Golemancer

Girls

Book 1 – Part 1

Maxx Whittaker

Golemancer Girls  is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual places, events, or persons living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Maxx Whittaker

Copyright © 2020 Saving Throw Ink

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Publishing Partner,” at the email  address below.

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First Printing October 2020

Cover Art by Tonzhat

Thank you so much for buying Golemancer Girls!

This was an absolute blast to plan and write. I loved the serial format with

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fill time between longer projects.

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1

“Just this way, master. Follow!”

I stumble over a tree root that juts from the Earth like a hastily buried corpse, trying to keep the skeletal form of the villager in sight. Despite a body that I swear is stitched together from spare parts of four different people, he moves like a shadow between the ancient boles of the Whisperwood and I can barely keep up.

“If this is another wild goose chase,” I mutter, palming one of the protective gems at my belt, “I swear to Eros that I’ll–”

“You’ll contemplate murder, and then you’ll toss that walking pile of fleas a coin and send him on his way, Rend.” Jade’s voice, wry and teasing, drifts up from the medallion at my breastbone.

“Shut up. No I won’t.”

“Will too. You need this, and you know it’s worth the chance if you can take a high vampire. Or, rather, what it has inside of it.” She wriggles against my chest, smug.

“Need this like the last rumor we chased? The fire elemental?” I shudder, can still feel the heat of the Carex Volcano washing over me like an open forge. “All I got out of that was burns over three quarters of my body and new hatred for heights. And the elemental didn’t even have a captured golem soul.”

“Yeah, but if you want your revenge, you’re gonna have to take risks. You know that.”

I won’t give her the satisfaction of agreeing, but the little sigh that escapes me is obviously good enough for her. She vibrates against my chest in silent laughter.

Bah. She has got way too much attitude for a disembodied soul that only exists because I cast her into a soul gem.

I shiver at the prospect of harvesting a golem soul. Maybe this is finally it. After countless disappointments, maybe this vampire has captured one.

Golem souls. Wandering the world, homeless. Ancient spirits, cast from their bodies after the great war a thousand years ago. Like ghosts.

But these are very real. And if you catch one? The power… it’s enough to imbue into a real golem. And not just some hulking monstrosity that only cares about pounding things into piles of blood and bone. No, a golem soul can power a real golem. A thinking creature capable of independent action. And if you bind one?

Please. Please let there be one at the end of this journey.

They’re incredibly rare. Which is probably why the vampire, if it has a golem soul, hides this far from civilization. Closer to the capital or Blackstone, my home, it’d be hunted relentlessly.

“How much further?” I call, squinting against the full moon.

“Not far!” The villager’s high voice pipes from… somewhere. I’ve lost him. The ancient, twisting trees look so much like him that any of them could turn and cackle at me and I wouldn’t be surprised.

But I can follow his voice. A slight breeze whispers through the forest, but it doesn’t drown out the loud burp that erupts from the shadows just head.

I sigh again. “Wild goose chase,” I grumble.

If Jade had eyes, she’d roll them.

Our push through the trees ends so abruptly that I slam into the back of the villager, and for a moment we’re a tangle of leather limbs and clanking gems. When I extricate myself after a lot of grunting and cursing, the villager’s kneeling, hands over his head. “Sorry, Lord! I… I didn’t a mean it. Please don’t… don’t kill me. I don’t…”

I shake my head. “Stop, stop. None of that.”

The villager… Alvo, I think his name is, peers from behind the slats of his bony fingers. “Yer… Yer not gonna lash me?”

“No… Gods,” I huff, reaching to help him up. “Mistreated by your nobles, are you?”

Alvo takes my hand tentatively and makes a sound like a broken bellows as I haul him up. “No nobles, no lords ‘round here,” he mumbles, brushing dirt from a smock that’s already so filthy I can’t tell if he’s making progress. “Just us fringe folk.”

“Ah. Explains why no one’s sent soldiers in to clear out your threat,” I say, surveying the moonlit landscape. Ahead of us a short ways off the jagged teeth of gravestones reach skyward. “A high vampire is a dangerous beast.” Even without a golem soul. “Thought someone would have tried to kill it by now.”

