Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether

by K. M. Frontain

  “They were made of tubes of paper, and filled with this stuff. Man would jam them in the soil with a stick, light a cord at the bottom, and then crack! Up in the air! There were sparks flying everywhere. The noise was horrendous.”

  “Are the arrows in the kegs as well?”

  “No. Just the powder. The main powder. Not the ones he said he used for the bright colours that fired across the sky. Haru didn’t seem to care about the pretty colours. There are paper tubes in the hold, but none of the black powder. That’s up here.”

  I turned to regard her dim shape. Her kerchief was off. Her hair blew in the wind, whipped about her shoulders. She smelled wonderful. I hooked a hand into the belt of her trousers and drew her closer, saw more clearly her face, the eyes almost luminous, the lips wet, opening in a small gasp of surprise.

  “Do you want to seduce your great grandfather with me?”

  The look. Oh, the eager look. Yes. She did.

  “My cousin,” she whispered.

  Smiling, I bent and kissed her, filled my arms with her, took in more of her scent. Tasted. A hint of fish stew, woman’s sweat, woman’s excitement.

  Something not her. Another scent on the breeze. Another taste in the air when my lips drifted across her cheek to her neck. A different feel. Something beyond.

  Nuzzling her shoulder, I looked forward and spied a blackness rising in the sea, a thousand small fluorescent creatures sliding away from a sharp dorsal fin.

  Vaal. Vaal, you come to watch.

  I kept her turned from him. His presence didn’t make me want to back off, but brought an almost painful strength to my need. I worked my hands up her shirt, bared her back. No jerkin on her frame this night. The shirt was almost too thin. Silk, the finest silk.

  Her nipples were hard against my front, sliding just beneath the thinnest of cloth. I pulled back long enough to yank off my knit shirt and toss it toward the kegs, then pressed her to me again. She felt like sin had come into my arms. Sin and secrets, and deeds long hidden. My deeds, Vaal’s. A victim. Many victims.

  I touched her through the silk, twisted nipples, nipped collarbone, incited her whimper and shiver. Noises of her belt buckle coming undone, small jerks of her hips to get free of her trousers. She drew one of my hands lower, to curve with the lines of her bottom, to smooth fingers into the crease of thighs.

  Breeze, come and bring her smell with you.

  I lifted her onto the rail. She grabbed wood and rope, hooked an ankle around a support rung, threw her head back and smiled. I went to her centre and captured the smell the breeze was too lazy to bring me.

  Creation, but I loved cunny. Hers was perfect, the musk of a day’s work in the hair, the scent of everything that she’d passed from her body, the unwanted and the wanted, mixed to become this masterpiece, the taste and odour of a woman.

  She’d already fucked someone today. I knew his scent, the one that had been after her hole. She’d finally given into him, but only because she’d despaired of having Haru.

  Like I despaired. But I wanted his heart, not just his body. His body I had by contract.

  Vaal, you bastard. Why do you watch? Do you remember? Do you remember the things we did together, before you threw what we had to the wind?

  I retreated from her centre to slip my fingers within warmth, but looked below the rail at the shark smiling in the moonlight.

  Teeth. Tearing.

  Teeth. Biting.

  Do you remember that, Vaal? The victims, the countless victims?

  “Unh! Please!” Valerys groaned, straining, legs wide, smell and silhouette so needy. Like me.

  I scraped up her front with my chest. She moaned and jerked on the rail. I shoved fingers in harder, felt the place where seed entered, children left, wanted to pound it until she screamed, but instead hooked my fingers just where it made a woman want to writhe and beg for more. I bit her nipple through silk, fucked her and fucked her with my hand. She was going to scream soon.

  To the side of us, swimming close, dark shape, black eye of Vaal. Teeth. Mysterious wants, sinister desires. Memories creating a wake in the water, thousands of years long.

  “Unh! Omos! Beautiful Omos! So good! So good!”

  Vaal’s hunger. Mine. The union of power and murder that spanned most of our black lives. It felt so good. It had always felt so good.

