Rage

Chapter 5

Briar

It was almost laughable, how theatrical these men were.

Leave it to a self-important man to be completely deaf and blind in matters of taste and style. Richard did always struggle with dressing himself. He got by because of classic good looks, but when the man paired black shoes with a brown tie, it was no wonder that the venue for the sacrificial rite looked more like the set of a penny dreadful than a proper ritual space.

The room lacked the earnest austerity of a cathedral, but it made its best attempt at mimicking one. A large platform at the center of the room stood laden with white flowers: lilies, roses, daisies, carnations–seemingly whatever could be found on short notice. I wondered if any of them had been purchased from Marguerite, and a cursory glance her way told me they had been. She appeared almost green as she looked at her personal captor.

In the center of all of the foliage stood a stone altar; the most ancient thing in the room, with archaic etchings depicting figures of ambiguous gender in the midst of various carnal pleasures. To my newly elucidated eyes, it was clear that one figure appeared in each panel; a goddess with long hair and sharpened horns. I wondered if the men were blind to this because they were idiots, or simply because they were arrogant.

Encircling that ancient altar were eight other altars, newer in construction, each inhabiting the point of an eight-pointed star. One for each of us.

“Welcome, girls,” Richard said from where he stood, still wearing his stupid looking robe and his feral smile. “Welcome to the first day of freedom.”

In the end, the plan we’d come up with to fight hadn’t amounted to much of anything, just as the demon had promised it wouldn’t. Turned out that our hosts had picked up a magic trick or two, including some chant delivered in tongues that made the women in the bathing room fall to the floor like marionettes forgotten by their puppeteer.

When the shoddy plan failed, I’d expected Cassandre to fall apart. But she remained silent as she clasped hands with Atreya.

Somehow we all…lent each other strength in the moment of reckoning. It felt good to be silent and still as we were led down the halls in our pristine shifts and our bare feet. It felt good to not give these pigs the satisfaction of thinking we anticipated the violence awaiting us.

It felt good to know that, encased in my beating heart, was a monster that would tear them all to shreds.

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard the rumble of dark, satisfied laughter bounce off the walls of my skull.

“The time is nigh, men. Take your chosen brides to their marital beds,” Richard bid the other eight men in the room. They swarmed us and each took the arms of the women they’d drugged and dragged here. I didn’t take my eyes off Richard, but I heard quiet hissing and soft gasps. I even heard soft-spoken Diana bark at her publisher not to touch her.

Standing ahead of me, the ancient altar between him and myself, Richard offered his hand out to me. I strode slowly, taking my time. Richard’s smile did not fall, but I watched it tighten. Apparently I wasn’t scared enough for his liking. I came around the altar and placed my hand in his, pleased to learn that it felt no more vile than it normally did. I didn’t fear this man. I hated him.

“So unschooled in the ways of seduction that you have to ritually claim your bride, Richard?” I asked.

“Please,” he said through a chuckle. “Where I’m headed, I’ll have no need for a bride. All women will be available to me. I will merely need to speak a whim and it will be fulfilled.”

“Oh? And where is it you’re headed? A wax museum? I hope you have plenty of firewood, I can only imagine how hard and unforgiving the wax is in the winter.”

“I’m heading,” he seethed, “to godhood. And soon will be freed of your incessant needling and acridity.”

I smiled at his fraying temper. It was hard not to laugh, in all honesty. “I do love a bit of dramatic irony,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. He hovered halfway between striking me or pitying me, unsure whether I was mocking him or descending into hysteria. “Are you going to lie down willingly or will I have to force you?”

Shrugging, I said, “I wouldn’t want you to sweat on your pretty little robe.”

His lip twitched with distaste, but he said nothing as I picked up the hem of my shift to step over the mass of flowers. The altar took up a larger space than I thought from a distance. The stone on the surface stretched carved and inlaid with shining obsidian in the shape of my demon. The only difference between this shadowy rendition and the real thing was that he was missing one set of his horns.

Richard held onto my hand like a proper gentleman as I settled myself onto the altar. Where I lay, my hands gently rested on the large, clawed fingers of obsidian. I realized with dark humor that they assumed this image–the image of a huge, clawed beast–depicted the Forgotten One.

I couldn’t wait for them to find out just how wrong they were.

