by Mark Adam
Sex, Blood, Magick, Treachery; collide in a maelstrom of passion and violence. Dark Times call for Dark Heroes
In a decadent city of twisted sorcery driven by sexual energies and brute force, one man, a reaver and magician, makes a desperate, brutal gamble to steal power from the most corrupt of cabals. But everything comes at a price…
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Flesh Gambit
Copyright © 2014 Mark Adam
ISBN: 978-1-77111-784-5
Cover art by Scott Carpenter
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Flesh Gambit
By
Mark Adam
Chapter One
In that time and place where Gomorrah, Tiered City, rose at the nexus of the mortal coil of Helios, Four Gods ruled a mankind grown cruel and decadent. Weak serviced the strong, and pleasures of the flesh were the highest aspirations. The Quatrain, the four living godheads, were fat spiders at the center of human webs, each vying for control of the slave race.
Cahlii, the whore-mother, ruled as first among equals, and from between her legs she expelled a civilization as degenerate and miscreant as her own lust. The sex-priests of her denomination corrupted the powerful and drove the worship of the dishonored tabernacles into disrepute. The three secondary godheads bickered and plotted among themselves, waiting and watching for the human pawn who could usher in their golden ages on the mortal coil and usurp the hated Cahlii.
It was not a battle of light against dark or good against evil. It was simply the manipulations of one power against the other. The struggle and maneuvers were, unlike the lives of their pawns, eternal. Capricious and debauched, the deities exploited their faithful with remorseless efficiency.
In Gomorrah, Tiered City, the savants of the misunderstood solar panels and their mystical energies ruled the populous from covered pavilions, side by side with sachems, traffickers, swashbucklers and slavers. Greed married lechery to produce insatiable gluttony for all sins.
Into the stinking canker slipped a black Prometheus, stealing and killing in the name of actualization. In a world devoid of moral center, his promises of genuflection to the dishonored tabernacles were lies and his every action an expression of this ideal.
Prior to Ritual Night
Khat shoved his sword through the pirate’s throat.
The man dropped to the deck of the sunship like a sack of loose meat, and blood spilled out in a waterfall. The small crew of the corsair corvette watched the execution, faces impassive. The man had been a thief, and honor among thieves on the Twisted Cross was the purview of its captain.
Khat looked out over the railing where the man had stood. The Twisted Cross hung in the fever-warm air two hundred feet above the indigo sea. The glistening spires of Gomorrah reflected the scarlet rays of the setting sun on the horizon. Khat narrowed his single eye against the glare.
He could make out the tallest spire, the target of his attention, set on the cliffs at the edge of Gomorrah, the Tiered City. The Twisted Cross hung in the eye of the setting sun, invisible to the corrupt and kinky citizens of that chaotic and decadent urban center.
Khat turned to Orlec, his primate, first among the crew. “Feed the sharks,” he ordered.
The dusky primate was tall, the tallest man on the crew, but Khat towered over him by a full head and shoulder. Orlec nodded. He snapped his fingers at two nearby cutthroats, and they jumped to dump the corpse over the side. Khat stopped them long enough to rip the only piece of clothing the dead man had, his loinwrap, free.
“That coven-whore’s magic is making the men crazy.” Orlec confided. “If she doesn’t finish soon and that slave girl you bought on the market in Gomorrah is still around…”
Khat scowled. He turned his face with its exposed and empty eye socket toward where his men rolled the dead body toward the railing. He cleaned the gore from the blade of his short sword with the man’s loinwrap, then threw it aside.
“Stop,” he growled.
The men stopped, hands bloody. Khat turned back to Orlec. “Nail that bastard to the forecastle so they won’t forget. Then go down into the front hold where the opium is and give each man another share. That should mellow them out long enough for the witch to finish her spell.”
Orlec nodded, and Khat turned on his heel. The giant corsair leader crossed the deck of his corvette. The heat was brutal around Gomorrah and like his men, Khat wore only sandals and a small loinwrap attached to his battle harness. Under the swirling blanket of tattoos, his skin had been burnt to copper by the equatorial sun, and his dreadlocks were swept back in a loose ponytail away from the hard planes of his face.
At the door to his cabin, Khat slid his sword into its sheath. He could hear the murmur of the coven-whore through the wood and frowned. The erotic energy from the witch’s spell was as tangible as wind. If she didn’t finish soon he might have to give her to the crew to keep the girl safe.
Khat pushed open the door and entered.
The room was gloomy after the harsh light on the sunship’s deck. Khat pushed the door closed behind him before his vision had fully adjusted. He blinked the blur of the abrasive sun out of his eye and surveyed his chamber.
It was hot in his quarters, stifling. Men sweated freely outside, and the coven-whore burned a triumvirate of red-hot braziers inside the confined room. Khat saw her crouching naked in the middle of them, chanting incessantly. Her breasts were swollen from suckling the anonymous daemon childe which came to her at night, though she’d told Khat it had been over a year since she had sold her own baby in accordance with her vow-pacts to Cahlii.
