The Blood Groove (Purgatory Wars Book 4)

by Dragon Cobolt

  “Well, gods, now you tell me!” Liv hissed back.

  “Vrepit Kloth, zenthis no. Gr’tar.”

  The voice that spoke from the ceiling was fluid, turning the gutteral sounds of the language into an almost song. Light glowed into being from every corner of the room – a blue glow that made Liv feel oddly relaxed. The sword in her hand glowed white. Then the white glow flowed over her body.

  “Ren’Sah Vrepit. Genko.”

  The white glow faded and Liv tensed, ready for something to kill her.

  “It’s speaking the language of the Ancients,” Fizit whispered.

  “I wish Tethis was here,” Liv said, slowly. “Too bad you had her murdered.”

  Fizit looked guilty. That was enough to make Liv hold off on any more barbs. For the moment. But while she wasn’t broken up over Tethis’ death – people died, that was the way of the world – she wasn’t about to forgive it or ignore it.

  Except when you fucked Brax, a voice in her head muttered. She wanted it to sound like Liam, like a moralizing prat. But instead it sounded like hers. Liv felt something she hadn’t felt in a long while.

  A twinge of guilt. She shook her head, then took a step forward. Nothing killed her.

  She took another step, then another. Soon, she was standing in the Oracle’s room. The walls glowed to life, shining and showing a haze of strange symbols. They floated in the air between her and the wall – rotating, spinning. Some of them even blinked. Liv’s brow furrowed.

  “It’s responding,” Fizit said. “The records say that this was how it would respond – but eventually, it stopped answering.”

  Liv frowned. She looked at the floating symbols.

  Something about them was familiar.

  Not their shape, not their color.

  It was how they were arranged.

  She held up her hands slowly, then twiddled her thumbs.

  “It’s an iPhone,” she whispered.

  “What?” Fizit asked.

  “I’ve seen Liam use his iPhone-”

  “I thought it was called an iPod,” Fizit said.

  “He’s called it both,” Liv snapped. “Like how sometimes my name can be spelled with one N or two. Now, focus. The symbols floated around when he tapped at them. He called them icons and when he touched them, things happened.” Liv reached out with one hand and pressed the biggest, most obvious icon.

  Why not start with the biggest?

  Her fingers touched it.

  “Are you sure that’s a-” Fizit asked.

  “Tell me, Oracle!” Liv said, her voice as commanding as possible. “What the fuck is going on with my fucking father?”

  The walls around her fuzzed into a blur of colors and lights. Then, when they settled, they showed…

  Green. Jungle. A statue of a valkyrie woman, standing proudly beside four other statue basis. Liv’s brow furrowed slightly. “The fuck is that?” she asked.

  “It’s the Victory Hill,” Fizit said. “After the Ancient War, the five races of purgatory built statues to commemorate their victory.”

  “Where’d the other statues go?” Liv asked. “And what does this have to do with Ares?”

  “Valks got ideas about us who walk along the ground,” Fizit said, shrugging. “And no one bothered to stop them when they came to melt the other statues down for weap-”

  The air before the statue exploded into light. A sphere of whiteness expanded outwards and vomited out a very familiar figure. Liam Vanderbilt – looking as dopey and innocent as Liv had ever seen him, dressed in a bizarre set of clothing – tumbled forward. He hit the ground and then rolled off the hill. As he rolled away, the sounds of his grunting progress down a set of stairs built into the hill filled the chamber. Liv laughed.

  “This is fucking hilarious,” she said, shaking her head, then sweeping her hands at the wall. “But-”

  Her hand caused the view to spin dizzily. She yelped and almost fell off the tongue of metal that thrust into the room. Fizit grabbed her shoulders, keeping her rooted as the view finished its spin and ended up looking at the sky as Liam’s exclaims of fear and wonderment – all of it in that bizarre pseudo-Latin he spoke – continued to ring out. Liv held her hands out and then slowly moved them.

  The view panned around slower this time.

  Liv grinned as she focused on Liam. He had just finished slaughtering a crystalback and was checking over his belongings. He started down the hill and was out of sight.