Once I settled with my hair spilling off the edges of the altar, Richard made an embarrassingly theatrical gesture with his arms. “Men! Prepare for your consummate relations,” he called into the room. I looked around me as each of the men dropped their robes to the ground, revealing their pink, wrinkled bodies and their shrinking members nestled in unkempt nests of pubic hair.

I couldn’t hold it in then. I sputtered a guffawing laugh. Cassandre looked back at me, the terror on her face melting into a curious, questioning expression. I gave her a knowing look before Richard grabbed my chin and brought my gaze to his.

He still wore his robes, which I found strange. Was the sacrifice not meant to be our maidenheads?

“You won’t be laughing for long, you little witch,” he sneered, inches away from my face.

He released my face and lifted his other hand, revealing an ancient, dull blade that I hadn’t seen him pick up. My mind focused on that detail, trying to figure out when he must have grabbed it, or if he’d had it in his robe somewhere. Anything to avoid the distressing reality that he intended to use that blade on me.

He raised the blade over my chest, his other hand pressing down on my throat, clamping me there, crushing my windpipe. My ears started ringing as he called out to the room–to the unseen sky–with zealous fervor.

“O, Forgotten One! Behold your dark disciples. Behold their strength and their wisdom. Behold the sacrifice they bring to you. Too long has the world forgotten the rightful way of things. Too long has the world forgotten that which gives them their lives; the origin of their power . Come back into the world, Forgotten One. Remind the lost and the foolish where wrath resides and what true dominion looks like. Take this blood and use it to fuel you. Use it to once again take physical form. Your vessel awaits you.”

I could no longer look at what happened around me, but I could hear things faintly through the pounding of my pulse in my ears as I gasped for what little breath I could manage with Richard’s sweaty mitt on my throat.

I heard the tearing of cloth, the soft gasps and cries of Cassandre and Diana. I heard Atreya growl, “ Get off of me you disgusting swine.” Then came Bella’s whimper of, “ Doctor, please.”

I hated myself for the fear that pounded in my heart when I stared at that dull blade covered in verdigris.

I will make you bleed but once so that you can bathe the world in blood.

Richard brought the blade down with all of the strength he could muster. I felt it in the weight of his hand on my throat,felt the twitch of his fingers as he stabbed, again and again, with that ancient blade.

It was pain like I’d never known, and I found myself feeling regret as he cracked through the thin bone at my sternum and into the sinuous tissue of my heart. Not regretting what I’d done, no. Regret that I had only ever used a knife so sharp that flesh parted for me as easy as opening a well-loved book. I should have been using a dull knife. It hurt so much more.

Hot, sticky blood spilled out over my breasts, across the altar, gluing the white linen of my shift to my skin. It sputtered out of my mouth, its coppery tang coating my tongue and teeth.

My ribs caved against this brutality, but I did not die. I almost wished that I would as he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed again.

Then as he went to pull the blade out of my ruined chest, it stuck. I watched as his expression crumpled with consternation. I thought that maybe he had stabbed me with such brutality that he’d managed to get the blade stuck in the stone beneath me, but I was certain that carving through my spine would have rendered me paralyzed or at least numb. Then again, the pain had subsided–all that remained was the dull force of his closed hand thudding into me.

He released my throat and tried to pull the blade out with both hands. He was like a fucked up retelling of a heroic myth; only he failed to pull a blade from a woman, rather than a stone.

His eyes met mine and I grinned at him, knowing my teeth must be garish with the sheen of blood and saliva.

“What’s wrong, Dick?” I rattled wetly. “Having performance issues?”

“You little–” he started, but he didn’t get to finish.

A huge, dark hand exploded from the gaping wound in my chest, charcoal-colored and covered in viscera. It grasped Richard’s jaw with violent strength and I heard a sickening crack of bone as it squeezed.

Another arm clawed out of me, bracing on the bloody surface of the altar to give him the leverage he needed to wrestle the rest of his enormous form from the confines of my heart.

The men’s voices all coalesced into a chorus of terror and shouted questions as my demon left my body. He held onto Richard’s collapsing face as he turned to look at me with those beautiful ruby irises. With his other hand, he brushed bloody hair away from my face with such tenderness that I was enamoured. Who knew that a creature capable of such tenderness had such savage strength hiding beneath his too-hot skin.

“You were so brave,” he cooed. “Allow me, little goddess.”

