by SJB Gilmour
Not knowing my feelings for McConnell, The Guild paired us up again occasionally over the following centuries. When rogue sorcerers, demons or vagrants not welcome on Earth needed capture, exorcising or eradication, they sent for us. It was one of the happiest times of my life.
That happiness came at a price. My feelings for McConnell grew too strong for me to ignore. My relationship with Marzdane was reduced to tatters and I needed to act.
After one final mission, I begged Marzdane to release me from my vows. He refused. And so, one night when Marzdane had lapsed into his usual slumber after bedding me, I rose from our chamber and performed a rite forbidden by every necromantic chapter in The Guild.
Necromancers have the power to contact all kinds of otherworldly beings. Some are hideous and powerful, some merely unlucky enough not to have been born into this world. The spirit I contacted was an emotive imp, much like a common succubus only less powerful and much less dangerous. After a night with such an imp, a male would wake tired, but unharmed. The only noticeable effect would be a brief infatuation with the image of the creature he’d been visited by.
I gave her free reign to enter Marzdane’s chamber while he slept, so long as she chose the form of an elf. When she had sated herself and left Marzdane spent and smelly, I cast her back to her own plane, but not before she extracted her price for her service.
Emotive imps feed off any strong feelings we have. The sensual pleasures like greed, lust, or wrath are their most common source of sustenance. Once brought to the surface by that imp, the emotion becomes like a crease in parchment. It is always the weakest point in the psyche. From me, however, she chose guilt. I thought nothing of it then. I should not have been so flippant.
The next day when I asked him again for a divorce, he agreed without a second thought. He could barely wait for the ink to dry on the declaration before he sought out the brothels on Vendor to quench his new-found lust for elves.
I expected him to be angry when the effect of the imp wore off. I didn’t expect him to call the wrath of The Guild down upon my head. If it wasn’t for Rufus, I’d have been put to death. Instead, I was banished, declared renegade. Even Lentekhi was forced to recognise my wrongdoing. I was confined to barracks for a year. When I was released, I took my leave from the military outfit I had served for centuries.
I can’t remember how long I wandered. I must have crossed from Earth to Jilde to Vendor and back again several times over the next century. I never stayed in one place for long. When the most dangerous mercenary work I could find dried up in one place, I would move on, hiring out my blade to the highest bidder. Was I suicidal? I can’t answer that. Perhaps. Perhaps I was simply hoping that one day I would find a reason to stop fighting, yet the only way I knew to do that, was to keep on fighting.
Word of my prowess spread. I was given many names but the one used most commonly, the one that really stuck, was Angel of Death. Stupidly, I did little to dispel that moniker. Had I woken up and sought a gentler life, I may have found more peace.
But, such as it was, peace was not to be mine. The bloody, death-filled life I was living, took its toll. I lost all but the last shreds of my humanity. And, I took to drinking. I cared little for the causes I fought for. My only aim was to earn enough coin to fund another night of wine and the occasional slave-boy for my pleasure.
It was then that McConnell found me. I was face down in a puddle of wine in a disreputable lodging in a disreputable town, somewhere. I can’t even recall on what planet. He gathered me up and took me to his home.
He was living in an affluent house in London at the time. I protested at first, but I knew I would never fight him. I couldn’t. In the beginning, he made me his housekeeper. I was little more than a dressed up maidservant. Years passed and I became his understudy. It was there I learned English and discovered the richness of literature in that tongue.
Benjamin McConnell had more books, tomes and scrolls than I had ever seen or indeed have ever seen since, and I read every single one of them. Where once I had revelled in a life full of combat and passion, I found a new life just as passionate, but far gentler.
The rest, as they say is history. I remained in his service in England for nearly five hundred years. Then, in the early Eighteen Hundreds, when the air in London had become too foul for his taste, he moved us to the new land of Australia.
Then, some two hundred years later, just when I was thinking my life had reached as close to perfect as it could ever get, a shaggy-haired, skinny blonde orphan appeared on our doorstep. Her name was Sarah Coppernick and she was the first female Golden Mane werewolf ever born. The adventure she brought to my life made all that had happened in the previous millennia fade into insignificance.
That tale however, is not mine to tell. If you look hard enough, and in the right places, you may just find that fantastic and important story. Remember her name: Sarah Coppernick, Golden Mane werewolf…
You can find the first of tale about Sarah Coppernick in:
Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick.
http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Adventures-Sarah-Coppernick-ebook/dp/B0052T15FS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336520072&sr=8-1
About the Author
I live in Melbourne Australia with my wonderful wife and two fantastic daughters. I was raised in the family footwear business where I still work, but I’ve done a great deal besides. I’ve edited, researched, sub-edited and published. I’ve done a stint in the Royal Australian Navy, run a small café and pumped diesel at a bus depot. I’m a travel junkie, amateur birdwatcher and overall book and film nerd.
Sam Gilmour.
You can contact me: [email protected]
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Find all my ebooks at my Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/SJB-Gilmour/e/B005321S10/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1