Calliope's Wings Read online

  “I would like that.”

  The drums that had been beating at the wall of the city for the entirety of the day ceased and anticipation bloomed in my stomach at the loss of sound. The seafolk quieted their chatter only momentarily before their final efforts in gathering up their supplies redoubled. I and Mari’et were shooed off the bundles of clothing and cloth with frantic snaps of apology before those were scooped up in haste.

  “Go on, my friend.” I tipped our foreheads together, her having to bend to do so with my much shorter frame, in an intimate ‘embrace’. I peered up to see tears glistening in the soft-hearted healer’s eyes. “Go. There is not much time.”

  Without any more words shared between us, we split apart. Mari’et took a more direct route through the fresh market while I slipped between the slats that would carry me around the docks. There were ships I wanted to see off and a sleezeball of a pimp I thought deserved a taste of his own medicine.

  A sick, devilish sensation unfurled in my belly.

  The Udon was infamous for their marauding and destruction, weren’t they? What would one more body matter in the counts they would undoubtedly reap on Blackburhn?

  My plans had soured quickly.

  I curled what fingers I had under the noose that had been thrown around my neck by sheer accident while I crushed Mathai’s windpipe under my boot. The man, scum that he was, had been savoring his whores while he still had the chance. There was a high probability that the Zikta would steal the women for their own. When this happened, my ‘employer’ would suffer a major blow to his enterprise.

  Boohoo for him.

  But not to jump too far ahead into the shitstorm of my night…

  The Udon, not to my surprise, had been swift in their strike. Whatever forces Blackburhn amassed was nothing compared to the sheer force and magnitude of the warrior lot. The sun had been high in the sky when they flocked through and over the wall, the sound of their war cries echoing all the way to the wharf.

  The screaming followed soon after.

  By the time I’d slipped into the clay building Mathai housed his females, half of the roofs had been smoldering from torch fire. Without an underground network of emergency water pipes – despite the city literally being perched on the bank of the sea – the fires would consume every business and residence. The Zikta took care of the living populace with brutal efficiency. Small contingents were further into the city, grabbing male and female alike, scraping their eyes over them before either tossing them aside or killing them.

  It usually depended on if they fought back or not.

  I caught Selna’s eye as I tapped up behind Mathai as silently as I could in the heavy boots I wore. Her right eye was swollen shut, her nose and lip bloodied, and I could see that her left arm was broken. Still our vile boss rutted into her, his trim body stinking of ale and tic-cigars, while his meaty fists shackled her knees ruthlessly.

  I double-fisted the studded leather lash, the creaking of it lost under the cacophony of his grunting, before jumping onto his back. The male managed only one more thrust before his breath was gurgled and choked off.

  I clung to him desperately, my legs pinning his waist while my arms shook as I kept them locked behind his neck. Tauren were exceedingly strong, their orc-like bodies genetically perfect for being the dominant species of this plane physically, but the neck was as vulnerable as a normal human’s. Their eyes were another literal soft spot, but there was no way that I was going to be able to reach those.

  “Motherfucker,” I cursed in English, jerking roughly when his claws gouged my forearms. I could feel the muscle rending underneath, but the pain was secondary to the carnal joy that overwhelmed me, feeling his chest heave as he fought to get a breath. “Beat me. Mutilate me. Try to sell me. Burn in Hell, you sonofabitch. Burn.”

  Mathai jerked forward suddenly and then began stumbling back on unsteady feet. Squinting through the red haze in my eyes, I saw Selna releasing a dagger to the floor. The brown wrap with the cream pumice stone in the hilt told me that it was Mathai’s. I’d seen it enough these past months. It had been the one to remove my fingers.

  Now, it was stained red. I felt wet heat hit my ankle from wherever she’d struck.

  Then, with a feral cry of her own, Selna ran at the male. Her svelte body, beaten though it was, was substantial enough to send him off his feet. Unfortunately, she struck while I was still strangling. Worse still, the cloth-strewn windows were behind me. As Mathai lost his footing, we plummeted out through the second story opening.

