Page 13 of The Sacrifice

Folk of the Waste, in their twisted forms, form ranks around me, armed with bone rods with fused fangs and teeth at their ends. Some wear animus bone masks from stags to wolves to birds. Others stare at me from bloodless pupils. But I can make out the underlying lizard-like features of them all from the tattered scales to the skeletal tails. Black veins spiderweb through their emaciated bodies that are clad in nothing more than ribcage armor and the fine strands of hair woven to form crude threads for their privates. Skin flayed off to show whole rows of teeth. Some have rotted on one side of their bodies.

A few closest to me snap their teeth in eerie, staccato noises that remind me of clicking. Qora crouches before me to hiss and growl a warning at the dead.

One corpse wearing a stag mask jerks his toothy spear end to my legs where the bony hands clawed into my skin. “She bleeeeeeeds red,” he utters, voice guttural from withered vocal cords.

Instantly, the corpses pull back their spears and aim for the sky. Hollow or ruined eyes gaze at one another before the stag-masked corpse jabs a bony finger at me and proclaims, “Bring her to the Ash Court! The gods will want to meet her.”

Lightning jolts my system. At once, skeletal hands, talons, or scaly fingers land on my arms, my waist, my neck, and other parts of my body. Awestruck again because I don’t feel these Waste hands, unlike the dragon, I don’t struggle as the twisted ones drag me, then carry me to the crest of the city, to that dark castle upon that bedrock. Not a bedrock. It’s the enormous rib cage of a dragon. I shudder.

Upon our approach, the gray light of dawn lances the sky, but it’s not sunlight that radiates through this world. It’s a weeping moon. And the castle isn’t iron at all. It’s obsidian swirling with chaotic patterns of white.

“Ash,” Qora informs me, referencing the white patterns as if reading my thoughts. I wonder fleetingly if she can. How deep does our bond go?

Knots form in my throat, and I gulp them down as the Waste-folk escort me across a bridge of petrified corpses. But it’s not them that strikes thunder into my chest. Sealed upon each side of the castle and at its crest of turreted towers are three great dragon skeletons with their mouths open mid-roar. And I swear as the dead lead me into this Ash Court, all three dragon heads turn their cavity eyes to gaze upon me.

9

"Don't you know better than to play with monsters?"

QUINTESSA

They wear masks.

Bone-chilling, flesh-crawling, spine-tingling, hair-raising, blood-curdling masks. Formed of the facial skin and teeth of demons, the skull masks fix to each of the three gods’ faces. Sunken-in black oval bones where the nose should be. Spaces hollowed to show their eyes—menacing even without their monster forms. Now that Hollow Night has passed, so have their cursed forms.

A Court of Ash as the Waste-folk had indicated, except corpses swing from chains suspended within the domed ceiling. Some still twitch, their snapped necks tilted with blind eyes nearly popping from their sockets. More masks cover the walls of the Court. Some are similar to the ones they wear while others are bone skulls of various animals—some I recognize, others I don’t.

I shiver in the center of the Court, but at another glance at the god-kings on their thrones, three in all with the far-left throne vacant, I shrink and rub the gooseflesh pebbling on my arms.

When the second to the last, the third one, tilts his head to me, I squeeze my arms closer together, tempted to cover my chest. His eyes are black as pitch, but trickling down the bone mask from those sockets are drops of blood. The vampire. I freeze, trapped in that tilted stare, unmoving even after he angles his head in the opposite direction. At the movement of his chest, I know he’s taking a deep breath, inhaling my scent.

It’s the second one who rises. The Fae with the excruciating beauty, great horns, and moon-spun hair. His demon mask is just as eerie, but thorns grow from the edges of the eye sockets. They cannot hope to compete with the rich hue of his eyes. A twilight golden brown. The trees of fairy tales.

“I would invite you to explain yourselves,” he directs his words to the corpses, and I chew on my lower lip, praying I’m not blushing since his voice is the most enthralling tenor I’ve ever heard—the kind that could make angels and saints and demons weep to hear him speak—, “...but there is little point. For once in your pathetic lives, you’ve made yourselves useful. Now, leave us,” he commands, his voice lifting an octave and echoing off the walls.

If the god-kings notice Qora, none of them say. At the far-right end is the fallen angel. His eyes are softer than the others. The palest blue I’ve ever witnessed—a bitter blue like frostbitten flesh. Blue as lips kissed by death. Indigo veins twirl tiny whirlpools around his eyes, but they do not signify water but rather air.

“Where is the dragon?”

I hardly realize I’ve said the words until they leave my throat. All the kings stiffen in their thrones, but it’s the vampire who rises. One moment, he’s there at his throne. The next, he’s standing before me. A shriek catches in my throat, and my breath hitches at how close he is. Close enough for his chilled breath to drift across my face. Close enough for his dark gray vest to brush my chin since he’s far taller.

Between the dripping blood and that vest over a white tunic, its collar and top buttons open to his upper chest, and the labyrinth of scars upon his flesh, he is the most macabre and handsome being I’ve ever seen. A sharp contrast to the ethereal beauty of the Fae. What I love most perhaps is the cap donning his head. It’s what the boys in the Borderlands wear when they have the news scrolls to share from the god-eater’s capital.

Again, he tilts his head to inspect me, and I still from those eyes roaming across my scrawny figure, more than usual thanks to the tattered dress showing my spindly limbs and knobby knees.

I spread my lips into a sweet smile and mimic his actions but tilt my head to the opposite side. “Oooh! Let me guess. You’re the nice one.”

The other kings merely chuckle while the vampire regards me, eyes dark and hungry. Just as I open my mouth again, the vampire’s pale hand seizes my throat. Endorphins shoot through my blood, and I almost pass out. Not because he’s squeezing so tight and limiting my air but because I feel every infinitesimal bit of him. Oh, worshipful Waste, my knees turn weak! His hand is warmer than I expected. Silver veins throb on the side of his neck and his forearms from where his sleeves are rolled to the elbows. Lightning crackles in my blood as he leans toward me. His breath practically howls a windstorm upon my face.

“Merikh!” the Fae king bellows behind him.

He growls low in my ear, setting all the hairs on the back of my neck to tingle. More goosebumps multiply on my skin.

“As gray as a little dove. So breakable. Her throat is too tiny. I imagine it will bleed when I shove my cock inside it.”

Oh, glorious gods! Something warm pulses in my belly. And gravitates lower. Every trace of my skin hums. Is this what it feels like? Like I’m ready to combust, implode, and melt all at the same time? Why his words, the image of him stuffing his cock down my throat to suffocate me, arouses me, I can’t fathom.

I’ve seen it before. I've done it before. The sunken in cheeks, the flaring nostrils, the sweat-slicked hair coating my cheeks as I sucked off a man’s member. I felt nothing. Nothing stoked my blood then, but I still enjoyed the twisted sense of power, admiring how the man’s breath grew labored, how he closed his eyes and groaned so deeply. Will this vampire dig his claws into my hair and force his way deeper until I gag? Will he rock his hips and growl as I suck him until he explodes? Will he paint his hot seed all over my face? If so, it might just be worth suffocation. And blood.

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