Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One)

by Lita Stone

  He continued stroking himself. “Debating Carmen’s infinite wisdom of cock wasn’t really what I pictured us doing tonight.”

  She crawled toward him, an angelic smile on her face and the devil in her eyes. She lay on the bed beside him. As he crawled over her, she asked, “So no Hokey Pokey?”

  “You cannot name my penis after a children’s dance. It’s just...fucked up.”

  She laughed. “How about Colonel Zen?”

  “Random. But better.” He leaned down and suckled her neck, tasting and smelling those spiced peaches as if she’d bathed in the pulp. With a tilt of his head, he gestured to the side of the bed where Amy had rearranged her shoes. “Baby, I’m gonna eat you alive. And I don’t need any superstitious ritual to make you scream.”

  “I never scream.”

  From the nightstand, Shane grabbed Bastet. He waved it like a scolding finger. “You ever scream for him?”

  “Oh mercy! Put that away.” Amy grabbed for the toy. “And Bastet is an Egyptian goddess, not a ‘him’.”

  Shane held it out of her reach. “Mmm. That’s some handy info. Maybe I’ll let her join us.” He flashed a wide grin. “But I want you to myself for round one.” He tossed the vibrator to the side before tugging her panties down her legs. Twirling the silk undies, he tossed them over his shoulders. The panties caught on the antlers of a deer head Shane had killed last winter, joining a lacy bra and chemise.

  Shane shoved his aching cock against her slit. Kissing her deeply, he waited until she squirmed against him before thrusting.

  Hard.

  Fast.

  His mouth covered a hard pointy nipple while her hands traced the contours of his ass and slid up and down his naked back.

  When her shoulders stiffened, tensed, the first telltale sign she was about to climax, he ground his pelvis against hers and sent a silent thank you: To Aunt Carol, love Colonel Zen.

  #

  Standing on the edge of the sea, Isaac choked and coughed. Blood and amber vomit poured from his gaped mouth and pooled at the massive two-headed wolf’s scaly seaweed-dripping paws.

  Galmoria dismounted. “Did my baby catch a nasty bug?” She sauntered closer.

  With the back of his hand, he wiped spittle from his lips. He wanted to snarl at her, let her know the fight had fled him. But his broken, shallow breathing and hammering heart prevented him from making any sound but a gruff grunt.

  Galmoria’s boot slammed into his chest. He splayed onto his back. A jagged shell clipped his right shoulder.

  More blood and venom drooled from his lips. He managed to crawl to his knees. “I w-will...have y-you.”

  Galmoria gripped his shoulders, her fur-covered groin at eye level.

  The most stringent essence he had ever scented raided his nostrils. Isaac grappled her legs for support.

  “That’s it, my cub.” Galmoria moaned as she swiveled her sex against his face, smothering him between her dripping folds. Her insidious nectar mixed with the salt water stung the back of his throat like tiny insect pincers.

  Whimpering, Isaac jerked away. He balanced on his hands and knees and spat. “Never will I...pleasure you.” His canines flashed.

  The back of her hand felt like a stone axe smashing into his cheek. With a puny grunt he rolled onto his back again.

  Galmoria dug her heel into his chest, grounding against his Narkush stone that hardly held any glow. “You disgrace Mother, little Isaac. Such a weak and puny cub.” Her fangs shot over her lower lip.

  Little resolve remained in his mind, and none in his body. Vostrict’s deadly cocktail weakened his muscles, turning them rigid, burnt and frost-bitten. His teeth chattered as an icy fever captured his body.

  With a talon, Galmoria pointed to the sky.

  In the lavender clouds, a visage formed of Ira sitting on a bed next to a fevered Lynn. Sweat drenched his mate’s hair and her face was flushed, eyes closed. Isaac heard her soft purr.

  Galmoria smiled at Ira. “Hello, dear. I command you to kill that pathetic whelp.”

  “N-no,” Isaac uttered, hoarsely.

  Galmoria snarled. “Don’t sass Mother.”

  If Ira killed Lynn it would mean his own death, death by synchrony. It was not death that he feared most, but to watch his twin perish would be more punishing than any physical suffering Galmoria could inflict.

