So many of you noticed that I am currently quiet on the fic front, and thats because i am wiriting an original erotic horror anthology. I have decided to give you guys a sneak peek at one of my currently unedited stories since everyone has been patient with me.
Donations are not obligatory, though if you feel like supporting my dreadful coffee habit by all means have at it!
Without further ado, please enjoy the fruits of my labours....and ignore the typos, seriously, no editing here whatsoever!
We’ll Meet Again
As cells went, he’d seen worse. A lot worse. In fact, when it came to his own personal hierarchy of the most desperate and befouled places to find oneself in, it was downright cozy. Sure the hospitality left a lot to be desired and the rats were a little preemptive in trying to consume him in his sleep. But his captors clearly had bigger fish to fry by the distant but almost continuous bouts of screaming and heavy machinery, accompanied by the percussion of regimented boots hitting the stone. This left him with ample time to simply sit and listen in his darkened little cell with barely enough room to stretch his feet and a piss bucket that was always too close for comfort, no matter where in the room he moved it.
He’d been in worse places, but it wasn’t often that he found himself in the company of worse people than the ones that ran the facility. Put quite plainly, Nazi’s were the worst possible examples of human excrement ever to fall off the back of gods encrusted flanks. And Ezra was in a somewhat unique position to offer such a comparison.
There were places in hell where a man would have his skin repeatedly peeled away by the turning of one of those little metal keys found on tins of spam. Demons of torture would drown a man in a river of shit and make him vomit it back up with his next revived breath, and thousands of souls could hardly draw breath at all between the screams as they burned. And yet none of it compared to the righteous nastiness of humans fucking over humans.
Hell was not subtle in its tortures. They had gone old school and pretty much called it a day. Eternal torment was eternal torment after all, why fix what wasn’t broken? But if you wanted to see how a man could be broken down piece by piece as every atom of his hope was sucked away, you really couldn’t outdo the humans in their inventiveness and outright viciousness. The Nazi’s were not the first scourge to walk the earth, and given the earth's history so far, they wouldn’t be the last, but they were top in the running for being the most inventive and thorough about it.
Ezra wasn’t entirely convinced that even half the Nazi party believed the rhetoric that Hitler spewed like an angry bantam hen upon his podium. But belief mattered little when the rhetoric gave justification to do just about anything in its name. It allowed them to perpetuate their war and the cruelty it bred like flies, with absolute implied righteousness. For an officer, that might mean marching hundreds into tiny rooms where they gagged on their last breaths, or making men into animals until there was nothing left but more stinking carcasses to throw on the fire. To the common soldier it meant closing their ears to the sound of screaming while they washed themselves clean with soap made from the corpses of the very people they shot on sight.
In his own somewhat educated opinion, none of them quite compared to the doctors. He was fairly certain the ones that weren’t fanatics, were at least smart enough to see the shit their leader was spewing. And just as smart to call it pure gold so long as they retained the keys to the kingdom of human suffering they were handed.
They had been given permission to tear the skin off the world, with no retribution in sight. For every potential problem the German army might face, there were a host of medical experts and an endless supply of patients to test every theory and thought that might give them an advantage.
One such butcher had enjoyed this autonomy to its full extent over the last couple of years, though perhaps not with the same flair as some of the bigger names. Dr Rueben Wagner already had a list of controversial ideas during his tenure as a surgeon and geneticist even before Hitler’s victim mentality hit its peak. Enough to have him imprisoned, and more than enough to have him released and given free reign by the mad bastards seeking to make use of the overabundance of ‘cattle’ they had herded into their camps.
In this newfound freedom and lack of wanting for test subjects, Wagner’s theories had gone from controversial to downright insane. It wouldn’t be a shot in the dark to imagine a man like that would burn himself on his own stake eventually, but unfortunately, Wagner had a lot of skill and patience to at least make half steps towards some of his insane theories. Out here in the armpit of the German countryside, Wagner’s little facility had become a charnel house.
Ezra had been given orders to avoid causing too much of a fuss in the facility if he could help it. The ‘package’ and prying it from Wagner's clutches was his actual mission after all. He’d played along thus far, allowing himself to be captured in the small town about 3 miles from the facility, after successfully being caught forging papers. If the officer that had ordered his imprisonment in the facility had looked more closely at the papers he produced he might have been suspicious to note how exceptionally good at subtly proving they were as legitimate as toilet paper. But that was the trouble with making yourself superior to the point where men became dogs under your boot. You often didn’t expect any better, and had no patience for suspecting a long con when it was dancing in their faces.
He had been beaten, as was to be expected, and thrown into the cell where he had been temporarily forgotten, presumably until he either starved or proved useful to whatever manic fever dream Wagner set his scalpel to next. Now it was just a matter of waiting, while hoping that the ‘package’ had time for him to sit in here quietly cooling his heels.
They hadn’t given him many details, and he hadn’t asked. He was hardly on a mission of mercy and though he despised the Nazi’s, he didn’t much care for the people pulling on his reins either. But they were a means to an end, and Ezra very much wanted that end and the reprieve it promised. If that meant hunkering down in a factory of screams and living nightmares in order to pull one of their assets out of the fire, so be it.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long before the opening of his cell door sent the once again encroaching rats scurrying for the walls. Dim, filthy light momentarily became as bright as the sun in contrast to the uncompromising dark of his windowless abode, and a rail thin hatchet faced young woman stepped inside accompanied by an armed soldier. The StG 44 rifle pointed at him from behind her, was all the confidence the woman needed as she bent down and looked him over, making little notes on a clipboard. Ezra heard her mutter to the guard asking for more light, and squinted his eyes against the glare of a torch as it was pointed his way. He found himself focusing on the near permanent sneer on her thin lips. She wore her Antipathy like a decaying perfume, and he’d bet the nose on his own face that she screamed Fureur’s name when she reached whatever grim faced climax she forced out from between her skinny legs.
He wasn’t particularly perturbed about being sized up for whatever butchery Wagner had devised, all he needed was for this skeletal bitch to send him deeper into the facility and the rest would more or less take care of itself after a fashion. He could have just blitzed the place but that would put the asset in danger, and Major Groves had been clear. Without the asset, there was no deal. And Ezra could practically taste that deal. Groves was an asshole of the highest order who thought much the same of Ezra, but the man was honest and his pompous honor alone would not renege on what he had promised as long as Ezra delivered. Of course that same pomposity would have him right back on the leash if he failed.
Unfortunately, his plans of doing things somewhat quietly went up in smoke when the woman removed a stethoscope from her pocket and plugged the ends in her ears. She’d barely twitched aside the bloodied collar of his shirt, preparing to listen to his heart, when she shot up and immediately started shouting for more guards. Ezra could already hear the pounding of several approaching feet before the echoes of those shouts could even die down, and he sighed as the guard in the doorway leveled the rifle at him. There wasn’t even time to flinch before he was hit by a volley of bullets that ran the length of his torso in a diagonal spray. The eyes behind the sights were articulate in their fear, though the hands were steady on the rifle, all the more so when three more guard's skidded up behind him while the thin woman slipped out between them.
Oh well. So much for the quieter route.
Christopher Mortenson had been a big man in a small life that revolved around the keeping of the Vesborg lighthouse in Denmark. He’d been the perfect mark for possession, lonely and bitter, but still stubborn enough that it had taken Ezra months to wear his mind down.But eventually his resolve caved to the relentless campaign the demon had besieged him with one long winter forty years ago. He had been worth every second, and over the years Ezra had learned to wear the lighthouse keeper's large body like a tailored suit.
Even now, with four rifles pointed his way, the soldiers stood transfixed as all 6ft 7 inches of him stood up from the floor, their fear stench growing between them as molten brass and lead poured from the six holes in his chest. If you really wanted to know how deep the Nazi’s had gotten into their people’s souls, you only had to look at the faces of the men gathered around the door. All of them clearly wanted to run, anyone with half a fucking brain cell would have bolted as he bled out the bullets meant to end him while his wounds slowly sealed themselves together. But the men at the door had a fairly clear idea of what failure could bring, and nothing he could do would ever outweigh the inventiveness of their own people. Better to die trying than fail and have done to them what they had blithely done to countless others.
Fuck it, he thought to himself. Loud it is.
Four rifles thundered in unison, filling the tiny room with an acrid sulfur smell that almost reminded him of home. Four voices clamored in panic when he didn't stop moving and grabbed the first soldier with a hand large enough to palm his whole face. He could feel the man trying to fumble the rifle between them as the continents of his skull suddenly fractured and split themselves into independent islands of pain beneath squeezing fingers. He threw the first man aside and immediately drove his fist into the soldier that had been firing over his shoulder. He moved fast enough that the soldier’s ribs barely had time to graze his knuckles before his spine erupted from the middle of his back.
The butt of a rifle struck his temple several times as he pulled his dripping fist free. The soldier behind the gun looked almost demented in his pointless effort to put him down and put him down fast. He watched the man’s fear bulge from his eyes when he turned his head and felt the twitch of that hated connection, right before the soldier became a pillar of screaming agony and flame. The last soldier had enough sense to back up a few steps before throwing aside the gun and falling to his knees, though much of that sense fell away when he closed his eyes, rapidly stammering out a prayer over tightly clasped hands.
If god were ever inclined to assist this particular specimen of human waste, and Ezra highly doubted it, it would only be in the sense that his death came quickly, his body obliterated between the rough rock walls and a heavy filing cabinet that was shoved across the room with all the force of a charging bull. The metallic clang of its impact was soon joined by the blare of an alarm that wound itself up into a full throated yell, alerting the rest of the compound. Ezra didn’t even stop to check the guards for keys to the heavy door cutting off Wagner’s dungeon from the rest of the facility.
As more heavy booted feet pounded towards him, the door blew outwards, tearing off its hinges and colliding with another group of soldiers. Those who avoided being flattened by several pounds of sandwiched steel, suddenly found themselves frantically beating at sapling flames that crawled across their flesh and rooted themselves to become a flourishing inferno. Ezra ignored the flames which did little more than tickle his flesh as he passed through them, shrugging off the charred hands that tried to reach out for him.
He was getting in his stride now.
His terrible momentum took him around one corner as he rolled up his sleeves and began to whistle the opening bars of the 1812 overture. The song was paused as the skinny woman in the labcoat fell into the hallway from one of the side rooms, her rage a pyroclastic flow of screamed oaths that promised to lay him in pieces at the feet of her beloved reich, Her declarations were backed by the open black eye of a ruger, punctuating every manic threat with a loud report, propelling her hate on the wind of of each bullet as she backed up down the corridor.
It wasn’t that he minded being shot in particular, his body rejected the bullets much like an oilskin coat will reject the rain, but he did find himself disappointed in the stupidity of continuing to put holes in his chest and face despite all evidence that this did not work. By the time the woman finally came to the same conclusion, her fingers were caught in his grip, almost breaking around the butt of the gun as he slowly forced her hand to raise itself and the gun to her temple.
