by Mark Eller
“But I am queen,” Helace said. She sat up straight and lowered her arm. “There is no one left to tell me different.”
Belsac looked around the throne room and shook his head. “I’m here, Helace, and I’m not so ignorant as you think. You seek to make me so angry I’ll release you from life before I have time to play with you. Well bitch, we both know I’ve won the game, and we know you will never be queen. Now tell me, is anyone left alive in the castle who knows the king is murdered? There might be some way we can stall matters if there isn’t?
Helace bowed her head in defeat. “There’s nobody. All the witnesses are dead. The body was removed through the secret ways. The only evidence left inside the castle is this mess around us, and I suppose it could be cleaned up quickly enough”
Belsac nodded with satisfaction. The tight worms in his belly loosened and slithered away. “Good. We can run a bluff. We’ll pretend the king is in seclusion for the next two weeks. We’ll say he is only speaking to his mistress and his closest advisor.” He paused. “You said the only evidence inside the castle.”
“I did,” Helace agreed. “There might be a little bit of evidence outside the castle walls. I had my people take Vere’s pieces to the city’s front gate and hang them on the bars.” Straightening, she studied him, her expression suddenly hard. “By this time the secret is known to most of the city. I wouldn’t be surprised if you find humans marching toward the castle right now.”
Belsac’s rage roared through him. It seared. It burned. Red fires raged within his eyes. Leaping forward, he swung, tearing into her arm with…with…oh shit…with the fucking hook.
Helace slid low in her chair, bent, and fell to the floor. Jolson’s severed arm lay across her chest, rising and falling with her tortured breathing. Smoke rose from where its hook was buried deep in her throat. Flesh boiled. Helace’s fading eyes laughed with victory.
Looking down at the results of his rage, Belsac cursed. It was in the fire now. Everything was fucked up beyond repair. Zorce would have to begin his battle before he was fully ready. Athos would have to ascend before Belsac was prepared, and Belsac’s own future was in dire jeopardy. Replace Athos, hell. He’d be lucky if he lived through Zorce’s rage. The only thing that might save him were the facts Belthethsia was nearby and he still retained the hook. Belthethsia had mentioned just a week earlier she wanted to try her hand at reanimating the dead. He’d gather up Vere’s pieces and let her give it a try. If she succeeded the cattle could be told the dead man hung on the gates was some other obnoxiously fat slob and not the king. If she failed, maybe him having the hook would save his ass.
* * * *
Helace felt the hook in her throat and rejoiced. There was no escaping this final death, a death without hope of resurrection. She was safe from Belsac. The hook was taking her life faster than she believed possible, but then, the hook had always before been worn by a living being. Its nature had at least partially changed with the will of the owner. At this moment nobody owned it, so the hook acted to suit its needs.
Those needs said it was lonely. It wanted to be possessed, but the only hope it had for an end to the silence within was a person dying. It had no healing left within it. It held only death, and, perhaps, the ability to draw attributes from the living.
Helace felt the hook latch onto her life, felt its determination to not let her life go, and then she felt herself drawn into the dark metal. She felt herself subsumed and dominated by an essence that had never been alive, by an essence with plans of its own.
Helace wished she could scream, but by the time she formed the wish, she no longer owned a body.
Chapter 5-- Changer’s Reprieve
The woman exuded charm, magic, and she smelled. Mathew smiled, drew closer, and breathed in the deeper odors of the woman’s body. Evil clung to her, shrouded her, but was not part of her. She had been near them then, near the hellborn, near demons and devils. They had touched her, pawed her, but she had not succumbed. She also smelled of human. He could scent her soul.
He breathed deep, drawing the air, her air, and his senses stirred. Not completely human, she smelled of blood and death. She smelled of human and spawn. Though she was not beautiful to his eye, she drew him. Mathew wanted to bury his face in her belly. He wanted to breathe in her scent and sink his fangs into her flesh, into her promise. He wanted to bury himself into her body and blood like a lover seeking release. Most of all, Mathew wanted to use her as a man used a woman. But not until the time was right, not until his bloodlust was safely sated and he found her alone.
