by Mark Eller
Leaping from the knight’s arms, the gelf scampered to the miniature rose bush in the room’s corner. Ignoring Tobin, Ani followed on a dead run with the two guards following.
“Lady Morlon! Wait!” Strong fingers wrapped about her upper arm as Tobin’s hand brought her to an abrupt halt halfway down the hallway.
Ani struggled but couldn’t break his grip. Teeth barred, she glared up at him. “Missa’s in danger. Let me go. Now! I have to get to my daughter.”
“I think you’re a little late…Lady Morlon,” a deep voice interrupted.
Tobin and Maxlar’s faces paled. Tobin’s sword dropped from his hand. Ani turned, slow, trembling. The air in the hallway’s confined space suddenly seemed thin. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t scream.
From a mere ten feet away, death stared at her. The living nightmare smiled with row upon row of endless needle teeth in a mouth that couldn’t possibly fit on any creature’s face. Black didn’t describe its color, for its skin was more an emptiness, almost as if she stared into an endless abyss of nothing. The tips of its folded bat wings scraped the ceiling, while large, muscled arms were crossed over a broad chest in a stance of confident superiority. During her time in the Hellhole Tavern she had seen more than one devil crawl out to the hole, but this was truly the largest one she had ever seen. Endless waves of power began exuding from the monster, flowing over her body, pulling, caressing, dragging her one slow reluctant step after another into its wanting embrace. Behind her, she heard soft whimpers followed by the rattle of armored bodies falling to the stone floor, but the fate of the knights was of no concern to Ani. Moving as if she drifted in a thick syrup dream, she continued toward the hellborn, each step bringing her closer to the being she suddenly had to have, the being she now most desired.
Like it existed in a heat wave, the devil’s image wavered, warped, his scales smoothed, and his face took on the visage of the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Long, black silken tresses fell from his head like a river of molten onyx, framing a strong, smooth, pale face. His smile was delicious; full…inviting. His body was sleek, muscled…taut…and completely bare. The devil’s manhood stood erect between his legs, and Ani whimpered at the sight. Deep in her soul a fire of pure lust and need ignited. Like a violent summer storm, her body’s needs burst forth, consumed her, and drove her forward another step to his wanting embrace.
“My, you are beautiful.” His voice surged over her body as if he were already caressing her in her most intimate places. “I see why Sulya was so jealous. It must have angered her greatly to know you don’t have to lure men to you by trickery.” He held out a hand possessing long graceful fingers. Fingers she was sure he would use to bring her endless moments of pleasure. “Come Anithia. I am Mercktos, and your fate awaits you.”
A shiver of lust ran from her groin to her breasts, hardening her nipples, making her wet. She stretched out her hand. Then pain, sharp, unbelievable pain, arced up her leg when something latched onto her. She screamed, staggered backwards, and shook her leg frantically. The devil’s spell shattered like glass in a storm, breaking around her in cacophony of chaos.
The sound of doors flying open and alarmed shouts echoed through the manor.
Growling, the devil started forward. Something whizzed through the air. He screeched when a silver arrow pierced his jugular.
Ani staggered into the rough granite wall, clutching her leg, blood soaking her dressing gown and dripping down into her slipper. Whatever had bit her was no longer in sight.
Shouts, screams, cursing, and flashes of power filled the air, stinging Ani’s eyes and bombarding her senses. The devil shifted again like liquid night. Once more death filled the hallway. Grabbing the silver arrow, he yanked it out, snapping it in two as if it were a useless twig, splattering the walls and floor with his black, foul smelling blood. Rage twisted his features into a hideous, monstrous nightmare as he strode straight for her. Fear ripped away the trappings Mercktos has laid upon her soul, leaving her sick with horror and disbelief.
“I didn’t want to do this the hard way Anithia, but you leave me no choice.” He reached for her with thick, razor sharp talons, flexed them inches from her face…and stopped.
Anithia could not fathom the devil becoming angrier, but it appeared she was wrong. Eyes spasming wide, he jerked upright with a throat tearing growl. His talons curled inward as his hands curled into tight fists.
