9. Ysu
Ysu
I carried her through the early morning forest, noting how her weight settled against my chest with surprising trust. The little serpent who once trembled at my touch now rested one scarred hand against my shoulder, her fingers tracing the armored segments with absent-minded curiosity.
My venom had changed something within her.
She carried a different scent now, something dangerous mixing with that ancestral green that first caught my attention.
“You’re warmer than before,” she observed, her voice carrying none of the careful deference she’d shown mere hours ago.
“Your perception sharpens,” I replied, adjusting my grip as we navigated the twisting roots of the forest. “It has been quite some time since I’ve had such a satisfying meal. Their essence fuels me.”
She hummed thoughtfully, a sound that vibrated against my chest. Such a small thing, yet I found myself cataloging it alongside her other responses—the way her breath no longer caught when my additional arms shifted, how her pulse maintained its steady rhythm even when my mandibles clicked near her ear.
Fear had transmuted into something far more intriguing.
The villa emerged from the morning mist, rigid and unnatural.
Roman stone and precise angles assaulted the natural curves of the hillside, though my silk now decorated its walls in ghostly streams. Bodies hung suspended from windows and doorways, wrapped in white cocoons that shifted gently in the breeze.
The heating system still breathed its hot air, though now it carried the copper scent of spilled blood rather than perfumed oils.
“It looks different,” she said, tilting her head to study her former home. “Smaller.”
“You are no longer the tiny creature that was once imprisoned here.” I set her down at the villa’s entrance, watching how she moved.
Already I saw change. Her gait was different, more fluid.
She hadn’t realized that her steps made no sound on the stone, that her balance had adjusted to accommodate changes yet to come.
She sniffed the air, searching for her quarry.
Already my little serpent was becoming something much hungrier.
We passed through halls painted with arterial spray, over floors where drag marks told stories of futile attempts at escape.
I would have to reward her for it, I hadn’t had such fun in ages.
The thought of it had the hunger that consumed me rising, but I wasn’t sure if it was for the hunt, or for the way I intended to spread her before me and feast again.
She paused at a doorway—her former room, I surmised from the way her jaw tightened. But she didn’t enter, didn’t linger. The past held less power when the future promised such exquisite possibilities.
“You said you had a gift for me,” she prompted, full of naked desire that had me grinning.
“Such a greedy little thing.” I guided her to the triclinium, where torchlight flickered over a scene I’d arranged with particular care. “I thought you might appreciate the chance to...conclude certain unfinished business.”
The large one hung suspended from the ceiling, silk binding him from shoulder to ankle.
His own bulk betrayed him, as his weight tugged him down so that his limbs had nearly lost all blood.
His face purpled above the white wrappings, eyes bulging as he recognized first me, then her.
Muffled sounds escaped the gag of webbing across his mouth.
Pleas, threats, prayers to deaf gods. I didn’t particularly care.
Beside him, the young one with a hand for artistry presented a more pathetic sight. I’d wrapped him loosely, allowing his arms some movement so he could struggle. The boy’s face streamed with tears and snot, his whole body shaking as he watched her approach.
I had smelled her on them. Knew that they had been the worst offenders of her harm. The void within me had begged me to consume them as I had so many of the others, but a new sensation—the one she had awoken—had allowed me to merely maim them, saving them for their true justice.
How different they must have looked to her now—these men who had seemed so powerful when they held her down, made her so desperate she had bargained herself to a creature of nightmare to destroy them. But they were just human—unlike her. Not anymore.
“They’re still alive,” she said, and I heard the tremble in her voice.
“Fresh meat spoils quickly,” I explained, settling myself against a pillar to observe. “I thought you might prefer them... aware.”
She stopped before the large one, her face unreadable. What is my serpent thinking? Her hand rose to trace the air near his face, not quite touching. He tried to follow her movement, neck straining against the silk bonds.
“He liked to kick me here,” she said, indicating her ribs. “Broke three of them once. Said it was to teach me proper posture.”
