Pure Requiem

by Aja James

  Rhys the eagle is in his winged-man form, having snatched Tal from between the canyons, out of the spraying path of Medusa’s poison. Valerius and Cloud stand with them, armed and ready.

  But as the hydra rises from the lake, stomping its giant claws into the shallow banks, and its long, spiked, scaly tail whips behind it like a third monstrous head, I see just how doomed we all are.

  The giant beasts look like harmless stuffed animals next to the monstrous hydra; the fearsome warriors like tiny insects. No human weapon short of an atomic bomb can destroy that thing.

  Medusa likely comes to the same conclusion as I have, because the sound of her voice rings across the valley like deafening thunder, though neither head opens its mouth to speak.

  Fools. You think to defeat me. You run blindly toward your own destruction. I wonder whose bright idea it was to lead you here.

  The head that spewed poison curls in my direction, aiming a glowing, yellow, slitted eye at me.

  You’ve done well, my little Creature. Recruiting these lovely new additions to my army. It has certainly taken you long enough.

  I brace myself imperceptibly, thinking fast.

  Does my Mistress truly believe that I am working in her interest, or is she merely taunting me? She’s the most mistrusting thing on the face of this earth. Surely she does not put stock in my loyalty?

  But then, Medusa has always been over-confident. I have always been her poor, pitiful Creature. And I have two fragments of her soul within me. Perhaps she believes I have no independent thoughts of my own. In addition, she must know that I saved her after Ishtar all but stomped her into the ground.

  Perhaps I can use that leverage now.

  I don’t bother to conceal myself as I make my way forward, still in my Creature form, toward the menacing hydra that threatens to exterminate the Pure and Dark Ones at the slightest provocation.

  “Yes, I have brought them to you, Mistress,” I say with my trademark smirk. “Even if you used up most of your front-line army to draw them close, I think this is still a win. Nine Pure and Dark seasoned warriors to add to your store. Nine of the best.”

  You neglected to convince my Enlil to join the group, she utters sourly in our heads.

  I can see that everyone hears her thoughts as well as I do. They look between us warily.

  “There’s always next time,” I placate. “For now, you have both your little sister, your beautiful prisoner, and their daughter and her Mate. Three animal spirits, not counting Ishtar’s, and two generals.” Not counting the Paladin, who should still be near death from his wounds hidden in the cave, I don’t add.

  “What would you have to look forward to if I brought you all the tasty morsels at the same time?”

  Something like a satisfied purr gurgles through the head on the right, igniting a rash of unpleasant goosebumps, like boils, all over my flesh.

  Steadily, I draw closer, almost abreast of Tal’s group now.

  I catch Ishtar’s violet leopard eye, and we exchange a silent communication. I only hope she understands what I need her to do. I hope she doesn’t believe Medusa’s words.

  In her beast form, she communicates telepathically to her sister, and through the link I have with Medusa, I can understand her as well.

  You will never take us alive, Anunit. I will never let you have him again, Ishtar growls.

  Yes! Whether she’s doing it because of our exchange or simply because she’s Ishtar, she’s doing it—trying to distract Medusa’s attention.

  The right serpent head twists toward her, locking Ishtar in its monster sights.

  They exchange more mental taunts with each other, but Medusa doesn’t attack. She wants the warriors alive to turn. It’s ever much more fun that way.

  I pay them no mind and hurry the last steps toward Tal.

  As I pass him, I whisper urgently into his ear, “Take the right head. The left regenerates.”

  I don’t wait for his confirmation of understanding or even that he heard me before yanking on the chain of Valerius’ unsheathed scythe and slicing my arm with it.

  “Arrrgghhh!” I yell—because fucking gods! that hurt!—“look out!”

  The right head swivels back in my direction, just as I intended, while Ishtar, Maximus and Ariel launch an attack from the Hydra’s left side.