“That. Stupid. BITCH!” Throwing back his head, Mercktos screamed. His voice cut through Ani as if she were being struck by a thousand knives, tearing into her senses in a bloodless slaughter.
Anithia convulsed, screamed, and knew she would soon die. Air escaped her. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. She would suffocate if Mercktos didn’t shut up. Her heart would seize.
When light filled the hallway, her body snapped taut. The pain of Mercktos’s scream was ripped away, replaced with a sense of floating, as if she were a thing of air and light. Strange squiggly afterimages drifted in her vision, like little bugs swimming through the air. She willed herself to lift her hand, to reach out and touch them, but her hand did not move. She had no volition, no will. All she could do was float in her mental cocoon and wait for the devil to finish her off.
Closing her eyes, Anithia threw a last silent prayer into the heavens.Anothosia…my child…please save her.
The light faded, the world receded, and Ani drifted into the void, amused to see the strange bugs skittering after her, trying to lure her toward a tiny rose bush.
* * * *
Alarmed shouts rang through the manor. Priests and priestess’s thundered up steps and charged from their rooms. Sulya cursed when Missa kicked her violently in her shins while trying to pull the gag free. Scowling, Sulya vowed she would make the little wretch pay for the trouble she was causing.
What the hell had gone wrong? Mercktos assured her he would gather Anithia without a sound. Obviously, he had failed. The manor guards were alert, and Sulya was trapped. The only escape she could fathom was going up— toward Mercktos— toward the screaming.
Gripping the unruly child to her, Sulya sped down the hallway then up the stairs, swearing once again when the child’s struggles nearly tripped her. Behind her, Heinous and Ruin, battled a quartet of disorganized knights. The stairs suddenly shook beneath the similian. Blinding light and the roar of rushing wind threw her against the wall. A loud pop inside her ears sent pain coursing down her neck and into her shoulder. Crying out, Sulya shoved herself away from the wall and staggered forward, nearly dropping the child. She blinked several times to clear her vision, and when she could once more see clearly, the sight greeting her in the narrow hallway brought her to an abrupt halt. Her grip on Missa loosened.
The almighty Mercktos, Zorce’s most feared devil was not only battling an overgrown rose bush; he was getting his ass kicked while doing so. The plant wrapped about his body and attacked him like he had fallen into a nest of vipers, using thorns the size of small daggers while simultaneously beating against him with flowers as large as his head. Each thorn struck him repeatedly, piercing time and again while the thrashing flower heads raised bruises. Mercktos fought back savagely, ripping flowers and stems free, but for every flower he decapitated, two grew back. The bush shredded his wings faster than he could heal them. The daggers sank deep, trailing thick black blood in their wake. Mercktos’s face was a furious twisted mass of teeth and ripped scales as he tore at the bush, more hideous to see than even Zorce’s countenance. Sulya shivered violently as his power flowed from his body, his raw hatred stabbing at her very sanity. Whimpering, she leaned against the wall and tried not to fall.
Even in battle, Mercktos heard. He looked at her past the raging flowers and flailing stems. His eyes were swirling vortexes of white mist as he bellowed orders. “Get her out of here! Take her through Anithia’s room. A wagon waits below.”
For once Sulya did not argue with the Black Knight. She stepped over
Ani’s unconscious body and into her room, the child still clutched in her arms. Once inside, she ran to the balcony faster than she had ever moved in her life. Down below, as Mercktos promised, was a large wagon filled with hay. Sulya started and scowled when Ruin appeared beside her.
“Where’s Heinous?” she demanded.
The blue scaled demon shook his head, his voice rasped from deep in his chest, furious and cold. “He’s been sent back to our god. We must hurry. They’ll soon remove the bookcase I used to block the hall and be upon us.”
Ruin was smaller than Heinous but twice as vicious. It didn’t surprise her Heinous had been the one to die. Despite Sulya and Athos’s best efforts, the knights hadn’t grown weaker over the years. Fewer in number, yes, but not weaker because Zorce had placed Calto Morlon off limits. Anothosia’s high priest had not only led his knights true, he had taught them more battle spells than they had ever before known, creating a tightly knit, hard fighting force. To Sulya, it was another obvious sign the bitch goddess was meddling where she didn’t belong.
