CH 29 - Into the Fire

Logan found the servant’s entrance Amber had directed him too and staggered out into the warm night air of the courtyard with the bucket of meat she had managed to acquire from the kitchen. He made no attempt at stealth. The guards at the first gatehouse watched, amused, as Logan staggered and mumbled his way closer.

“Where you going?” one of them asked.

“Check on m’ beast.” Logan slurred.

“He’s fine,” the guard replied. “Go on back inside ... sir.”

Logan looked at the man. “You ever seen what happens when a Hell Hound gets stir crazy? You want to?”

The guards looked at each other and shook their heads. Logan held up the bucket and grinned. “The secret is to mix booze in with the meat.”

They all had a laugh and let him pass through. Logan made his way to the cage where Coyote was being held.

“Is it time?”

“Almost,” Logan responded as he dumped the meat slurry into a trough and reached down to ease open the deadbolt on the cage door. “Everything hinges on the ladies now.”

“Ladies, plural?” Coyote asked. “Cousin, what have you been up to?”

Logan shrugged. “To borrow a catchphrase from my Marine brothers and sisters, improvise, adapt, and overcome.”

“And hope,” Coyote added.

“Yeah, that too.” Logan sighed.

Amber watched the cups rattle on the platter she held in her trembling hands. Her feet felt like blocks of stone. Every step forward was a monumental act of will as she approached the door.

Logan’s words ran circles in her mind. Speak slowly when you have to speak at all. Stick to the truth whenever possible. Remember to breathe, and, most of all, remember that you are fighting for your freedom. You can do this!

“I can do this,” she breathed, too quickly. Amber tried to slow her racing pulse but it was too much. Panic made her knees weak and she fell to the floor.

I can’t do it!

The sheer madness of what they were trying to do was overwhelming. She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t anything or anyone that mattered. Even in life, she had been nothing more than a party girl living day-to-day for the next good time. A failure, then and now. The Baroness would punish her in ways too horrible to imagine.

Amber bit down on her knuckle to stifle a sob. The pain helped drive back the darkness closing in around her vision. Behind and all around her was the yawning, bottomless pit that had become her entire existence since her death.

And yet, just ahead there was a light, the merest whisper of hope. It was faint in the darkness of her mind and as gossamer and fragile as spun glass. The smallest pressure would shatter it into broken, glittering shards. It would be so easy to let go and embrace her weakness and cowardice. To just be the worthless serving girl the Baroness had forged her into. Just be...

A mindless pet to be used and abused for the sick pleasure of her Harem ... forever.

I’m no one, she had told him.

Not true, Logan had replied with a gentle smile.

Amber took a deep breath and stood up on shaky legs. I am not no one, she told the frightened serving girl that lived in her mind. I am not worthless. And I would rather return to mist than be a slave for one motherfucking minute longer!

She was still terrified but her hands stopped shaking. It was enough. Taking a deep breath, she steadied the platter in one hand, gripped the wine pitcher in the other, and stepped through the door onto the bridge spanning across to the roof of the slave tower.

The guard patrolling the roof watched her approach. Amber offered a shy smile and glanced up from the floor. She held the platter of cups out.

“The Baroness is feeling generous and bade me offer a taste of the celebration.”

The man leered at her. “Just the wine or something else?”

“Just wine, sir.” She replied in a soft voice. And nothing else ever again! The sudden surge of righteous anger, fierce and hot, caught her by surprise, but she welcomed it. It gave her strength Amber would not have even imagined herself capable of only ten minutes ago.

Her hand was perfectly steady as she poured the wine. “Enjoy the wine, sir,” she said with a steady smile and absolute calm.

Steps led her down to the third level and to the guard standing sentry outside the door of the slave cages inside. He too was more than happy to accept a cup of good wine. Onward to the second floor and the final level of slave pens.

This one she remembered was special. As the guard was accepting his cup of wine, Amber looked up and cocked her head. “Did you hear that, sir?”

“Hear what?” the guard asked as he took a sip and chuckled. “Ooh, this has some bite to it!”

“I thought I heard something from the other side of the door,” Amber said.