  With Lynn enraptured in the throes of her metamorphosis, she would be helpless against Ira who acted under Galmoria’s influence now.

  His brashness to conquer Galmoria had led him to mount Vostrict and take enough poison to kill an adult Minotaur, and now he and his twin would pay for his foolishness and impatience.

  Galmoria nodded skyward. “End her!”

  Ira drew a slim blade, turned to Lynn and ran it through her abdomen.

  Galmoria bellowed with laughter, her heel twisting into Isaac’s chest.

  Isaac felt no pain. In his soul, Lynn’s life-force remained true.

  Closing his eyes, he feigned a final breath.

  “My poor, poor, child.” Galmoria removed her heel. “You might have made a fine replacement for Adela.” Standing over him, she kicked at his ribs.

  Isaac’s claws snatched her ankle, jerked and twisted; the bone snapped, and Galmoria toppled to the ground beside him. Shrieking like a vulture, Galmoria clawed with her talons. Isaac absorbed her blows, gritting his teeth, and wrapped both hands around her slimy throat before he twisted. Her shrieking stopped.

  Paralyzed, her lips pursed like a drowning fish.

  From behind, Isaac crept over her, his front to her back side, his cock against her asshole. He gazed toward the sky.

  Ira grinned. She held her blade up. It vanished, a phantom knife.

  Galmoria writhed beneath him, her head lolling on her shoulders. Before her broken neck could heal, he knotted his fingers in her hair and yanked her head backward. Empty, doll-like eyes met his.

  “Look upon my face when I fuck you like the demon whore you are.” Isaac’s blood and pus covered cock stabbed into her vile black hole.

  The sea-wolf howled at the purple heavens.

  “I hate you, Mother.”

  #

  By the illumination of the small night light, Amy watched his silhouette, black cowboy hat and broad shoulders, rock back and forth. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, opening herself up, he rewarded her with a deep groan.

  Her mom once said men weren’t worth a damn and to invest in lots of batteries. But Aunt Carol had told her the right man would know how to reach those special spots that no plastic toy could touch. And every girl needed that deep touch every now and again—that was what Aunt Carol had said, even though she’d never married.

  Amy’s nails dug into his back. The deeper they buried, the harder he pounded. Her sex milked him as she exploded with orgasm. His cock snug, she relished in the feel of his bulk and masculinity, grateful he’d been the one to take her virginity years ago.

  With a feral growl, he nipped at her earlobe.

  Her legs quivered as she crossed her ankles around the small of his back. A moan was all the response she could manage. A high-pitched rolling moan.

  Lifting his upper body, he gazed down at her. “I love you, Amy Rae Baker.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Through some cosmic force that Atticus’ knew nothing of he’d been dropped inside of a lusterless world with only various spectrums of gray. The sign in front of the building read REEP’s.

  The doors slid open. A person dressed in a long unwavering robe clouded in smoky hues exited the building.

  The figure came closer. His skin attempted defiance of the gray world through a ghastly slate-blue complexion.

  Atticus rushed forward.

  Rourn held up a red alder wood staff that had also retained its color. “All is going according to the correct path. But you are in grave danger now. We must hurry.”

  A metallic grinding sound penetrated the stillness. From mid-air, white rifts tore open. Arachn
id creatures dropped to the ground with muffled clangs. Slender arched legs kept barely kept their bulbous bodies from scraping the ground.

  “Time Reavers!” Rourn sprinted, waving Atticus along. “They must not get to you or else they will trap you within a timeless cycle.” He raised his staff in the opposite direction of the general store. “We must make haste to the temporal gate.”

  “Screaming lotus!” Atticus raced after Rourn who appeared to glide over the ground. “You committed the unpardonable sin! Why?”

  “No time to explain.” Rourn waved him along.

  Behind, Atticus heard the clanking sounds that could have been mistaken for rusted gears, but it was the screeching of the bizarre spider-urchins.

  As fast as Atticus ran—and he could run fast—the world only crept by, like grains of sand sifting down an hourglass. Grain by grain.

