Chapter 194 - Zenzele, My Love part 13

My thoughts are strangely calm as I dangle from the monster's arms.

Stolen away again!

I suppose I should get used to being kidnapped, only I suspect that this will be the last time I am ever abducted. The monster that has stolen me killed Ghinini and Atswaan without hesitation, and I am certain that he means to kill me as well.

I shiver from the unnatural cold of the demon-man's flesh. The wind flogs my face and shoulders cruelly as he races through the dark landscape. He moves in great leaps, the savannah rising and falling below. It would be a wonder, this flight, if not for the pain that sizzles between my thighs each time his feet hit the grassy earth and he leaps skyward again, jostling my body. I can't help but cry out each time he lands and vaults again into the heavens, and I wonder when he will finally stop and feed upon me.

But he does not stop. Perhaps his belly is full, and he has stolen me so that he might feed upon me later, when he is hungry again. I try to scratch out his eyes when I have recovered some of my strength, but he brushes my hands away from his face without the slightest sign of irritation, and so I surrender. I go limp in his encircling arms, and await my inevitable fate.

We travel east for a while, the dark grasslands blurring past below us. My captor bounds across a herd of wildebeest, crossing the great mass of dozing animals in one leap. A lioness startles when we land near her unexpectedly, but we are airborne again before she has time to scramble away in a panic. My abductor's passage eventually angles north, and then he is scaling a great escarpment of stone, a mountain, its crown swathed in mist. The moist air tingles against my cheeks and breasts as we ascend, moving higher and higher. He carries me into a cleft in the rocks near the apex of the rugged peak, and there he places me down inside a warm and fire-lit cavern.

I sprawl limply upon a mound of soft furs, trembling from the cold and the pain. There is no terror left in me now, only a fatalistic passivity. Death would be a release.

The demon-man who killed my sisters paces for a moment, his shadow quivering on the dank stone walls of the cavern. Finally, he sits on his knees. He puts his fists on his hips and looks me over. He has large, scowling features, big gleaming eyes, skin like obsidian. His hair is thick and bushy, like a fuzzy cowl.

"You bleed," he says.

I would have been surprised he spoke my tongue if not for the stupor which has come over my senses. Yes, I am bleeding. Warm, wet blood dribbles from between my thighs. So?

He makes a loud snorting sound, his thick lips twisted into an expression of disgust. He seems to come to some decision then, and he drops to all fours and crawls toward me. I do not struggle as he loosens the strips of cloth which bind my legs together, though I do cry out when he seizes my knees and forces them apart.

"Please, no!" I gasp. "Aaiiieee! It hurts!"

He does not seem to register my cries of pain. His strangely gleaming eyes are riveted to my genitals. I see his stomach convulse, and then he bends down between my thighs, and his tongue lashes across my mutilated organ.

The pain is immediate and enormous, and I shriek, the sound amplified by the stone throat of the cavern.

I struggle against him, but his hand comes down on my chest, pinning me to the ground. I try to push it away, but it is like trying to move the earth itself.

He makes a retching sound. I feel something cold and wet splatter my groin.

"Stop!" I howl, dizzy with pain. My vision sizzles with dark spots and little flashes of light. I am losing consciousness, the world narrowing, shrinking to a tiny point of light.

His tongue works its way around my wounded genitals with a moist slurping sound. It is slimy, like a fat earthworm. Slowly, the pain begins to abate. I feel a sudden flush of warmth, a sharp prickling sensation, and then the pain is gone, completely gone, as if it never existed. Pleasure, low at first, then growing in intensity, spreads throughout my pelvic area before threading its way up my body, first to my breasts, my nipples tightening to hard brown pebbles, then to my extremities. My groin throbs as if it is a second heart, and I feel the echoes of its pulsations reverberating through my body. I gasp, my thighs quaking, my toes curling. For a moment, it is like I am in a dark, womb-like place, and all there remains in the world is the pleasure, the warm, tingling pleasure.

My captor withdraws. He sits back on his knees, squinting at me. I want to grab him by the hair and pull his face back down between my thighs.

"The pain is gone," I pant. "My uke doesn't hurt anymore."

"I have healed your injuries," he replies, and then he rises. His organ is still tumescent. It sways back and forth like a great snake as he crosses the cavern and reclines beside his fire. I sit up, touching myself between the legs. There is no blood. No pain. Only smooth, scarred flesh, warm and pliant, still moist from his tongue.

"My teoma has healed your injuries," he says. "But it cannot restore the flesh that was cut away from your body."

Yes, I have already realized that. The flesh the old woman carved from my body is still absent. There is only smooth skin and a tiny warm opening, barely large enough to press the tip of my finger inside. My pleasurable little bud, the sensitive skin that surrounded it, are gone. My explorations evoke a sharp sense of loss, a feeling that is equal parts panic and mourning.

My captor watches me fumble with myself, his expression mercurial. He seems by turns amused and disgusted, then angry and embarrassed. When I rise shakily to my feet some time later, he does not move to restrain me. "You may roam about my lair freely," he says when I glance at him questioningly, "but do not try to escape. The mountain is steep. You will fall to your death."

"But what are you?" I ask. "I have never seen your kind before. And what is your name?"

"I am Bujune," he says. "I am a blood drinker."

"A blood drinker," I repeat, and then: "Do you mean to kill me, like you killed my sister Atswaan?"

He stares at me for a long time without speaking. I see his eyes move to my breasts, my groin. Finally, he meets my gaze. He shrugs. "I do not know," he says. "Perhaps."

Then he lies back, and turns on his side toward the fire.