Authors: R. Lee Smith
**Is it…a
nephalim?**
**Aye.** He
showed no surprise that she knew the word. **Reach not thy hand to touch. My
control is limited.**
It was not a
hound, but not a man either. Mara was considerably taller, but it had twice her
weight, and even in this servile crouch and moonless dark, she could see
nothing but the strength and power of its muscular form. Its skin, thick and
grey and covered in grotesque growths of bone, camouflaged it perfectly against
the stone slopes. If it wasn’t for the hard shudders of its snarls, it would
have blended to invisibility right before her eyes.
**They can be
dangerous, even to us, and this breed more than most,** Kazuul sent, studying
the thing that crouched at his feet with a deceptively detached air. **Wretched,
mindless creatures made in mocking image of their immortal blood, cursed with
every human hunger, suffering life upon a world that cannot sustain them. They
thirst and never quench, lust with seed that rooteth not, consume all and yet
starve.**
He crooked his
claw. The monster raised its eyeless head, pouring drool to freeze off its jaws
like another row of teeth. It slouched away, still snarling, and was lost to
the night.
**Adam’s blood
doth thin their own, yet to perish taketh a cruel age, and so we use the
nephalim in whatever small way they can be used. The reavers, we set low upon
the mountain’s crust to devour freely those Men they may encounter, save only
those few hours when we welcome approach.** Kazuul’s mind was quiet for a
minute or two as the wind howled, but through his touch, she shared the shadow
of every dark thought which he kept hidden. **But they are born to starve, and
no sooner are their jaws whetted than they are shitting out the blood of their
victims upon the rock and howling their hungry rage to heaven.**
**How many are
yours?** she asked, knowing it was an offensive question.
**None living,**
Kazuul replied, unbothered. **Yet I have sired many in my time.** He grunted to
himself and added, **I shall sire no more.**
**Is that why
you stopped teaching?**
It wasn’t the first
time she’d asked that question. She no longer expected an answer, but to her
surprise, he shrugged. **T’was one consideration, if not the most paramount.**
**What was
the—**
**Solomon.** The
word was a curse in Kazuul’s mind. He bared his teeth, then gathered her up and
swept her away through the mountain and into his lair. Just being out of the
wind was almost as good as a roaring fire, but Kazuul released her at once and
stalked over to the aerie, where he began to pull rock up to close it away.
“Do you mean
King Solomon? What did he do?”
“Then thou hast
heard his legend.”
“I know a
little. I know he came here. Horuseps showed me his cup.”
“Did he.” Kazuul
laughed once, blackly and without humor, then looked at her. “The Cup of
Solomon. A very pretty prison, was it not? Yet when first Solomon came to me,
t’was a harmless vessel for a beardless boy to spin lies over. T’was here, in
my school, in mine own theater, that Solomon learned the art of Dominion. Here,
with books unknown to human understanding and magics unpracticed in the human
world, Solomon summoned one of the great race of djinn. Here, he bound its body
into the crowning jewel of his
harmless
cup and bound its will to be his
slave. Thus did Solomon achieve his ambition and depart us.”
Kazuul shook his
head slowly, ponderously, as a bull might before it charges. His fangs were
bared as he spoke, so that he bit off each word, and his anger, undimmed by
millennia, put a dangerous growl in his throat. She could see his clawed hands
flexing on empty air, the muscles of his powerful body coiling and tensing.
“The race of
djinn was not born of Earth, yet they dwelled many ages among the sons and
daughters of Adam. They dwelled,” he spat, “in the kingdom of Solomon, who saw
them, coveted their power, and by cruel trickery, summoned all there were and
set each one into a mortal prison to be his treasure during his life, to be
scattered to the winds and forgotten after his death. They were an ancient
race; their fires, the spark of life over countless worlds. Now they are made
mad, lost to time and memory, destroyed. Ha. This is what Man does with magic.”
He swung around very suddenly, coming towards her with his eyes blazing light,
the Mindstorm hot with his rage. “Hath not Man done harm enough, powerless,
that I must put weapons into his hands? How many cups did he forge, Solomon the
Betrayer, set with the souls of my race, my fire?”
