Chapter 33
Nahash had no idea how many months had gone by since he’d been separated from Cass. He barely hung onto his sanity by a thread. Even with the daily injections of stimulants and hormones, he felt certain it wasn’t enough to stave off brain deterioration. Even the blankets covered in her scent weren’t enough to save him. If he wasn’t reunited with her soon, he would die. He needed Cass, right down to the very core of him.
He also missed her—so much that it threatened to push him even faster into insanity. Time had begun to slip away from him, and not just those times when they knocked him out and beat him. He would zone out for long periods during his imprisonment, returning to his happiest memories—which had happened, ironically, while he was being eaten alive by an alien lifeform. Artificially-induced fantasy or not, his time with Cass had been very real while in the belly of that beast—real enough to create a child with her—a child he would never see, or even know their name.
During the passage of time, he remained very aware of his further resistance to the tranquilizer they injected into him. He still feigned unconsciousness when he awoke during their beatings, so they didn’t realize his growing immunity to the drug. Too wrapped up in their lust for torture and abuse, they failed to notice that his body had tensed up. They thought the rattling of his chains resulted from their beating, not from his alert tension.
Keeping silent and still while they pummeled him challenged his rage, and not just because of the pain. He hated those males so much that he wanted to rip their flesh from their bones while they still drew breath. He wanted them to suffer in so many creative ways he spent his recovery time dreaming about them.
He needed to keep playing along though, until the resistance allowed him to remain conscious right after they injected him—before they started beating on him and broke bones that would slow him down. He needed to be healed and at full strength, because once he escaped, he was going to kill everyone in the facility, then he would take on whatever prison held his mate—his intent to kill everyone there as well. Those involved in keeping his mate from him would die.
That moment he waited for finally came. The poisoned dart struck his flesh, sliding beneath the scaled surface to spread its tranquilizing drug. Nahash waited for the weakness, the dizziness, and then the darkness. None of that came. Nothing but a mild nausea assailed him after the dart. He still played along as if it did, first swaying as he clutched his forehead with one hand, his eyes rolling back in his head. Then he allowed his entire body to go limp, even his shackled tail, which he concentrated on uncoiling to lay flaccid around him as his upper body collapsed to the floor.
His captors waited until they felt certain the drug had knocked him out, but they didn’t have medical scanners, because they’d be useless around Nahash. He would destroy them as soon as they came within range of his psionics. The guards had to rely on what their eyes told them. Eventually, those lying eyes told them he’d fallen unconscious, making it safe to enter his cell.
Usually, four of them joined in on the beating, each one as vicious as the last. Except for Dolis, who left the other three behind the curve when it came to viciousness. Nahash now understood why Dolis had never been a soldier. His streak of cruelty ran far too deep. He got off on the violence and the killing. He also liked to throw in some torture just for the fun of it. Nahash knew this because Dolis liked to brag to the other guards while they beat Nahash, regaling them with tales of other tortures, or complaining about his disappointment that Nahash had to be knocked out during the process. Dolis felt Nahash would only truly suffer if he were awake—as if the devastation they left on his body afterwards didn’t provide enough suffering.
He sensed their footsteps through the vibration of the floor beneath him even though they moved quietly, almost as if they still planned to sneak up on him. He’d never been awake for that part before, and he found it difficult not to strike immediately, but he needed all of the guards to be in the cell so none of them had a chance to escape and raise the alarm before Nahash got what he needed out of Dolis.
One of the guards approached his prone body, nudging his tail with a booted foot. When Nahash didn’t move, the guard kicked his tail much harder. Nahash had gotten so good at playing dead that he didn’t even wince at the pain.
“Spinner! This thing is such a damned freak!”
Nahash hadn’t heard this new guard’s voice before.
“And a deadly one at that,” Dolis said with the confident voice of a veteran torturer. “Even with those shackles. You can’t shock him. We tried after he was unconscious. Figured his psionics wouldn’t work if he was knocked out. It actually gets even worse. You get any electronics around him, he takes them out in his sleep. Seems we started something with that too. He started shutting things down within his range every time he passed out. We’ve had to push all technical barriers back to the city. You see why we use those bio-lights now?”
“The Grand Spinner didn’t intend for shit like this, you know. Why even make freaks that can do this?” Another hard kick to his tail had Nahash biting his tongue to control his urge to lash back.
He needed the last guard to enter the cell and close the door, trapping them all behind a mechanical lock that would not easily release them without the key one of them carried. The other three stood around him now, readying their batons while casually chatting over him.
“He had his uses, when he was loyal to the empire,” Dolis said. “He was supposed to be our champion against those damned Lusians and Ultimans.”