He rose to his full terrifying height, and grabbed onto Richard’s shoulder with the same hand he’d just used to brush my hair from my face.

He tore the man in two as easily as if he were made of paper.

Richard’s entrails fell to the ground with a sickening, wet splat.

I looked weakly around the room, finding the naked men scrambling at the stone door that wouldn’t open for them. Their would-be sacrifices were in various stages of getting up, most of them holding their shifts around their bodies after their captors had ripped them open. They watched my demon with fearful hesitance as he discarded Richard’s corpse with careless abandon.

He stood, turning to the women who had become my sisters in this terrible experience.

“You may leave if you wish.” He approached my side, crushing white flowers beneath bloodied feet. “Or you may join us. Your sacrifices await your retribution.”

With one hand, he scooped my torso up toward him. With the other, he snapped his fingers. The men were rendered motionless, collapsing into disgusting, weeping heaps of hairy flesh on the floor.

Quiet reigned for a long time. Atreya was the first to speak.

“Will she die?” she asked.

“No,” my knight said immediately, no hint of worry in his voice that was just so pleasantly reverent and resonant. He watched my face with rapt admiration. I smiled at him and brought a hand up to cradle his face. His sharpened teeth appeared in a smile as he cupped my cheek in turn.

“Good,” Atreya said. “Can you help us with one more thing, creature? Help us get these disgusting pigs into the bathing room. There are some women in there who would like a word.”

“Bring them here,” he said, scooping me up into his arms with tender care. “There are more tools for them to use. I need a moment with my goddess.”

Atreya met my eyes over his shoulder as he turned and walked away with me. Her brows quirked, as if in question. I mustered a small nod, letting her know that I was okay.

My demon walked through the chamber as if he knew this place well. I’d assumed that the altar which I was laid upon had been found and moved here. Only now did it dawn on me that the caverns themselves may have been ancient as well.

Warm blood spilled down my front, soaking into my white shift like a glass of wine spilled on luxurious, white carpet. Or maybe an entire bottle.

“This looks as if it should be fatal.” I leaned my head against his chest as I looked down at my ruined, sunken rib cage.

“It is.”

So casually did he deliver this information that I thought I may have misheard him at first. His crimson eyes met mine as we passed behind a stone wall that I hadn’t realized had an opening. “The Forgotten One strikes fear into the hearts of many. Even Death himself will not disrupt your will.”

“I’m not the Forgotten One,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said. “But you will be soon.”

We passed under a stone archway where a long-haired woman reached for a two-horned demon, joined hands over our heads. “Is that you?”

He looked up at the sculptures and nodded. “Yes.” His voice carried a quality that sounded almost wistful. He did not elaborate.

He placed his large hand over my chest where gore and viscera still gaped against the ruined front of the shift I’d been dressed in. His thumbnail caught and severed the soaked tendrils of linen with gentle care. I watched with the same detachment I always felt when I disposed of the butchered flesh of one of my marks. The only moment marked by cognitive dissonance was when the pad of his thumb brushed the sensitive skin on my sides and tickled.

I wasn’t numb, then. Something just divested me of my pain.

“You’ve really been with me since Penny died?” Warmth spread across the space around my ribs. Light bloomed. My flesh and sinew reached across the cavern of my ruined heart.

“Yes.”

I watched on, not missing that my heart did not reform as the cage of my ribs canopied my lungs again. For some reason…that felt right.

“Why didn’t you save her?”

His eyes were ruby-like in their vigil over me as skin, new and pink, covered the fibrous muscle moss growing over stone. “It was through your loss of her that I found you,” he said. “Once Death claims his bounty, I cannot get it back. But I could protect you. Strengthen you.”

“Why me?”

“Asking such things is like asking why your sister went through the cruelty that brought me to you.” His hand brushed into my hair, his thumb brushing my cheek bone. “Some questions have no answers.”

That wistful quality returned to his eyes as he carefully set me down on soft cushions that smelled stale but felt clean. He tore through the remaining sheds of my shift, baring me to him with ease. When he removed the blood-soaked fabric from my body and discarded it like refuse, like he wouldn’t abide the reminder of the man he’d ripped in half.

Blood still clung to my new skin. I was healed, but not clean. His eyes roved down my body, pausing at the peaks of my breasts, the curve of my stomach, the silken-haired mound between my legs.

His voice was rough, almost reverent, as he asked for the final time. “Are you ready to become?”