Mara stepped
back, watchful, and instantly he turned away, his fury bleeding out of the air.
“Nay,” Kazuul
said, staring into the wall where the aerie had been. “I’ll sire no more
nephalim. I’ll make no more Solomons. I am done with Man.”
She waited until
the last strain of anger was gone before saying, “I’m still here.”
He glanced at
her, thought, then smiled thinly. “Thou art woman.”
“You could still
get a nephalim off me.”
“Not as thou
hast played the game,” he answered archly, but then came back to her wearing
his most smoldering gaze. “But if that be your fear, my Mara, fear not. My
matings shall set no half-breed stock in thee.”
“You promised—”
“I make no
demands, beloved one.” His powerful hands took her in, holding her close
against his rough hide, just as if they were at the mercy of the icy Romanian
winds once more. His tongue flicked unerringly at the tender skin above the
vein in her neck, and he pressed his teeth there playfully, but only for a
moment. “Yet well would we both be served by the weakening of thy will. Thou
art come alive only in mine arms.”
“I was alive
long before I ever met you,” said Mara, refusing to acknowledge the tightening
of her skin under his lips or the eager heat leaping to life in her womb. “I’ll
be alive long after I leave. I’ll replace you, Kazuul.”
“Nay.” His hand
covered her breast, his thumbclaw scraping lightly back and forth over her
nipple until it hardened for him. “I have ruined all other men for thee. Thou
shalt never clasp one ‘twixt thy hungry thighs save that thou thinkest of me.”
His mind stroked
hers, as gentle and as sure as his hand, giving her no words but only little
promises of pleasure like kisses on her naked soul. She shivered, but did not
move away. “You taught Dominion,” she murmured.
“Aye.” Kazuul
tugged at the neck of her gown, growled under his breath at her locket, and
then scoured his teeth along the full, firm swell of her breast. “The art of
will and its many manipulations.”
“And yet, you’ve
never used it against me.”
“Nay, nor ever
shall.” He went to one knee, biting at her hip through her long skirts.
“Are you afraid
I’ll learn it if you do?”
“I fear nothing
that comes of thee.” He mouthed her with growing aggression, his claws
beginning to prick through the heavy fabric, and shifted suddenly to draw a
deep breath from her concealed sex. He smiled. “I shall teach thee whatsoever
thou desirest to learn. Nothing would please me better than to see thee master
of mine art.”
“Nothing?”
He looked up at
her, stroking her thigh. “There are pleasures of the heart, my Mara, and
pleasures of the flesh. And if ‘tis true that the latter be more brilliant in
its making, so ‘tis also truth that the former endures. When?” he asked,
quietly and with a broad timbre of dark frustration.
“When what?”
“Again, I warn
thee to mock me not. When shalt thou come again to my bed?”
“After
last-bell, to sleep.”
“I hear the
racing of thy heart at mine every touch.” He passed his hand low over her belly
as if to prove it, and her womb cramped with traitorous, insistent need. “I
smell the perfumes of thy ready cunt. Thou makest a torture for thyself as much
as for me.”
“But it is still
torturing you,” she said, and shrugged him off. “Call it a pleasure of the
heart.”
He growled to
himself, still comfortably on one knee, watching her walk away from him.
She made it all
the way to the curtain at the foot of his stair before her resolve weakened. Why
was she doing this? What did it matter if she couldn’t get anything else out of
him but the protection he’d already given her? It was still good sex! Three
nights, she’d slept beside him, expecting each time to wake up under him, his
prisoner now in every way, but so far, his promise was holding him. She’d
almost rather he took what he wanted than be the one who broke first, but it
was a hard thing to lie beside him and only sleep. Kimara Warner had very
little use for simple human companionship, but she was used to getting sex
whenever she wanted it.
“Give her back to me,” said Mara finally,
decisively. “Give Connie back to me—”
“I know her
not,” Kazuul said, all warmth gone from his tone.
“—and I’ll let
you do what you want with me before we leave.”
“I have never
seen thy calf.”
“As often as you
want, for one night.”
“I know nothing
of her whereabouts.”
“I’ll let you
cum in me.”
