At some time during the night he woke to find a body pressed against his, warm and young and unmistakably female. He smiled to himself, thinking that before he left this place, he might have some fun. If he was careful, and didn't leave any marks, they would not know he had hurt her until after he had gone. With a smile and a contented sigh, Loclon pulled the girl closer and went back to sleep.
With daylight came the horror.
He had opened his eyes slowly, enjoying the feel of the naked body pressed against him. He ran his hand over her small breasts and her slender hips and then over her belly, reaching down between her thighs to pull her legs apart. He felt something sticky against his hand and cursed. He pulled his hand away and held it up to the light.
It was not blood on his fingers - it was pus.
He screamed, leaping from the rough pallet as the girl turned over. She was grotesque. Her face was ruined, half of it eaten away by the disease that devoured a person from the inside out. Her whole left side was covered with open sores that wept pus, and a clear sticky fluid that stained the rough sheets beneath her.
“Please...” the girl cried, tears streaming from her one good eye. Her pathetic cries made him want to vomit; the idea that he had touched her made him want to die.
He had leapt the wall into the colony of Malik's Curse sufferers.
Loclon screamed again, and he kept on screaming until a big man with a huge fist and half his face eaten away by the Curse burst into the hut and knocked him out cold.
He had been in hiding ever since. He avoided the small settlement and its disgusting inhabitants, sneaking in at night to find whatever scraps of food he could scavenge. The others knew he was out there, and the grotesque girl from the hut sometimes left scraps for him, perhaps in an attempt to coax him back into her bed. She had been quite pretty once, he supposed, but now she was just a husk that was being slowly consumed by a disease that had no cure. A disease that ate at the extremities and left the body covered in ulcers, and ate through one's internal organs until there was nothing left and the victim died an agonisingly painful death.
He peeled off his ragged clothes and checked his body every day, looking for some sign that he had contracted the disease, but so far he showed no symptoms. All he could do was prowl the island looking for a way off.
There was none.
It was the reason the victims of Malik's Curse were confined here.
He made one attempt to get back into the Karien compound, but the wall, which had been so easy to clamber over from the inside, was much steeper on the leeward side. A deep, empty moat surrounded it that made it impossible to climb without a rope. There was no rope to be had. So he had returned to his prowling, scavenging existence and gone back to trying to find another way off the island.
Loclon tossed restlessly and then sat up, unsure what had wakened him. He looked around in the darkness but could see nothing, so he scrambled on his hands and knees to the entrance of the small cave where he sheltered and looked out over the rocky beach. He saw a figure standing in the moonlight on the beach and scuttled out to get a closer look. Whoever it was, it appeared to be a woman, but he could not make out her identity from this distance. A bubble of excitement began to build in him.
The figure saw him stumbling across the beach and began to walk towards him. He raised his hand in greeting, certain that he had been rescued. The woman was tall and walked with an easy grace that showed no hint of the wasting disease. She was not one of them.
“Hello, Loclon.”
He froze at the sound of her voice as she stepped closer.
“R'shiel!”
“You sound surprised, Captain. You should have known I'd come for you.”
He studied her warily. She must have been drawing on her power - her eyes burned black as the night surrounding them. Her hair had grown out and was almost on her shoulders, ruffled gently by the sea breeze. It took him a while to work out what else was different about her. It wasn't her quiet air of confidence, or the power that radiated from her.
It was her lack of fear.
Loclon cautiously took a step back from her. “You've come for me?”
“Did you doubt that I would?”
Hope flared in him as he realised rescue was at hand. She would take him from this place. He would probably be dragged back to the Citadel in chains, but that was better than being here. Better than a slow, lingering death while he was eaten alive by his own body. He could escape eventually. Either along the way or once they got to the Citadel. It didn't really matter.
He nodded and held out his hands to her. “I'll come quietly. I won't resist.”
R'shiel studied him for a moment and then smiled. It chilled him to the core.
“Death told me once that evil is its own reward, Loclon. I understand what he meant now.”
“What are you talking about? I'm surrendering to you. Take me!”
“I don't want your surrender.”
“Then what do you want?” he screamed desperately.
“Vengeance,” she said softly.
“Then take it! Take me away from here! Take me back to the Citadel! Put me on trial! I'll confess. I'll tell them everything I did to you. They'll hang me R'shiel, you know that. Rape is a capital offence. You can stand there and watch me swing! You can gloat over my corpse! Take me back! GET ME OUT OF HERE!” He was blubbering and didn't care.
“No, I don't think so, Loclon.”
She turned away from him and began to walk back along the shore. The waves shone with phosphorescence as they slapped at the pebbly beach. He fell to his knees, sobbing with despair.
“You can't leave me here! Have mercy!”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder, her black eyes reflecting the shimmering waves. “Mercy?”
“Please, R'shiel. Take me back with you. I'll do whatever you want. I'll suffer as much as you want. Just get me off this damned island before the disease gets me!”
R'shiel stood there watching him on his knees, begging her for mercy. She had done this to him before. She had made him grovel like this at the Grimfield and once they were gone from this place, he would make her pay for that insult, too. But for now...
She was wavering. He could tell. She walked back towards him. Hope burned bright in his eyes. She was part Harshini, wasn't she? They were supposed to be unable to kill. Deep down, she didn't have what it took to make the killing stroke. That he was alive at all was proof of that. She'd been raised by the Sisterhood. She believed all that stuff about law and honour. She would not be able to turn her back on him.
But when he saw her face, he realised how wrong he was. There was no mercy in those alien black eyes. No pity. No compassion.
Nothing but cold, unrelenting contempt.
“I came here to send you to hell,” she said. “But I don't have to, do I? You're already there.”
He wasn't sure how to answer her; he wasn't even sure what she meant. She just stood there, staring at him with those alien black eyes...
Then the itching started. It was barely noticeable at first. He was too consumed by his fear of her to pay attention to it. It began in his fingertips, a niggling, annoying sensation that barely even distracted him. He rubbed his hands against his tattered trousers to relieve it, but it simply made the itching worse.