FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  It normally took a lot to stagger Brea, but at that confession she found her voice caught in her throat.

  “I thought you were in danger,” Kozog said. “I came quickly. I don’t think you even noticed.”

  “It’s an elf thing,” Brea said, fairly sure he would believe that. “Sometimes we just like to sing.”

  “It’s completely okay,” said Kozog. “I enjoyed it, truly, and I wish you would do so more often; not only when we are in peril.”

  “I’ll remember that,” she said, a warm glow spreading across her face.

  “Although,” Kozog said, casting his eyes to the wooden trap door, “if anyone is waiting down there for us, I think we lost the advantage of surprise.”

  How could he do that? Bring her such warmth and happiness, and then take it away. Not deliberately, just…by being him.

  “It’s fine,” said Brea. That was a lesson she had taken from her parents; any time anyone insisted some slight was fine, it was not fine.

  Once again, Sheyra’s words came back to her. The fair folk never forget, but they do forgive. Technically true. Brea added her own caveat. Eventually.

  Maybe.

  Kozog grabbed the trap door and hoisted it up. “I’ll go first,” he said, and together the two of them disappeared into the gloom.

  Chapter V

  Kozog

  THE GLOOM DIDN’T BOTHER HIM; the thin sliver of light filtering through the open hole into the ground was more than enough light to see by. He put foot in front of foot, walking down the stairs into the dim light, letting his eyes adjust.

  It was just as he remembered it; a dank, musty cellar full of bottles of wine and wooden crates that they hadn’t unpacked from the move. More art. Kozog didn’t know why his mother collected so much.

  “Looks clear,” said Kozog, resting the butt of his spear down on the ground and waving over his shoulder for Brea to follow.

  He almost hit her in the face. She was standing right next to him; quiet like a cat. Kozog had not heard her move.

  “Careful,” she hissed.

  “Sorry.” Kozog inhaled, taking in the damp scent. “Where is this ledger?”

  “Loose stone, southeast corner.” Brea stepped forward cautiously, her eyes fixed on one of the stones. “I think I see it.”

  A faint hum filled the air. Kozog gripped his spear cautiously and a section of the wall, earthy and covered in moss, melted away to become a woman with delicate features and a strange, pale, unearthly beauty to her.

  A woman wearing no clothes at all, save a dagger strapped to her hip via a thin leather band. She stared at him with dimly glowing crimson eyes that seemed to pierce through him, a curious smile on her face.

  Kozog could practically smell the demonic influence on her, but the stranger made no move to engage. “Another demon,” he said, flicking his tongue over a tusk.

  “Can’t these guys take one night off?” spat Brea, her weapons in her hands. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The strange woman smiled as she stepped up to Brea, unsheathed her dagger, and in one impossibly swift motion, drove it into Brea’s heart.

  Time stopped. A tiny flower of red blossomed at Brea’s back, the stigma the narrow point of the blade, fine links of her chainmail punctured. It was a picture painted perfectly in his eyes; Brea, still standing despite the blade’s penetration, the woman smiling as though she had only offered a cup of tea, and the slow drip of blood onto the floor.

  How had this happened? Why didn’t she parry, or block, or—

  Brea crumpled in a heap. The demon casually sheathed the bloody blade.

  Kozog’s spear found his hands and a bloodthirsty roar bellowed out, primal and wordless. His legs coiled and sprung forward, tip of his spear aimed to the creature’s heart a thick trail of smoke engulfing his hands.

  The woman daintily stepped out of the path of his furious assault and, ever so gently, touched a finger to his forehead.

  Kozog froze in place, his face twisted and distorted with pure hatred.

  “What do we have here, mmm?” said the demon. Her voice was honey and gravel, impossibly sweet but concealing a deep, echoing power. A succubus. “They said that Sheyra would come herself; who in the hells are you?”

  Unrestrained fury burned in his veins as he struggled to move his fingers, to bring his weapon against the one who had slain Brea. It didn’t move.

  “A half-orc,” said the succubus, stepping around Kozog’s immobile speartip, sliding up against his front, scraping one of her nails along his breastplate. “Fascinating. I smell Sheyra’s blood in your veins; her son, possibly. Not unlikely given her... tolerance for humans.”

