by Ryan Talbot
She smiled as she leaned forward, her lips brushing my neck. “Then you may blame it on fear,” one of her hands gripped my cock and I swallowed.
“I’m married,” I said. “I can’t.”
“Such concepts are beneath you, Liar.” She laughed and tugged at my hardening cock. “And it seems you can, after all.”
“I know...” I gasped as her touch set fire to my flesh. “I can, dammit. I’m forbidden.”
“No one forbids one of your kind, Liar,” she murmured into my neck, her full lips kissing gently.
“I did,” I shuddered. “I took an oath.”
“Such things,” she laughed delicately. “Are but words.”
“I do not want this,” I whispered.
“Liar,” she said.
“You would do to me what was done to you?”
“I accepted my fate in order to preserve my life, Liar.” She kissed her way down my jaw. “So must you.”
“You’re going to kill me if I don’t?”
“No,” her fangs rested heavily against my lower lip, and her eyes met mine. “You would return from the death of your flesh. I will devour you. I will end you utterly.”
“Just so we’re clear,” I growled as I shoved her backward. “I’m only doing this to stay alive.”
“Words,” she whispered as she pulled me to the floor and wrapped herself around me. “Liar. They’re just words.”
I moaned as she enveloped me. Her hands knotted in my hair and yanked, exposing my throat. Her fangs trailed down my neck as her tongue traced patterns of lust and darkness on my flesh. The wards on my own tongue shattered and I gasped. Her body pulled me deeper, clenching and flexing around my cock as she rode me. Between her sorcery and the sheer force of my lust, I lost myself in the moment. I gripped her hips thrusting as deeply into her as I could, her moans in my ear driving me further and further beyond the bounds of my sanity.
She pushed me back down against the floor and held me in place as she lifted her hips, pulling nearly free of me. The cold air of the Veilside gave way to the warmth of her as she brought herself down on me again and again. Her sharp, black nails raked down my chest as she laughed and moaned, her madness even more apparent in the throes of her ecstasy.
“Stop,” I gasped, my mind swimming. “I’m going to…” I clenched my teeth and tried to fight back the surging tide of my orgasm.
“Release the waters of your life,” she moaned. “Give them to me!” She threw her head back and ground her herself against me.
My orgasm ripped through me and I screamed every curse I knew as I flooded her. Her laughter followed me on my dash through my own head, chasing my sanity before it deserted me entirely. I felt her nipple enter my mouth and my lips closed on it reflexively. Her poison flooded my mouth like honey and I drank deeply.
19
My eyes snapped open and I stood before the massive spider again, my hand caressing her massive face. The human eyes on the sides of her head closed, and even the light of her six primary eyes dimmed, pulsing with a contented blue glow.
“Uhn,” I clutched at my heart with my left hand. “What did you do to me?”
“I fed you, nourished you,” she said, her voice quiet. “Girded your soul, such that it is, for the trial to come.”
“You poisoned me,” I moaned. I stepped woozily backward, dropping to a knee.
“Such is the love of the gods, Liar,” her right foreleg stroked my face. “Poisonous, and treacherous.”
“I gave you what you asked for,” I collapsed forward, catching myself just before I hit the ground. I stared up at her.
“And I have given you what you will need,” she crouched down, holding my gaze. “But there is more to be done, before our tryst is concluded, Liar.”
“Wha-” my body spasmed in the grip of her toxin. The world swam in my vision and my stomach surged. I fought to keep from throwing up. Understand, it’s pretty much always better to die from poison than to risk offending a god.
“Sleep now,” her voice was very close. “It is better you are not awake for this.”
“For what?” Sweat beaded along my brow and I was certain that at any moment I was going to die.
“All must appear in concert with the designs of the Harbinger,” she said. “My apologies, Liar. This will not be pleasant.”
I nodded mutely, then her fangs descended and I knew only pain and screams.