  The three beasts manage to gain claw-holds on the left Hydra neck and head, avoiding its fire-breathing mouth. They keep it busy while the right head focuses on Tal’s group, with Valerius and Cloud already in motion, leaping onto the monster’s front and scaling up its torso with their blades.

  Medusa howls so loudly, rocks fall loose from the surrounding hills.

  I do not know if the Pure and Dark Ones do any real damage or are simply annoying her, but they seem to be making progress. While they are on one of the heads and on the monster’s body, it cannot turn its poison and fire upon itself. Perhaps they will find a vulnerable spot, most likely between the eyes or underneath the scales at the back of its head.

  One can only hope and pray at this juncture. Goddesses help us all!

  It’s then that Rhys takes giant eagle form with Tal in his claws, flying the General directly above the right hydra head.

  I would have missed what happens next if I blinked.

  I’m eternally glad I didn’t.

  Chapter Fifteen: Within The Sound Of Silence

  *TAL*

  One shot is all I have. One slice is all it takes.

  When the eagle warrior flies me over the hydra’s right head, I know it is her.

  Medusa.

  I do not comprehend this monstrous form she’s in, but I can sense that there is more than one consciousness inhabiting it. I do not recognize the left head. Whoever or whatever is inside it is a stranger to me.

  I focus only on my nemesis.

  I feel her giant serpent head lurching in my direction as she senses my approach. I feel the moment when she recognizes me, because she swallows back the poison she almost discharges from her mouth.

  Just as I anticipated she would. She wants me alive.

  I don’t give her long enough to wish me dead.

  Upon my signal, the giant eagle releases its clasp on my shoulders. I somersault through the air, tucking my legs close to my body to increase velocity.

  The serpent moves to catch me in her mouth, as I expected she would, extending her neck to reach me.

  At the last possible moment, like a spinning wheel pulled suddenly back by an invisible string, I unfurl with the hilt of the laser sword grasped in both hands.

  Right above her neck, close to her head, I unleash the blinding, twenty-foot laser blade, cutting through thick, metallic hide and scales, granite muscle and steel-like bone.

  Her shocked, agonized scream rents the air, black poison spurting from her mouth as she tries too late to spew her hell-fire.

  I use her own jaw as leverage as I kick with enough force to send my body swinging around the underside of her neck, the laser sword continuing its arc, forming a complete circle, as I loop back to the top of her head.

  And then—it breaks from the rest of her body like the split of rock and ice from a mighty glacier, crashing into the lake below in a venomous splash of acid and water.

  The eagle catches me from plummeting down with her, flying us just above the sinking vortex around her decapitated head.

  We don’t have a moment to waste as the second head shakes itself like a great wet dog, dislodging the other warriors from its body and head, then raining fire upon the surface of the entire lake.

  I hear the bodies plummet into the water. I feel the hellish heat of the hydra’s fire. I can smell the singeing of the eagle’s feathers as the wicked fiery tongues catch the edge of his tail when he doesn’t fly away fast enough.

  The creature itself sinks into the lake in a cauldron of broiling bubbles, whether to pursue its attackers in the water or to lick its wounds, I do not know.

  But soon, all is silent again, save the poun
ding of the rain upon the lake’s surface and the occasional thunder rolling through the skies.

  The eagle and I land on the now deserted banks of the lake. All of the enemy soldiers have been turned to ash or dust. And if some managed to live, I do not sense their presence in the vicinity.

  We wait in silence with baited breath. Where are our comrades?

  Where is my family?

  After what seems like an eternity, a short distance away, I hear movement in the water.

  “It’s Maximus and Ariel,” the eagle warrior, Rhys, tells me what my eyes can’t see. “He’s carrying a female in his jaws. She’s alive and coughing.”

  I hear her. My Ishtar.

  On our other side, I hear people trudging out of the lake, their weary feet dragging.

  “Two of your warriors,” Rhys explains. “One with a chained scythe, the other with a long spear.”

  Cloud and Valerius. They are alive as well.

  Finally, I hear the limping approach of two pairs of feet from the direction of the mouth of the creek. One of them sounds heavier than usual, as if he carries the weight of more than one person.