Some of that zealous fervor fell from her eyes as he smiled down at her, her thin lips trembling before she grit her teeth and pulled the trigger. The dry click from the emptied gun was the last thing she heard before a blow from his hand drove its barrel through the side of her skull. She fell limp and twitching to the floor, and the overture continued, as he stepped over her to get to the door at the end of the hall.
The whistled tune preceded his descent down concrete steps that fed into the bunker that had been dug and walled off below. He’d say one thing for the Nazi’s, they were efficient at setting things up on the fly. The bunker was no shoddy affair of mud and timber struts. The walls were concrete and the floor tiled, the electric lights strung along the walls barely flickering as he made his way, unaccosted for now.
The next ten minutes were a lesson of the kind of barbarity that even the devil himself would wince at. It wasn’t the gore or the clear mistreatment that had been visited on the creatures he found in cells and laid out on tables that offended him. It was the negligent abundance and lack of any art to it. Every soul was specially catered to in the hells he came from. Admittedly it was their eternal damnation and torture that was catered to, but every soul received its due respect and attention.
Warner played with his toys with the same mindset of a small boy who took apart the toaster just to see what was inside. It was a waste.
Before he came to the steel bulkhead door behind which he was sure his quarry lay, Ezra came upon only one person with enough left in them to look alive. She was barely recognizable as a human, let alone a woman. The face that peered up at him from the filthy palette on the floor was half melted by a collection of sores that had been left to fester and run together. Only her eyes gave her anything near a human appearance, eyes as blue as the underside of an iceberg. She could barely lift her head and he could practically feel the fever of her afflictions baking off her body.
There was little time for small mercies, but he still bent at the knees and took that swollen disfigured face in his hands. He watched those blue eyes fill with tears that were almost certainly for the ruin he must see when he looked at her. Sores broke under even the lightest pressure of his hands, and yet he still bent and pressed a lovers kiss to her uneven mouth. He tasted the bitterness of her diseases and smelled the long death that awaited her as those lips continued to tremble against his own.
The last thought in the young woman’s head was the thrill of her first kiss at 15 years old. She smelled the evocative scent of sheeps wool and camphor, and died in an old lover's arms when Ezra quickly and humanely snapped her neck.
He couldn’t really explain why he chose to do this, it certainly didn’t give him a warm and fulfilling feeling to end her suffering. Nor would he say that this mercy or the countless others he might take it upon himself to commit, wiped any of the long years of blood from his hands. If pressed he would simply shrug and say that some things simply had to be done. But there was nobody here to pry into the matter of his motivations, which struck him as odd. However he wasn’t going to question what may have been just a bought of good luck, and turned his attention to the bulkhead door.
It wasn’t locked, and Ezra was of the opinion that this spoke much more about the arrogance of both Wagner and the soldiers. Down here the world could not interfere, none would dare. But he certainly would dare, and set his hand on the doors wheel, preparing to turn it when a subtle scraping sound caught his attention. On the opposite wall, a small wooden cross was slowly turning itself around until it hung upside down. In the depths of Wagner’s death stinking bunker, Ezra’s laughter sounded unnatural and almost unhinged.
He laughed for the obvious fact of the cross turning in his presence, because no matter who’s side he found himself on, a cross would always abhor a demon. Mostly he laughed for the fact that a cross down here, in this place of absolute zero empathy or compassion, was more blasphemous than if you’d packed several hundred of his kind in the bunker. The fact that the cross lay inert down here while atrocities were committed, pretty much underlined the reason for Ezra’s absolute disdain for the ‘other side’ to coin a phrase from back home.
He didn’t dislike heaven because he was a demon. He loathed heaven for its righteous hypocrisy.
His laughter was still trailing off when he set his hands to the wheel again and turned it until the heavy door could be swung inward. Just in case, he took the time to keep both hands on the wheel until the heat that radiated from his palms began to melt the steel, warping it in place and preventing anyone from closing or locking the door.
The room beyond the door was quite a bit larger than the other rooms, but seemed to contain very little aside from the structure standing in the middle of it. To Ezra, it looked like a large steel coffin that had been stood up on one end. Several tubes and cables had been fed into the sides, some seeming to flow with a brackish looking liquid. There was no convenient little window in the front for him to see what might be inside, but there was a control panel off to one side and a cursory glance showing him that this was where all the cables seemed to lead.
After taking a moment to study the panel, he still had to go with his best guess and hit one of the larger buttons on the panel, on the basic principle that the button was a faded green. To his relief, a series of heavy metallic clunks were soon followed by a loud hissing as what he first thought was steam began to stream from the ‘coffins’ seals. At a closer inspection, the steam looked more like smoke and had an odd smell that he couldn’t quite place, but was almost pleasant. The heavy door finally swung open with a pronounced grinding of metal and Ezra stepped forward as the smoke began to clear to reveal Wagner’s prize.
The woman inside the coffin had been strapped in by heavy iron bands that encircled her wrists, ankles, neck and torso. Her eyes were closed and her head lolled to one side slightly, giving the impression of someone sleeping while standing up. However, by the sheer amount of needles taped to her arms, pumping who knew what into her system, it was a safe bet that her ‘sleep’ wasn’t voluntary. What parts of her skin that hadn’t already been bruised by what appeared to be several older needle marks, bore larger bruises and the occasional deep cut that didn’t appear to be healing too well. Her face was swollen to the degree that it would have been hard to identify if she were his package, if not for the scar just below her right ear.
It was small and curved like a sickle, which was the only identifier Groves had given him, likely assuming that less information was better. He hadn’t even known it would be a woman, which to be fair, made little difference to him. She was the package, and that was all he needed to know. Still, it was easy to tell at a glance that she’d been through a lot, which made him hope she stayed sleeping for a while because things were likely to get exciting upon their exit. Nobody had come running down here, despite the alarms still blaring.
At a guess, and most of his guesses were fairly educated by now, they had given up on trying to stop him from getting down here and were likely to be posting up outside. It was not going to be a clean exit.
With care, he pulled the needles free, still dripping whatever poison they had been feeding her. After a cursory once over, he also found several wires stuck to skin that had blackened at her temples, her chest and the back of her thighs. These too were pulled off, some coming away with small pieces of charred skin as he set them aside. When she was finally disconnected from everything, he felt better about guessing when it came to getting the iron bands unlocked. It only took him two tries of nothing apparently happening before he found the right toggle and had to bolt across the room as she slumped forward, becoming a dead weight in his hands.
“All right, thats phase one. I’d be indebted if you’d remain asleep for a while, I imagine the next few minutes are going to be somewhat…thrilling.”
He took her silence as consent and hauled her over his shoulder, frowning at the way that his body seemed to have caught up with the last twenty minutes. The bullets had been mostly harmless, but the rapid healing took power that wasn’t infinite. True, he was stronger than most, but if he wasn’t careful, he was apt to find himself still behind enemy lines and needing to feed. Still, for now at least, that was going to have to be a future Ezra’s problem, and if he ever needed an incentive to make it work, then the price of his deal with Groves was more than good enough.
Before he could leave the room, he paused and considered the heavy bulkhead door and after half a minute or so he set the woman carefully on the floor and rubbed his hands together as he approached the door. It was all very well taking everything they could throw at him in order to get her out of there, but the chances of a stray bullet hitting her were high and a little more defense could go a long way.
The heat of his hands proved more than enough to melt the hinges, and a good shove from the shoulder popped the door free before they could harden again. Bracing his arm around the warped wheel, he lifted the door with minimal struggle. It was good enough to cover him for about 6 feet, but he sighed a little at the prospect of having to heal more head wounds. But it was enough to mostly protect her from the front. As for the back…well he had more than one trick up his sleeve.
Two minutes later, she was back on his shoulder while he made his way back up the basement steps. There was nobody to greet him in the corridors but the corpses he’d already made and the blare of the siren. The main exit for the facility wasn’t far, and while he could hear nothing over the siren that continued to pointlessly scream at him from all angles, he could practically feel the presence of life just outside the double doors if he concentrated hard enough.
“This is going to hurt.”
His announcement went unanswered by the woman sleeping the sleep of the drugged, and he half shrugged before closing his eyes. The body of Christopher Mortenson had been his home for forty years and his very nature coupled with the glyphs the government had carved into his chest, allowed him to keep it in good condition, after a fashion. However, as useful as the body was, there were simply some things it couldn’t do. Ezra rarely allowed a full transformation, but when the occasion called for it, he was not above using his true forms natural advantages from time to time.
Now he moved muscles that had been mostly inert for about the last ten years, his face screwing up into a grimace as bone popped and lethargic muscles stretched. He bit back a growl as his body arched briefly, then bit down harder as pain sank its teeth in on either side of his spine. The filthy material of his shirt bulged and then ripped, as something like rolls of stone blue leather spilled out of the newly made wounds and unfurled themselves, still wet with blood that he flung at the walls as he moved the wings experimentally.
They were still a bit stiff, and it hurt like a bastard, but in a pinch it would do. The wings also provided something of a barrier as he curved them around his body, protecting the precious cargo from any backshots, though there were no guarantee. Demon skin was tough, but it wouldn’t stop anything larger than a 9mm, at the most it would only slow a bullet down. All of this was to say that despite his improvised methods of protection, he’d do well not to hang around.
Ten seconds later he rammed the double doors open, tearing one off its hinges as he stepped outside and braced himself for the first volley of shots. The silence of the next ten seconds was long and tense as the scent of blood filled his nose and his eyes adjusted to the early evening light. Ezra thought he had made something of a mess back in the facility but it was nothing compared to what he was seeing strewn around the buildings and vehicles. Here and there amongst the piles of meat were scraps of a uniform or a discarded weapon. The parts strewn around clearly belonged to the soldiers who right about now should have been trying to gun him down.
Suddenly the silence seemed a lot more dense than he liked, and the hairs at the back of his neck were stiffening. Something was out there, something that had turned an entire facility's worth of soldiers into red paste. The fact that blood still dripped from various places told him that this had happened recently and that was more than enough of an excuse for moving things along. Part of him felt foolish enough for the production he’d made in stepping out of the facility, but it wasn’t enough to make him drop the door or retract the wings still shielding the woman from behind.
Simply walking right out of the facility gates felt strange, especially when he could practically feel eyes crawling up his back. But he took the easy exit and began making his way to a line of trees where they would have better cover and might perhaps find somewhere he could rest for half an hour before making his way to the coast.
The high, insectile whine that zipped past his ear close enough for him to feel its wind, had him going from a sedate walk to a full on run before the sniper's bullet hit the trunk of a tree just ahead. The second bullet tore through the membrane of one wing and burned hotter than any of the other bullets had, while the third took him at the small of his back. The bullet seared his flesh, a fresh agony spreading its way outward from the large caliber nucleus.
There was only one thing that burned quite like it. Blessed metal.
The pain was enough to nearly put him on his knees, and only the makeshift shield kept him upright. Another impact on the rocks behind him got him moving again, forcing him to push the already overburdened body into a half run towards the thick band of spruces lining the border of the forest. He barely saw the shadow fall over them when the last hundred yards was within reach, but he felt the impact as it hit the ground just behind them. Ezra only spared a half glance over his shoulder, but it was enough to dump the last reserves of adrenaline into his system as he finally threw aside the makeshift shield and ran.
