Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 64

As he scouted through the gathering darkness, Bannon felt brave and important. After all his ordeals, he no longer hid from his past, no longer pretended that those dark memories didn’t exist. He was not just Bannon, the son of a man who drank himself into blind violence and abused his family, a bitter man who drowned helpless kittens and beat his own wife to death. No, Bannon was no longer defined by his father.

Standing tall, he marched into the moonlit night on his scouting mission, wending his way through the still-dead foothills. Though the grasses and scrub trees were dry and brittle, he no longer felt the Lifedrinker’s poison oozing from the hillsides. This was more like a normal landscape after a long winter: not dead but dormant, waiting to reawaken with spring. Now that the evil wizard was defeated, seeds would germinate, shoots would arise, meadows and forests would creep back.

But Victoria had been too impatient for that natural process. With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Bannon considered the harm she had done with her explosive fecundity spell. Rather than letting the Scar awaken of its own accord, Victoria had effectively dashed icy water into the face of a deeply ill person.

He gritted his teeth as he trudged into the night, making his way toward the expanding jungle boundary. He paused to rest near a moonlit boulder and took out his waterskin to drink while he listened to the vast starlit darkness. He could sense the vibrating power of the proliferating forest and could hear the inevitable sounds of cracking, straining branches, growing trunks, writhing vines, stirring leaves. Combined, it sounded like evil laughter.

A sad shiver ran down his spine. He knew that Audrey, Laurel, and Sage were there in that mass of wild growth, corrupted by Victoria’s out-of-control magic. His heart ached for them. He remembered their touch, their kisses, their laughter. He smiled to think of their warm breath in his ears, how he had loved to stroke their hair, touch their bodies. They couldn’t be gone now! They were beautiful, wonderful, loving.

Then he fought back a wave of nausea as he recalled what they had done to Simon. If the scholar-archivist had not shoved him out of the way in his eagerness to go forward, Bannon would have been the one ripped into ribbons of meat, his blood spilled onto the soil to spawn more of their awful magic.

He pressed his knuckles hard into his eyes, wanting that memory to be just a dream, a nightmare … but it was real, in exactly the way his mother’s murder had been real, the way he had abandoned Ian to the slavers. It was not a memory he could pretend would ever go away.

Feeling the hairs tingle on the back of his neck, he stepped away from the boulder, alert, sniffing the air. He whirled and looked above him to see Mrra crouched on the rock outcropping, her feline form sandy gold in the moonlight. The big cat let out a growling purr, but Bannon did not feel threatened. The sand panther knew who he was, possibly even understood that he was the one who had begged Nicci to heal her wounds, rather than kill her.

Mrra just sat there watching the night. As Bannon studied the powerful tawny form and the ugly symbols branded onto her hide, he was no longer reminded of the helpless drowned kittens. He was glad he had saved her, and in a sense, he had saved part of himself as well. Those limp, dead kittens had been a symbol of grief and guilt. The Adjudicator had found that agonizing experience inside him and dragged it to the front of Bannon’s mind as his damnation.

Running away from Chiriya Island, he had sought a life for himself, not just for adventure but for self-preservation. Since then, he had found all he could have hoped for by joining Nathan and Nicci. He had discovered not just exciting adventures, but friendship, acceptance, and inner strength.

He realized that he had been fooling himself with the illusion of a perfect life, but the things he had discovered since venturing out into the world were so much more. More than anything, he remembered the look of respect and appreciation that Nicci had given him after he helped her kill the Lifedrinker. He had risked his life, given his all, and they had been victorious together. He didn’t think his life could get better than that moment. Such thoughts eased his heavy memories of the bad things that had happened to him.

With a swish of her tail, Mrra vanished like a moon shadow into the night. After taking another swig of water, Bannon made his way onward, still hoping against hope that he could save the young acolytes who had so captured his heart, although he feared it might be too late.

* * *

The moon had set, and the night held its breath while waiting for the dawn. When Bannon finally reached the edge of the ever-spreading jungle, the demarcation was abrupt, with desolation on one side and a madness of foliage on the other. He could smell the leaves and the resinous wood, the potent aromas of wild vegetation.

