Blood and Madness

by Michael Clement

  Mog always knew the truth.

  I hated him because more than anything… I wanted to be him.

  And, I didn’t want anyone to imprison him.

  “Who is holding my father?” I demanded as Taesa moved closer to me. She wasn’t afraid of the Bride like she was of the Malignant Lady. Something about Azlin terrified her.

  The tall Gobliness smiled.

  “The exiled Lady of Foulmire has taken your father.”

  Fuck.

  Of course, she did.

  “Exiled?” Azlin murmured. I could tell that she wanted to know more, but getting information from Goblins was… below her.

  The Gobliness smiled and ignored her.

  “Why is he being held?” I asked.

  “Felmorna seeks to transform Columbia into her new Desmese,” she answered. “Mog opposed her, claiming that the land was his.”

  Yep. That sounded like my father. It had never mattered to him how big an obstacle was. He simply pounded away at it until it either moved or was destroyed.

  “Where is she holding him?”

  The Hollow Bride just smiled at me. Her black forked tongue slithered out and tasted the air. Then, it slipped back in.

  Goblins were not supposed to have long black tongues, especially forked ones.

  The silence kept going until I realized that she wanted something for the information.

  “I have nothing that you could possibly want,” I said, holding my hands out to show her what I had.

  Dark Lady, I hoped that she didn’t ask for the grimoire. I could feel it stuffed into my waistband. If she asked for it, would I give it to her?

  Fuck. I didn’t know.

  What could she want?

  I thought about it for a few minutes.

  Felmorna would probably imprison Dad wherever she was holding the girls. It wasn’t a coincidence that ‘my’ women had been taken if she was already holding Dad. Capturing Brynn, and attacking me, was probably a bonus on top of killing Azlin.

  Then, I realized that I didn’t need to ask her where Dad was being held. I could find him anytime that I wanted too.

  I just had to focus on the girl’s and follow their mental scent.

  - 8 -

  The Gobliness nodded, seeing that I had answered my own question. She had wanted nothing more than for me to think on my own.

  “Felmorna will kill you,” she said. “Compared to her, you are only a child playing with a broken tricycle. She will swat you down as easily as I could.”

  Well, that bolstered my confidence.

  “Why are you helping me, then?” I asked.

  The Bride smiled.

  “The enemy of my enemy… is my tool.”

  Nice.

  How Machiavellian of her.

  “Taking Mog away from her will cripple the Lady of the Plants position in the city.”

  Then, she grinned again.

  “And, removing the Heir of the House of the Snake from her grasp, will weaken her as well.”

  I nodded.

  She wasn’t trying to help me, per se. The Bride was only helping herself.

  “You will need more power in order to slip into her Domain,” the Bride decreed. “You are woefully lacking in the necessary spells and abilities.”

  She was right. Besides my stone-skin and hellfire, I wasn’t ready to take on a heavy hitter. Yes, my skin blocked some magic, and it could heal me, but I needed more.

  The Bride held up an arm bone, specifically a humerus. Blister had been a stickler in anatomy. He had told me that a Mage needed to know precisely what bone to harvest from a sacrifice. Thankfully, he died before he made me collect one.

  But, he had killed people.

  And I had helped him.

  Shaking my head, I sealed that thought away and focused on the bone. It was old, yellowing with age, and covered in black mold here and there.

  The Bride had carved runes directly onto the arm bone. Power drifted off the old bone like the scent of a steak dinner.

  My mouth salivated, but what use was it?

  “What am I supposed to do with that?” I demanded.

  Azlin snickered.

  I scowled at her and then looked back at the Bride.

  “It is the arm bone of a human mage,” she said with a wicked look in her eyes. “His name was Hollis Wood, and he came to Columbia to court me.”

  I looked at her with a stunned expression.

  Court her?

  The Gobliness nodded.

  “Hollis was a Necromancer of dubious power, but of great wealth. He rained gifts upon me, many of which I still have.”

  The Bride smiled and unconsciously rubbed a black, onyx ring on her pointer finger.

  “When I murdered him, I pressed all of his magic into this arm bone, concentrating his power and harnessing it much better than he ever could have.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  The words just spilled out of my mouth without thinking about the consequences.

  “I found him in bed with my sisters, all three of them.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Goblins rarely cared about things like that. Almost every Goblin male had multiple wives. The Dark was dangerous. Having only one wife to raise children was foolish. Only a harem had a chance of producing enough heirs.

