by Sunny
I lay there fallen, cocooned by that white prison bubble, and looked across to Talon. He stared back at me with concern, standing docilely in his own white-mist cocoon.
Lady help us . . . because it didn’t look like I could. I had a dreadful feeling not even my father or brother could, even with scores of their best men. That belief became even more certain as I watched Derek struggle uselessly against the entwining branches that held him suspended. It boggled the mind to know that the tree was stronger than a demon.
Ceasing the futile struggle, Derek opened his hand and dropped the sword he still clutched, and thrust the weapon forward with pure strength of mind. The sharp point of the blade thrust straight and true at the Tree Lord’s heart. It stopped with an audible loud clink as it hit the white shimmer that limned his body, revealing what it was. A shield! Much like what imprisoned Talon and me, only it protected and armored the Tree Lord.
The sword turned easily, like it was nothing for the Tree Lord to take control of it. It swung around in the air to face Derek, and became a battle of pure mental will. Derek’s face was strained and furrowed, while the Tree Lord’s was unlined, uncreased, with a slight smile even.
As effortlessly as if a real hand guided its course and intent, the sword sliced down Derek’s neck in a cut deep enough to start the dark flow of blood.
The sword swung back into position in front of Derek.
Giving up the uneven mental battle, Derek renewed his struggles against the binding branches of the tree. But that, too, was an uneven match. As he wriggled like a fish caught on an unbreakable line, the sword shot forth, much as it had under Derek’s guidance. But this time the weapon met its target true, and pierced through Derek’s heart. The shuddering cry he gave rang loud in the misty air.
The sword slid wetly out of his chest and dropped with a clatter to the ground to lie among the shrunken, shriveled heads.
The Tree of Death swayed two of its free limbs toward Derek and inserted its branch tips delicately like fingers into the open wounds of his neck and chest. A frightened gargle came out of Derek as those branch tips pushed their way inside his body, and then he screamed and screamed and continued to scream as those inserted tips started to thicken and swell, bulging obscenely with the blood it began to pull out of him.
I watched as Derek’s swarthy skin turned paler and paler. And probably paled myself as some of the tree’s roots pulled themselves out of the ground and reached for the Tree Lord. The ends of them, broken off and leaking blood-tinged sap, aligned themselves perfectly, and connected to the antlerlike crown atop the Tree Lord’s head. As I watched, the roots there swelled and thickened also. At first I thought the tree was drinking from him, too, until I saw that the Tree Lord was growing flusher, not pale. No, not drinking. Feeding! The tree was disgorging Derek’s blood into the Tree Lord!
I realized finally what those broken, barklike remnants covering him from head to toe were. That thick man-sized tree root complex down in the cavern below had grown around him, covering him, surrounding him. Talon and I had been leaning against the Tree Lord, positioned right next to him when we had made love. The tree fed him, sustained him. And we, our blood, maybe Talon’s and mine combined—dragon and Floradëur—had woken him up when some of our blood had smeared across his mouth.
As if that were not horror enough, what came next was even worse. That thin, white barrier that limned the Tree Lord’s body disappeared suddenly, and he began to pull Derek’s energy, his vitality, out of his body—a white mist substance that flowed from Derek’s neck and chest wounds.
The Tree Lord not only fed on the blood being siphoned out of Derek’s body into his, he stole out his essence, his very spirit.
One last, horrendous blood-curdling shriek from Derek and then his body went slack and still, truly dead. Only an empty shell now.
I had a somewhat similar ability to this. I could drink down a spirit’s essence into me, take in its vitality. But I could not capture that essence and enslave it to my will. Finally—someone who was capable of doing something far worse than what I did.
It was a discovery I was very unhappy to make, I realized, as I watched Derek’s body, emptied of blood and spirit and soul, shrivel down to less than one-quarter its original size.
