Grapeshot Pantheon Read online

  Grapeshot Pantheon

  Purgatory Wars: Book Seven

  Dragon Cobolt

  Uruk Press

  Uruk Press

  Great Britain

  Website | Twitter | Tumblr

  Grapeshot Pantheon © Dragon Cobolt 2018

  All rights reserved.

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cover by Remy Malara.

  Also from Dragon Cobolt

  Purgatory Wars

  The Murder Stroke

  Riposte

  The Cross Guard

  The Blood Groove

  Powder And Shot

  Blood And Iron

  Grapeshot Pantheon

  "Statues And Suitors" in Sex & Sorcery 4

  Worldshard

  Cadet

  Cadre

  Champion

  Other works

  A Fetch Job

  "The Last Mage" in Sex & Sorcery 3

  Furicana

  Devil May Care

  Also from Dragon Cobolt

  Grapeshot Pantheon

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  Grapeshot Pantheon

  Prologue

  Rocket Rex’s was an incongruous piece of pulp fiction that had somehow dropped straight from a Heinlein novel and landed slap bang in the middle of Montana. A large red rocket held at a canted angle by a pair of struts sat before the entrance, with a plastic plume of exhaust thrust kissing the sidewalk. The front door of the bar itself was painted chrome, and the interior was decorated with retro-futurist kitsch. Bobble-headed astronauts, signed pictures of Buzz Aldrin (not by Aldrin, of course, that’d be far too expensive), and plastic rayguns decorated the wall, where most bars in Montana would have hung up deer heads and wolf pelts.

  The only concession to the standard bar format by the aging owner, Paul Rex, was a caged TV that was usually tuned either to the History channel or, if his customers shouted long enough, the local football channel.

  The chrome doors swung open and in slouched Coyo. Rex and Coyo had known each other for five years, and Rex had yet to actually ever see Coyo pay for a drink with any money from his own pocket. Coyo had the uncanny ability to sniff out people at the edge between black-out drunk and bad-decision drunk. Wagers, bets, wheedling, schmoozing, and sometimes, light pick pocketing would follow. Rex judged Coyo for this, but as the end result was more money in his cash register, Rex kept his judgment to his own self.

  Today, there were two truckers who were on their way to the Rez and Marion Cooly. Marion’s husband had run off with a floozy who got younger and blonder every year, and she spent every dime she had saved every week at Rocket Rex’s. Coyo had never stolen a cent from her.

  “Hey, Mary,” he said, grinning toothily at her as he took the stool seat next to her. His finger flicked the bobble-headed astronaut that Marion had been staring at. “Wanna see a magic trick?”

  “I’m not going to give you any money, Coyo,” Marion said.

  “This is to cheer you up!” Coyo exclaimed, his fingers going to his chest, his narrow, brown face crumpling into an expression of pure sorrow. “Would you think innocent Coyo would try and cheat you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on! Where's the game?”

  Coyo and Marion and Rex all looked at the two truckers. The one with the annoyingly red hat was pointing at the TV. Rex turned to check to see if it was on the fritz. But behind the cage that protected it from bottles, rocks, and his own shocking ability to put holes in screens, the TV was showing nothing but concerned looking talking heads behind a desk. A scrolling text bar at the bottom of the screen had words bisected by those cage-bars, turning sensible sentences into an utter cipher. Coyo cocked his head slightly as Marion knocked back her drink, then held her cup out for another.

  “Maybe it’s important, turn it up!” the other trucker said.

  Rex picked up his remote and turned up the volume.

  “...-other world. This world is an artificial construct built inside of the moon of Pluto, Charon. Within is a civilization of displaced humans and non-human beings.”

  “You mean aliens, Hank?” the blond half of the duo asked, sounding honestly shocked. She looked to the left, her brow furrowing. Whatever she saw off the side of the screen made her eyes widen. She put her hand over her mouth.

  “We have... yes, we have footage coming in, uh-”

  The screen flickered and showed a new view – this one was of a large, metal room that looked a bit like a warehouse. Press and military filled it with equal measures. Reporters from every major news network were there, and the cameras couldn’t help but catch view of other cameras. But they all tried to angle for the best shot on the massive, black ring in the center of the room. Standing before it was a broad sweep of people. They were unmistakably aliens. But despite the fact that there were sharp eared people with pastel colored hair, despite the fact there were three foot tall green women, despite the fact that there were walking, talking lizards, the thing that the trucker in the red hat remarked on was:

  “Look at the tits on that chick!” He pointed at the woman with the longbow strapped to her back. She was glaring at everyone around her as if people owed her money. Then she glared directly at the camera and scowled harder, as if she had heard the trucker and wanted him to know how offended she was.

  Marion lifted her now full glass to her lips, only to find her hand was empty.

  Coyo tossed his head back, drank most of the cup, then sprayed it over Rex in a perfectly timed spit-take.

  ***

  Less than a block away from Rocket Rex’s, there was another throwback. A payphone. It had sat there on the corner and someone, somewhere, had decided that keeping it running was slightly cheaper than tearing it down. But it definitely wasn’t getting fixed if it broke. As if the phone had realized this, it had doggedly continued to work, chugging away despite the persistent smell of piss and the graffiti that sprawled along the outside of the glass.

