The Chronicles of Heaven's War: Burning Phoenix (51 page)

Asotos advanced until he stood only inches
from Darla, a mist carried on his breath, filled with the scent of
manly desire. Involuntarily, Darla sucked in the intoxicating
aroma, it filling up the loneliness inside with growing passion.
“Darla… Darla…what an unfitting name for a
goddess
such as
yourself. Who cannot see your beauty, or feel your compassionate
desire?”

Darla sighed, anxious, as a heated rush
swept through her, goose bumps rising on her skin while sweat
formed on her brow. What was wrong? No man had ever roused the
animal within her as this person was doing! A beast was waking
inside, seeking its carnal lasciviousness, heedless of trap or
danger. She drew in another deep breath of the heated mist, it
sending her heart aflutter while throwing her mind into an orgasmic
faint, the feeling racing down through her body until she quietly
moaned in the ecstatic flow.

Asotos smiled sweetly, sensing the woman’s
labored breathing. “Dear one, the moon reveals love’s yearnings.
Have the powers of evil kept secret from you the man I truly am?
‘Giver of Dreams Beyond Dreams’ is my name – ‘Chrusion, the Master
of Love’. All your sisters have gathered their arms to me and know
this to be true. Have they selfishly hidden from you these truths
so that you, alone, have not experienced the
fourth
heaven
? Malcontents they are, jealous and afraid, not caring
that you, too, deserve to experience the same as they.”

Asotos’ voice echoed his own growing desire
for this woman. “Oh, how you move me, my manly ardor seeking your
flowered palace, to find its journey through scented streets into
hidden chambers of fathomless delights. Your breasts intoxicate me
in ways unlike that of any other woman. To drink at the fountains
of life such a delight, I to make their milky springs burst forth
to satisfy my thirsty palate. Oh, my darling, the gifts we could
share by our touch, our embrace...” He reached out to rest a hand
the Darla’s shoulder as he leaned forward to kiss the woman’s
wanting lips.

“
That
is enough!” Lowenah’s sharp,
scolding tongue cut through the night. “
Words,
I said, and
that is all. Trust me, I will strike should you attempt a coup with
a touch or kiss.”

Asotos glared at Erithia, but chose to speak
no word in rebuff. Darla was nearly swooning under his spell and he
dare not risk breaking it. He again took up his haunting refrains
of fervid love songs, titillating Darla’s imagination with his
display of wanting desire. “Oh, my darling little sister, like a
virgin lass you are to me. Come to my lush fields of flowered
clover and learn what it is like to become a woman in the arms of a
god-son. Feel my strength as we ride, together, the comets across
the velvety skies of wistful dreams.”

Like an unbridled girl waiting her first
love, Darla spread her mind, opening her heart to Asotos’ beckoning
spirit. As she did, he reached into her soul with his spirit, to
gather hers to his. There, together entwined in mental copulation,
he sang love’s most sensual of songs, all the while telling her
that this rapturous interlude was but a shadow of things to come
when, soon, they would be entwining physically in each other’s
arms.

Darla was becoming lost in a romantic
rhapsody, the depths of which she had never experienced. The
ecstasy of the moment cast lights of dancing hues across the
woman’s eyes with each wave of climactic delight. As the unleashed
cosmic energy of the emotional intercourse raced through her body,
the woman felt her legs growing weak while her heart began to pain
with excitement to the point of bursting. Her arms slowly closed
about her body in a sensual embrace, and soon the erotic touch of
excited fingers was adding to the energy of the hypnotic symphony
twirling about in her head.

Asotos smiled. Long had it been since he had
practiced using his seductive powers to sway the heart of a woman.
Well he remembered his joy when his twisting music could open the
soul of the most wary of Erithia’s vixens, discovering their
deepest secrets to use to his advantage, to satisfy his desires. He
frowned. Not all had fallen to his wiles. Threatening those
creatures were, with extraordinary mightiness. So he had to driven
them away from his company, for fear they would discover the
truth.

As Darla moaned in growing arousal, lost in
lustful, passionate visions, Asotos probed deeper into the woman’s
hidden chambers secreted away from even her closest companions. How
disappointing -worthless refuse of a troubled mind and cheated
heart! Little could he find to support his suspicions concerning
Erithia’s reasons for delivering this girl to him. Oh, yes, it was
not by chance this Darla was Erithia’s
horse-maiden
, but
why? What was the trickster up to? Deeper on he probed.

