The Blood Groove (Purgatory Wars Book 4) Read online

  Vazt.

  The General’s bodyguard was one of the few men that Liv had ever met that she was sure could take her in a straight swordfight. He moved with the same economic speed, the same deadly precision, the same drilled perfection that Liam did. Though he used a short sword, rather than one longer than some goblins. However, here, Vazt showed how he was different from Liam. He kicked the other lizardman in the groin, then grabbed him by his feathered head-ridge, and smashed his head into the side of a tree. The other lizardman bounced and hit the ground, landing next to his severed, still twitching hand.

  “Fuck off,” Vazt snarled. “This is the General’s girl. You touch her again, you lose your dick and I won’t let you pick it up again.” He kicked the other man in the gut, once. Twice. “Got it?” He kicked him again.

  The other lizardman grabbed his severed hand and pressed it to his stump. Then, staggering, he came to his feet and ran off, wobbling so hard that he rebounded off a pair of trees before vanishing into the undergrowth.

  Liv looked back at Vazt.

  She could honestly say, she had never been quite so aroused before in her life.

  Vazt looked over over, his slitted eyes narrowing. He snorted, shaking his head, then turned to go.

  “Wait,” she said. “Wait!”

  Vazt turned back. “Yes, I’m watching you. Yes, even when you jill off.”

  “I-” Liv shook her head. She scowled. “That other soldier, he was acting like he’ll get his hand back.”

  “He will,” Vazt said. “Not sure what God did-” He was punctilious about calling Sysminor by the more deific title. “-but ever since the ritual in that fucking city, we get our shit together like the folk of old.”

  “What, you have legends about this stuff?” Liv asked. She had never heard that the lizardfolk had had legends. She had always been taught what philosophers knew: that the people of Purgatory had been banished there by the Christian church of Earth. Humans and lilin both had arrived with their gods, and they had met the elves, the goblins and the lizardfolk. Elves and goblins had become part of the new civilizations, and breeding between the new gods and the native Purgatorian gods had produced valkyrie. But the lizardfolk had been the weakest of the original inhabitants. They had had no culture, no gods, barely a language, and they had been easily driven to their current homes.

  Where, Liv had been taught, they belonged.

  She felt faintly unsettled to hear they had legends. It felt like a tooth had gone loose in her memory.

  Vazt snorted, then spat on the ground between them. He turned and walked away, tail twitching from side to side. Liv looked at her feet, then shook her head. She hurried back to the lean-to. When she ducked under, she paused. The General lay on his belly, head crooked into his arms. He was nude as the day he had been born – the loincloth he wore had been pushed aside by his tossing and turning as he slept. Liv knelt beside him, her eyes slowly settling on the firm balls nestled between his thighs. Lightly scaled, and the same shade of gold as the rest of his body, they made her heart race.

  Liv, remembering the blood, grabbed a washcloth and wiped herself clean.

  Brax groaned, shifting at the noise. Liv’s tossed the cloth aside, then reached down and yanked his loincloth back to cover him before he could fully rouse.

  “What time is it?”

  “By my reckoning, it’s three bells after the sun doused,” she said, quietly.

  “Dawn in a few hours,” Brax mumbled. He turned his head forward, his eyes closed. “I’m noticing a bit of fatigue. Mm. Interesting.”

  “So, even regeneration can’t fully recover from a day’s jogging in a few hours sleep,” Liv said.

  Brax chuckled. “Was wondering when you’d notice.” He rolled onto his back. Liv was painfully aware of how he moved his loincloth to keep himself covered. From the look in his eyes, Brax was aware that she was aware. Liv scowled at him.

  “I’m not an idiot,” she said. Then, quieter. “So, you had Vazt follow me.”

  “Of course I did,” Brax said, his arms cocked behind his head. Laying under her, almost entirely exposed, Liv could trace every line of his muscular chest. The fine detailing of the scales simply made it more interesting. She cocked her head slightly to the side, doing some mental comparison. Liam was taller. But Brax was broader.

  “Hm,” she said. “I suppose, since I can’t carry a weapon...” She trailed off. “Vazt said that your people have legends. About...” She groped for a word. “About your regeneration.”

