Lord of the Dark (23 page)

G
ideon opened the front of his eel-skin suit and freed his bursting penis to the night wind. So many times the wind had taken him thus, stroking his hot shaft and tight sac with cool breezes. He had almost given the wind substance, like the artists’ renditions of buxom maidens drawn in the legends of old maps, their cheeks puffed out as they blew the painted ships about upon their painted oceans. Somehow, giving his seducer an image seemed less lonesome than the cold reality of mating with thin air. But there was no relief in it any longer, not since he’d had his Rhiannon in flight, and soared with her to the brink of Paradise.

Thinking about Rhiannon as the wind took him made the climax more acute. He came quickly, aided by the approaching storm and the risen wind that chased the roiling clouds overhead obscuring the moon. It was the storm that had saved him a more serious blow by the watcher’s missile as he took to the air earlier. He had suffered only a graze instead of the direct hit the odious creature had intended, and spiraled out of their reach.

It was a cold wind for a warm night caressing him now, soothing the fever in his hot, sore flesh, cooling the thrumming veins along his shaft as the blood pounded through them rushing to the hard head of his penis, slick with pre-come. He had the wind to thank for such an erection, and now there was the memory of Rhiannon’s soft, caressing fingers and the silken feel of her thighs gripping his waist. Closing his eyes, he imagined her long hair lashing him like a whip as they plummeted toward land for the final climax. Her scent rushed up his nostrils, softly floral, sweet clover laced with the heated musk of sex. His hips jerked forward, his shaft seeking the sultry comfort of her petal-like folds, searching for the thick walls to grip him, milking him dry. It was empty air that took him instead, and he groaned as the seed of his body rushed out of him spurt after involuntary spurt, carried off on the wind that seduced him.

The rune caster’s cottage loomed up before him veiled as it always was in mist. The watchers gave Lavilia no truck. They had never bothered him when he visited her isle, but things were changing, and he couldn’t be too careful. The odious harpies attacked him at random now, where they hadn’t ever attacked him before unless he was in the arms of a woman. That being the case, anything was possible, and he could ill afford to suffer a lightning strike now.

He touched down upon the strand and moved with caution through the mist. Lavilia was near. He could feel her presence. How would she present herself this time? He had only to ask to know.

“Show yourself, Lavilia,” he said. “I haven’t much time.”

“Come to settle your accounts, have you, dark one?” she replied from deep in the foggy mist. It beaded upon Gideon’s feathers in liquefied droplets, casting an aura of rainbow shimmer about them in the reflected moonlight.

“You know what I need,” he replied. He did not want to waste the remaining gifts. If he could trick her into telling him what he needed to know…it was worth a try.

“The knowledge you need, you have had all the while, impetuous one, if you were not too blinded by love madness you would have seen it.”

“I dislike conversing with the fog,” Gideon said. “Show yourself and have done! I tire of tilting with shadows.”

“In due time,” she tittered. “I do not trust your mood, dark one. The desperate oftentimes do…foolish things. I would prefer not to become a victim of your current madness.”

“You have not begun to see my ‘madness’ if you presume to cheat me, old one.”

“Have I not served you well in the past?”

“You have,” Gideon replied, “and you know my needs.”

“Oh, aye, I know them!” she was quick to interject. “Is it your final question you have come to ask, or your last feather? I wouldn’t squander that if I were you.”

“I asked the question closest to my heart on a previous visit,” he said. “Your answer was unclear.”

“How is that?”

“You said it was possible for Rhiannon and I to be together, but not the way I expected, or words to that effect.”

“You asked if you could keep your lady, and I told you yes, but not as you wished. That should have been enough right there for you to figure out the rest, but you were too besotted, and still are, I’ll wager.”

“Why must you always speak in riddles?” Gideon snapped. “Can you not tell it plain?”

“All augur comes in riddles. The oracle I summon with the runes is no different from the necromancer’s spirit guides, or the sorcerer’s ploys.”