“Is there a choice?” I wanted to hide my face where I felt the flush of hot blood gathering there.

How your blood blooms like roses beneath your skin.

“There is always a choice,” he crooned.

I knew this, somehow. And yet it felt good to hear him say it all the same. In truth, I had already made my choice. I made it when he came to me in the darkness, made it every time I sliced into sweating, hairy flesh. I made it the day I looked into the mirror image of my own face and found nothing behind Penny’s eyes.

I will make you bleed but once so that you can bathe the world in blood.

No more girls dying at the hands of cruel men. No more sisters weeping. No more mothers burying their children. No more girls dying, sweating and vomiting in beds after unwanted life was carved out of them. No more brothers, uncles, fathers, taking what they wanted from sisters, nieces, daughters.

“I’m ready,” I said, reaching up and cupping the side of his face.

He closed his eyes in comfort before kissing the inside of my hand, his mouth just about as large as the span of it.

Another kiss followed: the inside of my wrist.

The belly of my forearm.

The swell of my upper arm.

The curve of my shoulder.

The valley of my collar bone.

My breaths came in sharp gasps as his split tongue circled around my small breast, sinuous movements winding around the soft flesh before converging on my hardening nipple. I let out a whine as he took the bud between his teeth and increased pressure.

My hips bucked and he released it, pressing the gentlest of kisses to the affronted flesh.

“You will tell me if I hurt you.” It wasn’t a question.

“I like that it hurts,” I sighed.

He smiled sharply against my breast before moving to the other to give it the same attention he gave to the first.

“You are a most beautiful violence,” he said as he licked the blood from between my breasts, from the edge of my lower-most rib, from the well of my belly button. “How I crave to give you this petite mort.”

He lowered himself between my legs and I found myself pressing my thighs together. He tutted, brushing his thumb between them as he had the first time. “Let me worship, little goddess.”

Not fucked. Worshipped.

My face and chest blazed with internal fire as I opened up my legs to him. The cold air hit hot wetness there. He pressed one kiss to the tufted softness of my pubic hair before descending lower.

My hips bucked involuntarily as he drew a line from the base of my opening to the tip of my womanhood. He pressed a large hand down over my hips, pinning me in place as one half of his tongue parted my folds and the other brushed impossibly delicious circles around that opening.

He moaned as if getting his first taste of a decadent meal. I moaned as that new-yet-familiar tension started to coil in my low belly again.

“Oh… god ,” I rasped.

He chuckled warmly against the wetness growing between my legs. “You flatter me, goddess.”

Where his tongue was once circling the well of my pleasure, now it broached within, filling me in a way I didn’t know I could crave. As it brushed and tasted and coaxed and fucked, the other half drew lazy circles at the pinnacle of my sex, winding me tighter and tighter.

I reached down for purchase sightlessly, hands grasping onto the first thing they could find; his horns. I pulled instinctively, wanting more of this feeling. He didn’t falter. He closed his lips over the entirety of the space between my legs, molten mouth and silken tongue lathing all across me. In and out, around, down. Across the tightness of my backside.

I gasped, eyes flying open as I looked down at him. His crimson eyes curved with mischief as half of his split tongue speared against the forbidding muscle between my haunches. My skin went hot and cold all at once as he worked both holes in a torturous, alternating rhythm. Just as the wave of pleasure from one penetration ebbed, the other crested and crashed into me.

My hands tightened around his horns as my toes curled. Sounds came out of my mouth that I’d never heard myself make as release barrelled into me. I could feel the satisfied curve of his full lips as he savored every drop of the wetness between my legs.

He hummed, the sound vibrating against me as I went boneless under his hand. He raised his head, tongue snaking out to clean the milky sheen still clinging to his coal-colored skin.

“You’re doing so well,” he said as he brought his hand up from my hips and bit through the pointed claw on his thumb, blunting it. “How I love to watch you come undone for me.”

He moved to his index finger, biting through that nail with a snap.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He chuckled, blunting his middle finger, then his ring finger, before answering. “It helps that you’re feeling good–it helps,” he said, voice rumbling in his chest. “But if you’re going to take me, little goddess, I have to prepare you.”

He blunted the nail on his little finger with a final, decisive bite before dropping that same hand between my legs.