Mathew focused his will. Of late, the hunger had grown strong. Too strong. He had thought himself safe, but the hunger had grown and his halted change had restarted. He had killed. Killing was not new to him. It was an old friend, something he had embraced while still a child. Dozens had died by his hand. Others died by his hire. Those deaths did not matter. They were clean, simple, not driven by the dictates of hunger and Hell. He had killed and let the bodies lay. Sometimes he buried those he respected. Never before had he stopped to feed. Never before had he dipped his face into human entrails, lapped up human blood, and felt such joy.
It was a terrible thing to do to a friend.
He shuddered, wondering why Hell’s envoys had lied, or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they wanted him here in Grace, wanted him to share their power, to grow and change with their guidance, only Mathew’s personal change had not stopped. The vile leavings of a vindictive child, the curse had grown and consumed, and because of this he had been cast aside.
He was not human, would never again be human, but he had not entirely given himself away to the beast. Mathew had thoughts still. He understood the concepts of honor and justice, of right and wrong. He understood these things which never mattered to him before. Truthfully, they mattered even less now, but they were concepts a beast wouldn’t know. The fact he did proved he was not entirely beast and might still be somewhat human even though his mouth watered with the remembered taste of human flesh. Truthfully, Mathew desired it more than he had ever desired anything which, he assumed, had been Hell’s plan. He was a virulent disease cast out among men. He was chaos and fear and a furthering of their power.
Mathew growled low. He was angry, and he had never played the other man’s game. He was driven, and so he stalked the woman who smelled of evil and good, of human and spawn. He stalked her, unseen in the night, while she questioned and cajoled those few humans still brave enough to walk dark streets when Hell reigned. Her voice grew deep, frustrated, and then it grew soft. Mathew followed close enough to see hairs standing upright on her arm, close enough for a quick lunge, for a fast bite, a shake and a tear. He was close enough to strike without warning, close enough to feed, just like she unconsciously fed off him. Something in her reached out, grasped at his life, and slowly sipped it away.
Fighting back a low growl, Mathew lowered himself to the ground, waited. Soon. Soon, she would be alone.
The woman spun when a hand reached out of the darkness, grasped her shoulder, and pulled her around. She moved fast. Too fast to be human. She struck, but her blow missed, and then she was flung against a wall, face pressed to brick, struggling. Mathew rose, ready to lunge, but the breeze shifted, and he smelled cirweed. Settling back, he waited again. Even he dared not face Trelsar’s Assassin.
Suddenly interested in more than a meal, his mouth parted in a wolfish grin. A new game had suddenly been declared. Tessla was in town. Hell’s minions would soon drop like poisoned flies.
* * * *
Jolson stirred and sweated and rose to his knees. Evil washed over him, sickened him, and made him weak. Bending, he retched green bile. Brown pus oozed from his pores, and he groaned. His flesh was changed, was changing, was becoming something less and more than it ever had been before. He was born of evil, created in Hell, devil torn and demon infused. Born human, he became spawn under a sacrificial knife. After escaping with the hook he began changing again, albeit reluctantly. Now, after two
demons who were not demons leapt into his belly and merged their essence with his own, the remaining evil infusing him was fleeing. It raced from his body as bile, as pus, as invisible waves that shriveled grass and killed nearby trees. Jolson retched again, watched green bile strike bare ground, and saw the earth boil. Acrid smoke rose.
Jolson moaned. He was changed. Too changed. The small strength which briefly filled him days before was gone. He was dying again, would soon be dead, and his soul would travel back to Hell. Once more, he would be Athos’s pawn, a toy to be broken. All his effort, his struggle for freedom, for release, would be wasted.
