by Lita Stone
The bubbling pond taunted his efforts in a sinister tongue. Elder Cai’s words rang in his ears. “Evil will tempt you from the righteous path, but a true Paladin will remain firm to his convictions.”
“I am Atticus,” he said aloud. “The power of the seven choirs are with me!”
The pond water boiled. Steam rose from its choppy surface, testing his patience further. Atticus held the stance for several long minutes before he repositioned himself.
He spread his arms wide, curved his back, and spread his legs as if succumbing to a free fall. He opened his mind.
Voices whispered from the trees. An unseen creature hissed.
“Grant me your wisdom.”
More hissing filled his mind, and soon an orchestra of snarling and buzzing.
Atticus fell to his knees. Water seeped into his boots and saturated the green leather covering his legs. His palms pressed against his chest. He angled his elbows upward, pointing to the west and the east.
Silence.
“Provide my heart with direction.”
The bullfrogs and the crickets went mute.
The water rippled.
“Chlokend dekruaacho eha-da ekrlloli Galmoria.” Alien words echoed.
Atticus’ eyes opened.
A shadowy humanoid standing thrice as tall as him stood on the surface of the boiling pond, its body a shifting blur of shadow. Eight insectile arms wriggled in front of its thin form. The only part that was not shadow were the two bulbous eye peering from beneath a black hood.
“Be gone! I do not seek knowledge from a devil!”
The demon rumbled like a bear in a deep barrel. Was it laughing?
Atticus’ hand gripped the hilt of his blade.
Two cold slimy tentacles shot forward and wrapped around his throat. Suctions stuck to his flesh and tiny barbs burrowed into his trachea.
“Chlokend eekruaacho eha-da ekrlloli. Galmoria!”
In desperation, he abandoned the hilt of his sword and latched hold of the tentacles with both hands. They weren’t tentacles, but bones as rigid and ungiving as ironwood branches. There was no breaking free of the demon’s clutch.
Oxygen deprivation took hold. His might struggled to keep his knees from buckling; the muscles in his face strained to keep his eyes wide, fighting through his blurry sight.
The otherworldly creature’s face leaned forward like the top of an ancient tree bent by a powerful wind.
“Ho’gon Geminii-th Kiqus Cinis-hub!”
His knees sank into the mud. His fingers uncurled from the black limbs. From above, the creature’s mouth fell agape before gobbling him whole.
Then it was over.
Blackness.
Atticus felt himself falling. The ground crashed into him. A parking lot sprawled around him. The world was masked in a sepia-toned hue. It was a parking lot belonging to the Fiesta Mart; in the near distance, across the faded highway, he spotted a gas station. An eerie silenced domed the world. There wasn’t even the whisper of a breeze or a chirp of an insect.
When he took a step, his boot scuffed the gravel loudly. “Hello?” His voice echoed as if bouncing off invisible walls.
The aged paper-colored glass doors of the Fiesta Mart slid open. A figure in a scarlet robe with metallic silver hair and a staff walked toward him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Shane stood at the stove, stirring the macaroni into the boiling water. He didn’t much like cooking but soon after their first fight, he’d learned flowers and chocolate were not key to fixing things with Amy. Birch had recommended cooking her a nice meal. So he had taught himself how to fix her favorite, his failsafe plan for every time he fucked up.
Except this time he had no clue what he’d done to piss her off. Amy seemed so happy and excited when he proposed, then—as if a switch had been pressed—she got all emotional and shit. If she was any other girl, he’d chalk it up to girl stuff, but Amy wasn’t like other girls. She wasn’t prone to fits of emotional outbursts.
Shane loved her. He told her so. He wanted to marry her. He told her so. What the fuck did he do wrong?
Shrugging, he stirred the cheese into the macaroni.
So far, the simple recipe had worked. Two hundred and thirty-six to zero. Not bad odds for a guy who caught the kitchen on fire the first time he’d cooked cheeseburgers in the frying pan.
He set the spoon down and cracked his knuckles. Here’s hoping for two hundred and thirty-seven.
He heard the front door open and glanced over his shoulder. “Hey babe.” He dumped the pasta into two bowls.