  Kozog mentally thrashed against the telepathic shackles. No movement. At his feet, he could see her. blood splattered against the damp, mossy floor of the basement.

  Brea’s flesh was pale white, drained of blood. Drained of life.

  Dead.

  The succubus pressed her lips to his. They were cold as ice, and Kozog felt a dark lance in his mind; images flashed before his eyes. Fragments of his life, all of his recall pushed through the kiss into her. Simultaneously, the strength in his muscles faded.

  “I pity you, half-man,” the succubus said, her voice at once soft as silk and hard as iron. “Looking into your heart I see the truth. You are the mule of humanity. Misbegotten filth-skin who crawled out of the gutter and thought he could stand among his betters as an equal.” The demon kissed at his cheek, working her way down to his neck, suckled at Kozog’s skin as one might a boiled sweet. “One who studied, trying to be one of them. Unfortunately you will never escape your nature, little orc. A savage. A killer. You are dirt to these men, mule. You must know they snicker behind your back, watching you strut around dressed as them, talking like them. You are a trained pet. Something to amuse themselves, made even more pathetic that you do not recognise it.”

  Meaningless babble. He didn’t care what she said. His heart was full of rage.

  More of his life energy drained out through her lips. Kozog felt as though he had run for miles; his legs ached, his arms were only held aloft by whatever dark spell she had spat at him.

  “Delicious,” murmured the succubus. She, seeming to have consumed her fill, raised her head. Another kiss and Kozog’s lips could move.

  “I’ll kill you for this!” he snarled.

  “No, you won’t.” She hooked her hands into his breastplate, pressing herself against him. “You’ll be a corpse when I’m through with you. When. It will be a time of my choosing.”

  Kozog’s tusks trembled with fury. “Why don’t you just kill me, beast? Send me to her!”

  “Anyone can kill,” the succubus mused, as though considering dinner wines. “Flesh is weak. It is the destruction of hope that is the sweetest victory.”

  “I’ll never believe a word you tell me.” He spat the words with all the hate in existence.

  “You see,” said the succubus, “here-in lies the first of your mistaken presumptions about demonkind and what we do. Your belief in our words is not required. I tell neither truths nor lies; I only take what you conceal in your heart and bring it to the surface. I use only your own perception and create nothing, false or true. I know nothing of Kozog save what I learn from your mind.” She smiled, exposing a mouth full of shark-like teeth. “To hurt you I simply remind you of your own failings.”

  Kozog willed the monster to die with all the mental energy he had.

  “You feel for this half-elf,” said the succubus. Kozog could feel the thoughts being pulled out of his head. “Perfectly understandable. Bastard half-breeds would be drawn to each other; mutts and mongrels, rolling in the dirt together.” Her dark smile grew. “How could you ever think she would be interested in a greenskin? Could she lie with you, a snot-blooded creature, bent and retched, a warped mockery of her human roots? Look at her pale skin, her perfect hair, and her kind eyes. Yours are sullen and empty; full of only rage, hidden beneath the thin, easily pierce
d veil of civilisation.

  “Did you know in Nuriel, the New Kingdom of Man, the nobility often import monkeys, dress them in halfling’s clothes, and train them to perform tasks? Some are quite impressive; copying documents, operation of complex machinery, or activating magical items. Some say they are almost human.” She hummed quietly. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “When I’m free, I’ll tear out your throat, you fiend-blooded monster.”

  “Promises,” said the succubus, purring in her throat. Her form melted away, ears elongating, and her dark hair turning chestnut and spilling down over her shoulders. The perfect facsimile of Brea.

  “You can practice on me if you want,” she said in Brea’s voice, perfectly intoned. “In every way you wish. Imagine that I am her; my body is still warm, unlike hers…flesh intact, blood in my veins. I can be her for you.”

  “Release me and we might find out,” said Kozog, fighting the sickening feeling in his gut as he looked at the perfect mirror of Brea.

  “You lie poorly.” Gently, the succubus slid the spear out of Kozog’s immobile fingers, dropping it on the ground. “But there is no sense in taking chances, is there?”