  Air wheezed from my lungs and my grip was lost to the lash as I took the full impact of the male’s weight. Fortune smiled on me as he rolled to his side, one hand clawed around his throat while the other cradled the area near his groin.

  My chest felt like it’d been flattened over by a steamroller.

  Crawling up onto my feet, I looked around through dim eyes. The fires which had been consuming the city had spread. Beasts ran by; some hitched to wagons, others riderless. I could hear people screaming. Ominous howls of the Udon. A nearby hut, its thatched roof aflame, collapsed mere feet away. A mangy not-quite-a-dog yelped as it scurried out from under a stall before its shelter could be consumed as well.

  Mathai growled, though the sound was more of a croak now as he attempted to recover. Without thinking twice about it, I reared back my foot and clocked him as hard as I could in the back of his scalp. His neck cracked as his head ricocheted forward and his chin snapped against his chest.

  Before he could recover, I latched onto his hair and yanked it back. He was forced to roll, revealing that Selna had sunken his dagger into his groin. He was bleeding profusely from his cock, which was slit halfway up the shaft to his hairless mound. She’d even managed to puncture him somewhere near his pelvic bone.

  Good shot, honey.

  Looking into his eyes, I pressed my boot onto his jugular. He struggled to grab my ankle, but his hands were bloody from his own wounds and the ones he’d inflicted on my arms. Not to mention that he wasn’t recovered from my earlier attack. He wouldn’t have the chance to, either.

  I imagined that this time I might finally die without resurrection because the pleasure I felt at the sound of cartilage and bone snapping under my sole was like sweet music. I was getting a ticket straight to Hell, for sure.

  “You scum-sucking worm.” I leaned forward into my step, sneering when Mathai’s eyes rolled. Because I wanted him to understand me, to hear my parting farewell to him, I switched to a tongue he knew. “Es’a Calliope. Sa’ssa kat uum et sa’ss vrish yuum bouht. Sa’ss Diahb uk uum arro et grap’ah yuum lo’to ashtini ku var Skyvryn. Yuum lo’ta breisk.*” (I am Calliope. Look at me and see what you reap. See Death in my eyes and know you do not ascend to Heaven. You will burn.)

  Pressing with all of my might, I sunk my heel into his windpipe. The male’s normally darker skin tone branched out to greenish-grey as his airflow was completely cut away. I luxuriated in the sound of his choking. The way his blood soaked through his pitch eyes as capillaries that were normally unseen burst.

  I had no chance to enjoy the singular moment of peace before a Lorun shot by. Its bulk I could have dodged – and did as its three-toed hoof cracked through Mathai’s face like tissue paper – but not the netting trailing in broken sections from its saddle. A piece, anchored by a buoy, snapped along the beast’s plated back once, twice, before whipping towards me. I had only a second to shield with my hands before the buoy caught on the rest of the tangled net, forming a noose around my neck.

  I gagged as I was wrenched off my feet and dragged behind the stampeding animal.

  Well, I thought with a mixture of dizziness and dark humor, Karma really is a bitch.

  Flashes of Blackburhn burning to the ground, the flames licking hot against my skin, were an unpleasant background to this impromptu death I now faced. As I was rocked over an upturned crate, the wood splintering painfully into my back, I briefly wondered where exactly I’d end up ranking this death.
Surely it wasn’t that bad compared to others?

  Tears built as the choking sensation got worse and my fingers were cut off of blood flow.

  A barking craw, only vaguely familiar to my dazed mind, rent the air over the Lorun’s desperate lowing and its heavy hoofbeats. I looked up into the smoke-filled sky, night having descended by that point, and lamented that I wouldn’t be able to see the stars this time around due to the thickness of the smoke. Stars always gave me some small comfort when I felt myself drifting away. Whether into sleep or death, it didn’t matter. The stars were magic and stardust.

  The Lorun skidded, braying miserably as it hit an incline. Probably the ramp the wagons used to scale the rocky outcropping between the wharf and the rest of the city. The net wrenched as my body bounced over the lip of the ramp to the rocks.

  Oh look; there’s stars, I thought in a daze. Black washed almost all my vision and the ‘stars’ came with it.