“Her,” Alvo says, scratching under his smock. “Tis a lady, my lord. Beautiful as you’ve ever seen, but dangerous. A killer. She takes the men of the village for her pleasure before…” he stumbles over his words, pallid skin as pale as parchment. “Before she sucks them dry.”

“Beautiful, eh?” I gnaw on his words, thoughtful. Might be a nice bonus. When I take the golem soul from her and put in a new shell, it’ll wipe the memories of the vampiress for the most part. But I’ve heard that, in some cases, the golem soul will retain the form of their former host. And if that form is an attractive woman…

I peer at Alvo as he shifts from foot to foot, running hands endlessly through the tangled shock of white hair atop his head.

Okay, jury’s still out on this one. This guy probably thinks a bottle of shine and a goat is a lucky night. He chews his lip before hocking a huge, black gob into the brush. “And summat did try to kill her, once. Oh, ‘bout two years past. Mage, he called hisself, and ‘bout a score of soldiers.” He whistles. “Shiny as you ever saw in their armor. Wearin’ long sheets with a golden sunburst on ‘em.”

“Tabards,” I say absently. Damn. So old Sinshade tried to take a high Vampiress? Fool. Explains why he went missing a few years back.

But the news heats my blood. Sinshade wouldn’t bother with monster killing if he didn’t think there was a reward to be gleaned. A big one. “Any of them make it out?”

“Nope,” Alvo rasps. “But the vampire come that night. First time we ever saw her outside the shadows. She did somethin’, some kinda brain magic, made Elder Tomsin go with her. Said it was the price we paid for putting a bounty on her, and that if we ever tried somethin’ like that again, she’d be back for all of us.”

I cough. “But… You did anyway? I mean, that’s how I found out…” I still remember hearing the rumor at a tavern a hundred leagues from here. That a village had gathered every coin between them to rid themselves of a vampire. It’d been a risk, coming here. If I chased every monster contract that came across my path, I’d be a thousand years old before I found a golem soul. But the caravan leader who’d told me the story had been adamant that it was a high vampire stalking the faraway region. Had said that his caravan had employed a seer that knew things, could feel them through the land and earth.

A seer that had conveniently died in a river crossing two days before. But something about the caravan leader’s intensity had convinced Jade and I, and off we went. Praying that this was the first step of our revenge. I shake off the memory. “You still put another contract on her?”

Alvo blinks, his eyes closing at different speeds. “Well, yep. Gotta git rid of her somehow.”

I turn, put my hand on a shoulder jagged enough to cut a roast. “Why in the hells didn’t you all just… leave?”

Alvo pats my hand like I’m the stupidest creature to walk Ecosa. “This is our home.”

Jade vibrates at my chest so violently I’m afraid she’ll explode. I slap my hand over her, stifling a tirade that’d probably drop Alvo dead. “Makes perfect sense,” I manage. “I can take over from here. Point me toward the mean lady and I’ll take care of her for you.”

“Center of the graveyard,” Alvo says, eyeing me so skeptically that that his enormous white eyebrows look like two caterpillars mating. “You sure yer gonna go in there like… like that?” he asks, gesturing at me with a limp flick of his wrist. “You got no weapons. And you sure don’t look like a mage.”

“No, not a mage,” I say, stifling a laugh. “And I don’t need weapons. Just tell me where she is,” I finish, running a thumb along the runes carved into my index finger.

“Well, alright,” Alvo whines. “Just, if she kills you, maybe don’t tell her about the contract before she does?”

“Oh, I might not have a choice,” I say, taking a slow step forward. “If she compels me… Brain magic, you know?” I wiggle two fingers at my temple.

Alvo pales so quickly that I have the urge to check behind him to see if the vampiress is already draining him dry. “Uh, maybe this ain’t such a good–”

“Nonsense!” I say, clapping him on the back hard enough to send him stumbling. “I can handle her. Trust me. Now, where will I find her?”

“The mausoleum,” Alvo stammers, features twitching like he has a brain clot. “Old Petros says he saw her comin’ outta there last month, and I believe him because when he came runnin back to the village he’d pissed himself. He stank like a–”

“I get the picture,” I grate, silencing him with an upraised hand that he shies away from. “One more thing before we settle up.”

Alvo’s thin fingers twine together like he’s kneading invisible bread. His lips pale as he draws them together in fear. “Uh, yeah?”

“Seen any wights in the area?”

