Requiem's Song (Book 1) (35 page)

"Father—" she tried
to whisper.

He grabbed her. He twisted her
arms behind her back and manhandled her forward, his blood dripping.

"You treacherous whore."
His voice shook. "You worm that crawls with maggots. You
betrayed me."

Issari managed a hoarse whisper.
"You killed your own father. You unleashed demons upon this
world. You are the traitor to Eteer. You—"

He clamped a palm over her
mouth, and she screamed into it. He shoved her up the stairs, his
blood leaving a red trail. When she fell, he dragged her. Her hip
banged against each step. She tried to fight, to punch him, to kick,
but could not. Another blow from his fist rattled her jaw. A slap
sent her reeling.

"Father, please!"

Blood filled her mouth. And she
knew that begging wouldn't help. She had stabbed him, almost killed
him. Her life was forfeit.

I
should have flown north with the dragons,
she realized.
I
should have fled. Now I will die here, alone, afraid.

He dragged her down a corridor,
past tall bronze doors, and into the palace throne room.

Once a place of splendor, it had
been transformed into a hive of fire and brimstone. The porphyry
columns, once pure and pale blue, now stank with serpentine demons
that wrapped around them, oozing drool. Once a mosaic had covered the
floor, featuring birds and dolphins. Now globs of rot hid the
artwork, and demons rutted in the puddles, grunting in their passion.
Once the throne had risen in a beam of light; now it rose from a mass
of writhing creatures who bit, licked, and clawed one another. Angel
herself now lurked here, clinging to the ceiling like a bat, drooling
lava and hissing down at her minions below.

Issari gasped as her father
tossed her into the chamber. She fell, landing in a puddle of rot.

"Demons of the Abyss!"
Raem called out.

The creatures ceased their
racket and turned toward him. One paused with another's leg between
its jaws. Others froze, still linked together as they rutted. They
stared, hissing, tongues lolling.

"Here lies a traitor."
Raem pointed down at Issari. "She is yours to do with as you
like. Mate with her. Eat her flesh if you like. Keep her alive for
your amusement or kill her. But one thing I demand: Make sure she
never leaves this chamber again."

With that, he left the hall and
slammed the doors behind him.

Issari leaped up, raced to the
doors, and yanked at the handles. Locked.

She spun around, pressed her
back to the doors, and stared at the creatures. The demons approached
slowly, grins widening. Angel detached from the ceiling, landed on
the floor, and hissed like a viper. Her tongue reached out across the
hall, an obscene tentacle longer than three men, to lick Issari's
cheek.

Issari raised her hand. Her
amulet, embedded into her palm, blazed to life.

"By the light of Taal!"
she shouted. "I banish you. I—"

Angel spat. A wad of dark drool
hit the amulet, hiding its glow. With a scream, Issari tried to rip
the glob off, but it clung to her hand, black and sticky.

The Demon Queen leaped toward
her, crossing the throne room in a single bound. She landed before
Issari, gripped her cheeks, and hissed.

"What a pretty thing."
She caressed Issari's hair with a clawed hand. "So fair. So
fresh. So innocent. You will be mine to break. I will mate with you,
and so will all in my hall. And when we are done, we will feast upon
you." Smoke rose from her mouth, and she licked her lips. "You
will live through it. You will watch as we devour your legs, then
your arms, then slowly work our way up your torso, sucking up your
entrails as you scream. But you will not die." Angel sneered,
holding Issari pinned against the doors. "Not until I say you
can."

Around them, the other demons
howled, drooled, laughed, beat their wings, spewed their filth. Their
faces spun, eyes red, mouths dripping.

Issari closed her eyes.

A
dragon can defeat them. A dragon can blow fire. A dragon can fly
away.

She took a deep breath, seeking
a magic deep within her. She imagined herself growing wings and
claws, rising, flying. Yet nothing happened.