The new guard snorted. “We aren’t at war with the Lusians or Ultimans.”
“That’s because we’d lose. Nahash was supposed to change that so we could force them to back away from Earth, leaving it to us. It’s our damned colony anyway.”
That was news to Nahash, and it sounded like the new guard was surprised too. “Earth? Isn’t that the human world? Why would the empire want that?”
“Other than the low-tech, ape-bloods crawling all over the planet, just begging to be rounded up and enslaved? Or the rich resources on that world? Or its fellow planets in the system? Seems to me, controlling Earth and its solar system wouldn’t be a bad prospect. Plus, it’s fun to torture the humans. They don’t have a high pain tolerance, and you should hear how they scream and beg. One of my human victims told me a bunch of things about Earth that our leaders don’t want us to know.”
“Hey,” one of the other familiar guards said in a warning tone. “We don’t want any talk about treasonous knowledge. Keep that in your own head or forget about it like you should. I don’t want to hear it.”
Dolis exhaled a disappointed sigh. “Fine. All of you continue to live in ignorance.”
The door clanged shut, and Nahash heard the key turn in the lock.
He struck so fast he tore out the throat of the closest guard before they even realized he’d moved. His tail wrapped around the second closest guard, avoiding Dolis because he wanted him alive. He also wanted him pissing himself by the time it was his turn.
Nahash did move to block the door with his upper body as he squeezed his coils around his victim from his head to his knees, until the male’s eyes popped out and his bones crunched into powder.
Nahash found that moment of give—when those bones broke, collapsing the body of the choking, gurgling victim, to be oddly satisfying. He hissed at the pleasure of it as blood dribbled out of the guard’s mouth, nose, and ears.
He tossed the corpse away with his tail, while grabbing the primitive projectile weapon the other guard pulled on him, turning it to aim it steady on Dolis, who’d dropped his baton and drew his own weapon, which swayed in his fearful grip.
His arms occupied, Nahash’s tail ensnared the third guard, who screamed and tried to fight back, but proved no match for the strength in the tightening coils. Nahash’s grin widened as he felt that delightful pop of bones and internal organs that would send blood pouring out of the meat sack trapped in his coils.
Dolis was shaking as he watched Nahash crush the other guard. He had no communication device to contact someone for help. He also had no other weapon but the projectile one he held up in one raised hand.
“I’ll set it down, and we can talk, Nahash,” he said, trying to control the quaver in his voice. “Like reasonable men.”
“We’re way beyond reasonable, Dolisss.” Nahash unrolled his tail right in front of Dolis to drop the remains of the third guard at his feet.
He’d killed all three before they’d even had the time to react. Bloodlust sang through him—fed by the stimulants and adrenalin released during combat, urging him to kill more. He needed to kill more. That was the only thing that would soothe his blood until he found Cass again. He needed her to fill him with good feelings to counteract the ones streaming through him now. An addiction to killing had taken over Nahash’s mind, and he enjoyed every moment of it.
“You don’t have to die today, Nahash.”
Nahash laughed. “But you do, Dolisss. Oh, yesss. You will die sslowly and painfully.”
Dolis jumped backwards as Nahash’s tail snaked towards him, sliding along the floor to reach for his boots.
He tried to steady his pistol to take aim, but Nahash shot him in the arm, having no problem remaining steady. With a shriek, Dolis dropped the one weapon that might have had any chance of stopping Nahash.
Shackle chains rattled as Nahash wrapped Dolis in his tail. He kept the gun in his hand, but knew he wasn’t going to need it. His flicking tongue had already caught the scent of Dolis’s terror, even if his bulging eyes and gaping mouth weren’t enough of a sign. He could smell the piss that spilled down Dolis’s legs to drip off his boots. As foul as it was, it made Nahash smile, baring all his teeth at the other male. He unhooked his jaw and allowed it to stretch until Dolis’s eyes widened so far Nahash worried they’d pop out without his help. That would be disappointing.
“You’ll never escape here alive, Nahash,” Dolis whispered before gasping in terror as coils slowly enwrapped him, sliding up his body until the highest sat just under his neck.
It was only then that Nahash lifted him off his feet and pulled him towards his upper body. He wanted to look Dolis in the eyes as they burst from the pressure he intended to apply.
But first, he had questions. A lot of questions. He expected it to take a lot of time. Just about as long as his beatings usually took. He figured no one would come to check on them before they were usually finished with their routine. If they did, Nahash didn’t doubt he could handle them. He had the key from the dead guard that unlocked his shackles and cell, and with Dolis, he had the key to Cass’s location.