He relaxes, stares at me quizzically. “Well, yeah. Always wights ‘round these parts. We see ‘em floatin’ around at night, mindin’ they own business. Like they do.”

Shit. “Any recent sightings?”

“Well, sure. Saw a big ‘un just two nights ago, over by Jainy’s shithole. Her outhouse burned down a fortnight back, so couple of lads and me dug her a nice pit out in the woods. Threw a log over it so she can sit and do her business real easy like. Flies crawl all over ye while ye shit, ‘course, but...”

He finally trails off at my murderous expression. But I’m not puzzling over mid forest shit pits, or how in the hells an outhouse burned down. No, I’m fixated on the revelation that there’s a ‘big’ wight in the area.

“Why do you care, anyway? You don’t have to be afeared, master. They’re harmless, you know,” he says, patting my hand reassuringly. “They don’t bother people none.”

“Your payment,” I say, changing the subject. I push a golden sovereign into his hand. “Take it to the bank in Shylo, and don’t show it to anyone until you get there if you don’t want to get robbed and left for dead.”

“Shylo?” Alvo frowns as the coin disappears into his pocket like black magic. He turns away to disappear into the Whisperwood. “That’s clear on two days distant.” He hesitates. “Still, might be good to be scarce in case…” he trails off, eyeing me over his shoulder like I’m already a dead man. “Well, good luck. I’ll warn the village.”

“No need!” I call, but he’s already gone.

“That was really mean,” Jade admonishes.

“You love it.” I lay a hand on a nearby grave, surveying the shadowed landscape. “You’ve got a wicked mean streak.”

“I do not,” she hisses. “That magistrate was an asshole. It’s not my fault that the letter from his lover happened to fall out of his robe in front of his wife.”

I laugh. “Jade.”

“Rend.”

“Jade…”

“Okay. Fine. Maybe I gave it a little tug with my gift. But it was already hanging out of his pocket.”

I roll my eyes. “Sure.”

“Thank the Gods that yokel’s gone,” Jade whispers, changing the subject fast enough to tug another chuckle from my chest. “If he kept going on, I was going to self-disassociate.”

“You’d better not. I need you.”

Jade warms against my bare skin. She loves flattery. “Yes. Well. Get us back to civilization and all its trappings and you can keep me.”

“Trappings?” I laugh as I push through the first rough line of gravestones. “You’re a medallion with no body. What trappings?”

“That soft cloth you use, with the oil?” She mmm’s and I swear it sounds like a moan of pleasure. “Really does it for a girl.” Then she hmphs as her metal goes cold as ice. “And it’s really rather rude for you to bring up my present corporeal… inconvenience.”

“Sorry. I know. My fault.”

“Gods damn right it’s your fault. You’re the one who killed me and brought me back to life, after all.” She heats again. “Not that I mind. Definitely beats being inside a dark elf. They’re such assholes.”

I close my eyes, remembering. That was so long ago. I knew so little. I wish I’d found her now; wish I’d harvested the golem soul from that dark elf when I knew how to put her into a real body. At the time, pressing her into the gem she still resides in had almost killed me.

The graves around us are all shapes and sizes, but they have one thing in common: they look terrible. Obviously carved over the years by the villagers with whatever they had on hand, most are rough slabs of rock barely chiselled with shape or words. I scan the wide expanse, searching for the mausoleum. Nothing. I grunt in annoyance as Jade’s last statement penetrates my mind. “Hold on. I thought you couldn’t remember much about your former host?”

“I can’t, but I know what I was. And I know how to read, Rend. I did a little research.”

“Read? When did you…? You’re with me all the time. How…”

She sniffs imperiously. “You don’t know everything about me.”

I blink. “So many questions.” Questions for later. “Where in the hells is this place?”

Jade’s surface lights just enough that her emerald glow reflects from the graves around me. I stay quiet as she works, listen to the wind slip between the graves. It smells like good earth, like fresh dirt. Comforting.

I’m comforted in a graveyard. I shake my head. How long has it been since I felt like a normal human?

After a moment, Jade extinguishes like a doused torch. “Over there. To the left. Down the hill.”

“Thanks.” I move off, dodging around a shattered gravestone. “I’d be lost without you. And that dark elf clairvoyance you somehow kept.”