The demons dragged her away from
the doors. They slammed her against the floor, stretched out her
limbs until they almost dislocated, and held her down on her back.
Towering creatures like human vultures cloaked in red feathers leaned
forward. Their beaks opened, full of serrated teeth. Worms crawled
between their feet, as large as children; they were great leeches,
Issari realized, like the ones Shedah had used but many times the
size.

"Break her!" Angel
commanded.

Issari closed her eyes again.

To
shift is not a curse,
she thought.
My
mother could shift. My siblings can. Even my father shifted.

She breathed shakily. For years,
King Raem had preached of the evil of the reptilian curse. For years,
Issari had feared the magic, thinking the weredragons poor souls to
pity. But her father too could shift! It was not a curse. It was not
an abomination unto Taal.

It was magic.

Issari took a deep, shuddering
breath.

Wings sprouted from her back,
shoving her upward.

She opened her eyes to see claws
growing on her fingertips. Her body ballooned, knocking demons back.
White scales, glimmering like mother of pearl, grew across her body
like armor. Demons clawed but could not break through.

A white dragon, Princess Issari
rose in the chamber, sounded her roar, and blew her fire.

 
 
RAEM

He stood in the charred rooftop
gardens—the same place he had stabbed his father—stitching the
wound his daughter had given him. His lips were tight, and sweat
dripped down his face as he worked, sewing his arm shut.

The trees, bushes, and
flowerbeds lay burnt around him. The broken lattices rose like
blackened bones. Once this had been a garden of life, a place of
solitude and peace. The dragons had come. The dragons had burned. The
dragons had torn his life apart, torn his children from him.

Two of those children—Laira and
Sena—now flew in the north, diseased creatures. His third child, his
youngest, he had taught too well.

"Issari is like me,"
Raem said softly into the ashy wind. "A traitor to her father.
And so she will suffer."

He violently thrust the needle
into his arm, savoring the pain. He was sewing the last stitch when
the palace shook. Dust flew. Bricks toppled into a courtyard below.
Raem leaned over the roof's edge and sucked in his breath.

A white dragon crashed out of
the palace doorway, shattering bronze and stone, and soared into the
sky.

Raem stared, silent.

A cloud of demons burst out of
the palace like black blood spilling from an infected wound. They
began to fly in pursuit, but the white dragon turned and blasted
fire. The inferno blazed across the demons and crashed into the
palace, forcing Raem to step back into the charred gardens. Sparks
landed upon him, searing his skin; he was still shirtless after his
visit to the cistern. When the flames died, he saw demon corpses upon
the courtyard below. The white dragon was already flying toward the
coast.

Light caught the dragon's palm,
shining against something metallic. Raem knew that light.

An amulet of Taal.

"Issari," he
whispered.

Before he could take another
breath, the roof crashed open behind him. Through a cloud of rock and
smoke, Angel ascended, shrieking. Claw marks drove down her stony
chest, leaking lava. Rings of fire burst out from her.

"Your daughter!" she
cried, voice a storm. "Your daughter is diseased!" She
landed before him, wings knocking down charred trees, and clawed what
remained of the roof. "You have forbidden me to leave this city,
and now she flees. Send me after her!"

Raem was surprised.

Not surprised that Issari was a
dragon.

Not that his city crumbled
around him.

Not that his wound dripped, a
failed assassination attempt from his dearest daughter.

Raem was surprised that, despite
all these things, he found himself feeling remarkably calm, even
casual.

He cleared his throat. "Yes,
my dear Angel, it seems she is a dragon. And yes, I have forbidden
you to leave this city."

The Demon Queen screamed. Her
fire blazed, a great pillar upon the roof. The palace shook. Demons
who flew above, balls of slime, burst under the sound wave of her
scream, falling down in tatters.

"Send me after her!"

Calmly, Raem turned to look
toward the coast. The white dragon was now over the water, fleeing
north. A second beast was flying in the opposite direction, heading
from the sea toward the city. As Raem watched, a great oily
vulture—larger even than a dragon—flew toward the palace, a rider
upon its back.

