Death Row: The Hunter Read online

  A message from Ellora’s Cave, Inc. USA and Ellora’s Cave, Ltd. UK senior editor Cris Brashear: because this is a serial as opposed to a series, and because of the fact that THE HUNTER picks up where THE FUGITIVE left off, I highly suggest rereading Part I of the serial before commencing Part II if it’s been more than a few days since last reading it to keep the flow of the story and the suspense intact.

  Warm Regards,

  Crissy

  Warning:

  The following material contains strong sexual content meant for mature readers. “DEATH ROW: THE HUNTER” has been rated NC-17, erotic, by three individual reviewers. We strongly suggest storing this electronic file in a place where young readers not meant to view this ebook are unlikely to happen upon it. That said, enjoy…

  Chapter 17

  My Beloved Nellie,

  I see the way you look at me, the fear so apparent in your eyes, and it breaks my heart as nothing else could. I know what is happening to me, lass. I know that it’s just a matter of time before I am lost to you completely.

  Will you ever know how much I love you, Nellie? Will you ever remember all of those precious years we spent together as a normal mother and daughter? Will you remember the walks in the rain, and the snowball fights every Christmas in the Winter Dome of the biosphere? Will you remember the giggles we shared every Sunday morning when we watched the virtual cyber-toons together?

  Or will you remember me like this.

  Like…a monster.

  Oh, my beautiful Nellie, please don’t remember mommy this way…

  Sinead Kan,

  December 24, 2230

  Chapter 18

  January 9, 2250 A.D.

  When she was certain the coast was clear, Nellie motioned with her hand for Cyrus 12 to follow her toward the next set of large boulders. The formation of rocks, which she assumed had been scattered throughout the jungle by Underground dwellers for concealment purposes, was perhaps another four or five miles away by foot.

  She had known from her studies years back that the ancient Mayans had used the network of underground caves in their worship of the gods. She had not realized until the past two days just how many of these caves there were. It made the task of finding the Xibalba all the more difficult.

  Xibalba, she thought on a sigh. She didn’t even know if it existed or not. The word meant Underworld in the ancient Mayan tongue. The Mayans had believed that the mouths of the caves were the entrance to the spiritual underworld of the gods. Nellie just hoped that the mouths of one of these caves would prove to be the entrance to her own salvation.

  She traveled through the jungle in silence with her faithful droid at her side, surrounded by the sounds of nocturnal creatures rising from their slumber to hunt. Cyrus 12 stayed on constant alert for sub-human and hybrid animal activity, while Nellie remained in the lead, going in the direction of…

  She wasn’t certain. She only knew that her instincts were telling her she was headed in the right direction, and instincts were all that she had to go on at this point.

  If this Xibalba existed, she adamantly vowed to herself, then she would find it.

  * * * * *

  The next several days proved to be the hardest of Nellie’s life, and yet conversely, she became a more powerful woman for it. She grew stronger physically, learned how to feed and care for herself in an extreme environment, learned even how to wield deadly weapons to their best advantage.

  The days were long and hot, the nights cold and lonely. She was more thankful than ever for Cyrus 12’s companionship, realizing as she did that her droid was now the only manner of friend she would ever have—could ever afford to have.

  Some nights, even most nights perhaps, her mind would wander back to the Underground catacombs and to the mysterious man named Kerick who had stolen her away. As she lay beside the ever-vigilant Cyrus 12, her gaze staring unblinking into the makeshift embers of the dying fire they’d built for warmth, she wondered if he ever thought about her since she’d escaped him, or if he’d simply gone out and stolen another female as a replacement.

  She frowned, cursing herself as an idiot for even contemplating the question to begin with. Sweet Cyrus, did the answer really matter? Did she even care?