Turning to the side, Jolson fell to his hands, to his face, and then he cried. He groaned and curled around his pain, but a hand grasped his hair, jerked his head around, and shoved something between his lips. He sucked in surprise, drawing in smoke. He tried to cough it out, but the hands holding his lips closed pinched his nose, and so he had no choice but to draw smoke into lungs he no longer possessed. Jolson had no choice but to let smoke enter his non-existent blood, circulate through his body, striking, killing, destroying pus and bile. His remaining evil writhed, shriveled, became dead desiccated remnants seeking release from a body that no longer had blood or organs or meat or bone, a body made of roiling energy and fluid encased within a skin bag. Evil residue fled. Brown sewage escaped from his pores, spilled from his eyes, his ears, his nose. His non-existent bladder bulged; his member rose, and he pissed his remaining evil away.
The hands holding him withdrew. The stem was pulled from his lips. Rolling to his side, Jolson looked through blurry sewage smeared eyes and saw Mira. Beside her stood another woman. Severe, her lips were twisted in disgust while she examined her hands. Those hands were coated in his bile, his pus, his exuded evil. One hand held a pipe between two fingers and a thumb. Smoke rose lazily from its bowl. Tessla, Trelsar’s Assassin, spat on the ground and turned her gaze to Mira.
“He said he had already lost much of his evil before and just after we met,” Mira explained. “After seeing this, I have to wonder how much evil he held when he first stepped out of Hell.”
“I met Jolson shortly after his escape,” Tessla said, “and I knew him in Hell several decades ago. He was pathetic, an ignorant stumbling coward just like almost all other spawn, but there was always something different about him; always something more. When I first saw Jolson in the Hellhole Tavern I had been free of Athos for years. Jolson shocked me because he held more evil than any devil I had ever known. It was almost as if he was a sponge and thus capable of absorbing any essence surrounding him.”
Kneeling, Mira stroked Jolson’s fouled brow. Her hand felt cool, strong. Jolson lay back and closed his eyes. He was filthy and weak, but he felt more complete than he ever had before. Something broken inside him was now whole.
“He was a child when his father sacrificed him,” Mira whispered. “It must have been horrible for a small child to fall into Hell.”
Tessla snorted. “Horrible for me, and I suppose for him, too, but he was never a child, or not much of one anyway. Jolson was fully human when he died, but I’ve no doubt he was something else before then. Something greater.” She looked at Jolson and scowled. “Clean-up belongs to me. Touching any more of this would kill you in minutes. If you don‘t wash your hands soon you will die anyway.”
“I’m not exactly alive,” Mira said. “I should be fine.”
Dropping her fouled pipe to the ground, Tessla broke it beneath a grinding foot. “Not exactly alive, but you’re not exactly dead, either. You have almost no reserves. You’re life is wasting and you’ll soon be entirely dead. No, it’s my job to care for my fellow spawn. Not yours.”
“Not a spawn,” Jolson whispered, his voice almost too silent for him to hear.
“Neither of us are spawn,” Tessla agreed. “Not anymore. Most of Yernden knows what I’ve become. I’m not sure anybody knows what you are.” She held out a hand. “Grab hold and I’ll drag you to water. Afterward, we can discover why Athos wants you dead and back in Hell.”
* * * *
“Interesting times,” Mathew murmured to himself while hunger tore through his belly and mind. He remembered the spawn. Remembered Jolson. He had been there when the spawn stumbled out of the tavern’s hole. Being spawn, Jolson had made little impression on him then, even with the strange hook. However, events had escalated quickly once he left the tavern. Hellhounds, devils, demons, soulwrights, and all manner of other hellborn had filed through the tavern, all sent on a hunt for this spawn. The town had quickly become so overrun pure humans became almost inured to the sight of hellkind. Many had become complacent, of which number Mathew had been one. He had been unafraid, unworried, even after a female changer and a ring’s curse made him into a monster.
Of course, him turning furry had taken place long before Jolson’s arrival. If he had been as clever as he believed, Mathew would woken up to the increasing danger and paid more attention to important details in Yylse and less attention to small matters like Count Wencheck in Grace.
And now Jolson was here, two miles outside of Grace, the king’s home. Athos hunted him still, and Jolson suddenly had Trelsar’s Assassin as an ally.
What the living hells was going on?
