While he soothed the bite on his hand, some of her hair fell away from his arms where he’d wound it to secure her, and she snatched it back, raised her foot, and struck him a brutal blow to the groin.
Doubled over in pain, Rolf let her go, and Rhiannon ran screaming through the darkness. Overhead, the stars had just begun to show in the indigo vault. The moon had not yet risen, it was blocked by the volcano, tinting the issue rising from the cone with an eerie pink glow. Great tufts of the smoke belched into the sky. It wasn’t until then that Rhiannon noticed the sparks and bits of burning matter spewing from the mouth of the fiery mountain. Neither had she realized until then that she was climbing upward over the hot gritty slag that made up the face of the volcano. There was really no other direction open to her with Rolf in close pursuit, hurling blasphemies after her as she fled.
Her gossamer gown was torn in spots and trailing tatters at the hem. It hung off her shoulder, baring more than she wanted Rolf to view. Her bare feet scarcely touched down long enough between steps to feel the heat of the slope she climbed. Her entire focus was escaping Rolf, and praying that her screams would bring Gideon.
By the time she neared the summit, her stamina was flagging. Rolf was gaining on her, and her screams had reached fever pitch. It was one thing when he wanted her for himself. Now, she had monetary value, and Rolf was obsessed with money. He would never give up until he’d had his way with her, until he’d delivered her to the odious individual her father had sold her to, and collected his handsome bonus.
Rhiannon had been hoping against hope that Gideon would come, that Rolf would back off when she reached the summit, but her strategy failed her on both counts and Rolf seized her just as she teetered on the brink. She was caught in her own trap with nowhere to go but down into a roiling pit of molten rock. They struggled on the edge, not only with each other, but with a sudden wind that had risen, and with the intense heat of the volcano that had changed the shape of the archipelago many times in the past about to erupt again.
Just when she feared she could struggle no more, another wind arose, and the flapping sound of a thousand birds rushed at her from all sides. But it wasn’t birds, it was Gideon’s massive wings, and a surge of new strength broke her free of Rolf’s grip, with another blow to his groin.
“Get down!” Gideon thundered.
She needed no encouragement to follow that order. Exhausted, she dropped to her knees on the rim of the volcano. Below, great explosions of molten lava rising slowly challenged the sides of the cone. Bubbles spat from the surface, blood red and white hot. It was about to explode.
Rhiannon dropped to her knees as another flash of light caught her eyes. Rolf had a knife. Hovering on the brink in the steamy air, half hidden in the plumes of smoke belching from the volcano, he was slashing at Gideon. All at once, the Dark Lord surged upward avoiding a swipe of the blade that nearly met its mark. He had no weapon to fight with but his body, and to Rhiannon’s wide-eyed horror for fear it wouldn’t be enough, he spun and shot back down, striking Rolf a blow to the chest with his feet that pitched him over the edge and into the boiling lava below.
Screaming at the top of her voice, Rhiannon scrambled to her feet as Gideon seized her in strong arms and lifted off with her cocooned as she had been in her dream.
“Get you down!” he called to Vane, whom Rhiannon hadn’t even seen until that moment. The Fire Lord had climbed up as well and stood on the brink of the angry volcano, its roar and burning breath ruffling his hair and billowing his shirt tinted crimson in the moonlight. “
Now,
Vane!” Gideon commanded, spiraling away from the intense heat rising from the lava flow. “It has its sacrifice. The gods alone know if it is enough.”
They soared off then, leaving Vane on the brink. There was no danger. The fire lord had tended his volcano for eons. He would know what to do and when the risk was too great to put life and limb to the hazard. Looking on, Rhiannon gasped. It was almost as if Lord Vane was baiting the fiery mountain—as if he challenged it to bury him in the lava that he had battled since time out of mind.
“Do not fear,” Gideon whispered in her ear, as she craned her neck watching Vane in the distance. “Vane knows what he is about. You are safe now. Hang on to me!”
Streaking through the night sky, Gideon swooped down and set her on her feet in a patch of scrub pine in lee of the fiery mountain. Evidently, for all his reassuring words, he wanted to be certain Lord Vane was safe before leaving him at the mercy of the elements.