“Don’t you forget it,” she preens. “Now, say there is an actual living, breathing vampiress down there? You have a plan?”

“She’s undead, Jade. No living or breathing.”

A growl. “Rend. Tell me you have a plan.”

“Course I do.”

Silence stretches between us as I near the incline.

“You’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?”

“Nope.”

“I am kind of attached to you, you know. If you die…”

“Aww. That’s sweet.”

“No, I mean physically. If she kills you and throws your worthless corpse down a midden pit, I swear to every God and Devil that I will disassociate and capture your soul in a spirit gem, and then you do not want to know what I will do with you.”

I pause, momentarily intrigued. “Tell me.”

“What?”

“The things you’d do to me.” Probably good to know how psychotic your travelling partner is.

She grumbles. “Terrible things. Horrible. You don’t want to know.”

I roll my eyes and chuckle quietly. “Tough talk, but you know humans can’t be collared like monsters or golem souls.”

“Yeah, well… I’d find a way,” Jade says darkly.

“Shush now,” I whisper, shading my vision from the moonlight. Maybe a quarter mile ahead, a low stone building looms in the night. “We’re close. When we get in there, be ready for anything and follow my lead.”

“Your lead? Rend, you won’t tell me your plan, so what the fuck lead am I following? And how can I help trapped in this… This stone, anyway?”

“Your powers. Like the magistrate’s note. Be ready.”

“I can’t move much, you know that.” She sighs. “When will you find me a body?”

I reach up and hold her tight, feel her gem press into my flesh. “As soon as I know how. If I tried now… And I fucked it up…”

“I know,” she says softly. “Don’t want to lose you either, you big idiot.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you, too,” I whisper. “Now, like I said, hush. Or I’ll leave you out here to wonder whether I bit it.”

Jade sputters and curses to herself, but at least she does it softly. I’m not sure where the vampiress is lurking, but there’s no reason to assume she’ll be deep in her barrow. She could be watching me right now, waiting to erupt from the shadows to tear me to limb from limb. Or turn me. I run my hand down the stubble at my chin and over the unprotected skin of my neck. Yeah, not interested in joining the ranks of the undead today.

I stride toward the mausoleum, flexing my hands. Whether she’s down below or about to pounce, I’ll be ready.

The runes etched into my fingers almost burn with anticipation.

I don’t dare light a torch, but there’s enough illumination thrown by an ominously full moon to make out the mausoleum’s pitted walls. It looks suitably old and spooky, and I’m roughly zero percent surprised that an eldritch terror’s made its home here. The door is thrown wide, almost invitingly, and as I poke my head into its yawning maw, I can make out dull light somewhere past the bottom of a set of unnecessarily long steps. Hundreds of skulls leer from the walls, the hollow pits of their eyes like tiny caves that I can imagine house traps like poisoned darts or magic flames.

No upper landing? Long, terrifying staircase? Maudlin decor? Whoever designed this place much have been possessed by a litch.

I shudder at the thought and whisper a silent prayer to Eros that I don’t encounter one of those tonight.

But that’s a risk of being a golemancer.

One of many.

2

Despite the fortune in protective gems hanging from my belt, descending into the mausoleum is terrifying. Places like this are always filthy with traps and dangers and sometimes even monsters, and it doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are because you’re almost always wrong.

The problem is that there are so many different ways the world can kill you. Prepared an anti-poison gem? Too bad. The fangs of the spider that inhabits this particular barrow secretes magical venom! Or perhaps you’ve got a stone that prevents you from being stabbed by anything sharp? Doesn’t much matter when the thing doing the stabbing hits hard enough that your gem backfires and the magic shielding sends you to splat against the nearest wall.

I shudder, remembering the volcano Jade mentioned. Who knew that heat protection soul stones only protected up to a certain temperature, and that said gem would shatter and that I’d be forced to fall down the side of the mountain, chased by a fire elemental, as my skin’s temperature went from ‘cool spring day’ to ‘inside of a fucking forge’ in half a second? Certainly not the author of Phylo’s Guide to Soul Gem Imbuement For Protection From the Elements. Turned out old Phylo was as shit at soul crafting as he was at book titling.

These thoughts thrash around in my mind like a horse with three broken legs as I take the first tentative steps into the vampiress’ lair. The stairway is as spooky as advertised, and the skulls stare sightlessly at me, mocking my slow descent. At any second, I expect flames to pour from their mouths, or for them to spring from the walls to bite my eyes out, or for some other equally terrible thing to happen.