  Brax snorted. “If you are asking me to tell you tales of our past, you are asking the wrong lizard.”

  Liv made a quiet, curious noise at the back of her throat.

  Brax laughed, quietly. “I left my village when I was sixteen years old. Barely out of the egg, by my people’s measurements. I didn’t want to live in a poor hovel, where every year, we made less and less food. I left and I did not look back. There are people who will pay a great deal for a lizardman mercenary. We’re tough, even without the recent improvements. That’s what got be dragged into the Battle of Statues.”

  Liv hissed. “I heard of that. The Curse of Midas-” She stopped. “Holy shit, you were standing in an army hit by the Curse of Midas?”

  Brax’s golden shoulders shrugged.

  “But-” Liv stopped herself. Every god had their favored curses. Immensely powerful weapons of war, used at only the right time, in the right places. Ra had his fearsome Eyes. Zeus used thunderbolts, but sometimes, when he needed to make a point, he could imbue a priest with the power to bring down molten gold, raining from the sky like sheets of water. She shuddered at the mental image.

  “I don’t know why I survived,” Brax said. “But...” He shook his head. “We need to get going.”

  His voice was gruff. To the point. But she had seen a chink in his poker face. Liv shook her head. “Who rescued you from the battlefield?”

  “She... no one,” he said, standing, turning away from her as he lifted up the lean-to. Across the camp, other lizardmen were moving about, waking their units. More and more of the lean-tos were being put away.

  Liv watched the General. His back was tensed up tighter than she had ever seen it. She stood, putting her hands on his shoulders. Her fingers squeezed him, hard enough to be felt through the gold that coated him. She didn’t know what to say. She could recognize loss, even if she didn’t know what caused it. And so, she merely hugged him. Her breasts pressed to his back and her hands cupped his chest, stroking him gently as she nuzzled his neck. The featherlike ridges that went from his head to his tail tip pressed against her belly.

  They tickled.

  “Livianna,” he rumbled.

  “Shh.”

  She kissed one of the feathers. His tail lifted, pushing between her thighs. The curved C shape of his tail meant that a long ridge rasped against her thigh, then against her sex. She crooned deep in her throat and dropped her hands. She caressed the bulge in his loincloth.

  He started to make a noise that might have been her name. Might have been a request, an order, a plea. Liv didn’t know. She cut him off.

  “General.” Her voice left no room for argument as she closed her eyes. She let her hand push his loincloth aside. She cupped his cock, then closed her palm around it, letting her fingers feel his every inch. Thick around as her wrist, and exotically ridged, touching him made her heart race. He was the enemy, yes. But she was surrounded by the enemy.

  And she was in charge right now.

  Brax hissed.

  Liv’s hand started to glide up and down his cock, feeling the way that, even plated in gold, his member had give and softness and that strange iron hardness of a truly aroused man. She could feel the faint beat-beat of his dual chambered heart against her palm. Her thumb caressed the triangular tip of his dick, feeling the lack of foreskin, reveling in his exoticism.

  Her other hand reached up to grab his shoulder, squeezing him. Because while she was jerking his prick, her palm filling the air wi
th the sound of his cock’s slickness, Brax’s tail wasn’t idle. He writhed it forward and back, using the length of it to bump and grind against her own moist sex lips, teasing her through her own loincloth. It felt like every other feather-ridge bumped against her clit, sending a tiny jolt of pleasure along her spine. The only thing that could make it better was if he could start playing with her ears.

  “Oh Asura,” he moaned.

  Liv squeezed the base of his cock, feeling his orgasm building. She directed the floodgates and pushed herself against his back as hard as she could, kissing one broad shoulder as she peeked over.

  His cock surged up, and then sprayed. A thick stream of bright white cum splashed along some leaves, flecking against the cup of a large, bio-luminescent flower, dripping from a low hanging branch, spreading along a ground.

  Liv shuddered and let herself cum. Silently, she writhed against Brax’s back, her juices soaking his tail and her loincloth. Dripping along her thighs. But more, she felt a closeness to him. The fact he had named another woman at the height of his passion didn’t quite bother her – though a part of her, the part of her who had wanted Brax since the instant she had seen him in action, was deeply jealous.

