Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) (28 page)

This time the smile
appeared more genuine. But her eyes indicated he wasn’t out of the
woods yet, and if he didn’t navigate this evening perfectly he’d be
docking with Alamo tonight.

He sat across from her. As they ate,
she told him about buying worms at Abe’s. Amy told him of Carmen’s
latest fight with Derrick, and them both getting arrested during
make-up sex in the back of Derrick’s truck.

Most women who just got engaged would
rush out and buy wedding magazines. They’d be debating colors,
flowers and a romantic locale for a honeymoon.

But not Amy.

She was more interested in worms and
Carmen’s make-up sex.

God he loved her.

“
So where’s my brother?”
Shane asked.

“
Oh, I dropped him off at
his friend’s house.”

Shane grunted and dropped
his fork. “I told him I didn’t want him hanging out with that
freaky kid.”

“
How do you know it’s
Zack?”

“’
Cause he doesn’t have
any other friends.”

“
Then let him have this
one. Plus you’ll get me all to yourself tonight.”

He
craned his neck and exhaled a deep breath. “Fine.”
For now.

When Amy finished eating,
she took her plate and fork to the sink. “I want to be at the creek
by six tomorrow morning.” She squirted a sponge with soap and began
scrubbing her plate. “So let’s get to bed early.”

From behind, he wrapped
his arms around her small waist and pressed a kiss to the crook of
her neck. He whirled her to face him. “I sure ain’t one to refuse a
girl her beauty sleep. Off to bed it is.”

Amy laughed. “That’s not
what I—”

He covered her lips with a
hand, drowning her words. “Hush.” His pelvis tight against her
hips, he pinned her against the sink. When her body leaned into
his, his erection pushed painfully against the crotch of his
jeans.

He kissed her.

The radio DJ cracked jokes about the
bizarre atmospheric disturbances from the night before.

Amy’s posture stiffened.
Her muscles tensed, shoulders squared. Without breaking from the
kiss, he reached and jerked the radio’s cord from the wall. He
slipped his hands under her shirt and pulled it over her
head.

Shoving him, she shot a
glance over her shoulder, out the window. With one hand, she drew
the curtains. With the other she covered her breasts. “Don’t let
the neighbors see Brassy and Sassy!”

“
What neighbors?” He
reached behind, his fingers unclasping her skimpy blue bra. With
his head between her breasts, he licked his way from Brassy to
Sassy. Inhaling, he moaned.

Amy dipped under him, escaping from
his grasp and fled through the den. Her taut ass turned the corner
and vanished down the hall.

Two
hundred and thirty-seven.
Grinning, he
dashed after her. The bedroom door slammed in his face. When he
tried the knob it didn’t budge.

“
What’s the magic word?”
she called from the other side.

“
Let me in!” He had been
gone ten days with nothing to comfort him but his right hand. He
was so damn horny he could barely think straight, nodding through
dinner, struggling to stay focused on the conversation and not on
her—

She laughed. “Nope. Try
again.” Shane heard the bedroom radio crank, an old country
station.

“
I guess
you don’t want me to screw your brains out?” He tried the knob
again but still it didn’t turn. “I swear to God I will kick this
door down if you don’t open it. You know I will.”
Then I’m really gonna fuck the future Mrs. Baker
raw.

When he heard her snicker, he stepped
backward and kicked. The latch broke, shuddering the door
open.

His grunt drowned out the
steel guitar. “Hello, baby.”

# # #

Isaac sprinted after Galmoria. Her
taunting laughter echoed deep within the large tunnel. His bare
feet pounded the coarse bone as he flung himself into the depths of
Nephruch’s bowels.

The furious wasps caused a
patchwork of welts to seize his bare chest, pumping hot toxicity
straight to his heart. His skin turned sallow. Stings to his groin
left white bubbles of pus on his throbbing cock.

Galmoria wished him
nothing but sorrow and pain and she would deliver as much as
possible and all in the name of the sacred ritual, which he had no
choice but to engage in, not if he wanted to fuck his
mate.

