The Blood Groove (Purgatory Wars Book 4) Read online

  But Meg always had loved to watch.

  She had pushed him, when Liam would have been glad to lay back, to expand his boundaries. To spread his heart.

  He looked over Tethis into Meg’s eyes. She grinned at him, looking knowing. Proud. Wise. Mischievous.

  “I love you,” Liam murmured.

  “I, ah, fuck, oh gods, oh gods, I love this cock!” Tethis mewled. “Ohfuckoh-fuh-ck!”

  The word became brittle and shattered as her mouth opened wide and her back arched, pressing her full breasts against Liam’s chest. Her nipples were hard little nubs that rubbed circles against his skin as Tethis writhed and squirmed. Her juices pattered onto the floor, a faint but marvelous counterpoint to the sound of his cock.

  Meg smirked.

  “I know,” she said. “You did say yes after all.”

  Liam thrust deep into Tethis and let himself loose as he felt her sex clench on his shaft like a fist. His balls twitched and hot spurts of cum filled the smaller woman. Tethis made a noise somewhere beyond noise – as if she couldn’t breathe enough to express the pleasure she felt at being Meg and Liam’s plaything. She shuddered, her legs kicking out in the air. Then she went limp. Meg purred, kneeling down, her palms sliding from Tethis’ thighs to her back to her shoulders, keeping her propped in the air.

  Advantages that came from being super-strong.

  Meg’s tongue slid along his balls, making Liam squirm. His hands went to Tethis’ legs to hold her in place as she beat gently at his chest, mumbling. “No... samples... mm...”

  She moaned, then. Meg’s tongue had moved from Liam’s balls to where his cock and Tethis’ tight goblin pussy joined. Her tongue licked and her lips slurped as she sucked up every bit of cum that dripped from around Liam’s cock. Meg drew her mouth back, smacking her lips.

  “Salty, but satisfying.”

  Tethis managed to whine out a single word: “Samples!”

  Later, Tethis was sitting on a stool to keep from wobbling, and looked at the mixture of cum and juices that Meg had captured in an empty inkwell. She frowned, tapping her fingers against her lips.

  “Fuck me fuck me oh fuck me, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Meg gasped out, her breasts transcribing perfect circles in the air, her hands gripping onto the wall. The loud slap of Liam’s hips meeting her hips, and the periodic rustling crack of Meg’s wings folding and unfolding with pleasure, joined her breathy narration. Tethis sighed softly.

  “I should have sent them to their bedroom,” she said.

  Liam, somehow, managed to grunt out. “Free Lord. Your boss.”

  Tethis sighed. “Yes, Lord.”

  She tried to ignore them. But considering Meg’s stamina - and volume - that was easier said than done.

  ***

  “Spark!”

  Laurentinus, Liam, Meg and Tethis ducked below the lip of the small mound of earth the engineers had erected a stone’s throw from Babylon’s walls.A moment later, Vani landed beside them. The hissing sound of burning gunpowder was the only noise that they could hear.

  Loki remained standing, her hands on her hips as she watched through the slit of the bunker.

  Then-

  Boom.

  And then-

  Whump!

  Liam scrambled to his feet. His whoop was loud enough to be heard over the ringing in each of their ears. The cannon had rocked backwards on its wheels, smoke pouring from the muzzle. The target that had been set up down range from the cannon had a hole blown through it larger than Liam’s head. The cannon-ball, made of a solid chunk of marble, had continued past the target and then skidded along the ground in the distinctive bouncing pattern of a grazing shot. Liam could already picture what it would do to the tight formations of classical era combat.

  He felt excited.

  Then, ill.

  Loki grinned. “So, there you go. It works.”

  Liam nodded slowly. Laurentinus rubbed his hands together. Vani and Tethis were already discussing new theories and ideas – including the creation of divination spells to put on the cannon, so cannoneers would know where their shot would go before firing. Liam let it all wash through him. Instead, he smiled at Loki.

  “Want to celebrate?” he asked.