  But a bigger part of her felt like she understood the general just that much better.

  His cock softened in her palm. Some of his cum dripped from her fingers as she released him.

  “W...We should get going,” he rasped.

  The army was on the road again, jogging and calling out hissing, sibilant cadences. And Liv was there, riding along the flank on her raptor.

  And there, where no one paid her any mind, she brought her hand to her mouth.

  And licked her fingers clean, loving every moment.

  Two

  The door to the passenger cabin opened and Vulkis Shieldbreaker - glorious former huscral of Thor, current captain of the finest vessel upon the entire Platonic Sea and sort-of-spy for the new Free Lord of Babylon - immediately regretted not knocking.

  “We are busy!” Athena’s voice boomed as she threw a boot at Vulkis. Because she was distracted by two fingers thrust into her very shapely, slightly iridescent pussy, the boot hit the wall above Vulkis’ head with an impact loud enough to ruin the boot and mar the woodwork.

  Artemis, her body just as nude as her... actually, that made Vulkis blink.

  Artemis was beautiful, of course. Just as athletic and slender as Athena, but unlike the pale and made up goddess of wisdom, Artemis looked as if she had been tanned all over, giving her a healthy, golden glow. Where Athena was shaved bald, Artemis’ bush grew wild and free.

  “Wait, aren’t you two sisters?” Vulkis asked, pointing between the entwined goddesses.

  “No!” Athena threw a second boot. This time, Vulkis was saved by slamming the door before it struck his face. As he turned his back to the door and tried to think of how he might save his ship and himself from the wrath of not one but two goddesses, Thu’Chan stepped over. He bowed his head.

  “Pirates on the horizon, sir,” he said, quietly.

  “Thank the gods,” Vulkis whispered.

  The Platonic Sea – never exactly a safe trade route in the best of times – had been driven completely mad by the start of the war. Refugees fleeing the Asier heartland as Brax and his army cut a swath through the countryside. With the Aesir fleet withdrawn from guarding their trade lanes, pirates had emerged from their atolls and their islands to attack anything they thought make make them a profit. Coming to the edge of his ship, Vulkis pursed his lips.

  “Looks like Hellenes!” he said.

  Then he heard a creak, not unlike a sail being drawn taut. Turning, he saw Artemis, her body as naked as the day she had been born. She was holding that monster of a longbow that she had brought onboard and was grinning as she aimed it right at his heart.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But my sister is really pissed. It’s either this or becoming a spider, and let me tell you this, this is a lot less painful in the long run.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Vulkis lifted up his hands. He stepped to the side, gesturing at the horizon that rose upwards towards the sky. “Pirates.”

  Artemis blinked.

  Then she grinned. Wolfish. Eager.

  “That’s way more fun,” she murmured.

  She sprang onto the railing of the ship and loosed an arrow. She was fighting against gravity and immense distance, and yet Vulkis’ eyes caught a glint of movement. Someone fell over the side of one of those ships and the ships started to roil with motion. Artemis laughed.

  “The look on his fucking face, dipshit,” she said.

  Vulkis turned back and saw that Athena was emerging from her stateroom, dressed in a tunic. The goddess of wisdom had carefully pinned her curly brown hair up into a severe beehive, and she looked murderously angry. As she walked towards Vulkis, the old huscral started to think quickly.

  “So, she says you are sisters,” Vulkis said, quickly. “But you said you’re not, uh, what’s that about?”

  Another arrow loosed. Athena crossed her arms over her chest. She breathed in, then breathed out. “Now that you ask,” she said. “I sprang fully formed from Zeus’ head. That means that I am technically related to Zeus, and Zeus is Artemis’ father. But the simple fact is that I am a constructed being – a god, but fully adult from birth, and-”

  She started to go into increasingly technical details as Vulkis saw her getting more and more distracted by explaining the intricacies of her unique position. By the time the pirates were starting to sail away, Athena had been entirely mollified by how interested Vulkis had seemed in her exposition. Artemis hopped off the side of the railing, her bow unstrung and swung over her shoulders like the crossbar of a water carrier. She hooked her arms over the bow, shaking her head.