  Valerys began to shake, to issue the perfect cry, offer the perfect moment. Down from the gloom of sails and unseen wind, my dragon head lunged to take her.

  Chapter Eight

  The murder didn’t happen. Reason returned, but not my own. Reason was Haru yanking me back by an arm and not letting go. Reason was his fingers fisting over a whisker on my dragon snout and a feeling that ice had taken hold of my entire self.

  Valerys screamed in surprise, and then screamed again. Visible at last, the dragon. Visible to anyone with mortal eyes, because of a whisker caught in Haru’s furious grip.

  “Get below!” he snapped at her. “Get below and don’t come back up until I tell you.”

  She tumbled off the rail, slipped on the deck and scrabbled out of sight beyond the kegs. Haru didn’t look at me. He set his gaze on the water and vented his fury at Vaal.

  “You goad him! You goad him to break contract!”

  The shark sank a little, just enough to hide the black eye that had been watching.

  “If you think to eat him now that we can find Intana, think again! I’ll put myself in his jaws first!”

  I couldn’t think, listening to this. I could only know his certainty, his strength, the ferocity with which he wielded both. There was no weakness in him. There was none. Gentleness had fled and become this solid power that would not permit my movement.

  Vaal sank further until only the tip of the dorsal fin showed.

  “Vaal!” Haru snarled. “I don’t know what lies in the past between you and Omos, but I can guess. Your feud with Omos ends now. Now! Do you hear me?”

  The shark in the water sank away entirely, but the true manifestation of Vaal arrived in its place, the massive being that could destroy a string of atolls in one swallow. I fell to my knees, but Haru remained firm, his clasp on my arm solid, his grip on my dragon shape impenetrable to the acids of Vaal’s gut. And nothing could touch me, not power, not spite, while he held me fast. I knew, even as I shivered in terror, that his crew was also safe. Somehow, a mortal-bred god had found the means to withstand a being spawned from the blackest depths of the unknowable.

  “I won’t relent!” he shouted. “End the war! End it now! You stupid, massive fuck of a god! Some ways are wrong! They’re wrong! You know that! You know it, Vaal!”

  The manifestation disintegrated, but Vaal surged from the water and set his claws into the rail. His man shape wasn’t the same as I remembered it. He wore a different face, a different body, more mortal in appearance than before. He glared at Haru, but Haru still would not loose his grip on me, and I was glad of it. This Vaal frightened me more than the shadow shape, because this Vaal was a harsh razor scraping at my soul. He hurt. He hurt so much.

  “You shouldn’t have intervened,” Vaal said. “We don’t need this weakling god, this drunkard that wastes everything that he is.”

  “In good faith,” Haru answered simply.

  Vaal stared at him, just stared, and I felt the razor draw away from my spirit until only sea air remained.

  Wind on my body, normal, safe. Haru released the dragon form, and it vanished at once, without my having to force the disappearance. The length of my greater body evaporated like so much mist that had been twining with the masts and yards of his ship.

  “You were going to make a liar of me.” Haru let go of my arm and stalked away. “I would never have forgiven you,” his voice drifted back, and then I was alone with Vaal.

  “Why do you do this to me?” I whispered, staring bleakly at Vaal. “I loved you! I loved you with all my being! And you tear at me, tear until there is nothing left but strips on my bones!”

&nbs
p; “If so, then you’ve grown a lot of flesh despite me,” he replied.

  He sat on the deck, one leg under his wet bottom, one raised and with an arm laid across. His fingernails were black and sharp and dripped blood onto the deck. Whose?

  “My own,” he said. “I splintered the rail.”

  Yes, the rail was damaged, the wood smashed, blood there, too. I wanted to taste it.

  “It would have been nice, Valerys’s last pleasure in your mouth as you ripped her apart,” he said.

  “Fuck you, you unholy monster. What did I ever do to deserve so much spite?”

  “You went from me to Blessed Land quickly enough, didn’t you? The moment she came into being, off you went to sniff between her legs.”

  I couldn’t believe he could compare wanting a woman to wanting him. “She’s female! Creation! Even you like females!”

  “You loved her!” he roared.

