Chapter 49: Volume 1- [ - 50 ]
It staggered. The carriage driver — a man with more courage than I had credited — charged in with his sword, driving the blade into the wolf’s flank. It howled. I reloaded. Five seconds. The fifth wolf was already running — fleeing, its survival instincts overriding its hunger. I raised the pistol and fired. The bullet caught it in the hindquarter, and it tumbled, its legs broken, its body skidding across the dirt.
The sixth wolf fled. I let it go. Five rounds, five kills. The driver stood over the last one, his sword bloody, his chest heaving, his face pale.
‘His skill — the lord’s skill with that weapon — I have never seen anything like it. The speed. The accuracy. The way he moved — like a dancer — like a killer — this is not the useless lord I was told about. This is — what is he—’
I reloaded the pistol. Tucked it away. Turned toward the carriage.
The driver bowed. Deeply. The kind of bow that said ‘I will never question you again.’
I walked to the side of the road, where the carriage window was. My reflection stared back at me from the glass — ash-grey hair, amber eyes, and across my face, my chest, my arms, the dark spatter of wolf blood. I looked, I had to admit, like a demon. The kind of thing that appeared in woodcut illustrations of the Abyss, standing over a field of corpses with a smoking weapon and a smile.
I opened the carriage door.
Both sisters gasped. Their eyes traveled the length of me — the blood, the gore, the casual posture of a man who had just killed five wolves the way another man might kill five flies.
“My lord — are you all right?” Sera’s voice cracked on the last word, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes scanning me for wounds.
“Are you hurt?” Lira was already reaching for me, her fingers finding my arm, pulling me into the carriage, her hands running over my chest, searching for injury. “Please — tell me you are not—’
“I am fine,” I said. “Come out.”
They looked at each other. Trembled. Came.
I led them to the nearest wolf corpse — the one I had killed first, the one whose skull I had shattered. It lay on its side, its body still warm, the grey fur matted with blood and brain matter.
“Cut it open,” I said. “Take out the core.”
Sera stared. “The — the core?”
“The monster core. Inside the chest. Behind the ribs. You know what a monster core is.”
Of course they knew. Every person in this world knew — monster cores were the crystallized essence of corrupted creatures, small stones of concentrated magical energy that could be sold, traded, or used in crafting. They were valuable. A single wolf core could fetch ten gold at the right market.
But extracting one required reaching into a dead thing’s chest cavity with your bare hands and pulling out a stone from a nest of tissue and bone.
Sera knelt. Her hands were shaking so violently that the knife I handed her nearly slipped from her grip. She cut into the wolf’s chest — the blade parting fur, skin, muscle — and reached inside. Her face went white. Her internal voice was a thin, reedy sound:
‘It is warm. The inside of the wolf is warm. And wet. And I can feel — the ribs — the heart, no, the heart has stopped — but the warmth — and the core — where is the — please — please let me find it quickly—’
She found it. Pulled it out. A small, grey stone, the size of a robin’s egg, slick with blood and fluid. She held it in her palm, her hand trembling so hard that the stone nearly fell.
“Good,” I said. “The next one.”
I made them do all five. Sera cut and extracted. Lira held the knife when Sera’s hands became too shaky, and together they opened each wolf and pulled out the cores, their dresses stained with blood to the elbows, their faces pale, their tears falling silently into the gore.
‘Please do not abandon us. Please. We are useful. We can do this. We are useful. Please do not—’
Sera’s internal voice was a prayer. Not to any god — to me. The man who had killed her father, fucked her through the night, and was now making her elbow-deep in monster corpses. The man she was begging not to leave her.
‘He is testing us. He wants to see if we are useful. We have to be useful. If we are not useful, he will leave us here — alone — on this road — with the wolves and the goblins and—’
Lira’s internal voice matched her sister’s — a mirror of fear and need, the desperate arithmetic of women who had lost everything and were clinging to the one thing that remained. The thing with ash-grey hair and amber eyes and a smile that promised safety while delivering destruction.
When the last core was extracted, I sighed. Looked at them — both kneeling in the dirt, blood to the elbows, their dresses ruined, their faces tear-streaked, their hands full of grey stones.
“You really are only good at one thing,” I said, and the smirk that crossed my face was not kind. It was the smirk of a man who had found the limit of his tools and was cataloguing the information for future use.
Both sisters trembled. But neither argued. Because somewhere in the wreckage of their self-worth, they had begun to believe it.
The camp was set near a pond — a small, still body of water fed by a stream that tumbled down from the eastern hills. The moon was full, and its light turned the water to silver, and the trees around the clearing cast long shadows that moved in the night breeze. It was, by any aesthetic measure, beautiful.
The sisters were screaming.
“PLEASE — FORGIVE US — LORD — PLEASE — GIVE US ANOTHER CHANCE—”
“DO NOT — AAAANGH — WE ARE SORRY — WE ARE—”
They were stacked. Sera on top, Lira beneath — both face-down on the bedroll, their dresses pulled up, their bare asses presented, their bodies pressed together. I stood behind them, my cock — hard again, the last Viagra still working in my system — driving into Sera’s pussy from behind, each thrust pushing her body against Lira’s, the weight of both women compressing together.
PAH! PAH! PAH! PHACK!
“HAANGH — HIIIIEENGH — PLEASE — LORD — TOO HARD — IT IS—”
I held their hair. Both hands — one fist in Sera’s dark hair, one in Lira’s chestnut, pulling their heads back, arching their backs, using their hair as reins the way a rider uses a horse’s bridle. I fucked them like horses. Alternating — three strokes in Sera, three in Lira, the transition a single smooth motion that pulled out of one and pushed into the other, the pussies indistinguishable in their wetness and heat.
“You cannot even tear a monster,” I said, the words punctuated by thrusts. “You cannot fight. You cannot hunt. What are you good for?”
‘Nothing — we are good for nothing — except — except this — he is right — we are only good for—’
“LORD — PLEASE — FORGIVE MY SISTER—” Lira’s voice was muffled by the bedroll, her face pressed into the fabric, her tears soaking the linen.
I reached forward. Slapped her breast — the one that was visible, mashed against the bedroll, the nipple pressing through the torn dress. The sound was sharp, and Lira yelped.
“Sit up,” I said.