  Loki glanced at him. She grinned.

  “I’d love too.”

  ***

  “Hell.”

  Liv’s attention snapped from Brax the body to Brax the man. Her focus narrowed and she stood up. She had been spending the long, boring time spent waiting for scouts to return from checking out Wotan’s defenses admiring Brax’s back. And shoulders. And tail. And ass. And remembering the feeling of his exotic cock filling her hands. And thinking…

  But with his curse, she refocused her eyes and realized Fizit – who she had been casually ignoring – had said a word. She reached backwards in her memory and found it.

  Sysminor, Fizit had said. He’s here.

  Liv stood as Brax turned to face her. “Find a place to hide,” he said.

  “But-”

  “Do it.” Brax put his hands on her shoulders. His eyes were filled with thoughts. Not just worries, but calculations of probabilities, considerations of the future. Liv put her hands on his hands. She stuck out her chin.

  “I can handle a god. My Dad-”

  “If you’re near me and he’s near me, I won’t be able to focus, damn it!” Brax snarled.

  “Oh, I’m distracting then?” Liv snapped without thinking about it. Brax leaned forward. The memory of his cock filling her hand. His voice as he moaned that name, Asura. The way they had ridden in silence afterwards. They hadn’t spoken, and yet the silence hadn’t felt nervous or stilted. It had felt... good. As good as the taste of his cum, tingling on her tongue.

  “Yes,” Brax whispered. His muzzle almost touched her lips. Then he shoved her backwards and turned to stalk off towards the edge of the army camp. Fizit remained beside Liv, shaking her head.

  “Why aren’t you going with him?” Liv asked.

  “God sees us as replaceable,” she said. “The General doesn’t want us to be the target of God’s ire.”

  Liv’s ears twitched. Something about that didn’t quite track. But Fizit was good - very good, in fact - at lying. The only lizardfolk who had a better poker face was the General himself. Liv shook her head.

  “Well, let's go check on the city then,” Liv said, turning and heading towards the hill. The army had camped at the bottom of a small vale between the jungle and the farmlands that spread around Wotan. Wotan. Who named a city after themselves? Odin lived there, and currently, at least three other members of the Aseir and possibly two of the Vanir had made their homes there. Liv had heard the reports, sitting behind and to the left of her ‘master.’ With six gods in residence, attacking would be suicide.

  But here they were, within a few hours march, hidden only by the lizardfolk’s skill at field-craft.

  Fizit followed after Liv, moving low and quickly. The top of the hill was graced by one of the ancient statues that dotted the landscape of Purgatory, this one a vaguely humanoid figure, the details worn away by time. Something in the jagged remainders of the statue filled Liv with a sense of dread. She ignored it, kneeling down in the shadows of the trees that surrounded the stone.

  Wotan was one of the larger cities in Purgatory. The Aseir had come with their gods and their stories and their boats. They had come to a land as different from their home as any other, and they had needed to adapt. They had adopted other tribes into their society, and used technology borrowed from other lands and other places. Roman style aqueducts, decorated with Viking imagery, carried water to the fields and the city itself. Walls that could have graced any Hellenic city surrounded it. And the fields were finely adapted to Purgatory, growing plants in large fields of water.

  Liv frowned. She could already see how an army might use those large, marshy pits to bog down attackers.

  And then, out of the blue, Fizit vomited in the bushes beside her.

  Liv, through
long experience, managed to not give her position away by crying out in disgust. She did wrinkle her nose and turn her head to look at the lizardwoman, who was wiping her muzzle and hastily scraping up some dirt and covering the bile.

  “Are you okay?” Liv whispered.

  “No, damn it,” Fizit muttered.

  The tone was familiar to anyone who had gone to the field of battle in a poorer army, one that couldn’t afford a priest or the sacrifices it took to keep a priest rich with magic. Far from priests and clerics, eating or drinking the wrong thing could make one very ill. And vomiting up half your body weight in water over a week was a fast way to end up very dead.

  But there was something in the tone that made Liv look closer.

