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What Comes Next
“Yes, Master, yes…Yes…YES!”
Gerald grunted and both their bodies convulsed in mutual release. Lydia gripped him tightly, riding out the climax while grinding herself against him. If he had been a lesser man her nails would have drawn angry red lines across his back.
That satisfaction of a good fuck came and went like a gust of wind. Nothing satisfied for long in Hell, even the most primal of human desires made real.
“More, Master. Please more.” Lydia grabbed him by the shoulders as he pulled out of her, but he ignored her. He pushed her back down onto the bed with little effort.
A whore in life and then a whore in death, Lydia always needed more. It was the source of the little power she could attain in Hell. Being Gerald’s chosen whore elevated her to the highest levels of her profession; a high priced call girl instead of a two dollar whore on a street corner. Being with him and sharing in his pleasure was like taking ecstasy, snorting cocaine, and shooting up with heroine all at once.
“Please, Master.” She grabbed for his cock, wanting to coax it back to life, but he slapped her hand away.
“Go clean yourself up,” he ordered, pointing at the bathroom they’d fucked in before moving to the bedroom. “And clean the place up while you’re at it.” A few gallons of water had sloshed onto the floor due to their enthusiasm.
Lydia tried to be coy, but the hard look on his face said she wasn’t going to get any more out of him tonight. She frowned and stomped into the bathroom.
Gerald sighed when the door slammed shut behind her.
He caught the glint of reflected light in his peripherals and reflex took over. He rolled forward and barely avoided the dagger that had been aimed at his temple. Out of his armor he was still a very powerful man, but a blade thrust with enough force could still wound or kill him. And getting stabbed in the head was a sure-fire way to kill anyone.
Lydia, still naked and in all her feminine glory lunged at him again with murder in her eyes. He caught her thrust, twisted her arm around, and crushed her wrist with his powerful grip. She cried out in pain and dropped the dagger into her other waiting hand. She caught it and slashed at his dangling cock screaming her rage.
Whatever had motivated the whore to try and kill her best client was beyond him. But at the moment he didn’t care. He back peddled, avoiding castration, and dodged to the side as she thrust for his heart again. Lydia’s thrust took her off balance and she stumbled forward. She was not a trained fighter and it showed. The element of surprise she’d achieved was gone now.
Her stumble brought her into close range. Gerald completed his side-step and grabbed her arm. He twisted, made sure her palm was down, and then brought his elbow crashing down on hers, while pulling viciously up on her hand that held the dagger.
Her arm snapped from the force, bending at a ninety-degree angle in the wrong direction. She screamed again and dropped the weapon. He didn’t give her another chance to react. He took his same elbow and drove it into her nose. Her face caved in as she crumbled to the ground. She was still crying in pain, but it sounded more like she was choking on her own tears.
It might have been the case.
Gerald took a minuscule amount of pity on her. He walked over, grabbed the dagger, and thrust it right between her beautiful breasts. Lydia’s body convulsed one last time in a death-spasm before disintegrating into ash.
Gerald got to his feet and brushed the ash off his legs.
Who they were didn’t matter, but this was an obvious assassination attempt. It wasn’t the first one he’d beaten off, and he expected more, but to try and kill him after he just helped win a big battle was simply bad manners.
The golden hall’s warmth put a smile on his face. He was armed and armored with everything except his helmet, which he carried under his arm. Thousands of soldiers had packed the hall for the victory feast. Ironically, almost none of them were the soldiers who actually fought the battle. Those survivors would be having their own feast delivered to them in the mountain pass. General Icilius was present along with a handful of winged commanders who’d been able to fly back over the last few hours. Gerald sat down with them and dared anyone to question it.
The rumor mill had churned after the battle, and everyone who’d survived knew that he’d killed two enemy knights and a General. That kind of power would make a man do anything; including hiring a whore to cut Gerald’s throat while he slept.
He tipped back an entire mug of ale in one long gulp as Icilius spoke at great length about the victory. Gerald always knew the man was prideful, but he made it sound like the victory was entirely because of him. The General was also riding high on his new power. He’d expended virtually nothing during the battle, and then absorbed most of the captured Infernal Knight’s power. He was probably the most powerful man in the room. Even Gerald would find it difficult to match him.
Either way Gerald needed to tread carefully.
The night went on, the drinks continued to flow, and in predictable military tradition that went back thousands of years everybody got shitfaced drunk. When violent men got drunk like that, things never ended well.
“Who are you calling a coward?” A Colonel was on his feet, his finger pointing just to the left of Gerald’s face.
