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  “Me, corsair. Me.” The coven-whore answered. “I want the girl.”

  Standing above his prostrate form, a figure blocked out the sun shining in Khat’s eye, showing only a black silhouette. He saw the pendulous sway of the coven-whore’s full, nursing breasts.

  His hand slid down to his belt, not to the hilt of his blade, but to the little pouch he kept there.

  “Not the girl,” he said.

  “Look at you,” the coven-whore’s voice was husky with lust. “Weak as a kitten, lying in the gore of your frenzy. My contract with you is done. Your augur cast. You are too weak to fight me. Give me the girl or give me you, but give me something to put between my legs before I burst into flame!”

  The coven-whore’s voice had risen to a shriek as she spoke, and Khat pretended to cringe as she screamed. He slid another of the little green pills into his mouth and bit down hard.

  “Go,” he told the girl. “Go, she can have me.”

  He reached down with one hand and exposed his cock. The coven-whore shifted, and he saw the avarice fill her eyes with ghostly illumination. He felt her small, clever hands dive to his groin and roughly jerk him to readiness. The green pill was bitter on his tongue.

  Khat closed his eyes as the coven-whore squatted down over him and he heard the girl scrambling toward the safety of his cabin. The coven-whore’s grip was liquid and hot and she made sounds like a wounded animal as she mated. He gritted his teeth against the pleasure and waited for her to finish.

  Only as he grew closer and she began to drink him further did the witch realize she’d been tricked. Prey had become predator. She suddenly tried to disengage herself as she understood it was she who was weak and Khat who was strong.

  “No! No!” The coven-whore cried.

  His hands closed around her narrow waist like manacles, and his thrusts became rapid blows and the wet slaps were clearly audible across the deck to where the slave girl huddled. His face twisted into a snarl of satisfaction as the burning built up in the base of him and he began to erupt. The slave girl looked down at the withered, burnt-out husk of the coven-whore in amazement. Khat pushed the used waste from him, his body fairly vibrant with energy. He felt the markings of power mixed among his tattoos answer the call of the stolen energy, and his hue became golden as esoteric power burned through him.

  “How is this possible?” The slave girl wondered. “How can a handmaiden of Cahlii be taken in such a fashion?”

  “Cahlii is not the only god in the heavens.” Khat answered. “In Other Days the apothecaries of Anubis made medicines against the succubi. Cahlii’s influence is not invincible.”

  “She is First Among Equals, Mistress of the Quatrain,” the slave girl argued, referring to the Four Gods who ruled in Gomorrah, the Tiered City. “She has ruled for a thousand years.”

  “Times change.”

  “But I saw you sleep with her before in the cabin. Why not then?”

  “When a coven-whore gathers the forces she needs to become a succubus, there are by-products formed, certain secretions in the vagina. The thaumaturgy in the powders I took reacted to those additional secretions, not to the coitus itself. You thinking of become a sorceress? Don’t worry about it. I am master here. That is all which demands your attention.”

  The slave girl hung her head and waited meekly for Khat to express his will. She studiously avoided looking at the withered mummy lying like a shucked corn husk on the corvette’s deck.

  “Come with me.” Khat snapped. “I will free that collar from your neck if you can guide my ship. I killed my crew and my witch. You will be my navigator.”

  “Me? I am but a pleasure slave.”

  “Not to me. Now shut up.”

  Chapter Six

  Present

  Alyssa sprawled across the floor of her room.

  She was spent by the energies of her magics and the teeth-rattling force of her orgasm. Her legs were damp from her touch, and the high breeze coming in through the open window brushed her gently there like the head of a snake searching among tall grass.

  She rolled over onto her hands and knees, hair hanging in her beautiful face, breasts dangling under their own weight. She gasped in recovery and with her sigh she heard the sound of wings.

  Her head snapped up, and her startled eyes found the terrace. She heard it again and this time the sound did not fade. She knew it well. As the daughter of a Gomorrah Liege, she had gone a-falconing many times.

  Uncertainty touched her then, for the wing sound promised a size she might not have anticipated. She forced her fear back and drew herself to her feet. The sound of those terrible, beating wings filled the air outside her window, smothering the rush of the sea. She heard a rustle, and then the wings fell silent.

  Alyssa moved around the raised dais of her bed, trying to see out on the balcony at what form her invocation had taken. Her stomach knotted from apprehension, but the folds between her legs were still damp and warm from the summoning. She stepped forward.

  “Come,” she whispered. “I have called you. Come.”

  The creature stepped into her bed chamber. Alyssa gasped. She knew in one certain instant that this creature had come to command and not to serve. In that same instant she understood that this was what she wanted as well. That it was the only way things could be. She sank to her knees in genuflection.

  “Liege,” she whispered.

  The creature was magnificent. The Seraphim ducked beneath the arch of the door. Larger than any man, it was smoothly muscled, colored a deep ebony, and completely alien. Its beauty was preternatural, its maleness excessive, and the spread of its wings gigantic. In its hand it held an intimidating glaive, and in the blade was set a crystal stone of obvious power.

