Addictive Rimeshade (13 page)

Squeezing the base of his spine, inflicting agony, I whisper lovingly, the way he no doubt seduced many, or perhaps he simply threatened harm, either way I say, “You rape the innocent, you fuck underage girls, you sell the wares for demented psychopaths to wank to, now it's your turn little foster father.”

Pleading mingles with blood and spittle, and I look away to Fenrir galloping back over rubble with Marcy in his jaws.

Nodding, I release Steven, grabbing the woman, scalping her hair off with my razored claw. I'm not a falcon, or father of the first wolf, for nothing. I'm a shapeshifter, I can manipulate my limbs and body at will.

Roaring with giant thunder, I bellow through their shrieks, “Silence!”

Whimpering replaces blood curdling screams, and in the sudden still I exhale relief at the blissful quiet. Hel is quiet, I miss it already.

To Steven, I say, “You took what wasn't yours to take. You violated. Now it's your turn to know how it feels to be ruptured, torn apart with girth, bleeding from every hole because a man couldn't keep his cock to his wife. You destroyed, now we will destroy you!”

Fenrir moves faster than lightning, clenching jaws around the back of Steve's neck to pin him to the ground, his legs swiftly pinioned, Fenrir's wolf erection stiff and throbbing, ready to penetrate the penetrator, his excited exhalations sounding like a dog pummeling a bitch in heat. The night splits in twain with the first thrust, it's brutal and ferocious, the smell immediately ripe and wrong, the victim's howl meeting the depravity, the karma exacted exorcising his sanity.

It's reminiscent of the battlefield. Cold sweat perspired in abject fear has a unique scent, mingled with hot blood and loosened bowels, it's the aroma of battle. It throws me back so many eons, heartache swelling a bubble of regret and pain through my chest cavity.

It's revolting to watch, but I will witness this for her sake. For all their sakes I will record this in Odin's book as a part of my life, so the father of this abomination can witness what his creations do for fun, for money, so he cannot deny he created a Steven and Marcy Smith who raped the daughters of god. Who raped my kindred without conscience because they thought repercussions were myths assigned to the devout. Wrong, I live and breathe and I'm here so your father will be accused for his creation. Because justice will be done.

Steve's screaming so loud he no longer sounds human, the desperation and horror hoarse and animalistic. It's apt.

Keeping my hand clenched on Marcy's throat to prevent her ear-splitting shrieks, hanging her barely with feet touching the floor, I watch Fenrir pierce fang through the male's neck, pulling out after orgasm to fling the human over, gnawing Steve's cheeks away, the blood gushing from the mutilated face, preventing resistance for phase two.

Marcy wriggles frantically when Fenrir rams his mammoth paw, using it to smash Steven's teeth in, freeing the gums of bone and enamel to prevent chaffing, then squatting over the bastard, ramming his bloody penis into the man's unshielded throat, suffocating him to death with an immense phallus, his final breath and taste that of his own anus, blood, and Fenrir cum.

I slash my hand in the cutting motion for Fenrir to stop, but he can't, at his pinnacle, releasing a haunting howl into the fetid night when he purges again. Scything warning through the ether, to the souls sleeping beyond this realm, those curled in their beds spiritwalking, they will sense it.

The man who raped them has asphyxiated, and I will not allow Hel to adopt him. It is Lara's wish to never meet him in Hell, so be it.

Throwing Marcy at my son, the shredding of her nightdress is sweet music for revenge's opera. She already knows her fate, but I hold up my hand, asking my boy, “Where is Lara's phone?”

He bays, giving me short wolf calls, explaining he left it at the front door.

Holding up my hand, I mutter, “Hang on, let's film this and post it on their creation. That interweb thing. Let the whole world witness their shame. Those who prey on the weak and defenseless deserve for their families and churches to know.”

Retrieving the tiny contraption, I'm forced to reshape, morphing back to accommodate human proportion, stalking through the dark carnage to the two who wait for me, her screeches now wails of despair.

Leaning over the prone woman, I slap her, hard, “Tell me how this works. Show me how the film function works. Karma isn't a bitch, you are. I'm the king of the dead and before you die you will be swallowed by a viper, you will be crushed and suffocated the way you crushed and suffocated the young women in your care.”

She's too hysterical, shaking too much, her words no more useful to me than maggots in shit.

Abandoning the idea, I wave my hand for Fenrir to continue, laughing when he shunts his enormous flanks between her thighs, panting her husband's stench into her face, riding the bitch so hard she slips in and out of consciousness with the sundering of her flesh.

She just revives, her screams so beyond bearable that it's only because the device vibrates in my palm that I realize it's ringing.

