Part of the NAUGHTY REUNIONS boxed-set, available for download September 25th
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Blurb:
Maj. Marisol Diaz journeyed to hell to bring home her wayward lover. Keeping him alive was going to be harder than she thought.
Genre/theme: Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Shape-shifter,
Copyright © Charlotte Boyett-Compo, 2015
Excerpt:
Previously in The WyndMaster’s Escape
When last we left our intrepid lovers, Maj. Marisol Diaz had
fled the planet Terra in a fit of pique—leaving privateer Santos Cabrera behind
at the ancient Mayan holy ground of Chichén Itzá. Infuriated over the intimate
relationship Santos had formed with the Mayan immortal Necahual and expecting
him to bring the evil woman back with him to their side of the Megaverse, Mari
had made a vow to never see Santos again.
Even though the great god Kulkucán who had arrived on the
Solstice to bless the people He had left behind on Terra had shown her and
Santos that they had once been husband and wife. They were Lord Xpiacoc and
Lady Xmucane from far beyond the stars. She and Santos were destined to be
together in all the lives they would been born into over the centuries.
But Santos had left Terra without Necahual. Having every
intention of finding Marisol to talk sense into the famed Riezell Guardian whom
he realized he loved more than his own life, he got sidetracked on Akhkhara. Distracted by a sultry siren who
had stroked his ego—among other things—and tossed him a wager his male ego
would not allow him to ignore.
In other words, he
thought with the wrong head which was typical of Santos Cabrera.
The problem with
that small indiscretion as he hunted for his one true love was that the
siren—posing as a Riezell Guardian—was in fact the pampered daughter of the Akhkharusian
emperor. She hadn’t really wanted him but rather the one of a kind Fiach
runabout that had been a gift to him from the Burgon of Aduaidh Prime. That and
exacting revenge on any man who held the distinction of being a legendary
WyndMaster. Santos not only lost the runabout to her wager but his freedom as
well when the emperor’s men arrested him for befouling the royal daughter.
Thankfully a member of the emperor’s court realized Santos
was one of the renowned war Hounds of the Burgon’s Kennel and thus was spared
the emasculation that was the punishment for his supposed crime. Instead,
Santos was sent to the prison on Hell-12—a brutal planet broiling beneath duel
suns.
Upon learning of Santos’ predicament, King Gabriel Leveche
of Storia—the infamous Lord Savidos and Kennelmaster for the Burgon—borrowed
Marisol from the Guardians to rescue her wayward lover from his savage
imprisonment.
Heartsick, terrified of what she would find once she reached
Hell-12, Marisol took flight in her own Fiach runabout to rush to her lover’s
aid.
Now that we’re all caught up on what came before, we join
Marisol somewhere in the Ceathrú Quadrant of the Ainmhi Galaxy…
Chapter One
Here she was bucking a nasty tailwind as she headed for
Helios-Twelve on a rescue mission for which she wasn’t sure she was prepared.
It had been eight months since she’d returned to Riezell from Terra. She’d
neither seen—nor heard—anything of Santos Cabrera until King Gabriel had sent
for her.
She’d tried to forget that Breasalian bastard. The gods knew
she had but the more she tried to push the good-looking son of a bitch out of
her mind the firmer he became entrenched. Knowing they had once—long, long
ago—been husband and wife ate at her subconscious like a mind worm. Like
getting a melody stuck in your head and being unable to force it out. Like
stepping in a big pile of Diabolusian warthog shit and trying to scrape it from
your boot.
Santos Cabrera was firmly entrenched and would not leave.
There’d been a dozen men since him. Twelve men that she’d
found attractive, sexy and had wanted. They’d had all the qualifications she
desired in bedmates: rugged, forceful, cocky but not enough to piss her off. On
first inspection that were ripe for her to pick.
Until she got them back to her quarters and began to find
ways in which they were lacking. Coming up short in comparison with Cabrera.
She’d sent them packing without so much as allowing them to
cop a feel.
And there were her myriad emotions regarding that swaggering
bastard. Dwelling on the things she loved about him.
