Bone Lord Page 7

  “Give me a night with you, and you’ll find out.”

  “I cannot give you the whole night, Vance,” she said as she pulled my cuirass off my torso. “The last souls you gave me won’t last so long. And you haven’t even begun to prove that you are worthy of a night with a goddess. But this hunger that gnaws at… certain parts of me needs satiating. If you prove yourself worthy, there will be more. Much more. But for now, you just get… a taste.”

  As she said this, her lips brushed my neck, and her tongue flickered out to quickly tease my earlobe, causing a pleasant chill to rush down my spine before she pulled away. In an instant, she was in front of me, the light of the full moon bright on her pale breasts, her smile hungry and inviting. Her tongue had left a hot glow on my earlobe, and the rest of my body screamed to be given the same.

  “What about her?” I asked, suddenly remembering that Elyse was sleeping just a few yards away from us.

  Isu shot a glare of contempt over at her.“What about her?” she hissed. “Is her sleep more important than intimately communing with the Goddess of Death?”

  If this was a trick question, I wasn’t going to answer it. Instead, I locked her eyes in an intense stare and boldly reached for her hips, letting my hands slide over them and onto her full, round ass. She gasped with sudden pleasure as I dug my fingertips into her firm flesh and pulled her close, pressing her hips against mine, so that she could feel the hardness of my arousal.

  The glowing light of the ruby around her throat was pulsing at a rapid pace now, and I could see her nostrils flare subtly as her breathing quickened.

  “Show me what you’re made of, mortal,” she purred, and I slid my right hand up her smooth back, slipped my fingers through her raven hair and pulled her head toward mine with gentle firmness.

  My lips met those of the goddess, and hers parted immediately to welcome my tongue. As we kissed, I slipped my left hand around her slim waist, dragging my fingertips with a featherlight touch up across her silky belly before I cupped her right breast, pressing my fingertips into her flesh with sudden firmness and caused her to gasp with delight into my mouth.

  She disengaged from the kiss, panting for breath, her breasts heaving, and stared with naked hunger into my eyes.

  “I want more, Vance. More.”

  Tracing my fingertips in a light, teasing passage down her side, I leaned in and began to kiss her again, this time brushing my lips against the exquisitely smooth skin of her neck to nuzzle her there while my hand drifted steadily down to the meeting of her thighs. There, I found a potently arousing wetness and heat. Isu moaned loudly and convulsed with an almost violent shudder as I began to work my magic there with my fingers.

  She dug her fingertips into my back and pulled me forcefully closer before clamping her mouth onto mine, moaning with bliss as we kissed and my fingers worked at a steady rhythm. She pulled back for just a moment and looked me in the eyes with indescribable desperation before she began kissing and nibbling at my neck and dragging her nails across my back. She was moaning so loudly now that I couldn’t believe Elyse hadn’t woken up. But we were too deep in to stop.

  Suddenly, Isu threw her head back and released a moaning cry that sounded like a thousand women all screaming out in pleasure at once, and a huge shudder rocked her entire body, the force of it crashing in waves through her again and again as I kept my hand on her sex, slowing down my movements but not diminishing their force, until she collapsed into my arms after what seemed like several minutes of moaning convulsions. Her breasts heaved as she panted into my neck, her arms suddenly slack and loose around my shoulders. Hundreds of birds took flight, startled by the sound, flapping in panic through the dark treetops.

  “So, that’s what it’s like when a goddess comes,” I whispered into her ear. “I like it. But we’re only just getting started, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Vance,” she whispered, “but this is where our time together ends tonight.”

  “What?” I asked. “We barely started.”

  “I need more souls. Give me more souls, and you’ll not only get more powers, you’ll get more of me.”

  “I didn’t even—”

  “More souls, Vance. This is all I can do… for now.”

  The weight of her body against mine suddenly vanished, and I staggered forward, stumbling through the air where her body had been a mere split-second earlier. I looked around, but there was no sign of her. A gentle breeze rustled the dry leaves underfoot as it swept along the forest floor, but then everything was still and quiet again. It felt almost like what had just happened had been a hallucination, or perhaps a dream. But I could still smell her delectable scent on me, as real as the smell of damp leaves or the feel of the breeze on my skin. Then, looking down, I saw a single hair, long and black, draped over my shoulder. I picked it up and examined it in the moonlight. It was real enough.