20
I felt the vibration of his steps before I heard them. My ears rang hellishly, and when I opened my eyes, the world still looked like a fish tank.
“You appear a little worse for the wear, Mr. Beckett,” he said. “Good.”
“Why?” I asked, rolling onto my back. “The fuck did I ever do to you?” I saw the Widow skitter up the wall toward the dark shadows near the ceiling.
“Oh, a little of this,” he knelt beside me. “A little of that. None of that matters now.”
“You’re not making any fucking sense!” I screamed, flecks of spittle flying into his face. My back spasmed as the poison had just a touch more fun with me.
“Sense?” He stood, wiping his face. “What good is sense?”
He paced agitatedly back and forth. He turned on his heel and stepped back to my side. “Sense is a function of divinity, Mr. Beckett. All sense derives from the Almighty.” He hurled a vicious kick into my ribs shattering them.
I rolled to my left, exposing my back to him as I cradled my right ribs and gasped for breath.
“What sense can there be when the righteous are punished and the unworthy prosper?” He dropped, driving his knee into my already destroyed ribs with the force of his fall.
“Fuck!” I screamed, spraying blood over the concrete in front of me. “I don’t know.”
“You will answer that question,” he stepped over me and squatted down, lifting my chin and looking into my eyes. “Before you die. You will correct the error of the Divine, or you will burn.”
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. Rough hands grabbed me and dragged me from the room. Dark eyes and skull bandannas were all I could see in the dark confines of the narrow hall they pulled me into. After that, everything became a blur as my investiture began to heal the massive trauma to my body. I was in and out of consciousness as they manhandled me down a dirt tunnel shored up by thick wooden trusses. After what seemed like an eternity, they dropped me.
My head lolled with the pain of the beating and the torment of the poison. Overhead, huge, green metal shipping containers hung suspended by chains. I blinked to clear my eyes and tried to count them, I couldn’t. Below them, seven huge earthenware jugs rested on the green tiled floor. The tile? Where had I seen that lately?
One of the skull-kids reached down for me. “Wakey-wakey,” he said. I didn’t need to see his face to know he was sneering.
More than anything else, I wanted to rip that fucking sneer off of his face. Unfortunately, my body wasn’t willing to cooperate with me. I swung my arm at him, and he batted it away as easily as he might a child’s. He grabbed my shirt by the collar and yanked me upright. He was damned strong for his size, I caught his eye for a second. There was no hint of vampirism in them, just cold blue hate. He jerked me around and faced me away from him, toward the shipping containers.
“Welcome home,” he said.
As if on cue, a chorus of screams broke out from one of the containers, and within seconds, it spread like wildfire. A hundred, a thousand voices all crying out in agony. A moment later, the sound of water dripping filled the cavernous room. Streams of clear water poured from the containers, dripping directly along sorcerous conduits and into the earthenware jugs.
“What…is this?” I stammered.
“The end,” he said as he motioned toward the shadows.
“Of what?”
“People like you,” he growled.
Two black robed and hooded figures stepped into the light and moved swiftly toward us. I turned my head to get my bearings. If I had any hope of getting out of h
ere, I needed to know how. The skull-kid’s fist shoved my face forward.
“Eyes front!” He snapped.
When my vision cleared, the two goons in robes were right in front of us. I jerked back from them as they reached for me. A knee to my lumbar spine ended that struggle. The skull-kid pelted me with knees and fists all the way to the ground. I tried to speak, but the heel of his boot on my forehead silenced me.
21
I awoke to the sound of dripping water and sobbing. Let me just say, in the grand scheme of things, that’s one of the worst ways to wake. I ran my hands over my face. I couldn’t find a spare inch of flesh that wasn’t torn, ripped or bruised. They’d hammered my face all to shit. I don’t know what I did to that Skull-Kid, but whatever it was, he damned sure didn’t like it. My eyes adjusted to the dim light slowly, my vision still swam from the venom, but at this point it was more of an annoyance than a hindrance.
