Seeing this, Sip-sip panicked, pushing away from Gazda—compelled by this growing fear to run, but the night ape’s fangs were set, and his freed hands slipped around to grip the back of Omag’s hideous head.
With this new purchase, the night ape savaged and ripped at the flesh and sinews beneath Sip-sip’s dripping jaws.
The crippled ape tried to swing the axe at Gazda’s head, but already his hands were growing numb with the loss of blood, and the slippery blade turned in his grip, and dropped to the ground just as Omag fell back on his knees, dragging the night ape upright.
As Sip-sip’s head grew light and his vision blurred, Gazda pulled his bloody face away from the gory ruin of his old enemy’s throat.
“Gazda is King of the Apes,” he grinned with a beard of blood drooling over his powerful chest. “Sip-sip is dead!”
Setting his hands to either side of the bull ape’s heavy skull, Gazda’s swelling muscles rippled as Omag’s torn and sundered throat gave away and his head pulled free of his body.
The crippled ape’s piggish eye glared a moment longer, hatred pouring out as blood showered from his ruined mouth.
Gazda kicked the ape’s corpse onto its back and set the severed head on its chest where he placed his foot beside it.
He threw his own regal head back, his black mane cascading over broad shoulders, and with arching spine and straining muscles he beat upon his mighty breast.
And let loose the victory cry of the bull ape.
For miles and miles, the very jungle trembled at the release of such power and passion, and brooding predators called short their hunts to run for cover with their prey.
Gazda was King of the Apes, and none remained to challenge him.
Moving then to Sip-sip’s captive, the night ape saw from the splayed position of her limbs that she had awakened during the battle before fainting again.
The female’s eyelids fluttered as he crept close and a blossom of red colored each cheek.
Gazda smiled and panted as he crouched over her full white bosom to watch it rise and fall. Hypnotic was the motion. The night ape hovered close in study while rubbing his enemy’s drying blood from his face, arms and chest.
He watched and his eyes soon grew dull as his breathing matched the female’s. The night ape found his wits slowing as exhaustion came upon him.
It was the day-weakness that afflicted him, amplified now as his battle wounds healed. He had also taken his fill of Sip-sip’s blood, and lethargy crept through his veins.
Casting around in the undergrowth, he knew he could not rest in such a place.
His enemy’s body would attract scavengers, and as the night ape studied the female’s soft features, he knew that she needed to rest and restore herself after the abduction and chase.
Gazda climbed slowly to his feet, crushing the sleep out of his eyes with his sinewy fists as he went to reclaim his knife from where it fell.
Then he returned to lift the female in his powerful arms.
Summoning what strength the sun had left him, he ran toward the nearest tree and clambered up the branches as though the female weighed no more than an infant.
Virginia’s eyes fluttered open and her mind was brought from dark dreams by the motion of her body, and the action of warm wind blowing across her face.
She was flying! But that notion quickly fell away as she felt the acute proximity of another body, this one naked, and she shuttered her eyes lest she give away her waking state.
A man was carrying her, so with eyes narrowed she looked up from where he held her to his muscular breast to gaze upon a creature of truly heroic proportion and line.
She saw the straight nose and high cheekbones of an aquiline face, perfectly set upon a rounded skull beset with long curling black locks and mounted on a neck formed from columns of dense muscle and covered with a fine white skin that resembled an elastic film of marble or ivory.
Like a statue, for so he looked, yes. This man was like statuary come to life, flexible but of stone or sterner stuff—he should have adorned some Roman temple or coliseum—that was it, a gladiatorial ring of combat.
This man brimmed with wild passion colored by the feral gleam in his almond-shaped eyes, and was hinted at through the splendid arch of thick black brows. A dark red scar gleamed at his precipitous hairline, echoing the fierce smile on his full lips.
Something about this marvelous man suited the vaulted nature that spread out around them like a living work of art, in manifold levels arching over them cathedral-like, and sweeping in all directions of the compass—a great, savage altar upon which this man fit uncompromisingly, set in its green filigree like a sculpted shaft of ivory.
A wild man, born of a wild place. And was he more than that?
She had seen him fight. Just a glimpse was all her psyche could accept of the primordial battle before she fainted. But she had seen this splendid man in combat with a demonic beast of hideous intelligence that had no place in nature or recorded time.
Just a glimpse as the pair had fought, before this man had locked his powerful white teeth on the monster’s throat!
She had swooned, only to awaken in his flexing arms as he moved with her through the canopy. From branch to vine and back again he leapt, carrying her like a babe in his long, strong arms.
Flying they were, almost—flying through his green heaven.
But such power in a living being, she realized could only be the work of God—so different was it from the ugly, leering potency she’d felt and seen radiating from her monstrous captor.
The wretched demon had leapt out of the shadows when she was running from