His lopsided grin. The endearing habit he had of arching a
brow when he was entertained—lips twitching in a useless attempt at hiding his
amusement. That lock of dark hair that constantly fell in a soft curl over his
brow. Those long legs flowing down from a high, round hard as rock ass.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she groused. “You’re a stud muffin, Santos
Miguel Cabrera. I’ll grant you that.”
And not only handsome but dangerously so.
He was highly-trained, determined, disciplined and extremely
confident, she thought. So physically and spiritually powerful. There was
something preternaturally focused about the way he did everything—as though he
had visualized each and every move long before he made it. He knew precisely
how she would respond if he touched her in a certain way, in a certain place
with just the right amount of pressure or even pain. He seemed to be able to
see beyond the mundane to the very heart of the matter. He was a hunter—fierce
and aggressive—a loner, and she thought that might well be why he needed the
conquest of so many females. Mayhap he was searching for just the right one and
what she wouldn’t give to be that companion. Yet for all his steady
determination, he was a will-‘o-the-wisp, as ephemeral as that phantom mist and
just as impossible to pin down.
“Damn you to the Abyss, Cabrera,” she said on a long sigh.
“Why can’t I just forget about your sorry ass?”
She knew why, of course. She couldn’t get him out of her
mind because he had become as much a part of her as the air she breathed and
just as necessary, it seemed, to give her peace. Yet the enigma of him raked
across her mind with steel talons to scratch away at that fragile peace.
He wasn’t monogamous and didn’t pretend to be. He flirted
with every halfway decent looking split-tail with whom he came into contact. He
lied. He cheated. He flitted about the Megaverse as though it was his own
personal playground—gods-be-damn the consequences of his actions. He put his
life on the line time after time without a second thought.
Because when he looked at her with those big brown puppy dog
eyes…
“Fuck!” she snarled. “You dance with a demon and you’re
gonna get burned.”
Frustrated didn’t begin to cover how she felt.
Horny? You betcha. She was that in spades.
Lonely? That, too, even when she was in a room full of
people.
Missing him?
Oh, yeah.
Needing him? Needing to be with him?
Gods-be-damned right she needed the selfish, arrogant prick.
And then some.
Along with all that, she was worried.
Worried sick.
Concerned with what might have been done to him at the hands
of the Akhkharusian emperor or his henchmen. That he’d been taken to Hell-12
was not encouraging. It was a vile, dangerous place where men were sent to be
punished severely. Not as severely as at Utuk Xul, the infamous underground
penal complex, but severely enough. She’d gone there once to drop off a
prisoner and the world was horrendous. Hot as the hell for which it was named.
Constant daylight 24-7 and little to no rain during the 425 day year. They
didn’t call it the sweat box for nothing.
Glancing down at the monitor that King Gabriel had supplied
her, she stared at the blip that was the subcutaneous chip each Hound had been
given upon initiation into the Kennel. The blip was strong—which meant Cabrera
was alive but it didn’t say anything about his overall condition.
Or whether or not he still had that part of him women across
the Megaverse had enjoyed with such relish. Santos Cabrera being anything less
than the supreme, confident and sexy alpha male he’d always been was a
terrifying thought.
She drew in a ragged breath.
“Be all right, Santi,” she whispered. “Please be all right.
I’m coming for you, babe. Just hang on.”
*****
Helios-Twelve:
The Burning Lands
He shook his head as he dropped his knee to the scalding
sand. Gods, it burned through his pants like acid but he didn’t have the
strength to push back to his feet. Eyes closed against the stinging salty sweat
dripping into them, chin to his chest, gasping for breath, he rocked back on
his ass until he was resting on his heels.
“Marisol,” he whispered then fell to his side. He drew in on
himself—the scorching sand burning him alive—wrapped his arms around his bent
knees and began to shake from the excruciating pain.
But he could go no farther. Could not take another step. His
energy, his spirit, his very will to live had been sucked from him along with
every ounce of moisture.