  Liv bit her lip. “But this isn’t the future. This is the past. That’s how Liam came to Purgatory.” She paused. “Shit, I’ve walked within a few dozen miles of this place while hunting him and Meg.”

  “Some icons have returned,” Fizit said, pointing at them with her finger. Liv looked down.

  One of the icons was a jagged bar. Another was a thinner bar looped by a circle that spun slowly counterclockwise. The last was a V-shaped black line with a surrounding red circle. She touched the V-shaped one first. The image froze. Liam was halfway between taking a step and moving forward and yet, he didn’t fall. There was even a butterfly, caught between wing flaps.

  Liv tapped the V-shaped one again. Motion returned.

  She nodded. Seemed simple enough.

  She took hold of the ring. Turning it counter-clockwise caused Liam to move backwards. If she turned it back far enough, the image would move to the moment he arrived. She kept twirling it backwards and found that the image actually turned back into a haze of random colors and blotches a few moments before he arrived in that ball of light.

  “So, it’s like a sentry,” she said. “It reports on Liam’s arrival, but has nothing before. I wonder if this sentry has anything earlier than Liam.”

  She reached out and touched the last symbol.

  The colors swirled out.

  Swirled in. Formed into the image of a dirty home. A priest of Hestia stood above a bed. An elven woman lay in it. She had haunted, bitter eyes and glared into nothingness while her swollen belly was tended to by two midwives. The midwives looked at one another, wordlessly communicating. The woman’s face, though. Looking at it...

  Liv felt as if she had been slapped.

  “Who's that?” Fizit asked.

  “That’s my mother,” Liv said, voice grim.

  She hit the cease movement button.

  Fizit’s brow furrowed. “Why is your birth recorded by the sentry?”

  “I don’t know,” Liv said, her voice flat. “But I don’t need to see her die in childbirth.”

  “But there were priests,” Fizit said.

  “That’s what I said, and I don’t need to know,” Liv said. She tapped the ‘next report’ button. This one showed her mother too – hale and healthy and looking utterly alien. She was clad in a kind of armor. It looked like armor at least. The edges were hard and straight, but also had an organic curve at the joints. There were blue crystals located in the shoulders. She was speaking to the camera, speaking the tongue of the Ancients.

  “How old are you?” Fizit asked, quietly.

  Liv shrugged. “Lost count,” she said.

  “You-” Fizit shook her head. “You lost count?”

  “My life is fighting and fucking and waiting for the next of both,” Liv said, looking at her. “Once you get past the first century, a second or third one starts looking a lot like the first one.” She smirked. “Honestly, the past year’s the most memorable I’ve had in a while.”

  Fizit looked like she was reconsidering her position on not murdering Liv. Liv honestly couldn’t figure out why. But before she could ask, a loud clang sounded. The tearing of metal – and laughter. And Greek. Soldiers swarmed into the room. Each of them were valkyrie, and they carried crude looking shields and strange weapons. One of them held the hilt of a sword, while another held what looked like one of those muskets that Liam had made but smoother, sleeker, and without any sign of a firing mechanism.

  Liv’s mother spun and drew her own hilt. Energy leaped from it and she sprang at the valk
yrie. He knocked the blade aside with a sneer.

  Liv watched, mutely, as they held her mother down.

  Liv watched, mutely, as Ares swaggered into the room.

  Liv watched, mutely, as screams filled the chamber – and the sound, the unmistakable sound, despite linguistic differences, of begging.

  And male laughter.

  Then she turned and walked out of the Oracle – the images behind her fuzzing into nothingness.

  Fizit followed her.

  “What are you going to do?” she hissed as the door out of the Oracle opened.

  “I’m going to find Ares,” Liv said. “And I’m going to mount his head on a fucking pike.”

  ***

  There was a small shop in Babylon that made a brisk trade buying and selling paper. The city of Babylon had an endless, voracious need for paper. Books were printed by the thousands, and the literacy rate was going up daily thanks to schools being set up by the priests and mages that Liam had been attracting to his city since the day the war began. In times of trouble, tall walls and a strong army had an allure all to their own for those who had read deeply of history and knew the result of sacks.