  “Fucking pussies,” she said.

  “Does it ever strike you odd that comparing a coward to a part of our anatomy has become commonplace?” Athena asked, her voice dry. “Some Greeks believe I’m so intelligent because a man constructed my every being, without a single-”

  “Yeah, whatever, toots.” Artemis waved her hand. “Wake me up when we get somewhere where I can shoot more people. Or if you want to sit on my face more, sis.”

  The door to her cabin shut.

  Vulkis breathed out a slow sigh of relief.

  “When do we reach Olimurias?” Athena asked, quietly, her cheeks bright red. “And I hasten to add, we are not sisters.”

  “Within the next daybreak,” Vulkis said. “Faster, if we get more headwind.”

  Artemis nodded.

  When she returned to her cabin with her... fellow Dodekatheon, Sobek emerged from his cabin. He walked over, then put his palms on the railing. He watched the water ripple before him. He grinned slowly.

  “I can see why Vanderbilt always taps you,” he said, nodding to Vulkis. “You’ve handled having three gods aboard fairly well.”

  “I still want to know, ah, why you didn’t hire your own fleet,” Vulkis said. “You could each have your own ship, and each have a dozen escorts.”

  “And travel at a snail’s pace, get attacked every day of the trip, and arrive months later than we would have.” Sobek shook his head. “Better this.” He sighed. “I am sorry, I know that the enemy are attacking Thorheilm.”

  “Don’t worry,” Vulkis said, his voice soft. “My family has spread far and wide since I was born there. And even if my grandfather and grandmother are still there when the lizards come, Thorheilm won't fall.” He shrugged. “And even if it did, I doubt that this Brax and Sysminor will want to kill a shoemaker and a miller.”

  Sobek nodded.

  The two men looked out at the waters for a time.

  “So, was it true that you walked in on Artemis eating out Athena?”

  “Of course not!” Vulkis let himself lean over the railing. “She was just fingering her.”

  Laughter carried far across water.

  ***

  “Here is what Odin knows for a fact ab
out Purgatory,” Loki said, her rump settled on the largest, most comfortable chair in the office that wasn’t Liam’s. Liam had his feet up on his desk, his toes wiggling as they stuck out of the fronts of his sandals. One of the serving maids that worked at the Free Lord’s manor poured water into a cup for him, then for Loki, then scooted out as quickly as she could.

  Not quick enough to avoid Loki slapping her butt playfully.

  “Don’t do that,” Liam said, frowning. “Most of my servants were former slaves. I have few rules for them, and one of those rules is no touching unless invited.”

  Loki pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Fair.” She looked as if she was giving him a new appraisal. “Still. Odin is a gatherer of knowledge. Lore and secrets are his greatest joy. He interviewed the eldest of the lizardfolk after the wars that came with our banishment. He collected elven scrolls and goblin tablets. He even questioned the Ancient God, who sired the valkyrie with Sif, Bastet, Aphrodite and myself.”

  “Wait, you bore some of the ancient valkyrie?” Liam asked, his eyebrows rising almost off his head.

  “Of course,” Loki said.

  “But-”

  “The Ancient God was gorgeous,” Loki said, grinning widely. “Besides, I love all of my children and they all share a theme. Eight legged horses, giant world eating wolves, snakes, Hel.” She chuckled. “That theme, in case you hadn’t noticed is-”

  “Being unique?” Liam asked.

  “And the valkyrie are so much more interesting than the legendary servants of my brother,” Loki said. “Humanoid, yet capable of flight. Immensely strong, and yet vulnerable to the simplest of things. Nulldarts are so cheap you can make them by accident if you are a crystalwight.” She sighed. “And unlike my other children, they had more people to interact with. Made an actual culture.” She nodded. “It’s very nice. And that is part of why I like you, Liam. You have taste.”

  “Because of Meg?” Liam asked.

  “Well, I was going to compliment the fine rug, but yes, Megara is an excellent choice,” Loki said, chuckling. “You know, she might be related to me. Just because she’s born in a Hellenic city doesn’t mean she was all Hellenic.”