Chapter Seven

It was her instinct to fight and Calyn might have ignored Dyson’s order except that the thing flew up and out a window at the top of the palace and then higher still as it escaped the confines of the building. The fear of falling became more immediate then, froze her mind for so long she lost all awareness of everything around her until something triggered her brain to begin processing once more.

It was almost like looking at the ground from an airplane—except she wasn’t sitting cozy in an air controlled cabin, strapped to a cushioned seat.

She was dangling from a pair of talons that had hooked into her so deeply that she felt stickiness on her shoulders and knew it must be her blood she felt—even though it felt cold from the wind whipping around her hard enough to make her teeth chatter.

Then she thought about the ragged tears on Dyson’s shoulders and chest and she thought she would throw up.

Or burst into tears.

It was all she could do not to as the fear was resurrected to its highest level with images in her mind of Dyson as she’d last seen him—his chest torn and bloody.

A terrible dread filled her, but she simply couldn’t accept that Dyson was dead. She couldn’t.

It made her feel like weeping all over again when she recalled that his last thoughts were about her—about trying to keep her alive and safe.

She thrust it from her mind with an effort.

It wasn’t doing Dyson any good at all to dwell on it and fall apart.

He’d wanted her to live.

She wanted revenge.

It sucked big time that she didn’t have a weapon of any description.

Because she was stark naked.

Not that she’d had anything before she got naked or could’ve concealed anything in the flimsy clothing.

Or that there was any part of the clothing that might have been useful as a weapon.

She might bite the thing and get it to let her go, but that would only accomplish what it had tried to do before faster if it dropped her.

It wouldn’t even wound the damned thing!

Worse to her mind, she was never going to be able to identify it if she got the chance to kill it. Because she couldn’t recall a single identifying mark on any of the damned things.

The faces, she recalled abruptly, did look different—just not a lot different.

They had almost human-like faces—which only made them more nightmarish to her mind, because they had the body, talons, and wings of a bird, and a tail that almost looked like a scorpion tail.

Was there anything at all that she could do, she wondered?

Was she completely helpless?

It felt that way and she was convinced it wasn’t just because she was scared witless.

Unless she managed to grab that scorpion-like tail and shove it up the thing’s ass, she didn’t see doing anything at all—and that was lame and as likely as snow in hell.

All she could do was wait for the thing to land, watch for anything she might be able to get to that could be used as a weapon, and fight like hell when she had the chance.

Because regardless of what Dyson had said, she was fairly convinced that the monster was planning on killing her whether she fought or not. She just couldn’t figure out why it had decided to haul her off first.

* * * *

Their first line of defense would be the bolt launchers designed specifically for the Valkyrie. Those could not be utilized, however, as long as the Valkyrie were holding the females, but the wait was a short one. As soon as the Valkyrie had disappeared into the Vamp Lord’s castle, Kahn’s men and Bryn’s launched an assault on the outer wall and as soon as they did that, the Valkyrie were sent out to counter the attack.

The shooters were ready.

They had practiced for weeks, but the weapons were a new design and the shooter’s lack of experience was compounded by the fact that they had to hit a moving target dead center mass and take out its heart to have any chance of killing the thing.

The first wave was disappointing to say the least. They took down less than twenty five percent and of those only a small percentage were killed outright and a good many of those wounded were able to get back up and create mayhem among the Canis Lupine.

The Valkyrie managed to kill or incapacitate over half of the men sent out in the wave. As a consequence, the castle defenders were able to repel the men and they were forced to collect their wounded and fall back.

They regrouped, sending reinforcements to fill the gaps left by those who’d fallen.

Kahn decided to see if men mounted on cycles might have more of an advantage against the Valkyrie. Summoning six men on bikes, he directed six more to mount backwards with their launchers.

The second wave charged the walls.

Again, the Valkyrie swooped out, heading directly for the men trying to scale the walls.

The riders charged in on the bikes, mimicking the movements of the Valkyrie. That time, the shooters took out six of them and wounded a dozen more.

The second wave reached the battlements and went over.

A third charged behind them. And the majority made it to the top of the city wall and went over.

Within moments, the gates were blown wide as the two groups captured them and disabled them.

The moment the gates came down the entire remaining force charged inside, engaged with the Vamps and the remaining Valkyrie and began to force their way to the castle itself.

* * * *

Calyn was taken by a guard as soon as the flying beast dropped her, marched from the battlements to the dungeon and shoved so hard through the cell doorway that she fell and skidded through the disgusting mess on the floor. A stomach churning stench that included, but was not exclusively, urine and feces rose from it to choke her. The place smelled, and looked, like an animal cage rather than a jail cell and Calyn surmised it might just be the home of the horrible flying beasts when they weren’t out flying around and attacking people.

There were nearly a dozen of the women from the temple cringing near the back when she was unceremoniously flung in.

They gasped sharply—as if a beast had been thrown into the cell with them—but otherwise—nothing.

No sympathy.

No offers to help her up.

Bruised and battered from her capture—and maybe even a little sore from the marathon fucking that had preceded it—she got up with an effort and looked around for something to wipe herself off with.