“I didn’t think I stuttered.” Gerald replied, although he did slur pretty badly.
“Fuck you, Sir Gerald.” He put a lot of disdain into the “sir”, which was good enough to boil Gerald’s blood; so he reached across the table, grabbed the Colonel by the scruff of his shirt with one hand, and punched him in the face with the other.
The man was powerful enough that he could take it, but it still broke his nose. Gerald didn’t stop there. He used the hand still clutching the man’s shirt and hurled him across the room. This Colonel didn’t have wings, and he landed hard on a table several hundred feet away. That pissed off the soldiers that were eating there. They grabbed the Colonel and started to pound on him. The loyal members of the Colonel’s regiment rushed to their commander’s rescue and soon a full scale brawl was underway.
Seere’s personnel guards watched with interest as Gerald and the stronger men present started throwing people all over the place. Only when the Prince himself showed up did they step in.
“At Ease!” Seere’s yell made the whole hall rumble, and it stopped the fight immediately.
There were more than a few piles of ash and bloody steak knives, but that was the cost of a brawl in a hall filled with warriors.
“Sir Gerald, may I see you please?” It was an order not a request.
“Yes, Lord.” Gerald bowed low but kept his chin high as he walked toward the giant.
Prince Seere gave the room one last look and then smiled, his rows of teeth glinting in the golden light. “Don’t let me interrupt. Please continue.”
More than a few men laughed, and then the fight resumed.
Gerald didn’t even look, his full and sober attention was on the giant winged-man who could kill every man in the hall with a thought. He followed his Lord back into the throne room where the door closed behind them.
Aside from the guards there was only one person in the room, Lydia.
Gerald was so focused on the woman who’d tried to kill him that he missed Seere ascending the steps to his throne, plopping down on it, and clapping slowly.
“Congratulations, Sir Gerald. You passed my test. So smile”
Gerald was confused, but he didn’t let it show.
“No need to act tough on my account.” Seere smiled again. “You’ve proven yourself on the field of battle and on more unconventional battlefields multiple times while in my service, so please relax. If I was going to kill you I would have done it already.”
“Yes.” Gerald nodded. “But why the test?”
“I’m not questioning your loyalty, Gerald.” The Prince quickly put him at ease. “Think of it as a job interview.”
“I hope I passed.” Gerald deadpanned, because he knew failure wasn’t an option.
“You did.” Seere smiled. “And because of that you will start you new assignment first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, Sir. It is my pleasure to serve as your Infernal Knight.”
“No.”
The single word cut through Gerald’s soul deeper and cleaner than any sword.
“I do not require you to be my knight anymore.”
Gerald was speechless. He’d worked literally his entire eternity to become a knight and now it was being taken away from him.
“Use your words, Gerald.” The Prince motioned for him to hurry up.
“But…Sir. I’ve never failed you.” It was the strongest argument Gerald could come up with.
“No you haven’t,” Seere rose for his throne, “which is why I’m promoting you. Well…it’s more of a promotion and a lateral transfer.”
“Sir?” Gerald didn’t have the grasp on modern dialogue that Seere did.
“Don’t worry about the details.” The Prince waved a hand in front of his face like he was brushing off a bad smell. “You’ll find out tomorrow. Report to the forges at 0800 and then we’ll come back here and I’ll tell you a story that will put everything into perspective.”
“Yes, Sir.” Gerald answered automatically. You didn’t tell Seere no, no matter what the request.
Seere sighed, descended the stairs, and placed his giant hand on Gerald’s shoulder. He tensed at the touch, half expecting the Lord of Hell to ground his bones into powder.
“You need to relax, Gerald, or you won’t be able to do your new job.”
Gerald grunted as something unseen and insubstantial hit his head like a metaphysical warhammer. He nearly doubled over as information, ideas, and even a few memories tried to split his head apart.
“Ahhh motherfucker!” Gerald screamed as his brain dropped into his feet and then rebounded back into his skull like it was attached to a rubber band.
“There, that’s better.” Seere took a step back and studied Gerald like he was looking at a painting. “How does that feel, Gerry.”
“I feel fantastic, Sir. But what the hell did you do to me?”
“Think of it as an upgrade. I modernized you. I’ve taken you out of the eighteenth century and into the twenty-first as much as I could without boiling your brain. It’s necessary for you to be successful in your new assignment.”
“Well consider me Gerry 2.0 then.”
Lydia chuckled from across the room and Gerry turned on her. She shrunk back at the murderous look on his face. Gerry didn’t like trying to be killed any more than Gerald had.
