Elizabeth Haydon - The Assassin King

A few more steps, he thought. Slowly.

A millennium of experience had trained him to never anticipate the host of the demon he was seeking. He had found F’dor clinging to any number of different types of men, women, and children. Rath had no fear of whatever form the monster took; he had watched dispassionately as the heads of toddlers in which the beasts had hidden exploded at the end of the Thrall ritual, because Rath understood the consequences of being swayed. Still, his curiosity got the better of him. He closed his eyes and tasted the wind on his tongue. Hrarfa.

The name resounded in his sinuses, clear as a bell. His heart, and that of the demon’s host, beat in perfect syn-chronicity. Assured again that he had found his quarry, Rath opened his eyes and moved silently closer to the glen. In the moonlight a woman was standing, her back to him, her long hair glistening in rivers of dark silver. She was stretching lazily in the moonglow, her hands running over her shoulders and through her hair in a slow, sensual dance, as if to gather the power of the heavenly light into herself. Rath inhaled; in what few tales were known about the hosts this demon had chosen, Hrarfa had rarely allowed herself to be seen in female form, the one closest to her formless spirit’s own. He took it as a fortuitous sign that she was about to die appropriately.

Portia smiled. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, in the pale light of the waxing moon. Nothing but shadows moved in the dark glade, but still she sensed a presence. The wind was high, and it caressed her human form like a lover, whispering over her skin with evanescent kisses, then moved on to tousle her hair.

The nascent fire in her poisonous spirit crackled with delight, both in the erotic sensation of wind on her skin and in the knowledge that her trap had been successfully sprung. Unlike her kin, many of whom saw the human form as a distasteful necessity for survival in the upworld, she had found the carnal delights of being encased in flesh to be a wonder that she both enjoyed and craved. There was a joy in the domination of a host, the pursuit and eventual capture of a new body, a pleasure in the eviction of its original owner through an exquisite painful devouring that left her aroused, alive in a way like no other. And there was solidity, a comforting sense of being still and real, so unlike the natural insecurity of being that was each F’dor’s bane. She had always been a bit of a risk taker, more daring than her fellow escapees of the Vault. Many of the Unspoken, as the dragons had called her kind, had discovered patience, a trait not naturally occurring in the children of dark fire, when they made their way upworld and away from their eternal prison. They had been able to build up empires slowly over the ages, trading hosts as cautiously as humans traded pieces in chess, biding their time, growing stronger in the material world, in the hope that the power they were gaining would enable them to at last find the rib of an Earthchild or some other way to free their fellows.

But she was different. She had found an intoxicating excitement in the lure, the switch, the deception of drawing unsuspecting humans to her, studying their ways, their traits, the very patterns in which they drew breath, then catching them unawares and ravaging their souls, taking their bodies for her own.

She had taken the form of a young Liringlas Skysinger once, several millennia ago and half a world away, and had learned some of the science of names, had made good use of what she had gleaned from him before she discarded his useless corpse in favor of one more interesting. She knew, as a result, how to bend her vibrations, alter the signature that her human form conveyed, until it could be almost anything that she wanted it to be. She also learned the intricacies of male lust, something she had used to her advantage on both sides of the bed. Eventually that led to her conquest of a First Generation Cymrian girl in Manosse, whose body was not subject to the ravages of time or age-related illness, seemingly immortal like the rest of the refugees from the Island of Serendair. She had liked the girl’s name—Portia—because it was very close in sound to her own, and the additional power the young woman’s lithe form and beauty gave her in enchanting foolish men through wanton sexuality. Finally, there was. an irony in subsuming a Cymrian—like the F’dor, they were a race of exiles with endless time to brood about being driven from their homeland. It was a perfect fit. Thus, trading hosts was almost never necessary anymore. But occasionally one came along that proved irresistible.

The Lord Cymrian had been one such temptation. Portia licked her lips, suddenly dry from the heat of anticipation and the kissing breath of the wind on them. Though she was in female form she had none of the physiological longings of a woman, did not feel the burning desire, the attraction of the flesh the way a human woman did. Rather, her desire was for the connection to power she gained in the fornication of powerful men. Her partners’ surrender in the heat of passion had fed the very essence of her being, their vulnerability and openness to her dominion was an orgiastic feeling. When a man was knobbing her body, his very soul lay open and exposed.

And not only did she then have access to it, to drink in the essence of it, absorbing whatever primal, elemental power was within him, but she was able to tie that vulnerable soul to a twisting vine of Bloodthorn, the perverted sapling of Ashra, the tree of elemental fire, that grew deep within the Vault.

As any member of the Older Pantheon of demons could.

Slowly she ran her hands through her hair, raising her breasts to the wind that caressed her nipples through the thin cloth of her shirt, and sighed happily. She could hear her name on the wind; she knew it was only a matter of time before the Lord Cymrian found her. And now her quarry had arrived; she could feel his presence, even if she did not yet see him. The tree of blood had tasted the soul of Gwydion of Manosse once before. Another of her kind, one of the Younger Pantheon, had managed to tear a piece of it free some decades ago, had experimented with it, formed a body of ice and the desecrated blood of children around it, and had used it to procreate without tapping its own soul, something a few other F’dor had tried but had failed to do. Bloodthorn had reveled in the taste of Gwydion’s essence, had almost been able to find and obtain the Sleeping Child with it. Once she had taken his body as her new host, the Unholy Tree would feed again. The wind picked up slightly, tickling the back of her neck and arms, and tousling her long dark locks. Portia’s smile grew brighter in the light of the moon. She couldn’t resist a chuckle at her own insatiability, one of the traits that the pathetic Tristan Steward had loved about her. Most F’dor of her power would have considered Gwydion of Manosse to be the ultimate prize, but she wanted more, as she always did. She wanted his wife. There was something bewitching about the Lady Cymrian that both disturbed and fascinated Portia. She knew immediately what it was—the sublime beauty that the-common folk who swore allegiance to Rhapsody were enchanted by was nothing more than an inner core of elemental fire burning within her, something she must have absorbed from a primal source. Unlike the dark fire of the Vault from which the F’dor drew their power, the element within the Lady Cymrian was pure, untouched by the taint of evil.

And thus, a challenge. The flesh between Portia’s legs quivered at the thought. Like the corruption of a child, or the rape of a virgin, certain acts of defilement were profound in their glory, a sensation of destruction of innocence that defied description, surpassing all other acts. The chance to take a source of pure fire and twist it, damage it, pollute it until it, too, served the same mission of Void that all F’dor did was almost too thrilling to contain. She inhaled deeply, trying to do so, and failing utterly.