Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether

by K. M. Frontain

  Vaal and I waited outside the den—as humans—but also spying with ethereal eyes: those of a Little Brother-sized mist shark that swam near the ceiling, and those of an insubstantial ether dragon, whose head poked in through the shut window, to join ranks with the stuffed animal heads on the walls. Haru could see us, but the mortal with him could not. Haru, however, had shut his eyes, too exhausted to continue looking once he’d verified our presence.

  “Hmm?” he murmured.

  “I said how old are you exactly? Careful. You’re about to spill your brandy. I’ll have you know it’s an expensive brand.”

  Haru raised his eyelids long enough to see and toss the remaining contents of his glass down his throat, then shut them again. “One hundred and…”

  Fifty-one, Vaal helped him.

  “…fifty-one,” Haru finished.

  Sirran’s gaze narrowed into a sceptical glare. “I don’t believe it.”

  Haru simply sighed and settled deeper into the cushions.

  “Prince Haru, you can’t be more than twenty. You can’t have had time to father over two hundred children and also have some of them grow to adulthood.”

  “What?”

  “How old are you?”

  Haru’s lids creaked upward. “Didn’t I just…?”

  “You said you were one hundred and fifty-one.”

  “Oh, good. ’S all right, then.” He held up his glass. “More brandy? I won’t feel a thing when you fuck me, and it might help with this sore chin of mine. I must have a bruise.”

  Sirran thumped his glass on a side table and stood. “Perhaps I want you to feel something.”

  A disinterested grunt answered him. I could have howled my laughter, both outside the door as a human, and within the chamber with my dragon throat, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched Sirran approach Haru and kneel by his legs.

  “Prince Haru, if you are a prince, tell me your true age.”

  “Did,” came a faint reply.

  Sirran’s lips thinned with resentment. He grabbed Haru’s legs, spread them and settled in between. Up above, Vaal twisted in the air so a shark eye could see them better.

  “Haru?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You aren’t over one hundred.”

  Haru raised lazy lids to regard Sirran, and his brown eyes were almost liquid in their softness. “Tell me I’m not. Tell me again.”

  “Haru, you’re n—” Sirran froze. He stared into Haru’s tranquil eyes and did nothing for several seconds. Then he slumped back to sit on his heels. “You are,” he whispered.

  “A holy man, old enough to be your father several times over, and with the power to curse you with a glance. Do you really want to annoy me when I’m this tired?”

  Obviously, Sirran no longer thought so, for the hand that had been resting on Haru’s thigh retreated.

  “If you really must play the stud to another man, why don’t you choose one belonging to your people, one who is amenable to this sort of thing? It’ll be much safer for you. You honestly don’t know the danger you put yourself in. There are gods who watch over me.”

  That was it? He was going to tell sour fucker the truth and thereby save the bastard’s ass.

  ‘Fuck someone else. You’ll be safer.’

  I could have roared in frustration.

  I thought you didn’t want to eat him, Haru said. And now you don’t have to.

  Slouch down a bit further and hump your crotch a bit, I answered. That’ll get him going again.

  Oh, go away, Omos!

  Haru didn’t hump his crotch, and Sirran rose to a stand and backed off. “Gods watch over you? What sort of gods?”

  “My people’s god, and an ally of my people’s god.” He straightened in the chair. “A shark and a dragon to be specific. I hope you didn’t send any of your men to impound my ship, because they’ll all die. The harbour sharks will leap into boats tonight.”

  “God of the Forge,” Sirran whispered. “Do you toy with me?”

  “No. I don’t. Will you show me to my room now? Or must I sleep in this chair?”

  “I can’t believe you have gods watc—”

  I loosed just the smallest of rumbles from my dragon throat, and Sirran froze.

  “It would be easier, Erant Sirran, if you were to forget you saw my cargo of black powder,” Haru said. “It would be easier if you pretended, in the morning, that we got along very well together, that you were never terrified, that you never thought to abuse your hospitality and use me, that you weren’t thinking to take my ship, name me a pirate, and keep me as your boy whore until you tired of me.”