The earth shook under his pounding feet and the creature's stench of old meat feverish with rot ran alongside him as his momentum threw them both into the treeline. He’d only risked a quick glance, but that had been enough to know it all but towered over them, making him feel like the proverbial child running from the giant. There was no question as to what would happen if the monster caught up with them, the display outside the facility was more than enough of an incentive to keep running. He’d gotten an impression of dark scaled skin and a long blunted snout that was familiar enough to jog his memory but not enough to depict whatever species Wagner had clearly twisted to his design.
Ezra darted in between the trees, slowing the beast’s momentum as it struggled to fit its massive bulk between thick trucks and dense branches. However, what it lacked in dexterity, it more than made up for in brute strength, and Ezra suddenly found an extra reserve of energy when he heard the brutal crack of a tree trunk snapping. He didn’t bother to look behind him when the upper half of the tree began to fall, but put on a burst of speed when the black open eye of a mine came into view. It was barely half a step behind them now, but they were huge steps and he knew they wouldn’t make it in time before one of those powerful clawed hands came down to claim them.
Ezra tapped into the last fumes of power available, knowing they were in trouble even if they got away, but at least they would be in trouble and alive, which seemed an important distinction as he turned to face Wagner's designer nightmare. He threw the lance of flame into its face, having to throw it blind while he didn’t dare to stop and take proper aim. He knew he must have hit something that hurt enough to make it scream. Still running, Ezra risked a glance over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of it storming through the trees. It shoulders some of the smaller ones aside, blindly stampeeding as it clawed at its burning eyes and shrieked. The sound was horrifying, but what finally made even his infernal blood run cold was the answering shrieks that seemed to come from two different directions at once.
At this point, he practically threw both himself and his charge into the open mouth of the mine, somehow not surprised that the crazy kraut had made more than one of the things. There wasn’t a chance in hell that thing would make it through the mine entrance, it had to be at least 9 feet and almost as wide as a tank, but apparently it was going to try anyway. Clawed hands appeared, trying to find purchase in the rock to pry it away, and Ezra very quickly began to back them deeper into the mine, already knowing what was going to happen.
There were mines like this all over the countryside as the demand for coal increased. This one had the heavy mineral smell of a salt mine instead but it had been carved out just as hastily as the rest. This much became apparent as he tried to outpace the ominous creak of the wooden supports as the beast clawed madly at the entrance. Parts of his borrowed body were promising to revolt by the time the first dry crack above them prompted another burst of speed from his already beleaguered body.
There wasn’t room to think about whether there was another way out when the cramped tunnel finally gave in. The sound of rocks falling was the last crack of the whip he needed to ignore the pain and the fact that his body was ready to throw in the towel. Part of his unusual condition was being subject to at least some human limitations and by the time his foot struck something in the growing darkness and sent him sprawling, he was already losing consciousness.
The last thing he heard before he hit the deck was the grind of stone and the beasts muffled fury as the fallen mine entrance cut them off.
o0O0o
At first there were only broken fragments of consciousness. Then there was just silence and the uncompromising dark which made it hard to tell whether his eyes were actually open or not. The next time he woke, it was the sensation of being dragged that roused him. He hadn’t been awake enough to move or respond, but his mind readily supplied him with the image of the beast's clawed hand dragging him further into the mine before he went under again. By the time he came to for good, the pain that had been buried under all that excess adrenaline had made a comeback. His whole world crystallized around the bullet in his back and the way it seared his flesh, the blessed metal preventing the natural course of his body spitting it out or turning it molten with the heat of his blood.
It hurt badly enough that it took longer than he’d like to admit to realize that there was light behind his closed lids, and that someone was straddling his body. Slowly his eyes opened, the shape above him blurred and indistinct. After blinking a few times, the woman came into focus. Her expression was one of apprehension and doubt, which might have had something to do with the large rock she currently held over her head, as she presumably debated whether or not to cave his skull in with it. He blinked again and managed to look down the length of his body. His shirt was open, displaying the raised scar tissue of sigils that had been carved into his chest half a century ago. The wings might have given it away a little more blatantly but they had retracted, likely not long after he’d been knocked out. It took effort to wear his demonic nature alongside the borrowed body after all.
But the scars alone would justify her desire to brain him before he woke, for those who knew what to look for. Which sort of begged the question as to why he was still alive.
He watched that apprehension turn to determination when she realized he was awake, and despite the pain and fatigue, he didn’t hesitate. Ezra enjoyed and welcomed some aspects of the human condition, but nothing beat a demon’s instinct for survival, and in a flurry of quick movement he threw his weight into a roll that had her pinned on her back. The rock rolled out of her hands in favor of trying to wrestle herself out of his grip, forcing him to exert himself further, which only seemed to make the pain worse, as if it ran alongside the blood in his veins. She was a fighter, not the claw your eyes out kind, but the sort that would tear your throat out with her teeth if you gave her room enough to do so.
Ezra might have found the ferocity quite charming if it didn’t feel like poison fire was working its way through his body, and he growled the codeword out through clenched teeth.
“Tengu!”
It was like he’d thrown a switch. She froze beneath him, the wildness of her expression melting into confusion as she stared at this face, then his scarred chest, and finally his face again. She seemed to be momentarily at war with the situation at hand, and he held her in place while she came to some sort of conclusion, her wrists relaxing in his grip.
At this point, most people might have asked where they were or how they came to be there, but once she got over the initial and frantic moment of confusion she asked “Is Wagner dead?”
“Given the various stages of unidentified mess I found when I brought you out of the facility, I can’t really say.” He loosened his grip slightly but didn’t get off her just yet. She had the look of someone ready to go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds.
“Shit. We’re going to have to go back. We can’t leave that bastard alive, and his lab….”
He was about to ask if she hadn’t perhaps hit herself in the head with the rock first, when the blessed bullet sent another bolt of agony charging through his body, like a jealous lover that didn’t intend to be ignored. He threw himself off her, rolling onto his side and pawing at his back as white hot agony exploded along his back like violent ripples. Part of him wanted to grit his teeth and claw himself open just to get the damn thing out, while the rest of him was blind to all senses but the pain consuming his thoughts.
A hand knocked his away, and he roared when fingers pushed their way into the wound, barely having enough sense to bury his fingers into the rock below him instead of turning around and succumbing to the instinct to tear her head off. The pain pressed his head to the floor between his hands like a jackboot, and the darkness threatened to return while those fingers searched for the bullet. He’d had hundreds of years to learn how to be human enough to pass, but in this moment, the thunder of his agony came directly from the depths of his hellish nature.
When she finally got a precarious hold on the bullet, he felt as though he would claw his way to the earth's core in order to escape the hell of the blessed metal that seared him as she carefully drew it out. The moment she pulled it free, it was like night and day, the pain suddenly stopping with no interim of ebbing. Just gone.
“Holy fucking christ thats hot!” she snarled, and he heard the metallic ring as she threw the bullet aside, still faintly glowing with the remnants of its blessed fire.
A Lot of things had happened very quickly in the last couple of minutes, but even in the midst of his relief, he noted that his mind was trying to get his attention about something. He brushed it aside for now and managed to sit up, stretching his back to assess the damage. There was more pain, but it was a human pain and didn’t come close to the agony of a blessed weapon. The wound along with Mortensson’s spine would heal within a day or so, far quicker than any mortal but still too slow for his liking, but there was little he could do with his power so depleted. Being bound to his host had its advantages, but it also had its limitations. He’d give up the unlimited power as the price for never being forced back down into hell again. Most of the time it was enough, more than enough by mortal standards, but days like today tested his resolve on the matter.
“Most people would hesitate to jam their fingers in a stranger's bullet wound. Where did Groves dig you up?” He didn’t really care, he just wanted someone else to fill the silence while he got his wits together.
“Lucky for you, I happen to be a Doctor. Admittedly impromptu infernal surgery isn’t my forte, but yours isn’t the first bullet I’ve had to dig out.” Her absent smile was a little too brittle to match the stiff upper lip she was trying to maintain in her voice. To give her credit, her words only shook a little, but the way she obsessively rubbed a hand over her threadbare knees gave it away. She was afraid.
To be fair, this wasn’t exactly a revelation. She’d been locked down for who knew how long, likely tortured, and was now stuck in a cave. Did she even know about the monster that had chased them down? Even he could admit he wasn’t overly fond of the idea of running into whatever that beast had been. Nobody wanted to spend an eternity as a sentient smear across the German countryside.
“Well I would say I’m grateful, but our situation is still solidly waist deep in a brown creek I’m afraid. The cave entrance collapsed on the way in, and what I presume to be Wagner’s monsters, are on the loose.” He said, while watching her knuckles turn white as she gripped onto her knees and looked back down the darkened passageway where the entrance had collapsed.
It was only at this point that he realized what his brain had been trying to tell him while she’d been digging around inside the bullet wound. Firstly, how in the hell had she managed to drag his dead weight further through the tunnels. They seemed to be in a small chamber between branching mine paths now lit by a makeshift fire. How in the hell had she even managed to see enough to find the deadfall that had drifted in with the roofs collapse? He could see her finding the right kind of rocks to strike against one of the miners tools, and even reason with the idea of her feeling her way around for material to burn. But he wasn’t dainty by any means and if he looked closely at the rock dust that lay on the floor like a carpet, he couldn’t see any drag marks.
But what really made him sit up and start studying her more closely, was the fact that he couldn’t see a single hint of her own injuries anymore. The bruising was gone, as were the little cuts and the needle marks that had lined her inner arms. Aside from looking a little torn in the clothes department and in dire need of a hairbrush, she seemed perfectly fine, at least physically. He half expected her to turn and snappishly ask him what he was looking at, but her mind was elsewhere as she continued to focus on the path leading back to the caved-in entrance.
“We have to go back.” Her tone offered no compromise or even a question really, she declared it as one might declare that birds must fly, fish must swim and Nazi’s should be executed on sight.
“You know, I was hoping I misheard you the first time. But we aren’t going anywhere, not till I get enough strength back to maybe blast the entrance open, and even then. The only place we’re going is back to the port to catch a boat out of here.”
The quick turn of her head and that blue eyed glare gave his hunger something of a savage poke, reminding him there were other means and quicker ways than simply waiting for his energy to return naturally. He pushed the thought aside. The body and spirit were willing, but she likely would have roasted both on a spit for his simply suggesting it with the way she was looking at him. She seemed to want to argue against leaving, then stopped herself and sighed, common sense appearing to override whatever it was that had her talking crazy.
Instead of arguing she asked, “How long?”
She hadn’t given up the ghost on the whole returning to the facility idea, he could see it hovering above the surface of her attempt at being reasonable. She was either very brave, exceedingly stupid or desperate, and he wasn’t yet convinced she might not be a little bit of all three. It was rare to find anyone quite so calm in the face of everything that had been thrown at them thus far, whilst apparently being over enthusiastic about going back for more punishment.