  Coyo slammed the door shut behind himself and tapped at the phone’s buttons, his eyes narrowing. He stuck the receiver to his ear, cocking his head slightly as he waited for the dial tone to start. A moment later, a computerized voice spoke in his ear. “Please state the name of-”

  Coyo kicked the phone, crooking his leg in the cramps space of the booth to manage to get his foot up against it. The operator hiccuped, seemed to warble slightly, and then the phone started to ring again. Coyo fidgeted from foot to foot, looking left and right as if he expected heavily armed ninjas to bust out of the Montana wilderness that stretched out in every direction. The distant mountains continued to loom. The highway continued to be mostly empty. The phone continued to ring.

  At last, there was a click and a groan.

  “I am going to fucking kill you.”

  “Sun?” Coyo asked.

  “No, it’s the fucking Tooth Fairy. In that you’re going to lose all of them when I get over there and kick your fucking ass, Coyo!” Sun’s voice sounded like it had gone through a blender. Coyo scratched at the back of his neck.

  “Uh,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” The faint sound of sheets crumpling and a girlish grumbling sound made Coyo’s ears perk. He could almost picture the other man sitting up and turning in the bed. What was he doing in bed? It was one in the afternoon? “It’s...” Pause. “
Almost one in the fucking morning!”

  Coyo blinked. He looked out the window of the booth, his brow furrowing.

  “How can someone so smart be so fucking dumb!?” Sun snapped. “I’m in Mumbai!”

  “Why are you in Mumbai?” Coyo asked.

  “Coyo.” Coyo could hear Sun’s finger pinching the bridge of his nose. “Who runs China?”

  “...communists?” Coyo asked. His brain made the connection a few seconds later. “They still hate you?”

  “Yeah, still!” Sun shouted.

  A string of Hindi – Hindi that sounded an awful lot like stop yelling at your phone and come over here and fuck me to Coyo – came over the line. Coyo heard Sun respond. Comparing him to the girl Coyo had to admit the accent was pretty good. He leaned against the side of the booth, waiting for Sun to get back to him.

  “So, you have fifteen seconds before I hang up and-”

  “They’re back.”

  “Who's back?” Sun sounded like he was guessing who but didn’t want to come out and say it.

  “The Greeks,” Coyo said. “And the Egyptians. And the fucking vikings.”

  Sun sighed.

  “Well, shit,” he said.

  “Yeah, and they’re in America.” Coyo chewed on his knuckle. “Sun, the fuck are we going to do?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Get your ass to Washington DC,” Sun said. “And Coyo? Bring a gun.”

  There was a faint click and Coyo sighed as he slipped the phone against the cradle. The contact caused the phone booth’s change slot to open and start to vomit a spray of quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies onto the ground. Coyo started to scrabble to get as many as he could. With his pockets bulging, he scrambled out of the booth, looked over his shoulders twice, walked over to a car. The owner had left the key in the ignition and had forgotten to lock the door.

  The car started to judder down the road, its forward progress interrupted by bangs and grinding of gears.

  Chapter One

  kilometers away, Liam Vanderbilt was sitting at a desk and glaring at paperwork. The fact that this was his life when he wasn’t being shot, stabbed, set on fire, dropped from large heights, and thrown into various hard surfaces, never ceased to amaze him. As a kid, he had always loved roleplaying games. Dungeons and Dragons had been a favorite. In the older editions, when you reached a higher level (he remembered it was 9th for fighters), you got your hands on a stronghold.

  Suddenly, the game became all about managing a castle and handling your servants.

  Suddenly, the game got boring.

  Liam would have given his left testicle for boring. The paperwork that sat on his desk contained dozens of decisions that would completely alter the life of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Millions, even. Billions, if things went right. Or catastrophic. For instance, here was a preliminary report from the Guild of Crystalwrights about crafting and sending crystals of various makes and category to researchers on Earth. Unformatted, formatted, enchanted, hardened, blessed, cursed, and decorated. He picked the report and frowned as he read the words and tried to come to a decision.

  If the way that crystals interact with your iPod is a general rule, my lord, then it’s fully possible that the unformatted crystal using lattice-work A-1 can be used to store 6.8 MWh safely.

  “iPhone,” Liam muttered.

  The paper refused to correct itself. Then his brow furrowed. 6.8 megawatt-hours... He pulled his iPhone from the drawer he kept it in, then spent fifteen minutes skimming through all the textbooks he had brought with him before, at last, finding the book about sustainability and the issues facing the world when it came to weaning itself off fossil fuels.

  “Holy fucking shit!”

  “Well, I am holy.”

  Liam looked up, grinning as he saw Mary stepping into the room. Her smile was playful. “And I am quite good at fucking. But I will draw a line at scatological eroticism.”

  Liam pointed at his phone. “Mary, a single unformatted crystal can store four times the energy of an entire oil barrel. That’s forty eight gallons of crude!”

  Mary smiled, weakly. “Is that good?”