She tossed her sneakers on the floor and smiled as she turned into the kitchen. But she didn’t seem happy. Her eyes were swollen and red.
Fuck.
Shane set the bowls on the table. “Hungry?”
Nodding, she draped her purse on the ladder-back chair before sitting. She took a bite and glanced up at him. “Thank you.”
This time the smile appeared more genuine. But her eyes indicated he wasn’t out of the woods yet, and if he didn’t navigate this evening perfectly he’d be docking with Alamo tonight.
He sat across from her. As they ate, she told him about buying worms at Abe’s. Amy told him of Carmen’s latest fight with Derrick, and them both getting arrested during make-up sex in the back of Derrick’s truck.
Most women who just got engaged would rush out and buy wedding magazines. They’d be debating colors, flowers and a romantic locale for a honeymoon.
But not Amy.
She was more interested in worms and Carmen’s make-up sex.
God he loved her.
“So where’s my brother?” Shane asked.
“Oh, I dropped him off at his friend’s house.”
Shane grunted and dropped his fork. “I told him I didn’t want him hanging out with that freaky kid.”
“How do you know it’s Zack?”
“’Cause he doesn’t have any other friends.”
“Then let him have this one. Plus you’ll get me all to yourself tonight.”
He craned his neck and exhaled a deep breath. “Fine.” For now.
When Amy finished eating, she took her plate and fork to the sink. “I want to be at the creek by six tomorrow morning.” She squirted a sponge with soap and began scrubbing her plate. “So let’s get to bed early.”
From behind, he wrapped his arms around her small waist and pressed a kiss to the crook of her neck. He whirled her to face him. “I sure ain’t one to refuse a girl her beauty sleep. Off to bed it is.”
Amy laughed. “That’s not what I—”
He covered her lips with a hand, drowning her words. “Hush.” His pelvis tight against her hips, he pinned her against the sink. When her body leaned into his, his erection pushed painfully against the crotch of his jeans.
He kissed her.
The radio DJ cracked jokes about the bizarre atmospheric disturbances from the night before.
Amy’s posture stiffened. Her muscles tensed, shoulders squared. Without breaking from the kiss, he reached and jerked the radio’s cord from the wall. He slipped his hands under her shirt and pulled it over her head.
Shoving him, she shot a glance over her shoulder, out the window. With one hand, she drew the curtains. With the other she covered her breasts. “Don’t let the neighbors see Brassy and Sassy!”
“What neighbors?” He reached behind, his fingers unclasping her skimpy blue bra. With his head between her breasts, he licked his way from Brassy to Sassy. Inhaling, he moaned.
Amy dipped under him, escaping from his grasp and fled through the den. Her taut ass turned the corner and vanished down the hall.
Two hundred and thirty-seven. Grinning, he dashed after her. The bedroom door slammed in his face. When he tried the knob it didn’t budge.
“What’s the magic word?” she called from the other side.
“Let me in!” He had been gone ten days with nothing to comfort him but his right hand. He was so damn horny he could barely thin
k straight, nodding through dinner, struggling to stay focused on the conversation and not on her—
She laughed. “Nope. Try again.” Shane heard the bedroom radio crank, an old country station.
“I guess you don’t want me to screw your brains out?” He tried the knob again but still it didn’t turn. “I swear to God I will kick this door down if you don’t open it. You know I will.” Then I’m really gonna fuck the future Mrs. Baker raw.
When he heard her snicker, he stepped backward and kicked. The latch broke, shuddering the door open.
His grunt drowned out the steel guitar. “Hello, baby.”
#
Isaac sprinted after Galmoria. Her taunting laughter echoed deep within the large tunnel. His bare feet pounded the coarse bone as he flung himself into the depths of Nephruch’s bowels.
The furious wasps caused a patchwork of welts to seize his bare chest, pumping hot toxicity straight to his heart. His skin turned sallow. Stings to his groin left white bubbles of pus on his throbbing cock.
Galmoria wished him nothing but sorrow and pain and she would deliver as much as possible and all in the name of the sacred ritual, which he had no choice but to engage in, not if he wanted to fuck his mate.