“At least eight hours just to get enough energy to blast us out of here. I’ll be in no condition to fight until I feed. Unless you spotted a brothel when you dragged me in here, we’re stuck for the foreseeable future.” He stretched out his legs and made a show of getting comfortable, which earned him a sour look before she stood up and began to pace.
The silence, punctuated by the soft sound of her bare feet crunching over rock dust, seemed to be begging to be filled, as the tension of strangers finally settled between them. He let it draw itself out as he watched her walk in short circles, clearly weighing her options. While he watched her, he began to mentally note other subtle things about her. For one, despite her first instincts upon finding herself randomly in a cave with a demon, she seemed to be taking it remarkably well. He’d noted there wasn’t a mark on her now, but neither did she exhibit the usual signs of long term torture and captivity.
In fact she was positively bright eyed and ready to go for round two despite the fact that she should have been as exhausted as him. Even if he brushed aside the more obvious signs, there was still something just a little bit…off about her.
That accent, undoubtedly real, but when she spoke the cadence was off in that it didn’t quite fit the era. It was like the words had caught up with the present day, but the voice was still somewhere in the land of whale boned corsets and debutante balls. He’d know, he’d been a menace in London’s high society in the mid 1800’s. It was the same with the poise. She all but bristled with pent up energy, so much so that she was wearing a track into the floor, and yet she held herself in a way that made every movement appear trained, and not in the military sense.
This was a person who was aware of every part of her body, and likely made it work like a well oiled machine. Now that machine was pent up with a need to do something, and something told him that she hadn’t quite mastered patience along with elocution. He didn’t have the faintest idea what she was, but the more he looked at her, the more he became convinced that she was another Unfamiliar.
It would explain why Wagner had her locked down, and why he appeared to be running tests, it would also explain how she got him up here. Every instinct and inch of rational deduction he’d honed over the long years after his emancipation from hell, told him that she wasn’t human, or at least not all the way human.
As if she sensed the intense regard of his mind, she spun on her bare heels to look at him, giving him her own assessing look before looking to the mine entrance again and back to him. He said nothing, giving her room to digest whatever new thought had apparently just appeared in her head. He watched her chew on it as she continued to look between him and the collapsed mine entrance, as if trying to decide the lesser of evils. He knew what was coming next when he watched her square her shoulders as if preparing for a fight or steeling herself.
“What if we could fast track this? This is Special Operations after all, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to take one for the team." She said this in the same manner as someone volunteering to be the first to take a dip in the aforementioned brown river, and he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or vaguely insulted. Of course, most humans had preconceived notions about demons in general and Incubi in particular. It probably didn’t help that a good deal of them often turned out to be true.
As bits of his borrowed spine continued to fuse themselves together he considered her idea. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and he wasn’t so insulted as to point out her assumption considering the state of him right now. However, she was looking to make herself twice the sacrificial lamb, first by offering to feed him, only to go and feed herself into the meat grinder back at Wagners facility.
“ Hold up on raising your skirts for England there Doctor. First, tell me what's going on. I have a lot riding on getting you back to Groves, so far I’m not inclined to assist you in running into the arms of whatever mutants Wagner has cooked up.”
She looked briefly irritated, as if he were making things difficult, but seemed to catch herself at it and sighed as dropped back to the floor. “Fine, I suppose there is little left to keep classified at this point.”
Ezra could guess most of it, but she filled in the blanks over the next twenty or so minutes. Wagner had always been crazy when it came to his scientific goals, and while he hadn’t been the first to consider using Unfamiliars to ‘enhance’ Germany’s fighting force, he had come the closest. The real problem with messing around with Unfamiliar DNA was its unpredictability. According to Dr Jacqueline Stone, as she finally and formally introduced herself, Wagner had found a viable animal to begin his trials on. All he needed was the right species of Unfamiliar, which was still a pot luck at best but it had unnerved the boys sitting around their war tables. Eventually the Doctor had been sent after an SS officer connected to the lab, a simple seduction job for information, which only went towards showing how expendable they believed her to be. She’d been sent to confirm the rumors before Groves sent in an air strike to decimate the entire area.
This seemed to be on par with what he knew about The Special Operations in general and Groves in particular. Officially, Churchill had declared the other side's use of magic and Unfamiliar soldiers as abhorrent. Unofficially, he was quite ready to fight fire with fire. Between shapeshifters inserting themselves into the British military and government hierarchy, and the massacre by the mages of blitzkrieg, he’d hardly had a choice. If Germany were ready to use every method at their disposal, Great Britain were forced to do the same, or they’d end up under the boot, just like France.
The good doctor had been doing well with ingratiating herself with her target, only to find herself dragged from her bed and thrown into one of Wagner’s cells overnight. She did not elaborate on what he’d been doing to her down there, and for once, Ezra didn’t need to be told not to push the issue. She appeared to be very adept at pulling herself together and ‘getting back on the horse’ as they put it, but she couldn’t hide the slight narrowing of her eyes or the balling of her fists in her lap when she talked about Wagner. Only the gods and her knew what she’d had to do in order to wrap the SS Officer around her finger, but clearly whatever Wagner had done to her rated as far worse.
“Wagner succeeded…up to a point. He used Indonesian lizards, komodo dragons to be precise and mixed it with something else. The result is the relentless beast you encountered, but Wagner also failed. He has absolutely no control over them.”
The latter part was something of an understatement, but the more she spoke, the more things started to make sense. The Reich were not above using Unfamiliars in their warfare but it was done mostly under cover. Nobody espousing the kind of shit Hitler did, could be seen getting down and dirty with the creatures that he openly reviled alongside the jews. Somehow he doubted 9 foot lizard men were quite what the army had in mind when they asked for enhanced soldiers.
“They realized what Wagner was doing and wanted him shut down.” he guessed, and she nodded to confirm.
“Yes, I heard him arguing with one of his staff one night, he knew they were coming for him, and his experiments. I suspect from what you told me, when you launched your attack, he thought they had already come and let them loose.”
Once again, he picked up on the faint brittle bitterness in her voice and not for the first time, he understood that this was personal. It might have seemed an obvious confusion given that she’d been locked up under Wagner’s ‘care’ for who knew how long. But he didn’t think that was it. He’d been around long enough to spot a trauma that had been well honed over a number of years, and something about this whole thing disturbed her deeper than Wagner’s surface level crazy.
“If the Germans are coming for their own man, why not just leave him to them?” It seemed the obvious solution to him, why bother risking it if they could just wait for Wagner’s own people to bomb the place into never having existed?
“Because Wagner doesn’t care about Germany to owe it any loyalty. Now he thinks they are coming for him sooner than he believed, he’ll make a run for it, and set up shop with whoever will give him the materials and money to refine his experiments.”
It was certainly possible. Wagner wouldn’t be the first person whose loyalty was conditional. Some went along because they believed, with a fervor that was frankly batshit insane and frightening at the same time. Others saw the gain it offered, only realizing they were clinging to the tail of a 350lbs tiger when it was far too late. Hitler had opened the doors to atrocities and the madmen behind them, and for people like Wagner, it had never been about serving Germany and all about pushing the boundaries while they could.
“All right. Assuming I set aside all rational thinking and agree to this, what exactly is your plan? I only saw one of those things, but I heard at least two more.” As compelling as her argument was thus far, none of it justified risking either of them, and she didn’t strike him as stupid, which meant she was still hiding something.
“The monsters won’t survive. He had eight originally. I only heard snatches of what was going on when they had to feed me or fiddle with the machine, but he was losing his mind over the fact they were dropping like flies. Something to do with their hearts not being able to withstand the strain.” He supposed it made sense if you looked at it from the perspective of a half mad genius. Throwing the last of his experiments out as a hail mary was good cover to get his shit in order before he set off for greener pastures.
“The monsters aren’t important if we can get in quietly enough to destroy Wagner’s lab, and maybe the man himself. If he gets away with the materials he has in storage, we’ll be seeing more of the same creatures.”
She was lying. Not all the way, but she was certainly leaving something out. He thought about pointing this out, hell he could just keep the argument going until time took the matter out of their hands. Once he’d rested enough to recoup the power he’d used, he could just throw her back over his shoulder and drag her to the rendezvous point. Once he handed her over alive and well, his new life was set and he’d never have to see the inside of a UKSDD cell again.
So why did he already get the feeling that he was coming around to what she wanted? Maybe it was because he didn’t really have a side in this war. The British war with its own Unfamiliars had only ceased because wiping them out just proved nigh on impossible, and the last 50 years had been a mess of new policies and a tenuous truce. The first world war had stretched Britain’s capacity for dealing with British Unfamiliars. The second reduced them to reaching for desperate measures, the ‘draft’ of Unfamiliars had begun and any illusion of choice in the matter had been stripped away. Ezra had seen enough of this war to make some areas of hell seem positively pleasant, and getting out had been high up on his list of priorities.
He didn’t feel that he owed Groves or his people any loyalties, and he barely knew the woman to even pretend it was for some ludicrous act of strategic chivalry. But he kept thinking back on the woman in that cell, whose suffering would have sustained one of hells own torture demons for weeks. Any demon who had possessed a human understood the euphoria of suddenly understanding that as demons their ability to feel was blunted by their very nature. Being in the driving seat of a mortal pulled away the thick veil that dulled emotion and sensation for his kind. It made everything more…visceral. Food could be tasted, sex was intense and the range of human emotions was perhaps the greatest high his kind could strive for. But the latter was a double edged sword.
You couldn’t indulge in just one emotion and shut out all the others. Hate went hand in hand with love, and sadness often mingled with joy. Somewhere along the line you couldn’t look at things and not feel the touch of rage or disgust that came with witnessing the worst of humankind. He felt the weight of her eyes on him as he mulled all of this over. She was smart enough not to interrupt and just impatient enough that he could feel the agitation in her energy while she watched him come to what had to be an inevitable conclusion for her.
“All right, we blow the place, and then we leave.” He knew it wouldn’t be enough for her and held up a hand before she could launch into whatever argument she had to hand. “It’s the best I can offer you. For all we know Wagner is already long gone, but we can stop his research from falling into the wrong hands.”
It was interesting to watch her expression go through various stages of acceptance before she tightly nodded, and he had to bite back a tired laugh when she made as if to start undressing again. “Slow your roll Dr Jacqueline Stone, I’m still half broken, we’re going to have to go about this a slightly different way.”
She paused, looking suspicious, “It’s Jacq, and what do you mean ‘different’, I thought this sort of thing was fairly straightforward for your kind.”
Ordinarily she would be right, the process was somewhat tried and tested as long as the pairing worked. A lot of people thought an incubus could and would feed from any source available, and that was mostly true for him while he remained out of hells reach and thus beyond its directives. In reality, an incubus serving under hell’s rule rarely had a choice. The old tales of people waking up to find an incubus sitting on their chest had some reality to it. What they didn’t know was that this was often a small act of rebellion on the demon’s part.
“Ordinarily yes, but not everyone an incubus is sent out to corrupt is exactly palatable. Most of us learned fairly early on that physical touch isn’t needed. While I'm almost certain you are desirable under all the dirt and blood, a broken spine is still a broken spine.”
