Ah, the stupid fuck was despondent. I’d never seen him this way, and I didn’t like it. I stepped closer, took a tangle of black hair, and draped it down his back, kissed a tiny portion of neck, the only area exposed above an overflow of lace froth. He looked good in red, Jumi did. Better than Sirran.
“You really love him, don’t you?” I meant Haru and I knew Vaal understood, but he didn’t answer. I sighed and looked at the sea as well. “You and I, it was always a power struggle between us. Still is sometimes. But him? He’s so gentle you can’t fight him.”
And yet I’d watched Haru kill without compunction just this morning. The dichotomy that was Haru.
“He floats past your defences, and by the time you understand he’s dangerous, it’s too late,” I ended.
“Yes,” Vaal murmured. “He’s a mix of many things, and the mix embraces a killer, but despite this, he is still gentle.” He almost looked at me, but his eyes didn’t quite travel the distance, stopped at my shoulder and fixed there. “What did he look like committing murder?”
“Calm, as if he wasn’t thinking about it.”
“Yes. It’s almost as if he goes into a meditative trance. Murder doesn’t touch him unless he stops to think about it.” He looked at me fully, and I saw his wound at last. “You really think I polluted him?”
“Yes.”
He scowled and squared off with me, ready to begin our unending battle all over again, but I wasn’t interested.
“You’ve put the beast in him,” I said softly, “and willing or reluctant, so has my son. Beneath the dispassion, Haru feels pleasure. He was naked when he killed. His staff was harder than I’d ever seen it. The veins stood out.”
Vaal’s gaze veered away. I had struck him with the simple truth, but I don’t think I deepened the wound, only made it weep more blood. “What would he have been like, had you left him to become an ordinary man?”
“What he would have been like? Ordinary. That’s what.” Vaal’s black eyes glanced at me, then looked away again.
“Then you were right to pollute him.”
We locked gazes again, Vaal’s expression startled, confused.
“You were right,” I insisted. “It would have been wasted, all his potential, if he didn’t have this beast inside to struggle with, to make him strive for spiritual strength. But you shouldn’t have hurt him today, Vaal. If he bursts that chain you put around his heart, he may have nothing to keep him stable. As a god, he’s not fully formed. You know it. If he were complete, he’d be able to fade his body into the ethereal as we do.”
Vaal’s gaze dropped. “I know,” he whispered. “I was sorry for what I did. After.”
Grinning, I seized the opportunity his inattention offered and whacked his forehead with my palm.
“Ow! Omos!”
“You’re such an idiot about him. Why do you love him so much?”
“He makes me feel good!”
“Oh, yes. I know that.” I pulled him forward by Sirran’s red uniform, put my arms around his waist, leant my chin on his shoulder. “But you’ve never let gentle live before, Vaal. You’ve always eaten gentle. To you, it was like blood in the water.”
His arms came around me and squeezed tight. “How can I explain it? He’s my pilot fish, Omos. He cleans my soul, and my soul so badly needs cleaning.”
“More than mine?”
His face touched my cheek, and his was damp. “More than yours. You never destroyed any of them, did you, Omos? They’re all intact inside you, your sacrifices, your kills. That’s what this girl was about this morning, and Intana’s mother.”
“Yes. That’s what it was about,” I said, shutting my eyes. I sensed pain, sorrow. Vaal of the Depths wept with remorse.
“I destroyed countless souls,” he whispered.
“It’s what sharks do,” I murmured. “Destroy things.”
“But not dragons?” He tried to pull free. I wouldn’t let him.
“Vaal, I don’t really know why I didn’t destroy any, but you know how I can get silly over a collection.”
He laughed in surprise. “Yes. Dragons and their collections. What was it last time, before you fucked off with Blessed Land?”
“Uh…buttons.”
Vaal sniggered while I blushed. Fine. Let him laugh at my foibles. So long as he suffered less.
“Buttons,” he whispered, and it was like a thank-you.
Ah, Vaal. I’d no idea your guts were softer than your shark skin.
Yes, buttons. Laugh at my buttons. I’d hoarded thousands and thousands of every type, bronze, gold, silver, mother of pearl, gem-encrusted, even wooden ones that had been carved exceptionally fine…
“Uh...you know, that horde is particularly close. Could we use it for trade?”
“You left it half way around the world from Verdant?” he said, pulling away enough to look at me. I lifted my hands and brushed away the tears beneath his eyes. “Why so far?” he asked.
“Blessed Land tried to take it.”
He laughed, and I was glad to be his buffoon because it made me smile to see him happy.
“You could resist her enough to hide your horde, but not enough to stay with me?” he prodded.
“Uh…but…” There was no way I could explain this without looking more a fool, or nothing but a covetous animal attracted to pretty baubles of no real importance. I changed the subject. “Change into Sirran’s skin again.”
He jerked free, startled. “No. Haru hates him.”
I grabbed his wrist. “No. He hates you wearing him. Change into him anyway.”
He tried to yank free again. “No! You said it! Haru hates me wearing him! What are you thinking?”
