Loved Him to Death
Book Two
Omos of the Ether
by
K.M. Frontain
Freya’s Bower.com ©2007
Culver City, CA
Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether
Copyright © 2007 by K.M. Frontain, pseudonym. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration © 2007 K.M. Frontain. All rights reserved.
Editor: Marci Baun
ISBN: 1-934069-65-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Warning:
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Chapter One
The voices. So many voices. A cacophony of whispers. Bubbles popping. Bubbles rising in slow lumps beneath a skin of lava. Underneath, a heat of pressure.
Voices. So many voices. Building. One great bubble rising to burst the crust.
I regained awareness with a gasp, my heart palpitating, a salty breeze cold on my skin. I couldn’t remember the reason for my being on the beach, only awakened in blank stupefaction with the tide bringing water over my shins and calves. The smaller pebbles rolling back and forth in the waves tickled my flanks, but the shark eyeing me from the deeper water a few cubits out annoyed me. Its presence had no doubt been the reason for my awakening, for taking me out of a dream that recurred more often than I liked. I stared at the shark, and could not recall my motives for sleeping in such an unwise location.
I sat up, but left my feet in the water, a temptation I hoped the shark would take. But it was shrewder than I thought, and swum fast and far in a few seconds. A flash of black and white, some very small pebbles coming up in its wake, and it vanished into the murk.
“Vaal’s fucking minions,” I spat. I deplored Vaal. And his minions. All of them. And I’d been hungry and breakfast had escaped. “Trust a shark to be less than cooperative.”
I curled my legs up and sat cross-legged for a time, thinking this small island seemed less than right. Something about it was very off. It should have been…bigger.
It shouldn’t have been an island.
What had I done last night? If it had been last night. There had been company. A village. Yes. And drink. Lots of drink. And women, one of them passable. And then there had been…
Oh, yes. There’d been an attempt to steal the stranger’s goods and clothes, and take his life as well. I had been the stranger, and the villagers had gone…
It seemed I’d been irritated enough to take their part of the world off the continent. And now I was damned tired and hungry. And naked and without goods.
I slumped back onto the pebble beach, groaning over my stupidity. I could have simply blasted the village apart; but no, I blew a peninsula off a continent.
“Why do I bother drinking with mortals?”
The centuries of living sparingly, and in one moment of drunkenness, I had spent my power as I would have spent my seed in some slut’s hole. Quickly and without compunction.
There was no telling how long I had actually been sleeping. To squander that much power that hastily, I had to have been dormant for days, perhaps weeks. I found it surprising Vaal’s minions hadn’t attempted to eat me earlier, but perhaps there hadn’t been a spring tide until now.
I didn’t have the energy to move again, and thought to shut my eyes and wait upon supper. This close to the tidemark, surely supper would come. Breaker sharks couldn’t resist dangling feet. The moment one came in to snatch my toes, crunch, supper in my mouth.
Yes. Sleep. Let the dragon shape lurk just outside the visible. Let the larger me watch.
I drifted, unthinking, my normal sort of sleeping, not the blackness of total stupidity from which I had awakened earlier. I avoided that sort of sleep, for as long as I was able. I didn’t like the dreams creeping in.
When I drifted, the tiny shape that comprised my visible body rested hard in the real, to all outward observations oblivious, but I loomed above, watching for supper.
Instead of seeing another shark, a ship rounded the southern point of the new coastline. I watched it with my dragon eyes, but didn’t bother to move the human shape I used for association with mortals. I didn’t desire company, not after what I’d done to company a few…well…however many days ago, but sharp eyes must have spotted my pale carcass on the grey beach, for the ship turned from the coast and rode the waves toward me.
Ah, well. Human would do as well for my stomach as shark. Better actually, just now when I was feeling particularly weak. And I’d gain a ship from it.
Terrorise a few remaining crewmembers, and I had a lazy means of transport.
Such colourful sails. What was that black symbol in the red centres? Strange. This far off from their native land? It seemed a Brellin family mark.
With the silver mark of Verdant beneath.
I sat up at once, stared at the symbols with my human eyes, shocked to see the pair together, stunned to see the order. The family mark provoked no recollection. I was not fluent with all the house names of the Brellin, and it had been a long time since I’d come across any Brellin folk from which to learn the newer ones, not that I would have bothered.
Vaal’s favoured people. I despised them, a pathetic group who threw their children out to swim with sharks. It had always been my opinion they were a people without strength, and yet, there on those sails, a family crest overtopped the Verdant Imperial Seal.
Creation. What had happened in Verdant for me to witness a travesty such as this? And halfway around the world? What had happened to my son? That idiot must have mucked things up worse than before. Somehow, he had.
The ship, a three-masted tern, hove to and dropped anchor two hundred cubits off the island. Sailors lowered a tender down to the water and clambered onto it. They began rowing toward me, but my gaze lifted again to the set of sails, and then dropped suddenly to a single figure at the stern. A still figure with one hand clenching a shroud.