  I could hear the thumping of my heart as I bobbed and bounced; scraped and dragged along the ground while smoke filled whatever part of my lungs that still managed to get air. A sharp snap filled my ears before my movement changed. While my body was still rocketing, it was no longer caught in drag.

  Instead, I flipped ass over teakettle, my face curiously numb. When I came to a stop, it was jarring. Fortune made it so that there was no air left for me to wheeze out of my lungs on the impact, however. I felt my frozen fingers twitch under my chin as my eyes rolled. My heart was still thumping like the hooves of a thousand horses and there was a muted roaring in my ears.

  Then, very suddenly, I could breathe again.

  Air poured into my lungs so quickly that I blacked out from it. The stars were gone along with my pounding heart and the rushing blood in my ears.

  I couldn’t have been unconscious long, however. When I coughed and sputtered my way to wakefulness, I felt heat everywhere. The sound I thought was my heart actually was dozens of dual-clawed feet situated on three big toes similar to those of a camel. The roaring, too, was not my blood in my ears. It was instead the raucous noise of the owners of those beastly feet bellowing into the night’s inferno-ravaged sky.

  My body trembled as long, clawed digits smoothed over my back, sides, and legs. I was on my stomach, blurrily watching those feet beating ground so near to my face. My hand reached out without my conscious will to do so, probably to touch one of those big toes, only to have my forearm shackled loosely. The copper skin struck a brilliant picture of contrast against my dyed, ruddy gold skin and the bloody rivulets scoring it.

  “Be still, Innintani.” The male’s voice all but purred the command above and behind my ear. It was a nice voice. Threatening, in a way, but modulated and caressing. “A litter is coming.”

  “Do not touch me,” I rasped miserly, glaring at the offending hand on my arm. Despite air being returned to me, I was becoming rapidly sluggish and dizzy. I felt myself on the fringes of unconsciousness. Still, resentment pooled in my chest at being denied death. Again. Retaliation and desperate want curdled and formed a snappy reply which, I hoped, would earn me a killing blow.

  Heaven knew it wouldn’t take much in my present state. My healing powers didn’t work on myself – again, Karma’s bitchy ass fault – and I was a beaten sack of flesh and bone. One solid strike to my crown and I’d be dead.

  “Get your filthy, ugly hands off me.” I wiggled a little on my stomach and whimpered despite my resolve to face annihilation with a brave face. Everything hurt. The hurt shifted my words to English. “Fuck you and the Mahzri you rode in on. Better yet, why don’t you go fuck it like the beast you are and leave me be?”

  Instead of getting angry at my harsh tone, the male’s hands on me stiffened before mirth touched against my senses. He didn’t make a sound of his enjoyment of my harsh insult, but I could feel it. Along with my healing, I had become something of an empath. The two came hand-in-hand since it helped me to track injuries better. It wasn’t a pleasurable ability when I was surrounded by such sickness, death, misery, and sadness on a daily basis, but positive emotions sang in my blood. The Lubrei’s were a balm to my wavering consciousness.

  “Rohahn,” another voice boomed over the beating feet of the Mahzri, the crackling of raging fires, and the distant screams of people. Boots crunched into the darkening edges of my vision while I rested my cheek against the ground. “It comes. Aid me, brago, to lift Her.”

  “Don’t touch,” I repeated druggedly. They ignored me.

  My head was tilted and pivoted to make room for a silken bolt of fabric to cushion my cheek. That felt nice. So did the hand that stroked against my cheek to temple, tucking stray clumps of hair off my face. Their upset growls were only minutely discouraging as I fought with my body’s demands to succumb to blackness.

  “The Tohtahk will not like this,” one of them said. My eyelids had grown absurdly heavy by that point and I didn’t have the strength to open them again. What did it matter, anyway? Nothing ever went the way I wanted it to, so it wouldn’t make any difference if I saw things coming or not.

  “May the One have mercy on us.” The fabric of my shift – sticky with blood and filth from the streets – was peeled from my back very slowly. A hiss of pain came from my sneering lips while the Lubrei and the innumerable Mahzri bellowed and snarled in anger.