  I looked across at the skeleton still standing there. The rest of them were at their assigned posts at various points around the perimeter of the campsite.

  “Well, you got to see a bit of a show, right, buddy? It’s not every day you get to see a goddess being fingered, is it?”

  The skeleton cocked his head and his jaw chattered bizarrely. Was he laughing? After that, he strode off, resuming his patrolling of the shadows with his skeletal companions. Feeling both excited and disappointed by what had just happened, I strolled back into the campsite to check on Elyse. She was still snoring softly and didn’t seem to have been awoken by Isu’s moans and screams of pleasure. There was no indication that she had any idea what had just happened a couple of yards away from her. The wine must have done a pretty thorough job of knocking her out.

  I settled down and resumed eating the roast hares in silence, and then enjoyed some of the soldiers’ brandy to wash the meat down. It was crude, harsh-tasting stuff, but I couldn’t deny that I had a bit of an unhealthy affinity for cheap, nasty liquor. As I lay down later to sleep, I reflected on what had been a very interesting, and very weird, day. What had started off as a simple exploration of a crypt had ended up with me obtaining necromancer’s powers, gaining a deposed—and smoking hot—bishop as an ally, taking on a quest to kill another bishop, killing a giant man-eating lizard, and finally with me pleasuring the Goddess of Death herself.

  “What a day,” I murmured with a smile as I curled up inside my cloak on the ground and closed my eyes. “What a fucking day.”

  Chapter Seven

  When I woke, the sky was still dark and peppered with stars, but the eastern horizon glowed with the promise of the coming dawn. I pushed my cloak off and sprang to my feet. I felt a bit stiff after all the fighting I’d done the previous day, but the night’s sleep had done a good job at refreshing me.

  A few feet away, Elyse was still snoring softly and showed no signs that she’d be waking up any time soon. The fire had burned out, leaving a pit of gently glowing coals. I smiled when I saw my skeletons still patrolling the perimeter of the camp. These guys really were perfect sentries.

  After drinking my fill of water and doing a few stretches, I walked out of the camp, while giving the skeletons a mental command to protect Elyse. I instructed my main skeleton, the one with the paladin’s greatsword, whom I’d nicknamed “Sarge,” to come fetch me right away if there was even a whiff of trouble. He seemed to understand, so I set off for the soldiers’ camp.

  As I’d predicted, it was mostly undisturbed, and the corpse of the giant lizard was still there, right where it had fallen. Some of the dead soldiers had some flesh chewed off them, so some sort of carrion eater must have enjoyed a meal here. The lizard, though, was undamaged; its armor-like scales were surely far too tough for any scavenger to bite through.

  “All right,” I said, rubbing my hands together eagerly, “let’s see what these new powers of mine have to offer.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to activate the power-up, but I figured that, as had been the case for raising skeletons, it would be quite intuitive. I sta
red at the massive lizard and focused on its body with full intensity.

  Nothing happened.

  “Come on, come on,” I muttered. “Isu said I’d be able to do this—unless she was just fucking with me.”

  I wouldn’t put something like that past the Goddess of Death—the old legends said she could be something of a capricious trickster—but I felt that her gift had been genuine. Maybe I just wasn’t doing it quite right.

  “All right, let’s try this again.”

  This time, instead of focusing my gaze on the dead beast, I closed my eyes and tried to shut out everything around me, focusing instead on the presence of the creature, the weight of its body, the space it occupied. I wasn’t quite sure how it got there, but my mind began to produce an intense hallucination. The image seemed completely foreign at first, and then, I realized I was visualizing the insides of the massive lizard. I was like a tiny creature, invisible to the naked eye, traveling through the thick, congealed blood in its veins with ease. Like a magnet, its cold, still heart was pulling me onward, drawing me into its center.