“Why is that?” Gideon wondered, thinking out loud. He was genuinely curious.

“Because the truth behind it is all too often too terrible to bear spoken plain…like now,” Lavilia said. “You want me to elaborate upon an answer I have already given you. Is it my fault that you are too dense to see the answer staring you in the face? I think not, dark one. You need to take stock. Your sight has grown narrow these days. Love does that to a body.”

“I’ve never had ‘sight.’ That is why I come to you.”

“You come to me because you have no other alternative,” she chortled. “You’ve made a grand muck of things blundering about on your own.”

“Then enlighten me!” Gideon thundered, his voice echoing repeatedly, amplified by the fog. “Come out! Show yourself and let me look into your eyes.”

After a moment, the mist parted and Lavilia stepped out of the writhing whorls of mystic vapor naked, her long gray hair barely covering her faded nipples. “Do not worry,” she said, sauntering closer. “I want none of you this time; it is our last time, and I would remember our coupling as it was upon your last visit. I have something else in mind.”

“She is with Marius. Is she safe on the Forest Isle until I resolve this?”

“Is that your last question?” Lavilia asked. “Think carefully, you only have one.”

Gideon already knew he and Rhiannon could be together, just not as he wished. That much he’d tricked her into telling, so he wouldn’t waste a question on that. He’d already wasted one when the nightmare began. He could ill afford to lose another.

“Yes,” he finally said. “Is she safe where I have left her?”

“Not for long,” said the crone. “You have angered the guardian of Outer Darkness, and none upon the Forest Isle are safe from that one’s wrath.”

Gideon gave a start. “Why did you send us back there then?”

“I didn’t send you anywhere, dark one,” Lavilia defended. “I got you out of hell to play out your destiny. That it is to happen on the Forest Isle is none of my doing. I haven’t the power to dictate destiny, only to reveal it.
You
set this course in motion when you struck out on your own without hearing what you needed to know that would have prevented all of this, impetuous one. Lay no blame for that blunder upon me!”

“And thrice now I have begged you to tell me the rest of that augur. You
owe
me!”

“Do I? Take care, dark one. You can ill afford to anger me now. I do not need to tell you what you were in too great a hurry to hear. Someone else will do that for me. But this much I tell you for free…You will not find your safe haven anywhere within the reaches, tracks, and climbs of Arcus. Waste no time seeking sanctuary here or
anywhere
that the watchers can gain admittance. They are relentless.”

“I have nothing left to lose,” Gideon ground out through clenched teeth.

“Nothing except Rhiannon,” Lavilia reminded him. “And your soul.”

Gideon gave it thought. There was no time to waste, but he was down to his last feather in her keeping. He needed to be certain. When he didn’t speak, Lavilia took the initiative.

“I can tell you no more,” she said. “Take great care calling back your last feather. That is all the free advice I can give you, and I’ve said it before. I will not cheat you, dark one, but I am bound by the oracle I’ve summoned to do your bidding in this, and if you do not choose wisely…”

“I understand.”

“I wonder that you do,” she said on a gusty sigh. “But no matter. It will play out as it is designed. Come! Embrace me…”

“I thought you said—”

“I am not asking you to put that grand magnificence inside me, there isn’t time for that. I ask only that you give it me in spirit. When I touch that body, it becomes a living memory, dark one, a vision imprinted in my mind that I might call up whenever I will to bring your image to me as if you’ve come in the flesh. Let me have my playthings. It will not hurt you, and it will bring comfort to a tired old succubus on dark and lonely winter nights.”

Gideon almost pitied her as she sauntered close, cupping his face with her wrinkled hands.

“I will miss you,” she said, sliding her crippled fingers down his neck. She was like a blind person seeing by touch.

Gideon took a closer look, and his breath caught in his throat. She
was
blind. Why had she never showed him this before? “You cannot see!” he cried. “How is it in all these years I have never noticed?”