So easily Asotos managed to open the most
secret of sealed rooms in Darla’s mind. On and on the man delved
until, suddenly, he found a passage far back in the recesses of
Darla’s mind that was so ominous and foreboding that even Asotos
felt a chill run down his back. He smiled. So, there
was
something special about this creature, something dark and sinister.
His heart raced with excitement as he slowly began to make his way
down the passage to guarded chambers far below.

Asotos’ searching came to an abrupt stop,
sending a crashing pain back up through his mind. A wall of
impenetrable energy barred his path, the girl’s mental powers so
great that even as he played his most hypnotic music, she refused
to allow entrance to the domains beyond. Risking losing control
over the woman, he gathered up all his available inner strength to
see what lay beyond those guarded doors.

Surprised, Asotos let out a quiet gasp – a
gasp that went unnoticed by Darla, she being lost in feverish
orgasms. There was something
alive
hiding beyond the locked
passage, a beast unlike anything he had ever encountered either in
vision or reality. In anger, it hissed, recognizing him by calling
out his name, reviling him for his intrusion into its private
world. It then quickly bounded away into the fathomless depths,
leaving the man perplexed and troubled.

Before Asotos could gather his wits about
him, he heard another creature crying out his name in despair. Far
beyond his mental reach, a voice, hideous and beautiful, called out
hopefully for desired rescue, like a child pleading for help from
its father. Asotos jerked back, dumbfounded at what he had
witnessed. Something else was alive inside this woman’s mind that
sought escape from this prison, something so hauntingly familiar,
something longing to be with
him!

At that instant, Darla heard the faintest of
cries echoing up through the rapturous music being played across
her mind and heart. The demon was waked, its evil voice intruding
upon those passionately intoxicating interludes. With all her
strength, the woman reached back into her mind to chase her monster
away so that she might enjoy a little longer this most haunting of
moments. Then she heard it, the creature calling out to the man who
was giving her these dreams of dreams, beseeching him for
deliverance.

Darla’s eyes flew open in horror at the
thought that the demon was calling out to its creator in desperate
hope for rescue. She turned and stared dumbly into Asotos’ face.
Here stood the only man who could ever give to her the Dream of
Dreams, the ecstasy of the Immortals - her
greatest
enemy,
king over the demons of both flesh and spirit.

Gradually, reality began to sink in. The
whispered tales told by Lowenah’s daughters when the wine was on
them held more truth than Darla had ever guessed - tales so
outrageous that they made the girl’s heart ache at the telling of
them. Now her heartache was growing at the thought of never
realizing the indescribable, heated passion experienced by those
women in former days. With each passing second of her waning erotic
fires, the girl’s heart was sinking further into forlorn
despair.

What was happening? Why did she have to
suffer this evil at experiencing, even if only in vision, what was
never to be hers to luxuriate in? Looking up at Lowenah with
pleading eyes and a face reflecting betrayal, Darla choked out a
mournful cry filled with lament and anguish. Her mind screamed out
in a naked savagery like that of a wounded lioness mourning her
murdered cubs, ‘Why have you hidden these secrets from your little
child?! Am I so wicked so that I, alone, must receive this loss, to
never reach the mountain peaks and soar above the clouds as
all
my other sisters have?! Who are
you
to deliver me
to Heaven’s gate to only cast me into the depths of Hell?’

Backing away from Asotos, Darla turned to
stare up at the bright, full moon. Chiding the girl for her
insolence for even thinking she deserved better, the moon’s cold
silvery light shouted out its scathing rebuke. ‘See, little
brattling, even the Maker of Worlds has harbored no place for you
in her heart, playing the
cat
with you in order to toy with
the man hurting her. She has used you up to the full, leaving only
an empty shell of worthlessness, which you already were in the eyes
of everyone living. Now you also see the pain he gives, and so much
you deserve it to be, misfit! Worthless little piece of filth,
troubling thing...’