  I surged forward at a furiously accelerating pace until everything became a blur of color and light.

  Then, suddenly, I was there. A huge heart floated before me, a once-living pillar of flesh. And then, I saw my hands reaching out to it, glowing with a yellow-green energy. Without hesitating, I plunged my hands in, and a tremendous jolt of electricity surged from my body, through my arms, and into the organ.

  Almost imperceptibly at first, it started beating in slow, booming pulses. It sucked in the black blood and pumped out a new, bright, yellow-green liquid. Whatever the hell it was, it definitely wasn’t blood.

  I had the sensation of my stomach lurching up into my mouth as I was hurled with massive force out of the lizard’s innards and back into myself.

  “Holy fuck that was weird,” I gasped, staggering back.

  A great groan rumbled through the lizard’s corpse, then its limbs twitched a couple of times before all of its muscles seemed to spasm at once, clenching tight and then relaxing over and over, as if they were slowly learning how to function again. Finally, the creature’s eyes opened. But they were no longer the dark-brown eyes of a reptile. Now, they shone through the dying darkness with that same yellow-green glow.

  The huge lizard got up, stretching its body out slowly and looking around in what had to be confusion. Then it caught sight of me, and for one frankly terrifying second, I thought it was about to break into a charge and come at me with its jaws open wide. But instead, it rumbled softly, waddled over to me, its tongue flickering in and out of its mouth like a snake’s, and stopped in front of me. There, it slowly lowered its head to the ground like an obedient lapdog.

  I hadn’t often felt as powerful I did in that precise moment.

  Some lapdog this thing was: four or five tons of muscle, steel-proof armor, monstrous claws and jaws, and a spiked tail that looked like it could batter down a small house in the blink of an eye. The huge lizard was staring at me with curious glowing eyes, when I suddenly recognized that look.

  “I’m gonna call you Fang,” I said without a moment’s hesitation.

  The look I’d seen in this giant man-eating zombie-lizard’s eyes was the same one my loyal childhood dog Fang had given me whenever he’d lay down with his paws at my feet. Fang’s eyes had been warm and brown and dripping with affection and innocence, whereas this lizard’s eyes were glowing an unnatural hue of green and looked terrifyingly soulless. Still, I recognized a look of devotion when I saw it, and the name “Fang” really seemed to suit him.

  “I’m gonna get on your back now, Fang,” I said.

  Fang let out a raspy grunt that I interpreted as meaning “All right, I’m cool with that.”

  I climbed warily up onto Fang’s neck, and he gave no indication that he felt uncomfortable or that he was going to buck me off, so I got myself into a comfortable spot just behind his shoulders and settled in for what would be an interesting ride.

  I wasn’t sure whether he understood my words or was simply reading my intentions in the way that the skeletons seemed to, but I could feel some sort of invisible bond between us. In any case, I wasn’t going to need reins. I visualized my campsite and thought unambiguously about going straight there. That turned out to be all I needed to do. With a rumbling growl, Fang set off at a brisk walk in the direction of the camp.

  Now, I’d ridden plenty of horses before, from the biggest and most expensive warhorses down to lame old hacks, as well as mules, a water buffalo once, a dire wolf kitted out with the battle tack of the northern barbarian tribes, and a trained giant racing snail. Riding Fang was nothing like riding any of those things.

  First, when he moved, he swayed from side to side. I figured that anyone who was prone to seasickness would have a very bad time on his back. Second, the texture of his scales was kind of like a cobbled street that had somehow been wrapped around a gigantic cow. It actually gave a pretty decent massage to my stiff muscles, but I figured that I’d have to get a custom saddle made eventually. Lastly, there was his coloring. Most animals people rode had drab, earthy colors on their scales or fur, but Fang was bold red and jet black, with a blood-red head. I felt like I was riding a comet, a comet that just happened to be able to rip a man in half with a single bite of his jaws and kill the biggest warhorse in the blink of an eye with a lash of his tail.

  “You’re gonna be quite the companion, Fang.” I leaned forward to scratch him on his scales behind his ear holes. I knew he wasn’t a dog, but it had been a while since I’d had a dog, or any pet really, so I was making do.