  Nellie sighed, her eyes feeling dried out from a prolonged lack of blinking. There was just something so solid about that man, so powerful. Ironically enough, the steel resolve and physical strength that had scared her so mightily when he’d first stolen her from the Altun Ha biosphere seemed as though they’d be a blessing now, an assurance that she’d live to see tomorrow instead of dying out here in the jungle tonight. She knew death could be lurking just around the next corner, could take her unawares at any given time…

  But sweet Kalast, that hardly meant she should think back on her captor! He had been interested in mastering her, in fucking her, not in helping her develop a serum, she reminded herself.

  Nellie took a deep breath and expelled it, then settled in next to Cyrus 12 under the animal furs. The droid wrapped a toned silver arm around her middle, offering silent comfort while the scientist slowly drifted off to sleep.

  There was no use in thinking back on the past, and especially not on the enigmatic Kerick. Chances are, Nellie knew, that she had already been replaced by another female captive anyway. But if she hadn’t…

  No. Even if she hadn’t been replaced she could never go back. Not just because he was bound to be angry with her for escaping after the trouble he’d gone through to capture her, but also because they had different, disparate goals.

  Kerick wanted sex. Nellie wanted a safe haven to work in while she developed the serum. And so she would continue down the path she had chosen, while praying to Cyrus that the path led to the Xibalba.

  Nellie closed her eyes on a sigh, telling herself not to think about it. She ignored the voice in her head that reminded her of how intrigued Kerick had seemed by her talk of the serum, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 19

  January 21, 2250 A.D.

  By the fourth week of Nellie’s disappearance, Kerick’s desire to recapture her became an all out obsession. She was all he could think about, all he ever dreamed about—all he wanted period.

  For fifteen years he had controlled his bodily needs, not even allowing himself to masturbate except for on the rarest of occasions. At the time he had needed to exert that physical and mental control over himself, for it had helped him to retain his sanity in Kong. And, he conceded, it had also helped him to keep from grieving over never thrusting inside of a woman again.

  But now he was free, a fact his body and mind refused to overlook. And the urge to mate, the urge to bury his cock deep inside of her tight, wet cunt, came upon him frequently and violently. His mental faculties felt no more advanced than an animal’s these days, as it seemed he was finding a place to be alone every other hour just so he could violently jack himself off.

  He needed Nellie, he mentally reiterated for the millionth time. He needed some information—anything—even the smallest of rumors to go on, and he would find her.

  As Kerick prowled toward the commons chamber—the Underground earthen room used as a communal dining place by seven or eight different tribes of outlaws who dwelled within these particular catacombs—he told himself he would make it through the meal long enough to ascertain if any of his men had picked up on Outside whisperings of Nellie, and then he would go. He couldn’t stand to be in the commons chamber longer than was necessary anyway, for he was damned tired of watching his brother fondle all over the female he’d claimed while Kerick had been forced into celibacy, separated from his own.

  Had he once thought it amusing when his seventeen-year-old brother had captured a wench for his own us
e? He grunted. When Kerick himself had possessed his own woman, yes he had found it amusing. Now that he was alone, however, the amusing had mystically devolved into the annoying. Suddenly he understood how Xavier must feel.

  Upon entering the commons chamber, the first thing Kerick saw was young Kieran standing over his claimed property, pounding into Karen’s pussy from behind like a battering ram. The wench was gasping from atop the stone table she’d been bent over, her breasts jiggling as she moaned during each hard thrust.

  Kieran’s eyes were closed as if concentrating intently on the feel of his captive’s cunt, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips as he pounded animalistically into her flesh from behind.

  Kerick’s eyes shuddered, lust coming upon him. He had a feeling he knew what he’d be doing after the meal, and he also had a feeling he knew who he would be doing it with—himself, he frowned.

  Sweet Cyrus he needed to find Nellie.

  But as lustful as he was, it was more than his need to own her, more even than his need to thrust inside of her and pound away at whim that made him obsessed with finding her. He was also terribly worried about her and was desperate to protect her.