There was something…something ephemeral. What had it been?
I didn’t take my attention off the figure until the sailors in the dinghy hollered to me in common speak. I answered in kind.
“Hallo! I’m stranded!”
“Understatement! But you’re naked, just as a man should be. I’ve decided to rescue you.”
A woman? Perhaps I wouldn’t eat them all for breakfast after all. And that ship did need a crew, more than a crew of two, unfortunately, or the men would have gone down my gullet there and then. The woman, now? I could smell her already, and she smelled fine.
“Should I be naked, too?” said one of the sailors in the dinghy. “Will that give me a chance with you?”
He spoke in Brellin. The woman shushed him with a rude word in the same tongue. The boat scraped the pebble beach, and two men jumped out to haul it ashore, pumping their legs to manage the task quickly. Vaal’s people they might be, but his breaker sharks had a definite appetite for family, and they were family, the sharks and the Brellin.
Twi
sted bastard, that Vaal. He had an appetite for his human descendants as well. Perhaps I had no right to quibble about that, but at least I’d culled the worst of mine from the brood before letting one live.
But…given that black symbol on those sails, seems I should have culled the lot. Stupid Intana.
A flash of movement in the water. Yes. The sharks had returned, the black-topped bastards, grinning just cubits away. And now I couldn’t reach in with my greater head and pluck any up. No glorious squish. No filled belly. Damned irritating, but the woman deserved some consideration first. If she was beautiful…
She thumped onto the beach and approached. Her smell hadn’t lied. A find. A real find. She was young, but not too young. All the curves a man liked to see, and just the tad extra that hinted of a bosom better than average, a precious loadstone for a man’s shaft. I wanted to put mine into her cleavage, but first I had to play friendly victim.
“I’m so happy to see you!” I said. “I’ve been stuck here for… Well, I’m not certain how long.”
She crouched down at my side, tan arms coming to cross over her knees. She wore red trousers, baggy in the legs but tight over the bottom, and Creation, what a bottom. Sweet. Not too big, not too small. Round cheeks, just the way I liked them. I definitely had to go there.
She shifted a fraction, and I dragged my gaze away from perfection to see the rest of her. Leather boots on the feet. Up top, a beige shirt with a leather jerkin over it. All that had to come off as soon as possible.
Over dark, wavy hair, she’d tied a red kerchief. A lovely oval framed her features, the forehead slightly wide, the chin slightly narrow. She had large brown eyes, a perfectly delectable nose, and luscious lips that wanted bruising, with my mouth or my shaft, I wasn’t yet certain. Shaft. Most likely shaft.
“You’re handsome for a pale skin,” she said. “It’s a good thing, your black hair. Good luck.” She looked at my crotch and smirked. “Good luck there, too. Exposure doesn’t seem to have hurt your constitution.”
A sailor dropped a folded blanket on my lap at that moment. I gave a weak smile and belatedly pretended to have some modesty, pressing the tented blanket down with a forearm.
“It’s lucky our Haru spotted you. The rest of us took your pale body for bleached driftwood, but I suppose we would have seen the truth when we’d come in closer.” She lifted to a stand and offered me a hand up. “Come on. We’ll get you on board and fixed up.”
I had nothing to fix but my hunger and the need in my groin, but I smiled and took the hand she offered. I lurched to my feet, all three and three quarter cubits of me. She still grinned, even after I towered over her.
“A big one!” she cried. “Look! We’ve found us a giant. We’ll use him to scare off pirates. Oh, no. Wait. All the pirates are this tall around here.”
The men laughed—not the one that wanted in her hole, but most of them. True, I had an extra span in height compared to some of them, but I was no giant, not in my human shell. The woman now? She couldn’t have been more than three cubits. Compared to her, yes, I was a giant.
Something about small and adorable makes me want to squeeze and rend. But I’d try to rub her all over me before I surrendered to the urge.
“What are you staring for?” she asked. “Come on! Unfold that blanket and cover your marooned behind.”
She turned and marched back to the dinghy. Pushy woman, but then, I recalled Brellin females were more assertive than most.
Yes, theirs was a matriarchal society, but I thought it unusual to find one of their women working as a sailor. I couldn’t quite remember why.
I crunched pebbles in her wake, flapped the blanket open and threw it over my shoulders. My attention wandered back to the ship. The figure still watched from the deck. He’d only lowered his arm from the shroud.
As I squinted at him, I transferred my consciousness outward into the dragon shape that hovered beyond mortal perception. I could see more clearly with it than with my human eyes, and I wanted a better look at this man.
The moment I did so, however, he turned and walked away from the rail. A thick braid draped his naked back to below the seat of his blue trousers. Streaks of yellow mixed with medium brown. A ribbon of gold woven in, perhaps?
