‘Lily marked herself with my personal rune, gave herself to me. I activated it myself. These all have the same mark, but it’s a fake, a simulation. These six are Lorril. Where is Lily?’
The cloak shuddered, barely restrained rage shaking the body beneath. Then it stilled and the voice, when it came, was soft and calm, and amused. ‘Three floors up. Don’t worry, the wards won’t stop you.’ At his words, the pretence no longer necessary, the six Lorril shifted, each becoming a copy of Ceri as she had been a year ago. Why would he want them to mimic me? To disturb me?
Turning and ignoring the change, Ceri hurried upward. She felt the wards crawl over her skin again as she went up into the space they protected. She ran past some sort of personal office, and then a bedroom with a huge, four-posted bed. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she pushed open the door on the next floor. Inside was not really what she had expected. It was laid out like some sort of laboratory, and not an alchemist’s one. There were various instruments which looked like something a thaumatologist would hack together if they had no technology to work with. An examination bench formed of chromed steel and light padding, with restraint straps mounted on the frame. And in the middle of it all was a tall, slim cage with the dull colour of silver-iron, and Lily inside it, her wrists shackled to a chain which suspended her upright.
Twisting around to look at the newcomer, Lily frowned. Ceri moved forward, a huge smile on her face. She did not need the rune tattoo to know that this was Lily. It felt like Lily, smelled like Lily. For the first time in her life Ceri knew that she would know this beautiful creature anywhere. Her hair was longer, coming further down her back than it had, even though it was pulled back into a ponytail, but it was definitely Lily. She was even still wearing the collar Ceri had given her with the little, silver padlock, but now there was a silver chain strung between her right ear and her lip.
As she got closer Lily began to smile back, though there was an odd pain in her eyes. ‘Ceri, you came. I knew you’d come.’
‘Of course I did, love. I’d walk across Hell in bare feet to find you.’ Lily’s eyes lifted toward the door and Ceri turned to see the cloaked lord standing there.
‘Go ahead, let her out,’ the man said.
‘Don’t!’ Lily cried out and Ceri turned to look at her, alarmed. ‘They did… something to me. He forced me to feed… at first.’
Ceri’s eyes narrowed. ‘At first?’
‘An experiment,’ the cowl said. ‘I made her feed on demons, enslaved ones. Lorril, Devim, Devos. I suspected that her demon half would be… enhanced by a steady diet of demonic energy. My theorem was correct. After a while we just needed to throw her in a room with a prisoner. You should have seen her with the Chelvig. Most entertaining.’
‘I can’t control my… appetite,’ Lily said, half moaning the last word. Ceri looked up at her and she looked back, red sparks burning in her pupils. ‘And I really want you right now.’ There was a terrible, predatory look on her face, and fear in her eyes.
Ceri turned back to the hooded figure. ‘Who are you? You act like a thaumatologist, and this isn’t just the kind of malicious treatment I’d expect from a demon, this is something personal. You know me. Not just my name. You know me. You’ve got half-a-dozen Lorril pretending to be me. And what happened to the other four?’
The lord barked out a short laugh and lifted an arm to undo the tie of his cloak before throwing it back from his shoulders. The figure beneath was more or less human, thought there was a shifting quality to his form which suggested he was not entirely solid. He was paler than Ceri remembered, but he had the same shock of black hair and the same nerdish good looks. The voice was different; she realised it sounded more resonant, or perhaps more like it was echoing from somewhere as he spoke. His eyes were still brown, but the pupils shone a dull red. He was definitely…
‘Matthew Barnes,’ Ceri said. ‘I’m truly amazed your master trusted you again after you blew it the last time.’
Barnes face lost its grin, his expression darkening. ‘He… understood. You killed me, Brent. He understood my natural desire for revenge. Eventually.’
‘For a dead man, you’re looking pretty good. Better than the people you murdered when you last came to Earth. Better than the two vampires you enslaved when you were human. They’re still having treatment for the things you had them do, by the way. The last I heard neither of them was ever going to get over the psychological damage. You were a perverted, lazy, pathological freak when you were human, and now you’ve got the form to match your personality.’ She gritted her teeth, preparing for what she was going to have to do.
‘Careful, Brent. You’re powerful, yes, but you can’t dismiss me from this world and I’ve gained a lot of power coming here.’ His eyes were getting redder as his anger grew.