  “Papa,” Inanna says as she draws near. “We made it.”

  I reach out a hand to clasp her shoulder, needing to feel that this is real.

  “We found the Paladin,” Gabriel says beside her. “It will take him at least a few days to recover from these wounds, or even to regain consciousness, but his body will eventually heal.”

  What remains unsaid, as we all know, is whether his mind and soul will heal as well.

  Ishtar reaches me then and launches herself at my chest in kitten form. I catch her easily and she cuddles close, her wet, furry body shaking uncontrollably.

  I can feel her emotions as if they are my own.

  She’s elated by our victory, but now that the adrenaline has receded, the fear she held back overwhelms her.

  She insisted on joining the mission. She wouldn’t stay behind. I know she needed to be with her family. If we died, she wanted us to die together.

  But we are alive. We survived.

  Except—

  “I lost him, my love,” Ishtar whispers in her vampire form, as she squeezes me tight against her and hides her face in my neck.

  “Erebu.”

  A breath I didn’t know I was holding rushes out of me, and my heart skips a beat.

  “I dove for him,” she continues, her teeth chattering from the freezing water of the lake. “I dove so deep. The monster had him in her jaws. She wouldn’t let him go. I don’t know where she took him. Somehow, they just… disappeared. And then I couldn’t dive any deeper. I couldn’t breathe…”

  I look in the direction of the Dark warriors who must have saved her.

  “Thank you,” I say with eternal gratitude.

  “Aye,” a deep, gruff voice acknowledges. It must be the Chosen’s Commander, Maximus.

  “We must return to the Cove. ‘Twas a good fight, Pure Ones. But this is not over. The creature yet lives.”

  “But how?” Ishtar asks. “I feel her gone. Anunit…Medusa is gone. I know it in my soul. She was my sister, after all.”

  “There is another,” I answer.

  I can feel the scrutinizing gazes on my face as I speak.

  “I sense another, entirely separate consciousness in that hydra form. The head on the left. It is the one that regenerates, if Erebu’s warning is correct.”

  “He warned you, papa?” Inanna asks.

  “Yes. He told me before we launched the last attack that Medusa possesses the right head. At least, that is what I interpreted from his words.”

  “Then this Erebu might have saved us all,” Maximus growls. “Is this the person you were diving for?”

  “Yes,” Ishtar answers in my arms.

  “He is our son.”

  She shudders against me, and I hear her swallow back a sob.

  “And now he is lost to us once more.”

  I brush my mouth against her temple and hold her tight, willing my strength and warmth to soak into her icy, damp skin, into her bones.

  “But he is not lost,” I murmur so softly only she can hear. “He lives. I know it. And as long as he does, there is hope.”

  “There is always hope.”

  Epilogue

  *THE CREATURE*

  Hello, darkness, my old friend.

  I admit I kinda missed you. All that bright, sparkly joy of the Pure Ones wears on a person after a while. Downright exhausting! I can never keep up.

  Now that I’m back in Evil’s bosom, I feel at home.

  Mostly.

  My skin does crawl a bit with apprehension as I lie here naked and chained spread-eagle to a slab of stone in some fathoms-deep, under-water cave.

  A female I’ve never laid eyes on before walks into my peripheral vision.

  “You’re awake,” she says in a voice I’ve never heard before.

  “I am,” I chirp cheerfully.

  As if I’m not laid out like a virgin sacrifice. Damp, cold air whistling between my thighs to shrivel my balls as a strange breeze churns through the cavern.

  “Have we met?” I ask politely, using my best manners. “I would remember your exquisite visage if we have.”

  “Then it stands to reason, by your own logic, that we haven’t,” she answers without really answering.

  “Hmm,” I murmur, trying not to shudder as she calmly strokes a hand from my throat, down my torso, to grasp my penis and balls.

  “You seem so familiar,” I manage to eke out in a semi-normal voice.