  “I hate them,” she revealed. “Hollis could have fucked anyone else, and I wouldn’t have cared. But, not them. So, I killed them all.”

  That I could understand.

  Holding the bone out to me, she said, “I can exchange your arm bone for his.”

  Just as simple as that.

  More power.

  “What is the cost?” I asked, knowing that there was always a cost.

  “The bone comes with power baked into it,” she explained, ignoring my question. “I have carved spells into its length, to strengthen Hollis’s magic and to give you immediate access to spells that normally, you wouldn’t be able to cast.”

  She was buttering me up and baiting the hook.

  “It holds magic that will let you walk in the darkness without being seen or heard. Curses to awaken the dead and command their obedience. And, hexes to unlock doors or spell wards so that nothing, and no one, will stop you from seeing what they hide behind their locks.”

  Chuckling The Bride added, “You will be able to walk through an area, leaving no scent or evidence of your presence. Tracking your scent will be impossible.”

  Finishing with a flourish, she said, “And, you will be able to climb like a spider, scurrying across a ceiling or up a wall with ease.”

  All of that sounded good, but I knew that she wasn’t just going to give it to me. It had taken her time and effort to create that bone relic. She wouldn’t just give it to me for free, even if the Bride considered me her tool and weapon.

  I held up my hand.

  “What is the cost?”

  The bride lowered the bone of her murdered lover.

  “It has been a long time… since I had a lover.”

  Smiling with her rotted teeth, she said, “And, I am lonely.”

  - 9 -

  Taesa growled, and Azlin laughed.

  I wilted inside.

  Fucking the Bride sounded awful. She was quite possibly the ugliest woman that I had ever seen. And, she smelled like rotting assholes.

  But, the magic in that arm bone was so tempting.

  It wouldn’t make me any more of a mage than I was now. The runes carved into it did not differ from the hex marks that flowed up and down my back, courtesy of Blister. But, I wanted to cast my own spells, not use hexes created by other Mages.

  I looked at the bone and then back at her dried up tits.

  Dammit.

  I did not want to touch those.

  Her forehead wiggled. I stared at it in shock. It shook like a drunk squirrel that was tied up in a sack. First one side pulsed, then the other. Then, the whole fucking things moved and twisted on its own.

  That did it.

  I was no
t fucking anything like that, no matter what the prize.

  The Bride laughed. “You are so easy to manipulate. I know that you don’t desire… this body.”

  She touched her chest, caressing her own dried up sacks of tits.

  “But… this one?” she murmured. “This one will be a different story.”

  The Bride snapped her fingers. Two huge Goblins with midnight blue skin entered the light created by the dying locomotive. Their long white hair glowed in the firelight. Behind the second one, a long coffle of women appeared.

  Naked.

  Beautiful.

  Women.

  Just seeing one… was mind-blowing.

  All of them together was an orgy in the making. My mind spasmed with lust.

  Then, I noticed their eyes.

  Not one of the women was seeing me. They were in a drug-induced state of catatonia. The only thing that kept them walking was the chain that dragged them along.

  “I molded their flesh until they were the epitome of male desire,” the Bride murmured.

  She strutted up to the first slave, because that was what they were, and placed her talon covered hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  Dark magic began to seep out of the Gobliness’s hands. It flowed over the woman, but ever so slowly. The slave’s skin began to turn green, and then black, rotting before my eyes.

  I couldn’t stop watching. It was horrifying but mesmerizing. And not one peep came out of the girl’s mouth, as she began to disintegrate.

  As the woman’s flesh turned black, the Brides turned...

  Jesus.

  The Bride’s skin began to mimic the dying’s slaves healthy flesh. Pale Caucasian skin flowed over the Bride’s gaunt frame. Curves grew, as the slave crumpled. The Bride’s breast became full and lush, pressing out with eye-popping fascination. Long blonde hair replaced the Gobliness’s black mane.

  Kneeling, the Bride’s green eyes looked up at me with seduction brimming in their wicked depths.

  I lost control of my magic, flowing from stone to flesh without a thought. Hell, I barely even noticed.

  Only a ragged pair of pants concealed my engorged member.

  Dammit.

  I was so hard that I tented my pants in the front.

  But, that erection stuttered and died when I looked at the desiccated slave who collapsed to the ground. A cloud of dust rose off of her skin as her body continued to decay… until only bones remained.

  Shit.