I clicked my mandibles in acknowledgment but remained silent. This was her moment to seize or squander.
A sword lay on the floor where its owner dropped it. One of many scattered weapons that had proven useless against me. She bent to retrieve it, testing its weight with an untrained hand. The blade caught the torchlight as she returned to the brute.
“You always said pain was instructive,” she told him, voice steady as deep water. I held back my sound of satisfaction. “Let me return the lesson.”
The blade entered just below his ribs, angled upward with surprising accuracy.
His muffled scream harmonized beautifully with the wet sound of parting flesh.
But she didn’t stop there. She withdrew the blade and struck again, and again.
She pierced an artery and blood sprayed across her rage filled face.
Devastating.
I longed to wrap her in my arms, to lick all that fresh blood off her soft skin until I sunk back into her warm cunt, her taste and the taste of her revenge merged together. But there would be time for that later.
“This is for every night you held me down. This is for the burns. This is for making me watch while you—” Her voice broke, but her arm didn’t waver. Blood soaked through the silk wrappings, spreading like spilled wine across a pristine white cloth.
When the brute finally stilled, she stepped back, breathing hard. The sword dripped on the tiles. Already I saw the shift—her pupils dilated and elongated, her chest rising and falling with excitement rather than exertion.
“How do you feel?” I asked, genuinely curious.
She considered, her head tilting in a gesture unconsciously mirrored from my own mannerisms. Adorable.
“Nothing. I thought it would... fill something. Feel better.”
“Because you merely killed him. Any peasant with a sharp stick can kill.” I moved closer, careful not to touch her yet. “You felt nothing because you gave him nothing of yourself. Death alone doesn’t satisfy—consumption does.”
Her gaze shifted to the boy, who had worked one arm partially free and clawed frantically at his bonds.
The boy’s terror filled the air, sharp and intoxicating.
He had nearly gotten free, the pathetic thing.
She approached him slowly, and I noted with interest how her body crouched low automatically. A predator with prey in its sights.
“Please,” he managed to gasp as she reached for his bindings. “Please, I was just following orders, I never wanted?—”
“Liar.” The word emerged as a hiss. She dropped the sword.
She tore the webbing with her bare hands—her nails, I noted with satisfaction, had sharpened, and she didn’t notice the strength required.
“You loved it. Loved leaving your little marks, your signatures in my skin. You found others, when I no longer satisfied you.”
“You called me moon-whore,” she continued, circling him as he scrambled backward on hands and knees. “Said my barbarian blood made me fit only for bleeding and fucking.”
He tried to run. It was almost pitiable how slowly he moved compared to her now. She caught him at the doorway, one hand closing on his shoulder with enough force to pulverize bone. His scream transformed into something higher, more primal as I heard them crunch.
“No more knives for you,” she snarled, and then she was on him.
What followed transcended simple violence. She tore into him with hands that no longer quite qualified as human, fingernails rending flesh with the efficiency of claws. Parts of him came away in her grip and she flung it aside with disgust before diving back in.
He tried to fight back, landing a solid blow to her jaw that would have felled her yesterday. Today, she barely noticed. She responded by grabbing his striking arm and pulling. The sick, wet pop of separation from socket preceded his shriek by a heartbeat.
“You liked to cut patterns,” she panted, using those sharpened nails to peel skin in strips. “Let me show you what I learned.”
I watched, fascinated, as she systematically dismantled him.
There was artistry in her fury now—she targeted the places that hurt most but killed slowest. When he begged, she forced his mouth open and ripped out his tongue.
When he tried to crawl away, she cut his tendons with a natural hunter’s accuracy.
The hunger had taken her fully now. Her jaw began to unhinge and her throat elongated as she leaned over his gurgling form.
The serpent awakened in truth, drawn by the warm feast spread before it.
I saw the moment she wanted to consume him—really consume him, not merely kill—but her body hadn’t progressed enough for such ambitions.
Instead, she tore out his throat with her teeth.