He rubbed two fingers in slow, agonizing circles over the sensitive flesh before curling all of his fingers but his pinky. He tickled gently at my opening before slowly, steadily pushing that fingertip into my body.

I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand as he watched me with hooded, hungry eyes. The sensation was so different from that of his tongue; it was rigid and unforgiving in a way that already had me stretching around him.

He groaned, his long lashes fluttering as his eyes moved to watch the pursuit and retreat of his little finger.

“Waiting for you these years has been agony,” he grunted as he withdrew his little finger completely and replaced it with his ring finger. “I cannot wait to spear you upon my cock–to feel you twitch and entrap me, to feel your hot breath against my ear as you cry out my name.”

My focus zeroed in on his finger as it slid in and in and into me. He swirled his fingertip inside of me, brushing against some secret place in my body that even I didn’t know. He waited there, drawing circles inside of me until the feeling of overwhelming fullness softened to a comforting touch.

I looked up at him as those fingers continued their drugging circles inside of me. “What is your name?”

The words came out with too-soft edges, slurred and heady.

He smiled. “My old name died with you the last time, when you decided to rest and place your power within me for safe keeping. Choose a new one for me.”

Another fingertip joined the other, leaving me seeing stars as he slowly stretched me around two of his large fingers. I could think of nothing else as he teased and coaxed and pressed.

“It’s too much,” I whimpered.

“Shhh,” he soothed as he brushed the thumb of his other hand across the peak of my breast. “I thought you liked that it hurt?”

“I–I do.”

“Just breathe, little goddess,” he said as he pushed those fingers in deeper.

Such divine pressure spread inside of me, such exquisite pain as my back arched and my head pressed back into the old cushions. Once he almost bottomed out, he drew his fingers out of me again and started thrusting them into me, first slowly, then faster and faster until wet sounds echoed off the stone walls around us. My moans joined them at the same tempo, keening higher and higher until they were all but desperate sobs.

I reached a hand out toward him and he leaned over me. His nose brushed mine as I linked my arms behind his neck.

I felt so safe dwarfed beneath his huge frame. His hellfire warmth enveloped me as he increased the speed of his fingers one more time, the edge of his palm brushing just enough on the sensitive nerves at the apex of my core that I cried out with blissful finality as I came again.

He closed his mouth on mine, devouring the sound as I devoured him. He tasted like darkness and decadence and me. His fingers retreated, leaving me feeling woefully empty. I made a sound of protest in his mouth and he parted from the kiss to laugh darkly.

“You will soon have more than you ever dreamed inside of you, sweet goddess; patience with this servant to your will,” he said.

I bit down on my lower lip and yelped with pain. Wonderingly, I tongued at the edge of my teeth, finding that my canines were longer, sharper–like fangs. He grinned at me, brushing blood from my lip and licking it off his thumb.

He only had one set of elongated canines, now, where he had once had two.

“Teeth to match your bloodthirst, goddess,” he crooned.

He reached down between us and I followed the path of his hand. His dark trousers were suddenly gone and his cock was a monstrous thing in his hand as he palmed himself.

It was slightly darker than the rest of him, almost soot-black against the muted charcoal of his hand. My mouth went dry as he pressed the silken head of it against my opening. His breathing turned rough and ragged as he slowly, patiently slipped inside of me.

The work he’d done preparing me made the sensation, at most, mildly uncomfortable. My legs twitched faintly as a series of raised ridges slipped past the sensitive threshold. He gritted his teeth in a snarl, as if this act of restraint required great effort on his part.

“I want to fuck you mercilessly,” he growled. “My entire body screams for it.”

If I still had a heart, I was certain it would be thudding.

“O-oh?” I gasped.

His eyes appeared dark and ravenous as they met mine. “Yes, goddess,” he said. “I want to ruin you. But I won’t. Not yet. Not in this.”

Despite saying so, his control seemed to slip as his hips rolled and he buried himself deeper inside of me. He dropped his head down beside mine and growled into the cushion. “You are so exquisite. Better than I remember.”

He drove in deeper; deeper than it felt possible. I watched the mound below my stomach distend as he finally bottomed out, his sharp hipbones flush against my inner thighs, forcing them wider apart and tightening his fit.

“ Goddess,” he moaned as he slipped back out, ridges catching and making my unfamiliar teeth clatter as I gasped against his shoulder.