But nothing does. Not for the first half of the stairway. In fact, if it didn’t look like the place was designed by a mass murderer, this would be downright pleasant. A chill breeze from below takes the edge off the humid night above, and the stairs are perfectly carved and spaced. “Weird,” I mutter.

Jade startles against my chest, vibrating violently enough to crack. “Don’t do that!” she whispers, furious.

“Do what?” I ask as I poke a finger slowly into one of the skull’s eye sockets.

“Scare me!” She heats enough to burn. “You know I hate dark places.”

“A medallion with phobias. Will wonders never cease?”

She huffs. “If you’re done violating that poor fellow’s eye hole, can we move on?”

I withdraw my finger, surprised that my ‘violation’ didn’t trigger a trap. Weirder and weirder. “Fellow? How do you know it was a man? Or is that wishful thinking? Hankering for a little ‘bone on stone’ action?”

“Rend.”

“Jade?”

“Apologize, and then tell me what you think is so ‘weird,’ in that order.”

I smile and hold her a moment. “Sorry. That was terrible.” She wiggles in my grasp as I turn my attention back to the staircase and my slow descent toward the warm orange glow in the distance. “As for what’s got me creeped? Everything about this place so far.”

“I get it.” She’s cold against my chest. “Usually by this point there’s a lot more screaming and running.”

“Yup.”

“Burning also.”

“Yeah…”

“Oh, and remember that time you were poisoned by the pit trap?” She giggles. “You had to lay next to the road for three days. And I asked you to close me for awhile because the flux was so powerful. Oh, the stench–”

“Jade.”

“Rend?”

“Maybe not the best time to remind me of how mortal I am?”

“Right. Sorry.” She warms apologetically. “Let’s just… Be careful. I’m creeped now. By more than the dark.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Tell that to the pit trap…”

“Jade!”

She laughs to herself as I push deeper. I move with the same speed and caution as before, and bafflingly am met with the same lack of danger. This only hypes me up further, and it feels like my feet barely touch the ground, I’m so tense. I’ve raided a lot of tombs. Cut through a shitload of hair-raising old forests. Scaled mountains and fought through sewers.

No matter where I go on the hunt for golem souls, a few things never change. Dry biscuits and meat so salted it puckers the lips. Waking up after a night under a tree or cliff with pain in places you didn’t know you could have aches. That itch you get in your toes when you haven’t taken your boots off for days.

And then there’s the risk.

Traps. Beasts. Beasts that lay traps. Beasts that take the form of gorgeous naked women in the hopes of your cock springing out of your pants before you realize that they are the trap. The risk of adventure comes in many forms, but there’s always danger on the way to your goal.

Not this time, though. The trek from my lab under the streets of Blackstone to here took two weeks even in carriages, on foot, and on rented horseback. Along the way I wasn’t waylaid by bandits, no one slipped unknown narcotics into my drink at any of the old roadside taverns I stayed in, and my mount never reared at the distant shriek of a griffon or wyvern. Shit, he didn’t even throw a shoe. Once I arrived at the unknown village that my skeletal guide led me from, the people were accommodating and kind. I’m used to at least one enterprising thief trying to steal my soul gems, or at least my purse.

And now this. A mausoleum that should be teeming with danger, but instead it’s as lifeless as the skulls that watch my slow progress below.

It ain’t right. None of this is.

But I can’t go back. Not now. Not after everything.

Not if I want my revenge.

A face flashes through my memory. A twisted sneer, one half cut by an old scar earned in a knife fight.

I push Laskel’s mocking grin from my mind. Bury too familiar rage and grief.

Not now. Need to concentrate.

The steps end in a long hallway. Its dark stone walls are pocked with doorways, likely leading to crypts filled with the caskets of whatever ancient family owned this place. They yawn like gaping mouths, black as pitch, and my visibility as I peer down their lengths ends a handspan deep. They’re the sort of dungeon accoutrements that I’m used to, and normally I’m sure draugr or goblins or something else would come lurching out to tear me limb from limb.

But somehow, I know that isn’t the case this time. Somehow, I know that the hallways are empty, harmless. Not worth exploring or paying attention to.