  This shop – named something innocuous and easily forgotten – was a perfect cover.

  No one asked why it made paper, or purchased ink, or sent out letters.

  One would expect a professional scribe and papermaker to do such things, after all.

  Linizt approached the shop in her robes and tried to ignore the pain spiking between her temples. She missed her tail. She missed her claws. She missed her teeth. She missed everything about not being disguised as a human – if only because she wanted to sink her teeth into something and rip and tear until it was all shreds.

  Being a spy required patience and a willingness to listen and a mind for details and a memory that wasn’t dulled by reading and writing.

  But there were limits, even to Lin’s abilities.

  When she came to the shop, she knocked once, then twice, then three times more. A quiet voice spoke through the door to her: “Pass?”

  “Lightning and shadow,” Lin murmured.

  The door opened and the pain between her temples faded somewhat. Her handler – and the only other lizardfolk she knew in the city – smiled at her. He was handsome, even in the form of an elf. Maybe slightly more, as his elven form didn’t have that wicked scar across his muzzle that left his teeth exposed. Tark stepped back and gestured Lin into the chambers. Lin stepped forward and Tark closed the door.

  Before she could even start her report, Tark leaned forward and kissed her. His lips were warm and eased the ache in her head to nothing more than a mild annoyance. Lin knew she should push him away. Remind him that there were orders against fraternization between ranks laid down by their spymaster.

  Remind him that she was only supposed to be here for five minutes to give her report, not three hours. But they had been such nice hours…

  Her hands gripped his hips and her breasts pressed to his chest as she kissed him back. Then Tark drew back, his voice was husky. “Report, then we can get to the fun part.”

  Lin grinned. Her hand went to her robes and she casually skimmed them backwards. Tark let the robes hit the floor – his hands were too busy finding her shift and tugging it up. Lin lifted her arms and shivered slightly. The warm air of the office caressing her bare skin felt wonderful after what felt like whole lifetimes being buried under clothes. She missed scales. She missed the casual nudity of the tribe.

  But she did rather like the size of her breasts in this human disguise – more so when Tark cupped and squeezed them. She closed her eyes, arching her back to thrust her tits into his hands.

  “The, ah,” she said, then gasped. His fingers had found her nipples and tweaked them, sending jolts of pleasure through her. Her knees felt weak and she bit her lip, hard enough to almost draw blood. “Theeee ah um, the project. I’ve gotten close enough to, um, see what they’re doing. That cloud?” She opened her eyes, looking into Tark’s eyes. “They’re building something up in the sky. I don’t know what magic keeps it there. Haven’t found out. But the pottery they’re making goes there. And there’s also something else! The shipyards? They’re not actually building ships – that’s what we think they’re making, but no. No. The wood is too thin, and the sails are on the wrong parts of the ships. The shipwrights, though, are being watched too close for me to get any more information about the ship building projects. But I don’t think they’re making a fleet.”

  Tark nodded. “Brax will know by the end of the week.” He leaned forward, then and caught her nipple in his mouth. His fingers dipped to the snarl of fur that grew above and around her sex. He caressed the folds of her pussy, then plunged his elegant middle finger all the way into her – his fingertip found the center of her pleasure and this time nothing Lin could do stopped her from arching her back and moaning.

  They hit the bed a moment later.

  Lin wouldn’t admit it unless under torture, but there were some advantages to not having a tail.

  For instance, laying back on the bed, spreading her thighs wide so that Tark could delve his tongue into her hot, needy cunt? Much more comfortable without a tail right above her rump. She arched her spine and crooned as his tongue lapped along the folds of her sex, his nose rubbing at her clit. It felt like he wrung pleasure from her body for hours – letting her rise towards climax, then drawing it out enough to let the waters recede, then driving forward again. He stoked her higher and higher and higher, until the moment his long, thin cock pressed to her sex.

  “Ready?” Tark purred.

  “God yes,” Lin whispered.

  Tark plunged into her.