  “Shh,” I hushed them as best as I could while being sprawled out on the ground. My fingers bounced nervously against the stone path. Shooting pain in my fingertips told me that I’d ripped some of my nails.

  That sucked.

  I was distantly aware of more bodies, mostly humanoid, pressing around me. My mind rolled between wakefulness and black slumber while my body suffered one long, rolling ache. I hurt so much so that my linguistic abilities puttered away. I couldn’t translate all the words being spoken above and around me, instead drowning in my own misery.

  Fuck, this was a shitty fucking hand.

  Somebody roared loud enough to wake the dead just as my body was being rolled and moved onto a nice, plush, cool surface. I heard skin striking against skin. Felt wet warmth splatter against my cheek. Then, hands the size of catcher’s mitts layering over the sides of my face. They tilted my head and I had the feeling of whoever the beast was wanting my attention. He was saying something, furtively, but I was just too out of it to care anymore.

  I fell asleep – or, rather, I succumbed to unconsciousness – to a chorus of harsh consonants and rumbled growls.

  Chapter Three

  Who the fuck lit the incense?

  Druggedly, I rolled my head on the lavish pillow it was cradled by. Actually, my whole body felt cradled and swaddled. Minus the aches and pains riddling my body and the way my throat burned every time I swallowed, I was more comfortable than I had ever been since coming to this world.

  Blinking up to the ceiling, I was confused. I could see the stretched, dark canvas – or maybe it was animal hide? – everywhere, supported by a cleverly latticed structure of bonewood. There were dried plants hanging from the bonewood. Copper bowls were around the outer rim of the canopy, also hanging from the frame. Gauzy netting stretched the inside walls with tied-back drapes of more of the same roof covering on the outsides. More latticed framework. All etched with black designs too far away for me to get a good read on.

  The hut was huge. Like, utterly massive. It made me think of yurts back on Earth, especially with the lattice framework.

  There were trunks, pillows, and comfy looking chairs in the room. Bolts of fabrics and furs. I could see a copper firepit in the center of the space, a gentle flame coming out of it. There were rugs on the floor that looked…well, they looked more like they should be hung up on the walls instead of spread out on the ground. They were made with beautiful threads of teal and silver, offsetting the coppers and creams everywhere else. And the bed I was lying on? Fuck me, it was a goddamned cloud and had the softest sheets ever.

  Where the fuck was I?

  At the sound of husked, feminine voices, I
moved my eyes up and over, having to tilt my head to see women coming into the hut. They were topless, their heavy breasts dangling out without shame. Their skirts were long with slits down the sides for easier movement, the color a bland sort of steel-grey like the cloak I’d lost at the stalls.

  As soon as they saw me looking at them, they shut up like I’d yelled for silence or they were doing something wrong. The tallest one – the one with prominent tusks and the smallest breasts – dropped a large jug, the ceramic shattering across the ground. The water inside splashed over the priceless looking rugs while the ceramics cut her bare-topped feet. The bronze ring in her wide nose winked as her whole face grimaced with apparent horror. The other four turned to glare at her, but their own bodies were tense.

  “You fool,” the ‘lead’ female hissed, brutally yanking the tall woman’s bullring. The tall one whimpered a little, but went where the leader pulled her. She crushed through the broken shards with her sandals.

  “Ruune, we will be whipped for this,” another of the women snarled in the twitching ear of the humbled tall one. She pushed Ruune’s shoulder, moving her out of the mess.

  “Come here.” When they all looked at me with wide, frightened eyes, I realized belatedly that I’d opened my mouth and practically barked at them because of how much my throat hurt. I swallowed thickly, hoping to clear the ache out. “Please.”

  The five women flocked my way immediately, apparently taking my word for law. Ruune hung back away from the other four, though, her head bowed and her six, sharp-nailed toes fidgeting where her hands didn’t. I lifted my heavy arm, idly noting the crisp wrapping of white cloth around my forearm, and pointed to the tall female.

  “Ruune,” I spoke her name and called her attention to me. I curled my fingers to my palms loosely, gesturing her closer. “Ruune, come here.”