“I am illusion, dark one, remember? You have seen what I have wished you to see. I need no eyes for the kind of sight the gods have bestowed upon me. It was my sacrifice eons ago in trade for my second sight. My third eye sees far more clearly than the two dead orbs you gaze into now, dark one. I see you with my spirit through these old fingers, and your image will forever live behind these sightless eyes.”

She continued to follow the contours of his shoulders, then traced his broad chest through the eel-skin suit. Spreading it wide, she reached inside and found the small, hard buds of his nipples set like gems in his pectoral muscles above the sleek, roped torso. When she fondled his penis, his posture clenched. She was making a mental image of every muscle, every crevice. He was already aroused when she began, as he always was after he’d flown. When she cupped his testicles, his hips jerked forward, and his shaft lengthened, the distended veins thrumming, straining the sensitive skin.

Gideon groaned and shut his eyes. He’d steeled himself against this very thing before he ever touched down, and convinced himself that whatever sexual favors she extracted from him were no worse than the Ancient Ones’ ministrations in Marius’s forest. His cock had needed milking since the watchers’ lightning strike as he set out. The wind hadn’t been enough to slake the need the lightning awakened, that was why the nymphs had always serviced him when they were near. Without release, the pain would be excruciating. Resigned, he opened his eyes and gave a lurch. Lavilia had shapeshifted into the young and buxom creature he had taken on his last visit.

“You will have to finish what you’ve started there,” he said, his voice husky with lust. “The lightning strike I suffered coming here needs purging.”

“’Twas my intent, dark one,” Lavilia said. “But you will not have to suffer putting this fine shaft I am holding inside of me this time. I need to hold it thus when you come to make the memory that will live in the legends of the Arcan Isles for all eternity. For soon, you come this way no more, Gideon, Lord of the Dark, but your legend will live on for all who will come after you through the mists of time. I will see to it.”

Cold chills raced the length of Gideon’s spine. “You make it sound as if I am about to die, old one,” he said, as cheerfully as her cryptic augur would allow.

“There is no death for an immortal, no matter what his plane of existence, you know that. Just as Simeon’s penis was once preserved at the height of its splendor for all to witness down through the ages, so will your magnificence be preserved at the moment of ejaculation. So it shall be with all the lords of Arcus before my days are done. It is my gift to the posterity of the archipelago, so that whatever occurs, all who tread these isles will know the greatness that once reigned here.”

Gideon gave an incredulous grunt. He’d seen Simeon’s phallus before Simeon consigned it to the deep by way of a tide pool on the Isle of Mists before he wedded his Megaleen.

“
You
sculpted that phallus of Simeon?” he blurted.

She nodded. “With my third eye, just as I sculpt you now. Yours will be my greatest work, dark one. Stand still! I feel the blood pumping through those rigid veins; how hard the head is, yet how silken soft the skin that sheaths that hardness. No marble mined of any quarry could ever really do it justice. Without my magic, it could not be done.”

“Touch my wings,” Gideon got out, trying to hurry the process. His need was such that he could bear no more without pain.

“Not…quite…yet…” she said, pumping his shaft with her hand in a circular motion from root to ridged tip, avoiding the smooth, domed head that had begun to leak pre-come. His penis was so engorged it looked purple in the eerie light, as he watched her skilled fingers masturbate him.

“Mica’s teeth!” he seethed. “Have done! My wings! Stroke my wings and set me free from this torture…It is enough!”

Her deep, tantalizing revolutions pumping him steadily made him shiver with each thrust of her hand. Like any temperamental artist, she would not cease until she’d gotten the aspect just so. Finally, he could bear no more. He was ready to let his penis decide for her, when she stroked his wings working his shaft hard in rapid tugs, and Gideon groaned as he climaxed, his seed spewing out of him in a steady stream until she had pumped him dry.

Gideon closed his eyes as the rush of orgasmic fire overwhelmed him. When he opened them again, Lavilia had melted into the mist.