  And Lin forgot orders. Forgot the fact she was stuck spying in a city, far from her people, in a body that wasn’t her own. She forgot everything but this moment. Her thighs closed around Tark’s back and she clung to him, moaning inarticulately as he fucked her and fucked her hard. His mouth found and sucked on her neck. He added just a hint of teeth, to make Lin squirm and shudder under him. Her cunt clenched around his cock.

  Tark threw his head back and roared quietly. His balls clenched and his heat filled her. Lin shuddered and panted, her eyes hooded as she breathed slowly under him.

  The two spies laid together.

  “What happens in Babylon, stays in Babylon, right?” Lin whispered, her hands caressing his back. Tark – who was still managing to hold himself up so he wasn’t squashing her – kissed her neck and made a quiet noise at the base of his throat that might have been an affirmative. Might not.

  Lin kissed his forehead, squirmed, and pushed, and eventually got Tark to let her go, no matter how badly she wanted to stay. Once she stood, she shook her head and grabbed her shift. She slipped it on over her shoulders, feeling sweat starting to soak into the thin cotton. “I don’t know what the cloud is hiding. But it...” She paused. “It has to be big. It’s more than just magic. Be sure to tell Brax that.”

  “I shall,” Tark said, quietly, watching her dress.

  Lin blushed, leaned forward, kissed her handler one last time, then turned and hurried away.

  Tark smiled.

  A flash of white light filled the room. When it faded, Tark was no longer laying in the bed. Instead, a completely nude and utterly beautiful looking Lin was lounging there. She adjusted the covers, so that the coarse sheets covered her hips, leaving only her breasts exposed. She brushed her hair out and waited paitently. When the door opened again, Tark – the real Tark – walked into the room.

  He bore with him several jars of ink and a distracted look. He staggered to a stop when he saw Lin.

  Lin – Loki – grinned at him.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this again,” Tark whispered, slowly, as he walked towards the bed. But his cock already showed what his plans were. Loki rolled onto her back.

  “I have nothing to report,” she purred. “So, what better way to spend our time, Tark?”

  Tark didn’t hav
e an answer.

  Ah, Loki thought as Tark’s cock plunged into her sex, hilting himself to her as she kissed him on the mouth. I fucking love my job.

  ***

  Liv sat on a hill about five miles from New Athens and stewed silently. Fizit crouched next to the firepit that they had dug, with wood planted above it to break the light and smoke up to make them harder to spot. The siege of the city had settled into the bloody work of stalemate, and Liv had been glaring at it for the better part of a week.

  In the back of her head, she had done the math. A fucking week to the fucking Oracle – no, not the Oracle. The sentry. Two days to climb that fucking mountain. Two fucking days sitting around at the sentry, trying to coax more information from it. Two days to get fucking down the fucking mountain. A week to fucking get fucking back. She shook her head. Now, a week of sitting. Almost a month.

  Fizit had been the one who had grabbed Liv and dragged her back into the room.

  “We need to learn more,” she hissed. “You can’t go off and try to kill the God of War without knowing what caused him to change.”

  “I don’t fucking care!” Liv snarled. “He raped my mother. He’s going to die.”

  Fizit rolled her eyes. “Come on, Liv. You can’t be this fucking self-centered, can you?”

  Liv growled and opened her mouth to speak. Fizit snapped her teeth, cutting her off.

  “No, shut up, and listen,” the lizard said, her tail lashing from side to side. “You knew Ares. For centuries. Tell me, honestly. Did you ever think that he romanced all the women he laid?” She shook her head. “I doubt it.”

  Liv opened her mouth to respond. But she couldn’t say it. Instead, she shook her head.

  Fizit sighed. “You knew he was like that. Why so mad now?”

  “Because it’s my mother!” Liv shouted, yanking her hand from Fizit. “Because it’s... because...” She stopped, then closed her eyes. “Because...”

  Fizit shook her head. She stepped forward and put her hands tentatively on Liv. Liv whimpered. She had never whimpered before in her life. She didn’t know what to think, how to feel. Every part of her heart screamed for vengeance. That was her mother. But Fizit was right. She had never thought about or cared about what her father did. He was just the man who had trained her, and then sent her out to do missions.