Kadin and the Noble's Daughter by Michael E. Shea (top books to read txt) 📖

slipped her feet under herself and slid close. Kadin sat still and continued his smile. She kissed him, her tongue sliding along his lips. His hand circled her waist and pressed her close. His other hand cupped and lifted her breast. She moaned and pressed closer.

They made love under the red moon. She sat atop him, head back and crying within waves of pleasure. He smiled at her as she lay atop him. She smiled back.

“Again, desert rat.”

Kadin survived his twenty eight years by hearing and seeing everything. He saw birds in flight from miles away and tracked starving rogues across the desert in sandstorms. Yet he heard and saw nothing when the vampire entered the ruins and stepped into their camp.

The red moon lay low, half hidden past the dunes. The darkness of the sky faded into deep violet.

The vampire stood on a stone block twenty feet from where Kadin and Lenda lay naked. Kadin opened his eyes and stared, knowing the creature saw him awake but unable to react.

The being stood tall, wrapped in black cloth. His black eyes pierced into Kadin’s own. A scarf of black covered the vampire’s mouth and fluttered behind him in the chilled morning winds. He stood on the black stone above the well.

Kadin could almost see the world twisting around the vampire. He was a force of power in a dead world. He was alien, a creature of dread might and unfathomable cruelty.

Kadin stood slowly and picked up his black knife. He tightened his muscles and relaxed, knees bent and resting on the balls of his feet. He felt the heft of his knife in his hand. Though naked, he felt far from vulnerable.

Then the vampire’s mind crashed in on him. It felt heavy, pulling him down and inward. He felt black fingers closing in. He heard the vampire’s voice, deep, soothing, and horrible, speaking in a language of dark and terrifying words.

“Oh sweet mother, wash us till the end of days.”

Kadin whispered the words again and again. He forced the black tendrils out of his mind and focused on visualizing a single movement. He pushed this vision back from his consciousness, into the instinct of wild animals chased by predators.

“Come.” The vampire’s black voice spoke huge in his mind. Kadin stepped towards him on legs that were not his own. His knife was slack in his hand. The black tentacles drove deeper. Kadin saw visions of dark sacrifice and dreadful ritual. He saw the vampire, once a man, laying upon the very stone alter upon which he now stood. His chest was ripped opened and a nightmarish horror vomited black blood onto his beating heart.

Around him, the statues came alive, twisting and screaming in pleasure and pain.

“Oh sweet mother, wash us till the end of days.”

He whispered but the vampire was strong. Each push and Kadin’s mind fell more and more into madness.

Kadin stepped in front of the vampire and looked into the infinite black eyes under the cowls of cloth whipping and twisting in the air like serpents. The vampire reached out to him with long sharp-nailed fingers covered in red blood.

Kadin’s mind fell but the animal in him triggered. The vision he pushed deep down became reality.

Kadin swept his black blade across, through the black cloth, and split open the white skin underneath. Black blood flowed down the vampire’s throat and chest. His black eyes went wide. The vampire ripped aside his cowl and tried to scream but only blood came from his mouth. Kadin felt the weight on his mind free.

Kadin kicked hard into the vampire’s chest. The vampire fell backwards and into the open mouth of the well. Tendrils of his black cloak and scarf writhed around him as he fell into the blackness.

Kadin stood on the well’s lip, naked and holding his knife in a black blood soaked hand.

Lenda awoke and stood, holding a wool blanket in front of her ivory breasts.

“I had a bad dream.”

They left the accursed well at dawn and rode two more days before crossing between the two huge bulls of stone and gold that guarded the gates of Gazu Bedel. The domes of the city’s ancient temples towered over the sandstone and clay buildings. All around them merchants and slaves rushed during the afternoon’s business. The priests of the god kings, dressed in blue cowls, strode past them. Pleasure slaves cooed and let their sheer clothing slip as crowds rode past.

Lenda slipped off his horse like a swath of silk. He turned and looked at her. Her eyes swam and she smiled at him. He felt her smile all over. Without a word she slipped into the crowd and disappeared.

An hour later Kadin dismounted in front of a cheap but modestly safe house of rest. He found it when he reached back into his saddle pack. He took it out and watched the sunlight reflect in the shining gem. As the red light shined in his eyes, Kadin reconsidered his accommodations.