  “I loved you!” I roared back. “You stupid bastard from the nether end of Creation! How can you compare what we had to my chasing a female for pleasure?”

  “You loved her,” he repeated, this time quietly, “and I waited forgotten in the seas while you romped across the lands with her, while you played jealous lover and ate every mortal man she managed to shove between her whore legs. She had you on a chain, and you and I were a memory.”

  “I don’t remember that very well,” I said. Discomfort put weight on my gaze and anchored my eyes to the deck. My fault. So much of it had been my fault. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it. “It may be because I truly hate her right now.”

  “Yes, and she’s still thoroughly disillusioned with you. What exactly did you do that day?”

  “Do? After she mocked me for having a son that couldn’t want a woman? I told her I was glad Intana showed his hole to a man, and I said her whore daughter from a mortal father didn’t deserve even his piss to drink. Then I pissed on Blessed Land and took off for the ether.”

  Vaal barked a sharp laugh and paused. I looked sideways at him, and he guffawed again. “You didn’t,” he said after.

  “I did. I pissed on her.” I smirked, then grimaced. “She sent something up at me, some massive charge of energy, and I lost most of what I had left. I’d given Intana the dome to sustain him throughout the ages. I was too weak to fight off her attack.”

  “So you fled and hid.”

  “I fled and hid,” I agreed, “and slowly gathered my power again.”

  “And wasted it recently. What was that about? Do you know the size of the wave you created? It almost sank this ship.”

  “Never mind,” I said, once more discomfited and looking anywhere but at him.

  “It was something stupid, wasn’t it? You never did have a brain.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “You didn’t. Look at you. Pathetic.”

  “And that made it right to eat me?”

  He said nothing. After a little, I looked up to assess his mood. He pondered me without a hint of anger or resentment.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The contract. I had to make it invalid,” he said.

  “To eat me!” I spat.

  “No. I want Haru. Can’t you share him?”

  I couldn’t believe I’d heard that. “Are you asking me to share?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared scepticism at him. “Couldn’t you have tried asking first instead of eating me?”

  “Haven’t you been thinking murderous thoughts about me for the past two days with regards to keeping Haru to yourself?” he countered. “How could I have known you wouldn’t say no?”

  “Are you telling me you aren’t so insanely in love with him you won’t eat me for having fucked him?” I shot back. “You! The god that ate a mortal not long back for sucking his perfect brown prod?”

  “Omos. I love you. I’d share anything with you, except his death. This is one mortal that shall not die in your teeth or mine.”

  “Well at least we agree on something!” I shouted then I blinked. “What did you say?”

  He made an impatient wave with the tan arm that rested on his knee. “We’d better plan this right, because he’s not going to let either of us in that cabin if we don’t launch this siege together.”

  “Did you say you loved me?”

  “I don’t recall. Shall we discuss battle plans?”

  “Vaal! Did you say you loved me?”

  “I never stopped, you idiot!”

  “Oh.”

  “I could eat you, you’re so stupid. You’ve passed this regrettable flaw on to your son. Did you know?”

  “I do.” Ah, damn. I was so stupid. Stupid for a thousand years.

  “Longer.”

  “Will you shut up about that thing with Blessed Land!”

  His hand shot forward and dragged me over. I ended up between his legs. His grip was stronger than I remembered it, full of potency, much of it that didn’t bear the stench of murder and sacrifice.

  “What is this? What—?”

  His mouth locked over mine and the questions were swallowed. I felt his fingers in my hair, an arm curling around my torso, nails digging in just a little. And his tongue fucked my mouth until I groaned.

  Ah, Creation. Vaal! I’d missed him so much, his assurance, his odd blend of cold and warmth. Having him touch me again, touch me and love me, was a miracle as astounding as our advent into this universe. The impossible had come to be.

  His lips left mine, and I tried to get them back. “Vaal! Please! Please!”

  “Haru!” he whispered hoarsely. “We have to seduce Haru.”

