by Jamie Magee
Her breaths were short, but she still held her ground. “Now is not the time. You don’t understand what I have been through with that male! My split from Talon gives him free reign to do what he has always wanted—worse it gives whoever is in his Throng permission to come at me again. Vengeful whore!”
“You’ve met?” he asked ticking his chin up as his hands kept to their work.
When she didn’t answer, he asked. “Lately?”
“No.”
He paused his manifestations and let a look of disapproval soak up his expression.
“Just stop,” she said moving away from him. “I know what it looks and sounds like, but all I did was save a warrior. From the first second, I was the villain blamed for all their woes. Not once was I told what I had done or how I even managed it.”
“What do you know, then?”
“I told you, Scorpio favors Talon. Each time Talon and I have split for a long while, Scorpio vanishes. Most times I fall ill, drained.”
“Cursed.”
She nodded.
King arched a brow telling her to go on.
“Scorpio is worried about Talon, so he will call for Toril—his crazy bitch—to help him save Talon. And she may very well do so for all I fucking know, but what I do know is that she loathes me, and will do whatever she can to make me crumble. I do not need another loose cannon!”
“No,” he agreed. “You need to delegate. Zale has been collared by you. Understanding his debts and all the ways he has fucked us needs to be at the top of your list. And let’s not forget Akan, he could overrun you with mortal issues,” King dipped his head to catch her stare. “If someone can help Talon, let them.” He reached his arms around her and waited for her to melt against him. His lips brushed her brow. “I will never let anyone hurt you.”
“Even if I deserve it?” Even if I’m already cursed...
The laugh she heard deep in his chest caused a grin to bust free on her lips.
“You are rash, Love. And yes, I’m sure to some you deserve all the hells, but it’s not up to them. They are not your judge.”
She moved her arms around him and squeezed. What was so agitating was that if she had found Scorpio today, after having King once more, and opening her mind up to a past she had locked in a vault, nothing would happen the same way.
She might’ve even recognized him as a soul from a Throng. She would’ve seen him as a good omen, not a dark one. Her goal would have been to make him and his own as powerful as she could. Favored allies.
Now, though, she had burned far too many bridges and what could have been a powerful asset was karma rising to serve its due deliverance. King could say all the calm words he wanted, even promise to put armies before her, but it would do little good to calm her down and send her on her merry way.
Reveca didn’t trust the secrets Scorpio had kept over the past. For all she knew, he was biding his time until she had something to lose again. Perhaps he did have the blood of gods within him, and the knowing power saw this day forward.
Reveca’s arms tightened and she clung to King. She knew they were about to witness and endure a wicked ride that was nothing short of hell bound.
Demons were rising, the dead were walking, a lunatic shifter was free, and her Sons were barely holding on to the foundation she killed to give them.
Chapter Four
For two days, Scorpio had ridden nearly non-stop. The hum of the bike and the constant streaming scenery had lulled him into a state of calm that gave him time to reason with himself. So many times in the past, he had thought, ‘this is it.’ He’d felt the battle cry turn his gut as a rush soared through his entire being. All those times he had grieved the fact change was never easy, and always painful.
It was different this time. He wasn’t only sure; he knew he hadn’t felt this way in years. There was something fierce in the air that refused to be ignored.
When Scorpio had met Talon for a routine inventory swap months back, the nagging feeling to check on his boy was there for a reason. Talon looked like shit.
The unrest in Talon had nothing to do with Blackwater’s bullshit or their rivals Devils Den— those strife’s only filled the long days of an immortal’s life. It was in his eyes. Talon knew just like he knew every time before, that he was in for a world of hell. His witch was ‘bout to leave him again. Stoic as ever Talon handled the load of doom like a seasoned warrior who had seen it all.
Scorpio hated Reveca for it, he truly did. He hated it when anyone forced his hand. For one Creator given second, he wanted to feel like he had a choice in his existence. Scorpio never had a choice and likely never would. He was the effect to a cause that was foolish.
Day in and out he had planned for this uprising, the war at hand. Scorpio knew what pieces to play and when—that was the easy part. The part that would throw friction into the mix was emotions.
Always with the fucking emotions!
Through his existence, Scorpio had heard more than once that emotions were what made humanity beautiful. To feel, anything at all is to live. He disagreed. Whatever was once beautiful about humanity was now lost to the ages. Nothing, no matter how grievous it may be, could cause any of them to truly feel, much less notice for more than a blink of an eye. Describing them as desensitized was an understatement.
Scorpio envied them. Truly.
For all he knew, if he ever truly stopped feeling emotions as richly as they were meant to be, it would be his death. At least, he was warned of such. He was also warned of the gray witch that would destroy him a dozen times before he finally delivered the last blow.
The prediction baffled him, why would he let anyone strike him a dozen times before delivering vengeance?
His mind cast him back to the beginning in search of a different solution beyond awakening his salvation and Reveca Beauregard’s demise.
