Dark Gods Rising (32 page)

Something stirred in Tessla. Something new or perhaps something she had given up long ago. Something burned. Emotion! Anger! Pain! The sensations fired her mind and destroyed her balance. She did not care. Del was dead. Her lover. Her source. Maybe even her friend. Del’s shell lay on the ground while his wondrous soul was clenched in an imp’s insubstantial jaws.

She narrowed her eyes. She growled, and, when the imp began sinking toward the street, she smiled grimly. Del’s soul was too large for it to hold. The imp appeared ill.

“Sweet baby,” Belthethsia cooed. Smoke drifted from her remaining hair, but her burnt scalp and hands were now whole. “Pretty boy.” She held out a commanding hand. The imp floated toward her, but its movements were hesitant, heavy. Dell’s pulsing soul was more than twice its size.

Decision made, Tessla ran three stumbling steps forward and grabbed the imp from the air. Belthethsia chuckled, but her laugh was weak, showing she, too, was on her last legs. Godless healing demanded a tremendous toll.

“What are you doing?” the succubus demanded. “My imp can’t hurt you. You have no soul.”

Face held ridged hard while unfamiliar emotion raged within, Tessla ripped Dell’s soul from the imp’s grasp and threw the imp onto the smoke churning hellfire mound of the morphos. Instantly, the imp burst into flames and was gone. With weak, trembling fingers, Tessla pulled out her pipe and set it between her lips. She put Del’s soul on top of the pipe’s bowl and sucked Del down.

Del’s soul exploded within her. It seeped into the center of her cells. Expanding, it raced to fill a vacuum she had never known existed. His soul was warmth, cold, and pain, a delicious joy she had never experienced, a burst of emotions making her former anger pale into insignificance. Shuddering uncontrollably, Tessla wondered how humans could suffer such intense sensations. She waited for them to fade, but they lived on, a steady beat thundering with the rhythm of her heart.

“What’s this,” Dell’s voice whispered within her mind.

Tessla looked inside herself, looked with an inner vision that was no longer clear. There, deep within her body, a small part of Del had gathered cirweed smoke to itself. This part of Del sent tendrils out, stalked a black area where Athos’s curse crouched and quailed. Del pounced. Poison and cirweed and soul roiled. The curse trembled and fell apart.

Legs shaking beyond her ability to control, Tessla collapsed. The air around her hung thick, and the street felt cold. Overhead, the moon shone large and bright, brighter than she had ever seen anything since the time, long ago, when she left the heavens after Trelsar’s rebuilding. She stared at Belthethsia, at the few people who had not yet run, and saw skin and hair and clothes. She saw faces in the torchlight, faces without shadows, but hard as she tried, she could not see anyone’s soul.

Three city guards looked as if they had regained their courage. Lexos inched closer, hesitated, and pulled his sword. Belthethsia eyed him with a slight frown.

“I’m too weary to deal with this!” she snapped. Another imp oozed out of her skin. This imp, Tessla knew, would be her last. Only the gods of Hell could carry more than two.

Shoulders square, body straight, Belthethsia held the imp in plain view and spoke to the guards. “I’m leaving. If you don’t get excited, I promise I won’t kill you when I return.” She turned her gaze to Tessla. “I know Mathew well. For the right price he’ll tell me where Thingy went.”

Hair burnt, jaw misshapen, Belthethsia walked off with the dignity and presence of a queen. She paused a moment to watch Mother Brood regain her feet, and then she was gone.

“Wonderful,” Del whispered. “Is this your world? Is this how you see?”

“It was,” Tessla answered, wondering how she could protect Jolson with her strength hampered by Dell’s soul.

* * * *

Mercktos watched as a slight breeze tossed strands of white hair about Tessla’s shoulders. Frustrated, he growled deep in his throat. He wanted her again. He wanted to break her. He wanted to hold her. Right now, at this moment, she was tired and weak. Better yet, she looked confused. He could take her. He could drag her back to Hell, but Hell was closed to all hellkind until the hook was returned, closed, even, to Zorce’s right hand.

Tessla turned in his direction but didn’t see him. Even disheveled she was exquisite, white hair, black nails, and pale. He remembered her touch, the smell of her skin, the taste of blood on her lips. For one moment, he felt her hands clutching his neck, pulling his mouth down to hers while dark talons sank into his throat.