Reaching up, Ruin rubbed its bloodied head where one of its three horns had been torn loose. One of his three eyes had also been gouged out. A feeling of loss twinged at her as she looked back to where Mercktos still fought. She would miss Heinous. Sixty years earlier he had been one of her most useful tools.
Back to business.
“Jump into the wagon,” she ordered Ruin. “Catch the brat when I drop her, and be careful. If she dies before the ceremony, Zorce will have our heads.”
Nodding, Ruin leapt over the rail, stumbling as he landed. Sulya grimaced. A three story drop was usually nothing to a demon. His stumble proved Ruin suffered greater injuries than she had suspected, lessening his value for the next several hours.
Satisfied Ruin was well set, she leaned over the railing with the child in her arms. The miserable wretch squirmed and kicked and wailed. The similian flung Missa away with a grin, half hoping Ruin missed and dropped the little brat. Not enough to kill her, of course, but enough to hurt. Unfortunately, he caught the child cleanly. Damn.
Over the balcony’s edge Sulya went, gritting her teeth against the pain which still assailed her from Mercktos’s cries and also the agonizing impact of landing after a three story fall. She hit hard, rolled to her side and then pulled herself painfully upright. With a limp and a curse, Sulya clamored into the wagon’s driver’s seat as Ruin wrestled a burlap sack over Missa’s head and shoved the little brat down into the hay.
“Nasty little human.” He cursed under his breath as one of Missa’s feet connected with his bleeding eye socket. Sulya released a faint smile. At least she wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of the horrible child’s malice.
With a snap of the reins, the wagon lurched forward and took off toward the gate. Mercktos was supposed to handle this as well, but things hadn’t looked like they were going his way the last she saw. The only advantage she had left was the thin chance none of the knights had seen her leave.
“Get down,” Sulya ordered the demon. “I don’t want anyone seeing you.”
Ruin burrowed into the hay. The gates loomed before her, appearing insurmountable. She couldn’t ram her horses and wagon into the solid steel bars, and her ability to fight was limited by Ruin’s injuries.
Sulya steeled her nerves. The morning sun would either find her safe in her hidey hole or decapitated by Calto. If the gate guards stopped her, she would tell them Lord Morlon had sent her to bring back a group of Anothosia’s knight’s from a neighboring manor. It wasn’t the most feasible excuse, but it was the best she could come up with on the fly. If they didn’t believe her, a bunch of her supposed friends would soon die.
The similian slowed her horse’s pace as she drew closer to the gates. When no one challenged her she pulled the horses to a stop. Several tense moments of feeling like she was about to be shot full of arrows ticked agonizingly by before the gates quietly opened. Mercktos limped up to the wagon in his human form, naked, covered in blood, and hopped into the seat next to her.
“You said there were no supernatural guardians.” Rage, hatred, loathing emanated from the devil in long, dark streams of power. Large, ragged tears in his pale, perfect flesh healed slowly. One particularly nasty wound on his face laid bare his cheekbone. “I barely made it out alive.”
Sulya shook. Cold sweat covered her body, and her vision blurred. Dark energy flooded her senses. “I don’t know what happened. The only guardians I’ve ever seen inside the manor are the knights.”
With an almost audible snap, Mercktos whipped his head around and glared at her, his eyes empty pits of nothing which sucked at her soul and drained her will. “Knights? You only saw knights? I was fucking well shredded to fucking pieces by a fucking rose bush. That was a gods damned gelf creation back there. With attitude!”
“Gelf?” Clutching the reins tighter, Sulya shook her head. “No. It couldn’t be. I— ” Realization struck her like a slap to the face. An old man had brought a potted rose bush to the manor two days prior. A gift, he said, for Anithia. Still, it hadn’t been a danger. She had snuck into Anithia’s room and checked the bush over carefully because she knew the time for action was near. When had the gelf entered Ani’s room? It must have been within the last hour, but if so the sheer size and ferocity of the bush spoke of an unbelievable amount of power. Was Omitan now taking a hand, or was Anithia somehow involved?
The muddy tendrils of Mercktos’s energy recoiled. A ripple of calm seemed to quench his anger, almost as if someone had thrown a pail of water on his fire. “You’ll suffer for this fiasco. I’ll make it clear to Zorce why Anithia wasn’t captured along with her daughter.”
