TITLE: As My Sister's Keeper: Prologue
AUTHOR: © Claudia MelGregory (claudia.melgregory@gmail.com )
DISCLAIMER: Original fiction. All characters, location, and plot owned by Claudia MelGregory. Any similarities between real people, places, and events are unintentional ... and probably a product of your over-active imagination.
SUMMARY: Only a thin veil of ignorance, separates the world of the Normals from the Supernaturals that walk among them. But that might not last long. Not when an imprisoned Ancient bent on revenge has been released. Ariel and Uriel are determined to put down the threat. But It'll take more then the Seoul twins, to stop him. The Powers That Be devise a solution which may prove as deadly as the Ancient.
DISTRIBUTION: Email me please.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, what is there to note?
WARNING: Dark fiction- Horror. Sexual Content. Blood-play. May have BDSM Content Strong. GLTBH and Inter-sexed themes situations, and characters. Violence. More Violence. Brief but disturbing imagery of sexual violence.
THANK YOU: To my wonderful partner/significant other, SweetGirl who is not only patient, but who continues to unconditionally love this barbed mind, and somehow manages to keeps me grounded.
RATING: NC 17 Not suitable for reader under 18. You have been warned.
FEED BACK: Welcomed and appreciated ... but reserves the flames for hell.
As My Sister's Keeper
Prologue
Raising the Fallen
The belly of the earth rumbled, shook.
“Here me!”
Gales of wind howled the earth’s discontent, whipping the folds and tails of ritual robes into a wild dance.
“Guardian
of the great Divide!” A single voice rose above the wind. Robed
arms outstretched toward an indigo sky. “Rend the Void! I
Command you. By the blood of your father, I command you. Set free he
which you have imprisoned between Earth and Heavens.”
Lightening streaked--forked tendrils the colour of blood stone, reached from ground to night sky, and converged in a single jagged line that touched the face of moon.
“By the will of Eris! I command you!” The devout whipped a dagger from the pocket of his robe and flung it. It flipped through the air, landed tip down, stabbing the ground. “He! Shall! Be! Made! Free!”
The ground bulged like a pregnant belly. The phenomenon moved like a wave, the bulge cresting and falling, cresting again, approaching with a frightening speed which sent all but one of those gathered, scattering.
The bulge halted at the tips of his feet.
Lightening scorched through the raised mound of dirt and grass. A crack like the sound of a large tree splintering and falling, brought the chanting to a halt. The wind died. The lightening ceased.
A fissure formed, traveling the same path as the bulge, cracking the earth like an egg shell until it ended at the mound. And there the earth, sputtered dirt, rock, weed, until the fissure at the mound became a gaping mouth that spewed flames and noxious gases.
Cautious, those gathered, approached and as one slit their wrists and fed the mouth until flames lowered, and gases reduced to mere puffs.
Bound and gagged, the blindfolded four were dragged forward, struggling wildly in their captors’ grips until they were thrown one by one, into the yawning fissure. Muffled screams, and piteous gurgling howls, echoed from the dark abyss. And the gathered stood transfixed, awaiting the miracle that would mark this occasion of sacrifice and ritual.
None moved or uttered a word, collective breaths were held.
A bloodied hand, the length of an average male’s arms, dark, misshapen reached from the inferno and clawed at the ground. Gashes along the massive arm bled profusely as the hand gained desperate purchase and then with determination attempted to drag its body free. A second arm, minus a hand, was flung over the mound of dirt rimming the fissure. The limb oozed fluid, black and charred from the open wound at the stub of a wrist.
A second pair of arms appeared, and at their wrists the tattered beginnings of wings with gaping holes that bled freely. the ragged wings were tucked together at the creature’s back. A cloven foot swung over the fissure, sloven from pain and with a grunt the second leg was thrown over, the lower half lopped at the knee.
The beast measuring what seemed at least fifteen feet, drug itself forward across the ground away from the hole, which had begun to close.
With an agonized mewl, it rolled onto it’s back, eyes rolling as agony sent its body into shocked convulsions. Vomit thrust from its mouth threatening to choke the beast on its own bile until under its own power its head turned to the side. It coughed out thick black bilge and blood.
