The warden might feel that way, but the look on the guards’ faces said they’d be more than happy to send him to death fifteen minutes early.
Caillen wheezed and coughed as they dragged him down the lackluster hallway and out into the common ground where spectators, dignitaries and newspeople waited to catch a glimpse of the legendary smuggler who, until now, had been more myth than real. The networks would make a fortune charging for this show.
Ironic really. He’d had to fight every minute of his life to scrape together two credits, but his death would make some asshole a nice rent payment for a few months.
I should have taken them up on the offer for a tranq. ’Cause right now as he walked up the platform and neared that gleaming blade, his panic was seriously setting in.
Ignore it.
How? Look around you, moron. You’re about to die. And there was at least a hundred people here to witness and gloat. Damn them all for their sadistic entertainment.
< size="3">Don’t think about it.
Something hard to do since he was being forced to kneel under a ten-foot blade that was shining with metallic bloodlust over his head.
You can do this…
I don’t want to die. I don’t. I need to live. I got plans. Well, not really, but I could make some. Some that don’t include my head rolling into a plastic bucket that still bears stains from the last execution.
He ground his teeth together to keep from begging for his life. He wouldn’t give them that satisfaction either.
“Any last words?”
Caillen glared at the warden. “Yeah… See you in hell.” He looked over to the group of three giggling young women standing in the dignitary section. One of them bore a striking resemblance to the warden. “And for the record… your daughter has a hot ass.”
She let out an excited shriek.
The warden’s face flushed with rage.
The guards tightened the noose again, choking off the rest of his words.
Caillen’s sight dimmed as his ears buzzed. Oh yeah, much better to strangle to death.
Not.
They forced him to his knees, then bent his head down on the arc that had been designed to cradle necks and hold them in place until the blade fell. Still, he choked as the guards refused to loosen the noose. He heard something loud, like maybe someone shouting, but he couldn’t tell what it was or where it came from.
It was almost over.
A few seconds more.
Just let go.
Relax…
He was too much of a fighter for that. He tried to hang on to every gasping, ragged pain-filled breath. But the fight was useless as he heard a loud clattering sound.
In the end, the darkness took him under.
3
Caillen came awake to a vicious pain throbbing around his throat and a worse one pounding in his head. Yeah, he was in hell. He had to be to hurt this badly.
“Is he coming around?”
He didn’t recognize the concerned tone that belonged to an older man.
Someone pried open his eyelid and rudely flashed a light in his eye that made his headache pound even harder. Groaning, he flinched, moving his head away.
Gently, the doctor turned his head back and held it in place while he continued to test the dilation of his eye. Good thing Caillen’s arms were strapped down or the man would be bleeding over the intrusion and that light would be shining out of an orifice the gods had never meant to hold it.
“He’s conscious.” The doctor lowered his voice as he stepped back from the bed and gave Caillen a reprieve from that vicious light. “Do you know who you are, son?”
He licked his dry lips and cleared his sore throat before he answered raggedly. “Caillen. Dagan.” Or rather that was who he’d been before they beheaded him.
Did the keepers of hell not know who was sent to them?
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
Caillen had to blink several times before the doctor’s pudgy phalanges came into focus. At least he hoped that’s what he was seeing…
If not, that man was real popular with women.
“Three.”
The doctor turned to his right and bowed low. “He’s awake and alert. But he’s still weak from the asphyxiation and the subsequent resuscitation.”
Resuscitation? From beheading? What the hell had they done to him and why would they bring him back?
More torture?
Gah, what did I do now?
Oh wait, that was too much to count. The point was what had they caught him doing now…
Caillen scowled as an older man stepped out of the shadows and approached his bed. Clean-shaven and well-kempt, he had finely boned features and vivid blue eyes. There was an air of refinement that seemed to emanate straight from the man’s DNA. Yeah, he was definitely an aristo. A major one at that.
Why would someone so high ranking be here to see a common piece of condemned filth?
The man’s lips trembled as his eyes misted—that concerned Caillen more than anything else. Was the man that angry or that upset?
Oh shit, don’t tell me I slept with his wife.
Or worse, his daughter.
The other thing Darling always complained about was that one day Caillen’s wandering penis was going to get him killed…