Lord of the Dark (2 page)

“Damn the watcher!”
he seethed, pumping his cock ruthlessly.

Beneath him, his wings were like lead, pulling him down into the water. How black its satiny breast was, with only one torch lit on the rocky wall. Calling upon his extraordinary strength, Gideon surged upward, his wings raining water. His feet found bottom, for that part of the pool was shallow. His breath was coming short, not from exertion, but from the climax that was about to rock his soul, and he plowed through the water to the fall spilling down and stood beneath it.

White water poured off him, spindrift mixing with rising steam as the flow of falling water beat down upon his wings, upon his naked skin, every pore acutely charged with the palpitating rush of orgasmic fire ripping through his loins. One last spiraling tug on his pulsating shaft, and he watched the seed leave his body in long, shuddering spurts, as the water creamed over him, spraying out from his unfurled wings in crystalline droplets.

Gideon cried out as the climax took him, the bestial howl echoing back in his ears amplified by the acoustics in the cave. When had his wings, those traitorous wings, unfurled? He flapped them now, and rose hovering over the pool, beating the water from the silver-white feathers. It rolled off them with the same ease it would have done rolling off a duck’s back.

Soaring higher, he wended his way to the edge of the pool and touched down on the smooth, cold marble. He groaned again. The melancholy sound drifted over the water and became part of the roar of the little waterfall across the way. How he detested the ritual. How he abhorred that he’d once again squandered his seed thus. His cock was flaccid now, but not sated. It would never be sated. That was part of the curse. He had climaxed, but there was no satisfaction in it. Tomorrow, the wind would ruffle his feathers and he would grow hard again, with no soft hand to ease his torment, no warm, sweet, welcoming womb to receive his seed. No hand but his own would service him, and no womb save the night or the pool of dark water would have him, should he prowl the archipelago until dawn swallowed the darkness again…and again.

He snatched the torch from its bracket and thrust it into the water, his nostrils flared at the hissing, spitting steam and noise it made, casting the pool in darkness. Then furling his wings, he stomped back to his sleeping chamber. It had been days since he’d closed his eyes, and he was exhausted.

There was no bed. He could not lie in one long enough to sleep. On his back, pressure upon his wings would bring arousal. Were he to sleep upon his belly, the weight of the wings would crush and smother him. He stepped into the sleeping alcove, a hollowed-out niche in the cave wall that fitted him utterly. There, he would sleep through the rest of the day and night standing, hopefully through the storm, until the dawn came stealing, throwing beams of morning at his feet through the narrow apertures high in the eaves, no wider than arrow slits. He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his broad, muscled chest. Yes, there he would remain until the dawn touched his wings with silent sound that only he could hear, setting off the cruel vibrations, making him hard again.

R
hiannon heard the siren’s song from her cabin below decks on the brigantine
Pegasus
. The captain must have heard it, too, since he crossed the bar that separated the bay and sea and followed the sound. There, the flesh-tearing wind propelled the ship through the archipelago straits broadside in a starless, moonless night as dark as sin, fraught with horizontal rain and hailstones as large as crab apples. The missiles made a dreadful din striking the deck above, but that was the least of Rhiannon’s worries then. She hadn’t seen her father for hours, and she’d barred the cabin door against the first mate, Rolf, who had stalked her since they’d left port on the mainland at dawn.

What was it in the siren’s song that made men run mad? Rhiannon didn’t know. She had always thought legends of the beautiful sea creatures luring sailors to a watery grave were nursery tales…until now. Outside, the haunting music rose above the howl of the wind, and the crew had been under its spell since the storm began. The singer almost sounded angry. Why couldn’t these bewitched men hear the rage in the siren’s voice? Or was that something only another woman could detect?

The pounding came again at the cabin door. Rhiannon backed away, watching the seasoned wood shudder under the first mate’s fist, as his hoarse voice demanded she let him in. There was no question of his intent. Fearful, though resigned that her father was more than likely dead, she accepted that she was alone. If only the siren would stop singing. It was as if everyone aboard had gone mad since her eerie music began.

The ship was being driven nearly horizontal in the water toward the shoals that marked the mysterious enchanted isles. Through the porthole, Rhiannon could see a slice of sea and sky that seemed impaled upon serrated rocks, like wolf’s teeth chomping at the white-capped swells and the ship’s hull as it sidled through them. Clinging to the bunk post with one arm, she groped the air in mad circles, reaching for her mantle on a wall hook alongside, for she was wearing only her sleeping shift and she was nearly naked in it. The cloak was just out of reach. Making matters worse, she hadn’t finished plaiting her long, ginger-colored hair before the siren’s song began. As it was, it fell down her back to just inches above the hem of her shift. It was her greatest asset, and now her greatest hindrance, for it threw her off balance.

The pounding came again. The shuddering door caved in, and Rolf careened into the cabin dripping water from his slicker. Staggering over the cabin floor negotiating the pitch and roll of the hull, he seized Rhiannon’s arm.