The head straightened crossed eyes were set on an expanse of inky black and then came into sharp focus upon the twinkling of jewelled lights liberally scattered among the stretch of deep dark blue. A large orb of white ringed with halo, a perfect circle in its sole orbit. The moon?
“Where?” the voice cracked from a millennium of non-use.
“Earth,” the reply was given in smug, triumphant tone.
Torn lips peeled back in a mimicry of a horrifying smile, to reveal a mouth of broken and split teeth. Sharp eyes of black settled on the triumphant grin and the smug eyes.
“Warlock, you know,” the broken beast asked, “who I am?”
“Shemihaza.” The warlock dropped to his knees. “The Great Watcher. The Enlightener. And we are your willing disciples.”
Laughter bubbled from the broken thing on the ground, startling those all around not because it was terrifying sound but because the tinkling laughter was softly husky as to make the spine shiver with the tingle of arousal even as the eyes testified to horrified condition of the broken beast.
The laughter, a private joke, faded and then died. A last sigh uttered, both mournful and triumphant in warning.
“You should have left me unmade.”
The body rattled, stilled. The eyes closed.
The warlock's booted foot, nudged the unresponsive head side to side. “Get the cables from the truck. Back up the flatbed.”
***********
Raising the Dead
He woke screaming.
Clutching at the old wound over his heart where four razor sharp claws had stabbed through. He gasped, almost choking, as if the scream had expelled every last bit of oxygen it could from burning lungs. His skin felt raw and chafed, as though slowly healing from one big scraping of road rash.
He wheezed out a weak laugh at his own expense. No stranger to pain, having experienced it for an endless eternity, but this, this felt different—hurting in places he no longer believed capable of feeling such suffering, like his heart.
My heart? In an instant he was frozen, and then rested a still hand over his left breast. He fingered the scars, eyes wide from the unmistakable pounding beneath. My heart—he frowned at the powerful thuds which brought malicious agony—the heart which shouldn’t be beating.
He sat up, abruptly. A gross miscalculation.
The room or wherever he’d had the misfortune of waking at present did a sickening tilt and twist, jarring to the gut.
He grunted,
flopped back down, head trapped in endless spinning vortex. His
tear-blurred vision cleared and he was staring up at wooden beams of
an unfamiliar ceiling. Heart racing, and every shocking and
impossible thud brought knifing pain to the organ. His brain
throbbed.
Images fired off in his mind, bright rapid blasts, like the rat-tat-tat-tat of an old machine gun.
Blood. Screams. Twisted flesh. Death. Sex. Power.
“Ugh,” he croaked and then launched his upper torso over the side of the bed, gaze flickering wildly to a bedside trash can just in time to yank it into place and contaminate it with blood and stomach bile.
He fell back onto the bed, on his back panting, sweating.
Agony was a live current rushing through his extremities, sending messages to every single nerve-ending, alerting each one that something was wrong and in the most awful way possible. His body twitched and jerked.
“Well that looks pleasant.” The voice pierced through the darkness.
He launched herself from the bed, into the nearest corner and crouched, growling at the intruder.
“Reaver!” he snarled.
“Hello, Nykaryzah.”
Light flooded the room, hurting his eyes, forcing his face to the wall. The wings at his back fluttered violently and folded inward as he trembled.
“Where am I?” The words slipped through cracked and chapped lips in a bitter croak, the sound muffled by the wooden wall.
“Alive.”
Alive? That jarred his brain, like a splinter stabbing through the soft tissue. Alive?
He giggled, clutching his hand to his aching chest and then laughed until his eyes wept, and he found himself crawling, lurching toward the trash, yet again, to empty his gut.
He caught an image, a scene from an old human novel, a monstrous body twitching on a surgical table while a mad scientist flooded it with the harnessed power of lightning. Laughter erupted, bringing more pain.
“I'm alive!” he croaked, laughing bitterly at his own expense and then hung his head and groaned.
“Shemihaza has been loosed from his prison. It is your Onus to unmake him, again.”
“And then what?” He asked curious as to what would to be the price of heroic deeds this time around.
“And then ... you die again.”
Nykaryzah laughed once more, crazed, enraged and bitter, and was rewarded with another wave of pain, and almost choking on vomit.
“I am so fucked.”
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