And that’s when I spotted the figure in a red monk’s robe across the street, standing in the open doorway of a small church. Despite my grave injuries, I felt confused. I didn’t recall that church being here when I’d first arrived on the scene. Then again, I had focused on the apartment more than the immediate surroundings.
The mysterious figure kept waving me forward.
Run if you want to live!
Was that another voice in my head or just an echo of my own thoughts?
I craned my neck and saw more possessed kids sprinting after me. Drawing whatever reserves I had left, I hobbled across the street toward the church, every part of my body screaming for mercy. The figure in the monk’s robe melted back into the dark church almost as if I had imagined it. Even though there was no trace of the person who had called me, the chapel still represented a sanctuary, and I darted inside.
As soon as I set foot in the house of God, the large wooden doors slammed shut behind me. For a brief moment, I heard the kids slamming into the now-closed church doors like human battering rams. And then all sounds drained from the world. I stared at the door, wondering what had happened.
I shifted my focus to the insides of the chapel, took one step.
And froze.
Wherever I was, it sure as hell wasn’t like any church I’d ever visited before.
I found myself in a giant, cathedral-like structure, hewn from rough stone, a cavernous, vaulted ceiling stretching hundreds of feet above me. How could the small chapel I had entered house such a vast interior space? Impossible. My mind was playing tricks as death closed in. This place was a castle, not a church.
For a second, I wondered if I might have already died. Was this my first glimpse of the afterlife? I quickly cast that silly thought aside. I was in too much pain to be dead already.
Giant columns ran down the length of the chamber and guttering torches conjured grotesque shadows in the windowless space. There were no pews, crosses or statues of Saints, no sign that this place was affiliated with any religion I had ever heard of.
My psychological equilibrium off, my body pushed to the brink, I took another step and a wave of weakness hit me. The world tilted and slipped out of focus, and I collapsed in a string-cut sprawl.
I let go and accepted my death.
But someone had very different plans for me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to be reborn.
3
Darkness threatened to sweep me away as every part of my body shut down. My injuries were pushing me to my physical limits, which sounded a lot better than the truth—I was dying.
My eyelids grew heavy. Unconsciousness at least promised relief from the pain. And then I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. Two robed figures peeled from the encroaching shadows like ghosts and hustled toward me.
Before I knew what was happening, they had grabbed my arms and began to drag me across the flagstone floor. I wouldn’t have been able to resist them even if I’d wanted to. I was done for, barely clinging to consciousness. I didn’t feel the cold stone as it scraped my back, didn’t react to the bony fingers digging into my shoulders, didn’t feel much of anything. The world had become a dream.
No, a nightmare.
The two shadowy figures stopped and brusquely yanked me to my feet. Agony flooded my injured body, and I clenched my teeth, stifling a scream. On the positive side, the rough treatment jerked me awake. Reality snapped into focus as I stared at the altar before me. Strange glyphs and runes had been etched into its rough-hewn stone surface, symbols that distantly seemed familiar. Not Christian or Muslim or any other religion I had encountered in my thirty-one years on this planet.
Before I could protest, the two robed figures unceremoniously lifted me into the air, one holding me by the shoulders while the second hooded apparition grabbed me by the legs. I felt disconnected from my body, unable to fight back. I tried to scream but lacked the strength, my parched lips unable to form any coherent words.
The monks slapped me down on the stone altar like I was just a piece of meat. I blinked, guttering torches shining down at me like the lights in an operating room. The hooded spooks loomed, their faces shrouded in shadows. My arm shot out at one of the monks, and I somehow managed to tear the hood away, revealing the face underneath.
Or lack thereof.
I gasped in horror. The thing towering over me had no discernible features, no eyes, or nose or mouth. I was looking up at a mannequin come to life.
Calm yourself, Slayer, a voice spoke up in my mind. The sorceress will be with you shortly.
I made an attempt to grab the faceless creature again, but an invisible force slammed me back to the altar, making me feel like a pinned insect. I was unable to move, an enormous weight pressing down on me.
The two featureless creatures vanished in the shadows. My blood ran, sticky and red, over the rough stone surface of the altar. Terror prevented me from passing out.
I filled my lungs and screamed, “Help me, please, someone, get me out of here! HELP!”
“Hush now. Don’t be afraid!”
I paused, still terrified but grateful to hear a human voice in this accursed temple. I squinted but couldn’t detect any sign of the mysterious speaker. I tried to twist my head in the direction of the voice but failed. An inexplicable force pulled me toward the altar, almost as if the slab of rock was exerting a form of magnetism over my shattered body.
“Who the hell are you? What the fuck is happening?”
“My name is Octurna. And I’m about to save your life, Jason Night.”
The voice was both feminine and commanding, seductive yet strangely cold and removed.
I never heard the speaker approach. No footsteps or rustling of fabric gave her away. A shadow fell over me, and I was looking up at one of the most beautiful creatures I had ever laid eyes on. The woman was in her late twenties with high cheekbones, jet-black hair, and porcelain skin. She wore a crimson robe slashed at the neck to reveal a glimpse of her tantalizing cleavage. Catlike green eyes stared down at me with a calculating expression.