  They paused at a traffic light blinking black and white. The wind swayed a STOP sign as effortlessly as it would flutter leaves of an aged spruce. The metal pipe creaked in long drawn out whispers.

  The air was dense on this plane. Atticus grimaced, heaving for a breath. He wanted to drill Rourn for answers...to so many questions. Well, actually one question. Why?

  But instinct told Atticus that Rourn had not jumped from that ledge to dodge his duty to the Order. He was not a traitor or a coward. He had reason. Something deep and innate screamed this logic to Atticus.

  Instead of asking why, he asked, “What do you mean by everything is going according to the plan?”

  “The multiverse consists of our own world, time, and galaxy and the worlds, times, and galaxies of every other possible timeline. I have seen a dozen worlds since my transition. A world where Germany controls all facets of global life; a world where electricity was never invented and the church ruled a dark age America with an iron fist...well into the 21st century.”

  “What does Germany and the church have to do with me or the Beast?”

  “Everything and nothing,” Rourn said. “We must maintain the correct timeline for certain events to be triggered. If things do not happen in certain accordance the future of our universe could devolve into a dystopia of interstellar proportion—worse than anything ever written about by Herbert or Asimov.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. Just know that the Dark Trinity has a plan to save our universe which will save his universe as well. He has contacted me from a distant world from a distant future within the same space-time plane that we preside in. If we fail in our mission to keep the timeline proper then his fate is as terrible as ours will be.”

  A small army of spindly mechanical Reavers appeared around them. They disappeared only to reappear seconds later, but this time much closer.

  A spider lunged on Atticus’ thigh. Fangs pierced, lodging painfully deep into his flesh and dragging him through thin air.

  Gray got grayer.

  As if he weighed no more than a slice of parchment paper, he felt himself falling...floating...until his feet touched solid ground once more.

  He stood on the terrace of a ziggurat surmounted by a chalk-white limestone temple. Though wisps of smoke trailed from bronze censers spread about the terrace, Atticus detected no fragrance. Buildings composed of sandalwood and dark grainy basalt sprawled around the mighty pyramidal structure. And all those buildings were aflame, crumbling and collapsing.

  Men, some in loincloths, some naked, some still donning headgear of nobility and military, hurried about in an erratic manner while others embraced, kissed, and caressed each other. They ignored the city falling down around them. The only thing they seemed to care for was each other’s flesh. Crude short swords and curved blades laid scattered on the unpaved streets, along with shields and various pieces of leather armor.

  Near one ruined roughly worked wall of cyclopean stones, Atticus spotted a man on his knees before another man. Atticus tore his sights from the abomination only to spot another man inserting his entire forearm inside a young girl squatted in front of him, her bare back splashed with blood!

  On enormous wings, ascended a black winged-cat that would have surely sent a fearless wyrm flying away with its tail between its legs. The cat’s sudden shrieking brought the buttress of another building to join the heaps of burning rubble sprawled into the streets below. Billows of undulating smoke and dust swelled upward to meet the blanched heavens above. Head first, it soared high toward the smoke screened sun, embodying both breath-taking regalness, and hellish horror.

  A Geminus Beast! Screaming lotus!

  From an ebony-rimmed archway of the temple appeared a second winged-cat Geminus. The sheer massive size and powerful physique caused Atticus’ heartbeat to still. The unearthly creature’s golden-yellow eyes penetrated Atticus’, impelling him to put distance between him and the Beast.

  The terrace shook when the Geminus galloped, heading straight for Atticus with lips snarling and fangs bared.

  Atticus ran, skipping down the steps two at a time. The Geminus circled overhead like the buzzard before Rourn’s death. When it simultaneously dove and shrieks crescendoed, and the other Beast’s maw snapped at his back, Atticus swung himself over the tarnished ledge of the sprawling staircase.

  He dropped a long distance to the ground below, bending his knees to better absorb the hard landing. He rolled on the dirt as the winged-cats’ talons clawed the terrace above; they both hissed and roared.

  The men in the streets ignored him and continued their heinous acts of depravity. Atticus sped along the cobblestone road, through a burning marketplace. Charred timber and molten pools obscured the path out of the city. The wild rampant flames lashed at anything that moved.