Her body was slick with sweat from the top of her shaved head to the inner folds of her smooth thighs. Her eyes rolled up to show only the whites, and the augur had opened her Eye of the Magi in the center of her forehead. The jet black orb shifted to watch Khat as he moved through the room.
He crossed to an apothecary’s table set in the cabin wall and picked up a decanter. The table was set beside a divan, and from its cushions the slave girl watched Khat. He tried to ignore her. The energy of the coven-whore’s spell worked on him like a drug and he couldn’t drive sexual images from out of his head. He forced himself to drink the tincture he had concocted. It tasted like honey-wine, but the herbs instilled a mildly euphoric calm.
He tossed back the drink in one gulp and set the cup down. His pulse pounded at the temples. The slave girl had stripped down against the brutal heat in the room. Her body, young and nubile, was just as slick with sweat as Khat’s or the coven-whore’s. He could smell her the way a hound scents a bitch in heat. He put a small green pill into his mouth and chewed.
“Put your clothes on.” Khat snapped, and the girl jumped to obey.
He poured a second cup of the tinctur
e, drank it, and his head began to clear. The slave girl’s silks had been designed to entice rather than hide. It was almost worse when she slipped the short robe on because Khat’s mind kept coming back to what she was hiding. He poured a third cupful and gave it to the girl.
Behind him he heard the coven-whore cease her chanting. He turned and saw the lid slide closed over the black Eye of the Magi. The woman’s own startling blue irises rolled back from the inside of her head. Her cheekbones were strong, her mouth full. Khat wet his lips.
“Is it done?” he demanded.
“I have created a hole in the thaumaturgy used by the Infantana to protect the girl. The magics were stronger than I had anticipated. I am drained. Your old lover is a powerful sorceress.”
“You didn’t put the dreams in the girl’s head!” Khat roared.
“I’m tired, used up. I need energy.”
Khat froze. He swallowed and felt the fear of a man who, thinking himself safe, slides between his bed sheets only to feel the sudden caress of a spider scuttling up his leg.
“So take more drugs.”
The coven-whore rose in a smooth, languid motion. The light from the braziers played across the sweat splashed along her inner thighs. The woman was as bald there as on top of her shaven head.
“I’m no fool, bitch,” Khat spat. “Your magics work on me the same as any man, but I’m not so crazed I’d willingly service a succubus.”
The coven-whore turned and crossed to the cabin’s only window. It was set in the back of the ship and looked out now over the waters to the tower where all of Khat’s plans converged. The witch slowly bent over at the waist and leaned against the window edge. She arched her back and exposed the naked folds of her sex like a cat.
She looked back over her shoulder and smiled.
“I need what I need, corsair. I do not lie.”
“No,” Khat said but he was already poised.
“Then I say no to your fourberie. If the girl would dream of the grimoire, then I must have what I need.” Her voice was raw, like a drug addict in the presence of their poison.
Khat knew she had him, knew he must gamble now or lose everything he had planned. He stepped forward between the braziers. He made no pretense at romance. He pulled the sweaty linen of his loinwrap to the side, not bothering to remove his weapons or battle harness.
With eyes as big as saucers the slave girl watched him mount the coven-whore. Out on the deck, the cutthroats would hear the witch’s screams and grow bitter.
Khat grabbed his ready cock with a big hand and pushed the head of it against the boiling, moist folds of the coven-whore’s exposed and swollen vagina. She grunted hard and shook her head back and forth as he pushed his erection in her. He gave her a moment to take him, felt the velvet grip of her inner muscles squeeze along him, drawing him further in.
He reached out with his long, brawny arms and grabbed the coven-whore by the shoulders. He yanked back on her as he thrust his hips forward, impaling her along his length in a swift, vicious movement.
The coven-whore groaned low in her throat at the hurt, and Khat moved his hands down to the sweaty curve of her hips. He began to fuck her in earnest. The coven-whore started to shriek her pleasure. Her hands slapped the glass panes of the cabin windows and dug into the wood of the frame. To the slave girl sitting just a few feet away, the smell of the woman’s damp was pungent and the sound of Khat’s wet, slapping rhythm was vibrant and pugnacious.
“Is it working,” Khat growled as he sawed in and out of the coven-whore. “Do you feel it? Say it!”
“Uh, uh, uh,” the coven-whore grunted.
She bit down on her lip hard as she struggled to take what Khat was giving her. A line of drool rolled out of her mouth and dropped in a rope of salvia to the bouncing, sweaty slope of her breasts.
“Say it!” Khat snarled again.
The muscles of his arms stood out in vivid relief as he squeezed his hands hard, digging his blunt fingers into the soft flesh of her hips. The coven-whore’s head rolled back, and he thrust his hips forward hard, snapping it back then pushing it forward. He continued to grind his cock into her, relentless, merciless.