He no sooner touched down, when he seized her, his trembling hands flying over her body. “Are you harmed?” he said. “Has he…molested you?
Answer me!”
Rhiannon’s breath caught in her throat. Gideon was like a wild man, his eyes flashing mercury-tinted red in the glow of the volcano. They flitted over her body from head to toe again and again, as if he didn’t trust them to present him with a true image.
“N-no,” Rhiannon stammered. “He was hiding in that chamber. He was stalking us! I told you I heard something!”
He crushed her close. “I never should have left you alone,” he murmured. He was aroused, his hardness forced against her as he crushed her closer still. His wings were half unfurled. Hot breath puffing from his flared nostrils scorched her cheek, and his heart was hammering against her. His feathers were practically standing on end from passion and ordeal. Rhiannon longed to smooth them, but she dared not. When such an unstoppable frenzy came upon him, the merest pressure upon those magnificent wings would bring him to a riveting climax. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his narrow waist.
Seizing her buttocks, Gideon rushed her against the slender trunk of one of the taller scrub pines and opened his eel skin, exposing his thick, hard penis. His mouth was hot, like liquid silk, as he took her lips in a fiery kiss. It buried a trail from the deep recesses of her throat to the innermost depths of her womb, spreading wave upon wave of achy heat through her belly and thighs. The firestorm of insatiable need peeled back layer upon layer of her innermost folds, like petals opening for him from the inside out, until her clitoris hardened like steel, begging to be touched.
Overhead, the sky glowed with an eerie blood-red hue as great plumes of belching fire shot from the volcano into the night. The heat of the eruption was visible in waves rising from the heap of slag that rose to the top of the inferno. Neither Rhiannon nor Gideon noticed. Their oblivion was such that all they could see was each other, the visible waves of their own body heat rising from their skin, and the desire in their eyes devouring each other. All they could feel was the drenching fire of their volatile embrace.
This was the curse of the gods at its worse, for it not only used his own body against him, it was in league with the palpable passion of their love. It blinded them both to all that went on around them. It made them oblivious of the danger of lava spewing out of the volcano, oozing down over the mountain of slag to the shore, where it emptied in a hissing, spitting rush into the bay. It rendered them impervious to the imminent threat of earthquakes and tidal surges it would spawn. But worst of all, it blinded them to the two silhouettes hovering overhead, their wings tinted blood red against the indigo vault.
Rhiannon guided his shaft along the rim of her nether lips. Riding her wetness, Gideon undulated against her, going deeper with each thrust, but not enough to penetrate. Excruciating ecstasy. There was almost a feeling of desperation in their embrace, as Gideon’s wings slowly unfurled. Rhiannon leaned into his gyrations. She could feel the hot silken head of his penis as he moved deeper along the curve of her opening. She could feel the rim that defined the mushroom tip, and the distended veins, feel the blood pumping through them to the rhythm of his ragged heartbeat as his shaft rubbed against her from clitoris to anus.
His hot hardness was more than she could bear. Lost in the power of a passion that had captivated her from the very start, the infectious urgency that had joined them soul to soul, she melted against him. Unable to hold back any longer, he raised her buttocks and plunged into her, grinding the thick root of his sex against the bud of her clitoris until she cried out in a rush of husky pleasure moans.
The lightning bolt hit them both directly this time, stunning Rhiannon and pitching Gideon over in the smoldering patch of scrub pine the missile had ignited. Gideon’s agonized groan ran her through like a javelin. She tried to rise but fell back down, the heat of the ground rushing at her now that awareness of her surroundings was trickling back. Glaring white pinpoints of light starred her vision. Her head reeled dizzily. Gideon’s groans bled into the fringes of her fast-fading consciousness, and she called out to him, the sound of her voice so desperate she could scarcely believe it was coming from her own throat.
Then all at once she felt herself lifted into the air, felt it bear her up above the volcano spewing great streams of lava skyward, above the radiant heat rising from the holocaust the Fire Isle had become, above Gideon writhing in the smoldering scrub pines.
