Black Ice-Completed
Chapter 24

Warning: Gore and violence once again in this chapter.

It felt like it was taking forever to get to the cabin until she finally came into view. All that remained was charred lumber and burning beams. Terror consumed her as she looked around for her aunt but found nothing and no one.

Giving a soft whimper, Nyota shifted and began looking for tracks in the dirt that she might miss if she looked as a wolf. She could see that a struggle had broken out, three separate foot prints, one belonging to her aunt and the other two were the tribesmen.

Following the trail as best as she could, exhaustion riding her far harder than before, but pushed on. Veronica needed Nyota and she was not going to let her down!

Nyota followed the trail until she came upon the big river. It was fifteen miles acros with rushing water that could drown a person in seconds.

The only logical explanation was there had been a boat waiting for the tribesmen and after waiting for the other four men, that had gone after Nyota and didn’t show up, had decided to leave.

Dejected, Nyota glared across the river where trees loomed high and birds that she wasn’t familiar with squawked loudly. Sighing, she turned back around and made her way to the two remaining men she had left alive. At least she hoped they were both alive. Nyota had no idea when the man with the one arm would pass from blood loss.

Picking her way back into the area where the men were, she felt nothing as the crows were just beginning to pick at the men when they noticed her and took to the trees to wait for their meal.

Walking over to the one armed man she growled in aggravation when she realized that he was now dead. Tossing him to the side, she marched to the other and wrapped her hand around the man’s neck, she shoved him up against a tree trunk and watched him scream in pain though no sound emerged due to her choking him.

“Where are they going?” she snarled, holding him in a chokehold before dropping him to the ground.

Wheezing out a breath he looked up at Nyota with a sneer, “You might as well kill me beca-“

Nyota cut him off as she grabbed him by the neck again, shaking him while she squeezed tighter, “Let’s get something straight. You will die and by my hand no less. The only thing you have to decide is if I kill you quickly or while you’re filled with pain,” she snarled as she shook him again so his whole body would vibrate until she threw him down to the ground with another snarl, “Now, where are your tribesmen going?”

She watched as the man tried to catch his breath from the shaking, the nerves in his broken back causing his whole body to shiver. But when he spat at her she shifted part of her hand into long claws and slashed them across his chest. The ragged cuts were nowhere near major arteries but they would burn fiercely, “Where are your tribesmen going?” she rumbled again.

“You will have to kill me! I will never betray my brothers!” he said, whimpering as pain shot through his body, rage and stubbornness evident on his face.

Nyota asked many times over the next several hours, each time the man didn’t answer she would slash him with her claws in a different area and when he was soaked in blood she began to pull out toenails or fingernails with her own fingers.

By the end, the man was crying form the pain that raged throughout his whole body. When Nyota asked once again, the man cried out, bloody spittle flying from his mouth, “You bitch! My brothers will come and when they do, they will avenge me tenfold!”

Nyota raised an eyebrow and slowly looked around before giving him a smirk, “You haven’t even figured it out yet,” she said as she softly caressed his bloody cheek, rubbing his open wounds.

The man whimpered but something about her smirk made him ask, “What do you mean?”

Nyota gave a mirthless laugh and slowly brought her hand away, “Your ‘brothers’ already left. They crossed the big river while you and the others tried to subdue me.”

“Liar!” the man stuttered and Nyota couldn’t help but laugh.

“If they were coming, they’d already have been here. In fact, they would have been here when I would have started with my question. Your brothers abandoned you,” she said simply as she tilted her head at him and smiled at his evident shock. Nyota waited while the man came to cope with the facts, and she watched as his disbelief transformed to rage then to sadness and back to rage. “Where are your tribesmen going?” she asked slowly when his eyes connected with hers.

The man spat once again but it wasn’t at Nyota, “They’re nothing to me! They’ll be taking the woman to Marais to sell, if she’s not sold to one of the swamp Kars, she’ll be taken to my homeland and sold there. Whether one of my people buys her or the wolves do is all in the God Kaseen’s hands! Now kill me so I can haunt those paovraf until they turn gray and into dust so I can drag them down to Aabaylon!”

Keeping her eyes locked onto his, he never felt her claws slide up under his chin and into his head.

After cleaning her hands and body in a nearby stream, she stumbled to her hidden cache and unburied the contents. But before she could really do anything else, exhaustion finally ate up the last of her energy and she collapsed with the sword grasped tightly in her hands.