***
When you’re born, the way you are is all you know. You may despise this or that about somethin’ in your life, but it’s what you know. You learn to manage it, to master it and deal with the discomforts the way you need to.
Life would have been simple for Scorpio if he had never understood how different he was. At age nine, for no reason at all, silence filled his being. The emotions he did not create but always sensed, the shifts in the mood, the random thoughts—they all stilled. He was alone. Isolated.
Frightened, he ran from his room and down the stone halls of his home searching for his mother. He found her in the temple she taught him in every day. She was feverously working a spell, the more she said and did the further Scorpio felt from himself. It was horrifying, he might as well have been losing his limbs, eyes, ears—all of them. The very part of him that he had always known as him was robbed.
No matter what he said or how painfully he cried, his mother never broke her chant. And worse yet, a force would not let him approach her. Every step he took felt weighted, out of sync with what he knew.
When Scorpio saw his father lying on the shadowed altar, eyes closed and body limp, he felt the thudding weight of doom slam into his gut. None of this made sense. He had fallen asleep in a world that made sense and awoke in hell. What was she doing to father? Was he next? Why? Scorpio pleaded to no avail.
The horrid night only became more hellish when the sky ripped open with a grim green hue. His mother wailed and fought with magic he had only heard of. In the end, she lost. All that was left of her and his father were the robes they had been wearing.
All around Scorpio he could hear screams, the frantic cries for help, the tragedy of the end of times. But he could feel nothing. At best, the tiniest whisper of emotion was deep inside, nothing compared to the thundering rush of what he had felt his entire life, and this emotion was filled with a sour emotion he had never known before— sorrow.
The earth began to shake violently; the stones of the temple fell to the ground thunderously. A sense of survival kicked in, and he commanded his legs to move, to run.
No matter w
hat way he ran, the fallen stones of the palace blocked his path. He was being buried alive and was numb to it all, lost and confused. Darker and darker it became as the moon was eclipsed and the stones around him blocked even more of the star blanketed sky.
In the haze, Scorpio saw a white light with the slightest hint of blue. He rushed to it thinking it was an early sunrise. As he approached, the light absorbed him. What happened next he can’t say. Scorpio remembered the peace, hating the stillness of it at first, then finding a numb comfort in it. The burning pain of mourning and shock that fought to protect him was caressed by the nothingness.
The next clear memory he had, he was a young man. No longer a child, but as tall and powerful as his father once was. He’d emerged in a field of violet flowers. In dismay, as he looked down at his body and tried to remember where he was, and who he was, they came back.
A tsunami of emotions coming from the masses of humanity crashed onto the shore of his soul. Each second that ticked by took his mind back to clarity, to who he was. The child of a goddess, at least that is what those around him had called her. His mother never admitted as much to him. All she had ever done was teach him how to humble the power in him, and how to use it. His father was much the same; the male was known as the God of War. A leader so powerful that despite his title, peace reigned among those he watched over.
There was more knowledge under the surface he struggled to unlock. His life with his family felt like a distant dream, it was so vague that with every other thought he questioned if it was.
For days, he walked following the sense of emotions, seven sunrises later he found a tribe. Reluctantly, they took in the stranger from afar wearing strange clothes with ink branded on his chest and back.
To some, he was a bad omen; to others, he was a warrior spirit sent back to protect them all. Scorpio tended to believe both ideas about himself. Clearly, something was hunting him, something his mother sacrificed herself to protect him from. And it was more than obvious the world he came from was far less primitive. Knowledge was a weapon that could protect those who dared to trust him.
Their language came easily when he paired the words with emotion and approached everything through the eyes of a child, what he still felt like deep inside. The Shaman took him in as a son and taught him day in and out. When the time came, Scorpio went through the same rite of passage all males of their kind did. When it was over, he no longer felt like a child but felt as if he had earned his way into manhood.
Even though the rhythm of emotions never left him, for the most, part Scorpio never felt overwhelmed.
After his second victory in battle over their territory, he was given a wife. Looking back, he realized they were both still children, too young to understand the promises and path they were taking. In the life they had, their time was due. It was their duty to be fruitful and bring more to the tribe.
It was when Scorpio was deep inside of her that his mind haunted him. Others, with fair skin like his, some with darker skin than his woman, and even more somewhere in between the two, would flood his mind.
He would feel touches that did not belong to his timid wife. Most of the images would fade as easily as a breeze. One remained.
Scorpio tasted a kiss that was not his wife’s and felt a body that was not hers clench his shaft and take him deeper. Erotic, mind-bending, and dangerously naughty urges rushed through him as he would pump harder and harder trying to consume the feeling washing over him.
More than once Scorpio would come to his senses moments after a mind-bending orgasm only to find his young wife terrified, stiff and staring up at him like the possessed man he was. He began to fear for her life, and sought to spend as much time as he could with the warriors far from the tribe.
It was a quick fix that only brought the woman given to him shame. Other women were brought to him, an unspoken gift to give him reason to stay. Taking any one of them would have only broken the girl further who had seen the darkest part him. To his people, she was failing their great warrior; in her eyes he saw resolution.