Gideon!
For one wonderful moment, she’d thought it was he who had hold of her, but no. Sight of the Dark Lord lying doubled over in the undergrowth below, his crumpled wings tinted red by the lava flow as if they were bleeding, all but stopped her heart. He lay so still. It was as if he were dead, and she screamed his name at the top of her voice as the watcher who gripped her none too gently carried her high above the fiery mass of lava and slag, and spirited her away.
H
e is gone,
a disembodied voice ghosted across Gideon’s mind.
It is too late. We should have intervened long ago.
The other sighed.
He will rally, watch…
The first speaker heaved a gusty sigh.
And what of the other?
Lord Vane is not our concern
, the second voice said.
He has dealt with far worse than this in eons past, and will again, so my scrying tells me. The Prince of Flames has the power to self-combust to fight the volcano. Look! He makes of himself a human backfire to stay the lava flow when, like now, sacrifice is not enough to appease the gods who live within the fiery mountain.
The first speaker sighed again.
These accursed islands are the playgrounds of the gods.
And the lords who tend them are their pawns,
the other observed.
See? He stirs, the dark one. There will be hell to pay now.
Where has the watcher taken his lady?
the first speaker asked.
The other hesitated, then said,
Into Outer Darkness
.
But I thought the watchers could not enter Outer Darkness!
the first speaker said a little too loudly.
Shhh!
the other warned.
They cannot.
Then…how?
The other grunted, clearly out of patience.
They have their minions who can. Enough now! See? He wakes, and he has heard us…!
Gideon groaned awake, the words
Outer Darkness
ringing in his ears. He tried to rise and failed. Searing pain ripped through his crimped left wing, trailing smoke where the watcher’s lightning bolt had struck it. Blood was seeping out between the feathers. He groaned again, shaking his head like a dog to clear his vision, but the motion only grieved his wing and made his head ache.
A watcher still hovered overhead, making flamboyant gestures with his hands as if he were juggling with the snake lightning passing between them. The creature’s intent was plain. The moment Gideon slithered into position to rise, the watcher aimed his missile with intent to hurl it. Gideon roared like a lion, pounding the slag beneath him with clenched fists, but blinding pain doubled him over with the effort, and he couldn’t lift off. His wing was too severely damaged.
“I know where you’ve taken her!” he thundered, his fist raised against the watcher poised overhead. “You think I won’t follow her to hell itself if needs must. What? You think I fear darkness?” He loosed a mad, misshapen laugh. “Fool! I am
lord
of it!” he cried.
Watchers never spoke, at least they never had to him, and this one was no exception. The lightning was their voice, and the creature hurled another searing white-hot bolt down, missing him by inches, though he felt its heat and shrank from it.
Gideon roared again. Not only was the pain in his wing more than he could bear, he was aroused, just as he always was when his wings were touched; it mattered not whether the caress was one of passion or of pain. The wound was deep, and his cock was throbbing in an erratic rhythm, his heart pounding so violently, he feared it would burst through his chest. This is what the nymphs and the Ancient Ones that lived in their ancestral trees had helped him overcome in Marius’s forest. This was what they soothed, with their carnal ministrations, relieving the pressure in his cock that the watchers’ missiles had set loose upon him, pressure that he had been too weak to relieve himself.
He could almost feel the softness of their hands stroking his shaft from root to tip, and the fluttering of their anxious tongues laving him, the deep, dark mystery of their sex gripping him each in their turn, milking him, making him come to relieve the terrible agony and ecstasy the lightning bolts inflicted upon him. Time was when he used to look forward to their ministrations, for there had been sexual pleasure in it. Lately, since Rhiannon, their tending had become more therapeutic than sexual, like it had been the last time in the forest, when the Ancient Ones had cradled him so the nymphs could perform their services. That episode had begun the current nightmare. If only it had been Rhiannon’s hands upon his engorged penis. If only it had been her lips laving him instead of the jealous nymphs’, and her sex milking him of every drop of the damnable come the age-old curse had brought to bear, none of this would be happening.
