Skinner grabbed
Garrett’s arm and tried to drag the man toward the safety of the pens. Two more pistol shots rang out and a man
screamed. A horse whinnied in terror.
“Freeband
Raider!” someone shouted. “They’re
Freebanders! Where’s Hallen!?”
A mounted rider
charged past Skinner, almost knocking him to the ground. The Sime rider held a struggling, cursing
Gen firmly in his tentacles. A moment
later, another horse and rider pounded after them. The rider was bent low, drumming the horse’s sides with heel and
tentacle. He couldn’t be sure, but he
thought the rider was Tavis.
There was a high
pitched wail; a shiltpron, Skinner realized.
A chaotic stream of notes followed, and one of the Simes fell off his
horse, clutching his head with hands and tentacles. A shiltpron was a musical instrument that manipulated not only
sound, but nagerically as well. I
hadn’t realized that they could be used as weapons. A weapon that only affects Simes. Clever bastards, Skinner thought admiringly.
He shoved Garrett
to the ground, rolling him under the pen.
As he was bending to follow, tentacles grabbed him and he was thrown
across the saddle on another Sime. The
mnan’s clothing was ragged and smelled foul.
“Yer mine, Gen” the man cackled, kicking his horse into a breakneck run.
Skinner kicked
at the man, but his angle was too awkward.
He couldn’t get any leverage.
The man’s handling tentacles tightened around him to the point of pain. “Quit yer wigglin’,” the man snarled.
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Skinner turned his head and bit down on one of the tentacles with
all his strength.
The man cuffed
him but didn’t loosen his grip. Skinner
could still hear pistol shots and screams blending with the wail of the
shiltpron, but they were receding in the distance.
If only I had a
weapon, Skinner thought in despair.
Even the leg irons would have helped.
One on one, Gen strength was no match for Sime. He didn’t even see the obstacle that must
have loomed in their path, but suddenly the horse was airborn in a mighty
leap. They landed hard; the sudden
impact driving the air from Skinner’s lungs.
By the time he had recovered, the horse had slowed to a jarring trot. Then they stopped.
“Yer a big ‘um,”
the Sime chortled as he struggled to turn Skinner over, to position him for the
kill. “This is gonna last me
for…shen..!”
Out of the
corner of his eye, Skinner saw another body hurtling through the air. Tentacles wrapped around his body, tearing
him from his captor’s grip. For an
instant he thought it was Tavis, but his hopes where dashed when the man called
out in lightly accented Simelan “Fox!
Catch the shendi-flayed horse this time!”
His former
captor, denied his kill, screamed incoherently and attacked his rival. The man danced away, moonlight gleaming off
the knives gripped in of his two tentacles.
It was hard to make out any features in the dark, but the man had dark
hair cropped short and a clean shaven chin.
“This one’s
mine! Get yer own!” the Freebaser
screamed, grabbing for Skinner.
Skinner rolled out
of the way, too slow to evade an augmenting Sime, but his action delayed the
attack just long enough for the newcomer to plunge a knife into his attacker’s
back.
The Sime’s
reeking body collapsed across Skinner’s body, pinning him to the ground. He struggled to push the heavy weight off
him, only to see it snatched up and tossed aside as if it weighed no more than
a bundle of rags.
“To the victor
goes the prize,” the Sime murmured.
“And shuven…what a prize you are.”
So it wasn’t a
rescue, it was just another predator fighting over him. Tentacles like twisted iron cables wrapped
around his arms. Skinner struggled,
uselessly, knowing that it would do him no good. Though he had witnessed Sime strength before, he had never had it
turned against him like this before tonight.
Mindless panic
roared through his limbs like liquid fire.
Idiot! he screamed at himself.
You're just giving the shendi-flayed monster what it wants.
Ruthlessly,
Skinner pushed past his own terror and began to shut himself down. "Running water", Simeon had taught
him. Or had it been his mother? Memories were tumbling out of his head like
a child’s block toys. "Gushing
over your hands. Now, close your hands
and the flow stops. Concentrate. Nothing exists but your hands and the
water." He could feel the fear
inside him flowing away.
"Oh no you
don't," the Sime chuckled.
"We need this way too bad.
No way am I going to let a fat, juicy selyn source slip through my
fingers with a few gypsy tricks."
His dark eyes narrowed. "Be
a good boy and give it up. You really
don't want to know how far I'm prepared to go to get what I want."
"Go to
hell!" Skinner hissed, and then cursed himself as his control wavered and
threatened to break.
"Been
there...done that. Came back and brought
a friend," the man's eyes lost focus for a moment. "That's the problem. I'm eating for two, now."
No fear,
Simeon had told him. Without the
fear, they can't control you. You
control. Not them. Skinner steadied himself, staring directly
into the eyes of his captor. "You
can't hurt me."
The man's eyes
widened. "You're amazingly
strong. In a fair fight, I do think you
could probably take me." His lips
twisted, bitterness turned inward.
"Too bad for you. I never
fight fair."
With an augmented
movement so swift Skinner barely had time to register the knife before a
bright, slicing pain scored a line across his chest.