  The thing drew back obsidian lips and revealed the strong white teeth and fangs of an aristocratic vampire. When it spoke its voice was the deepest of rumbles, and the vibrations of its words rolled through Alyssa’s slight, feminine body and straight into her womb. It made her gasp.

  “Behold. I am Abraxsis, Herald of Anubis.” The Seraphim spread his arms wide, holding his glaive aloft. His erection rose to frightening proportions even as the terrified Alyssa looked on. It frightened her and drew her the way men sick with the arson-fever love fire, wanting to control it and be consumed by it both at once.

  “Behold Abraxsis.” The Seraphim repeated and stepped forward. “You have called me to spill blood in His name, and my price must be met.”

  It grinned, and its animal fangs glittered wet and white against the vivid jet of its lips. Alyssa, suddenly and acutely aware of her nudity, fell back before the creature. Her eyes were wide as the vision of him filled her gaze, and as he stalked forward, a strange and savage demigod, she began to lose herself in his majesty.

  “I know the price.” Her lips quivered. “I know the price, and for the heads of my Infantana and her Caliph I will pay it.”

  “You dare call Abraxsis, Herald of Anubis, for common murder?”

  He towered above her, and she cringed between the muscled columns of his legs. She looked up and saw how the twin spheres of his testicles, as large and round as a bull’s, were drawn up tight against the thick shaft of his erection.

  She realized then that he could smell her own virginity like an aphrodisiac and she understood what the old magics had promised, how far these beings of light and dark were willing to go to claim something no longer even remotely sacred among her own kind.

  She fell back before him and unfolded her legs. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she felt the answering rush down between her thighs. She saw his nostrils flare like those of a dog scenting blood and his erection fairly quiver with his anticipation.

  “Do it,” she whispered. “Take what you want, what you need, then make me Infantana in Gomorrah as my father would have wished. Destroy the enchantments of that bitch sorceress, my false mother and her Caliph. Kill them for me, lover.”

  Then, as the grimo
ire she had seen in her dream instructed, she parted the sticky folds of her lower lips and whispered the Seraphim’s name in the wild tongue. Abraxsis roared and fell upon her. He was not gentle, and after the first thrust it was her own blood that greased the action.

  But the pain did not matter, though she could not keep from crying out. Each thrust of the archangel pushed her closer to vengeance and to the tower throne. The pain cleared her head and made her think of the pleasures to come and when at last, the boiling mess of his seed splashed inside, she took him in greedily.

  Chapter Seven

  Prior to Ritual Night

  Khat draped the slave girl across his knee. He felt the soft crush of her breasts against his leg and her silky hair spilled across his lap. He used his big hand to turn her head as he wished, exposing the back of her neck. She could still smell the coven-whore on him.

  “I’m frightened,” she whispered. “I do not understand why you saved me.”

  Her breath was warm and soft on the naked skin of his thigh. He felt her lips move as she talked softly, not wishing to displease him.

  “There is danger. You know this. The rune-spell could slip beyond my control as I ink it into your tattoo. It would burn your mind to a cinder. I have never had this happen to me.”

  “Why did you save me?” She repeated.

  The girl lay still as Khat began to ink the symbol into her skin using the stylus needle. His actions were steady and carefully. The tattoo was a powerful and permanent enchantment.

  “Because I wished to,” he replied.

  “Even though it has put your plans in jeopardy?”

  “I did not wish to give you to them. They sought to use their influence over me to make me do something I did not wish to do. I will not be played in such a matter. Ever. Better death than compromise.”

  “You never compromise?”

  “Not with humans. Sometimes one must in order to deal with other more powerful creatures. But never easily. I have not done something I did not wish to do since the Legion.”

  “You are a Legionnaire?”

  “I was for a time. It was a reward.”

  “A reward?” Her voice was incredulous. “A reward for what?”

  “For killing a man.”

  “The Legion is a punishment, not a reward. How could service in the Legion be a reward?”

  “I was in Primus at the time.”

  Despite the danger to herself if Khat’s hand faltered, the girl stiffened in surprise. She remembered her danger a heartbeat later and stifled her outburst. Khat had anticipated her reaction and held the stylus away from her neck. When she was still again he slowly lowered the needle back to her flesh.

  “I suppose being a slave-soldier is better than being a convict in Primus,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

  “The Centurions of Gomorrah rounded me and my street band off the docks during the food riots when I was eleven. They dumped me into Primus and left me to the mercy of the rape-gangs and the yard bulls. I had managed to smuggle a piece of wire inside with me. The first Happy Jack that tried to take me, I fell in his arms like I wanted it. He let his guard down, and I jammed it through his eye and into his brain. I didn’t sleep for the next two days, just stayed on the move through barrack billets and the open yards and the flesh pens, always moving one step ahead of the bulls and rape-gangs.”

  The slave girl remained silent and still for a short bit as Khat’s sure hand worked on her tattoo. Finally, she said, “Did they catch you?”