But the nymphs were a clever lot. They had spirited him away before Rhiannon ever realized what they were about. Unconscious, Gideon had no idea what was happening either, until it was too late. And now, for all his brave words earlier, he feared he might never see Rhiannon again.
Overhead, the watcher gloated, pacing in the steamy red air as it flitted back and forth, toying with its lightning bolt. Gideon had no doubt that it would hurl the damnable thing at him if he made an attempt to rise. But time was passing. Every second was carrying Rhiannon farther and farther away from him. She had already disappeared from sight. The last glimpse he had of her struggling in the watcher’s arms as it soared off into the fiery, smoke-filled sky had left an indelible stain upon his memory that threatened to drive him mad.
What sort of obscene test was this that the gods had inflicted upon him? What depraved deity had devised this torture of tortures? In total aberration, he screamed Rhiannon’s name at the top of his voice. It echoed back in his ears above the rumble of the volcano spewing lava, above the crackle and roar of flaming slag, and the echo of the bay, for it had risen from its bed in a tidal surge that brought towering waves nearly as tall as the fiery mountain itself crashing toward the shore.
Hissing, steaming waves gobbled up the shoreline foreshortening the strand, sucking the sand back into the water until it lapped relentlessly at the very foot of the volcano that had spawned the devastation. The sounds of Nature at its most powerful raised gooseflesh over Gideon’s spine, for he above all knew the power of the elements enraged. He had seen it all before and become one with it—an elemental of the air that carried him aloft, a plaything of the gods, and of the mother of all that was and is and ever would be in Nature, the essence of his being, and his curse.
He was not near the lava flow, and yet the heat of it was suddenly fierce enough to scorch him. Glancing about through eyes narrowed from heat and pain, he searched for the cause of the sudden rush of blistering discomfort, only to stare slack-jawed at what was generating it. A blazing column of what could only be described as white-hot rage was streaking down the mountain. Lord Vane was in the middle of it, his arms raised in an attitude that expanded his already gargantuan posture enhanced by the radiant glow rising from his fiery body.
The heat of the Fire Lord’s approach was almost unbearable. The rush that preceded it all but closed Gideon’s eyes. Shielding them from the glare, he watched in stunned amazement as Vane’s raised arms hurled shafts of flame skyward that singed the watcher’s wings and sent it careening off into the night. A troop of agonized shrieks pouring from its otherwise silent throat trailed off on the sudden wind that had risen. The sound ran Gideon through to the core.
“A moment, old friend,” Vane said from the midst of the fiery column that had all but consumed his image. “That fellow won’t be returning anytime soon. Give me a moment and I will help you…I cannot touch you yet….”
Gideon could do naught but stare. He had heard of this, but he had never seen it as he did now, up close, only at a distance. He had never felt the heat of Lord Vane’s combustion or seen the power it generated. Staring in rapt awe, he couldn’t help but wonder how Vane made love to a woman in such a state.
“By all the gods,” Gideon stammered in spite of his better judgment. “How do you…eh…that is…with a woman…how…?”
“Not without reducing her to cinder and ash,” Vane replied. “And you thought you had problems, did you, my fellow plaything of the gods? We keepers of the Arcan Isles are all of us damned to our own special darkness.”
“There is only one darkness that concerns me now—
Outer Darkness
. That is where they have taken Rhiannon.”
“I know,” Vane said. “I saw. I need to see how badly that creature has hurt your wing. You will need both of them if you would follow after her.”
“It bleeds badly,” Gideon said. “The pain is scarcely bearable.”
“Can you stand?”
Gideon made a bold attempt, then fell back down in the scrub pines.
“No matter,” Vane said. “I can heal you there. Lie still for just a little longer….”
Gideon tried to do as Vane bade him, but the pain in his wing and the anxiety of knowing each minute ticking by put more distance between him and Rhiannon were beyond bearing. As hard as granite, his cock was bursting, throbbing—begging for the achy heat of release. The watcher was gone, but he had left his punishment behind, just as they always did since time out of mind. There was no besting the watchers of the gods.