  He rose and approached Sirran. His fingers reached past the froth of lace bordering Sirran’s throat and plucked forward a medallion on a chain. He held the gold with a delicate touch. “I’ve found a way past the power of this charm. I know exactly what you wanted, planned, thought to gain. But in actuality, you’ve nothing to gain but your death.” He let the chain collapse onto Sirran’s pale neckline.

  “I am not an enemy of your people. I am what I say I am, a merchant prince from half way around the world. In the morning, you will introduce me to merchants of good standing as you promised, and then we will go each our own way. It will be much simpler for both of us. I’ll even let you keep that single keg of powder as a sample to show your alchemists.”

  Sirran took several steps back again. “Do you honestly think I can let you leave with that cargo of powder?”

  “Ah, now you’re thinking that I bluff. Well. You’ll know soon enough if sharks have leapt into the boats of your raiders, won’t you? Little Brother will let a few survive to tell the story.”

  “Little Brother?”

  “The harbour sharks. They are my kin. My god fathered both them and my people. Will you show me to my room now? I truly am very tired.”

  Haru suddenly made an impatient noise, and his regard became colder.

  “No! You will not murder me in my sleep, idiot!”

  I growled, louder this time. Sirran started and looked nervously toward the window. “It’s trickery! Just trickery!”

  “Break the window, Omos of the Ether, if you please,” Haru said.

  I became solid enough for Sirran to see my head in the room. The glass shattered and tinkled to the polished parquet floor, while the window frame cracked and splintered all around my black neck. I snapped my jaws once, then faded before other humans saw the remainder of me coiled on the expansive lawn.

  “Look up at the ceiling, Sirran,” Haru said softly.

  Sirran’s head snapped back. He gasped, stumbled backward and fell, and the mist shark flashed by, just where his head had been. Haru crouched next to him.

  “That wasn’t even Vaal’s largest manifestation. For him, that was nothing more than showing you a speck of his true nature. I don’t toy with you, Sirran. Those were not figments conjured up to frighten you. They were real. And I really do want to have a bed now.”

  Erant Sirran conducted Haru to a sumptuous chamber with a luxuriant bed forthwith. He stood outside and watched Haru walk to the bed, flop down onto it crossways, and cease moving.

  Vaal and I slipped past Sirran. Vaal at once approached Haru and began to undress his limp body, but I looked at Sirran and uttered the softest of growls from deep in my throat, a low, purring sound that no human could imitate, and shut the door on his white-faced stare.

  No, you stupid fucker, I thought. We hadn’t brought weapons with us, because we were weapons by nature.

  Grinning, I moved off to the bed to help Vaal settle Haru beneath the covers.

  * * *

  When Haru awakened the following morning, Vaal was absent, for he’d left me to guard Haru while he went to see after a breakfast of scraps in the harbour. Human scraps. Little Brother had left him some delicacies.

  Revolting. I despised carrion, preferred all my meat fresh.

  “You are such a dragon.”

  Haru issued this muffled good morning from beneath a blanket. Only th
e top of his head poked out, a mess of blond and brown tresses stabbing out from his braid, which trailed along a neighbouring pillow. I looked forward to combing his hair out and re-plaiting it.

  I crept up onto the bed overtop of him. “Haru?” I called softly. “Haru, how are you feeling this morning?”

  “Sleepy. And sore!”

  Damn. I’d have to wait until the evening after all.

  The blanket flipped down. “Will you heal my chin?” he asked.

  Ah, I should have done that last night. He had a glorious bruise, but not one of my making, and therefore not one he needed to cherish. I ducked lower and kissed the injury goodbye.

  Haru hummed a small, happy noise and shut his eyes again. I would have preferred to kiss his bum better, but it seemed he didn’t want that sort of attention yet.

  I decided to kiss it anyway. I tugged the blankets further down and lowered to nip his right nipple.

  “Unh! Omos!”

  “Are you awake yet?”

  “No.”

  I bit the left nipple, and the mewl of protest he uttered was enchanting, but he lied again after and said he wasn’t awake. Smiling, I dipped further south.

  “Omos?” he murmured when I paused to worship his navel.