He thrust back into me, only slightly after this time. One large hand slid under me, angling me up a little higher at the small of my back. That little shift opened new depths to him and he retreated again before plunging even deeper.

This time we moaned together.

“ Bite me,” he commanded.

I obeyed, opening my mouth and sinking my sharpened teeth into the spot beneath his clavicle. His hips bucked and I rolled my eyes as I tasted his blood, warm and sweet in my mouth. I lapped at the wound I’d inflicted as he started his rhythmic thrusting into my body.

My brow ached as he sat back, his other hand scooping beneath my upper back as he brought me up with him. My legs were shaky and loose as he tightened his hands around back and kneeled back. Instead of thrusting into me, he sat still while he moved my body, raising and lowering me onto his perfect, swollen cock.

“Name me,” he growled.

“Mmn,” I sighed out. My head was empty of everything but the perfect union of pain and pleasure.

“ Name me,” he insisted again, bucking his hips at the same time that he slammed me down onto his cock. I gasped loudly, hands pressing against his chest.

“Wait,” I said uselessly.

He used his thumb to hook one leg higher as he ground his hips in a circular motion and plunged into me again.

I tried to make my brain think of anything. Anything that wasn’t this divinely punishing cock driving into me again and again. I went boneless in his hands as he continued his delightful torture, turning me over and cradling me in his hands as he fucked me from behind.

From this new angle I could see all the etchings on the walls around us. Distantly, I scanned our entire life story in pictures as his tempo quickened. My brow ached as the imagery went from abstraction to memory in a seamless river of information.

“I missed you,” he said behind me, his voice close to my ear. “I waited while everyone forgot.”

I closed my eyes and a fever-dream of fragmented memories spilled into me. Or perhaps they were just recovered. I didn’t know.

A man that looked like him, only without the horns and teeth; without the enormous size. His clothes were out of date.

The silken tug of colorful ropes bound around our hands before we smiled and kissed each other.

Dancing around a maypole when he was much younger. I was younger too. Smaller.

A long night at his mother’s bedside with my herbs and tinctures.

Strange men in strange clothes coming into town and making camp.

Giving a girl a bundle of herbs and instructing her on how to unburden her womb.

The roughness of his hands as he brushed hair out of my face while I failed to carry another pregnancy to its end and dealt with the fever accompanying my miscarriage.

Prayers called out to the sky to take the strange men and their strange clothes away.

Being locked in a cage, stripped bare, checked for marks. Touched by these men. Snarling, biting, fighting them off; trying to.

“I couldn’t stop them then,” my demon said behind me. I reached up and smoothed my hand around the back of his neck, eyes still unseeing as this past self spilled into me.

The acrid smell of smoke. Fire. Fire. Fire. FIRE. FIRE. FIRE. Pain doubling, then tripling, then numbing. Numbing everything except for the rage. Gods there was such rage in me and rage in Rowan’s face.

Rowan. That had been his name.

“Rowan,” I sighed.

His pace stuttered and I came back into my body as he nuzzled against my neck. His thrusting continued, only now it was slower and more tender. His lips brushed against the sweaty skin of my neck.

“You remember,” he said. “Your first becoming. You remember it.”

My eyes rolled as another collapse into pleasure loomed. “They burned me,” I said.

“Called you a witch,” he growled. “My beautiful wife. Our precious healer. Protector of all that was good, all that was right. And they cast you out and called you a demon. Burned you while they made me watch.”

“I want to see you,” I said.

“Soon,” he breathed against my ear.

I could feel him against every surface inside of me, but I didn’t think I had another release in me. I feared I might break. As if sensing this, he became even gentler, his movements focusing on his own pleasure while simultaneously brushing his hands in soothing strokes down the length of my body. Touches meant to pacify, rather than titillate.

“I cursed them,” I said, recalling the words I’d uttered.

“And I sealed that curse with their blood,” he panted as a moan left his throat. “I tore them apart with nail and tooth and blade for you.”

Yes. It was getting clearer. I was all but ash when the sky poured rain down on us all, extinguishing flame and creating rivers of blood that carved through our once-peaceful village.

“You came to me,” I said softly.

“ Yes ,” he moaned as his body trembled with effort.

“You held me in your arms as I soaked in their blood,” I said.

“ Yes. Fuck,” he gasped.

His hips slammed into haunches as he curled over top of me, laying me face down in the old cushions as he fucked me into them. The tightening angle seemed to push him over the edge as he let out a snarl.

