“Yes. Haru managed to get into the harbour during the last investiture.”
“With your help,” I said, making a statement of it. For Vaal to enter Verdant’s harbour, the last Oradhé had to have been chosen and kept his sight to see the truth of Intana’s nature, and thereby break the echoes of my power. I assumed Vaal had sent in Haru to save the last Oradhé’s eyes because only Vaal’s sharks had been able to get in beforehand, just so Vaal might observe, through his minions’ eyes, the godling he would never have again.
Yes, I’m very malicious when I want to be, and I’d wanted Vaal to watch Intana throughout my son’s slavery, while being incapable of personally approaching or helping him.
Vaal grinned, but the humour in the expression was wry. “No, actually Haru sailed in under his own power while I watched and waited. I left the early work to his capable, if innocent, manipulations. He didn’t know how potent he was back then. A lot of him works on instinct. But shh. Don’t tell him I said any of this. He thinks I’m omnipotent still.”
I frowned, not believing Haru had sailed in unaided. I’d arranged the power to prevent outsiders of the Ardu faith from entering the harbour when an Oradhé lay dying in Celestial Dome. How could a mortal have sailed through my barriers without Vaal’s help, or get past the guardians of Celestial Dome’s entrance? Vaal must have helped him, but for some reason lied about it. I couldn’t see the point and asked more questions to draw him out.
“What happened? Did Haru somehow save the next Oradhé from losing his eyes? What did he do? Swim beneath the dome, past the sharks? Free the Oradhé before his eyes were put out?”
I could only think Haru must have used the air-giving sponge I had created beneath the dome, and that he’d entered through the Pool of Maturity, the opening used for the new manhood rites of the Ardu faith.
Ah. New back then. That was a millennium ago now, and because of Haru and Vaal, it was all over now. The Ardu faith had no doubt ended.
“No. No, he didn’t save the next Oradhé’s eyes,” Vaal answered. “He was the next Oradhé. He entered the dome by the front, and Intana chose him. And then he asked Little Brother to jump from the water and save him at an appropriate time. Little Brother has always been fond of Haru, enough to protect him from anything.”
I halted dead still. Haru? Haru had been the last Oradhé? And he wasn’t dead! My son had let him live?
Seemingly unaware that I had been shocked into immobility, Vaal continued aft.
“And of course, the more he needed me to help him manage Intana, the further into your harbour I was able to swim, until I broke through the barriers entirely. It only took him six days to draw me in through the echoes of your power. Amazing for a near-mortal. Then I rid Verdant of your loudest echo, biting through the chain that held Celestial Dome to the harbour floor.”
Haru had been the last Oradhé, and Intana had put a permanent mark on his chest.
I hated my son, hated him enough to think of killing him a thousand different ways. He loved Haru, loved him hard enough to trap his destiny to a mortal. Vaal I could stomach because I loved him, but my son would die.
Vaal looked back and caught my shock and disbelief.
“He sailed in on his own?” I whispered, only able to murmur this most innocuous thing instead of all the accusations I truly wanted to shout.
“You don’t understand him, Omos. Haru can’t be stopped from sailing wherever he pleases. I’ve never seen a man with such mastery of space and time.”
“Space and time? Don’t you mean the sea?” I was still fumbling with the fact that Haru had been the last Oradhé, and not just some outsider to take advantage of the fall of Verdant’s power once my son had been freed. Now Vaal expected me to comprehend something as untrue as Haru being master of space and time.
“No. I’m master of the sea. Haru is master of space and time,” Vaal corrected.
“I’m master of space,” I said, getting irritated. It wasn’t really true any longer, but I didn’t like it that anyone, even Haru, might have seized my place. The ether was mine, and I wanted it back.
“No, not like the ether, though he has become a sailor there, too. Any space, Omos. He can slip into any space, no matter what the conditions. There’s something too gentle about him, and he just breezes on by like a butterfly’s kiss.”
Vaal had answered my thoughts and not my words, but at that moment, I was too dazed to take heed. He grabbed my arm and dragged me onward. We stopped a few cubits from the hatch leading down to the cabin. There was another sailor at the wheel further on, but we ignored him.