“I’ll let the two of you figure this out.” Seere turned his back on them. It was a clear sign to leave.
“Gerald…Gerry.” Lydia shuffled after him. The long dress she was wearing wasn’t conducive to running.
“I get why you did it, Lydia.” He rounded on her so quick she nearly fell on her ass. “But that still doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what you did or forgive you.”
She looked hurt, so he took another minuscule bit of pity on her for old time’s sake. “Lydia you give the best head a man could ever ask for, so I’ll make sure you get settled in as someone’s new favorite. But if you think I’m coming within ten feet of you without a full set of armor then you’ve got your head so far up your ass you’re tasting what you ate for lunch.”
Lydia flushed at the response but nodded. This was Hell after all, you took what you could.
“So this is goodbye.” After everything they’d been through he wanted to give her a kiss but, her trying to chop off his dick less than two hours ago was a turn off, so he just walked away.
He passed through the drunken brawl, which was still going strong, without having to seriously injure anyone else. He headed out of the warmth of the golden hall and straight back to his brownstone.
He opened his door to find two women kneeling in the entryway.
“Ladies.” He nodded to them like this happened to him every day.
“Master.” They both replied with eyes downcast.
He smiled down at them his eyes fixating on all the good bits. “Why don’t we take a bath and see where things go.”
Dux
The armor he wore was the same but the man underneath it was different. Prince Seere’s gift had fundamentally changed him, and Gerry could tell.
Walking down the cobblestone street away from his home and toward the forge, Gerry could already feel the differences between him and Gerald. He passed a roving patrol of two spearmen and was faced with a situational dilemma.
Old Gerald wouldn’t have even noticed the two soldiers aside from a quick threat assessment, and even then they would have been quickly discarded as worthless. That was how Gerald thought. He was a Knight, an aristocrat of Hell, a member of the infernal one percent. Although, Gerry didn’t know what the term “one percenter” meant, he knew he was one of them. Those two guards were meant to be seen and not heard, and certainly not interacted with.
New Gerry felt compelled to wish them good morning. Not because he knew them or wanted to get to know them, they were common foot soldiers after all, but because it was a decent thing to do. If he treated them with respect they were more likely to fight harder for him. That was the key difference in his transformation. Gerald was all about fear and reputation. Gerry was all about,
In the end he settled for a casual wave. The two spearmen’s eyes nearly bulged out of their skulls and they scurried away like they were cockroaches and Gerry was there to step on them.
He kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to a minimum as he crossed through the camp of tents and small but sturdily built wooden huts that comprised the majority of the capitol city. He also had to keep his eyes from wandering at every pretty woman who smiled at him, which was all of them. He stopped for a moment to watch a sparring match between two swordsmen.
It was comforting to analyze the techniques and know what the men were likely to do before they did it. His second sight also still worked. He could see the power, what little of
it the soldiers’ had, fueled into their bodies to make them stronger. When the gathered group noticed him watching they stopped and dropped to one knee.
Gerry had to stop himself from saying sorry for interrupting, and instead just continued on his path.
“Gerald.”
Gerry looked up in time to see General Icilius drop out of the sky beside him. Instinctually, Gerry clutched his spear tighter and angled himself away from the General’s dominant hand. That way if the older demon tried to run him through it would deflect off Gerry’s Infernal Iron armor and set him up for an effective counter.
“Yes, Sir.” Gerry still knew how to respond to a senior officer properly.
“I want you to accompany me back to the front. We need to shore up the defenses of the new territory, and I need someone to oversee the construction of the new Keep.”
“I’ve been ordered to the forges by the Prince, Sir.” Gerry replied with a shake of his head. “He has a new assignment for me.”
“A new assignment.” The General was immediately interested without looking like he wanted to know every detail. “What is more important than securing our hard-fought gains?”
Gerry just shrugged before he realized Gerald would have given his longtime mentor more information. He coughed to cover it up and wasn’t sure if it worked. “The Prince didn’t say, Sir. I’m supposed to get more information when I get there.”
The General nodded, but his eye’s crinkled in suspicion. Gerry could guess why. After last night’s assassination attempt and the new job offer, the status of their professional relationship was currently unknown. When things went from known to unknown in the Legion it usually meant someone’s head was on a stake.
“Good luck, Gerald.” The General extended his hand.
Gerry eyed it warily for half a second before grasping it. The General gripped it hard, much harder than was necessary, like he was reminding Gerry of all he’d done for him over the years. Gerry returned the solid grip with one of his own, not because that was what Gerald would do, but because he wasn’t going to take shit from this guy, especially if he didn’t work for him anymore.
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