“I have been waiting for someone like you for years,” she said.
“Someone like me?” I asked in a strangled voice.
“You’re dying.” Octurna’s voice was matter-of-fact, impassive. “You’re strong, but all your skills and talents won’t matter if you bleed out on my altar.”
Hey, I couldn’t argue with that logic.
“What the hell do you want from me?” I croaked.
“Your strength. Your loyalty.” Octurna leaned closer, her gaze imploring. “Do you promise to serve me if I save your life? Will you be my warrior, Jason? My Slayer?”
My face contorted with anger. I had no idea what this woman was yammering on about. Maybe, considering my sorry condition, I should have agreed to any deal she was willing to offer. But I hated being pushed into a corner. Even when my life hung in the balance.
“Screw you,” I croaked with the last of my strength.
To my surprise, a smile played over Octurna’s face, and for a moment, she looked like she was flesh and blood and not some perfect sculpture come alive. “I like your fighting spirit, Jason. You had best hold on to that anger if you want to make it through the next hour.”
Octurna’s sensuous lips pressed into a thin line, her features narrowing with concentration. While she drew closer, her robe shifted around her graceful neck, revealing again the swell of two perfect breasts. I swallowed hard.
Delicate hands with long nails slipped over my blood-soaked SWAT uniform, caressed my battered body and found my wounds. The contact was electric, and it sent shivers up and down my spine despite my pain. With her touch, vitality returned to my body. With it, my anger came rushing back.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded to know. “And who was that fucking monster who murdered my men?”
“You survived a battle with a low-level demon. A succubus conjured by children who had no idea what they were doi
ng. Consider it your first glimpse of a far larger world.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“The answers are coming. Patience, slayer.”
Her finger brushed over the knife wound in my chest, and the pierced flesh reknitted itself. The throbbing pain subsided, and as the hole sealed up, the bleeding stopped. More injuries remained but this woman—witch, sorceress, goddess, or all of the above—could save me as long as I gave her what she wanted.
Do you promise to serve me if I save your life?
“What are you? Are you like the thing I faced in the building?”
A wan smile played over Octurna’s features in response to my question. “No. I’m very much human.”
“How are you doing this?”
“Magic.”
“I don’t understand…”
“You will soon enough. Magic is beauty and ecstasy and power. Without it, the world would be devoid of miracles.” She leaned closer and whispered into my ear. “I’m sorry about what happened to your friends. They were good people. Warriors. But you’re more than that, Jason. You’re a survivor.”
She brushed her fingers delicately along my broken arm, sending shivers of delight through my body. I could feel the pain lifting, the bone resetting itself. My mind was reeling.
“Your men were disciplined, trained, well-armed, but they came up against an enemy they didn’t understand.”
Octurna’s hands now found the bullet wound in my other arm. Her finger disappeared in the hole in my flesh, but there was no pain, almost as if her touch had an anesthetic effect on me. A moment passed, and she fished out the metal fragment and tossed it carelessly aside.
“What if I told you their deaths weren’t in vain, that this terrible encounter served a higher purpose? Their sacrifice brought you to me.”
I stared at her with a mixture of incomprehension and anger. “Sacrifice? That goddamn witch slaughtered them!”
Her eyes flickered with a trace of irritation. Octurna clearly wasn’t used to being addressed in such a tone. But who could blame me? I’d been to Hell and back, and my patience was running thin.
Her face relaxed, but her eyes continued to simmer. “There are other creatures like the succubus out there. Monsters who live in the shadows, biding their time. The demon you faced was a low-level thug. Imagine what the real nightmares are like. Think of how many innocent lives will perish in the future unless we stop the Shadow Cabal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about vengeance. What would you give if I could help you destroy the monster who wiped out your team? Would you seize the opportunity to even the score, to make it suffer as much as its innocent victims?”
“Yes.” The answer rolled off my tongue without hesitation.
“Good. Then we have an agreement, Jason Night.”
As if to accentuate her point, Octurna waved both her hands over my body. Crackling tendrils of red light forked around her fingers and engulfed my chest. Within seconds, my remaining wounds sealed themselves. I was back to normal. Still superglued to the stone altar, but alive.
“You’re brave and strong, Jason,” Octurna said, “but the things you’ll be going up against, well, it takes more than a broad back to battle the demons and their twisted masters.”
I was struggling with what Octurna was telling me. Masters? Creatures of the night? My mind was going into overload. I never got a chance to give voice to the myriad of questions cycling through my mind as Octurna pulled out a flask. Before I could protest, she popped the cork from the flask and poured red liquid right into my open mouth. The red substance hit my lips and burned down my gullet. This sure as hell wasn’t wine. The coppery swill made me gag.
“Dragon Blood will make you stronger, faster, less prone to injury.”
The red stuff was still sizzling down my throat as the full meaning of Octurna’s words hit me. She was making me drink blood? Could this nightmare get any stranger?
The answer was a resounding yes as Octurna started to remove her robe.
The fabric fell to the stone floor next to the altar.