Ceri laughed and raised her hand, flicking her fingers apart. Lily’s shackles snapped open and the cage door unlocked. The door opened as Lily pushed it and a wash of heat swept over the room. Barnes shuddered as Lily’s aura hit him, but Ceri stood quite still as the half-succubus slipped out of the cage, her hands sliding over Ceri’s skin where she could reach it. Her hunger was almost palpable.
‘It was nice knowing you, Brent,’ Barnes laughed.
Ceri’s skin tingled where Lily touched it. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ Lily breathed. Her hand slid down across Ceri’s stomach, under her skirt. Ceri felt fingers pressing against her sex and sighed, closing her eyes. ‘I want you so much,’ Lily whispered, almost a moan.
‘That will do, Lily,’ Ceri said, her voice soft and calm. ‘We’ll save more for later.’
Lily stopped caressing Ceri’s body, stepping back slightly and then standing up straight, hands behind her back, eyes downcast. ‘Yes, Mistress.’ Barnes’ eyes widened and a ruddy shade flushed his cheeks in anger.
‘She’s my bound demon, you arsehole! You made her more demon, so you just increased my control over her. She can’t hurt me, even if I let her.’
‘She… she clubbed you unconscious with a sword!’
‘Yeah, she did. She knew what would happen to me if she didn’t would be worse than some momentary pain. With what you’ve done to her now, I doubt she could have done even that.’ She smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re here though. Your father asked me to do him a favour if I could.’
‘Let me guess,’ he said, his tone dripping sarcasm, ‘he wanted you to save me from myself.’
‘Sort of. He wanted me to make sure you couldn’t destroy your memory any more than you have.’ She lifted her right hand and allowed the ball of energy in it to fly toward Barnes. His eyes widened for a second before the bolt ploughed into his chest. His form shuddered as though it were water and a stone had been tossed into it. Fissures of energy broke across his skin and he crumpled to the floor, shuddering and twitching like a beached fish. Ceri watched him squirm for a few seconds before launching a second bolt straight into his head. There was a flare of light as the fissures grew wider, and then he was gone, leaving nothing but some slowly falling, sparkling dust and the cloak he had been wearing.
Taking in a deep breath, Ceri turned around. ‘Are you okay, Lil?’
‘Yes. No. I think we should get out of here before I explain.’
Ceri nodded. ‘They haven’t treated you too badly. You look gorgeous. The longer hair suits you.’ She turned, starting for the stairs down.
‘Yeah well, what’s with the black skin and the platinum blonde hair?’
‘I needed a disguise to get in here. It’s just spell dye. It’ll wear off in a few days.’
‘And why do you smell like a Devos’ jockstrap?’
Ceri winced. ‘I’ll explain that when we get out too. If we go down past the wards I can teleport us out to my place.’
‘You have a place? There’s going to be a lot of explaining…’
Day 12
Ceri opened her eyes and smiled. She was waking up in Lily’s arms and this time it was not a dream, not a nightmare. The war
m skin against hers was Lily’s real, solid, warm skin. She lay still, not wishing to break the moment and disturb her sleeping lover.
Staying in the city had probably not been the best idea ever, but so far no one had come banging on the door with swords and magic. Ceri had used a lot of power getting Lily out of the castle. When she used magic it left a residue of thaumic energy in her body and if that built up too much it began to degrade her structure. Organs failed. She would eventually die. It also tended to cause a localised high magic zone which grew to wild magic levels, creating random events and a lot of trouble. Her threshold for damage had got a lot higher since she had started using magic, but it was still best to sit back and rest as much as possible to let the residue leech away before trying to go home.
So far, there had not been much explanation. They had arrived back at Ceri’s hovel and that had been it. Seeing each other again after so long had been too much and they had fallen into bed. Lily had been a little timid at first, until she realised that her nature stopped her from doing anything too dangerous to Ceri, and then she had let go entirely. Whatever Barnes had done to her had turned her even more wild in bed than she had been. Or perhaps it was just seeing Ceri again. Ceri had certainly felt that way about Lily.
‘I am awake, you know?’ Lily said after a few minutes, though her head did not move from Ceri’s shoulder. ‘Are you going to tell me how you got into the castle now?’