She saw no possibilities beyond the straw that covered the floor and looked as dirty as all the other straw.

Probably half of the women were as naked as she was—and the rest dressed in their tissue clothes.

So the bastards had very nicely timed the raid to snatch the women while they were mating/breeding with the men.

It brought Dyson to mind and the urge to cry assailed her.

They hadn’t even gotten to the mating part—and now she had no idea whether he was even alive or not.

Somehow it made it worse that they hadn’t consummated.

Of course, she had with Kahn and also Bryn, but it wasn’t herself she was thinking about.

Poor Dyson had seemed as eager as the other two, but he’d given her time to adjust to the situation she found herself in—because he knew she needed it, that she was hurt and confused about being passed around.

And he was just that thoughtful.

And if anything had happened to him she was never going to forgive herself.

After a few moments she mastered the urge to just flop down and weep, and threaded her way through the cluster of women, very deliberately—accidently—rubbing the gunk off on them as she passed.

That got a rise out of them. Fear was replaced by outrage.

For a few unnerving moments, she thought they might attack her.

Calyn shrugged. “I’m damned if I see a lot of difference where the shit is. The floor stinks so bad it’s hard to tell whether you’re smelling yourself or it.”

Thankfully, they seemed more inclined to ignore her like they always had than to escalate anger to violence.

Calyn settled her back against the outer wall—the only solid wall of the ‘cage’—which had nothing else to offer ‘comfort’ beyond the shit littered floor.

After a few minutes, the other women joined her.

They hadn’t settled long when they heard a great commotion outside—a lot shouts, but mostly unidentifiable noises. Calyn was mostly just puzzled, but then one of the women gasped with excitement. “They have come for us! Our men are fighting for us!”

On the instant, Calyn shoved away from the wall like the rest of them, vibrating with hope and excitement—scared, both for herself and the men when she realized how loud the fight must be for them to hear it beneath the building.

There was some kind concussion. It sounded too deep to be guns of any kind that Calyn could think of and the shockwaves from it were hard enough they could feel the building shudder.

“Cannons?” she wondered aloud.

“Yes!” one of the women exclaimed excitedly. “Kahn Rex had a new weapon designed and built to fight the Valkyrie. It shoots wooden stakes. They must hit the heart to kill them, my man told me. So that is why there are a lot of explosions—because it is hard to hit them when they are flying.”

“The flying things are Valkyrie?” Calyn asked. She frowned. “These people turn into those things? Valkyrie?”

They stared at her blankly for several moments and then burst into hysterical laughter.

As if it was totally absurd to think any of them could turn into anything like flying monsters—or wolves or half wolves.

“Those are beasts! Their masters are the Vamps.”

Calyn stared at the woman who’d spoken. “Vamps? Uh … tell me that isn’t short for Vampires?”

The women merely gaped at her. “What is Vampire?”

“Blood suckers.”

They were clearly taken aback—they didn’t laugh uproariously at her ignorance that time. They were just shocked, but before Calyn could relax, the first one spoke again. “Yes. They are blood suckers.”

“Holy shit! Ok. We need to see if we can figure out how to get out of here.” Because if they were anything like she’d seen in movies …. Well, she didn’t want to be their damn dinner!

The women all stared at her as if she’d grown two heads.

Or was mentally retarded.

“Our men are coming for us,” one of the women finally said.

Calyn stared at the woman, trying to decide if she was just that stupid or that clueless. “Yeah. I’m really excited about that, too. But … what if the Vamps decide to come get us and do horrible things to us because the guys are coming? Or what if they just decide to come kill us?”

They almost literally reeled when she pointed out those two possibilities.

“What if they don’t?” one of the women asked.

“But what if they do?”

They stared at her. And then looked around the cell. “What could we do?” one of the women finally asked.

Good question and way better than ‘let’s just wait and see if we actually need to do something before we go to all the trouble of preparing for it’.

Not that Calyn could see a lot of options.

Since it seemed to be entirely up to her, however, she put a lot of thought into it. “We have to bar the door. If we can’t get out, we need to keep them out—till our guys come and rescue us.”

They looked around the empty cell. “How are we going to do that?”

Welding it shut would be Calyn’s preference, but although that wasn’t possible, it generated an idea. “Give me your pants—six volunteers.”

Nobody moved and nobody volunteered. “Look ladies. I’m buck ass naked here. If I had something to donate to the project I would. We need something to bar the damned door. Since we’re shit out of furniture to pile up, I’m suggesting you give me your fucking pants so we can tie the damned thing shut. That’s not my first choice mind you! I’d way rather park a tank in front of it, but the pants can at least slow them down. Hopefully. And it isn’t like those pants are keeping you warm.”

Finally, one of the women unfastened her pants and peeled them off. Thankfully, five others played follow the leader and they had enough tissue pants to tie the door all the way around.

They hadn’t even finished when a guard came tearing down the corridor, filled with intent, and skidded to a halt when he discovered they’d tied the door shut.

Cussing profusely, threatening every vile repercussion that came to mind, he commenced to wrestling with their knots.