Sword raised, Bannon faced the primeval forest, hoping he would not have to go inside. The twitching branches and gnarled, spasming vines unsettled him, but he shored up his courage. Drawing a deep breath, he called out, “I’ve come for you!” He meant to shout, but it came out as no more than a whisper. His voice cracked.

The vegetation snaked and curled. In the starlight, as his pupils dilated with fear, he spotted more movement, heard a stirring that was more than frenetically growing plants. They had heard him.

Beautiful feminine forms glided between the trunks, branches, and undulating vines. Even with the camouflage of their mottled skin, he could make out the beautiful bodies that were so familiar to him.

He said, “I came to save you.”

Though the young women were fundamentally transformed, he still recognized Audrey, Laurel, and Sage. His breath was hot in his mouth, and his pulse raced. He had seen what these forest women could do, and he knew they were monsters … yet still he wanted them. Their enhanced scent was thick in the air, making him dizzy.

“Come with me,” he begged. “We can go back to Cliffwall. We’ll find a spell to make you normal again. Don’t you want to be with me?”

They laughed in unison, a musical sound that made all the branches stir. “Don’t be silly,” said the thing that had been Sage. “We are so much more now. Why don’t you come with us? Think of how we could pleasure you with all of our new skills.”

Bannon could barely breathe. His vision blurred. They seemed more intensely lovely than he remembered them, more than anyone he’d ever seen, any woman he could imagine. Something about their scent …

Flowers suddenly sprang up all around them, a spray of intense violet-and-crimson blossoms that he recognized with a shudder. The deathrise flower! The smell made him dizzy, and in the back of his mind he knew that Nicci must have been wrong about these blossoms, because surely this was the most beautiful, exquisite poison in the world!

Unbidden, he took a step forward. The three young women extended their emerald arms, exuding a mist of attracting chemicals. The lovely, but deadly, flowers bloomed around them.

Tears filled Bannon’s eyes, because he wanted them so much. He remembered how wonderful they were, how sweet and caring, how innocent, and yet how skilled when they had made love to him.

“We can be together,” he said, “if only you’ll just—”

Laurel interrupted him. “Yes, we can be together. Always.”

“We want you now more than ever,” said Audrey. “We are more fertile, more filled with desire.”

“We can be everything you want,” Sage added. “And you will give us everything we need.”

They spread their arms, and their breasts beckoned him. Their dark green nipples looked like flower buds. Bannon yearned for them. He had meant to come and argue, to fight to take them back. The sword felt slick in his hand. Even with its leather grip, his palms were so sweaty, he could barely hold on.

“Come to us, Bannon,” said Laurel.

The other two echoed the invitation.

He could not resist. He succumbed, gliding toward the edge of the jungle.

With a great blow, a growling, furred form crashed into him. The full weight of a sand panther knocked him off his feet and tumbled him out of the reach of the vicious forest girls.

The beautiful apparitions snarled, their mouths opening to reveal long woody fangs. Their arms stretched out, coiled with vines, corded muscles, and tendons. Their fingers reached out for him, tipped with hooked thorns. The smooth, perfect green skin on their arms became studded with deadly barbs that dripped with milky venom.

Gasping, Bannon rolled over and tried to catch his breath. The spell was broken. Mrra bounded away, then circled back, snarling. The forest women reached out with a thorn-studded embrace, trying to catch Bannon before he got out of reach.

He instinctively slashed with Sturdy, lopping off one of Audrey’s arms. It dropped to the ground, and its severed stump twitched, extended, and grew roots, digging deep into the ground while the arm continued to grope upward for him.

Howling, Audrey raised the stump of her arm, and a new limb grew from the severed end, a tangle of vines, muscles, and blood vessels reemerging to restore her.

Bannon hacked at them, swinging his sword sideways, then up, then back down, splintering the female forms. They did not bleed red, but spilled oozing green sap.

“I wanted to save you,” he cried.

The three just laughed as they regrew into contorted new forms with additional branchlike arms that sprang from their shoulders and torsos. Their hair became a wild, marshy tangle of strands.

The sand panther retreated, growling to Bannon. He backed away onto the rocky, desolate ground where the forest avatars could not yet go. From their verdant refuge, they simply glared at him, and Bannon stared back, sobbing. Tears ran down his cheeks. “I thought I loved you.”

“We will have you again,” the women said in a single rasping voice like dry leaves crackling in a fire. “We will have you forever.”