Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 108: Prisoners Of War

"Stay, she-demon! Stay!"

Kelly stayed. The woman was by no doubt a Red Claw. Strikingly attractive, with large black eyes, a full mouth, high cheekbones, and rich ebony skin that indicated her ethnic descent. Her face was patterned from the nose upward in lacy swirls of red paint, like a masquerade mask defining her onyx eyes in exaggerated detail. Her lips were just as red, with twin lines running up over her cupid's bow to connect with the design over her nose. Her natural auburn red hair was braided in tight, individual strands that fell well past her waist and jingled together with the small metal rings that tied them off. A thick leather headband wrapped her forehead and adorned two delicate antlers that extended backward like an extra pair of ears fashioned from bone.

As for what she wore, it was even less than Kelly. She was practically naked beneath swathes of lacy red body paint and a belt with dangling bullet casings painted red, barely camouflaging her crotch.

She was clearly frightened of Kelly, though willing to defend herself if push came to shove. Why would they have kidnapped her and posted her under the guard of someone who feared her? Under normal circumstances, Kelly would have tuned into her infamous compassion and played the diplomat to try and placate the woman. But they had darted Danse and now he was nowhere in sight. The Madness was still throbbing and clobbering inside her. She wasn't about to play nice until she found him, safe and sound.

"The man I was with, where is he!? What have you done with him!?"

As she moved onto her bare feet and began to rise, however unsteadily, the Red jabbed her spearpoint nearer, the whites of her eyes stark against the red rimming them. "Back! Back, demon!"

"Where is he!? WHERE!?"

"Back! BACK!"

Kelly reared like a viper. Not at all liking the fact that the woman refused to answer her, her alarms were screaming on overdrive and she was seconds away from lunging for the spear, when a canvas curtain violently parted to expel a group of three more tribals hurrying onto the scene. Two men, one woman, all armed.

The tallest and oldest of the men stepped forward with brandished crossbow, taking swift aim at Kelly. "Stand down, Fury Blood!"

Fury Blood. She had been called that before. By one of the slaves she had rescued in the Bleeding Abyss dungeons. Foo-Fighter, was it?

The woman holding her at spearpoint spoke without plucking her gaze from Kelly. "No. Do not provoke. Let she-demon be. I will handle her."

She wasn't about to be handled by anyone. Her patience was rubbed raw. Kelly took one step toward the spearhead, braving the way it tested her with another stab. "Answer me, and that spear won't end up in your skull."

The red woman didn't flinch, but the man with the crossbow flinched for her, refusing to resign his aim. "Heed her, Sightwalker."

Sightwalker.

A heavily clad woman on his right implored through a deep, beefy voice behind the barrel of her pipe shotgun, a variant Kelly had never seen before. "The she-demon will cast about her gaze of doom. Set us all afire."

If only I had that gaze of doom for real.

The Sightwalker made no effort to deny such demonic power in her, so Kelly played it up, letting her eyes labor over each one of them with confronting zeal, speaking in a voice of lazy, luxurious darkness. "It's been too long since I unleashed my gaze of doom..."

It spooked them. The armored woman spat something gutteral and lifted her shotgun up from the hip, the male archer on the leading man's left tensed and drew his shaft, and the leader spread his arms out in an effort to calm them, dropping his crossbow aim.