  “Mmm?”

  “Intana’s mother? Is there anything left of her, anything at all?”

  I froze, lips against his belly. Intana. Intana’s mother. To mention either of them now—I wanted to bite into his guts.

  “Vaal ate Jumi. He’s still there, my Jumi, but he’s become a part of Vaal. Not just physically. They’re entwined, forever.”

  Jumi? This must have been the name of the mortal Vaal impersonated when in human guise. How could someone as wise as Haru think Vaal did anything but mimic a dead man?

  “Yesterday I accused you of destroying Intana’s mother. I can’t stop thinking about it. Tell me you loved her enough not to destroy her. Tell me she’s become a part of you,” Haru said.

  I made a muffled response against his skin, pressing hard on smouldering resentment, resentment that wanted to become an all out conflagration of frustration and fury. “What does it matter?”

  “If anything were to provoke Intana to revenge himself against you, it would be that you destroyed his mother.”

  I shivered slightly, turned my head to lay my left cheek on his belly, shut my eyes. The fury sweltered, rising closer to the surface. “You think he’d keep a grudge over a mortal that disappeared from his life so long ago when his slavery lasted centuries longer than the few years he knew her?”

  His fingers touched me, slipped into my hair, feathered across a shoulder. I shivered again, wanting more, hating that I wanted more. Hated that he wanted more of Intana.

  I raised my lids to see black locks with diamond salt. My skin had taken on a lustre, a blackness of glittery scales down the outer side of my visible arm.

  “Omos. Who had he to love him after you took her away? Who did he have that truly cared? Certainly not you.”

  “He had his Oradhé.”

  “Not the same. Mortals of no importance to his heart.”

  “Until you came.”

  He shifted suddenly, lurching beneath me, shoving his way lower until I was forced to look at him. The depths of tranquility in his eyes were a shock to me. He had to know how much his questions disturbed me. I wanted to destroy him. For loving Intana.

  “Creation, you are beautiful,” he whispered and kissed me. I hissed into his mouth. Was he a fool, to say this after speaking of my son?

  Where is Intana’s mother? he roared into my mind, and I jerked up from him, startled and in agony.

  “My head!”

  “Answer me!” His fingers fisted onto my shaft through my trousers and squeezed with all the strength of a seagoing man who’d become a god.

  “Unh! Fuck!”

  It hurt and felt good, but I wouldn’t be dominated. I wrenched away from him. He toppled me with only his thoughts. I fell athwart the mattress, clutching my head. My trousers came off, yanked, almost torn. My knitted shirt went next, and then he had my legs over his shoulders.

  He wasn’t gentle. He claimed as only a god could claim, with a ferocity that overwhelmed my being. His shaft burned into my centre, unliveable how it tingled, how it shocked, sent waves of pleasure and pain throughout my body, provoked the muscles in my extremities to clench and not release.

  “I ask you a simple question out of concern for two beings, one that still lives and one that might live on in you, but you hide behind your spite,” he said. He shoved hard into me, grunted, pulled out, and shoved again. With each assault, my body suffered the same torturous, exquisite spasms as the first time. I wanted more of it. I couldn’t take more of it.

  “Show me Intana’s mother, Omos. Show her to me, and I’ll make the pain stop and give you pleasure only.”

  Intana’s mother? Did she live on in me? Had I loved her enough?

  Haru thrust into me again, and a bolt of energy went straight up my spine.

  “Lord! Mercy!”

  Ah, hell. Even in my anguish, I couldn’t believe I’d shouted that, of all things, but Haru understood at once.

  “Yes,” he grunted. “Lord. Your lord. The master that feeds you. The master that chastises you for being an intolerant fuck!”

  His body propelled into me again. His groin smacked hard into my buttocks. My shaft jerked against my stomach, rising up, slapping down, leaving a stream of clear liquid on my abdomen. There were black scales on my flanks, coming around in stripes toward my navel. I’d gone less human, but still he mastered me with little effort.

  “Name me again, Omos,” he commanded. He seized my shaft, almost broke my ribs squeezing my knees and his arm into my chest as he leant hard into me.

