“He had a couple dozen demons with him, and a giant hellbeast. They all wore aera armor.”
“Giant?”
“Giant. Some kind of lizard dragon thing. All his demons were riding it with him.”
“Hmm. Rider indeed. What else?”
“His aura had everyone in a frenzy. I had to run past it all to get to my sister, and the whole thing was insane, demons dying left and right, not a single one trying to stay alive.”
Laoko frowned, and even that was a subtle thing.
“I think that is enough for today. The rider, angels, I have lost Ericia, Teleius, my entire brood, and now I escort an unmarked soul wearing an angel rune, in hopes we can find food before this hole in my side kills me, and before the half dead angel completes the second half. The unmarked soul has a host of abilities I do not understand, and now I am at his mercy. All in a single day. Forgive me if I do not wish to speak more.”
David stared up at the giant woman. “Mercy? You think I’m going to hurt you? Eat you?”
“I had considered it.”
“Of course not! I–fucking christ, after what you just saw with me and Moriah, I figured that was obvious! We need your help. We were gonna try and cross this province on our own, and it was blind luck we even ran into Vicus. Not lucky, but, you know what I mean. It’s not like we can just force you to help us across the province, anyway.”
Silence. Laoko watched the white stones pass underneath her, sighed, clutched her wounded side, and gestured ahead.
“Jeskura. Daoka. If you’d be so kind as to take lead. Go straight, and before the day is done we will find a crater. A place to sleep. We won’t find food until tomorrow.”
Jes and Dao hopped ahead, joined Caera and David, and leaned in.
“I can get us across the province without her,” Caera said, “but it’ll be a hundred times easier with her help. I say we do what she says.”
Jes grumbled. “She could be leading us into an ambush like Vicus had been.” Of course, she didn’t bother speaking quietly enough for Laoko to not hear.
Daoka clicked and chirped, and gestured up at the tetrad.
“Fine, fine.” Jes held up her hands, sighed, and she and the satyr took the lead.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It wasn’t the coziest hole in the ground, but it was better than sleeping out in the open. A literal crater, surrounded by tombstones like some sort of wall, and the ground in the hole lacked the white stone shards of the White Lands. Soft black dirt, comfy compared to the stones. Comfy compared to the church last night.
Laoko went in first, and she had to duck and twist to get through the gaps between the huge tombstones. Everyone followed, and everyone lay on the ground, panting and groaning, even the Las. They piled on top of each other, like they often did, and whimpered and whined as they clutched their damaged wings. Still not healed.
Everyone fell into the usual rhythm. Caera took first watch, but in the walled-off crater, the best she could do without exposing herself was sitting by the inner edge. Acelina lay the angel out on the dirt in the dead center of the crater where everyone could keep an eye on her, and she sat on the edge not far from Caera. Jes and Dao took a side and got cozy, and David joined them.
The Las weren’t trusted to take shifts, but they did like to help, so Lasca and Laara joined Caera, sitting all proud and ready to fight. Laria and Latia joined Acelina instead, and they cozied up to her giant thighs.
“Think she’ll live?” David asked, gesturing to Moriah.
“I think so,” Caera said. “She’s pretty bad off, worse than Dao was. But, she is an angel. I don’t know much about angels, not nearly as much as Laoko”–she cast the tetrad a glance–“but I’m guessing they can take a beating.”
Laoko cast a knowing glance right back at the tiger, but left it at that, and slowly sat against a tombstone.
“She’s lost most of a wing,” David said, “and that gash in her shoulder is deep, and burned. Hellfire, too. She’s… in a rough spot.”
“If she dies, she dies,” Acelina said. “This ridiculous attempt to keep her alive is absurd. She will betray you.”
“An angel? Betray?”
“An archangel is famous for betraying God and Heaven, little soul. Why would a normal angel not betray someone she does not trust in the first place?”
Laoko raised a finger. “Don’t be so quick to judge angels. They are not demons, zotiva. They stick to their word and their beliefs, to a fault.”
Everyone looked at the bolstara tetrad, and Laoko returned their looks with the most subtle, innocent smile. What the fuck was going on in that head of hers?
“Either way,” David said, “I think it’s important she lives. I don’t want angels as enemies. I don’t even think we would be enemies, if they just understood what I’m trying to do, me and Mia.”
“And the unmarked you killed?” Laoko asked.
“He was… pretty horrible. If he’d been able to do what I can do, and apparently what Mia can do, then… I can understand the angels doing what they’re doing. But far as I can tell, Greg didn’t know how to use the powers, yet. And there’s no way Mia would have killed angels if it wasn’t in self defense.”
“No way?”
David squinted at Laoko. “No way. I know my sister. She doesn’t have it in her to be cruel or violent, even to people who deserve it. She…” A memory struck him, and his eyes fell. It was true Mia struggled to hurt a fly, but when David had delved into the ocean of vibrations, it didn’t bring his whole mind with him. Some simpler part of him played the strings, and that simpler part of him didn’t have trouble killing people at all. It’d wanted to, revenge for hurting the people he cared about.
And with Greg, he’d played no song at all. He’d jumped the man and smashed his skull in. Skin splitting. Bone, breaking under rock. Soft stuff coming out. Screaming death around him, almost meaningless compared to the sensation of David on Greg’s body, smashing his brains in.
He could block that stuff out, but could Mia? Did she have to do anything like that?
He looked at his hands, and squeezed the rock that wasn’t there. The murder weapon. The vision of Greg dying, seeing David through Greg’s eyes, it bubbled in his mind. He shook his head, held his temples, and stared down at the ground between his legs. Eyes wide until the air stung, he took a deep breath, another, and another, until his heart settled.
The fuck?
Daoka chirped at him and rubbed his shoulder. He didn’t respond. She shook him a little, he teetered, and she leaned in and pressed her black forehead to his.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just… lost in a… memory.”
Frowning, Dao nuzzled in closer, used her ram horns to nudge his head up, and pressed her lips against his cheek. Her claws snuck behind his neck, and she turned his head into her until they kissed. Despite how hard her flat forehead was, black skin covering where eyes should have been, her lips were soft. She nudged her nose into his, kissed him again, and he leaned into her and rested his forehead against hers more.
Laoko watched all this from her side of the small crater, an eyebrow raised.
“You are all quite comfortable with each other,” she said.
“Have to be,” Jes said. “Just a few days after Dao and I scooped David out of the river, shit kept falling on us left, right, and center. It’s been nonstop chaos.”
Dao chirped, smiled, and lay on her side against David’s side. She plucked at his new clothes, rubbed a hoof against his sandals, and kissed his shoulder.
“He belongs to her?” Laoko asked.
“He does,” Jes said. “I mean, we all kinda share him, but Dao has claimed him.”
Dao nodded, chirped some more, and pressed her forehead against David’s chest, right under his shoulder. Nuzzled in, she sighed, relaxed, and rubbed her forehead against him like a cat, nudged her ram horns into his chin very much not like a cat, and relaxed.
Laoko tilted her head. “Share?”
“Yeah. David’s a total hornball. Horny twenty-four-seven. So nights we aren’t feeling horrible, we all fuck him.”
“All?” Laoko tilted her head to the other side, eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, all.” Jes grinned, climbed over Dao and David, lay next to him, and cozied up against him, too. “This special body of his has a lot of tricks.”
All David could do was lie there, blush, and squirm as the two ladies half buried him in their bodies. They were still in their armor, and he was fucking exhausted and aching from the inside out. But lying down on soft dirt, in new clothes, wearing new shoes, with two beautiful ladies cuddling him? And better yet, they’d survived another night against ridiculous odds? It was a good night.