He could tell she was already trying to see ahead of the path he was trying to lead her down, likely searching for a lie or a double cross. To be fair, he wouldn’t have trusted himself as far as he could have thrown one of the big bastards waiting for them out there. But perhaps she could trust his desire to get the hell out of here and on that waiting boat more than anything because she nodded without asking for clarification.
“All right, how does this work?”
From where he sat, he beckoned her over, and she came readily enough, refusing the awkwardness of the situation in favor of doing the job ahead of her he supposed. She only offered him a slight frown when he pulled her down and arranged her so that she straddled his lap. With exaggerated care, he slipped a hand at the back of her neck and drew her forehead down to his.
This close, her scent hit him as odd. He hadn’t noticed it while exiting the facility or running from those freaks. There had been too much smoke and blood. But now he could smell it, the equivalent of the air before a storm would hit. He sensed a powerful sensation of restraint that was almost iron clad, and he had to physically work at not trying to pry deeper. They had more immediate matters to take care of than what she might be holding back or hiding. Instead, he gathered what little power he had and sent his mind out like a bloodhound.
The reason so many people had tales of waking up from a fever dream to find a weight upon their chest, was that an incubus could slip in and out of a dream with little trouble, even controlling them to an extent. Now his mind hunted for hers, catching it up in the momentum of his own. Pulling her into his own mind was risky, but he had more control there, and the moment he had touched upon her mind, he found himself faced with a damn fortress.
They didn’t have the time for him to navigate his way through those walls in order to crawl past her defenses. And they were old defenses. No mortal lifetime could build mental towers that high, and even as he felt her going limp in his hands, his excitement at the prospect of feeding was overridden by his curiosity.
Just what in the hell was she?
o0O0o
It began with My Blue Heaven.
He picked the song from the thousands he’d collected in his memory. It was a popular tune in the London pubs, where love was brief and energetic, and he could almost taste the barely in the air before he steered his thoughts away from the bomb scarred streets of London. He needed all of her attention now, and reminders of what was at stake back home were not welcome, though Gene Austin got a pass as he sang of lovebirds calling. Ezra reached for something beautiful, and because every demon came with a taste for the theatrical, something a little more grandiose than the dim basement bars of her home.
The floor came into view first, the intricate polished parquet spreading out like ripples, hitting the edges of the room and climbing upwards to create high walls with tall arched windows. It was perhaps a little more intricate than was necessary, but considering the last few hours, he felt he’d earned a little lavishness. He neglected the art that should have decorated the ceilings, because it had always unnerved him to have people looking down at him from on high when the palace was his hunting ground at one time.
It was a demon thing.
He made up for it with the chandeliers that dripped with crystal, reflecting tiny intricate rainbows on the floor below. My Blue Heaven had been coming from some internal radio in his mind, and now the size of the hall almost swallowed that scratch voice. Ezra brought that voice to the foreground, and Gene Austin now echoed pleasantly, as if he were the voice of some wartime god.
He could feel the woman beside him in the periphery of his mind, cautious, curious and still very guarded. By focusing on her, Jacq’s waiting mind filled his reality as well as his hands, one settling warmly upon red silk at the small of her back, while the other found itself occupied by her hand. She already had questions in her mouth before she’d even finished materializing in his dreamscape, and he swept them away with waltz that forced her to concentrate on keeping up.
The moment her feet caught up with what was happening, she barely missed a step and he knew that his assumptions about her mortality were on point. Again, it was all to do with her poise and how natural her movements felt. She had been born into a life where that poise and knowing all the steps went hand in hand with transactional romance. In a fit of mischief, he’d almost gone for dressing her in the kind of fussy affair that had been all the rage back then. However as he led her around the ballroom floor, putting off the moment where she might muddy the waters with questions, he had to admit, Dr Jacqueline Stone cleaned up well.
The red silk complimented hair that hung like black velvet against the back of his hand as it shifted slightly along the small of her back. Her eyes still held that guarded look of amused suspicion, but they still reflected the light in a certain way that curiously awakened the slumberous beast that was his own desire. Hers would feed him, but his own was rarely awakened. The truth was, an incubus could always perform, but for most it was a performance alone. He saw it as simply paying for his food, though that didn’t stop professional pride from making sure that each and every ‘meal’ would remember him for a lifetime.
It wasn’t the way she looked or the body in his hands. She was a pretty thing once you scraped away all the signs of captivity, but after hundreds of years ‘pretty’ didn’t make much of a difference to him anymore. Yes, that careful control and composure over her own body promised to be exciting at the very least, but it wasn’t that either. He didn’t know a demon alive who wouldn’t be drawn to find whatever it was she was hiding underneath all that careful nature of hers. It was in the nature of every demon, particularly his kind, to peel back the layers of a person in order to hit them or excite them in just the right spot. This would be the first time in a long time where he would have to trust in his own abilities solely.
Of course, the nature of those abilities still gave him something of a large advantage.
“Are you always this elaborate when preparing a meal?” she asked with a half smile that he’d painted just a few shades darker than the scarlet silk.
“You strike me as someone who at one time became used to such opulence. Though you hide it well.” It was the closest he came to an accusation and he silenced any reproach with just a dip of his head, lowering his face to the upward tilt of her jaw. Now he opened the internal floodgates that unleashed his power like a wave of warm scent. Some would call it pheromones, others would liken it to a spell. There were a number of demons who called it ‘salting the meat’, but Ezra simply called it the awakening. An incubus could draw you in with a kiss, every layman knew this much at least. With bodily fluids that were more powerful than any natural aphrodisiac, snaring prey was easy. But the flood of power didn’t override the mind like a kiss, it simply attached itself to any naturally occurring desire and made it unbearable to deny.
He would feed from this strange woman one way or another, but call it professional pride or simple ego, he had to know one way or another. He tested the waters with a single finger that ran up the length of her spine and settled on the back of her neck. For a second he thought there would be no reaction and he’d have to do things the coercive way. Then she shuddered, and the hand that had been resting primly on his shoulder was suddenly gripping his collar as if for stability. Ezra smiled against the line of her jaw as he felt her fighting her own reaction and fell into his own intoxication when he felt the deliberate press of her body along his.
Somewhere in the last few seconds they had stopped dancing and were merely moving their feet. He felt the ebb and flow of her desire as strongly as her scent, and as he buried himself in it just as he buried his mouth against her neck, letting it call to his own. A slow excitement began to fill him as he tasted her with tongue and lips, teeth scraping delicate skin to make her draw in a sharp breath. There was something hidden in her all right, he could taste it on his tongue, a wildness that was sharp and pungent, and if he didn’t know any better he would swear he had a were beast in his hands.
His mind was his own playground, and it was just too tempting not to reach inside and try to touch that other part of her that pulsed in her psyche like a red eye. He made her heart race with a slip of his hand over one silken hip, diving beneath a cunning slit in the dress to grip the back of one thigh. He drew it up along his own hip, enough to expose the top of one stocking, his thumb playing over the lace edging as he was just a finger length of a thought away from touching that hidden thing.
A low growl that he heard in his own head rather than with his ears, froze his progress and made him pull back. It was the kind of growl that would only warn him once, and though curiosity was eating at him almost as much as his own growing lust, he was far from stupid. He heeded her warning and drew back, setting his focus now upon the way that she tilted her head for his mouth to roam her neck.
He’d drawn back from his curiosity, but still, he’d awakened something in her if not her secret. Strong fingers knotted themselves in hair just a few shades lighter than her own. He allowed his mouth to be pulled from the warm fragrance of her throat, pulling his gaze to eyes that seemed to search his face. Or perhaps she was merely stalling for time, second guessing herself for a few breaths before she surged up on her toes and met his mouth in an almost punishing kiss.
He was momentarily surprised that she chose to pour oil on the slow burning flame, and when lips parted to allow her to taste him with an agile tongue, he felt the immediate change. The embers he’d been carefully stoking in her now became violent fire that had her frantic. He was beginning to understand at least a piece of the puzzle that was Dr Jacqueline Stone now, as they fought like vipers in a kiss that was almost a war of its own. This woman threw herself at every task whole heartedly, there was no middle ground or stopping at obstacles. She had chosen to feed him and at no point had she thought about putting in the bear minimum of effort. It was all or nothing. When her hand slid between them to grip him in against the cup of her palm he came to understand she would have found a way to get back to Wagner with or without his help.
For her, it was all or nothing.
He fed her his alluring poison until she broke away breathless and heaving with the need he’d created and she exacerbated. Most eyes would haze over at this point, lost in the pleasure drug that dripped from his tongue, but hers had only grown more focused. Something stared out at him from behind cut glass cobalt, something that was her and not her at the same time. Her narrowed glare matched the soft smirk that turned up one corner of her mouth, the expression twisting something in his gut. So many secrets to this woman, not least of which was the awakening of his own body, now radiating with an internal heat directly tied to his growing arousal.
He knew she felt it not just in the hand that now deftly stroked in between working at his belt, but against her skin and deeper still. Watching her slowly come undone from that tightly laced demeanor was enough to begin driving him to distraction, and more than enough to finally grip the back of both thighs and lift her.
She didn’t miss a beat, her legs wrapping around him in an embrace that begged both hands to slide back and grip her rear, pulling her tightly against him. This was his mind and its rules belonged to him, which meant the awkward flurry of removing clothing was dismissed for the immediate and satisfying experience of pressing against her naked and slickened core.
In his lifetime, Ezra had made empresses scream and kings cry out his name. He’d heard every vocal expression of desire known to man and yet the guttural sound she made when they came together was enough to tear away a little more of his restraint. He’d planned to tease, to lead her down a rabbit hole of desire until she finally begged for him to give in. But he’d secured himself to a double edged sword, one that cut deep when she tenses her thighs and lifted her body enough for the tip of his cock to brush against her entrance.
He laughed at the audacity of her teasing, a sound that evolved into his own growl of surprise when she did it again, allowing just the tip to enter her briefly with a soft sigh before rising up to deny him again. His fingers dug into the firm curve of her ass and on the next pass he pulled her down, burying himself inside her and ripping a savage sound from her throat. He felt the next shudder pass through her body, tightening her around him as he held himself deep in the velvet furnace of her body.
She recovered and retaliated quickly, her hands lacing together at the back of his neck and heels digging into the small of his back for the leverage to slowly lift herself. She didn’t get far, the urge to seat him in her again and grind against the deep friction proving too much. In the midst of all that sensation building between them, he found himself fascinated with how far she must have come from her own era.
Back then she was likely still a force to be reckoned with, and certainly too much for some fresh faced noble boy to have kept her locked away as trophy. But she had still been a lady, for whom sex was likely a fabled creature only seen upon marriage. Now she clung to him almost desperately, slowly finding a rhythm to ride his body. He fell back, trusting his mind to provide and not being let down when his back met the softness of a mattress and exotic furs.
Either the change in perspective neither surprised nor bothered her, or she was simply too lost in what she was doing and feeling. Now straddling his lap, she planted both hands on his chest and the tightening of her thighs was all the warning he was afforded before she began to take him at a half gallop. She looked smaller sitting on top of him, and yet somehow still beautifully monolithic as Ezra watched her put her whole body into it now. Thighs and hips quivered with tension, her skin already developing a thin sheen of sweat, and he swallowed hard when witnessing the tightening of stomach muscles each time she took him as deep as she could and ground against the sensation.
