Army of the Goddess: A Bona Dea Novel (Stormflies Book 2) by Elizabeth N. Love Read Free Book Online Page A

Kyle's nose hard enough that blood sprayed out and the man staggered back. But the pain Jon hoped to inflict was all but ignored.
    “What are you doing? Help! Someone help me! Get off of me!”
    He flailed any free part of his body, hoping to delay whatever they had planned. He shouted as loud as he could, hoping to draw attention from someone outside, if anyone was nearby. Three men against one, Jon just wasn't strong enough to pull himself free, and his punches and kicks failed to break their hold.
    “This is the one?”
    “Yes. The Grand One showed him to us, the one the host left. She wants this one.” It was Kyle's voice, but it sounded gravelly and strange. Maybe Kyle had only been infected recently for him to sound so different at this moment.
    Kyle was responsible for that mixer. He was the one who reported it broken, the one who opened it up. A lure—and Jon had bitten the hook. The Stormflies wanted him because he had intimate contact with the woman who was now the Protectress. They wanted to get close to her. The Stormflies had a vendetta.
    They had him. They would infest him and use him to get what they wanted.
    He steeled himself against what he understood would be painful.
    I'm sorry, Axandra
, he said in his head.
I would never hurt you on purpose. You know I wouldn't.
    He clenched his eyes shut, but fingers dug into his flesh to pry open his left eye. He resisted as long as he could manage, but eventually his attackers prevailed. The light was so bright, his eyes watered profusely.
    Fire blazed against the soft tissue. His eye seemed to boil. Then the pain moved into the nerves of his skull so that his hair felt like hot wires on his scalp.
    Then the pain transmuted into euphoria and his entire body reacted by striking a rigid pose, the sensation where extreme pleasure meets satisfaction at the end of a sexual encounter. The Stormflies made sadistic love to their victims, trapping the human bodies in a realm of reward in intense pleasure and punishment in intense pain.
    The human race had no chance to defeat these tactics. Human bodies were weak and prone to distraction. In an instant, he understood why their people had already been enslaved for the last three hundred years.

Chapter 6 - Revelations
    20 th Unimont, 308 (Hopesday)
    The PAIN! PAIN!
    Why me? Just stop. Stop feeling. Let go. You don't need to go through this. Just let go.
    As the swirling cacophony of buzzes and sizzles swarmed, and the pain seared every nerve within her body, Axandra felt the tautness leave her muscles. For a euphoric instant, the pain receded completely, and the body sank upon the stone altar. Death meant freedom from physical form, but entrapment with the Stormflies.
    Her own whimpers woke Axandra from sleep. For a brief moment, her body refused to move. She feared the dream was true and the Prophets had her trapped in the Haven. She waited tensely for footsteps on stone, for thunder to roll through the air.
    With her eyes open, black and gray faded into one another. Shapes were all abstract illusions, globs of not-color in two dimensions that may have been a chair or cupboard or a vase of old flowers. She could not count the minutes that she lay there on her back staring at the gray static her dark room provided.
    The silence of the room, the softness of the bed, and the sweet night noise of the garden reminded her that the terror ended months ago. Fifty kiloms away, the rocky home of the Prophets sat abandoned. Without the protection of the Great Storm, the isolated subspecies moved elsewhere to find solitude. No village would take them in, not after the crimes they committed. She last heard they had sailed to an uninhabited island to the south. There was no proof to this rumor, yet she clung to the idea as an anchor to avoid drifting further into the sea of paranoia. She could not continue to heal if she thought the devils watched her every move.
    Trying to still the pounding of her heart, Axandra lay flat on her back