  “Lord!” I grunted.

  “There,” he groaned. “A cry straight from a mortal mind. Who taught you it?”

  “I…!”

  “Show me who taught you it!”

  A spike of energy travelled up my centre again. I screamed, screamed as if I had burst my skin. The pain vanished, dissipated with the retreat of his body. I lay limply on the twisted covers and heard whimpers that were female.

  “Sweet Creation, Omos. You like them plump like me,” Haru said.

  My eyes went wide. I scrabbled up onto my bottom and shrieked to see female legs, a fork without a penis, a soft belly, large breasts.

  “Shit fucking mother of a diseased abortion!” I yanked backward, trying to retreat from what I saw, and tumbled off the bed. “Oh!”

  “Omos?” Haru’s head and shoulders poked over the bedside. His expression, ferocious seconds earlier, was filled with concern.

  “Change me back! Change me back!” I howled.

  “Easy,” he murmured. “It’s all right.” He started off the bed. I rolled to get away from him.

  “Don’t touch me!” I screamed, fumbling backward across the floor, then sobbed to hear the sound of my voice. Her voice. Intana’s mother. My hand came up to hide my mouth, to stop the moans that wouldn’t cease. Fingers too soft, too slender. The moans became louder.

  “Shh, shh,” Haru whispered. He knelt, folded his arms around me and pulled me in between his legs. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  I sobbed, a broken sound of choking despair. “I ate her! I ate her. He ate me!” A deep shudder knocked my head against Haru’s chin. He grunted a small, wounded noise, but didn’t retreat. “I thought he loved me, thought I loved her! I thought—!”

  “Shh, shh,” Haru murmured, rocking me now. “Easy, love. Easy.”

  “He’s a monster!”

  “Shh. Omos, shh. Stop hating yourself.”

  “She hates me!”

  “You hate you. Stop. Let it go. She’s still with you. She’s not gone.”

  “I ate her!” I wailed, and the pain returned, the feel of skin splitting everywhere, but the physical torment was brief. The mental anguish? It went on. Haru had loosed it, and I couldn’t rein
it in. I was a man again, sobbing in Haru’s arms, curling into him and wishing I’d never come to exist. “I ate her!”

  “Yes, love, but you didn’t waste all that she was,” he whispered. “She’s still there, with you. If anyone can teach you to love your abandoned offspring, it is her.”

  “She hates me!” I whimpered. “She hates…”

  I hated me. Beast. Beast without mercy. Beast that had ruined countless lives, hers as well.

  Bubbles, bubbles forming beneath my crust. The heat, the horrible heat of pressure. Voices. So many voices!

  I moaned, certain I was about to burst apart. Haru saved me with a simple kiss of his lips on my forehead, concern and love a clamp so gentle and yet so potent that the upheaval banked and became as placid as a pool of sheltered water. Not a bubble anywhere. Quiet, the sense of listening, waiting, patience. Patience where there had been turmoil, demand, need for identity.

  Realization had rendered the voices mute. Haru’s realization, his recognition of presence.

  “You never destroyed any of them!” he said, wonder in his voice, his entire body suddenly stiff. “They’re all in there, loving you, or hating you, and you hating with them. Is it any wonder you’re so confused.”

  Confused. Me?

  “Yes, love. Confused. You. You’ve let the hate grow and forgotten the love.”

  “Because I ate them!” I howled. “I ate them all! Ow!”

  I suppose I deserved the smack in the face, and it did shock me back into some semblance of logical thought, but I doubted he would have done it if I had still been wearing a female shape. Brellin bastard!

  “Do I need to hit you again?” Haru asked.

  “No! Get off!” I shoved at him, but didn’t mean it. Smiling, he pulled me back inward to rest against his hairless chest.

  “What was her name?” he asked.

  “Aeleyre.”

  “She smelled very good.”

  Yes. I could still smell the memory of her. And I missed her. I missed her so much. “Haru?” I whimpered.

  “Shh,” he murmured, then laid me out and commenced to put the pleasure where the pain had been. Haru. Beautiful Haru. My lord, my master, the god that would at last ease the burden on my soul.