I know they use green for go and red for stop, so I press the green side of the bar, lifting the rectangle to my ear, “Mmm?”

Marcy's soured wail and soul searing keen make hearing impossible, so I tell the phone, “Hang on.” Stomping back to the perimeter outside, I pause once to yell to Fenrir, “Keep her alive! I want her ended properly!”

Shifting like a shadow between the trees at the edge of the property, I lift the phone, “Yes?”

“
Where are you you fucking bastard! You leave her alone! I'm going to tear you apart, I'm going to make you suffer, I'm–”

“
Hello Ewan, greetings brother. You still liking the sound of your own voice I see. If you want her, you come and get her.”

But she'll be snake shit by the time you reach her.

“Where are you,” hisses at me, his anger so wretched he morphs to eagle chief speech.

Damn, what is this place again? Scratching my head, I look up at the stars, plotting the ground via the map of constellations, finally arriving with my location. “I'm in
Amberley, but not for long. If you want her alive, best you come alone, and chop chop darling berserkr, she bleeds like the feast goat. You and me Ewan, just the two of us. I'll give you a nice big kiss to give to your grandfather for when you die and go to Asgard.”

“
Fuck yo–”

Delighted, I figure out how to disconnect the call. Accidentally of course, I touched the screen, but still, that should enrage him. The end is upon us, the final days are here, Ewan wants my blood and bones, how little the young learn from history. If Odin couldn't kill me, why does he think he'll be any different.

Stalking inside, I thump Fenrir in thanks, lifting the woman, shifting into air, blowing away across the sky, the air holding a woman on the precipice of death.

I'm the only god who can become air. Few recall that about me, and air cannot be caged, or slain.

*

Ewan:

He's torturing her! The sick bastard is torturing Lara! He can only be holding her in three possible locations, and I'm hedging my bets it's either Jotünheim or Hel.

Looking up at the thick bank of clouds, I beg them for a clue. They prefer to watch us outwit each other, they probably won't intervene, but it never hurt to try. I'm in Amberley, so I take to the sky, shifting into Eagle form, looking for evidence of a wolf and his master.

The air smells like blood.

Odin, please don't let me be too late!

Chapter 12

Witnessing death makes us need to celebrate life, carnally.

Therefore is war foe, or friend? For it does indeed fences mend.

~ The Gemini Journal

Leug:

Blowing in through the north entrance, I drop the foul human, sniffing the air for
Jörmungandr. Reaching out through the rock, I feel for him, calling him up and out of the cavernous catacombs. I gave Lara my word, that means this woman must die outside the gates to Hel, not within them.

She will feel the same helplessness her victims felt, having someone big and strong hold them down, crushing their internal organs with his distended gut, forcing himself through their hymens, coating his dick with their virginal blood, suffocating their existence with his ruthless ego and sadistic libido. Digestive juices and the strength of a snake's constriction will certainly replicate some of that.

How dark and desperate must Marcy's victims have felt? How utterly helpless when everything in the world kept them his victims, the human system allowing this to permeate society where innocence is harvested for fun. This will be fun for Jörmungandr, and justice will be served.

The thought of that man's sperm festering inside the womb of the woman I love makes me angry enough to run to meet Ewan, to have an excuse to deliver my rage in all its might on a worthy opponent. But war is Odin's way, it was never mine. Sometimes I feel anger; this is one of those times.

Jörmungandr comes, his smile still one of love and trust. He knows his fate was not my doing, he knows who holds the blame for his incarceration, chained at the bottom of the ocean for a thousand years to appease a god scared of his own shadow, so he created an environment where he doesn't have a shadow – or shade.

Pathetic.

I point at Marcy, speaking mind to mind with my son, as his chief and father I can exercise this ability with ease, and he complies without question, swallowing the bleeding yet still breathing woman, not even pausing in his passage to slither outside, her inside him now, her last screams will be in the silence of his body, no one hearing them in their isolation, just like she and Steve kept the girl's isolated so no one could hear their shrieks of frustration and pain.

Carving a wedge through the snow, he leaves to digest her beyond Lara's haven. Hel is Lara's home now, and keeping her safe starts and ends with me.

Shifting to falcon, I fly through the tunnels, eager to get back to my celestial mate.
As I round the corner to the gallery, Carmen waits with the biggest book this world has ever seen. It's giant sized, its original owner the very coward I wish to destroy; Odin.

I call to her, alighting on her arm out of old habit, catching a strand of her long silver hair and tugging it playfully through my beak.

“Chief, we don't have time for inconsequential flirtation. You must read this, and read it now.”