It didn’t matter how many times Scorpio told her it was not her fault, that he was dangerous, she believed the others.
To appease them all Scorpio made her restrain him, tie his limbs as tightly as her might would allow her to, and then he laid there and watched her coax his seed to the surface. It was never hard. Tied down or not, his emotions and mind sucked him into a different plane. It didn’t matter what his earthly body was doing, his mind and soul were ravaging another and as he did he felt the rush of a dozen orgasms coiling and primed for an explosion of ecstasy, so intense that the slightest phantom brush of flesh against him would cause him to roar into the night.
In time, his wife was with child, and he let himself flood with relief. He had given honor to his wife and himself pause from taking her on a ride he knew she was too innocent to endure.
His glory ended quickly. Months before her time she lost the baby. The shame returned and before he knew she was ready, she begged him for another child. With the next babe, both mother and child died in delivery.
The tribe blamed the girl, to them he was godly and she was a mortal who could not hold his presence. Like before, others were brought to him, but he refused in his grief and spent all his time honoring her family, demanding the others did as he said. He told them his queen and child were their guardians from the stars, something he wanted to believe. He may have had the body of a man at the time, but he was still a young man on the inside, confused about what his past, present, and future held.
The confusion only became worse as the next years ticked back, and unlike those at his side, the sun never aged his skin, the work never tested his strength. What was bewildering became horrifying during one battle over territory.
Time after time he had been successful, never failing to surprise his prey because he could feel them, their fear and adrenaline simmering in the covered wilderness.
It was the first time he was struck that changed everything. The arrow went through his heart. He didn’t die. The pain was noticeable, but not the agony he had watched others perish with.
Immortality was his.
Understanding this was a mind fuck. All the rumors about him in his tribe held weight now. It was disturbing. For the second time in his life, he felt alone. There was only one choice. He had to leave them.
Single-handedly he took down the warring tribes close to those he had called family. It was easy enough to do when he no longer feared death. Afterward, he struck out on his own determined to find peace in his mind.
A soul walk is what the Shaman man who had raised him into manhood would have called it.
Scorpio never found peace.
All alone and far from any other soul, he still sensed them. He could hear their thoughts, at times when he closed his eyes he would see lands he never visited. He’d walk in the lives of others he did not know. He sensed all but was only drawn to some. To one in particular.
If he stilled his mind and focused on the female that had haunted him, he’d find her. Her energy would be a throbbing light begging for him to slide within. And he would. His soul would merge with this powerful energy, and when it did, nothing else mattered. The high was unreal.
Even more baffling was he could feel her body, move her hands to touch where he wanted to touch, to move the way he wanted to see her move. Her fingers would stroke and explore as he ached to do. When the release came, an explosion of emotions would burst from the pair of them. Night after night, like an addict he searched for this female. He consumed her, willing her body to react. Exploring her to the point where he knew her body better than his own was a wicked game he yearned to play.
Determined as ever, he left to find the lands he could see in his mind’s eye. Across the plains, over mountain ranges, and the sea itself he searched fearlessly. What did he have to fear? Death? No, it would not come, no matter how long he went without food or water, what exposure his body had to elements. He was strong
er each day.
Feeling distant emotions, seeing the lives of others, he became a constant student. So much so that he was sure on his journey he had lived a thousand lives.
Day by day he felt himself getting closer and closer to the goddess he visited each night.
Name... the word whispered in his thoughts as he camped all alone under a blanket of stars at the peak of a mountain.
How to answer? Was he really hearing this or had he grown delusional because it had been so long since he’d seen another.
When he didn’t answer, and lay as still as possible, he felt a tingle along the edge of his skin, one so familiar that his cock lengthened as it grew thicker and thicker. Then the tingle became a molten burn as it slid deep within him. He felt his soul pushed to the side to a point where he was not present but out of his body watching in wonder.
He could see her energy, the outline of her soul. Even though each move was timid, it felt nothing short of raw and erotic. His hands moved to his member and began to stroke as his shoulders pushed into the ground. She was doing it, what he had done to her night after night, realizing she was had erased the one sliver of guilt that always told him he was nothing more than a perverted haunt who was tormenting some strange girl.
No, not a girl. This woman commanded his touch like the goddess he was sure she was. He ached to feel what he had in the past, the sensation of a body he never touched clutching him in its sweet wetness. It wasn’t long until he had roared into the night taking a release that was so powerful his mind and body grew numb and still, drifting him into a peace his waking hours could never deliver.
She came again, on the same night. Then night after night it was a race to see who could consume who first, and how long it took to take the other to the edge, only to pull back and start again.
It took two seasons to coax her name from her mind. Toril, the child of a soothsayer. Sailing to her land, finding her village, then the woods behind her home took him years. By the time he found her, he was hell-bent on the idea that the end of his race had arrived. He’d found a female who was unquestionably part of his soul, they’d find their piece of earth and reside in ecstasy for all the time the gods saw fit to give them.