“A butterfly’s kiss? Vaal, you’re getting maudlin,” I said.
He showed he wasn’t with a whack to the back of my head.
“Ow!” I growled, but not too seriously. “Too gentle? You’ve always eaten too gentle in the past. What made him so different that you let him live to become this…demi-god?”
“Just that. I saw the potential and I let it grow. Trust me, Omos. Just help me get in there with you, and you’ll see potential the likes of which you have never imagined. Too gentle hardly begins to describe the way he works his power.”
But it did begin to. It did. I’d experienced some of his gentleness already, and beneath lay a strength that was…different, like this strange new force to Vaal’s potency.
Creation. Vaal had soaked his strength from out of that mortal and become a monster capable of taking out the city of Verdant in one—
“Shh!” he hissed. “Stop shrieking when you think! Just persuade Haru.”
—bite. One bite.
Vaal glared at me. I glared back.
“And also,” he added, “don’t think to kill your son, Omos. I’ll make you suffer. So will Haru. You don’t want that. Trust me.”
Fuck him! But that Haru could make me suffer, I somehow believed. He made me suffer even now. I needed him. I needed him so badly it hurt, worse than the hurt of my needing Vaal. But of course, I was inured to needing Vaal, having avoided him for…um…a few millennia, what with going on a fuck binge with Blessed Land, and then hiding from her and him.
“That’s right, you over-sexed craven,” Vaal said and prodded me in the stomach with a pointy nail. He drew blood and laughed at my disconcerted expression. I hated that he and Haru read me so easily.
Growling again, I stomped down the hatch and pounded the door that sealed the cabin. “Haru! We’ve made peace. We want to annul the contract and start over. Let me in.”
“No!”
His answer came from directly behind the door. So he’d been listening just within. I smiled. He was interested, whether he wanted to admit it or not. And he was peeved and adorable.
“I’m sorry about Valerys. Really. I… She smelled so good, and instinct came over me—”
“Stupid fucking hole of a maggot’s ass!”
I stared at the wood and thought about smashing it to bits.
“Told you he was angry with you,” Vaal said. I glared back at him. Smiling, he came forward and stood with me. “Haru! Let us in. Please. We’re sorry. It was my fault. Don’t blame Omos.”
Oh, that was good, son of a bitch. Try and seem all noble.
When you’re not!
“You whine really well,” I said. He shoved me with his shoulder. I shoved back.
“Haru! Give us the contract,” Vaal said, warning me with a glower to desist. “We want to annul it. We’ve agreed on a truce.”
“What about the other contract?” I whispered, remembering the one Vaal had swallowed. “We need to incinerate that one, too.”
Vaal said nothing, just stared at the closed door as if waiting for Haru to respond.
“Vaal?” I said. “The other contract?” He looked sideways at me, and I knew he had hoped I’d forgotten it. All the hurt and anger of before came crashing back into my being. “Bastard! Cold fuck of a fish! Bring that contract up where I can see it!”
“Don’t be so testy. When he opens the door, I’ll regurgitate it
, and we’ll get rid of both.”
“Regurgitate it now!”
“There’s no point in—!”
“Now!” I snarled, a roar beginning in the dragon that hinted just within our ken. I didn’t care how big Vaal had gotten. I’d eat his human body and flee before his monster manifestation consumed me. I had the strength for that. Haru had given me it, yesterday and this evening during the sessions. I knew it now.
Vaal glowered at me and ascended the steps. He returned a minute later, wet again, and bearing the hermetic case.
“Open it,” I said.
He didn’t bother arguing, but snapped wide the cap, withdrew the papers and knocked them open with a few careful whacks of his hand in the air. Easiest way not to drip directly on the ink. Yes. It was the contract. He shoved it back in the case and snapped the lid shut.
“Haru!” I called. “We have the other contract. Let us in.”
The door opened, the other hermetic case shot out, and the door shut again. I heard the bolt shoot home and realized only then that the door had never been locked to begin with. “Fuck!”
Vaal laughed. I scowled.
“Did you know the door wasn’t locked?” I demanded.
“No. But I should have expected him to do something to make us both seem idiots. He always does. Somehow.”