When he was as drained as completely as he could be, the supple branches unwound themselves from his legs and arms and dropped him to the ground, a discarded husk. The tree roots detached themselves from the Tree Lord’s head, reddened clots visible at the ends of the broken connection.
He looked much better now, no longer thin, dried, and brittle. His flesh had filled out, his weight increased by almost a stone. He moved much more fluidly now, like the deadly, dangerous predator he was. The ultimate predator who fed off what had once been the top of the food chain down here—off of demons themselves.
He looked rested and relaxed, almost cheerful, as if he’d just had the best sex of his undead life, no matter that his partner had not survived the experience.
I shook my head to dislodge that macabre analogy and watched the Tree Lord rummage through Derek’s remains. He wasn’t content with simply stealing Derek’s blood and spirit, he had to steal his clothes, shoes, sword, and food pouch also.
“Who are you? What is your name?” I asked. Even though I had pretty much guessed already.
“Merlin,” he replied. “Or perhaps you might know me better by my demon name. Myrddhin.”
The mad demon sorcerer who had been obsessed with the blood of Floradëur and dragon. The father of death magick. The infamous seer who Talon and I had inadvertently awakened from his centuries-long death slumber with our blood.
We were fucked. Truly and hopelessly fucked.
TWENTY-TWO
THE DEATH MAGICIAN pulled Talon and me along in our misty bubbles. It was a relief to leave that creepy Tree of Death behind. A pity we couldn’t leave its even creepier master also. But no, it seemed he was keeping us for a later snack.
Good thing Derek had come upon us or his fate might have been Talon’s and mine. It still probably would be, sooner or later. But later was a much better option than sooner. Time was our friend, no matter that we had awareness of the horror awaiting us. I was learning things—for instance, about the shield that protected him. He had to shed it before he could yank our spirits from our bodies and turn it into the mist that crawled this land. Cursed this land was indeed by the enslaved spirits of demons. No wonder we felt so uneasy entering these misted mountains.
Myrddhin pulled us along to a flowing stream and parked us along the bank while he waded into the water and immersed himself in it. It would have been nice if he had drowned, but alas, demons could not drown. We didn’t need to breathe, and the stream was only waist high, the current not strong.
He ripped off the remaining shreds of cloth and root-bark from himself, and scrubbed clean, emerging naked. Someone so malignant and evil should have been as ugly and repulsive as his actions were, but nature had camouflaged the monster he was inside with a pleasing outer countenance. He was not wickedly handsome like Hari or beautiful like my Stefan, but he was attractive, pleasing to the eye. And that was just wrong. He should have had a beaked nose with a wart at the end, a hooked chin, and rotting teeth.
He shook himself like a dog, slicked off as much wetness as he could with his hands, and donned the shoes and clothes he had pilfered from Derek’s corpse. Wearing his stolen clothing, he looked ordinary, just your average, ordinary demon. Not like the most infamous black sorcerer and dealer of death magick that ever existed, and, unfortunately, still did.
Taking out a strip of yaro jerky from the food pouch, he bit off a piece. “Ah, food,” he murmured, chewing slowly with relish. His gaze shifted over to Talon and me. “What year is this?” he asked.
I told him the truth—why not?—and watched his eyes widen in surprise.
“Almost a millennium,” Myrddhin said, gazing blindly down at the dried stick of meat in his hand.
Time
was our friend, true. But unfortunately it was also Myrddhin’s. He was a formidable enough opponent weak; he would be even more so after he had recovered his full strength and power. If there was any chance of taking him down, it had to be done now.
I shifted position to kneel down on one knee, as if tired of standing. The movement straightened my back, thrust the mounds of my breasts into even greater, more eye-catching prominence, and the hem of Talon’s T-shirt gaped an enticing hole between my knees. I knew what I looked like with my alluring gold skin, long curly hair, and full lush curves. If his appetite for food had stirred, so soon would his appetite for other things. I did my best to help it along, not by being seductive but the opposite. By appearing helpless, feminine, frightened, and weak. It wasn’t always a matter of how to get to your prey. Sometimes it was simply a matter of how to draw them to you.