Isaac’s feet touched a smooth crystal floor. Just as he looked down the bottom dropped from beneath him. Shards of crystal imploded and rained down.
The tunnel vanished.
With a crash he slammed onto a wood plank. Looking around he discovered he was in a small ferry, a large monstrous rat carved in the wood at each end. Murky water splashed onto the bow.
Over a dozen wharf rats scurried inside the boat. On the opposite end, a small brown-haired boy wearing a red cloak rowed.
Stalactites made of sharp bones jutted from above and Isaac was forced to duck.
“Samuel of the rats at your service,” the boy said.
“Where is she?” Isaac brandished his dagger. “Where is Galmoria?”
“Tis not my place to know such things, sir. Only I have known the rodents for two centuries.”
“Get me to shore.” Isaac crossed the boat, stepping on rats biting at his ankles.
“Impossible, sir. Ye are my passenger on a cursed voyage.” Samuel stared past him and began to whistle a forlorn tune. He sang:
The rats and pigs will come for thee
The rivers and bones will have your soul
Thou eyes and liver will rot with me
Ye shall pay the eternal toll—
“Enough!” Isaac’s dagger cut through the boy’s neck.
Laughter echoed from behind. Glancing back, Isaac growled at the same boy, now seated at the opposite end. The rats scurried between the two cloned ferry-boys.
“My Master said, if thou discerners him. Me thought I known a beast, but man is he. Behold this creature, he is no king, of man or beast.”
Isaac’s lips quivered as he snarled. “Cease your ridicule, fiendish slave. I shall rule your soul.” A rat chomped at Isaac’s foot and he kicked, sending the rodent hurling into the muddy water. A yag-yaht, slender albino snake-like creature with a barbed tail, swallowed the rat whole with its fish-like large mouth.
The boy squealed like a mad swine. “Thou murdered Osklot!”
A sinister urge tugged at Isaac. Howling, he stabbed another rat onto his dagger. The vermin screeched and writhed at the tip of his blade.
Both visages of the boy violently shook. They merged as one—the original one. The boy charged and pummeled Isaac with tiny fists.
With a swift arc of his blade, he lopped Samuel’s head off. The severed head splashed into the dark river. The remaining rats jumped over the rim of the boat and swam toward the head.
“The whole world shall follow the beast. Hail the king,” the head sputtered while it drifted. The rats escorted it to shore.
Ahead, a fern green light lit the tunnel. As the boat drifted closer, the cavern gradually opened into a vast room, at least ten stories high and wide, all cast in the same green glow. The boat suddenly ran aground. The river went dry. A swarm of yag-vahts that had been lurking beneath the water slithered into the shadows.
White sand rained from high above. As the heavy sand filled the chamber, he heard Galmoria’s laughter resounding off the high ceiling. “Poor, poor Samuel.” Her words echoed. “Such a sweet, sweet boy—a Librus, too. Such puny children.”
“Show yourself, Mother! Come to me.”
“Don’t be hasty, my cub. Mother wants foreplay.” Her demonic groans of pre-orgasm flooded the room, as quickly as the sand.
The grit covered the boat, reaching to Isaac’s knees now. He spotted the rats carrying Samuel’s head up wide black steps. Isaac followed. The steps felt like rubber—rotten muscle of Nephruch.
The sand fell harder and faster. It spilled over his head and bit into his cuts and wounds caused by the wasps, rats and his self-inflicted laceration to his chest.
At the top of the steps, Vostrict perched on what appeared to be a petrified mushroom, large enough to serve as a throne.
Isaac scowled and charged the giant scorpion. Its tail went erect, stinger shooting thick venom. Isaac took a face full of the poison as he leaped onto Vostrict’s back. Isaac straddled the scorpion as if it was a raging bull, and held onto the creature’s bone-hard carapace.
“Take me out of here, Vostrict. Obey me, you pest!”
Vostrict scurried down the steps, but not before his stinger stabbed into Isaac’s back. Isaac winced, but couldn’t suppress a howl that tore from his throat. The stinger, a bony stiletto dagger, harpooned through his backside and Isaac felt it throb as it unleashed streams of venom into his body. His hands gripped tighter on Vostrict’s shell.