  On the Outside, and especially in the Underground, rumors abounded like wildfire. Yet Kerick had heard no whispers of a female scientist on the run. It was as if Nellie had been erased from existence.

  But in his heart he knew she was alive. Knew, too, that he would find her. Only this time, when eventually he recaptured her, he would make no foolish mistakes. He would master her immediately.

  And he would make certain she never escaped him again.

  * * * * *

  It wasn’t until a bit later, a few minutes after Kieran’s lust had been properly satiated, that Kerick realized he now had a sister-in-law. When the young Master and his new wife sat down to eat, he saw that the wench was wearing nipple chains. The last time he had seen her that hadn’t been the case. Her nipples had been bare.

  So Kieran had managed to get the wench pregnant, he mused. She had to be with babe. Otherwise his brother wouldn’t have been able to marry her. In a world where males outnumbered females almost five hundred to one, the laws of neither the biospheres nor the Outside worlds would permit for a wench to be forcibly married to a male who couldn’t breed her.

  Kieran had proven his virility. And now his woman wore the nipple chains. No male save his brother would ever dare touch her again.

  Kerick’s eyes flicked down to his sister-in-law’s breasts. A thin gold hoop circled the base of each nipple, the thin metal bands serving to keep her nipples plumped up. A delicate gold chain ran from the post of one hoop to the post of the other, symbolically binding her from the touch of other males.

  His thoughts immediately returned to Nellie as a primordial jealousy knotted his insides. His brother now had the reassurance that no other male would ever touch his female. Kerick, on the other hand, had nothing.

  His jaw tightened as he broodingly studied the new couple. He had to find Nellie. Now.

  Kieran grinned as he flicked at one of his wife’s nipples. “Notice anything new on her, brother?”

  Despite his melancholy mood, a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. The urgency Kerick felt to recapture his female before another male took her didn’t lessen, yet he couldn’t help but to take a moment to share in his brother’s happiness. Kieran was to be a father. “Congratulations to you both,” he murmured. “And welcome to the family, Karen Riley.”

  His sister-in-law was polite enough to quietly murmur a thank-you to him, but she skittishly avoided his gaze—a fact Kerick found unsettling for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint. It was as if she was hiding something, or perhaps plotting something, and was worried he would see right through her.

  Or perhaps he was seeing conspiracies where they didn’t exist, he sighed. Ever since Nellie had fled from him, his grim mood had grown all the grimmer.

  Still, he would keep an eye on Karen Riley. A naïve male in the throes of an all-consuming lust and love (and who’d been seventeen-years-old for approximately five hours) could be fooled. Kerick could not.

  “She didn’t get her blood this moon cycle,” Kieran arrogantly informed him. The muscled arm that lay across his wife’s shoulder tightened, drawing her in closer to his side. “My babe is in her belly. Best birthday offering I’ve ever had.”

  Kerick’s gaze flicked towards the new bride. She was pale as a sheet and slightly shaky. Almost as if she was in shock from the realization that she was pregnant. What had the wench expected to happen when Kieran had been eagerly mounting her day and night? Surely she was old enough to know how babes came to be in a female’s belly. She had to be nearing forty, close to Kerick’s own age.

  “I’m happy for you, brother.” Kerick’s steel gaze trailed away from his sister-in-law’s and back to his younger sibling’s. “In truth, I am.”

  And, Kerick realized, he really was happy for him. Kieran had been deprived of everything growing up, including a home and most of his family. Their maternal grandmother had raised him, and had dutifully brought the younger Riley to visit Kerick in Kong once a year. She had been old and frail, but she had also been smart enough to never let the Hierarchy get wind of how Kerick and Kieran were related.