She was using his body, fucking herself on his cock with a growing need that would burn in her until it was released. He’d seen Incubi torture mortals with that need, driving them to the very edge over and over again until they became mad with it. But not her, she railed against it, against him, until laying back and taking it just proved too much.
Her hips fit perfectly in his hands, and his grip matched the sudden tilt of his own hips when he met her next backward thrust and pulled himself even deeper into her body. Now he held her there, refusing to let her move while he braced his feet against the bed and delivered a series of short but strong thrusts. Her body jolted with his enthusiasm, his own pleasure circling his body patiently while he became enthralled with hers. He saw the horizon of that first climax, currently out of reach but growing closer with every stroke, and his mouth watered for that first taste.
Nails dug half crescents into his chest and for a moment he thought she might just let him drive her over the edge, until she loosened one of his hands from her hip. He didn’t really have time to wonder how she could match his mental strength in that moment, not when she simultaneously gained the room to begin meeting his thrusts with her body again, and certainly not when she drew two of his fingers between her lips. He fed them to her to the second knuckle, relishing in the indulgent way she sucked at him and probed the seam of between his fingers with her tongue.
When she began to ride him at a gallop, he let her, feeling her cunt squeezing around him fitfully. When his fingers fell wetly from her mouth and gripped her throat, he felt her frantic energy mixing with his own, her body now dripping with exertion as she climbed upward in her ecstasy.
Her climax hit them both like a rushing wave, bending her spine back as she cried out in harsh expletives. Her energy hit him like a lightning strike, flooding the barren and dry spaces of his depleted power. He drank her down like chilled water as she shook and bucked against him, his eyes widening as energy ricocheted inside him.
Something clicked in his brain, as though instead of satiating his hunger, that wild energy she gave him only intensified it. Before she could even come down from wherever her mind had traveled in those breathless quaking moments of pleasure he used the grip on her throat and one of her thighs to flip them easily enough. The nature of his hunger had come to full light now, riding alongside his own building desire not just to empty his pleasure inside her, but to see her come apart again.
He lunged into her body, satisfying some dark part of his nature when she screamed for him, not for pain but for the overstimulation of a body that had barely time to recover from aftershocks. Her energy tasted of raw power, and he likened it to a storm that would smash itself upon the landscape and rip up buildings in its wake. All the while he searched for his body's own capitulation in the heated embrace of a body that still met him with every fevered stroke.
Once more those strong legs locked behind him urging him as effectively as a whip at the flanks. A dim and distant part of him warned that he had to be hurting her, even within his own mind the power of his strength should still have been painful. But if it was, she rallied in spite of it or perhaps because of it. Her hands pulled his mouth back to hers, her tongue sampling his bewitching poison yet again.
The harsh impact of flesh met with the sound of the bed shifting slightly with their momentum. Both sounds were crowned with every cry and trembling moan that he swallowed down as she practically fed him that rising energy from her lips. He drank of her, raging against a body that wouldn’t give in, which only pushed him harder and faster towards that cut glass edge of pleasure and pain. He was grateful for her acceptance and somewhat in awe with the way she took everything he had to give and still urged him onwards, as if his end were as vital as her own.
He would have liked to have stayed longer and fed her until she spilled from his pores, but they had reached a point of no return. When she suddenly arched sharpley and tore her mouth away from his to scream as she bucked frantically against him, he could barely hold on, even as he gorged himself on more of that raw power. Her body held him in a vice like embrace that tightened in harsh contractions, the climax leaving her in a flood that simply urged him to join her.
Arms that steamed with the heat of his arousal and need, pulled her back into his lap, pulling her into those final strokes that eventually proved to be his breaking point. Hips snapped up into hers, and his body jolted with a whip crack of tension that seemed like it might never end before it finally did break. He flooded her body with his heat, bowing his head and gritting his teeth against the urge to set them into her shoulder until the taste of copper flooded his mouth. You could take the demon out of hell, but there were some urges that were instinctual, and only a hard won control developed over hundreds of years prevented him from tearing into her right then.
She rode out every liquid pulse that filled her quivering body until it began to wet her thighs, and he clung to her, breathing in the scents of sex, sweat and the underlying reality of the cave where their bodies rested. He wanted more, and something told him that desire wasn’t going away anytime soon, even as reality pried this possessive thought away from the foreground of his mind. She wasn’t mortal, he knew that much, which meant that sooner or later she would be under Groves’ thumb the moment he returned her.
Was she like the other poor bastards that Groves and his special operations had rallied to fight for a king and country that barely recognized their right to exist. Or was she like him, tired of a life of running and choosing the lesser of evils?
She had been important enough to Groves that he’d sent Ezra to retrieve her, and that tight arsed bastard pretty much loathed the ground any demon walked upon. But that probably wouldn’t prevent him from using her again.
She eventually lifted her head to look him in the eye again, and he paid attention to the curve of those lips as she took in his expression, “Don’t go getting sentimental demon, we have work to do.”
He ignored her statement and stole a last kiss instead, because he could, because she let him, and because he didn’t know when he’d ever get the chance to do so again.
o0O0o
She refused to allow things to be awkward by the time they were both awake again, and he decided against poking the bear. This was a lot harder than he would have thought considering he woke up feeling like he’d swallowed half a dozen boxes of the Forced March pills they handed out to british troops like candy. He was buzzing with it, and his apprehension was far behind the prospect of seeing just how hotly he could burn with Jacq’s energy thundering through his veins like a colt in a canyon.
She kept the plan simple and didn’t argue when he insisted that she wouldn’t be entering the lab alone. Then again, he suspected she would have agreed to anything as she stood there staring at the blocked entrance, her jaw tight and her feet restless. She was practically chewing at the bit to get out of there, and he didn’t make her wait. The fallen boulders were too heavy to move by hand, but a controlled blast flung most of the debris outward and both of them bolted out of the newly cleared hole before a second collapse could close them in again.
It was blessedly cool outside, the night air crisp and clean compared to what the cave had smelled like, but there wasn’t time to stand around and appreciate the moment. There wasn’t a chance in hell the beasts hadn’t heard the explosion, and the moment he made eye contact with Jacq, she nodded wordlessly, and they both bolted. Nothing was chasing them, but that didn’t mean they were going to hang around to be discovered. There was the mysterious sniper of course, but in the dark they’d be a hard and fast target to hit.
The facility proved to be as silent as the grave it had become. It still smelled of blood and meat, and even Jacq seemed to pause long enough to take it all in, though it was a lot more ‘colorful’ in the daylight. He’d seen it before, and frankly, he was more interested in studying her face while she looked over the mess Wagner’s monsters had left behind. There was anger in those eyes, not for the massacre itself because in this day and age, a Nazi slaughter was cause for celebration, but something else.
She clearly had a bone to pick with the whole place, but the more he looked at her and the way she seemed to seethe with tension, he was starting to believe that this was personal. It was more than just her incarceration, which anybody would take personally. No, the way that she looked at this glorious mess made it seem like she was taking it to heart.
He cleared his throat quietly, “Hey, Doc?”
She gave a small start, having apparently temporarily forgotten he was there and seemed to gather herself until he ‘almost’ believed she was as fine as she pretended to be.
Halfway across the facility's yard, they came upon a pile of meat that still had bits of recognizable uniform attached to it. On a belt that was now slimy with congealed blood, Ezra noted a dagger. He bent and wiped some of the clinging gore away, noting the SS button on the pommel. He beckoned Jacq over, speaking in a low voice as she came to rest on her haunches beside him.
“You were right. They sent someone official, likely to shut him down. My guess is Wagner let out his pets as a cover to get away. Probably only stayed long enough to take those shots at me when he saw me leaving with you.”
Jacq merely nodded, but he could see by the bloodless nature of her tightly pressed lips that she was more than bitter at the prospect of Wagner escaping.
Inside the facility the air stank of burnt flesh and the ghost of gunsmoke. They took their time picking their way back to the lab room he’d found her in, all too aware that Wagner or any of the soldiers that had escaped the massacre might still be around. Their efforts turned out to be for naught by the time they reached the lab.
It was clear she did not like being back in this room, and he could hardly blame her, even if he only had half a guess as to what had gone on here. He was reluctant to leave her alone in the lab, but was tactful enough not to push the issue when she sent him to look in the armory for explosives. The armory was pretty much untouched and he found several boxes of dynamite, likely swiped from the mines, as well as a half dozen cans of fuel for the trucks outside.
He spent a good twenty minutes with one ear tuned for the slightest indication that the mutant beasts were approaching while distributing the explosives around the facility along with several trails of gas, all leading back to the armory itself. He’d just about finished when he heard the distant sounds of clashing metal and breaking glass. With visions of one of those huge scaled hands smashing through a wall and just snatching her up like a storybook princess, he was skidding to a halt inside the lab within half a minute.
He was just in time to watch her swing a heavy wrench into a set of shelving where hundreds of unidentified objects sat floating in jars full of formaldehyde. Next, he stood by as she grabbed the shelf itself and heaved it until it wobbled on two feet and finally fell forward with another crash. All that careful poise was gone, and even though he knew they should still be keeping things quiet, Ezra didn’t dare interrupt her. In fact he was pretty sure if he said a single word right then she’d have turned the wrench on him.
She turned her attention to a tall refrigerated cabinet, bringing the wrench down on its heavy padlock several times, sending off enough sparks to make him glad he hadn’t gotten around to placing any explosives or fuel in the lab just yet. The lock finally gave way and she tore it off before yanking the fridge open. Now her path of destruction slowed as she seemed to be checking the racks of test tubes that filled the cabinet.
She would rapidly search through one rack before sweeping it out of the fridge and moving on to the next, her search becoming more and more frantic with each one. Blood and bits of glass were now pooling behind her and he could hear the harsh heave of her breath. She found what she was looking for at the very back, a rack containing only four vials that she drew out with a sigh of relief that quickly turned to disgust as she raised it above her head and dashed it on the floor between her feet. Apparently, smashing these wasn’t enough and it was only when she raised one of her bare feet that he finally stepped forward to get her attention.
He saw the way her hand tightened on the wrench and for half a second he thought she might actually take a swing at him. Then she seemed to actually register that it was him and the cold fury he’d seen seconds before, now fell into a wretched expression before she took his offered hand and stepped over the mess. Ezra was all for getting them both the hell out of there and heading for the shoreline where the boat would be waiting for them. But Jacq didn’t seem inclined to move as she came to stand before the coffin-like structure that had held her prisoner.
“Even if we blow this place up into ashes, this isn’t going to be over for you. Is it?” he asked, taking a few cautious steps towards her.
Jacq shook her head and finally turned away from the iron coffin, “No. Wagner is dangerous, and I doubt he left this place without taking a souvenir.”