Women, they really do take life far too seriously. Acquiescing, I stand next to her as myself, the shift taking a moment to settle my vision and vertigo.

“Yes?” I ask, looking from her to the book.

She flicks it open, saying as she points, “Macala has thundereggs. If Ewan comes he will no doubt be bringing lightning with him as those two are thicker than pirates now, so be warned. And speaking of Ewan, he's closer than you think, a few hours at most–”

I cut her short, interjecting the biggest issue on my mind, “Are Lara and Deliah twin sisters?”

She nods, releasing the book to thud heavily in echo around the tektite cave, saying, “Blood sisters, born together, neither of them being born first.”

“Who is their father?” I push, urgency gripping me.

“
Búri.”

“
Their mother?” I pry, wondering who should be so lucky.

She closes her eyes, pinching the top of her nose above the bridge, “It makes no sense. He chose a human. Her name is not in the book, which is in itself impossible. She was fifteen, it says he came to her in a dream, and the shame was too much for her family when she was pregnant and unwilling to name a human boy as the father, sticking to her satanic story. They sent her to a Magdalene facility, giving her children up for adoption. She is a cripple because they tore her open to enter into this life as one, together.”

Immediately I'm overcome with emotion, the enormity of my precious maiden is so vast in my persecuted existence. Hel is a small place compared to home, it can be constricting, but Lara has left a scent of holiness in my realm, washing the old away with a breath of beatific purity.

She has rejuvenated my holy spirit in ways only her quintessence can explain, as if she was sent to spiritually fortify me for the conflict.

Before Ewan comes I must show her what she means to me, and I must do so now as time on this plane is fleet of wing. If he harms a hair on her head I will shut Hel down, with him inside it. I will imprison us both to wage war for eternity if he harms the one already so wounded by ignorance and ruin. Then the dead will walk the Earth with the living, for this vendetta I will forsake all other responsibility, incarcerating the two gods born to clash.

I nod, dismissing the crone, saying after her, “Fenrir will return with his sons Sköll and Hati. Call Hel, assemble the family, she must greet you tonight for the hour of reckoning fast approaches.”

Carmen smiles, crinkling a face as aged as primeval vellum, “What will be will be, Logi. You are free, you are the only one who is. You are here to free us all.”

She says it like a solid fact cast through Odin's hagstone. The oracle has spoken, then let it be.

Turning on my heel, I rush to the refreshing chamber, to wash away the scent of bloodshed and a victim's petrified sweat before sneaking into bed with my sváss, ready to expose my aura to her, to lay all my lights at her feet, to instill my love in her eternally.

*

Emma:

Deliah and Ewan have been missing for ages. My sixth sense is in overdrive and I intuitively know something is amiss.

Leaving the beer hall where warriors are getting louder as the vats get emptier, I walk through the black glass tunnels of
Buachaille Eite Mòr, heading for Ewan and Liah's chambers inside the highland mountain.

Knocking softly before I enter, unwilling to surprise her the way I did this morning, I call in, “Deliah? You here?”

She mumbles something I can't hear, so I step inside his gloomy chambers to investigate. She's in the middle of his bed looking like a widow, her eyes puffy from crying, blatantly distraught.

“
Oh my god, what the hell happened?”

*

Deliah:

Oh fucking hell. What does she want? Like I don't have enough problems snowing me in without Miss Golden Eye adding to my issues.

What happened is none of your fucking business. Is she always this nosy? Instead of answering I give her my shrivel up and die glare. She's an overachiever getting on my tits.

“
Deliah? Where's Ewan? Are you okay?” she persists.

There's no getting rid of this type of female, they're so busy playing the saint and rummaging in other folk's business. I need her the same way I need an enema.

Sarcasm is my friend, so I screw up my eyes and give her the look, “Do I look okay?”

“
No. I'm alarmed. Can I help?”

Yes, you can fly after Ewan and flatten the mountain where Leug lives.

Akshly, that gives me an idea. I like saying akshly, it's my accent, and I hope I never lose it.

*

Leug:

Inside my respite cave I stare down at the sleeping angel. Her long frost-fair hair laces my pillow, her chest lifting with every breath, the shapes underneath her cotton vest enough to make me dizzy with blood loss. It's time to be a giant, to be strong, to be myself so I can adore her without getting faint with desire.

I'm supernatural, so is she. Unlike the other clans we don't wear the mark of Valhalla as we never gave Odin that kind of allegiance. Instead I gave her my fire, and tonight I must give her my ice. Then our fates will be intertwined tighter than guilt.

She's as rare as a hornfel, and just as enchanting.