Why am I so sure? Well, it could be the archway at the end of the hall. Even a hundred yards off, I can make out its details perfectly. It’s spanned by a door wrought from massive slabs of wood. Black bolts like rivets strap it to huge iron hinges that plunge deep into the wall. It’s ominous as fuck; the kind of door you build when you want to tell the world that something terrifyingly dangerous lurks on the other side. I’m sure that whatever danger this place holds is on the other side.

The vampiress? Or something else?

Only one way to find out.

The door is slightly ajar, and warm firelight flickers from the other side. Inviting.

Dangerous.

I scan the floor, chewing my lip. “Good a place as any, I guess.”

“Rend, did we not just have a discussion about dark places and jumpy amulets?” Jade whispers, her voice pitched as low as mine.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “Gotta take care of business.” I pause, heart in my throat. Jade knows my next question, but she waits for me to ask. She knows when to sass me and when to let me work through my shit.

I’ve come a long way. Suffered a lot of disappointment. Been on a lot of ‘wild goose chases,’. And since the betrayal, I’ve come up empty handed.

I pray that this venture yields… something. I need it to.

Finally, I touch her lightly, run a finger along her surface. She shivers in pleasure. “What do you sense?”

“Definitely a soul, here.”

I tense, throat tight.

“Strong one,” she finishes. “I think… I think it’s a golem soul.”

Thank the gods.

“But Rend…” Jade hesitates like she already knows what I’m going to say. She probably does. She’s one of two people on Ecosa that really knows me. “...are you sure about this? I know that the last few months have been… disappointing. But this is a really powerful golem soul. And if a vampiress absorbed it, she’ll be…”

“Unstoppable. I know.”

“You think you can take her?”

My breath whispers through the tiny reed of my throat as memories assail me. As they always do at moments like this.

Plummeting into darkness. Screams. And then pain. My leg, destroyed. Useless. Gods…

Can I take this high vampiress? “I have to.”

“I know,” Jade says miserably. “Just… don’t die.”

“Don’t plan on it.” I smile with half my mouth, an ivory tear in the dark hallway. “Haven’t died yet, have I?”

She’s silent as I pull a stick of rough chalk from my pack. Its imbued with no less than five fairy souls; I grimace as I palm it. Unsavory stuff. Fairies are generally harmless, but are hunted ruthlessly for their souls by lesser golemancers. They’re sold on the black market for small fortunes because their little souls are packed with magical energy, and a golemancer of my skill can do so, so much with them.

I hate having to use them. Hate the strange melancholy that I can still feel emanating from the white stick in my hand.

I didn’t kill them. They were already dead. Better they’re used by me in the afterlife than someone else. Better than a shady golemancer lazily shoving the soul into a beauty cream or sex toy for the rich. I take care of my souls, use them with care.

I grimace as I justify. Know I’m doing it. Don’t care, even if I want to.

How far I’ve fallen.

“Rend?” Jade hisses. “Rend, ah, in case you didn’t realize, this is a bad time to go off on one of your self-hating, reflective, lost in your head journeys.”

I shake my head. “Sorry,” I repeat, going to my knees. The chalk scrapes softly against the rock, a thunderous sound in the still air. “And I was not.”

“Don’t bullshit me, master. I know you.”

“Master. You haven’t called me that for a long time.”

She tsks. “Don’t change the subject. And stop beating yourself up.”

“Just…” I pause as I complete a wide circle that spans the entire hall. “Sometimes I wonder...”

“Rend,” Jade says, voice dangerously loud as anger bleeds into her words, “he took everything from you. From us. Your life. Your prize. Your credibility. My sisters.” I almost draw back; if Jade had a body, she’d be spitting flames. “How much further can you fall? Can we? This is worth it.” She quiets. “Anything is.”

“Yeah, right. I know.” I add another circle inside the wider one and don’t respond further. The difficulty and irony of having a conversation about losing my soul for my revenge isn’t one I want to deal with right now. Not here.

The symbols come next. Runes taken from some ancient civilization, the only remnant of people who died during the great war. How? No one knows, but a sense of dread at the thought seeps into my mind. As it always does. Millions of people, an entire continent. Gone.

As I finish the last rune, the same that’s carved into my left palm, I shudder. Hard not to imagine that the same magic I use in my work is connected to the extinction of those who invented it.