“This is your fault. If you’d brought up the other contract without the fuss!”
“Ah, clamp it! I had every intention of bringing up the other. I just…”
“Just what?”
“Wanted to see you get all nervous,” he said and laughed in my face. I shoved him into the wall. He shoved back, and then we knocked each other about for a bit, hitting with fists and hermetic cases.
Until Haru slammed the door wide and shot a…a thing at us and both cases sparked like small stars.
“Shit! Shit, fuck!” I cried, dropping the case. It disappeared before it touched the deck. Next to me, Vaal fared no better and hissed in pain. I looked up at Haru, who eyed me with a flat expression. “What the fuck was that?” I demanded.
“My irritation,” he said. He almost shut the door again, but I shot forward and smashed it back into the wall. “You burnt my hand! With irritation!”
“Mine, too!” Vaal snapped. His arm shot past my head. I jerked aside in surprise. His palm went out to Haru. “Fix it!”
“Piss off!” Haru stalked over to his desk.
“Haru,” Vaal whined.
He whined. I turned and stared at him. I’d thought it was only me who was so desperate.
“What?” Vaal hissed. He shoved me. I shoved back.
“Stop it! Both of you!” Haru cried and began laughing despite everything, or perhaps because of everything.
“You’re both such…bastards!” he chortled and leant on his desk, giggling.
“See. It worked,” Vaal whispered.
“Was fighting and being pathetic part of it?” I asked, disbelief plain in my voice, likely plain in my expression, too.
Vaal shrugged and gave me a sloppy grin. “Anything that worked, Omos. Anything that worked. So long as we did it together.”
Together.
I smiled. Together we looked at Haru and walked forward.
Chapter Nine
Haru had returned the mattresses to the top bunks. We put them back on the floor, didn’t bother to remove the linens and blankets before we made Haru know to whom he belonged, just dragged him from the desk, a hand each on his arms, and shoved him down on wool. He’d stopped snickering the moment Vaal had tossed down the first mattress, and he was perfectly sombre as we pressed to either side of him and began to remove his clothes, this activity between kisses and small, punitive nips.
He said nothing. I don’t know why I’d expected him to say anything, but I had, and was a little miffed that he took our ownership so calmly. Until I realized he didn’t view it as ownership. We, Vaal and I, were these great beasts with whom he dealt. We were untamed animals roaming his territory, and the best way to cope with us was to stay calm.
Damn him. And Vaal believed Haru thought he was omnipotent still. Well maybe Haru did, but he’d never once crawled under Vaal’s label of ownership. He’d been dealing since Vaal had first taken him. It wasn’t any wonder the shark had become a pathetic whiner like me.
Vaal suddenly lifted up from Haru’s neck and smote me on the forehead with his palm. I lurched back, shocked into momentary clarity.
“Enough!” Vaal spat. “You think and think and think, and never to good purpose! Stop thinking! You’re useless at it!”
Haru started sniggering again, and I glared at him and Vaal, until Haru suddenly reached up to grasp my neck and pulled me down to kiss the thoughts out of my head. I forgot about resentment, reasons, motives, and lived through an incredible kiss, one of feathery touches of tongue on my lips, and then deeper probing when I groaned and opened wider.
“Better,” Vaal grumbled to our sides, but I didn’t heed him. Haru’s hands were on me, his perfect hands, working my trousers off my hips. Then Vaal was over at my back, helping, his body warm and cold, and all but destroying my ability to think. The last lucid thought I had was that he and I weren’t going to fuck Haru, but that they were both going to fuck me.
“Exactly,” Haru murmured and worked down my torso toward my groin.
Ah, Creation! His lips! I moaned, the heat of his mouth shooting straight down my shaft and into the root of my sex. Vaal’s fingers brushed my hole, and I whimpered like an animal.
“Lift your leg,” he whispered. I did, put it up and across Haru’s shoulder. I strained like Valerys had strained, wanting every part of me used, and used thoroughly.
Vaal’s hand retreated for a moment, but only to put spit on the fingers. Then his cold and hot touch returned. Fingertips circled my anus.
