“Oh, is that so?” he asked before backhanding her across the face. As she spat blood onto one of her captors, he drew his dagger and held it to her neck.

“You keep that pretty mouth of yours shut,” he whispered. “I’ve humped corpses before, you little whore, and we’d all have hours of fun with yours before you turned cold.”

Qurrah watched his lover smile even as blood ran down her lips. He tightened his grip on the whip’s handle, knowing the one who held him was far too interested in Tessanna’s body to pay him any attention. The girl was playing games with them, with all of them.

“It’d be more than hours,” Tessanna said, licking the blood with her tongue. “I’m fire, you naughty little boy, pure fire. I’d burn you the second you put that little weed you call a prick inside me.”

Sparks of flame burst within her eyes. The leader glanced around, for the first time realizing he was not dealing with normal travelers. Qurrah saw this and chuckled. About damn time.

“What the abyss,” the leader said, pressing harder against her skin with his knife. Her hair caught flame, then her shoulders, her chest and her neck. The fire hid her nakedness. The men who held her screamed, the flesh of their hands seared black. The leader thrust his dagger only to have the cheap metal shatter. Fire leapt across the broken blade, burning a thin line up his arm. He tried to run but Tessanna was not done. She whispered a few words of magic, paralyzing him where he stood.

The man holding Qurrah fled. Qurrah whirled immediately, fire consuming his whip. He wrapped it about the fleeing man’s legs, tumbling him to the ground. The man screamed as the fire burned his ankles to the bone.

“Shut up,” Qurrah said. The necromancer hooked his fingers in bizarre directions and let his dark power flow. The bones in the man’s ankles snapped. The broken pieces tore out the black mess of flesh, animated with dark power. With a thought, he ended the man’s screams, shredding his throat with his own bones.