Only the gods knew, and maybe Tessla, but there could be opportunity here, a chance for mayhem or gain. First he had needs to appease. He hungered. Before long his hunger would consume his mind, turning him into a beast who killed and fed without thought, without restraint. He would not let it happen. Mathew had no choice but to feed, but he could choose his victim. Humans were this form’s preferred prey, but there was other prey, more dangerous prey, and Mathew only played the games he chose.
He slunk away, careful to make no noise. Tessla and the woman would be here a while. They would stay to clean Jolson and change his clothes, and then they would go into Grace. Inside the city they would be surrounded by Athos’s minions, but the hunt would not find them. Athos looked for a spawn wearing his hook. Athos looked for a being who smelled of brimstone and evil, a being who bore the mark of Hell. The lesser god did not seek a one-armed being accompanied by Trelsar’s Assassin, one who was not spawn, was not human, and bore almost no taint of evil or Hell.
Only Mathew knew of this new Jolson. Only Mathew’s nose would find him no matter where Jolson went inside Grace. If Athos wanted Jolson, the god would have to remake Mathew into a complete man.
* * * *
Mathew slid through the palace gates, past watching soulwrights and redcap guards, and paced sedately into the throne room. Naked, Belthethsia leaned on the king, propped up by one elbow set on his chest. She ran the tip of a small rod across his body, gently, slowly, almost with love. The rod touched him here, there, leaving ragged pustules and sores behind. Vere groaned when she burned away one nipple, then the other, and slowly moved the rod toward his groin. A hellhound lay by her side, its tail thumping contentedly while it dined on the stump of the king’s leg. Mathew noticed the king did not bleed. To the side, a greatly changed Sulya stood watching. She looked totally pissed. An understandable expression, Mathew figured, on a woman who seemed to have grown talons. Even though her face and hands appeared similian normal, when her pant line shifted, he saw a hint of scales about her waist.
Mathew fought back a wolfish smile. It was funny, in a way, and satisfying. The bitch deserved a taste of what Hell had done to him.
He focused his attention back on Belthethsia as she played with her toy.
“Really darling,” Belthethsia said happily to the king, “did you think I would leave you hanging peacefully on the gate just because we were lovers and my mother is gone. It’s because she’s dead that I’m doing this. I have to honor her, you know. After all, she was my mother even if I did hate the bitch. I’m sure you understand. Besides, you are just an encumbrance now, sweetheart. No arms, no legs, and hardly any soul at all. Why did mother just toss your soul aside? It had broken into so many pieces by the time I found it I doubt even Zor
ce could have grabbed them all. No matter. Lost is lost, and your soul’s destruction is no loss. Mother claimed you were never a good lover. I have to agree. The sad truth is you couldn’t satisfy a sow.” She sighed. “I just wish you had enough mind to understand what I’m saying. There wasn’t much intellect left before you were decapitated. There’s even less now. A shame, really, but I did enjoy the experiment of putting you back together, and Belsac seemed upset about all your pieces being put on display. The poor dear worried about how our subjects would react.” Pausing, she studied Vere for a moment before knocking several times on his head. “Hello. Are you listening? Anybody in there? Can you tell me if my imp grabbed enough of your nano field before the pieces drifted away? I’ve never tried this before so I’d really like your input. Can you still feel pain or are you moaning and groaning out of habit?”
Vere did not answer, but he did moan, and his very pale head rolled to one side, displaying to Mathew that very little of his head was attached to his body. Mathew saw pulsing veins and a roughly connected spine where a neck belonged, but most of the skin and muscle were gone.
“Are you done talking to it now?” Sulya demanded. “I don’t care if it’s moving. The thing is dead. The likes of you and I can’t undo a death simply by reattaching a head.”
“This is all very frustrating,” Belthethsia complained. “I blame it on the blood. There just wasn’t enough left in the torso. Oh well, I’ll just have to play for a bit longer and see what I can learn from his tones.”
Mathew sat, tongue lolling, and watched while Belthethsia set the rod to the king’s deflated manhood. His flesh broiled and acrid smoke rose until nothing remained of the king’s pride but char. The smell made Mathew’s stomach rumble with hunger.