“Done,” I say, knees cracking as I stand. Damn. I’m only twenty-nine, but my body’s been through a lifetime’s worth of abuse.

Jade laughs silently. “Ready, old timer?”

“Wow. Someone’s angling to be left behind.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Then be nice,” I say, palming the protective gems at my belt and steeling myself. Now, which crystals to activate? I palm my soul deposit, the biggest gem on my person. It’s a blue shard the size of my hand strapped to my side, and at the moment it’s my most prized possession aside from Jade. Inside are another five fairy souls, as well as two lesser monster souls. A werewolf and a wyvern, I think. The monster souls are almost priceless despite being close to useless to most golemancers. Difficult to harvest and not as powerful as fairy souls, they’re too weak to imbue into a shell to bring to life, and don’t even have a consciousness like Jade’s. But they’re enough to power a few protective gems, and the ferocity of the creatures they were harvested from yields them qualities that fairy souls can never possess.

Like the ability to infuse a gem to stop a ballista bolt with my chest.

“What do you think?” I whisper.

“Definitely at least one impact gem,” Jade says thoughtfully. “One to resist her compulsion. And then the usual cocktail of anti-poison and strength gems?”

“Sounds wise,” I say. I hold the soul deposit tight and close my eyes.

Immediately, my mind connects with the lost souls inside the gem. The tiny fairy souls and their sadness, something I try and fail to ignore. And the monster souls, inert and unthinking, automatons now that they’ve been separated from their bodies for so long. With my left hand, I tap a series of smaller gems fixed to my belt, and as I do the souls flow through my body, whispering into my mind and back out like wraiths. Each gem I touch receives a gift, lighting gently from within for a heartbeat before fading to a dull glow.

When I’m finished, I take a ragged breath. As I always do. I pull a skin from my back and take a long drink of water.

Soulsmithing is thirsty work.

I swallow the last of my water and throw the skin aside. I don’t need it anymore. In a few minutes I’ll be victorious. Or, more likely, dead.

“Ready?”

Jade frets. “You heard what Alvo said about the wight.”

“Yeah.”

“A powerful wight and a more powerful vampiress.” She warms with worry. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” I say, holding her tight. “But it’s too late to go back, now. We’ve got a high vampiress to kill and a soul to harvest.”

3

The door looms above me like a guardian sentinel, a golem of wood and iron glaring balefully at an intruder. I bite my lip and I draw close. The opening that the glowing firelight emanates from seemed so small in the distance, but in reality, its wide enough that I can walk through without turning my body.

I hesitate, raising one hand to the pitted wood. I don’t have Jade’s clairvoyance, but I can still feel something on the other side of the door. Something old. Powerful.

My quarry? I’m not close enough to sense the soul with any detail. It could be inside the vampiress. And it could be inside something far worse.

I sigh. Nothing left to do. To prepare. Time for the hard part. “Ready?” I whisper.

“No. But that’s never stopped us in the past.”

I smile. Jade always knows how to pull a grin from me, even in the worst times.

I open my mouth to sass her when a voice like liquid honey pours from behind the door, silencing me. “Oh, do come in. This is so tiresome.”

The vampiress’ words seep into my mind. My brain. Pull at my soul. How do I know it’s her? It’s hard to mistake compulsion this powerful. And only vampires have the ability. My mind gem resists, but it’s a boulder sitting in the middle of a river, and the compulsion overwhelms it.

Shit.

I take an involuntary step forward, fear stabbing my heart. I wonder if I’ve finally made a fatal mistake… If she’ll be too strong for me to harvest.

Only one way to find out. And at least I know, now, that I’m in the right place.

As I step around the door I reach up and snap Jade closed, sealing her inside her protective layers of magic, making her undetectable. She’ll give me hell for it later, but it’s the only way to keep her safe. My secret weapon. If I need her, I can open her back up with a word of power.

If I can speak, that is.

The room comes into focus slowly as my night vision fades. I look everywhere but at the vampiress, watching for traps and escape routes. Anything to pull my attention from her a moment longer. Her words still ping around in my mind like billiard balls, smashing into my brain and battering at the walls of my resistance. If I look right now, stare into her eyes, I’m afraid she’ll take me on the spot and I’ll forget my own name.