“W-what are you going to do to us?” I asked, my body and voice shivering with fear. It wasn’t hard to fake. Truthfully, it wasn’t even really faked.
His eyes fastened on the quivering slopes of my breasts, the round nipples clearly outlined by the softly stretched material. For once I was grateful for the large boobs and pretty face my mother had bequeathed me. Mad sorcerer or not, he was male. A male who hadn’t had sex for almost a thousand years. Talk about a dry spell.
He’d met his other needs—clothed himself, sated his thirst for blood, taken the edge off of his physical hunger. The want and need for sex had to be rearing its ugly head now with my helpless, quivering female display.
That’s right, you crazy son-of-a-demon bitch. Come to me.
Only when he did, I quivered and quaked even more, and nothing of that was at all faked. I had come up with a horrible plan, you see. A way to destroy him. Unfortunately, it involved him getting really, really close. Intimately close.
“Please me and I might keep you around longer than I planned,” he said, coming to stand beside my bubble. His eyes lingered on my breasts for a long, slimy moment before trailing down the rest of my body.
“No,” Talon said angrily, “leave her alone.” He’d been standing there calmly in his bubble, not fighting or trying to escape like I had. Part of it might have been seeing how useless my efforts had proven; another part might have simply been that he was used to captivity, it was nothing new to him. But now that calm acceptance flew out the bubble, so to speak.
His talons flashed out long and thick. Before, he had had small pointy black nails like the claws of a kitten, stunted and half-formed like the rest of him had been. He’d been named Talon in mockery for the talons he did not possess. Then after I had brought him back to Hell, and he had stretched into his tall, willowy self, his fixed, stunted nails had retracted. I hadn’t seen what they had become until now, when he used them to slash at his spherical white cage. He didn’t look like my gentle Talon with those impressively long talons viciously scraping at his bubble-cell, his eyes flashing dangerously with rage.
“Please,” I begged, looking at Myrddhin. I didn’t even know myself what I was begging for—for him to come to me, or leave me alone. My body didn’t want him anywhere near me, but my mind knew the necessity and protested it vehemently.
Myrddhin dissipated the sphere that surrounded me. Before I could move, he froze me with a mental flex of will. Bloody saints, he was strong! Not just natural demon strong, but with the added power of hundreds upon hundreds of other demons’ stolen blood and vitality. It was frigging terrifying how helpless I was against that great mental strength.
He touched me and I couldn’t even shudder in revulsion, locked still by his will as I was. Talon howled protest, throwing himself against his bubble. It was distracting enough to make Myrddhin look up and frown. From the corner of my frozen eyeball, I saw a sliver of white peel off the inside of the sphere and stab through Talon, exiting out his back to blend back into the misty white bubble. The attack dropped Talon to his knees.
Hush, Talon, I said as quietly as I could through our mind-link. Be still. Don’t make him hurt you again. Then I closed my mind off, not wanting to give a hint of what I was planning.
Everything—all worries, concerns, conniving plans—flew out the window as Myrddhin lifted my arms and tugged the T-shirt over my head. It was humbling and deeply disturbing the way he moved my limbs around like that of a plastic doll—lowering my arms, positioning me on the ground to lie down on my back, straightening out my legs, spreading them open.
Somewhere deep inside, I screamed, Noooo! I don’t want this!
Panic suddenly exploded within me, a wild, feral thing. No matter how my mind argued that this was the plan, the frozen and spread state of my body ripped away all my control and I fought. I fought with everything I had, trying to break his control over me. And couldn’t.
Terror surged and battered within me like a giant rip-tide. And there was nothing I could do—not even blink as Myrddhin disrobed and knelt between my spread legs.
