Chapter 3
Lyall
Why am I always so obnoxious?
I didn’t understand my need to cause mayhem, be difficult, and be contrarian just for the sake of it. For the longest time, I blamed it on whatever bad genes my sire had passed on to me. But it was a shameless lie that even I was too embarrassed to try to hide behind anymore.
Heaving a sigh, I shifted into a Gharlakan and took flight towards one of the many portals scattered throughout the Shadow Realms that would enable me to cross the Veil into the Mortal Realm.
Not for the first time, I seriously envied my brother Pharos’s ability to teleport between worlds without requiring the use of portals.
The whole way there, my mind continued to mull over what my mother’s real agenda could be. She had absolutely no use for the peony flowers that grew in the graveyard. That meant her request had to be some sort of workaround for the Covenant, which you could sometimes bypass by being clever.
For example, I couldn’t verbally or otherwise warn someone that they were about to step into the trap of a shapeshifting abomination.
However, if I happened to walk ahead of that person while ‘minding my own business,’ it could ‘accidentally’ prompt the beast to reveal its presence by targeting me instead as the closest potential prey.
If that enabled that person to turn tail—thus saving them from a certain death—I couldn’t be accused of breaking the Covenant.
It wasn’t my fault the beast chose to step out of its hiding spot.
Which brought me right back to why my mother was sending me to the graveyard. Who was she trying to help? Could this be the next step required to save Ranael?
She said that my love for him touched her deeply.
Could that be a hint that I was getting closer to getting my brother back?
My heart soared at that prospect. Nine Hells, how I missed him.
Of all my siblings, he always made me feel loved, accepted, and not judged.
Over the last couple of years, I had grown closer to Pharos.
He was nice, but a little too self-righteous.
Actually, that wasn’t a fair label. But as an Angel of Death, Pharos tended to be a bit too much of a rule follower and was both excessively sweet and protective.
My exact opposite.
While he never berated or belittled me, I could clearly see his disappointment when I acted up.
It shamed me even more to know that I misbehaved because I wanted attention.
I was so fucking pathetic. The fact that Pharos had been trapped inside the wretched necromancer Cornelius for all of my life except for the last two years didn’t help either.
We never really got a chance to grow close although he had been reaching out from time to time.
My countless other siblings lived too far away, had personalities that were far too different from my own, or were cursed like Ranael.
So whatever this mission entailed, I burned with curiosity. It saddened me to admit that the prospect that it might earn me another hug from my mother lit a fire under me.
So fucking pathetic.
For a male who prided himself as being an apex predator, I sure acted like a clingy toddler desperate for his mommy’s love and approval.
Obviously, I understood that it was in large part due to the vermin who had been my sperm donor.
My mother genuinely meant it when she told me to let it go, and that she didn’t hold any of it against me.
My head understood it, but my heart still struggled to comply.
And my mother’s aloofness and dislike of physical displays of affection made it even harder.
It was stupid of me to take it as a rejection as she behaved the same with all her other offspring.
As I crossed the portal, I used the chameleon-like camouflage of the Gharlakan so anyone nearby wouldn’t see me as I made my way to Duskwallow.
As I began my descent into the graveyard close to the crematorium, my sonar vision picked up an insane amount of magic being expended.
Whatever ritual was taking place within, it involved some serious dark magic. Something nasty was about to happen.
A thrill coursed through my spine at the prospect of the impending mayhem.
This obviously couldn’t be a coincidence.
All day, I had worried that I might be going there too late or too early.
However, my mother stated that I wanted to be gone from Duskwallow before sundown while also giving myself enough time to do what I needed.
For this reason, I speculated that she wanted me to come in mid-afternoon, around 3:00 PM.
I couldn’t be happier to have apparently guessed right.
Circling around the large building, I used my echolocation to detect a potential opening that wouldn’t require me to go in through one of the three doors.
I spotted one at the base of the residential part of the building, just a couple of meters from where the crematorium wing began.
Although the much smaller residential section had been built at the same time, the wood and brick exterior made it very visually distinct from the dark stones of the crematorium.
I landed quietly near the tiny hole and shifted into an ash spider.
The vicious critter resembled a hunter spider.
However, it spit webs coated in a substance that turned the web into powdery ash on contact.
In turn, the powder would cause excruciatingly painful rashes and welts.
If it penetrated the victim’s bloodstream or if inhaled, it acted like a virulent poison that killed in minutes.
I crawled through the opening at the base of the damaged exterior brick wall of the house.
It led me inside the living area of the former gravediggers.
Abandoned more than 300 years ago when the entire place became cursed, it had now been claimed by dust, some dark and viscous form of mold, and the stench of something that should be dead but refused to be.
The furniture looked disturbingly pristine, as if it had somehow been frozen in time.
You still couldn’t pay me enough to sit on or even touch any of it.
However, I was shocked to see the countless arcane symbols and runes covering the wall separating the residence from the crematorium.
It literally felt like standing before the doorway into Hell.
The house itself looked like its former occupants had simply walked out one day and never returned.
But you could tell that various arcanists etched those markings over a long period of time.
I didn’t doubt something even more disturbing would greet me on the other side.
Then the sound of a woman screaming seeped through the closed door.
My back stiffened. As I raced towards another tiny fracture in the wall where I could slip into the next room, I began to doubt my initial assessment.
I first thought that the woman was in distress.
But now, although she sounded like someone in pain, her screams had a lascivious edge to them that hinted at something completely different.
I entered the crematorium and found myself in the viewing room. The guest chairs or benches were gone. The altar-like stone slab upon which the deceased was exposed in their coffin prior to the cremation still remained. However, it had been completely desecrated.
Dark stains spoke of old blood likely resulting from ritualistic sacrifices.
Various other markings and unidentified splatters on the tiled floor revealed the unspeakable atrocities that took place here.
A large pentagram protruded from beneath the altar, which was encased in a giant magic circle.
As with the wall in the gravedigger’s living room leading into the crematorium, the walls here were covered in occult symbols and runes.
But it was the couple on the altar that retained my attention.
A man in his mid-twenties was savagely ramming his cock repeatedly into a woman.
She was kneeling before him, ass up, her face almost crushed on the hard surface of the altar.
He was fisting her hair in what had to be a seriously painful hold.
Her face was red, her skin bruised, and multiple claw and bite marks marred her flesh.
For a split second, my stomach roiled, and a wave of rage surged within me at the sight of a man handling a woman so brutally.
This systematically triggered me and my fears about what my sire had done to my mother.
And yet, I knew it had not been rape. Or rather not rape by coercion and violence, but by deception as a doppelganger.
You tried to do the same to Amara…
I did not! That wretched thought would occasionally slink back into my mind.
Yes, I had offered to take on the appearance of her soulmate so that she would stay with me instead.
But she had known exactly who was before her.
I had shifted right before her eyes. I didn’t manipulate her thoughts under a different appearance.
Whatever the circumstances, my partners would always know exactly who was touching them, and it would always be with their explicit consent.
And to my dismay, this woman was consenting to her partner’s unbridled roughness.
I moved to the corner of the room to get a better view of what was happening.
By the illuminations on the magic circle, they were partaking in some form of sex ritual.
It undoubtedly benefited the man. But what was he offering her in return?
The runes on the pentagram glowed in tandem with the sigils on the man.
However, although the female didn’t seem to have any sigils on her, the bruises and wounds she had sustained were healing at an accelerated pace.