I uncoiled my dragon self and wafted closer for a better look, but he withdrew down a hatch to the captain’s cabin.
Damn it. Had to have been another Brellin, though his skin had been somewhat darker than the usual caramel and cream of his people. His had been a richer brown, caramel without the cream, pure sugar, heated candy hard.
Why had I thought such a stupid thing? I was too hungry. Had to be. But to think of sugar when I wanted meat… “This Haru fellow you mentioned? Is he your captain?”
“Yes,” the woman answered. “My cousin. I’m Valerys.”
Sugar. There was sugar. My gaze veered away from the ship and onto the woman. “Isn’t that a Verdant name?” I said.
She’d already climbed aboard the dinghy and turned to seat herself, but she froze with her bottom still in the air and looked up at me in surprise. “You know of Verdant? Here? Halfway across the world?”
“I’ve been there.” I looked again at the sails and their marks. “Isn’t that the Imperial Seal? What’s a Brellin house symbol doing overtop of it?”
My gaze reverted back to her. She’d placed her bum on the board at last, and I envied the wood. Damn fine bottom on that woman.
“Sachoné House took it over,” she said. “You sure you’ve been to Verdant?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
She stared at me oddly. The accompanying men grew still.
“Why?” I asked.
“You can’t be very good at observation,” she said. “Sachoné House has owned the Imperial Seal for over one hundred years. Any man who visited Verdant would know.”
A hundred years? Damn! Damn and damn! “Oh. Well. I guess I was drunk again.”
The tension evaporated with laughter. She chortled at me, and so did some of the men, but not the one that wanted her. I’d kill him first when I took over the ship.
“Get in,” she said impatiently.
I’d lost some esteem, admitting to blatant drunkenness. Well, she’d change her mind before I ate her. Beautiful she might be, but I intended to devour every member of Sachoné House in existence. I hadn’t given my son over to mortals only to have him come under the jurisdiction of Vaal’s disgusting bastard race.
I climbed into the dinghy and sat in front of her, smiling my least offensive. It can be a very charming smile, but she no longer seemed inclined to consider me appealing. Her gaze veered off to watch the men shove the boat into the water.
A shark came in close to the flank of a man on my right. The woman noticed and shouted in Brellin, “None of that, Little Brother! We’re short-handed still!”
Short handed? I might be able to use that, but not until she repeated it in common speak. I didn’t want them knowing I understood Brellin. Yet.
“I’m not drunk all the time,” I said, hoping to win back her interest. I succeeded in getting her eyes back on me at least, but they held a mocking gleam.
“Such as now? How did you end up stranded and naked on that crumbling rock?”
“Don’t remember,” I replied and thought to make her opinion of me all the worse, but she brushed my incognizance aside to discuss another matter.
“There was a disaster here,” she said. “A week ago, we sailed overtop a wave the likes of which I have never seen in my life, and hope never to again. I thought we’d go under and meet Vaal in the depths. If we’d been on any other ship, with any other captain, I think we would have. We’ve been sailing to find the source of the wave since.”
The sailors jumped in the dinghy and set to rowing. I ignored them, very interested in what the woman had to say. “There are always large waves on the ocean,” I said.
“Not like this. There was a moment when the ship was all but perpendicular to the horizon, all of us
clinging for our lives that weren’t lashed down. Haru had to wrap a leg around the wheel post to stay fast, but over the top he took us.
“And the ride down the backside of that monster was even scarier, because it felt as if we would crash through the surface into the depths and sink that way instead. And we did go under for a bit, but we came up again like a cork only seconds after. We lost two people overboard then, but Vaal brought them back to us.”
I squinted at her, acting puzzled over the name.
“Vaal, our god,” she offered. “He saved our lost men.”
“Really? Your god had a personal interest in these men?”
“No, not particularly. We’re short handed and it only meant more work for Haru if Vaal let the men drown.”
So, Vaal had some connection to, or interest in, her Brellin captain. It perhaps explained the transient air of potency I had sensed looking upon this Haru’s distant figure. “And your god saved the ship as well, I take it. For this Haru?”
“No. Haru did that alone.”
I just stared at her. The wave she’d described seemed the type to swamp a ship rather than let it ride even halfway to the crest. I couldn’t believe a mortal had surmounted such a thing without divine assistance.
She smiled at my patent disbelief. “I tell you true,” she insisted. “Haru took us over and down that wave, and lost only two men too stunned to lash themselves down. It truly was a monster. We thought it the result of a cataclysm somewhere in the seabed at first, but now that we’ve seen this shoreline…”
I looked at the mainland. Massive sections had sheered away from the current coastline. The shattered edges lay in slanted ruin for as far as I could see. The wreckage of trees clung to the tops of the cliffs. More lay scattered or crushed within broken slabs. Some floated close to the cliff edges. It was all very new disaster, plain enough to see, and I had only perpetrated it a week ago, it seemed.
Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether Page 1