slipped over my lower lip and out before Hulk could pull it away. My head felt like a cannonball on my neck as I wilted into Tan’s hand.

  The tattooed male handed the horn off to her before leaning over me to lick the juice from my chin and lips with a tongue that was oddly bumpy and raspy. Then, his lips bussed mine, not exactly puckering due to his tusks disabling the act, but kissing all the same.

  When he returned his head to his hand, he was ‘smiling’ in a vaguely smug but mostly tender way. Anger gurgled in my gut even though I was quickly succumbing to unconsciousness.

  Hulk bad. Smash Hulk.

  I murmured and wriggled until the male capitulated and opened my cocoon up a bit. With what minute traces of energy I had left – and I had to scrape that shit up from the bottom of the proverbial barrel – I lifted my left hand a little and flipped him the bird.

  Fuck you, you fucking fuck.

  The male emitted a kind of purring hum and reached out to stroke my finger, then my hand, and easily guided it to lay across my stomach once he was done touching.

  He moved with slow confidence to caress my cheek and neck opposite him while I drifted away. The touch was languid and warm. If he’d been a boyfriend of mine and touched me like this, I’d have hopped on his dick and fucked him to within an inch of his life for being so sweet and soft. As it was, he was an ugly beast of an orc-man with a moby-dick – call me Ishmael – and just roofied me.

  He was on my shitlist.

  Chapter Five

  Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop…

  I hummed and blinked against the muted light filtering in to me from wherever I was being rocked ever-so-gently. My fingers pulled the silken blanket further down my face so it didn’t cover my nose and mouth anymore. Even without it, though, there was still a glittering gauze of steel blue acting as a canopy over the creaking base I was on.

  Yawning widely, wincing at the lingering ache in my jaw from Mathai’s abuse, I tried to make sense of where I was and what was going on.

  The blankets from the bed in the hut were still with me. I was swaddled loosely in them and the downy pillow was still under my scalp. There was something under my bedding and I thought it must be something like a woven basket because of the faint and familiar sound of fronds or flexible wood groaning. The canopy over me had only the smallest of latticework to keep it aloft. The sun beyond the curtain was high and blazing.

  Squinting, I tried to make out either shape bobbing to the left or right of the basket. The gauze was either thick or layered, because I had trouble figuring them out. Belatedly, though, I realized I was seeing the backs and looming heads, in profile, of two Mahzri. The basket was being carried between them.

  Huh.

  Shifting a little, I froze at the jingle that accompanied my movements. Lifting my arms in front of me, I could see that I’d been outfitted in some serious jewelry. There were slave-bracelets – the decorative-slave connotation from Earth, not Intau’s literal shackles – on my hands. The center ring hooked to my middle fingers, stretched over the backs of my hands, and wound halfway up my forearms. They were silvery in color, barely standing out against the white tone of my skin. The jewels inlaid in them were turquoise, sapphire, and topaz.

  Two cuffs clung to my upper arms, too, more chains of the same silver and blue gems draping elegantly from them. There were bells a quarter of the size of my pinky nail rimming the chains, making me tinkle and jingle merrily whenever I moved.

  That’d get annoying real quick.

  The bandages were off, at least. The gouges that’d been in my forearms were notably shiny from some sort of salve. When I poked the edges of one of the wounds, it didn’t come off. It felt a bit like rubber…like synthetic skin.

  The raw wound beneath was numb.

  Rolling my head, I heard more tinkling and felt something a little rigid against the column of my throat. Skimming my fingers around that area, I felt something like fishing line stretching from just under my skull and chin down to over my collarbones. My fingertips tripped against more bells and hard-edged nodes that might’ve been more jewels.

  My scalp, too, had chains or twine around it like a crown. Chains dripped into my hair, weaving into the clean fall of it. The ruddy dye for my skin was gone and so was the tar from my hair. I was back to looking like a walking, talking ghost. Albeit, a ghost draped in noisy finery, but a ghost nonetheless.

  I’d think about the odd jewelry later.

  I readjusted in the basket, taking stock of how I felt. I remembe
red clearly the agony in my back and the ache from my broken ribs before Hulk drugged me. My chest still hurt somethin’ fierce and my throat burned a bit when I swallowed, but my back wasn’t in any pain. Neither were my forearms. It must’ve been that miracle-gel from the stoppered canteen. It numbed the pain to nothing.

  Feeling a pinch low in my abdomen, I clenched my legs together and frowned miserably. I needed to pee, which more than likely was what woke me up, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about that.

  First thing’s first, though. I needed to get out of the blankets and the basket.

  I pushed the silken fabrics off me, noting the embellished dress I’d been put into. It was super clingy and ultra-sheer. I could’ve seen my nipples through the copper and cream fabric if I didn’t still have bandages wrapped around them. It hugged my torso and hips, loosening at my legs and billowed around my arms to beyond my fingertips. I pulled my legs up so I was more or less in a fetal position and gazing up at the canopy.

  I fussed with the hewn material a little, seeking where the fabrics overlapped or created an entry point. It wasn’t like I could’ve just bloomed into existence inside the cocoon-like conveyance. I thought it was something like a litter or even a palanquin…those ostentatious human-carried carriages. It was certainly a lot bigger and nicer than a stretcher. The bowl or basket or whatever it was was large enough to hold two or three of me, I was sure.

  Either my chiming bells – I felt a bit like a kitten with a belled collar on – or my progressively more aggressive search of the canopy alerted the Mahzri to my abortive attempts to get out. Their big heads turned and looked down at the top of the contraption before a long, sonorous bugle rent the air, starting from the two beasts-of-burden and echoing all the way out into the distance.

  I slapped my hands over my ears to mute the racket.

  “Hey! Hey! Shush!” My shout was barely louder than their vocalizations. “I don’t want to be made deaf! There’s a good chance I’ll come back that way. Shhh!”