  She gropes my reproductive organs without sexual interest (thank the gods for small favors), the way a buyer would grope ripe fruit at the market. Her thumb pinches into my scrotum this way and that.

  Like water balloons, they will burst if you pinch too hard! I want to warn her, but I fear that may only spur her on.

  “Eh…something I can help you with?” I offer with a toothy smile, locking my jaw when her hand tightens painfully around my flaccid cock.

  “You’ve helped me plenty last night,” she murmurs, and thankfully, her hand releases my penis to trail down my legs.

  I can handle rape if that’s what she’s into—been there, done that, got the tattoo—but I’m unutterably relieved that she seems to have just as much interest in the skin between my toes as she did in my dingdong.

  “Do tell,” I encourage.

  Maybe if she talks more, I’ll figure out what the hell is going on here.

  “Come now, don’t play coy, Creature,” she chides, and the fleeting expression I catch on her deviously beautiful face flicks on the lightbulb in my head.

  “Wan’er,” I breathe with disbelief.

  But…she looks completely different. How can that be?

  “In the flesh,” she confirms with a dip of her head, circling around me so that I can see her fully when I turn my face to the side.

  “My original flesh,” she expounds. “This is the form I was born in. I finally have the powers and the immortality to harness it once more. When you helped me end Medusa, all of her powers became mine alone. So, my thanks for that, little Creature.”

  I clear my throat around the consternation.

  “It was my pleasure.”

  Well, it was actually Tal’s, who deserves the honor of ending Medusa more than anyone else, so I’m glad he got it.

  But all of this is news to me. How had Wan’er become so powerful? It’s so mind-boggling I can barely process the implications.

  “But you failed to give me what I want most,” she continues.

  “Medusa’s beheading wasn’t enough?” I quip.

  She laughs softly. Menacingly.

  This does not bode well. At. All.

  “Oh, dear little Creature,” she muses, “Medusa’s demise is certainly satisfactory, but what I really want is the miracle of this.”

  She clutches my sex and gonads in a tight fist once more, making me arch my neck to look down at myself.

&nbs
p; “Umm… pretty sure every male comes with them,” I mutter around the pain, truly baffled.

  “But you’re special,” she hisses close to my ear, licking the shell with her disgusting wet tongue.

  I can’t repress the shudder that racks my body, can’t help the reaction of twisting my head away.

  “Don’t you know that you’re my monster? My little Frankenstein.”

  What?

  Her monster? But…Medusa was my Mistress.

  She must see the bewilderment on my face, for she goes on to explain.

  “I told you before that Medusa is no chess master. She is merely my pawn. As are you. You have been mine all along. I was there the day you were born. I was the human-skinned handmaiden that oversaw Ishtar pushing the girl and then you out of her feeble body. I am the one Lord Wind tasked to take care of you after he defied Anunit’s orders and breathed life back into your shriveled little husk of a body.”

  What?!

  “The offspring of a Dark and a Pure one, a Dark One with the animal spirit from my Mate, the male that the Dark Queen Ashlu stole. The offspring that has the breath of Elemental Air inside him, reviving his pitiful little life.”

  Whoa. My head is spinning from the revelations. I have a feeling I know where she’s going with this, and it’s freaking me the fuck out!

  “The only ingredient you’re missing, little Creature, is human. After I made sure Medusa found you and revived you from your death as a Pure One, then again when the Destroyer obliterated Persia and Egypt, I took note of your unparalleled ability to survive. You’re like a cockroach that never dies. So I started my experiments in earnest, crudely at first, without modern technology. Don’t you remember them?”

  A fissure splits through me, nausea rising in my throat.

  I don’t remember. I really fucking don’t want to remember.

  “I harvested your genetic material and your sperm for my other experiments. You provide the base for all of my creations. It is because of Evergreen that I can chemically turn warriors into programmable machines. It is behind the success of splicing human genes with animal, Pure and Dark. You are my magical ingredient, Creature. But you still haven’t given me what I want most.”