‘I met a girl, a det. Hiffy, she’s a barmaid, but she knew how to get me in and her grandfather knew the layout of the place.’
‘Uh-huh. How much did she want for that information?’
‘She wanted me, and I regrew her grandfather’s hand. The last lord of the castle cut it off for stealing. Anyway, she used to go in to the castle to… Um, they have girls brought in for the guards since they aren’t allowed to leave the grounds much, and I got picked by this Devos officer…’
Lily shifted uncomfortably. ‘What’ve I done to you? First I persuade you to be in a porn movie, and now you’re prostituting yourself for me.’
‘It wasn’t that bad. I told you, I’d walk through Hell for you and you did more to save me. And I earned eight silver. Three of them were even legitimate! The rest he just thinks I earned.’
‘How was your first true demon?’
‘Very big. Not entirely comfortable, but with a satisfactory conclusion.’
‘At least you came.’
Ceri giggled. ‘No, I got you out of that castle. Well, yes, I came, but that wasn’t the conclusion I meant.’
Lily gave a giggle in turn, snuggling up tighter against Ceri’s side. ‘Thank you for coming to get me, my beautiful Mistress.’
Ceri winced. ‘Please don’t say that. I’m not sure I can ever do that again. Not after what the dragons did to me.’ She felt Lily stiffen.
‘I think… I think I need it more than ever. You’re safe, but no one else is. I need my mistress to help keep it in check.’
Sighing, Ceri hugged Lily tighter. ‘Great, we’re back to square one. You’re scared of your demon side and I’m a reluctant dom. Maybe when we get you home we can come up with a way of… flushing you out. Detox for the soul.’
‘That’s another thing,’ Lily said, her voice tiny, ‘I’m not sure I can go back. Not easily anyway.’
‘Lil?’
‘Barnes said… he said that I was becoming more demon and my, um, pattern resonance was aligning with this world.’ She swallowed. ‘He said I was stuck here unless a Lord wanted to send me over, like he was.’
Ceri frowned. ‘Sit up. I need to have a proper look at you.’ A little reluctantly, Lily turned and slipped her long legs over the side of the bed. Then she stood up and waited meekly at the side of the bed until Ceri glowered at her and she lifted her chain and relaxed a bit. Blinking on her Sight, Ceri began looking at Lily’s metaphysical form.
All vertebrates had two lines of energy running through their body, the Chakral and Tantric Medians. The Chakral ran up from the base of the spine to the top of the skull. The Tantric ran from the sex organs to the centre of the forehead. In humans the Chakral was always the stronger, but Lily’s Tantric median had always been far stronger than normal and Ceri knew that the Tantric was the primary energy pathway in full Lorril. Now Lily’s Tantric median was brighter than ever, but her Chakral was stronger than it had been too.
Shifting her attention down, Ceri found the bundle of iridescent fibres which joined the two medians at their bases. This was the physical bridge; a metaphysical representation of Lily’s physical structure. When Ceri had last examined it she had seen a mixture or red and white fibres, and that was what she saw now. However, the red, demonic ones were brighter and there seemed to be more of them. They seemed to come in two types, though it took her a second or two to realise that she was seeing different vibrations in each. The new ones, it seemed, resonated to the flow of magic in this world. The older ones were thinner and seemed to match the resonance of the white, human ones.
She lifted her head slightly to Lily’s chest and the bridge there. This was where her soul was, and it was far more stained than it had been the last time Ceri had looked. Dark streaks permeated the silver strands. Ceri grimaced. ‘Oh, Lil, what did he do to you? He made you drain those demons entirely, didn’t he?’
Lily nodded, lowering her gaze again. ‘He did at the beginning. I must have killed… twenty? Then… After that I couldn’t stop myself doing it anyway. He liked feeding me the Lorril he’d brought with him, the ones he had mimicking you.’
‘Barnes might be right. Getting you home might be harder than I thought. I don’t think you’re fully aligned to this world, but you’re more tightly bound than I am and you should be.’ She slammed her fist into the straw mattress. ‘Damn! I can figure this out. I need time, but I can figure this out.’ She paused, frowning. ‘And what’s with that chain? He had your lip pierced!’
‘It’s a slave chain. They did it… in the city I arrived in. They weren’t sure what I’d be used for so they did my labia as well. You could have found me with my, uh, lips chained up, but Barnes needed them open.’