“That I want into Sirran’s ass again, while Sirran is in Haru’s. Did Sirran really enjoy getting fucked, or was that just you?”
Vaal’s dark skin went a little pinker. “Uh…”
“It was mostly you,” I concluded. “You need to let this Sirran out more fully to really punish him. You know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
“I’ll let you see the girl.”
He froze, staring at me.
“Yes. The girl. You’ll terrify her. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
His expression grew just that much more still. Oh, yes. He’d really like that. There was nothing more exciting for this shark than the terror before an attack. The girl would be perfect at giving him a dose.
“We can’t do that in front of Haru,” he said.
No. No, we couldn’t. “Play in the water with me later?”
Vaal grinned. I grinned, feeling a cold thrill up my spine. Yes. I’m the sort of idiot that likes to feel a bit of terror now and again, and only Vaal had ever been able to provide me with a sufficient measure. I leant forward to kiss him.
“Change into Sirran,” I whispered against his lips.
“All right,” he agreed and became the nobleman I wanted to fuck into the deck.
Perfect. Now to seduce Haru with him.
“You go in first,” he murmured, sliding his pale lips down to my neck. “You know how he likes it when you suck.”
I shivered. “All right.”
“Then I’ll come in and get in his ass.”
And then I’d get in Sirran’s.
I was just turning toward the hatch when both of us were blasted off the deck and far out to sea. I came up for air gasping and smashed my fist into a wave.
“Fucking damn it! Was I thinking too loud again?” I shouted.
Vaal surged to the surface spluttering, still in the Sirran guise.
“Did he hear me thinking?” I repeated.
“What? No. I think it was this stupid git of a man,” he replied. “I can’t be quiet in Sirran’s skin.”
Oh. Well. That was unforeseen.
“Tell me about it,” Vaal grumbled. “This is going to take more work than we’d thought.”
Indeed. But in the meantime…
“Vaal?” I cried, my voice high and
shrill. Haru’s gift of purple boots slipped off my delicate feet and sank into the depths. The trousers started sagging not long after.
Vaal stared at me, then grinned a shark’s grin with Sirran’s mouth. Damn. No wonder he’d eaten the man. Sirran was a natural at this.
“This is interesting,” he said. “That girl almost looks like Sirran’s sister.”
“What? Really?” Yes. They were both blond and light-skinned.
Oooh. This could be quite the game.
“Help me, big brother,” I shouted, splashing frantically and losing my trousers at last. “I’m drowning.”
Still grinning, Vaal sank beneath the surface while I shouted in girlish terror, and I was actually feeling the real thing. Delicious.
Perfect. After we’d done playing, we’d come up with another strategy for getting Sirran into Haru’s ass.
This was going to be a very pleasant journey after all. And perhaps I wouldn’t hate my son so much, or myself, by the time we reached the port of sand.
Something touched my foot and I screamed, but inside I laughed. Haru. Beautiful Haru. Creation had at last taken pity on Vaal and I and sent a pair of tired animals a saviour. We could play again, and it didn’t have to be warfare.
Vaal tugged me beneath the waves by an ankle, and his face shoved into my fork. I choked on water, giggling. It tickled too much, having a rough-shaven face in my crack.
Vaal looked up at me and he was laughing, too.
So much for our addiction to terror. You’re too girly, Omos of the Ether. Let’s sneak up on Haru and fuck him silly with penises. I’ll try not to think too loud.
Oh, all right, I agreed.
I changed back into my usual shape, and off we went to harass the demi-god we adored.
Excerpt from
Loved Him to Death: Vaal of the Depths
by
K.M. Frontain
A Beyond Sizzling Novel
I came from the cold and the dark, but I dislike both. There is no comfort in the cold, no wealth of sensation in the dark. Yet from these things I manifested. I yearn, always, for warmth and light.
I can create warmth. I must create warmth. They think me cold, those I encounter, those I approach close enough to touch, but if they are at all sensitive, they feel my heat as well. Few are ever that sensitive.
Always I exude the cold beforehand, and those I contact cower from me. The cold is, in their perception, my divinity, and once they feel it, they remember the dark within which the cold grew.
My heat, my personal heat, I create with motion. I am never inactive, not even when asleep. Always I swim and always I have heat. Touch my skin and you feel the cold. Touch my heart and you feel the truth of me. I am not a thing of cold, but perhaps I am a thing of darkness. I want the light, but I don’t need it.
And so I swim, rising up to violate the skin of the ocean, letting a man-shaped avatar invade the domain of air. I stand on ocean-washed planks and observe my greater nature break waves next to the ship I ride…and I feel the cold worse.
In this mortal guise, heat teases me, sometimes not enough, sometimes too much. The echoes of my sensitivity hit my shark form and incite me to seek more warmth. There are times I eat solely to steal the heat of my prey. It is for this reason I hunt the warm-blooded.
Haru hates that I feel this way, but I am a shark. It’s in my nature to consume.
On a day like many, Haru’s ship, The Red Ghost, sails through fog. We are close to shore. I smell humanity, the stench of too many mortals in one place. The water is foul in my mouth, but the odour of prey lures me onward. My little eyes are ahead in the port already, seeking meat. Shark nets span the harbour entrance to keep the naturals out, but this won’t stop my spies.