Something
overwhelming and primitive responded to the pain. His fear leaped out of control, freezing his muscles with a
paralyzing dread. The Sime's tentacles
still gripped him, but he couldn't have moved, could barely breath. His arms tingled with the contact. The feel of it was alien, terrifying all on
its own, but somehow...
"I've never
zlinned anyone like you before, Gen. I
know you aren't in any position to appreciate it, but later on you'll be glad
for it. Glad it was me. I wish I could take my time with you, big
man."
A keen escaped
his lips. One of the tentacles shifted,
caressing his jaw, his throat.
Everywhere it touched, an electric tingle ran through Skinner’s
nerves. His body felt weak, like he was
melting from the inside. His skin felt
like a raw, exposed nerve.
So this is what
it feels like to die, stripped of selyn.
It wasn't anything like he had expected. Why aren't I screaming?
They always scream... It was
getting hard to think, as if his ability to think was being stripped away with
his selyn.
"Delicious." The man's eyes half closed with
pleasure. "Wish I had the leisure
to enjoy this as much as it deserves, but I don't have that kind of
control. Let’s finish this." He
leaned forward and pressed warm, hard lips to Skinner's. Skinner tensed, expecting the agony that he
knew was coming, but the man only teased at his lips with teeth and tongue. His breath smelled of mint.
"C'mon big
man. Let's get this caravan on the
road. This isn't even the best
part." Skinner felt the drawstring
of his trousers being opened. At this,
he began to struggle again, terror rising like vomit in his throat. No, not
that. He'd heard stories about how
the Freebase Raiders toyed with their prey, mutilating them sexually to
increase the agony of being taken.
The rough-spun
cotton trousers were dragged down, exposing his legs to the cold air. He shivered as the flexible tentacles
explored his skin, slipping beneath the thin cotton of his undergarments.
The sensation of
that smooth skin sliding over his most intimate flesh made him fight to keep
from screaming, torn between terror and unwilling arousal. The man's eyes were on him, drinking in his
reactions.
"You're a
pervert," Skinner whispered.
"Abomination."
"You don't
know the half of it yet," the Sime told him, his voice turned low and
velvet, scorching Skinner's nerves.
"But you will in a moment."
Another tentacle
slid beneath his clothing. This one was
slippery; a Sime’s laterals self lubricated, the better to conduct selyn.
"Being a
pervert's not half bad. Oh, yeah, there
are a lot of people on both side of the border who'd shoot me on sight if they
knew what I liked to do to my prey."
The Sime chuckled. "But who
cares? I do as I please. Lucky for both of us."
A tentacle
wrapped itself around his cock, another slithered between his balls. The skin of it was much softer, much slicker
than a man's hand would have been. He
clenched his ass cheeks together as he felt it probing at the entrance. He gasped as the first tentacle squeezed his
cock, and at that moment of surprise the Sime's tentacle breached him.
"No. Don't," he moaned, feeling his ass
being forced open. The tentacle paused
for a moment, as if letting him adjust, then another one slid in beside the
first. He struggled, trying to escape
the burn as his sphincter was forcibly widened by the second tentacle.
The tentacles
touched something inside him; an unbearable pleasure made him cry out.
"Like that,
did you? Good. There’s more where that came from.” The tentacles twisted inside him, making
sparks shoot through his brain again and again, until his legs gave way and he
fell to his knees, and then to all fours, involuntarily opening himself up to
the invasion.
"Just one
more now..." another tentacle forced its way in, adding more pain and
pleasure as his anus was stretched widely. "...and we're ready to do
this." He felt one of the
tentacles slide in more deeply, up past the bend of his bowel. It made him feel sick and violated, feeling
those alien organs moving about inside him.
"Not many
people know where these points are," the Sime remarked. "It's all tentacle to arms and mouth to
mouth with them, proper position only, never deviate because...they never quite
manage to explain the why not.
Sheep. All of them. But not me." His breath blew across the hairs of Skinner’s back
teasingly. "I've found something
much better. I'm going to take your
selyn from the inside. And you’re going
to let me do it. That’s the secret, you
know. I have to make you want it as
badly as I do." The man licked his
throat, his lips taking the contact point over Skinner’s jugular.
Skinner screamed. The pleasure was unbearable. He struggled for control, reaching blindly
for anything to protect him from the desire to ram himself down on the Sime's
tentacles. With horror he realized that
he wanted more.
"You're a
fighter. "That's good. Need that..."
Skinner's cock
was throbbing, wrapped in a lightly squeezing coil of tentacle. He could feel the electric flow of selyn
flow increasing the sensitivity of all his parts. Even the ones inside.
The tentacles
writhed inside him; he began thrashing as the draw began in earnest. It built up, forcing scream after scream
from him, selyn flowing inside him like a full body orgasm that went on and on
until the flow finally died down.
He collapsed to
the dirt, no longer having the strength to hold his head up. So this is what it feels like to die. He was cold...so cold...
As his
consciousness slipped away he felt the Sime's tentacles trailing across his
buttocks, caressing them, and then darkness rolled over him.