Isaac’s feet touched a smooth crystal
floor. Just as he looked down the bottom dropped from beneath him.
Shards of crystal imploded and rained down.

The tunnel vanished.

With a crash he slammed onto a wood
plank. Looking around he discovered he was in a small ferry, a
large monstrous rat carved in the wood at each end. Murky water
splashed onto the bow.

Over a dozen wharf rats scurried
inside the boat. On the opposite end, a small brown-haired boy
wearing a red cloak rowed.

Stalactites made of sharp bones jutted
from above and Isaac was forced to duck.

“
Samuel of the rats at
your service,” the boy said.

“
Where is she?” Isaac
brandished his dagger. “Where is Galmoria?”

“
Tis not my place to know
such things, sir. Only I have known the rodents for two
centuries.”

“
Get me to shore.” Isaac
crossed the boat, stepping on rats biting at his ankles.

“
Impossible, sir. Ye are
my passenger on a cursed voyage.” Samuel stared past him and began
to whistle a forlorn tune. He sang:

The rats and pigs will
come for thee

The rivers and bones will
have your soul

Thou eyes and liver will
rot with me

Ye shall pay the eternal
toll—

“
Enough!” Isaac’s dagger
cut through the boy’s neck.

Laughter echoed from behind. Glancing
back, Isaac growled at the same boy, now seated at the opposite
end. The rats scurried between the two cloned
ferry-boys.

“
My Master said, if thou
discerners him. Me thought I known a beast, but man is he. Behold
this creature, he is no king, of man or beast.”

Isaac’s lips quivered as
he snarled. “Cease your ridicule, fiendish slave. I shall rule your
soul.” A rat chomped at Isaac’s foot and he kicked, sending the
rodent hurling into the muddy water. A yag-yaht, slender albino
snake-like creature with a barbed tail, swallowed the rat whole
with its fish-like large mouth.

The boy squealed like a
mad swine. “Thou murdered Osklot!”

A sinister urge tugged at Isaac.
Howling, he stabbed another rat onto his dagger. The vermin
screeched and writhed at the tip of his blade.

Both visages of the boy
violently shook. They merged as one—the original one. The boy
charged and pummeled Isaac with tiny fists.

With a swift arc of his
blade, he lopped Samuel’s head off. The severed head splashed into
the dark river. The remaining rats jumped over the rim of the boat
and swam toward the head.

“
The whole world shall
follow the beast. Hail the king,” the head sputtered while it
drifted. The rats escorted it to shore.

Ahead, a fern green light lit the
tunnel. As the boat drifted closer, the cavern gradually opened
into a vast room, at least ten stories high and wide, all cast in
the same green glow. The boat suddenly ran aground. The river went
dry. A swarm of yag-vahts that had been lurking beneath the water
slithered into the shadows.

White sand rained from
high above. As the heavy sand filled the chamber, he heard
Galmoria’s laughter resounding off the high ceiling. “Poor, poor
Samuel.” Her words echoed. “Such a sweet, sweet boy—a Librus, too.
Such puny children.”

“
Show yourself, Mother!
Come to me.”

“
Don’t be hasty, my cub.
Mother wants foreplay.” Her demonic groans of pre-orgasm flooded
the room, as quickly as the sand.

The grit covered the boat,
reaching to Isaac’s knees now. He spotted the rats carrying
Samuel’s head up wide black steps. Isaac followed. The steps felt
like rubber—rotten muscle of Nephruch.

The sand fell harder and faster. It
spilled over his head and bit into his cuts and wounds caused by
the wasps, rats and his self-inflicted laceration to his
chest.

At the top of the steps, Vostrict
perched on what appeared to be a petrified mushroom, large enough
to serve as a throne.

Isaac scowled and charged
the giant scorpion. Its tail went erect, stinger shooting thick
venom. Isaac took a face full of the poison as he leaped onto
Vostrict’s back. Isaac straddled the scorpion as if it was a raging
bull, and held onto the creature’s bone-hard carapace.