It was pretty clear that it wasn’t going to take him long to get through despite the number of knots they’d tied.

They needed a weapon.

Which they didn’t have.

On the other hand, they had lots of shit. Trying not to gag, Calyn reached down and grabbed a glob of straw that was stuck together with a glob of shit and launched it at the bastard.

It was an amazing shot considering she’d just thrown in toward him and, ordinarily, she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. She caught him right in the face—dead center.

He screamed like a girl and began to dance around outside the cell door, trying to scrape the shit out of his eyes. Girding herself, Calyn grabbed another shit ball and launched it. When she did all of the girls decided to join in and in a matter of seconds, they’d coated the guy with shit balls.

He staggered off as fast as he could, guiding himself blindly with the wall of the corridor.

Calyn didn’t want her hand anywhere near her nose, but there was just so far she could extend her arm. “Ok, so that bought us a few minutes.”

Damn few.

Whatever it was they wanted them for, they wanted them badly. And that was a really scary thought considering the battle they could hear. A half a dozen guards ran down the corridor.

The ladies were really in to the shit balls by that time, though, and they let them have it.

Either that or they just wanted to get it out of the cell.

Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to delay the inevitable nearly as long as they needed to—the guys still hadn’t arrived to rescue them when the guards got the door open.

And, sadly, they were pissed. Really pissed.

Because they were all covered in shit.

And when they demanded to know who’d started it everyone immediately pointed to her.

To be fair, the guard she’d hit in the face started the pointing, but the women could have kept quiet at the very least.

A guard grabbed Calyn and started out the door with her.

She grabbed for the bars as she went through the door and managed to hook an elbow around one, hanging on for dear life.

The man trying to haul her off gave her a jerk that loosened her grip. She lifted one leg and started kicking him.

“Don’t just stand there you pussies,” Calyn bellowed, kicking the bastard in the face with her free leg when he grabbed the first and jerked her off her feet and trying to pry him loose. “Do something!” Nobody moved. “They’ll be back for you next!”

That galvanized them, they rushed toward the open door of the cell and began to kick and pound on the guards with feet and fists.

They didn’t shift and Calyn had really hoped they would and could.

She couldn’t decide if the women just didn’t have that ability or they wouldn’t because it would make them ugly—and they’d rather die first!

Thankfully, the cavalry arrived—announcing themselves with furious bellows that made Calyn’s hair stand on end—until she discovered it was their men.

* * * *

The men were covered in blood and gore.

The women with shit.

It was hard to say who was most disgusting, but Calyn was actually leaning toward the shit.

It sucked to have to greet the men covered in it—Not that she was, but she had it all over her hand and she couldn’t chew her arm off.

She was tempted actually.

She was still thrilled to death when Kahn grabbed her in a crushing embrace that was really convincing as a testament to just how glad he was that she was still in one piece and released her only reluctantly to Bryn who embraced her just as fiercely.

They sandwiched her between the two of them protectively as they led the women up from the dungeon and outside—where bodies, blood and gore abounded from the recent battle.

And of course the hateful bitches who’d reluctantly taken part in protecting themselves gave her evil looks when they were led out of the dungeon—many by their own men, which, Calyn supposed bothered them as much as it did her—because it was really repulsive.

Thankfully, outside they discovered disgusting troughs where the Valkyries apparently drank and they managed to rinse the worst of it off while they were waiting for the men to hunt down and finish off the Vamps that hadn’t managed to flee.

Under their own guard, they settled to wait.

All in all, the men managed to free around fifty of their women and round up several dozen children.

The men were still searching the city for others when giant vehicles arrived from the Realm of Canis Lupine that looked like a cross between a bus and a plane. There were no wheels and no wings. It floated above the ground and was big enough to hold around three dozen occupants.

They were loaded up on the first to arrive with all of the weeping children.

Calyn couldn’t decide if the children were just scared or hurt, but none of the women seemed inclined to even attempt to calm them.

It pissed her off and after wrestling with it for a moment, she got out of her seat and moved to the first child and knelt down to coax it. She thought it might be a little boy, but it was hard to say. All of the children wore their hair naturally so the length depended on the age of the child not the gender. And, of course, all of them were pretty.

The child stopped crying immediately—mostly because it seemed to be terrified that she’d approached it. Finally, though, it accepted the hand she held out and got up to go with her. And she moved to the other children, one by one, consoling them until they quieted.

Kahn and Bryn came onto the bus while she was at her self-appointed task, but she figured whatever it was they wanted it could wait long enough for her to reassure the children.

And she did manage to calm them.

She actually collected several smaller children along the way who wanted to cling for comforting.

They were so sweet and so needy, she couldn’t bring herself to peel them loose, so she finally took them with her and went to see what Kahn and Bryn had come for.

Nothing more, apparently, than to be sure she was among those loaded into the vehicle.

She couldn’t entirely interpret the look Kahn gave her, but he said nothing. He pulled her close enough to kiss her forehead and then took one of the children and Bryn picked one up and they walked her back to her seat and settled the children with her.