  “Are your tits bigger?”

  Fizit glared at her.

  Liv cocked her head slowly to the side. “Definitely bigger. So, lizard young suckle too?”

  Fizit growled and suddenly, a bronze knife was pressed to Liv’s throat. Not that she had moved to stop the knife. Instead, she just smirked.

  “Tell anyone, and-”

  “You’ll what?” Liv asked, her voice cold.

  Fizit looked into Liv’s eyes. She drew the knife back. Her tail lashed from side to side in clear agitation.

  “Not even a scratch. Your father still watches over you then.”

  “He has his uses,” Liv said.

  “I can get a rock.” Fizit shifted a bit. The acrid scent of her vomit had faded, now that it was buried.

  “I can break your hand,” Liv shot back.

  “Bitch.”

  “Who knocked you up?” Liv asked.

  Fizit didn’t answer.

  “I think I know why you don’t want me to tell anyone,” Liv said, watching Fizit out of the corner of her eye. “It’s not the General. I’ve noticed how you look at him...”

  “I don’t want to fuck the General!” Fizit snarled. “Not every interaction between a woman and a man who are close means that we want to fuck.” She snapped her teeth. “I don’t want to be with child because, in case you haven’t noticed, this is the first step to the largest war that Purgatory has known since your people invaded.”

  “My people?” Liv snarled. “Did you not notice the ears? Elves are natives to Purgatory.”

  “There’s not a single native elf left. You all became Hellens and Norse and-” Fizit snapped her claws together. “You became sluts for gods, like the goblins.”

  “Look how well loyalty to the old gods served you,” Liv shot back.

  Fizit shook her head. She stood up slightly, then turned. Her tail whipped dangerously close to Liv’s cheek. Liv didn’t flinch, didn’t let the other woman see her flinch. Once Fizit was away, Liv remained silent for a time. She worked through what she knew, what Brax had told her. The Codec had been activated by a ritual. From what little details Brax had dropped, the ritual had involved a great deal of fucking.

  And Brax…

  No.

  Liv shook her head slowly.

  Maybe. If the Codec changed things around, it might have acted as a fertilization spell. She smirked. Liam’s god is going to be pissed.

  She froze as a blue glow came into her field of view. She stepped backwards into the shadows of a tree and stopped breathing. Her need for oxygen faded and she simply let herself be – her ears tensing as she listened to the sound of two voices. One made her tingle all over. The other was the voice of a mad god.

  “God, please, forgive my impertinence, but are you sure this is safe – you are quite visible.”

  “S-Si-lence silence s-ci-sic-silence!”

  Brax and Sysminor came into view then. They were walking along the hill, Brax behind and to the left of his god. Sysminor had shrunken himself down to merely humanoid size, and dimmed his glow as he walked among the trees. But he was still unmistakably wrong. His movements were jerky and patchy, as if Liv was missing entire seconds from her vision. He merely bounced from pose to pose. His body, too, was just... unfinished. Blocky cubes and squares, like someone had hacked out a crystal statue and given it madness. An inept Pygmalion.

  Then Sysminor came to the statue. He seemed to not notice the vomit, nor Liv.

  Instead, he gestured.

  “There there there.”

  Brax knelt down and scraped at the ground, revealing a small buried gemstone. He touched it with his finger and the hill shook slightly. A door opened in the earth, loam and dirt pattering into the chamber. Liv tensed as she saw a hint of what was opening before the statue. A familiar black stone and white lines.

  “What is this?” Brax whispered.

  “The door way – way – way to to vic success victory-ey-ey-ey Victor victory.”

  ***

  “Caw!”

  Munin flapped as he settled atop Odin’s throne, standing above and to the right of the one eyed god.

  “Caw! Loki has met success, caw! First cannons are being made, yes,” Munin pecked at the side of Odin’s throne, then fluttered forward. He landed on the table.

  Thor slammed his fist into said table.

  It shattered.