“How can you heal me?” he asked Vane. He couldn’t imagine it.
“Once my flames have cooled enough to touch you without setting you afire, I will cauterize that wound there,” Vane replied. “Then, a few days’ rest and—”
“No!” Gideon cried out, his eyes trained upon the eerie blood-red sky above. “I haven’t got a few days. I haven’t got a few hours. Every moment I delay, she is in mortal danger. I haven’t a moment to lose!”
“Outer Darkness will be there once you’re fit, believe me,” Vane said, reaching toward Gideon’s wing. “Forgive me, old friend,” he said. “But I must inflict pain if you would mend. Steel yourself…”
Lying on his side in the scrub, Gideon gritted his teeth against the pressure of Vane’s fingers beneath the bent and crumpled feathers on the curve of his left wing. Writhing as the gut-wrenching sensations he had steeled himself against challenged his consciousness, the Dark Lord stiffened. Smoke acrid with the stench of burnt feathers rose from the ragged tear, oozing blood as Vane probed it and finally applied the pressure that seared the wound and closed it, ceasing the blood flow.
Gideon groaned. Vertigo starred his vision. Cold sweat beaded upon his brow as the stink of burnt flesh and singed feathers rushed up his nostrils. Vane almost looked like himself again, though the heat waves still rose from his naked skin, and his eyes still glowed like the molten lava that had finally ceased to slow crawling down the mountain.
“Why do you stare at the sky so?” Vane queried. “That watcher won’t be back, believe me. The smell that’s caused that grimace is not all from your fine feathers, Gideon. I singed a few of his as well.”
“It’s not that,” Gideon confessed. “When this began, the rune caster took three of my feathers as payment for her auger. She said I would have them back when needs must. One floated down when I needed help bringing Rhiannon back from the astral. I was hoping…”
“Evidently, you have a greater trial to face before that time comes, my friend,” Vane said. “Rest…I need to assess the damage now that the lava flow has lessened.”
“Watchers cannot enter Outer Darkness,” Gideon said. “How can I rest when I do not know what creature they have bribed to take Rhiannon through the gate?”
“Suit yourself,” said Vane, with a shrug, “but do not ever say I didn’t warn you.”
“Thank you, my friend,” Gideon murmured. “I am in your debt, and I have brought enough hardship down upon you tonight. I must away before more harm is done, before that watcher you just fried brings reinforcements and prevents me. I have always been the pariah of these islands, but never more than I am right now, stripped not only of my privilege, but of my home, and in grave danger of losing the woman I love. Yet I have always tried to serve the isles and those who dwell upon them for the good, because despite the curse my lust has brought to bear, I am still the creature I always was…an angel devoted to the gods that have cursed me. I have to find the place that will let me be that creature again…or let it end here. But I will do that with Rhiannon or not at all—immortal or mortal. It matters not. That is for the gods to decide.”
“It amazes me that you still trust the gods!” Vane said through a rough chuckle. “I don’t—not anymore, not until they let me take a woman in my arms without turning her into a human torch. I wish you well, my friend, in your quest. If you find such a place, let me know. What heaven if it could be the polar ice cap, eh? Hale and farewell, brother prince…until we meet again.”
Gideon watched Vane stalk off then, and waited until the Fire Lord was out of sight before he attempted to rise. He felt like a wobbly-legged colt taking its first step as he rose gingerly to his feet and squared his hunched posture. He flexed his wings and took a deep, ragged breath. He’d been in worse shape. Praying that his wings were still operable, he tested them rising only a few feet off the ground before soaring off into the night.
There was no sign that watchers were near, but Gideon put no trust in that. Vane’s mend in his wing was holding, but for a few bloodstained and crimped feathers it seemed as good as new. This had been the worst. Never in his memory could he recall a lightning strike drawing blood. There was no question that the punishments were becoming more and more severe. He could put an end to them by letting Rhiannon go and embracing celibacy for the rest of his eternity, but he could not—would not do that. He would have Rhiannon no matter the cost, and judging from the watchers’ last reprisal, that cost may well be his life.