It took far more effort than was pretty to push back the tide of panic and terror flooding me, drowning me. To grab desperately for control, for coherent thought. To find a faint thread of reason and frantically hold on to it, and not let it slip from me. The one thing I needed for him to do—drop his shield—he had not done yet. It glowed faintly white around him still.
Talon, recovered enough to regain his feet and breath, opened his mouth and unleashed a powerful echoing cry, a forceful sonic blast that he could use like a weapon. But it didn’t shatter the misty bubble. It reverberated against the barrier and bounced back on him, knocking him unconscious as Myrddhin put his hands on my breasts. It was the oddest sensation, those shielded hands—not the pain or strength-stealing jolt I was expecting. His hands just felt solid, like hard stone touching me, lifting, squeezing my breasts. The way he ran his hand down my stomach, brushed his hard fingers through my thatch of curls illustrated that he knew how to touch a woman, how to please her. And that somehow made this violation worse—that he could not only control my body, he could ignite unwilling pleasure in me, too.
Alarming dismay mingled with the wet moisture that started to dew my folds as his shielded finger probed the opening of my inner sheath, and grazed over the sensitive bud of my clitoris, giving me another sharp jolt of unwanted pleasure.
Just fuck me, already, I screamed the only way I could—in my mind. Maybe he heard me, or maybe it was simply because my body was lubricated enough now for intercourse. For whatever reason, he followed my wish and positioned himself over me.
I had a horrible moment to wonder if he was going to fuck me while still shielded—surely not! Could he even feel anything that way?—and then the whiteness limning his body disappeared. At the same moment, he pushed his way inside of me.
A lot of things hit me at once. How good it felt— Goddess curse him. A sting of panic that maybe all of this was for nothing, that what I had planned wouldn’t work. Another stronger wave of panic that it would work and I would destroy not only myself but Talon and Nico, too.
Fear, anguish, and panic passed through me in that endless, timeless moment when he penetrated me. He had full control of my body. But not all things I could do required physical control or movement. I sent up a brief prayer to the Goddess to help me. Then I threw up a cone of silence around me—around us. I hadn’t known that it would work. If I would still be able to do that while under Myrddhin’s control. But, yes—silence snapped into place around us.
I’d seen it once briefly visible, my cone of silence. It was a type of shielding I could erect around myself that kept others from hearing or sensing me, tapering to a point above my head and stretching several feet around us, impenetrable to sound, encasing us fully like his white bubble had. In addition, in a nice bonus I hadn’t expected, my sound barrier cut Myrddhin off from some of his power. I hadn’t known until then that he drew some of his power from that ghost fog. The barrier cut off enough of his power so that I could move my legs, wrap them around his back, hold him to me tight and secure. He didn’t know, w
asn’t aware yet, of what I’d done. Simply cried out as my maneuver pushed him deeper into my body.
Sharp, undeniable pleasure mixed with hatred and loathing for the one who gave it to me, a really fucked-up sensation.
“Gods, you feel so good. So warm, so hot,” Myrddhin muttered.
His eyes, which had closed during the penetration, opened when he tried to pull out and plunge back in . . . and found that he couldn’t move, not with my legs wrapped like a vise around him, holding his abhorrent self to me, in me.
“Let’s see how you like this.” My teeth-baring smile must have been more alarming than I thought, or maybe it was simply that I had spoken to him and given him a clue that things weren’t completely under his control anymore.
Heat was another gift of mine. It resided in me like a simmering, dormant volcano. I’d used it to heal before, had channeled it into my fingertip to cauterize Jonnie’s bleeding artery. Now I used it to hurt—to destroy. I yanked it out of me, from the depths of my inner core, and it roared up in a molten flash-fire flood.
Burn, I thought, burn you bastard as I felt the heat fill me up, encompass me, and spread out to him. I held him to me, arms and legs wrapped around him like the most ardent lover, and let the heat overtake my body, burning not just him but me as well. Everything that was contained within my protective cone.