With a shriek, the roc landed on
the palace roof. A Goldtusk hunter spilled off its back, barely
landing on his feet. He was a tall, hirsute man with beads threaded
into his beard. Three fingers were missing from his hand, the wounds
fresh, and a gash ran down his chest. His skin was ashen, his eyes
sunken. Blood stained his tattered fur cloak.

"I seek King Raem!"
the man said, wavering, looking so weak he barely acknowledged the
smoky, fiery Angel.

"You have found him,"
said Raem.

The hunter gripped Raem's arms.
"The rocs . . . many dead. Zerra . . . slain. Laira, that maggot
of a harlot . . . took over the tribe. The dragons have a kingdom
now. Requiem, they call it. All is lost. All . . . lost . . ."

With that, the man collapsed. He
breathed no more.

Raem stared at the dead man, at
Issari who was barely visible upon the horizon, at the ruin of his
palace, and at the panting, sneering Angel.

And he laughed.

His laughter seized him. He
could not stop. Angel shrieked again, beating her wings, and Raem
laughed so much he had to wipe a tear from his eye.

"Do you see, Angel?"
he said. "Do you see the pain of children? Never breed, Angel.
Never bear a child."

She ripped out a chunk of roof
and tossed it aside. She lifted the dead hunter in her claws, raised
him to her lips, and hissed.

"It is time," she
said. "Time to eat human flesh. Time to grow. Time to kill
dragons."

Raem looked down upon the city.
He saw no living souls. All his people—once proud and strong—hid in
their homes.

The
dragons destroyed my city,
he thought.
And
so be it. Let blood fill these streets.

He nodded.

"A thousand men and women I
give to you. A thousand meals. Fly through the city with your demons,
Angel. Feast upon them. Grow large. Grow strong. And then . . . then
we fly north. To Requiem."

Angel howled in joy. Her jaw
unhinged, her maw opening wide like a python about to swallow a pig.
She stuffed the dead tribesman into her mouth, gulping him down,
chewing, swallowing, until her belly extended like some obscene
pregnancy. Her limbs grew longer. Her head ballooned. She laughed as
she grew taller, sprouting to twice her old height, then growing even
further. She spread her wings wide like midnight sails.

"Rise, demons of the
Abyss!" Angel shouted. "Rise and feast upon the flesh of
Eteer!"

She beat her wings, rising,
ringed in fire, a woman of stone and lava the size of a dragon. From
the palace windows and doors, they burst out, a thousand abominations
of the Abyss. They spread through the city streets. They crashed
through the doors of homes and shops. And they fed. And they grew.

Screams and blood filled the
city of Eteer that day.

Raem watched from the palace
roof, a thin smile on his lips.

Before him, the demons grew,
extending like boils about to burst. Globs of flesh. Scaled creatures
of hooks and horns. Unholy centipedes of many human heads and limbs.
All rose before him, growing to the size of dragons. They hovered
before the palace roof, swallowing the last bits of human flesh.

It was an army of darkness. It
was an army to purify the world.

Upon the roof, Raem raised his
arms. He shouted out for them all to hear.

"I have fed you, my
children! And you have grown strong. Now we fly! We fly north. We fly
to Requiem. We fly to kill dragons!"

They shrieked, howled, sneered,
laughed, roared. Their voices rose into a single cry, a thunder that
shook the city, that shattered towers, that sent burnt trees
crumbling. Raem's mount—the twisted woman broken, cursed, and
stretched into a bat—flew toward him. Once the size of a horse, the
deformed creature was now as large as a dragon, and the blood of men
stained her lips. Raem mounted the beast and stroked her.

Hiding the sky behind their
wings, leaving a trail of rot, the demon army flew across the city
and over the sea, heading to the land of dragons.

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Requiem's Hope
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Requiem's Song
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AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading
Requiem's Song
. I hope you enjoyed the book.

The sequel,
Requiem's Hope
, will be released later this year. While you wait, you might want to read my other Requiem novels; I've written nine more, all currently available. You can learn more about them on my website:
DanielArenson.com/Requiem