“
Take me out of here,
Vostrict. Obey me, you pest!”

Vostrict scurried down the
steps, but not before his stinger stabbed into Isaac’s back. Isaac
winced, but couldn’t suppress a howl that tore from his throat. The
stinger, a bony stiletto dagger, harpooned through his backside and
Isaac felt it throb as it unleashed streams of venom into his body.
His hands gripped tighter on Vostrict’s shell.

The scorpion dug through the sand,
burying deeper and deeper, taking Isaac with him.

Isaac’s vision blurred. Vostrict’s
poison relentlessly coursed through his body, a mixture of lava and
ice, scorching and simultaneously freezing. His muscles locked.
Couldn’t even open his jaw to curse the arachnid.

Vostrict crashed through a
floor of sinew. The cavern and green lights vanished, replaced by a
vast, purple sky and clouds of pale lavender. Isaac rolled off the
scorpion. With a thud, he landed on a bed of sand. An endless sea
lapped at a peaceful orange shore.

Soft waves nuzzled him. With trembling
hands he splashed his face. Blood from his fresh wounds seeped into
the water and was carried by the returning tide.

His muscles were stiff like bolts and
rods had been inserted in his limbs and torso. And his teeth
chattered. And.his heart thundered.

And he thought he might be
dying.

When he looked into the sky the colors
melded. He forced himself to stand on rigid, shaky legs.

In the last hundreds
years, he’d wandered the planets of numerous galaxies. Always alone
but never lonely. Glancing at the sky, he longed to see his twin,
know what she was thinking, what she was doing. Was she safe? Was
his wraith serving her well?

He had finally found his
twin. He would no longer be alone. But standing on this beach, in
this forsaken universe, awaiting his demonic mother, he felt
cold…and alone.

A behemoth of a two headed wolf with
squid tentacles rose from the sea. Mist shrouded its lower half,
but Galmoria could clearly be seen riding on its back.

She rode her mount onto the shore,
still wearing her boots, but nothing else. The salt water dripped
from her naked body and Isaac’s cock throbbed with anticipation and
need. The need to dominate her.

“Hello, Mother.”

A small lamp cast a soft
florescent glow on the bed where Amy knelt, dressed only in baby
blue panties. Against her chest she held a black cowboy hat
covering her small breasts. “It’s yours. I found it at the
Shadowlin Booth Library fair.”

Never
one to break tradition, Amy always had a surprise for him when he
got home. Last time he was away, he returned to a bottle of
homemade raspberry wine that she’d received in lieu of a tip. She
drank it down in two nights, singing its praises in a girlish, cute
as hell singsong tone.
O’Raspberry!
O’Raspberry! Finest wine is mine O’Raspberry! O’Raspberry!
O’Raspberry! Wine gets me horny every time.
So even though she drank the whole bottle it had still been a
gift for him in the end.

The Lypsium cologne she’d
gotten him last year was the best. He didn’t like it, but Amy loved
it and he loved the way it smelled on her. That familiar scent of
spiced peaches and sage wood went straight to his groin. And she’d
obviously splashed some on tonight.

His eyes on the Stetson,
he said, “Let me have it, baby.”

“
Come and get it,
cowboy.”

Shane discarded his
clothes and dived onto the bed. From a kneeling position, he
perused her from head to toe without missing any of the crevices in
between. With the cutest laugh, Amy hung the hat on his
erection.

He gyrated, before placing
it on his head. “Yippi ki yay.” Using one hand against her chest,
he pushed her to the mattress. Now she was sprawled out for him to
really get a look at her petite body. Each and every time he
towered over her little figure he felt like a giant about to devour
a helpless little damsel. He covered her body with his, planting
his fist on either side of her face; her smiling pink lips
reflected the pale lamp’s glow. Gently as his patience would allow,
he guided the length of his shaft toward her slippery sex. The tip
of his cock had just begun to enter her when her hands suddenly
retaliated with a barrage of slaps against his chest and
flanks.