He felt as if they had reached the edge of the mystery she was still keeping from him, and though he could likely hazard a well educated guess, there was still a lot he didn’t know. Most of the obfuscation was down to the same question he had been asking himself since he’d met her. What was she? The question was almost on the tip of his tongue when something hit the wall of the lab hard enough to crack it, and it was almost too easy to recall his previous image of a fist driving through it.
Ezra knew that they had been pushing their luck, and the roar that followed the crash was almost inevitable. He didn’t really know what he was going to do until his close fist came around in a textbook strike to the jaw. She went down like a sack of potatoes and he was there to catch her, not exactly feeling like a gentleman, but neither was he going to risk his bargaining chip with Groves by letting her run into the mess waiting for them outside.
Something hit the wall from outside yet again, and this time a hole appeared in the wall as several bricks fell into the lab. Despite the fact that she would probably want to kill him for it later, Ezra decided the safest bet was to put her right back where he found her and he set her down to grip the edges of the iron coffin. With her rampant energy still racing through his system like a runaway comet, he ripped the thing out of its bolts and laid it flat before depositing her inside as carefully as he dared.
He didn’t like closing the lid on her, but with the lock ripped off she could at least push her way out if she needed to. He didn’t much like the idea of leaving her in the lab, but he couldn’t deal with what was waiting for him outside while carrying her around like a sack of flour.Bricks were still falling into the room by the time he dashed out of the lab, heading for the facility yard, and as he skidded out into the gore smelling yard he spotted the creature on the outside of the wall. It was the first time he’d gotten a look at the thing properly, and though he had seen far worse in Hell, it was a head fuck to see something like Wagners creation topside.
It did indeed have the overly large head of a komodo dragon, but its body was bipedal and bulging with muscle covered with dark lizard-like skin. Its thick tail was almost as long as its body, which stood at around 9 feet when it stood up full to unleash a frustrated roar at the sky before it went back to clawing at the wall. Ezra might have stood there, partially fascinated, for a lot longer than he should have if he didn’t hear an answering roar coming from the depths of the forest. He jerked his eyes away from the monster at the wall and darted for one of the trucks still parked in the yard.
The vehicle's cab looked half chewed and splashed with dark stains, but he ignored this in favor of leaping up onto the truck's bed. There, a mounted MG42 had been bolted onto the cabs roof, and he grinned when he saw the belt fed brass gleaming in the half moon's light. He had power at his disposal, enough to at least make himself something of a challenge, but he’d hold it in reserve as much as he could because there was no way of really telling how many of the damned things Wagner had made. The Doc had said 8, but she’d also said they were dropping dead over time, so who really knew?
Ezra wasn’t enough of a good sport not to simply shoot the thing in the back, but almost as if the creature sensed him, or more likely smelled him, it now turned away from the wall and set its sights on the half mangled truck. Ezra watched as its tongue slipped from its mouth, tasting the air around it, and he wondered how the damn thing could taste anything as the powerful smell of putrescence finally reached his own nose. He had about half a second to register that it smelled as though it were rotting from the inside when it finally broke into a run. Time was not kind enough to slow down as it approached, almost silent but for the thunder of its feet that shook the truck beneath him.
Ezra squeezed the trigger on the machine gun, and its rapid fire roar filled the air. The creature was a charging wall of muscle, but at 900 rounds per minute the MG still packed a punch. Ezra ignored the obvious target of its chest and aimed lower, directing the spray of bullets to hit it in the knees. The ‘dragon’ for want of a better word, had the momentum that seemed unlikely to stop, and it did keep coming as its knees practically exploded in gouts of foul smelling black blood and bone. For a moment, he wore a vicious grin as its legs finally refused to support its weight on shattered knees, but the smile quickly dropped as the abomination fell like a mountain.
It might have almost been comical if he didn’t have to leap off the bed of the truck to save himself from being catapulted or crushed as it hit the hood of the truck. He was rolling back to his feet when he heard the screech and crunch of metal, turning to see that the ‘dragon’ was now throwing what appeared to be a tantrum. Its claws were digging into the truck, ripping and rending the metal while its teeth tore the rifle from the back. Squinting slightly in the dim light, Ezra could see thats its eyes were blackened and charred sockets, confirming that this was the one he had blinded.
He knew he didn’t have long, being blind wouldn’t stop it from tasting him on the air. He darted as quietly as he could towards a stack of barrels set at the far end of the yard near an empty vehicle bay. The closer he got, the more the smell of gasoline fought to overpower the rotten stench coming from the creature. Under the cover of ithe dragon’s overzealous revenge on the truck, he got a barrel onto its side and kicked it over towards the truck.
The beast’s long, flat head jerked up and cocked towards the rumbling sloshing sound, crawling forward on its powerful arms at an unnerving pace. Flame trickled from the center of Ezra’s palm, licking along his fingers as he made himself wait. The barrel hit the side of the truck seconds before teeth clamped down on it. He launched the flame before the dragon’s teeth could crush it, the projectile force of the hurled fire punching a hole in the thin steel.
For about half a second it almost seemed as though the flame had been doused, then he was closing his eyes against the sudden glare and diving behind another truck as the explosion ripped the steel barrel apart. It was followed quickly by another, possibly the gas tank on the truck. After the initial sound of the explosion there was a sudden and heavy rain of vehicle parts, torn steel and bits of charred flesh. Peering around the truck, he saw the prone beast, it’s head now obliterated from a body that was still burning.
He took a few cautious steps out from behind the second truck, noting several jagged shards of burning steel embedded in the passenger side door. Part of him wanted to immediately run for the facility to retrieve the Jacq and get the hell out of there while they could, but the minute he took a single step forward, call it intuition or simple self preservation, he just couldn’t shake the thought.
“That was too easy…”
A dark shape flew over the diamond patterned fence, passing a few feet over Ezra’s head, slamming into the wall above the entrance of the facility where it came to a stop. He looked up and recognized the heavy bulkhead door he’d dropped while running for the forest, before looking back in the direction it had come from. The treeline was just a dark and pointed horizon that shook erratically before a large shadow detached itself and became more distinct as it approached the burning yard.
It was as big as the first, though this one's roughened skin was a deathly white with patches of red that looked infected as it drew closer. This one wasn’t blind, but it sure as hell looked sick. Aside from what appeared to be patches of skin that had been eaten away, its spine appeared hunched and twisted, not allowing it to raise its long neck. The broad head hung low enough for its chin to touch the middle of its chest, giving it a morose expression, until you got to the eyes.
Malformed as it was, those orange eyes burned with an intelligent malevolence that held Ezra’s attention as it slowly slipped its clawed fingers through the links of the fence and pulled them apart like bits of string. He only started backing up when it pushed its way into the yard, more flame coming to his cupped hand as he backed up towards the building again, already considering taking aim for those eyes. Blinding them only seemed to give him a slight edge but he’d take any step to avoid hand to hand combat.
He had the strength for it, but the tradeoff for being bound to a body and never being dragged back to hell, was that Mortesson’s body was subject to very mortal injury. While connected to him, the body could survive the process, but he didn’t particularly want to find out what healing being torn apart might feel like if he could help it. Ezra was taking aim at the dragon's slow approach when something from above hit him hard enough to send him sprawling halfway across the yard.
Small stones and bits of glass and steel tore at his shirt and his back as he went sliding, coming to a bone jarring stop against the truck's wheel. Ezra grabbed the wheel well of the truck and hauled himself up, peering over the hood to see the monstrosity attached to the side of the building.
This one was slightly shorter but much bulkier than the other two. Like the first, this one was a dark gray. Some kind of anomaly in Wagner's process must have occurred for this one, since the skin of its spine was split all the way to the base of its tail, revealing a set of bone plates. Its massive claws had dug holes into the brickwork of the facility where it hung, glaring at Ezra as the white one slowly approached from the other side. A loud crash from the other side of the facility stopped the malformed dragon in its tracks, and the two creatures stared at each other for a moment before the white one bounded for the source of the noise.
Ezra didn’t have time to wonder what had caused the noise, as the dark scaled monster crawled down the side of the building and hauled itself up on two legs. Burning a little of that gifted energy, he backed up to the barrels again, hauling one up over his head and hurling it at the beast. His heart sank just a little when it batted the barrel aside before Ezra could launch another flame at it for one more quick kill. It retaliated by ripping the bulkhead door from where it still stuck out from the wall, tossing it almost negligently at Ezra and the barrels behind him. He was forced yet again to dodge out of the way, realizing just a second too late that it had just been a feint, and the dark scaled dragon was almost on top of him by the time he got to his feet.
He tried to get off a flame, but the brute was slamming its fists into the ground like it wanted to hammer him into the first like a tent peg, and it was all he could do to both avoid its fists and accidentally lighting up the barrels. Even Mortensson’s skin would withstand the heat while Ezra was at the steering wheel, but an explosion that size would have set off the chain reaction he’d prepared inside the facility. He was running out of room to back up however, and the grey skinned dragon was faster than anything that size should have allowed.
Everytime he tried to break off to the left or right, it was there, swiping with its claws or snapping at him. He was starting to think he might have to risk it with the barrels when something else flew through the air, striking the dragon on the back of the skull. The beast whirled around as the object landed a few feet away from Ezra who stared at it with eyes slightly widened.
It was the iron coffin.
For one devastating moment he thought it had all been for nothing, something had pried her out of the steel box which now lay crumpled and misshapen, he’d failed. Then something else stepped out of the thick oils smoke now covering half the yard, and Ezra might have made a run for it there and then if he didn’t become transfixed by the creature that stepped into the light of the burning yard, a low and seething growl preceding it.
He’d absently named the creatures ‘dragons’ for the animal they had clearly been spliced with, probably with a little magic added to the mix if he were to hazard a guess. But the thing that came into the light truly did look like some nightmarish amalgamation of dragon and man. Or in this case, and here Ezra had to do a rare double take, dragon and woman. It had to be at least 2 feet taller than the rest, its face a mockery of the human form made almost grotesque by the large jaw accommodating teeth designed to rip and tear at flesh.
Like the stocky mutant it had a row of dark plating peeking out of the mass of dark hair that sat around its head and shoulders like a mane. When it fell onto all fours and stalked closer, he noted that its black scales gleamed with a hint of deepest violet when the light hit them. It was a blasphemy of the human form, a mockery of god's design in a way that Wagner hadn’t been able to manage. And it was beautiful.
It was clear to Ezra that this was the creature the mad kraut had been aiming for with his experiments, but he’d only managed a poor facsimile in comparison to this creature. He watched its head lower between its shoulders and narrow its cobalt glare at its bastardized kin, and Ezra felt a thunderbolt strike at his borrowed heart. He’d know those eyes anywhere. He’d watched about half a dozen different emotions displayed within those eyes in the last day, including her untamed ecstasy.
No wonder she had taken it so personally.
Ezra barely had time to register that it answered every question he’d been asking since he met her, before the stocky mutant charged, for what it lacked in elegant design, it made up for with blind rage. Jacq didn’t move as the thing thundered towards her, merely widening her quadrupedal stance. When it got within three feet of her she reached out almost casually, burying her claws into the frame of the half burnt out truck where it crumpled like tissue paper. The mutant leapt, and like a titan she swung the truck to meet it, slamming the still smoldering metal into its gaping maw and bowling it halfway across the yard.