“Enough!” His
anger stabbed the Mindstorm and slowly faded. She heard him pace away, growling
heavily at each breath.
Mara waited,
rubbing restlessly at her stomach while her loins burned and burned.
**I would give
thee my blood, my bones, my very breath, and whatsoever thou wouldst ask, so I
would give thee,** he sent, his thoughts furious and unwavering, **but I know
the bitch
not
!**
He could lie to
her easily enough, even here, but she didn’t think he was somehow.
“I am not built
to long withstand temptation,” he snarled aloud. “I have pledged thee an oath
and I mean to keep it, but thou art no tickbird, and I, no tolerant dragon to
stay my jaws as thou dost pick and
pick
at me! Think well what thou
dost, lest I snap!”
“All right,”
said Mara softly. “Then I guess we’re done talking.”
Still, she
lingered. It was a good line to storm out on, but she felt no sense of victory.
What she did feel, she didn’t know how to name, but she didn’t want to leave
him yet.
His hand brushed
at her back, then came up to caress the curve of her throat, briefly amplifying
his bitterness and desire. “My Mara…”
“No.”
“Aye. Deny it
how thou wilt, thou art mine. I, thine.” He growled softly against her skin,
then brushed his lips across her cheek, and murmured, “Make use of what is
thine, beloved.”
“Stop calling me
that.”
He spat a curse
in her ear and stalked away. Back and forth, he paced across his chambers,
kicking at chunks of stone and slashing at drapes, swearing in and out of
understanding the entire time.
“I’ll be back,”
Mara said, faintly disgusted with herself.
He laughed
reproachfully. “Aye, to sleep.”
“With you,” she
reminded him.
He quieted,
running his claws abrasively along the left bat-wing at the head of his empty
bed. “Aye,” he said. “With the fool who giveth thee lead.”
“Yes, but that
isn’t why I keep coming back.” She gave him a shrug and half a tired smile. “At
least, it isn’t the only reason.”
“Pretty bird,”
he grumbled, and waved her off. “Fly then.”
She went.
*
*
*
“Honestly,” said
Horuseps, stacking books on the shelves behind his dais. “One of these nights,
he’s going to split you up the middle cock-first, and you, o my delightful
child, are going to have the temerity to be surprised.”
His was not the
first theater she’d invaded today, but it was there that she’d stayed, and in
spite of the fact that she’d mastered his art, he let her. Indeed, after he’d
reached the end of his lecture on the energies of life surrounding them on the
unseen planes, he’d dismissed his class and called her down to him, alone.
She knew his
casual remarks were aimed at prying information out of her, but she talked
anyway. It was pleasant to be with Horuseps, she realized. Pleasant to watch
his graceful movements as he put his teaching aids in order, pleasant to listen
to the easy roll and rise of his androgynous voice, pleasant to feel the
knife-edged humor and secret shadows of his vulnerable mind. It was almost like
having a friend, which was a nice way to feel, particularly so soon after she’d
had a spike run through him three times.
“What are you
hoping to achieve?” he asked now, inspecting each of a series of stone discs as
he arranged them carefully in a chest.
“I don’t know,”
Mara admitted. “Sometimes I think I hate him, not because I don’t know what
he’s doing, but because he makes me not know what
I’m
doing.”
“And sometimes…?”
Mara blew a sigh
through her bared teeth and shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t even hate him.”
He patted her
head on his way to another shelf.
“I don’t have
anything else he wants except sex,” she said, rubbing distractedly at her scalp
to take away the unpleasant tingle left by his touch. “But what’s the point of
withholding it when I know he can’t give me what I want?”
“Did I hear that
correctly?”
“I like sex,”
Mara muttered. “I like his kind best. Damn me, I want to be with him.”
“You’re actually
withholding it?” Horuseps pressed. “You’ve been sleeping with him all this
time—”
“It’s only been
a few days.”
“Precious, that
is a painfully long time to sleep beside a demon without either fucking him or
dying.” He started to brush at the dusty sockets of a hideously malformed
skull, then suddenly stopped and swung around to face her, both eyebrows
twitching straight out, sincerely astonished. “Good gracious, are you here for
advice?”