The scorpion dug through the sand, burying deeper and deeper, taking Isaac with him.
Isaac’s vision blurred. Vostrict’s poison relentlessly coursed through his body, a mixture of lava and ice, scorching and simultaneously freezing. His muscles locked. Couldn’t even open his jaw to curse the arachnid.
Vostrict crashed through a floor of sinew. The cavern and green lights vanished, replaced by a vast, purple sky and clouds of pale lavender. Isaac rolled off the scorpion. With a thud, he landed on a bed of sand. An endless sea lapped at a peaceful orange shore.
Soft waves nuzzled him. With trembling hands he splashed his face. Blood from his fresh wounds seeped into the water and was carried by the returning tide.
His muscles were stiff like bolts and rods had been inserted in his limbs and torso. And his teeth chattered. And.his heart thundered.
And he thought he might be dying.
When he looked into the sky the colors melded. He forced himself to stand on rigid, shaky legs.
In the last hundreds years, he’d wandered the planets of numerous galaxies. Always alone but never lonely. Glancing at the sky, he longed to see his twin, know what she was thinking, what she was doing. Was she safe? Was his wraith serving her well?
He had finally found his twin. He would no longer be alone. But standing on this beach, in this forsaken universe, awaiting his demonic mother, he felt cold…and alone.
A behemoth of a two headed wolf with squid tentacles rose from the sea. Mist shrouded its lower half, but Galmoria could clearly be seen riding on its back.
She rode her mount onto the shore, still wearing her boots, but nothing else. The salt water dripped from her naked body and Isaac’s cock throbbed with anticipation and need. The need to dominate her.
“Hello, Mother.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
A small lamp cast a soft florescent glow on the bed where Amy knelt, dressed only in baby blue panties. Against her chest she held a black cowboy hat covering her small breasts. “It’s yours. I found it at the Shadowlin Booth Library fair.”
Never one to break tradition, Amy always had a surprise for him when he got home. Last time he was away, he returned to a bottle of homemade raspberry wine that she’d received in lieu of a tip. She drank it down in two nights, singing its prai
ses in a girlish, cute as hell singsong tone. O’Raspberry! O’Raspberry! Finest wine is mine O’Raspberry! O’Raspberry! O’Raspberry! Wine gets me horny every time. So even though she drank the whole bottle it had still been a gift for him in the end.
The Lypsium cologne she’d gotten him last year was the best. He didn’t like it, but Amy loved it and he loved the way it smelled on her. That familiar scent of spiced peaches and sage wood went straight to his groin. And she’d obviously splashed some on tonight.
His eyes on the Stetson, he said, “Let me have it, baby.”
“Come and get it, cowboy.”
Shane discarded his clothes and dived onto the bed. From a kneeling position, he perused her from head to toe without missing any of the crevices in between. With the cutest laugh, Amy hung the hat on his erection.
He gyrated, before placing it on his head. “Yippi ki yay.” Using one hand against her chest, he pushed her to the mattress. Now she was sprawled out for him to really get a look at her petite body. Each and every time he towered over her little figure he felt like a giant about to devour a helpless little damsel. He covered her body with his, planting his fist on either side of her face; her smiling pink lips reflected the pale lamp’s glow. Gently as his patience would allow, he guided the length of his shaft toward her slippery sex. The tip of his cock had just begun to enter her when her hands suddenly retaliated with a barrage of slaps against his chest and flanks.
Amy shrieked. She shoved him aside and jumped to the floor. Underneath the bed, she rearranged her sneakers toe-to-toe.
Sprawled on his side, he patted the bed. “Hurry up and get that sweet ass back here.”
She pouted. “Tell Mr. Hokey Pokey to hang the heck on.”
“Don’t work that way, baby.” He thumbed at his bare chest. “Pilot.” Then pointed to his erect cock, impatiently twitching. “Copilot.” Shane wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked up and down, spreading precum along the length. “And I don’t converse with my dick.”
Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, as if in deep thought. Bringing her gaze slowly back to him, Shane could almost see the light bulb above her blonde head before she said, “But Carmen said that all guys talk to their penises, so it has to have a proper name.”