  “Damn this waiting,” Thor boomed. “My army stands ready, father, and the lizards are right there for the defeating.”

  “Thor,” Sif said, quietly. “Your army is young. New. Fighting tends to kill mortals, and they cannot be replaced overnight.”

  “I...” Odin could see the pain that flashed across his hotheaded son’s face. Thor sat down at the seat, his face covered a moment later by his large hand. He tugged on his red beard and looked like he wished he could strike himself with as much force as the table. Thor had always been the most enthusiastic of Odin’s children and fellows to expand their territory, to gather fame and to see the valor of men and women shown in the starkest of ways. On the battlefield.

  And now, when they were most needed, the best warriors were in Valhalla.

  “We have these walls,” Sif started.

  Odin’s one remaining eye widened – the warning coming fractionally before it was too late. He flung himself aside with all the alacrity he could bring to bear. And considering the millennium he had had to hone his abilities, to learn what could and could not be done as a god... that was quite fast. Still, he could feel the grazing touch of several nulldarts as they thudded into his throne. Munin took wing as Thor sprang to his feet. Three nulldarts sprouted across the redheaded god’s chest. Thor bellowed in rage and fury and grabbed for his hammer.

  Mjolnir was terrifyingly destructive.

  It required great power to be wielded.

  And with nulldarts – crystalline weapons designed to drain magic from everything they touched – peppering his chest, Odin saw the danger. He lifted up his hand, trying to reach for his son.

  Too late.

  Thor’s hands went numb and opened. Mjolnir didn’t even strike the ground before the terrifying power within bucked free. The hammer glowed a searing red, then exploded with a wave of concussive force that sent Sif and Odin flying. Thor crashed into the wall with enough force to shatter brick and leave him stunned. Munin escaped through the window. The invaders were pulped, their bodies turned to mangled red meat. But the hole in reality that they had leaped through remained. And through it came more warriors. Swords drawn, darts in hands. They flung them with the deadly skill – as if they were Roman Legionaries, not merely savage lizardmen.

  Odin got his throne between him and the next volley. He summoned lightning into himself as Sif hit the ground, nulldarts sprouting from her neck, her chest. She groaned quietly, kicking one leg.

  Odin sprang around the throne. His lightning bolt surged towards the portal, hoping to disrupt it. Instead, it was caught by a beautiful lizardwoman wearing a feathered headdress. She staggered with the impact – and then two more lizards with similar headdresses grabbed onto her. Then four more onto them. Their bodies linked together, and then a flash exploded outwards. The lizardfolk were cast to the ground.

  But considering they should have been turn
ed to ash, Odin took a moment to be impressed.

  Gestalt spellcasting.

  The next lizardman who came at him was golden.

  He was eschewed skill for numbers, his dart being flung at the same time as all of the other swarming warriors that entered into the council chamber. Darts plunged into Odin and he felt a terrible numbness cross his body. He staggered to one knee. The golden lizardman stood above him. Odin closed his one eye, feeling a sleep more terrible than any he had felt in his life reach towards him. Was this death – something he had seen, visited on others?

  Was it death?

  He gritted his teeth. “How?”

  The lizardman snorted, quietly. “I’ll tell you some day. Promise.”

  The pommel of his sword came down on Odin’s head.

  And, with a great sense of indignity, Odin passed out.

  Three

  Liam Vanderbilt had seduced more than his fair share of women. He was aware of this. Purgatory was a considerably more sexually liberated world than Earth, thanks to a lack of sexually transmitted infections and the difficulty of cross-species impregnation. Since all of his lovers – with the exception of Neb Mataare, a beautiful priestess of Anubis who had been more human than her furred, tailed body might suggest – were different species, he didn’t need to worry about making love enthusiastically and widely.

  Save, of course, for the religious argument. An argument he had long since kicked in the head and left back on Earth.

  But as he stood in the doorway leading into the reading room that Loki was lounging in, he thought that... this felt different.

  And it wasn’t just that Loki was a god. Or goddess. What was the proper term for a nominally male god in a female form?