  Now their grandmother lay dead, her remains lodged deep within the belly of the earth. She had held on for as long as she could, but in the end old age and grief over having lost her only daughter to infection overtook her. While their grandmother had been alive, she had dutifully prayed to Cyrus every day, begging for a cure, pleading with the fates to spare her daughter…

  Margaret Riley had done the unthinkable and gone into a remission of sorts for many years. Yet inevitably, tragically, his mother’s illness had reclaimed her body and soul a final, shattering time. Kerick simply counted his blessings that Kieran had not picked up their mother’s infected gene. His brother had undergone extensive testing from Underworld scientists and was without a doubt clean.

  Kieran’s birth had been the result of a rape, of a male who had forced himself upon their mother until her belly had swollen with child. It was true that in their world forcing a wench to have sex was as commonplace as breathing, but nevertheless there were still rules governing the act. Kieran’s father had broken them all.

  The sadistic bastard had shown their mother no kindness. He hadn’t even married her after she’d ripened with child, insisting he’d never wed with an infected freak. He had even gone so far as to inform Margaret that he had enough yen to buy a biosphere-raised female whom he could breed, so he had no intention of ever laying eyes on Kieran after his birth.

  Not that his mother had given a yen, Kerick remembered. Margaret Riley had always been a fighter and pregnancy hadn’t changed that facet of her personality. If anything it had made her tougher and a thousand times more determined to invent a cure for her infection. But in the end she had been lost to them, Kerick had been so grief-stricken that he’d immediately taken out those he knew to be responsible for her regression, and Kieran had ended up being raised by their grandmother.

  Marion Riley, Kerick thought nostalgically; were it not for their grandmother, the brothers would be virtual strangers today. But she had intervened and had made it possible for them to develop their brotherly affection. She had dutifully sent virtual messages to Kong once bimonthly, allowing the brothers to speak to one another as if they had been occupying the same chamber. The wily wench had even managed to make the virtual messages untraceable so the Hierarchy could never find Kieran. Their grandmother had done all she could do and more, and for that Kerick would always hold her memory in the highest esteem.

  Kieran grinned, his next words breaking Kerick from his thoughts. “Alaisdair wants me to share her, you know. But I ain’t.” His smile devolved into a scowl. “I don’t share.”

  Kerick snorted at that. Kieran had obviously inherited his possessiveness. “I don’t blame you, brother,” he mumbled, his mind wandering back to Nel
lie as it was prone towards doing. “I don’t blame you at all.”

  Kieran sighed. “You’ll find her, Kerick. Nobody doubts it, you know.”

  Kerick nodded but said nothing. If it was possible to find her, he would. He just needed a lead, any lead…

  Xavier entered the communal stone chamber with a naked woman and her five Masters. Kerick immediately recognized the smiling and very pregnant female as Xavier’s younger sister Madra. Madra had been purchased with five hundred stolen yen by the Tomi family about a year ago, so she now served in the role of wife to the fifty-year-old patriarch of the clan, as well as to all four of his grown sons.

  By whom the babe in her belly had been sired of was anyone’s guess, for it went without saying that all five of her husbands had mounted her. It was common for brothers to pitch in their yen and buy a communal wife, the general feeling being that so long as the males were of the same direct bloodline it didn’t matter who sired the wench’s children for the babes would still be of their line.

  Kerick idly wondered how he’d grown to be such an oddity. Where most Underground men accepted, even expected, to share a wench, Kerick knew he’d kill any male who ever thought to touch Nellie.

  Nellie, he mentally sighed. It always came back to Nellie. She might have escaped, but he still considered her to be his possession. He had no idea why he was so obsessed with her, a wench he barely knew, but there it was.

  Perhaps it was because Nellie reminded him of his mother in fundamental ways—both were scientists, both were fighters. Perhaps he hoped that where he hadn’t been able to save Dr. Margaret Riley, he would be able to save Dr. Nellie Kan. That Nellie possessed an earthy, exotic lure didn’t exactly hurt matters, he conceded.

  Xavier motioned toward him, inducing one of Kerick’s eyebrows to raise slightly. He murmured to his brother that he would bring his birthday offering down to him later, then stood up and walked towards his longtime friend.