  When we got to within 20 yards of the campsite, I ordered Fang to stop, jumped off his back, and told him to wait there, hidden behind tree trunks and thick foliage.

  The sun was shining bright now, and the woods were alive with birdsong. As I had suspected, Elyse was awake. She had evidently washed her face and brushed her hair, because she was looking far fresher than she should, having finished off as much liquor as she had not too many hours ago.

  “Morning, Vance,” she said cheerfully. “You sleep okay?”

  “Well enough, but not as well you did,” I answered with a lopsided grin. “The way you were passed out, a cave troll who had just eaten a cartful of beans could have farted his way through the night, and you wouldn’t have stirred.”

  Elyse locked eyes with me, and the corners of her mouth curled up into a mischievous smile.“Oh, I don’t know about that, Vance. It takes a lot less than a thunderous cave troll fart to wake me up. I mean, the sound of a woman being… carnally pleasured a few feet away from me—that’d do the trick.”

  I was left speechless and slack-jawed.

  “Who was she?” she asked before I could even think of saying anything. “Just some abandon?”

  “Some abandon?”

  “You know. You worldly men do it all the time. Meet some woman, promise her the world, get in her panties, and then abandon her the instant the fun is over. Hence, an ‘abandon.’ At least, that’s what I call them.”

  I hesitated for a moment before replying; it didn’t seem like the best idea to go telling a bishop that I’d fingered the Goddess of Death.

  “She wasn’t an ‘abandon,’” I said. “She was someone I’ve, uh, been getting to know recently. Someone I know I’ll be seeing again.”

  “I see. But why was she lurking in the woods? Where is she now? Why wouldn’t she just come and sleep in our camp instead of hiding out there like a rogue or a bandit? She’s not a bandit, is she? I’ve heard stories about female bandits, and—”

  “She’s not a rogue, and she’s no bandit. She’s just… very independent. Likes to do her own thing, comes and goes as she pleases. ‘I don’t need no man,’ you know. That kinda attitude. Except that, when she does need a man, she comes to me.”

  “I suppose you’re not the marrying type, are you?” she asked. She seemed genuinely curious rather than judgmental. Strange.

  “I don’
t see myself getting tied down to any one woman any time soon,” I admitted. In my code of honor, fucked up as it may have been, honesty and truthfulness were high up there on the priority list, and as stunning and sexy as Elyse was, I wasn’t going to use lies and false promises to get in her pants. “You may not like it, but that’s just how I do things.”

  She shrugged, and, remarkably enough, a glint of mischief continued to gleam in her pretty eyes.

  “At least you’re honest.” She folded up her cloak and started packing her things. “Most men aren’t. They’ll pretend to be a fairytale prince come to rescue you, to be yours forever, and then… abandon. Just as easy as they coughed up those sickly sweet lies, they disappear. Well, I’m not stupid. I’m not going to be anyone’s abandon.” She suddenly turned and fixed me with a piercing glare. “She knows this, right, the woman you were with last night? She knows you have no plans to ‘get tied down,’ as you would have it?”

  “That’s obvious. I don’t have that fairytale prince in me.”

  The smile returned instantly to Elyse’s face. “Good! Well, if you’re both open about your intentions, then there’s nothing wrong with having some fun. I just hope she’s okay with sleeping in the woods on her own, or whatever she does.”

  With the things this girl said, you’d never know she was a member of the clergy. The better I got to know her, the more I liked her. It seemed that she had a very open attitude toward activities of the carnal kind, which again reminded me of the divine curves hidden in those cleric robes.

  “She can handle herself, and she prefers being on her own most of the time.”

  Because she was the immortal Goddess of Death.

  “I see. She sounds pretty interesting. Maybe I’ll meet her sometime, huh?”

  I had to fight to stifle a laugh, which escaped my nostrils as an undignified snort. Elyse raised an eyebrow and frowned, clearly wondering how I’d managed to find humor in what she said, but I kept my mouth shut about the true identity of my mystery lady; things were complicated enough already.