Anger spilled forth from Sulya, energizing her, returning her confidence. “It wasn’t my ass getting kicked by a flower, and I will makethatclear to Zorce as well.”
Sulya snapped the reigns. The horses lurched forward, lengthening their stride. She would be damned if she’d suffer alone.
Mercktos stilled, shifted into his devil form, a slow and gruesome sight as bits of still unhealed flesh hung from his body. The stench of blood and rot nearly overwhelmed her as he leaned in close to her ear. “You know, it would be a very long time before anyone found you if you disappeared within Athos’s part of Hell. Maybe we should pay him a visit? You could be my peace offering.” He slid an ichor covered, forked tongue up the side of her neck.
Sulya fought panic as she snapped the reigns again. Patience…patience and an iron will would win her the day along with a front row seat at Mercktos demise, even if she had to hack everyone to pieces from the back row up to get there.
Chapter 6-- That Which Lies Beneath
Two hours later, with Mercktos by her side and Ruin limping several paces behind, Sulya walked down the filth packed alleyways and streets of Grace, silently cursing a wagon’s broken wheel and two horses who refused to be ridden. Around her, hookers and thieves wove in and out of the darkness but few approached. After one glimpse in the moonlight at her traveling companions most moved from her path. A chill autumn wind caused many others to huddle into their threadbare clothes. This coming winter would see many of them dead; frozen to death, starved, or food for the hellborn. Already, she had heard, snow had overtaken many parts of Yernden although it had not yet touched here.
“This was a foolish plan,” Mercktos complained, his voice dark and grating. He carried a squirming bundle of muffled cries. “The knights are now out in force, turning this city upside down in their attempt to find the child. And they still have the mother. Do you even know what this ‘gift’ is she possesses?”
“Shut up!” Sulya snapped. “Zorce commanded the attack tonight.” Her anger was a dangerous thing, barely under control. She had lost a favorite demon this night, accomplished only half of what she was supposed to achieve, and had the severe displeasure of having to put up with Zorce’s Black Knight. The worst part was she’d had no choice in any of it. When the father of all evil tells you to jump, you don
’t ask why, and you don’t say no. “We have the more important of the two. We’ve accomplished most of our goal.” The similian avoided looking at the devil. Mercktos’s visage only served to remind her that she’d helped fuck things up, that they didn’t get Anithia Morlon, and that the Black Knight would have his revenge upon her. Not for the pain and damage to his body, but because he had been humiliated before hellkind and mortals both.
They walked on for several minutes in blessed silence. Sulya was lost in half formed ideas and unanswered questions. She knew Ani and Missa’s gifts had something to do with the ‘song of life’, whatever the hell that was, and she knew it had to do with singing, or speaking, obviously. But how exactly did they use them as weapons? What had Ani done in the hallway that caused Mercktos so much damage? Better yet, how could she use the pair to her advantage? Could their power be used to destroy Mercktos? Her gaze slid sideways. The Black Knight had to have a weakness.
The devil captured her glance with his cold, empty eyes, holding her with his stare. “You think too greedily.” Mercktos’s whisper struck at her like a poisonous snake, driving another shard of fear and pain into her brain.
Staggering, Sulya tore her gaze away from his dark pits. Rage swelled in her chest. How dare he try to mind fuck her? If the opportunity ever presented itself, she would get rid of the festering pain in her ass without a moment’s hesitation. She’s would make sure he suffered while doing so.
“You bastard.” she swore. “Stay the hell out of my head.”
“I don’t have to be inside your pathetic little mind to know what you’re thinking. You’re as transparent as a piece of glass.” Mercktos chuckled deep in his throat and shifted his burden. “I have been and always will be Zorce’s right hand, and you‘ll always be a petty little whore.”
Sulya gritted her teeth and gripped the hilt of her sword tightly. She dare not risk a direct confrontation with the devil because she would lose, but by the two, she wanted to ram her sword into his nuts and watch it pop out the top of his head. The son of whore! Who did he think he was talking to? Oh yes, when it was time for him to die, she would make sure she was there to watch.