“Little fool!” he snarled. “Do you want to die shut up in here?”

Rhiannon strained against his grip. “Let go of me!” she shrilled. “Where is my father?”

“Drowned, with half the crew when we crossed the bar,” the first mate said. “And the captain’s under the siren’s spell. We’ll never make it through the shoals. You’re coming with me!”

His eyes, heavy-lidded with lascivious lust, were riveted to her breasts, to the tawny nipples straining against the thin gauze shift. Rhiannon pretended not to notice. She could feel the ship’s hull shudder beneath her bare feet as it grazed the rocks. He was right about one thing. She had to get out of that cabin…but not with him.

“Wait, my cloak!” she cried, reaching toward it. “I will not go above decks like
this
!”

Rolf relaxed his grip enough for her to reach the mantle, but instead of wrapping it around her shoulders, she flung it over his head, kicked him in the groin, and fled the cabin just as the ship struck the rocks again, pitching it bow downward into the belly of a swirling vortex. This time it was a fatal blow. Water rushed at her from all directions. The ship groaned like a woman as it died, then nothing, nothing but the howl of the wind and the plaintive siren’s song.

It wasn’t the dawn that woke Gideon in the sleeping alcove, it was the lightning spearing down, reminding him of another lightning strike. Muttering a string of oaths, he left the alcove, stalked out of the cave, and went to the beach to assess the situation.

It was still several hours until dawn. The black volcanic sand was like marble beneath his bare feet, where the rain had beaten it down. Siren song rode the wind from as far off as the Pavilion. Was it Muriel’s voice he was hearing? It could well be; there was anger in the sound. More than one ship would flounder on the Arcan shoals this night. Simeon would need help. On such a night as this, the Lord of the Deep would be blessing many dead. It was Gideon’s custom on such occasions to see to the living, however many he could save from drowning in the sea and bays, and from the jaws of the treacherous shoals. This was one advantage of his mighty wings, and one of the ways he justified his meager existence as guardian of the Dark Isle.

He wouldn’t go back to the cave for his eel skin. It was still sopping wet, and he only had one dry one. The prospect of struggling into a wet eel skin was not a palatable one; neither was soaking his only dry one in such a maelstrom. He was not Simeon, Lord of the Deep, whose natural state was being wet. Gideon relished his creature comforts, for he was permitted so few. His skin could be dried a great deal quicker than eel skin. Besides, there was something very sensual about flying naked through the wind and rain. It stirred his feathers, making him hard, and the punishing hail scourging his erect cock was excruciating ecstasy, prolonging the only climax he was allowed—that which did not involve the sweet, willing flesh of a woman, or any other entity, for that matter. He was cursed with a solitary existence. He was, being immortal, impervious to lightning, the watchers’ weapon. It could inflict great pain, but it would not kill him.

Without a second thought, he spread his wings and soared upward into the stinging rain splinters, instantly aroused. A hot, hard cock was a difficult thing to ignore, but the sight that met his eyes once he’d gotten aloft was enough to rival the curse that kept him in a nearly constant state of arousal. More than one ship had been impaled upon the shoals thus far. The wreckage was spread clear to the Forest Isle already, and the eye of the cyclone hadn’t yet passed over. It would reach Lord Vane’s Fire Isle by dawn at this rate. If only the siren song would cease, but it seemed louder still, and Gideon felt somewhat responsible for that. If only he hadn’t provoked Muriel’s ire, precious lives might have been saved. That it was the watcher’s lightning that set the siren off mattered not. Gideon had a conscience, and as he saw it, if it wasn’t for the curse he’d brought down upon his own head, there would have been no watcher.

He was over the Forest Isle, and he circled low. It was moon dark, but he could clearly see Marius, Lord of the Forest, in the clearing at the edge of the strand, lit in the lightning’s glare. Marius had become the centaur again, just as he always did during the dark of the moon. That was the curse of the Prince of the Green, a strikingly handsome man until the moon went dark. Then, the creature would emerge, with all of Marius’s dark good looks and broad, muscled trunk and arms, but the body and legs of a feather-footed black stallion. And thus he would stay for the three-and-a-half days of moon darkness until the new cycle moon appeared in the indigo vault and set him free.

With the help of what looked to Gideon like a vine lasso, the Lord of the Forest was trying to drag some who had washed up on shore to higher ground and the protection of the great enchanted forest, no mean task for a man who was half horse.

Gideon touched down alongside. “Let me,” he said, taking over the chore.

“Thank you, my friend,” Marius said, pawing the ground with his feathered forefeet. “I am not at my most powerful for such a chore in my present state.”

Gideon grunted in reply. He never wasted words. One by one, he turned the bodies that had washed up on shore over, seeking a pulse. He shook his head. “Do not waste your pains,” he said of the ones nearest. “These here are dead.”