On the far side of the cargo container, highlighted by the light coming in from a hole in the floor, was a woman. Chains bound her to the wall by her wrists and neck. Her head was clean-shaven, and cuts and bruises covered her face. A set of fang marks stood out against the porcelain skin of her neck. Dehydration and repeated beatings had taken whatever luster her skin may have had and rendered her unrecognizable. I pitied her. Speaking a minor incantation, I summoned fire into my palm. Holding my hand up, I scanned the room for anything to help explain exactly what the hell was going on.
“Justice,” the woman whispered with a whimper.
I crawled closer to her, fearful that shifting the weight in the container might cause it to swing. She twitched and thrashed in the midst of whatever nightmare she was having. A Word of healing, and possibly one of rest might have fixed her. They would know; that much power getting thrown around would alert anyone. Any sorcerer worth a shit would feel me drawing the energy necessary for the sorcerous healing and warding that doing it myself would require; and based on the expertise it took to design the collection system that was filling the jugs down below, they had a decent one.
My veins grew hotter the closer I got to the woman. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not throwing around euphemisms here, my veins literally got warmer. I stopped immediately. What the hell could cause that? I let my human blood fall away, and the world got a hell of a lot brighter as my Sight kicked in. Threads connected me to the woman, and hundreds more threads flowed through the wall of the container. It was a one-way connection, the flow of energy came to me, and nothing left. I was intrigued and a little terrified. Few beneficial things flowed in a single direction. Most beneficent magic took a more holistic approach and touched everything around it. This clearly did not follow that guideline.
“Justice,” she murmured again. Then, “no!”
Tentatively, I touched one of the threads that lead to her. My vision blurred and split. I swooned for a moment as my stomach tried to crawl out of my mouth. Wave after wave of nausea rolled through me. I was seeing from two different perspectives simultaneously. I pulled my hand away from the thread and returned to my own head. Looking at all of the threads binding me to others, my stomach fell. This was not good.
I sat back and closed my eyes. It was dark enough in the container that I didn’t really need to, but the act helped more than the effect implied. Thorne wanted to make me suffer; he’d said as much. But these others? What did he want with them? How many people could have pissed him off? Or at least pissed him off enough for him to do this? He had resources: manpower, capital, magic. But where did he get them? Satan’s judgment of him had been harsh, but respectful—after a fashion. From my own dealings with him, he was unpredictable, unstable, and completely fucking crazy. He had access to sorcery, his own and others, and he was willing to use it. And that left me nowhere.
Why go through all of the trouble to spark the War anew? What did he have to gain by it? He wasn’t working for any god that I could discern. Trust me, when people work for gods, they tend to advertise it. Even when they aren’t supposed to. He’d captured a god, branded her with an offensive slavery curse and used her to poison people. Who does that?
The woman stirred again. “I won’t tell…please!” Her arms crossed over her face protectively, banging the chains against the wall of the container. “No!” one of her hands grabbed at her throat, clutching at something invisible. “You can’t!”
There are some things no one can watch. Some things to which only the gods are equipped to bear witness. This was one of them. My hand snatched the threads binding us and I threw myself into her nightmare.
22
I hurtled over the roof of a small cabin and slammed into the soft dirt like a wayward meteor. I gasped and flopped for a second as the wind was knocked out of me. I rolled onto my knees and forced myself upright. The woods were quiet and I could hear nothing but the occasional call of a whippoorwill and the constant crickets. I smelled pine and the dampness of autumn earth.
Her scream ripped through the quiet, and I ran toward it as fast as I could. The campground had cabins arranged in a circle with all of the doors facing inward toward a central building with a flagpole in front. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept expecting to see a sign welcoming me to Camp Crystal Lake. It wasn’t difficult to find the cabin, once I got a basic direction. All of the windows of the cabins had been shuttered, but I could see light coming from beneath the door in the cabin at the nine o’clock position, relative to the flagpole, of course.