“Yeah?” The guard unlocked the door and looked inside. He spoke to someone inside. “Hey now, just what do you think you’re doing?”

Amber watched him walk into the room, having already forgotten the serving girl at his back. “Enjoy the wine, sir,” she whispered under her breath. “It will be your last taste.”

Quietly, she closed the door behind him and started down the steps to the barracks on the first floor where the rest of the guard slept and diced when off duty. Most were asleep though two looked up curiously as she descended the stairs. Amber tapped the now empty tray against the stone. The chiming of metal woke those asleep. She smiled at them all and held up the still mostly full pitcher.

“A taste of wine from the celebration?” she asked as men and women scrambled for empty cups.

“Hey now, just what do you think you’re doing?”

Beauty lay back against the bars and moaned. Her legs were spread and her hands wandered across the wondrous curves of her naked body. “So hungry,” she purred.

“Oh damn,” the guard muttered as his eyes threatened to bug out of his head. “Oh, man.”

“Please,” she begged in a sultry voice. “Just a taste?”

The guard groaned and reached down to readjust his trousers. It had been so very long since the Baroness had allowed him any pleasures of the flesh! The temptation of a gorgeous demon, helpless and horny, was almost irresistible.

Almost.

“No way I’m letting you out of that cage.”

“Ok,” Beauty nodded eagerly.

He watched in open-mouthed disbelief as the Succubus turned around in her tiny cage and pressed her beautiful behind against the bars of the cage! Both her sex and the rosebud of her ass seemed to wink at him in lewd invitation.

“Ok then!” He grinned, knocked back the last of his wine, and set the cup down to begin fumbling his trousers open. “Now don’t you move!” he laughed. “Well, other than back and forth.”

Still chuckling at his own joke, the guard knelt to get in position behind her. He never saw her foot fly through the bars. The blow struck his chest hard enough to lift him into the air and send him hurtling backward to crash against another cage.

The room was spinning. Pain radiating out of his chest making it impossible to catch his breath, cry out for help, or stop the man in the cage behind him from wrapping his hands around the guard’s neck and slamming his skull against the bars, again and again.

The guard’s last awareness was the voice of the alluring demon girl. It no longer sounded sultry.

“Get keys. Time to fight.”

Logan cursed beneath his breath to see one of the watch approach.

“What are you doing out here, sir?”

“Feeding my hound.”

“At this hour?”

“Look at this monster,” Logan gestured at the cage. “And think about it howling all night long for food.”

The guard looked. Logan suddenly wrapped meaty arms around his neck and squeezed until the man stopped moving.

“Well, we’re committed now,” Logan thought as he dragged the body into the shadows of the wall and confiscated sword, dagger, and pistol. “We can only hope the girls can do their part...”

“Look at the tower,” Coyote said.

Logan turned and looked. On the roof of the slave tower was a lone figure standing in the glow of a lantern. Mahogany hair tumbled in the wind.

A fierce grin spread across his face. “Hell yes, Amber!”

“We move?”

“It’s on, Cousin,” Logan replied out loud. “Give me a count of twenty after I pass through the second gatehouse and then do your thing.”

“About time!”

Logan started back toward the castle courtyard. When he reached the inner gatehouse, both guards looked at him and at the sword in his hands.

“Found this.” Logan held it out.

“Where?” One asked and reached for it.

Logan drove the point into his chest and spun to slice the throat of the other guard with his dagger. A second stab silenced the first guard permanently. “In your guts, you son-of-a-bitch,” Logan replied to the corpse.

He watched as a hulking shadow shot out of the pens and across the main courtyard to the primary gatehouse blocking the entrance from the road. A short, sharp scream of pain echoed into the night and was suddenly cut short. Like this gatehouse, he knew there was a hand crank that opened the metal barricade that no real Hell Hound could hope to comprehend. It proved no challenge to the Native American spirit of trickery.

Logan watched it crank open. It was not a quiet operation. Guards patrolling the top of the walls cried out in alarm. A bell rang out shattering the quiet of the night. A roar of voices answered as Alan and his people charged into the courtyard from the road outside.