  “It might have been better if they had,” the corsair laughed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I climbed and slid and ran over every square inch of that hell while they ran me down. I saw how fiefdoms had been carved out, how the inmates kept order. How Primus was like the Tiered City in microcosm. Strong utilized weak for power, for sex, for gain, for amusement. But the strong are not always the warriors or the slavers. Sometimes they are the Caliphs or wielders of thaumaturgies, or merchants, or politicians. Sometimes it is just a man with a blade. Doesn’t matter, doesn’t change the fact that no one will free you but you. You must be willing to free yourself, and to do that you, must be willing to face death.”

  “You could free me. You have that power.”

  “I do not have the time nor the inclination to petition the Slaver’s Guild on your behalf. By the time I’m finished here the Navigator’s House won’t want you free. You’ll be non-guildsman competition. I need you now for my plan to work.”

  “If you had let me go you’d have your primate.”

  “I don’t care. I wanted what I wanted and I won’t be manipulated by coven-whores and cutthroats.”

  “How did you escape them?”

  “Who?”

  “The rape-gangs.”

  “I became something worse.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ritual Night

  The Caliph threw open the door to the Infantana’s room.

  The Mistress of the Tiered City citadel looked up from where she squatted drunk on the floor. Pinned beneath her legs the serving girl squirmed for air. Slack with pleasure, the Infantan’s face snapped into a snarl of fury at the interruption.

  “How dare you!”

  “Alyssa has taken a grimoire,” the Caliph interrupted.

  Instantly the Infantana was on her feet, screaming for her cohort. The Caliph shrank against the wall as the ruler’s bodyguards sprang into action. They were cold-eyed soldiers long used to suppressing slaves and policing civilian subjects. They could wield blade, club, and whip with equal skill. Mercy was as beyond their ability to comprehend as democracy.

  “Bring me that girl in chains!” The Infantana shrieked.

  The fear was on her now, as it was on the Caliph. Without the distraction of the serving girl’s quick tongue she could easily feel the electricity of thaumaturgy moving through her stronghold.

  The cohort spilled through the door as the Caliph began to ready his wards and weirds. He knew better than any there what it was possible to call forth from that book if one were willing to risk their soul.

  Chapter Nine

  Ritual Night

  Khat was cold. He opened his eyes and sat up. All around him was an impenetrable black. Beneath his body he felt cold, slick marble. Confused, he stood and goose bumps rose on his flesh. There was the sound of water dripping in the background. His eyes tried adjusting to the gloom.

  Khat caught a flicker of light and spun in that direction. What he saw filled him with a dread he could neither name nor fathom. There was a cave of cold, yellow light cut into the black. It backlit what looked like a castle porticos. Behind the bars he saw a crude lift, similar to something found in deep mines.

  He understood that somehow he was still in the hold of his sunship, but that the coven-whore’s poultice had allowed him to see into the nether realms of the mortal coil as he cast his spell of summoning. He existed in two places at once, and the danger to him was great.

  Khat understood intuitively and with a great strength of emotion that he did not want to get into that elevator. He did not want to approach that light. Yet, in all this vast plane of reachless dark, there was only that sound of dripping water and that grim cave of light.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop

  Khat gasped in surprise and fear. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. It echoed around and past him so that the clamor seemed to come at him from every direction all at once. The single place he knew the noise did not come from was that frightening porticos and its elevator. Khat was too alarmed to tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing. His fear was unreasoning and overpowering. It was so different from his normal mien that it scared him all the more.

  He began mumbling in his fear, turning in all directions for some hint of succor or rescue. None revealed itself. He sank into a half crouch, overwhelmingly aware of his vulnerability because of his nakedness. His hands cupped his genitals as he turne
d, partly from shame and partly from the futile myth that it offered protection if he were attacked.

  He was naked and cold and alone in the dark.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop

  Now the staccato sound grew as whatever emerged from that sterile darkness drew closer. Yet, even as he felt his terror thicken, Khat still feared the promise of the elevator more and could not bring himself to run toward the one single place in all the dark he knew the sound was not issuing from.

  Then the darkness began to take form.

  Before his eyes Khat saw an outline darker than the darkness emerge, and his stomach dropped away in fear. It was a massive outline, a rider on a horse, at once huge and black as ink. Despite himself, Khat fell back a step.

  Still horse and rider approached, neither speeding nor slowing, but coming as inexorably as a river flowing. Khat gave back another step and then sank to his knees in hopeless surrender. Terror had robbed him of every virtue, of every ideal or aspect of nobility.

  Khat heard himself whimpering but could not stop. The dark shape loomed above him impossibly high, and as it drew closer, the shape congealed more fully from the melanoid wash of darkness. Khat knew a greater, fuller horror. Presented with the inexplicable, the corsair now bore witness to a vision of the impossible.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop

  The sound of hoof striking marble floor grew loud as thunder in high mountain valleys. It cracked and roared and seemed to shake the earth with the warning of its dire power. What came was many things. It was legend, it was horror, it was power in corporeal form. What it was not was rider and horse.

  The creature came to a stop inches from Khat’s cowering form.

  Still sobbing his fear, Khat at last summoned the courage to lift his face when the killing blow did not fall. He saw a hoof of gleaming atramentous, as large as his head, rising into a massively muscled leg. Whimpering, he scrunched backward and continued looking up.