  But I couldn’t think and tried to melt into him again, nothing but want and hardness rubbing into the naked length of his inner thigh. Vaal gave into me a little longer, kissing and offering me his tongue, his hand on my bottom shoving me against his leg harder. He felt so good, so incredibly good.

  “Fuck me. Please fuck me,” I begged against his lips.

  “Unh, no.” He tried to set me farther away, but I resisted.

  “Ah, Creation, you kill me! I’ll do anything you ask!” I squirmed harder against him, put my hand on his shaft and rolled hot skin up and down the length. He grabbed my wrist and squeezed hard enough to force out a cry of pain.

  “No! Wake up, damn it!” he hissed. “Haru! We have to appease Haru! The longer we wait, the more he’ll think neither of us is sorry for what we tried to do to Valerys.”

  Haru. Right. The other man we loved. I straightened up, but stayed within the cage of Vaal’s legs. My mind went from foggy to focused.

  Upon Vaal’s face. It was so very…Brellin. The features were typical of the people, wide-ish nose, wide-ish lips, oval face with a slightly wide forehead and narrower chin. Typical ended there. The parts meshed into an unusually handsome whole.

  His eyes put the lie to the image of mortality. He wore the all black sclera and irises of the shark god, but his teeth were more mortal than normal for him. Not as many sharp points, the incisors human and ordinary, easier for me to kiss without giving him a gift of blood from a cut tongue.

  “This new body of yours—?”

  “Belonged to a mortal Haru loved. I ate him.”

  “Oh.” That was just so Vaal. And so me. I would have done the same.

  And then I kissed him again, because the memory of our long reign of mutual murders and butcheries made me want to dissolve into him, the way we had dissolved together in the past, in a bath of blood and broken souls, ethereal dragon in shark, shark in dragon. The brutality of him. The strength. The—

  What was this strange power in him? No murder, no brutality! What was it?

  He shoved me off suddenly. “Haru! We need to make a plan!” he insisted.

  My thoughts brightened into a cold point. He hid something. Something about Haru. “So what do we do? He’s really annoyed with you.”

  “Me? With us!”

  “He wasn’t annoyed with me.”

  “Yes, he was. Just shut up. We need to whine outside h
is door, I think.”

  “That’s quite a plan. Brilliant.”

  Vaal gave me a withering look and then almost bit me on the cheek when I sent the insult back. I dodged just enough to avoid bloodshed, but stayed in his arms. When he leant back, I followed and kissed him. He let me, then moved his lips aside to speak against my temple, his breath going into my ear and provoking a shiver.

  “You ask for the contract, tell him we want to end it.” His face lowered. He kissed my jaw and travelled south to my collarbone. His free hand crept down my bare torso. Oh, yes.

  “You didn’t sign it,” I pointed out, winding fingers into straight black locks. Obsidian hair. It was glossy like mine, but without the sparkle of stars in them.

  “I’m not from the stars, Omos,” he reminded and straightened to look at me again, his shark eyes unreadable. I only knew he loved me because the cold of his grasp was less and the warmth stronger.

  “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t sign the contract,” he said. “I’ll be with you to agree that I want a truce between us. He opens the door. We incinerate the contract, and then we get in and fuck him senseless.”

  “Good plan,” I said, this time meaning it, but I had doubts. “He can hear me thinking. I can’t stop him. He could be listening.”

  Vaal grinned, a smile of predation, mirth and gloating. “He can’t hear us. My waters are darker than yours. He can’t easily read the current around me. And he can’t read you when you swim in my wake.”

  “Waters?” I said, making a face at him. “Does it always have to be water metaphors with you?”

  “Yes! Water! Better than relying on your airy hole of a brain.”

  I opened my mouth to refute this, but he kissed me, then kissed me again. Damn, he tasted good. And damn, he was strong. What was this power? So pure. So incredibly pure.

  “Right,” he said and stood up, dragging me with him. I was taller, just barely, but it didn’t matter. I was a worm about to swim in his wake, as he put it. I wanted him and I wanted Haru and I knew to have them both I had to incinerate that contract.

  We headed for the stern of the ship.

  “Did you and Haru free my son?” I asked as we rounded the cargo of powder kegs.