I stifled a gasp. I had dated my fair share of women over the years, but the one in front of me was an erotic vision. Her flawless skin the color of marble, an intricate web of tattoos running across her whole body, delineating her breasts from her shoulders and surrounding her sex, forming fine-lined patterns which reminded me of crop circles. Instead of disfiguring her sensual beauty, the ink heightened it.
An almost irrational desire for this woman gripped me, and my body stirred.
“You will require more than just the right weapons to hunt creatures of darkness, Jason Night. You will have to become a weapon.”
Her hands crackled with bluish flames, and the remainders of my blood-soaked black SWAT uniform evaporated into thin air. I was naked now my muscular body splayed out on a stone altar like a sacrifice to some mad god.
Or a goddess.
“You will need my strength. My magic is weak and depleted. I’m but a shadow of who I once was, but I’ll share what little I have with you, Jason. Accept the power I’m about to gift you and make it your own.”
Every cell in my body felt energized with desire despite all that had happened in the last hour. Octurna leaned forward, her breasts firm yet luscious, tantalizingly within reach. I wanted to cup those beauties and close my lips around her erect nipples. But even though she had healed my wounds, I remained like a statue.
Like some sleek jungle cat, my savior slipped onto the altar, her finely drawn tattoos shimmering in the flames of the temple’s torches.
Without hesitation, she mounted me, her weight against my thighs sending waves of pleasure through my body. But even as she stroked my manhood and directed it into the inviting heat between her legs, there was something clinical about her actions. Her lips never touched my own; there was no foreplay or build-up. She simply guided me inside her and rocked back and forth, her features furrowed in concentration as she rode me.
Our coupling was clearly incidental to some higher goal. What had she said? Accept the power I’m about to gift you.
As we built toward a climax, I saw her tattoos deepen in color, the patterns shifting and swirling, changing like ink blots on an elaborate Rorschach test, almost like they were alive…
She began breathing faster, crashing down onto me again and again. I wanted to touch her. I ached to thrust upwards, to grab her hips, anything. But I was helpless, a spectator in this ritual. My body tightened even as her gasping breaths became a single, drawn-out cry.
We both came in a paroxysm of pain and pleasure. A strange heat engulfed my entire being, and Octurna’s tattoos leapt from her skin to mine, forming new patterns and shapes all over my naked body. I screamed in exquisite agony as the living brands sank into my flesh.
The last thing I saw was Octurna’s beautiful face looking down at me, her eyes coolly calculating and determined, so unlike anyone I had ever encountered in my life.
And then I mercifully passed out.
4
Awareness returned in a murky haze. My eyes snapped open, and for a disoriented beat, I didn’t know where I was. One quick glance at my nude, newly tattooed body splayed out on the stone altar brought it all back.
My breath came in sharp bursts as memories flooded my mind with a vengeance. With them came the gnawing sense of loss. My team, my family, was gone! I shook all over as I relived each of their deaths. I wished I could have pretended that the last few hours had been nothing but a bad dream, but my surreal surroundings told me otherwise—and so did my transformed skin. I stared at the map of tattoos that now covered my body like ley lines, both horrified and fascinated by the web-like tribal patterns etched into the surface of my body. What had that woman done to me?
My chest tightened with panic. I had to stay in control. Keep a clear head.
I drew on the meditation techniques, which had been part of my morning
routine since my return from Iraq, and focused on the simple act of breathing. Inhale and exhale, in and out. My nerves calmed with each successive breath, and the shaking subsided.
Somewhat.
Once I felt like I was mostly back in charge, I contemplated my next move. There was no sign of the strange sorceress who had saved me, bedded me, and branded me with her tattoos. Not even the two faceless spooks were anywhere to be seen.
I was alone in the temple.
Taking another deep, rejuvenating breath, I slipped off the altar. As I took my first tentative step, power surged through my body. I felt stronger than ever—fantastic, in fact. Energized as If I had been mainlining Starbucks Americanos and Red Bulls. My heart pounded steadily in my chest with the force of a sledgehammer. I was ready to take part in an Iron Man triathlon and walk away with a medal.
Was this a side effect of the tattoos? Or the dragon blood?
On that note, did I really believe I had consumed the blood of some mythical beast? Despite everything that had happened, I couldn’t quite accept that dragon blood was now coursing through my veins. Wired and determined to get some answers to the many questions haunting me, I began to explore.
Again I marveled at the sheer size of the temple. The sprawling chamber appeared bigger from within than from without, composed of impenetrable shadow. I still didn’t grasp how the small chapel I had fled into could house such a gigantic structure.
I shook my head, knowing that figuring out this crazy stuff was way past my pay grade. Considering the insane shit I’d recently experienced, it was almost funny that the scope of this place was the one detail I continued to obsess about. I had seen good men transformed into homicidal maniacs, battled a demon, and witnessed a woman heal fatal injuries with her bare hands. Not to mention the freaky, tattoo-transferring sex. Either there was more to reality than I ever suspected, or I was experiencing the most vivid fever dream ever.
To be honest, the idea of waking up in some padded cell, my system full of meds and my body constrained by a straightjacket, held some appeal. At least it would have meant the world wasn’t going batshit crazy.
Night Slayer: Midnight War Page 3