He slowed his thrusts, milking his cock into me. I felt the hot liquid fill me before it ran out of space and slipped out past the tight fit of him inside of me. His breathing slowed, he sounded like a powerful beast that had just led a stampede.

He laid next to me and I let a moan out into the cushions as every ridge and bump of his cock brushed on the over-sensitive surfaces of me. I rolled onto my side, my legs and body achy from the first and likely hardest fuck of my life.

He pulled me into his chest and started brushing his fingers through my hair, his hands painfully gentle. I tilted my chin up to look at him, but something…caught. Something painful.

A chuckle rumbled in his chest as he lifted his chin. “They will take some getting used to,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what he meant at first, then he grasped the tip of my chin and adjusted the angle of it so I could look up at him. When I did, I found he was down to only one set of horns: the larger set. Earlier I’d grown fangs where he lost two of his, so that could only mean…

I reached up to the spot on my forehead where I’d been feeling discomfort while he’d been fucking me, feeling a bulge and swell of bone before it extended up another four inches and tapered to a razor sharp point.

“Horns,” I said.

He brushed a hand down my back. “Everything has been returned to you, my love,” he said, leaning forward and kissing my forehead. I wondered if he’d done some magic, because the soreness abated after that simple show of affection.

“But we were just human,” I said softly.

He didn’t falter, picking up on the conversation we’d been having before he finished. “We had been once, yes,” he said. “Servants of Atreya. Not priestesses, like the other one. But we followed her teachings. The missionaries came with their books and their rules and before long they had one half of the village turned against the other.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the smell of blood and ash, remembering crying as I smeared soot that had collected on my own burnt limbs over his face. I’d wanted to memorize the feeling of it. The feeling of him. The feeling of love. Knowing that I was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it.

A single tear escaped my eye as this memory went hand in hand with the utter devastation of losing Penny. There was almost too much loss. A much smaller thumb brushed the tear away and I opened my eyes to see Rowan almost nose-to-nose with me. Roughly man-sized rather than the towering creature of before.

“You’re smaller.” I sniffed.

“You willed me to be,” he said softly. “Before you needed me to be larger; stronger. You craved protection. Now you only need me to hold you as a man holds a wife; as an equal.”

“Where did I go?” I asked. “Why did this all have to happen?”

He smiled knowingly at me, brushing tears away. “You were so tired,” he said. “After doling out retribution again and again and again, seeing the darkness in men’s hearts again, and again, and again. You are so vicious when angry, but inside of you is still this gentle, tender heart.”

He placed his hand over the spot where my heart should be, but it was still.

“Do you feel rested now, Briar, Queen of Thorns?” he asked.

Queen of Thorns? Wasn’t that some Atreyan minor goddess?

I placed my hand over his heart and felt two different heartbeats. He put his free hand over mine. “You gave me this for safe keeping,” he said softly. “But you can have it back whenever you like. For the task ahead, it may be better not to have it.”

Outside of the room a chorus of anguished screams and demented laughter rose and echoed against the walls.

I smelled the blood and bile, a stench that had become as well known to me as my favorite perfume.

“It sounds like they have already handled it,” I said.

“It sounds like these arrogant fools have provided you with your very first priestesses,” he said, his grin going wicked. “And that you need to teach them the best way to make use of those knives and just whose flesh it should rend.”

“There are so many men like them.” I sighed. “Our work will never be done.”

“Fear can do so much to inspire good behavior, my love,” he said.

I met eyes with him for a moment before struggling to sit upright. He braced his hand on my back to help me. I held my hand out in front of me, examining the brutal claws at the tips of my fingers, then looked with awe at the wavy hair falling well past my hips and pooling in black puddles around my body.

I was still me. But I was also her : She who grew tired and chose to be forgotten. And the creature beside me had waited so very long for my return. I wasn’t sure if it was love that I felt for him, but I knew I felt gratitude and loyalty. Loyalty both to him and to the women destroying the men out in that ritual chamber.

“We need to get dressed,” I said. “And we need to get started.”

He cradled my hand in his and kissed the back of it.

“Of course, my love,” he said obediently. “Let us rid the world of this scourge.”

As the cries of dying men quieted to blissful silence and the drifting silk of fine garments enrobing my skin, I leaned in to kiss him before responding, “Sounds like fun.”

The End.