I sprinted at the cabin, leaping the stairs, I hit the door like a train, my left heel slamming into the sweet spot just below the door knob. Splinters of the shattered door frame preceded me into the cabin. There was a second of blindness as the light in the cabin blasted my eyes. An instant later, it all came into focus. A large man held a young woman by the throat. Her shirt was torn, and blood leaked from wounds on her chest and abdomen. She kicked him repeatedly, and he laughed at her. One of his massive hands was raised as if to strike her.
I kicked the back of his right knee, and as he fell, I threw my left forearm against the inside of his right elbow and punched him in the throat as he toppled backward. He hit the ground in a confused tangle of limbs. I didn’t spare him the time to unfuck himself. I grabbed his ankle and yanked him against the rough floor. Jumping over his extended legs, I dropped my knee on his liver. My fists rained down on him, each hit more brutal than the one before.
I stepped back, my knuckles bloodied and broken, a snarl etched on my face. I looked over my shoulder and the girl hadn’t moved. She remained bent over and shaking with the force of her crying and her fear. Bruises marred the back of her legs, where his hands had whipped her, and burst capillaries in the shape of hand prints on her hips stood out in sharp contrast to her porcelain skin. Teeth marks stood out on both of her buttocks, one of them deep enough to scar. My mind reeled as I tried to understand the inhumanity of what I was seeing.
“Cover yourself, miss,” I said quietly. “I’ll turn my back.”
“He’s not done,” she whimpered.
I snapped back to face him, my feet already spreading apart to brace for impact. He launched himself off of the floor, his fist leading the way. I snapped my left hand out, counter punching and driving a jab into the corner of his chin. He stumbled, dazed. I kicked him the balls, hard. He stumbled forward, hands on his crushed testicles. I didn’t let up this time, I drove my right heel into the bridge of his nose. There was a flicker of shadow across his face. I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. He wasn’t alone in there.
His face shifted becoming bat-like, complete with dark hair and glowing red eyes. With a hiss, he flickered again, and he stood right in front of me. Reflexively, I crossed my forearms in front of my throat. Aetherics have a habit of going right for the throat, not just for the blood, but to get at the chakra there. If you destroy it, you destroy everything. His punch shoved me backward five feet. My heels hit the wall alongside the door.
“Nice try,” I grinned.
“This is
not your place, mortal.” He snarled and bared a mouthful of jagged fangs.
“She’s human,” I growled. “That makes it my place.”
“Then you ca—” he cut off the second my mouth opened.
I shouted a Word of abjuration and pushed my Mark at him. Ice-white flames exploded out from me in a circle, throwing him back. He shrieked as the flames pinned him against the back wall of the cabin. I stepped closer and closer, crushing him with the weight of Perdition.
“Mercy!” He held his hands up, screaming. “By the Accords, mortal!”
“The Lord of Perdition has no mercy for rapists,” I said quietly. “And neither do I!”
“I am a son of Camazotz!” He screamed as the flames caressed his feet. “I have rights!”
Unfortunately for me, he was right. He did have rights, and nightmare or not, I was bound to follow them. I was required to spare his life. I spoke a Word of force as I hurled my foot into his junk. He realized what I was doing a second too late. My foot ripped through the back wall of the cabin, taking his balls with it. He screamed and thrashed as I caught him by the throat.
“I spared your life, expect no further mercy. Now run,” I whispered. And the moment I stepped out of the way, he did.
23
The cabin was silent for a second after he fled. I stared at the hole I’d kicked in the back wall. The shadows moved and swelled unnaturally in the dim light that shone through the hole. My guts began to sink.
“You’re gonna want to get dressed,” I said quietly. “Now.”
“What’s happened?” She asked nervously.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But when shit starts moving in the darkness, that’s never a good sign.”
“What are you going to do?” She asked.
I turned to face her. “I hadn’t really considered it. I just jumped in here when I figured out what was happening.”