  Together, the two Geminus Beasts dashed into the air and perched atop the temple at the ziggurat’s summit. They purred deafeningly, an obnoxious ear-piercing shrillness that made Atticus slap hands over his ears.

  The men and women in the streets ceased their defilements of one another and all stared blankly up at the temple, at the two magnanimous, deadly but regal Beasts. With zombified dullness in their yellowed eyes, the crowd shifted their attention toward Atticus. At once the lot of them shuffled toward Atticus, picking up and reclaiming their weapons as they encroached.

  A throng of the naked men and women closest formed a semicircle around him. Atticus snatched his long sword and placed his back against a charred sandalwood column.

  His toes curled in an effort to grip the ground firmly, legs and shoulders apart, sword at the ready close to his person. When the first two, an older man and a younger man, both wielding crude spears, came into range, Atticus lunged forward.

  His sword thrust with the speed of an angry serpent, the tip striking deeply into the old man’s abdomen, before rebounding and swinging upward from underneath the younger man’s arm, flinging the severed arm and spear into the dirt.

  Atticus drove forward, shouldering the young man to the ground. His slender blade slashed furiously but consciously at the next wave of assailants. A heavy club swung at Atticus’ face. He swiftly ducked before bringing his sword against a neck, rending the assailants head.

  Whirling around, he parried a short sword before running the steel of his own blade clean through the naked man’s ribs. As two more men flanked him, Atticus darted his sword from left to right, taking both the men’s legs out with quick slashing swipes before he stepped over a dismembered corpse.

  Atticus fled, jumping over a heap of burning debris, slaughtering two more naked men on the other side, and dashed out the bronze gates. Never slowing, he headed straight for the bleary mountain-scape shadowing the colorless horizon.

  He climbed the rocky path and reached the top in what seemed like seconds. A tall bearded man in an undyed lambskin tunic gave him a nod.

  Atticus asked, “Who are you?”

  “Lot.” He pointed toward the city behind them.

  The Geminus soared into the gray skyline. Its wings spread, silver sunlight casting gleams off black fur. Evil. Pure biblical evil.<
br />
  And the whole city lit up, turning into a column of white vapor. A black-and-gray mushroom cloud appeared soon after.

  The winged-cat caught in the grasp of the fatal cloud, became ash, raining down into the flaming furnace that had been Sodom.

  The wind carried the faint sound of familiar voices, like something out of dream.

  “He’s not ready...”

  “What if it shall come to be and you are not prepared?”

  “You must all be prepared for the Reckoning.”

  “He will not face the Beast alone.”

  Atticus felt himself being tugged. He staggered, sword in hand.

  “We must hurry to the woods!” Rourn flung a Reaver away with a flip of his staff.

  Atticus slashed at one and kicked another. They scurried away, popping in and out of time.

  A sharp pain bit into his calf where a spider must have pierced him. Absently, he rubbed the aching skin.

  “I saw Sodom,” Atticus said. “I saw the Geminus defeated.”

  “The Reaver has shown you the past? Amazing! What did you witness?”

  “There were horrible things going on in the streets. Men with other men. And there was a winged-cat creature...the Beast of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “The fall and destruction of the ancient cities of sin,” Rourn whispered. “The birth of the first Paladins and the last time Geminus mated on our world. If we do not stop the Beasts then all of Texas and the rest of the world could fall into the same immoral chaos that befell Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  Side by side they raced down the streets, each block taking eternity.

  “Why must we move so slow in this world?”

  “It is a space-time warp,” Rourn said. “And if you do not return to current day Buckeye in due time then the proper timeline will be askewed and all hope for the future of any world will be lost.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Isaac howled, his face raised to the darkened skies; his claws sliced the air as he reached for the violet clouds. In the distance, beyond a blackened mountain cliff soared a sky eel.

  Galmoria lay sprawled on the sharp stones lining the beach. She breathed hard and slow, her eyes rolled back into her skull. Ribbons of blood and other fluids laced her pale jewel-encrusted naked skin. Nearby her sea wolf stood obediently.