“And those others?” Marius asked him, pointing several yards off.

Gideon stalked over the strand to several more bodies sprawled on the beach. “This one in the slicker here lives,” he observed, “these others, no.”

“We cannot leave them here to rot on the strand,” Marius said.

“By your leave, I will load them on your back and help you consign them to the deep, that Simeon might bless them for their journey to the afterlife.”

“As needs must,” the centaur said.

Between them in the teeming rain, they put the dead back into the bay, and Gideon lifted the lone survivor. “Looks like a crew member,” he observed. “Where do you want him, at the cottage?”

“No,” Marius said. “We shall put him in the sod house. My faun will tend him. I do not take strangers into my home. These are dangerous times, old friend.”

Hefting the inert seaman, Gideon strode into the forest with the centaur following. There, the rain did not penetrate so severely, though the trees’ fragrant pine boughs and leafy arms reached out to stroke and caress him as he passed. For these were ancient tree spirits to whom he had always been friend.

Gideon hadn’t visited the Forest Isle in some time. As he passed among the trees now, their embraces grew stronger. They leaned toward him narrowing the forest path, encroaching upon it as the trees genuflected before him. They all but rose up out of the ground tethering him with their roots and vines and tendrils. The forest was lush with burgeoning species clinging to the trees’ trunks and branches. When several leafy arms began fondling his wings, Gideon stiffened.

“Do
not
touch my wings!” he admonished the trees. He was aroused to begin with, and the fondling was driving him mad.

The centaur laughed. “They worship you,” he said
“They waste their worship,” Gideon grumbled.

Marius gestured toward the obvious. “That there is long sore for wanting,” he said. “It’s virtually purple with unshed come. They know your curse. What harm to let them pleasure you?”

“What? And have the watchers shear off their limbs with great lightning bolts?” What the centaur was suggesting was something Gideon had never done, though he’d seen the Ancient Ones pleasure others over the years.

“They are
spirit
,” Marius reminded him, “not women, and they seem willing to take the chance. What harm to let them relieve you?”

“While you stand there pawing the ground with those great hooves grinning like a satyr, eh?” He slung the dead weight he’d been carrying in the person of the unconscious sailor over the centaur’s back none too gently. “Enough!”

“You need to take what harmless pleasures come your way when they are offered, old friend,” the centaur said, prancing in place with the added weight on his sleek black body.

“Oh? And I suppose you let these overgrown weeds pleasure you?” Gideon scorned.

Marius shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said. “I am not so different than you in that the gods have cursed me also. Where am I to get a willing mate like
this
?”

“Ahh, but you are not like ‘this’ every hour of every cursed day, only three days out of a month. My curse is perpetual, and I am growing tired of dodging the watchers’ fireballs.”

“Umm,” the centaur hummed. “I take it back. We are not so alike after all. I have not forgotten how to smile. I often wondered what it is about that handsome face of yours that spoils it. You have no laugh lines by your mouth! A smile would likely shatter it like glass.”

“And what, pray, have I to smile at, Prince of the Green? The wind blows on my wings and my cock grows hot and hard. The slightest touch upon those damned feathers and I am on the verge of climax, but no climax comes! Stubble that look! They
are
damned, these traitorous feathers. That is no blasphemy, ’tis
fact
! Look at me! And you want me to go about with a stupefied smile on my face?” He slapped the centaur’s rump, setting him in motion. “Get on with you, before that crewman you’re carrying expires as well. Go find your faun. Where the devil is he anyway?
He
should be helping you here, not me.”

“You know fauns are a lazy lot,” the centaur called over his shoulder. “They always wander off when there’s work to be done. Remember what I said…You have championed these spirits since time out of mind. There is no sin in letting them repay the favors in kind….”

If Marius said more, Gideon didn’t hear. The forest lord’s constant companion, a great, noisy magpie, with a long tail and black and white plumage, swooped down and followed the centaur into the forest, where they both disappeared among the trees.

“Aggh,
sin
!” Gideon ground out in disgust. “Smile, indeed!” But when he turned back toward the strand, he was surrounded by leafy branches and graceful pine boughs.

“Ancient Ones…” he addressed the tree spirits, “you must let me pass. I am needed elsewhere.” But the trees hovered still, edging closer. “No,” Gideon protested. “You do not understand. What you propose could bring lightning bolts from the gods down upon you. I am
cursed.
You cannot…help me…”

Pine and ash, rowan and oak formed a canopy above Gideon’s head in reply to that. He was cocooned beneath a virtual bower of different species of tree, both sapling and ancient.

“Damn Marius and his lecherous trees!” he muttered under his breath, regretting it at once, for they were not lecherous at all. They were reverencing him, wanting naught in return but the privilege of his release. Of all the curiosities in the enchanted isles, the Ancient Ones and Marius, their enigmatic keeper, were the most mystifying.