winter.
This was where Ember was. He could smell her
scent like the scattered leaves all around him.
Then he ground to a halt mid-sprint.
There was something else as well.
Burnt flesh... his nostrils flared in the cool
air... and human seed.
Rage exploded in Constantine and he entered the
grove only to find it was like a donut, trees in a circle and an
open area in the center where two human males lay.
One was dead.
The other had been tortured to a degree that
made Con smile. Ah... a balm to his soul.
Of course, that was assuming he had one.
Constantine came to stand over the one who had
been struck in the head with a sharp tool. An exacting blow. A
battle weapon. Constantine crouched above the split head, the
brains becoming hard and icy around the skull and knew what had
cracked it.
Demon.
He looked to the other. His vampire's heart,
normally slow, sped. Ember's scent lay everywhere but she was
nowhere.
Their cum lay in a scorched circle around a
place with the imprints of knees and hands still held in the
earth.
Small hands and knees. A female of fragile
constitution.
He could smell their rut like it was happening
in this moment.
They had fucked Ember and released inside her
body.
The one who lived would die; Con could feel the
throbbing of the veins of his forehead, the blood rushing through
his body at a primal level of speed and heat, his rage
incalculable.
But first , Con knew, he would suffer
the finest degree of torture Constantine could bring.
Fortunately, Con noted as he strode
toward the still living male, the other Demon had left plenty of
skin on this one.
And left him alive as a warning to other
supernaturals who crossed him that Demons had come this way and not
to follow.
As if Constantine would ever
obey anything put forth by another . Fuck that.
His rage sharpened even more and Con unraveled
the coil of The Encourager as the human's eyes bulged.
“You thought to take the Mer female?” Con asked
softly, the smooth side of his weapon an abiding comfort in his
seasoned hand.
The menace in his tone was easily interpreted by
the human. “We didn't fuck her pussy, vampire,” Mason wheedled.
Con's fangs burst as the comment left the
shitbag's mouth: a favorite human term for someone that was dung in
a sack.
Constantine looked down at the shitbag and snapped The Encourager above his head, striking and tearing as
he rent it with perfect accuracy over the human's remaining skin.
The human howled as the barbs sunk and tore.
It delighted Con, who leaned forward and
whispered, “Tell me all, and suffer less.”
The lie sat perfectly balanced inside Con's
mind, teetering on his tongue like all things well-practiced.
Mason did, quivering and blubbering between his
skin peeling off his body like the layers of an onion.
Once he was freed of most of his flesh, his
sightless eyes gazed back at the ultimate torturer.
Con wore the gore that had splattered back from
the skinning. As the chore became more challenging, he'd had to
move closer to the subject.
He stomped on the skull of Ember's rapist before
he continued his search for Ember, armed with information provided
in desperation.
Ember was an untouched Maiden of the Mer who had
remained a virgin through sheer chance.
However, her ass and mouth had been used like
that of a common whore. Constantine knew what that was like. Con
had suffered degradation. He enjoyed giving it... to a degree. His
anger was without bounds, without limits. For Ember had suffered, a
female he... cared for.
Goddess help him , he did.
Constantine threw his head back and howled his
rage and despair to the stars.
They glittered back with the hardness of their
diamond indifference.
*
Ember
Ember floated, the aches and pains of her body
remained but were tempered by the soothing pool of water she found
herself in and she sighed. It came out like a tortured exhale as
she remembered.
Everything.
Ember whimpered, snapping her eyes open, she
gazed around the
Learning to Kill: Stories