  “Kinda,” Liam said, dryly. “Considering we’re able to make...” He shuffled through the papers. “A ton of it a week using the crystalback ranches. With Earth’s grazing land, we could basically destroy OPEC.” He cackled. “Oh, wait, fuck.” He rubbed his temple. “What is that going to do to the Middle East?” He bit his lip, his brain locking up.

  “Well, that’s just the thing,” Mary said, stepping over. She sat her rump down on the desk. Papers crinkled and her tail lifted upwards as she smiled ever so slightly down at him.

  “No, wait, sorry, just need to think about this,” Liam said, rubbing his chin, then standing up. “Okay, I can’t just let short term economic problems stop me from ending the energy crisis and stopping global warming in one fell swoop. We’ll need to get all the best futurists on hand. And, uh, maybe get you in the same room as...”

  Mary’s finger went to the collar of her wimple, where the head-scarf led into the leather and black cloth of her outfit. Her fingertip pressed, then shoved, and within a few seconds, her clothing had peeled to the desk and the ground around it. Her shoulders rolled, setting a tiny jiggle to her ruby red breasts. Her dark black nipples thrust eagerly into the air, practically begging for someone to tenderly worship them. Liam looked at her, his mouth suddenly overflowing with eagerness. His cock strained against his kilt as he blinked slowly.

  Every single thought had dribbled out of one ear as Mary’s black lips split into a sultry smile.

  “Thought that’d get your attention,” she murmured, huskily.

  “Yeah,” Liam said. His nose flared and, now that he wasn’t too caught up in paperwork and long term analysis and planning, he could notice the thick musk of Mary’s scent in the room. His skin felt as if it was on fire. His hands went to his kilt as he bit his lower lip to repress an eager growl. Mary blinked. For a few seconds, he could see the conflict on her face and Liam wondered if she had planned for her distraction to lead to escalation. Then his kilt hit the ground and his cock bobbed in the air.

  “Fuck it,” Mary whispered. Her tail lashed out, then wrapped around his cock. She was almost rough with him, dragging him forward by his dick into a desperate kiss. Her fangs bumped against his lips and Liam grabbed at her silky hips. It had felt like years since he had touched her like this. Their titles and responsibilities and the uncertain weight of the future fell away as their tongues met and wrestled, even as his dick started to grind against her belly and her sex, his balls slipping along her thighs. There was a competition, a race to see who could be driven to breathless, gasping want first. Mary lost. She jerked her head away, gasping as she did so.

  “Liam,” she crooned, her hips rocking as she tried to get the head of his shaft against her plump pussy lips. Liam dragged back against her tail, the pressure forcing a low groan out of his mouth. But he had gone so fucking long without Mary that he wanted to enjoy the hit he got from her. His nose mashed against her neck and he inhaled. His brain buzzed and his whole body was washed in goosebumps. Mary turned her head, her fingers working through his hair as she held him to her body.

  Liam’s tongue dragged along her skin, leaving behind glittering tracks as he kissed and licked and sucked his way down to her nipple. There, he attacked. His teeth caught her nipple and applied just enough pressure to tease her between pleasure and pain. Mary crooned. “Liam, fuck me!” Her fingernails dug into his scalp. Liam pushed her back, her breasts bouncing as her shoulders pressed to his desk. Her legs spread wide, but rather than plunging into her, Liam knelt down. His back pushed his chair away, the bronze wheels skittering on the tile of his office.

  He planted his face against her sex, his nose pressing to the moist slickness of her clit, his mouth opening wide, as if he wanted to literally eat her, rather than just eat her out. Every contact point – his palms against the backsid
es of her knees, his tongue and lips against her sex, his nose against her clit – each one was another way for Mary to drug him. His eyes closed as his tongue plunged into her sex, and he could taste her exotic flavor – it was somewhere between pepper and a Starburst. It started off with a burn, but if you kept at it, you could taste the sweetness.

  Liam drew his mouth back, his eyes unfocused as he watched her juices drip onto the desk, soaking some papers that he was pretty sure were fucking important, but that was what backups were for

  “Leeee-ammm!” Mary whined. “Put your dick in me. I want to feel it. I haven’t had a cock like yours in so fucking long.” She bit her lip, her tail wriggling in the air to the left of her hips as she wriggled on the desk. And to think that she had been so chaste. Once. Liam grinned up at her face, looking along her slightly cushy belly, between her pillowy breasts, into those golden eyes of hers. She looked like she was a lick or two away from literally begging.

  Liam licked her clit. Once. She hissed.

  Twice.

  “Please,” Mary said through clenched teeth. “Please fuck me, god, I need it, I need your cock so bad, please fuck my brains out.”

  Liam surged to his feet. His hand took hold of his cock and he pressed it to her cunt-lips. She was so very aroused that his member slipped up and down her sex despite his best efforts, teasing her and driving Mary even more desperately wild. She sat up and hooked her arms around his neck, scooting herself forward on the desk. Papers crinkled and crunched under her ass as her tail wrapped around his wrist twice and her legs closed around his back. This still didn’t get his cock in her. Instead, he skidded along her belly and she groaned in frustration.

  Liam pulled back, her legs bowing under the pressure of his strength.