He mentally shook those memories away as Tessla walked to the dead child and its caretaker. Crying piteously, the caretaker kneeled on the road, holding the child to her breast.

Mercktos scowled. It hadn’t been necessary for the child to die.

Alarmed by the thought, he shook his head and fought back a disgusted growl. Living with a defective heart was difficult enough. Living among these disease-ridden vermin made it even worse. The damned heart had tainted his mind and sullied his soul. Had he actually been concerned about a dead child? What did one mortal child’s death matter to a devil or even the deaths of a thousand children? Humans lived to be killed.

Mercktos ached to return to Zorce so he could rid himself of the heart, but his god had not forgiven him. He was cursed to live and serve on the middle world until the hook returned to Hell.

Well, if he followed Tessla, she might still lead him to the spawn.

Mercktos sighed and watched Tessla lift the dead child in her arms. When he saw tears on her cheeks, once again, he felt a twinge inside his breast.

He growled. By Athos! He hoped the world fell soon. Wearing the damned heart was a horrible ordeal. He couldn’t survive these pains for long.

Tessla saw him, frowned, and then her lips turned in a slight smile. Parting, they formed one word. “Remember.”

Epilogue

Ludwig woke to discover Harlo standing beside his bed. Around Ludwig’s neck was the chain holding, Tirelle, his magical amulet. On each of his shoulders was cradled the head of a naked woman. Both had been satiated to the point of unconsciousness. By his lust, Ludwig would like to have bragged, but he suspected the previous night’s orgy of drugs and booze had more to do with their unconscious state than his passion. Although Ludwig repeatedly used both women the night before, he wasn’t sure either one noticed or cared.

He frowned. Superficially, part of his dream of returning to a life of ease had been realized. During the past few weeks he had eaten only the best food, drunk only the finest wines, and had bedded a dozen different women. Better yet, people bowed when he walked past because he wore clothes every bit as fine as those he had once known.

Unfortunately, the money was gone. Tomorrow he would be back on the trail, living hard. His food and wine would be of poor quality, and he wouldn’t even be a fond memory to his dozen women as they each wrapped their legs around a different man. Worse, the clothes would be gone, sold later this day to help supply Harlo’s bandit crew with trail supplies. Over the next few months Harlo would plan and execute a rash of thefts, all to make enough rugdles so his people could live in luxury for a few weeks more. Once again, Ludwig would have almost everything he craved. Still, even at the height of his most corrupt passion, no matter how much he ate, how much he drank, or how many women he bedded, he could not forget Meliandra’s sweet thighs, Gertunda’s glower, or the fact that every pleasure he experienced came through the misfortune of others.

“Time to get moving, lad,” Harlo said. “Got my sights set on a couple prospects, and there are rumors the city guard is looking for us. The price has increased on both our heads.” He grinned. “Kinda exciting, isn’t it?”

“Like an infected boil,” Ludwig grumbled. “Is it always going to be like this, stealing, killing, and running away, interspersed with a few weeks every now and then of drunken forgetfulness?”

Harlo’s grin grew larger. “Nah. These are the good times. Caravaners are feeling the strain. They’re putting on extra guards and setting traps. Too many bandits like us, too many hellkind running free, and too many rumors of dark times coming. Way I see it, things will be pretty black all over in a couple years, but we don’t have to worry about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’ll be dead.” Harlo laughed. “If we see next year, I’ll be surprised.”

“Great.” Ludwig turned his head to look at the woman on his right shoulder. A thin thread of bile ran from her lips. Changing his stare to the other woman, he saw she was mostly presentable. A little drool, some smeared food spread across one cheek, but otherwise, not too disgusting.

Pushing the first woman away, he rolled on top of the other. Still drugged, she only grunted when his weight pressed down on her, proving she still breathed. “Give me half an hour. If I’m going to soon die, I want to take a good memory with me.”

“Fine,” Harlo said, “but don’t get too depressed. I’ve been giving thought to a few, less dangerous endeavors. If things get too tough we might branch out a bit. Maybe we won’t die.”

“Living like this,” Ludwig said as he thrust into slack flesh, “is as good as being dead.”

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