“I- I feel it,” she managed to promise.
Her voice was rough and hoarse from the sex and came up from deep within her. Khat lifted his right hand up and brought it down hard against the curve of the coven-whore’s buttocks. The slap echoed in the room like the pop of a drover’s whip. Her ass turned red immediately and began to puff up. Khat lifted his hand and slapped her again.
The coven-whore screamed long and loud as she came, and Khat felt the heat around what he had in her increasing. Slick, warm fluids spilled out of her opening and splashed his balls and the flat plane of his hips. He grunted and began to thrust even harder.
He pushed his cock in and pulled it out, pushed it in and pulled it out as the pressure and fire began to build at the root of his penis. He thrust hard into the trembling woman, shoving her rudely up against window jam. He felt his cum roll up the length of his shaft like lava and spill into the gasping, moaning coven-whore.
He leaned forward and rested his weight across the woman’s back as the tingling shiver washed over him and his balls drew up tight between his thick thighs. He forced himself to stand and stepped quickly back, withdrawing from the coven-whore’s grip in one fast pull.
She moaned in protest and collapsed to her knees with Khat’s seed spilling out of her. She fought to catch her breath, and her hands began to work at the hard nipples of her breasts as her body refused to shut down from her fever pitch. Khat stepped over to the slave girl. She looked up at him from her submissive position on the low couch. The wet head of his waning erection hung barely a foot away from her pretty face.
“Get that cloth,” he grunted. “Get the cloth and clean that bitch off me.”
The slave girl sprang to obey. With small hands, the girl used the soft fold of linen to wipe the last traces of dampness from Khat. Her hand held his penis and lifted it as her other worked quickly to blot up the wet. She could feel the beat of the big man’s heart through the throb of a thick vein running down the length of his manhood.
Khat looked over his shoulder with a lazy motion. He saw the coven-whore rolled up into a fetal position on the cushions, both of her hands cupped between her legs. She panted like a dog as she fought to still the racing of her heart.
“Did you get what you need?” Khat demanded.
The coven-whore nodded, obviously still too out of breath to articulate an answer.
“Good. Now you can damn well give me what I need.”
Outside the cabin, the faces of Khat’s crew were stiff with resentment.
Chapter Two
Day of the Ritual
Alyssa let the silk robe slip from her shoulders and drop into a puddle at her feet. Naked, she crossed the smooth flagstone of her tower chamber to the window. She pushed open the veranda doors and stepped out onto the little balcony. On the horizon the bloody crescent of the sun slipped away, leaving long shadows with its final rays.
Down in the market-temple of Gomorrah, she could hear the priests beating the slaves.
She smelt the sea on the breeze and heard it crash against the cliffs far below. The chill wind tightened her nipples until they grew taught and pointed sharply. It made her think of what was coming, and she suppressed a shiver.
She turned and entered the bedchamber. On the floor a circled pentacle had been drawn to precise dimensions. In the center of it, Alyssa lowered herself to her knees and parted her smooth thighs.
Across the room from her, the grimoire sat open to the summoning spell her miraculous dreams had shown her. She had meticulously memorized the incantation, for if the augur were to work, her state of arousal would be such that reading would prove impossible.
Slowly she hung her head and let her long, honey-colored hair spill across the swelling jut of her breasts, now so they fairly throbbed at
the touch. Barely a woman, Alyssa’s body was lithe, nubile, and virgin.
Her hand, small and delicate, slid slowly across the flat stretch of her stomach. Her tongue began to twist and writhe as she whispered the strange, liquid syllables. The mantra was short and meant to be repeated with lyrical cadence. The words were ancient, their meaning even older. They were supplication, enticement, entreaty, and promise.
Her hand found the junction of her legs, and goose bumps rippled across her inner thighs. She moved her fingers into the dewy slit and felt lightning bolts of warmth penetrate inside her. What was damp now ran wet.
Her tongue thickened as her young body responded to her ministrations. The words she uttered came out huskier and almost slurred, as if she were drunk. She rolled her head back and let her hair trail down her back. She could scent herself now over the smell of the sea. It was a raw musk and clung in her nose, arousing her all the more.
Her words came faster. Her fingers found the swollen part of herself and began to work it in tiny circles. She heard herself gasp and forced the moans to come out as words of the invocation. From between her legs the liquid nectar part of her need spilled onto the floor in dewy drops. If her eyes had been open, then they would have seen the shimmering wave of green energy arch up like heat lightening.
Now the spell had become a single word, a powerful sound repeated over and over. It was a name and, through the ethereal folds of the mortal coil, the name was heard.
Chapter Three
Prior to Ritual Night
The naked slave girl looked up at Khat, eyes wide with terror.
A ball-gag was stuffed in her mouth and tied around her head. Her hands were bound with complicated knots behind her back, her legs tied in such a way at knee and ankle that she could not straighten them and rise from her kneeling position.