Asotos lifted a hand in sympathy at seeing
Darla’s plight, his tongue seeking to cast its magic spell over
her. “My child, dearest of all my sisters, how sweet have been
these fleeting moments. Oh, how much I desire to wrap you up in my
embrace. You do not know the anguish of my heart at seeing my
dearest child weep, and so needlessly. Come...come with your lover
dear and we shall find Heaven’s delights.”

Darla broke into a pitiable howl as she sank
to her knees. Pitching forward on her elbows, she buried her face
in her hands, wailing like a mother birthing a lifeless child. Who
could she trust? No one!
No one!
Treachery and deceit were
her life-long companions, the mocking jaybird her ally. Oh, to die!
Oh, the wonderful delight of feeling nothing, forever nothing.

Sitting back on her knees, she reached out
toward the moon, wailing beseechingly, “Let me die! Oh! Oh, please
let me die! Have mercy on me! Fall from your haughty perch and
deliver me to ruination!” Through broken sobs, she cried,
“An
abomination I am in this desolate land, a living abortion of
revulsion! Take from me your cruel denunciations and cast me from
life so that I may have peace. What, am I too unfit for a warrior’s
tomb? Then give me a dog’s grave, or that of the forgotten foe.
Rest! Oh, please, kill me now so that I may find some
rest!”

Hands on knees, Darla cast her gaze down and
began a lament of distraught outbursts and intense weeping.
Silently, all the people gathered there watched, some in curiosity,
others in empathetic remorse. Asotos stood quiet, waiting the
moment to pass, understanding the need for this creature to
get
this out of her system
before he could continue. Lowenah sat
her mount, saddened by the need to
punish
her innocent child
so, but this was Rhiannon’s night. The suffering of this child was
only a shadow of the evil hour to come.

* * *

The blazing fires of the Guardians slowly
diminished into a burning yellow glow like that of molten gold, and
EremiaPikros’ silvery moon rose higher into the chill of the
planet’s night sky. All the while, Darla’s mournful weeping filled
with unrequited outbursts of wailing and forlorn anguish rent the
air, echoing their woeful sympathies far across the barren
landscape.

Finally, in one last outburst of hopeless
surrender, Darla sat back on her knees and unleashed blood-curdling
howls to the night’s sky the likes of which few had ever witnessed.
At last, when aching muscles refused to cooperate with her
devastated heart, the woman hunched forward in defeat,
sallow-faced, her breathing shallow and labored.

Thus came the moment of resigned surrender.
Never
in Darla’s life,
never
upon the sordid fields
of war,
never
in front of her arrogant and bigoted brethren,
never
in the councils when so many spoke against her, no
never
before in her entire miserable, dreadful existence
could she recall a time when her heart was filled with such
helpless despair. Without even the energy to sob, she sat there
silently, a few tears still flowing down her cheeks and splashing
into the sand.

When Darla finally bent her head down in
resigned despondency, Asotos made his move to accomplish complete
victory. He stepped close, extending a hand, lightly stroking her
hair with caring fingers, preparing to speak.

A searing pain rushed up through the back of
Asotos’ head and into his eyes, blinding him while creating an
agonizing moment. Lowenah’s anger rose along with the brightness of
the fiery sentinels as she warned, “Touch her again and I shall
smite your manhood, myself! The diseased curse of the syphilis you
delivered upon my creation in the Realms Beneath, I will pour out
on you a hundred fold until it eats away both your sight and mind.
I swear this by my name never uttered to mortal kind. I swear!”

After releasing the silky black strands of
Darla’s hair, the pain in Asotos’ head diminished, he quickly
regaining sight. Turning, he glared into Erithia’s smoldering orbs.
The witch’s power was too great for him… for the moment. He would
have to finish this game on her terms. Still, he was not
surrendered yet. After all, his tongue was very persuasive, having
seduced even the most loyal of Erithia’s daughters to join to him.
He focused his attention back on Darla.

His voice filled with heartfelt compassion,
Asotos waxed empathetic. “Oh, the folly of this night! This moment!
All these loving gifts that you need so dearly I could have long
ago given to you, most desirous of maidens, but for the evil done
to me… and to you. Look! With lies and deceit, your
loving
companions have littered your path, so that you must walk a lonely
road in desperate need of love. Come along with me, and this night
I shall give to you what others have hidden from you, the Dream of
Dreams. It beckons to you, my passionate ardor waiting your
rapturous embrace.”