  “No chance I can take while my hands don’t move,” said Kozog. “How about another kiss? I’m liking you as Brea.”

  She laughed, deep and powerful, a stark mirror to Brea’s playful trill. “All eventually fall for my charms,” she said, casually hooking her arms around Kozog’s shoulders. From behind her, a pair of stunted bat wings grew with the sound of stretched sinew and bone. “Even if I am wearing someone else’s face. Maybe I will keep you alive. Maybe. Just for me to toy with for a little before you die.”

  “How about that kiss?” asked Kozog.

  She leaned forward, her lips barely away from Kozog’s. “Such pleasures I could give you,” she said in Brea’s voice. “Far more than any mortal female. I can make you abandon your elven friend in a heartbeat.”

  Kozog smiled when she kissed him, and snapped his teeth down on her lip, jamming his tusks into her cheeks.

  Black blood sprayed all over his face. The succubus howled a wild, otherworldly wail that belied her extra-planar nature, and the guise of Brea faded away to reveal a red-skinned, warped woman with huge bat wings and a scorpion’s tail.

  The fel magic holding his limbs rigid faded; he tore his tusk out of her flesh, one breaking off. He slumped and staggered, struggling to keep his footing. His whole body felt as though it were made of lead.

  “Mule!” the succubus screeched, slashing at him with fingertips ending in elongated claws, drawing lines of blood across his shoulder. “Beast! Orc! Animal!”

  Kozog grit his teeth against the new wound, guns bleeding from his broken tusk. He sprung forward and slammed his forehead into her face. Black odorous filth sprayed from her crumpled nose, in a tangle of wings, tails and flailing fists, they collapsed onto the ground, punching, biting, and kicking.

  The succubus’s tail snapped over her shoulder. The tip dug into Kozog’s forearm. Poison pumped into his veins. He head-butted the demon. She clawed his flank. He kneed her in the groin. She kneed him back.

  Kozog’s rage faltered as dark poison pumped into his body, but picturing Brea, dead and broken, drove him beyond its burn. He punched, kicked, gored and roared like a lion.

  Her claws latched onto his chest, finding the wound below his heart. Something about it surprised her; her eyes opened wide with fear and shock, and for a split second, her guard was down. “Az’shelas?” the demon asked, a word he did not recognise in any tongue he spoke.

  Kozog’s hand found the dagger at her hip, drew it, and reversed its grip. “You talk too much,” he snarled, and drove the tip between her eyes.

  Her form melted away. The succubus’s body became a misshapen, almost formless creature of black liquid ash with dark flaming wings, neither male nor female; a genderless construct spun of pure ruin.

  The succubus’s body twitched, jerked, then burst like an overripe sack, spraying rancid black liquid in all directions, covering the floor and Kozog’s body. The world around him shimmered, translucent and distorted for a moment, and Brea’s body faded away.

  Instead, she stood with her back against the wall, the wound on her chest vanished. Her hands were outstretched, trembling, as though choking the life out of some unseen foe. Her face was streaked with tears, her hair wild and dishevelled.

  A moment’s confusion stopped both of them. Kozog, with the demonologist’s training the church had given him, knew what had happened.

  Every demon’s words were lies but there was more power to them than that. The could also reach into one’s head, their heart, and paint a false reality. The perfect tool for corrupting the pure; it took particular discipline to resist the truth of one’s own senses, and although Kozog knew of it intellectually, he had not experienced it personally.

  Before now.

  Their eyes met. Brea shrieked. “No more illusions! No more trickery! You’re not Kozog, he’s dead!”

  Kozog knew that Brea, although lacking the specialist training he had, had clearly come to the same conclusion. “Wait,” he said, holding up his filth-stained hands. “It’s me. It’s really me. She was in our heads, Brea, trying to break us. She’s gone now.”

  “You’re lying!”

  What could he say to prove he was who he said he was? “My mother, who you met, is named Sheyra.”

  “The demon knew her name,” said Brea, her fists clenched in a fighting stance. “That tells me nothing.”