  The Bride ate her. Just like she ate Hollis and her sisters, I bet. And, she did it… just to look prettier. So that I’d fuck her.

  The devil inside of my soul wondered how long the transformation would last, while the angel within me still looked at her with disgust. The only problem was… the angel was tiny.

  “A few hours,” the Bride mentioned, reading my mind as she stretched in her new skin.

  Beautiful.

  But, under that flesh was a deadly monster.

  And, how had she known that she would need the slaves?

  Setup.

  It was all a setup.

  The Bride shook her head. “I always bring them with me.” With a shrug, she added, “I never know when I will get hungry, and I like beautiful, delicate flesh to eat.”

  “I can’t,” I stuttered, thinking about the women I cared about. Several of them were injured, and a monster was holding them captive. Spending a night with The Bride felt like… betrayal.

  “You will… if you want the power to save them,” she snapped.

  - 10 -

  Smiling, The Bride moved closer to me.

  Dammit, she jiggled in all of my favorite ways. Her hips and breasts formed a perfect hourglass. Tight, strong abs glistened in the firelight.

  And… she was a blonde down below as well.

  “Call me… Summer,” she murmured.

  I could feel sex dripping off of her skin.

  Hell, I could smell it leaking out of her.

  “We don’t need that bone,” Taesa hissed, pulling me back. “We can save the others without her, or we can just leave and abandon them all.”

  “I want…”

  “You want to fuck her,” the Pale Witch seethed.

  I turned and looked at her. What was going on? She was supposed to feel my emotions and then want what I wanted.

  But, this was the opposite of that.

  “The Taming spell changes with time,” Azlin said with a grin. “If you don’t reinforce it… then, your bitches will start to think on their own again.”

  Then, the Malignant Lady began chuckling. “It is so… time consuming, keeping them as simple fuck buddies.”

  Well… shit. That wasn’t great news. Most of my women were serial killers and murderesses. I needed them to want to be with me, or they would murder me in my sleep.

  Dammit.

  I would have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  Turning to Taesa, I said, “We need help, freeing the others. I’m not abandoning them.”

  Taesa snarled. “Why? They aren’t a better fuck than me!”

  I looked at her in the doctor’s body and tried not to laugh. If she had been here, in her own flesh, I might have agreed. But, in a zombie’s flesh, not so much.

  “I want the magic,” I admitted.

  There, I said it. I wanted more magic.

  Hell, I wanted to be the most powerful mage to ever live. Every wizard felt the same. Magic was addictive. The more that I had, the more that I wanted, even if it was a canned spell, instead of one inscribed in my sigils.

  I wanted to have so much magic that no one would ever fuck with me, or my women again. And, if they did, then I would destroy them.

  “It isn’t worth the price,” she growled.

  I pointed at… Summer.

  “Fucking that… won’t be hard.”

  “She just killed someone so she could be pretty for a few hours,” Taesa snapped.

  “You do it every day,” I declared.

  Taesa looked at me, stunned.

  “You’re living inside of someone else’s flesh that you ate and wore as a coat,” I yelled. “Where do you get off judging me, or her?”

  Taesa took a step back.

  Then, she started to cry.

  Before I could say a word, she ran off into the darkness.

  Fuck.

  I completely mishandled that.

  Summer’s hand touched my shoulder.

  I turned back to her. She was only inches away from me.

  “Don’t do it,” Azlin murmured.

  I glanced at her.

  “One kiss is all that it will take,” she said with a grin. “Then, you’ll be her toy.”

  I took a step away from the Gobliness.

  Summer bit her lower lip and pouted. Then, she slid her hands, suggestively up and down her perfectly toned body, touching all of my favorite parts.

  Dammit.

  Her breasts were huge. I wanted to suck on those nipples so bad that I could scream.

  “Three times,” she murmured. “Climax me three times, and the bone is yours.”

  “And, then I will be yours as well,” I snapped.

  But the smell coming off of her was so arousing. I was starting to forget that a pack of Goblins were watching us.

  That made me wonder what her ass looked like.

  Dammit, I nearly swore out loud. I wanted to pull her body close to me and squeeze that ass.

  The Bride smiled.

  “Only my bite will make you mine forever,” she murmured, “and you are already marked.”

  Her fingers slid across my skin, touching Hana’s bite mark.

  “She is a strong-willed one, isn’t she,” the Bride murmured in my ear. “Your… Hana.”