Little Brother. My little eyes. Haru understands that not all the naturals are me. But some are. Some will slip through nets, because when they do, they are cloud in water, ethereal, not quite there. Only a web of power could prevent my little eyes from entering a harbour, and there is seldom enough power to stop me.
I turn from the rail to look at Haru. He is at the wheel, smiling. This is a port close to home, but one that does not worship me. He smiles not for that, but because he has friends there. He will see them again after many years away. We have sailed the world together, he and I, my little eyes his guides in the night and in the fog. But throughout the journey, Haru has been the pilot of my soul.
This journey almost finished. My journey still unfolding. I face it now with more serenity than I have in aeons, but the hurt that Haru endured for me almost made my serenity not worth the gaining.
***
We escaped with our cargo of black powder, defeating a local power, one Erant Sirran, who would have impounded the ship and detained Haru as his prisoner. Five days passed in which we sailed beyond the capitol city of the Guardian Empire and navigated for another port further up the coast of the Marakut Gulf.
The charts Haru used were old, still showing the lesser Karakut Gulf, but the peninsula separating the Karakut from the waters of the Marakut had broken from the continent. Along with the fishing grounds, the peninsula had slid into the ocean depths.
A very angry and potent animal had stepped on the land with a very heavy foot. The Karakut Gulf no longer existed. There remained only the Marakut, one monster of a gulf beforehand and much more of a monster now.
Such a disaster. Omos was ever a volatile god.
Yes, he was the potent animal with the heavy foot. Omos, my lover. And Haru’s lover as well.
We discovered him languishing on an island after his catastrophe, so debilitated that a mortal could have murdered him with ease. A little over a week later, strengthened through Haru’s mercy, Omos clung to the rigging above the deck, playing at being a sailor and hollering at the real sailors for better instructions on how to tie knots. All these aeons and he’d made do with only a few knots to serve him, but now he wanted to learn them all at once while making practical use of the knowledge.
I looked up, found him bent half over a yard, almost on the verge of toppling off. His black hair, entirely mortal in colouration, hid his features.
He has a beautiful face, my Omos, a mix of viciousness and sensitivity. He can look incredibly hurt one second, ready to rend and tear the next. Blue eyes, so blue they are startling. Pale skin, even features with high cheekbones and, despite being somewhat thin, sensual lips. Omos could twist his lips with great complexity of emotion, but lately his features in their entirety had been twisting out of shape and becoming other faces.
Omos of the Ether, the fool. He’d retained the souls of every victim he had ever swallowed and they were pressing beneath his skin, wanting to explode outward all at once. He’d ever been erratic and now was more so. Somehow, Haru prevented Omos’s self-destruction. Omos lived a breath at a time, and it seemed Haru monitored the strength of each supernal exhalation.
I hadn’t understood the dragon’s folly, a millennium ago. Longer actually. But the truth was, Omos’s emotional vacillations had been a symptom of possession.
Yes. He’s possessed. He’d gone about consuming souls and now he suffered being owned by a multitude, every victim living inside his skin, all clamouring for a turn at being outside in the air again. Omos hadn’t known this either until Haru had broken through his armour, softened his scales, permitted the first of the host to rise out of the spiritual lake and take a breath.
As I pondered this, Omos swung his head back and looked straight at me. A smirk played at the corners of his lips. He habitually left a day’s growth of beard on his face. It looked good on him, made him seem careless and wild, which he was. To a mortal, he seemed a man in his early thirties, but he was ages older than any mortal alive.
What?” he shouted down.
“Why don’t you pull out a sailor from beneath your skin,” I hollered up, “instead of cursing Haru’s men for not being clear about knots?”
“What? A sailor? Do I even have a sai—”
Yes,
he did, and out the sailor came, only not the same size as Omos original. In this unfamiliar avatar, Omos slipped within his clothing, yelped a high note of surprise, and fell headfirst toward the deck. I lunged forward and caught him. I lifted him, upside down by the ankles, and looked him in his startled brown eyes
Up until his knit shirt fell loosely over his small head.
“You didn’t have a sailor older than ten?” I asked, trying hard not to seem amused.
“I don’t know,” came a muffled answer. He shook free of his shirt and grinned at me with the waist of his man-sized trousers sliding down to his armpits. “Ten, you say? I think this boy remembers being older.”
“Hmm. Well, it’s doubtful. Why did you bother eating a boy?”
“Have you any idea how annoying most boys are?”
I smiled at him, a smile of teeth. “You mean you didn’t eat this one because he was young and juicy?”
“Seems scrawny to me,” came the answer. “I’m getting a headache.”
I lowered him to the deck, and he rolled and shot upright. On his small feet, he rose to half my height. He had a gorgeous mop of curly brown hair.
“Well. Up I go again,” he muttered.
He left his too big trousers behind on the deck with the shirt and climbed the mast naked. Omos of the Ether. He was such a buffoon. But it seemed he knew his way around ship knots now.
Coming in 2008
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Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether Page 19