It recovered quickly, and she seemed to let it, rearing up on two legs again and stepping carefully around the wreckage of the yard as the mutant circled her. As she stepped in front of him, Ezra had to take several steps back to avoid the massive tail that swept behind her. Staring at the armored plates that lined her back to the base of that tail, he found himself with a powerful urge to clamber onto her back like some absurd battle mount that would have made any demon in the fighting pits rip themselves apart with envy. It was an urge he denied because there was no telling whether she was actually on his side, or if she just had bigger fish to fry right now.
Like the others, she could move extremely quickly despite her bulk, and she charged at the same time as the mutant who dashed forward, a chunk of metal protruding from its ragged cheek. It was like watching two mountains collide. The gray skinned beast must have known it was outmatched, going for her throat with its teeth and refusing to let go. In retaliation she raked claws along its ribs, opening up its sides like cheap cuts of beef that bled profusely. She roared when it seemed to bite down harder, twisting its head from side to side as if it meant to tear a good chunk of flesh away.
Ezra was circling them both, trying to find an opening where he might have been some help instead of standing there, as useless as tits on a bicycle. But once they started rolling around on the ground, each trying to find purchase in ending the other, it became impossible to aim. She was bleeding, but not as much as the mutant, tougher skin perhaps. Still, the mutant refused to release its potential killing blow until those black scaled hands came around its body in what almost looked to be an embrace.
Claws dug beneath one of the upper plates on the mutants back, and with another roar that he felt coming up from the bottom of his feet, she pulled on the mass of bone. It finally released her throat long enough to shriek, the sound unmistakable in its agony and almost burying the meaty tearing sound as she pulled the armored plate back. Now it was doing everything it could to get away from her, its claws raking at her flanks as it continued to shriek, but all this seemed to do was help her in ripping the plate free and tossing it aside. The moonlight shone on its now exposed spine, making it appear horribly white amongst the mess of black blood. Again it tried to crawl away, actually managing a few feet before she was up and on its back again.
Even if Ezra had been capable of feeling horror for the gore displayed before him, he wouldn’t have been able to look away as she leaned down and buried her face into its exposed spine. There was a terrible crunching sound before she jerked her head back, pulling half the mutant's spine free in her terrible jaws, cutting off its panicked shrieks like a switch had been thrown. The spine was flung aside with a toss of her head, and Ezra felt himself backing up slightly as she circled the body a few times, still bleeding from half a dozen places, her eyes burning like the frozen tail of a comet.
He watched her rise up as far as she could, unleashing another unholy scream at the sky before both her fists came down upon the limp body of the last mutant. Over and over again she expressed an uncompromising rage by way of beating the inert body into an unrecognizable pulp. By the time she stopped, her fists were painted with a darker black than her scales, and her muzzle was pulled back as she heaved with breath that escaped like steam from between her clenched and monstrous teeth.
Now that all the noise and fury had died down, Ezra was uncharacteristically at a loss for what to do next. He honestly couldn’t see trying to get her down to the shoreline 3 miles away as going very well under the circumstances. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if she was in the right mind to not tear him to pieces.
He wasn’t left to wonder too long. A large hand clamped around his ankle and yanked him to the ground, and as he tried to twist and kick out, he saw the open and hungry maw of the white mutant. It wasn’t in great shape. One of its legs had been torn clean off, and large chunks of its flesh had been torn away. Yet it still pulled at him mindlessly, forcing Ezra to grasp onto one of the wooden struts of the vehicle bay. He had no clue whether these things even understood the concept of vengeance, but this one seemed determined to make swallowing him whole the final act in its miserable existence.
The pressure around his leg suddenly ceased, and he found himself in a rare moment of awe as the white mutant was sent bowling across the yard with a powerful blow from Jacq. His instinct was to back up rapidly on his ass when her shadow fell over him, but while her body caged his, she turned to the white beast and roared again as it tried to pull itself towards them by its claws. Ezra would have said that her mouth and jaw were not designed to make speech possible, and indeed the one word that rumbled from her mouth was thickened and trailed off into a deep bass growl.
“Miiiiiinee!”
The mutant appeared to get the message, or perhaps it simply had nothing left. Its claws slackened, still half buried in the blood soaked dirt, and the soft pained trill that came from its throat almost plucked on one of his heartstrings before it finally slumped over and became still. In the silence that followed there was nothing but the sound of Jacq’s heaving breath, every exhale trailing off into a low growl. Cautiously, he slid out from under her bulk, taking care not to make any kind of sudden movement that might change her opinion.
She watched him with the careful gaze of a predator, but made no move otherwise. Despite doing his utmost to not spark another outburst of bestial rage by accident, he nonetless gave into the powerful urge that had gripped him as soon as he’d seen her. With one hand he reached out, and when she seemed to make no move to stop him, he reached further until the solid line of her overextended jaw was under his hands.
The scales were smooth and cool to the touch, and as his fingers followed the line of her bone structure she uttered a low rumble that he might have called a purr if the notion wasn’t utterly ridiculous.
“What a beautiful thing you are.” he whispered, planting his feet and not moving when she extended her neck enough to sniff at his body before her large head butted against his shoulder. There was an edge of bitterness and regret to his words, because the idea of handing her back over to Groves was a hard one to swallow. Harder still, was the knowledge that he would do it nonetheless, because he had to.
He’d spent long enough under the UKSDD’s thumb, and though the new cities they were planning to build would be naught more than larger cages, they offered at least a taste of freedom where there had been none for the past 100 years. He would sacrifice her freedom for his, and that was a terrible exchange. But he’d never accepted this mission in order to be a hero, even if every fiber of his being told him that this magnificent creature, this indomitable woman, should never have been caged in the first place.
From somewhere in the depths of her broad, armored chest, she released a mournful sound and the heavy bulk of her body finally collapsed as she began to pant hard. Ezra took several steps back, not sure of what was happening until he heard the sickening crack of bone. The she beast writhed on the ground, her limbs contorting and shrinking at the same time. She was beautiful to him in both guises but the one that came in between the woman and the beast was not for the weak of stomach. Her body writhed into shapes that should have been impossible, and seemed to shudder with tremors as legs straightened and scales melted away.
The entire process took around half a minute, and by the time a very human Jacq had replaced the beast, she looked as though every inch of wind had been taken out of her sails as she struggled to even lift her head. There were plenty of things for which every member of the UKSDD and any other mortal that wished to control the Unfamiliars should have been made to pay for in due time. But for Ezra, the greatest crime was the expression of tired shame he saw in those eyes as she looked up at him.
“Finish it.” She croaked, her voice as brittle as cracked glass while her bruised and bloodied body shook with a fine tremble before she collapsed out of sheer exhaustion.
o0O0o
By the time he spied the boat waiting for them on the shoreline, he could still see the thick column of black smoke coming from the facility. There were enough coal mines honeycombing the area that with any luck the place would still be burning six months from now. And good fucking riddance. What little conscience he had left, made him go back into the facility to check that all the prisoners were dead before he lit the whole shit show up. There had been one or two who were dead, except their bodies hadn’t caught on that anything left of the soul had pretty much flown the coop. He ended them as quickly as he could and felt all the more justified for finally tossing a match to the trail of gasoline he’d poured into the yard and over the bodies of the mutants.
Now he trudged his way over the pebbled beach, hefting Jacq in his arms where she continued to be exhausted dead weight. He still had enough energy in him that he would have carried her for miles if he had to, but people were already climbing off the boat to meet him. Two soldiers approached, their guns in hand but thankfully not pointed at him. Ezra pointedly ignored their attempt to take Jacq from him, striding past them into the water where he hefted her over his shoulder and waded out to the boat.
Likewise, he ignored the hands reaching down to help them up the side of the boat, and only finally released her when they all but pried her from his hands. The minute she was out of his hands, he saw two more soldiers coming up from the lower deck, one holding an extremely large needle, the other toting chains. Something in his expression must have made his incredulity obvious, for he’d barely taken a half step forward before several guns were smoothly pointed his way.
The CO came up from below, pushing past his men and making lowering gestures with his hands to his men before he turned to look at Ezra.
“Has to be done old chap, she doesn’t travel well by sea, and Groves will throw a bloody tantrum if we wreck another boat, she’ll be quite safe, I assure you.”
Ezra couldn’t find a single polite word to reply with as he watched them stick her with the needle and bind the thick chains about her wrists and throat. He despised the idea of her waking up like that, almost as much as he despised the very idea of chaining up all that raw power and beauty like she was a fucking animal in the zoo.
He felt the CO’s hand patting him companionably on his shoulder and had to bite down the urge to turn around and rip a few fingers off with his teeth.
“You should be happy! Lady Hyde is back to fight another fight, and you’ve held up your end of the bargain.”
Ezra’s expression was wooden, but inside he was thinking of several inventive orifices in which the CO could stuff his false camaraderie. Then something in his mind did a double take and his brow furrowed as he watched the ships doctor checking her over for injuries underneath all the grime and blood.
“Lady Hyde?”
The Co produced a shit eating grin and laughed, slapping a hand on Ezra’s shoulder once again as he gently led Ezra into following him down below decks. His soldiers were bringing up the rear, carrying Jacq between them, forcing him to ignore the ridiculous and pointlessly possessive urge to rip her from their hands.
“Hah! You thought Stevenson pulled that story out from between his narrow buttocks? Course he changed things up a bit, but his story was as close to her legend as we’re ever likely to get!”
When the soldiers split off towards a room with another heavy bulkhead door, he once again was made mindful of the several guns in the hands of vigilant soldiers when he tried to follow them. The CO’s humor turned into an almost pitying expression, as if he could possibly understand. Still he watched until she disappeared out of sight, feeling accustomed to the hollow feeling he was left with.
He allowed himself to be led to his ‘cabin’, which was a nicer word for the cell with its door that locked from the outside. And when he heard the tumble of the boat's engine he finally let himself fall back on the lower bunk, his mind still racing with the events of the last 24 hours or so. Nothing about how this ended sat well with him, and what made it worse, was that he was about 90% sure she would have told him the same thing as the CO had. Because no matter how much he despised the idea, she had managed to cage herself almost as effectively as the soldiers had.
All those hidden parts of her, the mile high walls and secrets that were bound behind them, they had been of her making. He knew that what he had seen tonight had been rare, there were no tales of ‘dragons’ being swapped around the Nazi encampments, and those fuckers gossiped between each other worse than fishwives.
As he lay back on the bunk, waiting for exhaustion to take him just as it had stolen her away, he found himself unable to bask in his victory. He had done what was asked of him, and Groves would keep up his end of the deal if only so he could maintain his pretentious air of ‘honor’ above all else. But he couldn’t see the future just yet. He couldn’t see past those cobalt eyes, set in the face of both the woman and the monster.
Ezra didn’t believe in fate, and divine intervention for a demon was laughable. And yet as he finally drifted to something that could be called rest he felt a jolt of near certainty that made drifting off a little easier.
This would not be the last time he would see Dr Jacqueline Stone, or Lady Hyde.
o0O0o