Page 16 of Finding Her Heart
All eyes on the Orki, Annabell moved in Lurann's direction. This would end in death, but not Lurann's or any of the women. They wanted to be out of the way, but Annabell also wanted to see it. The Orki would make the murderers pay for what they had done.
"We need to get out of here," Lurann mouthed, pulling Annabell close. The tension in the room rose as Boss tried to negotiate with the dark-skinned Orki. His war beast stepped forward, nose lifted, scenting.
"No, I want to see." Annabell couldn't take her eyes off the scene. She remembered this Orki. There were scars on his cheek and he lacked the tusks some of the other's had. He had come into town to trade once or twice.
"We can take the back while they are distracted," Lurann said, taking Annabell's hand and giving her little choice. She motioned to as many women as she could, trying to get them to leave before the battle started. Eyes all on the biggest threats in the room, none of the men tried to stop them from taking the exit that opened up by the bakehouse.
They found raider bodies out there, another of the Originals, with two of the big wolf-faced war beasts. Lurann shook with fear. Older than Annabell, but slightly shorter, her body lean where Annabell carried muscle and softness, she clung like a fearful child. "We have to get away from here."
"They've killed the raiders. I think it's going to be okay." Annabell patted the other woman's hand, hoping she would stop her clutching. The tug and pull of unwanted man hands the last couple of days had left Annabell bruised up and down her arms.
"It's gone from bad to worse. Men I know how to deal with. But these are not men. They never smile. They don't act like men. They killed a friend of your brother's!"
"That was so long ago, and that man broke the Peace Law. Will they never be forgiven for following through on their own laws? The Orki have come. And those men you were kissing are dead!" She hadn't meant to say it. She knew that Lurann hadn't wanted the hands of murderers on her. She couldn't have.
Lurann stopped short, looking at a man slumped against the corner of the left bakehouse. Nearly sliced in half, fresh blood everywhere, the smell of his guts ripe in the night air. Kneeling down, she grabbed a handful of greasy-looking hair on the head, lifting so that she could see his face. "You're right."
Seconds ticked by. Annabell standing and Lurann kneeling, looking into the dead eyes of the man who had bitten her neck hard enough to bruise and bleed. "You are. The Orki have come and all the men are dead. You are dead. You are all dead. And you can't hurt me. You can't hurt anyone anymore."
She spat in the face of the corpse before throwing it away from her. The body slipped in the bloodied dirt, cut so deep that the pieces separated with a disgusting noise. Lurann stood up, taking Annabell's hand, her grip lighter.
Something had happened. Annabell wasn't sure what, but the woman who took her hand was the confident, standoffish woman that Annabell had always known and not the frightened child of moments before.
Lurann's parents were late settlers to the village. They applied for a home when they married, but were not approved and able to take up residence until after their daughter was past her toddler years. As a founding town, Righteous Way was the oldest on the Peace River, with few fresh families. Lurann's parents won a lottery to get a house already built. There was a stiff superiority to Lurann that sweetened around men. As a girl, Annabell watched Lurann grab the attention of her brothers, like she was a cake they couldn't take their eyes from.
"You're right. Of course. The Orki look like monsters and though they do take brides, they offer first, don't they?"
"Only if the woman is young. The Orki only have one woman. They will carry away a woman who has no family to tell them no, but she is treated like a princess in a fairy tale."
"How do you know so much?" Lurann rubbed her free hand over her face. She was calmer now, but Annabell saw a tremor.
They walked away from the bakehouse and Gathering Lodge, the Orki outside doing nothing but watching them. Her composure returned. When the war beasts lifted their heads to sniff the air, Lurann moved faster. Walking in the direction of her house, jumping at the shadows caused the bright double moon, another war beast coming from that direction stopped them. The noises it made brought distressed sounds from Lurann.
The war beasts were huge, strange looking. Dangerous. But Annabell knew they would never hurt a woman without cause. "It's okay."
"I told Kejere I would do what I could. He told me to take care of you," Lurann said, trying to keep her voice steady.
"You did. You kept me ugly just long enough," Annabell agreed.
"It is going to eat us."
"No, we will be fine. But I don't think we should try to go to your house right now. Let's go back to the Gathering House."
"That place," Lurann breathed.
"They are all dead. They can't hurt anyone anymore," Annabell echoed.
Lurann straightened her shoulders. "That's right, they can't."
Chapter 6
I Never Forgot You
The survivors didn't know what to think or do. Tall, thick bodies, monsterish faces. Walking, grunting, war-like beings with rock-toned skin, muscle, and violence. Lurann wasn't alone in her anxiety, the survivors of the massacre by the steel city outcasts disintegrated into instinctual fear in the presence of the Orki. The Originals rescued them, but the human women wept louder than they had for weeks.
The irrational reactions of her fellow humans irritated Annabell. She could still feel her face throb, the soreness of her marked-up arms, the pain in her entire body from lack of rest. Dirty, the smell of death, alcohol and bread yeast on her clothes, the loss and woe everywhere, Annabell had no patience for this behavior. Overwhelmed by the violence of the outsiders, none of them did a single damn thing to protect themselves. Not one of them tried to escape or save their loved ones. The raiders stripped them of power and forced them to turn on each other.
The last she saw of Benjere's Bo Bess, her eyes gawped wide with terror as the others forced her forward. The image would never leave Annabell's mind. And no one saw Bess again after she left that pit of hell in the bakehouse root cellar. Bess was dead. They had killed her.