Her face passed before his closed eyes and he held onto it
for as long as he could. It was the only salvation he had in this hellish
place. The only thing that brought him a modicum of peace in these last moments
of his life. He was rapidly losing consciousness and he knew when the darkness
came, it would last forever. Yet he knew he would take her name and her face
down with him into that eternal stygian nothingness. Her flickering image would
be his only companion in the Underworld. The woman who had been his destiny.
The woman he had thrown away.
Or who had thrown him away. It didn’t matter which it had
been now. Either way he had lost her. The only good thing he’d ever had. The
only happiness he would ever know. She could have saved him. Now he was so lost
no one could save him. Dying as alone as he had lived.
*****
“No!” Marisol gasped. The tracking device that was
monitoring the subcutaneous chip housed inside Santos was fading, pulsing
slower and slower. A red warning was throbbing around the indicator. That was
not a good sign. That meant he was…
He was dying. She knew it as surely as she pushed the Fiach
into a steep dive over the red planet of Helios-Twelve. Beneath the belly of
the runabout the dunes stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions. She’d
already passed over the penal colony camp miles to the south as she tracked the
blip that led into the very interior of the inhospitable desert.
“Hang on, baby,” she said. “Just hang on a little bit
longer.”
What the hell was he doing way out here? She wondered. He
wouldn’t have tried to escape. He was too smart for that. He’d know there was
nowhere for him to run. No place to hide on this barren world. The only thing
on Hell-12 was the penal colony. Trekking into the desert where there was no
water, no vegetation and no shade was suicide and Santos Cabrera wasn’t the
type to off himself. He was too practical. Too arrogant. Too sure of himself.
Too greedy for life and all that it could give him. He wouldn’t have gone
voluntarily into the cauldron of the desert but he might have been taken there.
“Someone brought you out here and left you,” she snarled.
“And if it’s the last thing I do this side of the Abyss, I’m going to find out
who and end his fucking life.”
She was close to where the signal was originating and she
slowed the mighty Fiach, pushed it lower to the ground until she was all but
skimming the sand. The underside of the craft was inches from the planet’s
surface and the runabout was kicking up a boiling cloud of red dust in its wake.
“Where are you, Santi?” she asked, straining to see through
the shimmering haze of heat. The light was so bright it hurt her eyes even
through the protection of the solar film on the windscreen. “Come on, sweetie.
Where the hell are you?”
Miles and miles of nothing but endless dunes stretched out
beyond the nose of the Fiach. One glance at the heat sensor on the control
panel told her the outside temperature was dangerously high. No one could live
long in such interminable heat.
“Damn it, Cabrera. Don’t you dare have fallen into some
fucking quicksand thing and been swallowed up!”
She looked down at the tracking device. The red glow was
barely moving. Once it stopped, so had the heart of the man whose vital signs
it was monitoring.
Then she saw a dark blotch in the midst of a red dune off to
starboard and knew it had to be him. There was no animal life on Helios-Twelve,
no indigenous life of any kind save the wretched souls—inmates and guards
alike—at the prison miles from where she was.
Throttling down even more, she realized she shouldn’t get
too close for the wash from the downdraft of the propulsion pods beneath the
craft would send blistering sand all over the still form to cut him as easily
as diamond to glass. Impatiently, she lowered her craft—engaging the webs on
the struts to prevent the Fiach from sinking into the powder—and came to rest
about eighty feet from where he lay.
Unmoving, curled in on himself in a fetal position.
She had the hatch open, gangway down before the engines
could throttle all the way down. She flew off the corrugated metal ramp as she
raced toward him. It was him. She’d know that curly black hair anywhere. The
build. The dark umber of his skin. Wading through the sand felt as though she
were dragging her feet through thick mud, she cartwheeled her arms to keep from
pitching to the burning surface. When she reached him, she went to her knees
beside him with tears streaking down her cheeks.
“Merciful Morrigunia!” she gasped as the heat from the sand
seared her knees.
His flesh was blistered over nose and forehead, the backs of
his hands, the tops of his feet. The rest of what skin she could see was
turning red. She could see his chest moving slowly and knew he was alive but
his cracked lips and labored breathing scared the shit out of her.
“I’m here, Santi. I’m here. Just hang on, baby. Please hang
on.”