Ceri growled. ‘I didn’t kill him slowly enough.’
There was a sound of someone knocking on the door and, for a second, Ceri thought they were not going to get the time to figure out how to get Lily back to normal. Then she realised it was knocking, not banging. ‘Probably someone wanting healing. I’ve been making money selling magic to the det. I need to lay off for a bit after last night. I’ll get rid of them.’
Running quickly down to the door, Ceri stopped beside it and called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘Ayasha! You’re still here!’ It was Hiffy’s voice and Ceri unlocked the door to let her in. She looked worried. ‘I thought you’d be gone. Back to humanland. You’re still black, and naked.’
‘It doesn’t wear off that fast and you’ve seen me naked before.’
‘Not her though.’ The blue girl pointed behind Ceri to where Lily was standing.
‘Ah, right. Lil, this is Hiffy, the girl who helped me get you out. Hiffy, this is…’
‘Lilith,’ Lily said before Ceri could finish. Ceri raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I feel more like my birth name at the moment.’
Ceri gave a little shrug, hiding her worry even though Lily could probably feel it anyway. The binding between them was back in force at full strength now that there were no dragons or demons in the way. She turned back to Hiffy. ‘What’s got you so agitated?’
‘Soldiers came to the Horns looking for anyone who might know anything about the death of the castle’s lord,’ Hiffy said. ‘They don’t seem to suspect you. Seems like Captain Torn was very satisfied with his blue-eyed whore. They are up in arms about the death though. Did you really have to kill him?’
‘He and I have history.’
‘He used to be a human,’ Lily said. ‘He was pacted to a Lord and ended up here when he got himself killed. He was a total gashikagig.’
‘Huh,�
� Hiffy replied. ‘Well, without him it’s going to be chaos for a while. You need to get home before the new lord arrives. There are rumours that his Lord is coming here to oversee the hunt for his killer.’
‘Yeah,’ Ceri said, ‘slight problem there. Lil is kind of stuck here until I can figure out how to reverse what was done to her in the castle. I need time, maybe someone who knows more about the metaphysics here.’
‘Shit,’ Hiffy growled. ‘You need to leave the city at least. Not that I want you to go, but it’s not safe.’ Her foot tapped on the floorboards as she considered the situation. ‘There’s a det that lives in a village about four days walk south of here. He got into trouble for studying magical theory. Det aren’t supposed to. We’re not good enough. Supposedly he still studies, just out of sight of the higher demons. He might be able to help you and maybe you could help him, and it would get you away from here.’
‘Okay,’ Ceri said. ‘I’m going to need clothes for Lil-ith and some directions, and travelling rations…’
Hiffy looked at Lily, pursing her lips thoughtfully. ‘She’s a Lorril, right?’
‘Half,’ Ceri said. ‘Her mother was human.’ She glanced at Lily. ‘I told Hiffy what I was. We can trust her.’ Lily nodded, acquiescing to Ceri’s statement without a thought.
‘Still… She doesn’t need clothes, she needs a chain for that collar. You travel as a demon and her slave Lorril.’
‘I’m not dragging Lily around naked by a chain,’ Ceri snapped.
‘Yes, Mistress,’ Lily said flatly, ‘you are. Hiffy’s right, people won’t look twice at something like that. Wrist and ankle cuffs would be good. The ornate silver ones high demons buy for their slaves to show they can afford to.’
Hiffy nodded. ‘Good. They sell them down at Low Gate.’
Ceri sagged a little and tried not to look too dejected. This was going to be hard.
Interlude: One Night in Bangkok
Bangkok, Dragon Empire, November 30th, 2012
Carter Fleming sat at another bar nursing yet another over-priced, lousy whiskey he had no intention of drinking and pretended to watch the Thai girl in the tiny, two-piece swimsuit dancing on a small stage across the room. She looked as uninterested as he did. After five nights of cruising go-go bars and massage parlours, he was beginning to wonder whether the sight of a half-dressed woman would ever get him excited again. He was also seriously considering getting out of the nightclub business. He kept telling himself that the girls he employed in his clubs were well paid, safe, and doing it of their own volition, but every night made him wonder more and more whether he was just kidding himself.
Thaumatology 10 - The Other Side of Hell Page 7