“I meant the bloody ridges,” he mutters under his breath.
Feeling a bit gleeful at riling him up, I press my luck.
“Mmm. So good. Like roasted honeydew-coated chestnuts, with a hint of caramel. You really don’t know what you’re missing.” My inner demon purrs and sends a wealth of possible positions into my head. Ways in which I could wield his body, make him succumb to my every desire. Total debauchery. I hum in agreement because, yes. This.
His body is filled to the brim with tension—rigidity in his shoulders and the ticking of his jaw. When his eyes flash open, he thrusts the clothing into my chest and turns on his heel. As he storms out of the tent, he calls back, “Meet me outside. And clean the fuck up. I can’t talk to you when you smell like a brothel.”
“Why do you always have to be such a godforsaken puritan!”
“Better than a whoreson!”
“Not in my book.”
“Your book would have been burned at the stake along with Satan’s daughters.”
To the now watchful eyes staring at me around the room, I say, “Only a handful of those were real blood heirs.”
Dumbfounded expressions greet my comment as if none of them appear to know what I’m talking about. History and humanity are funny like that. Give a race fragile minds, time, and free will, and they’ll focus on the present and forget the past. Even rewrite it to fit their agenda.
Loudly and with feeling, I call out, “It’s all about pleasure, am I right?”
They nod, and cheers go up around the room.
Idiots. On the brink of falling into perdition, and they don’t even know it. I scan the tent and shake my head while wearing a wide smile.
Their actions will determine their fate and the fate of this world for the next thousand years, but they’re too busy fucking to care about the bloody apocalypse. They should be working to redeem their souls and seek deliverance.
Do I feel an ounce of guilt for corrupting them? Fuck no…because free will and all that. It’s a tool. A tool for Heaven just as it is for Hell. A knife’s blade that humanity walks along, but only for so long before they choose sin or salvation.
Plus, this right here is the very reason I was created. To test their will and tempt them toward war and sin. My purpose met, my conscience is clear.
Pollock
The nagging unease persisted, settling deeper with each passing hour.
The city felt it too.
Not in any way that could be named, but in the subtle shifts of daily life. Voices lowered. Movements quickened. Even the air seemed heavier, as though something unseen reached out with ghostlike fingers to disturb their hearts and minds.
When I could no longer sit idle and wait for the cause to reveal itself, I convinced Kahill to act—pressing him to send contingents of his best soldiers to fortify the city walls and additional men to reinforce the nearby settlements.
He agreed to do so after many hours of deliberation, and not without reluctance.
He could not dispute one truth, no matter how hard he tried. That was the growing wrongness of each second we wasted, and the not knowing what was coming meant we had to prepare for anything.
With orders delivered and supplies gathered, we made plans to ride out at first light.
It took us six days to narrow our search.
We did not follow tracks, nor rumors, nor signs easily read. Our guide became the slow creeping dread and death that rode the air like a separate entity, the farther west we traveled, thickening with every mile and settling like disease in the marrow of bone.
All the while, souls slipped from my awareness, blinking out of existence with no rhyme or reason.
A rapture, in a sense.
Though not one of our making.
Heaven was discontent as well.