Haru hadn’t stopped sucking me throughout this, had taken me deeper. I felt his throat far in back of his teeth. My shaft bent for it, was squeezed and released and squeezed again. I couldn’t hold still and began to pump into him.
“Get some oil,” Vaal said.
Haru’s murderous suction left. I wanted to die that he’d abandoned me instead of killing off the last of my intellect.
Vaal took pity on me and gave me some comfort, his lips on mine, his fingertips still rubbing my hole. I wanted more than that.
You shall have it, I heard him say, whispering it straight into my spirit. It was all heat and need, that whisper. I shook all the harder, knowing he needed me as much as I needed him.
I rolled toward him, to feel more of him, kiss more of him. I only made it as far as my back.
Haru returned, and Vaal’s touch on my hole left, to be replaced by Haru’s as he slipped oiled fingers inside me, more than one. My hips curled upward, sucking them down, and Vaal grabbed my nearest leg and hauled it higher. Haru prodded me straight into my root. My abdomen clenched, and my shaft jerked on my belly.
“Touch me!” I begged, my voice gone hoarse.
“Shh, not yet,” Vaal whispered. He was doing things to my neck with his teeth, nipping, leaving marks, claiming territory that had escaped ages ago. Every bite and squeeze incited my shaft to leak more, clear liquid pooling in my navel. Haru continued to stroke my root from the inside until I thought he’d kill my intellect after all.
“Now,” Vaal murmured, and I wondered if he meant for me to release the tension, spill onto my abdomen, but he didn’t. Haru’s fingers slipped from my hole. I moaned in disappointment.
Haru shrugged out of his loosened clothing and lay down on his back next to me. “Get on,” he said.
Creation. I looked at his shaft, saw a bead of his fluid hinting where foreskin had peeled back to show the head, and shot off my back to straddle him. He aimed his shaft, and I thrust down, taking all of him at once.
Ah, damn, it was so good, so good to feel him in me, impaling me down to the base, feeling his balls on my hole. I leant forward to kiss him, one hand coming up to feel the nipple circled by
Vaal’s symbol and my son’s proclamation of eternal devotion. I pinched the little nub of flesh, hard, very hard, and Haru released a sound that almost took the last of my self-control away.
How can I describe his voice when he needed? Something of a whimper, something of a moan, something vulnerable, a cry for help, but for help that would make him weep more.
“Shit,” I whispered against his lips and twisted his nipple the next time I pinched. The noise came again, and Vaal had to squeeze my shaft hard to stop me from shooting onto Haru’s belly. I sat up a little to look at the shark.
“Hold it in,” Vaal advised. “Don’t you want to make Haru happy?”
Happy? I wanted to hear him weep. If that would make him happy, then yes.
Vaal kissed me, then shifted to my rear. “Hold it in, Omos. Whatever happens next, hold it in.”
“What are you doing back there?”
He said nothing, but his fingers answered, slipping in with Haru’s shaft. I released a noise then and sounded very much like Haru. Haru yanked me down to kiss him again, and this opened my hole wider to Vaal’s exploration.
Ah, hell! He would tear me apart. That’s what I thought, but after a few minutes of this, I relaxed.
When his fingers retreated and the head of his shaft prodded me instead, I tried to jerk away from Haru’s lips, but Haru’s strong grasp around my neck kept me fast. Vaal took hold of one bent leg and shoved me further into a position that facilitated claiming me.
“Unh! Fuck!”
He squeezed in, burnt his way up along Haru’s shaft. His head, his length, his cold, his heat, there with Haru’s strangely potent, but gentle warmth.
“Ah, fuck! Ah, fuck!”
Vaal retreated, returned, stroked his shaft along his lover’s. Haru began to shake, to loose the noises again, more desperate every time Vaal tunnelled in, surpassed Haru’s length and all but split me. Then it was back down Haru, locking momentarily with his head and creating a strange bumping sensation inside. They squeezed everything in me, and my shaft rocked into Haru’s belly, the fluid of my need pooling on his abdomen and making him slick. The next time Vaal lunged into me, I ground onto his shaft, onto Haru’s, and worked my own harder against Haru’s stomach.
Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether Page 9