  Of course she did. Kozog’s eyes fell to her exposed fingers. “Your burned your hands,” Kozog said. “On your dagger. The tiefling’s spell heated it, back in the Shadowlands. Then you rode with Bane’hal to Irondarrow keep.”

  Brea tensed. For a moment, Kozog thought she would not believe him, and then the tension flowed out of her whole body. “Thank everything.”

  He stood, flicking his fingers to clean off some of the demon’s blood. “Again, it was just an illusion.”

  “I know.” Brea pointed at his other hand, and the weapon held within it. “Wait, is that the cow’s dagger?”

  Kozog smiled, holding out the black metal, slick with dark blood. “Mmm hmm.”

  “How did you get it? She was holding it just before, in my mind, as I choked the life out of her…”

  He casually wiped the weapon clean on a scrap of cloth. “I promise you,” said Kozog, inspecting the last flecks of blood on the hilt. “She only missed it for an instant.”

  Brea

  The servant’s quarters, as Kozog had promised, unlocked from the inside. She cleaned off as much of the demon’s blood off Kozog as she could, and then the two of them slipped away into the growing twilight.

  She hid her trembling hands from him until her nerve returned, after Kozog led them to a cheap and nasty inn near the edge of town and checked them in.

  The place was a dilapidated, deserted hole in a wall surrounded by Marcelin’s unwanted and unwashed. She didn’t care; it seemed safe enough, and she flopped down on the diminutive bed at the centre of their tiny room. Was this a room for a halfling?

  “Mine,” she said. “You get the floor. Nap time.”

  “Actually,” said Kozog, standing in the doorway. “This is where I leave you.” He held up a hand. “For the moment.”

  She rolled onto her back, staring at him. “Wait, you’re not staying here tonight?”

  “I would, but it’s probably better I don’t stay here. That was a genuine demon, and a powerful one too, all within the walls of Marcelin. I have to report this.”

  “Lots of paperwork,” said Brea. “That should make you happy.” She considered, sliding out of the bed and moving out to the doorway. “How will you explain how we got down here in the basement? This building is supposed to be in lockdown.”

  “That part will be easy,” he said. “I’ll blame it on some crazy Freelander I saw breaking into my house. This kind of thing should pass magical interrogation a
s, technically, you were the one who entered first. Clearly I, as a civilly minded priest of the church of Tyranus, who is oath-sworn to upload the law and protect the people from thugs and brigands—”

  “Hey!”

  “—should, with heavy heart, be forced to violate the seizure order in order to apprehend the suspect and preserve justice.” He smiled. “Unfortunately, the villain got away. However, in doing so I was able to discover a demonic infiltrator in the basement, which I defeated.” He pointed to his missing tusk. “And suffered terribly in the doing so. A humble sacrifice, willingly made, to preserve the peace.”

  “Won’t it look suspicious, you finding a demon in your own house?”

  “Demonologists often speculate that demons arise in areas of profound corruption with obvious signs of their taint, or alternatively, in areas more pure than others. Honestly, as there are no gaping maws to the Hells in my bedroom, this will work in my favour.”

  “This is all okay,” said Brea. “Except it makes a criminal out of me.”

  “All elves look alike,” said Kozog. “I’ll be sure to give a vague enough description that nobody can pin this back on you, knife-ears.”

  “Bah, broccoli-face.” Typical. She sighed, tossing her hands into the air, and then regarded him. He seemed…sickly. Weak. Tired. Afraid? “Hey, greeny. You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Kozog said, which Brea could tell was a huge big stinking lie. There was that word again. Fine.

  “You sure?” she asked. “Because you look like shit.”

  He laughed and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. When it finally did, the words came from within; she knew he spoke his mind without reservation. “I don’t want to sleep just yet. Sometimes when I sleep I see my mother’s eyes, ten years ago. I see the pain, the terror as she tried, all in vain, to stay the hand of her husband’s executioner. She had spells, connections politically and socially, as well as might in battle; but still my father fell. The pain she felt…I was only nine when I saw it. I cannot put it into words. It is something only an orc feels. Teetering on the edge of madness and terror; of fear and fury. The bloodrage. I felt this today, and now I am afraid that one day it will consume me. I tremble, thinking what the only outcome for me will be.