I’m surrounded by opulence, like someone teleported a room from the royal palace of Alvastone to here. A carpet, ridiculously thick, spans the entire circular chamber. Burnished reds and golds run its length in complex patterns and seem to twine up into the furniture, an assortment of lavish armchairs and divans that stretch along the walls. A fireplace the size of a woodland cottage roars at the far end of the room, its flames taller than I am. The walls are draped with long red curtains that frame priceless art; I see at least one DeGaux, the work of a master who only painted ten landscapes in his lifetime. I’m somehow sure that it’s not a replica.

My vampiress has expensive taste.

“Shy? That’s adorable,” she purrs. Her voice caresses me like living flesh, and my cock hardens in my breeches.

Not a good sign.

“Just admiring the general splendor,” I say, gesturing to her painting.

“Hm,” she pouts. “Generally, when a man comes down here, he admires my general splendor.”

I pointedly don’t turn to her. If she wants me dead, she’ll be too fast for me to stop. But the fact that we’re bullshitting tells me she needs me. As I thought she would. Killing me also kills her ability to feed on me. So I get cocky. “Maybe I’m not here for you. That painting’s worth more than the villages I passed to get here.”

She yawns. “Humorous. How refreshing. Most of the men I bring down here, or come of their own accord, are busy threatening me at this point. Or they’re pissing themselves.” I hear a delicate inhalation. “Good. If you’d done the latter, I’d be rather put out.”

“You could avoid the riff raff with a few old fashioned traps. Maybe a fire pit back there,” I say, hiking a thumb over my shoulder.

“Why would I do that? I prefer my toys in one piece, thank you very much. It’s difficult to take pleasure from a corpse.” The chuckles. “Unless that’s your thing. Though, I must warn you, if it’s your thing, I’d rather not know.”

“No, no,” I say, fighting back a laugh. She’s trying to take me off my guard. Charm me.

“Good. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, I should think, and if you were some sort of deviant, you might offend my delicate sensibilities.” She gives me a wicked laugh, then turns serious. “And don’t lie to me, please. I know why you’re here.”

“Oh? Enlighten me.”

“Still won’t look? Because a slight turn of your head and you wouldn’t have to ask me that question,” she says with an audible pout. “This won’t do. We’ve only just met and you’re already starting to irritate me.” I hear her shift, her movements languid. “We’re going to spend so, so much time together. Wouldn’t you hate it if we got off to a bad start? I know I would,” she whispers, her last words tinged with menace.

I firm, fighting her compulsion with everything I have. It’s like trying to stand firm as a tidal wave pours over you, and without meaning to, I finally look up and take her in.

And it makes things so much worse.

Reclining before me on a couch the color of blood is the most delicious creature I’ve ever laid eyes on, which is saying a lot considering the variety of people and monsters I’ve encountered in my short life. The bulge in my pants thickens.

The vampiress notices, and fathomless eyes like chips of ruby gleam in the firelight as her gaze drops low. She licks pillowy lips, and they’re so full I can’t help but imagine them running along mine, kissing my chest, wrapping my cock. Long, crimson hair cascades over the couch where her head rests, full locks of it caressing her shoulders and barely concealed breasts. Her body is absolute perfection, sin made real. Her only clothing is something more like a piece of lingerie a noble would wear, a lacey affair that stretches up from between her legs and barely covers her taut stomach. Twin straps cover her nipples and nothing else, and I want to tear them from tits that are full and flawless. She’s thick at the hips and chest, her neck is thin and elegant, and she has long, powerful legs that I want wrapped around me as I throw her against a wall and plunge my cock deep into her–

Stop. Rend. Get a hold of yourself.

She’s doing this. With her compulsion and her words. She may be perfect, but she’s still a killer. Still an enslaver of men. Still a monster.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been in more danger.

I resist her. Breathe deep as my runes burn and Jade trembles at my chest. She can’t sense what’s going on, but she’s connected to me and can feel my fear. My lust.

The vampiress must sense my resistance. Her eyes narrow as she taps one perfect fingernail to the dark wood of her couch. “A fighter, eh?” She sits straighter, which does terrifying and amazing things to her tits. “Good. I despise weakness in my mates.” She licks her lips slowly, a long motion that almost makes me cum there and then. “Men like you last so much longer.”

“That’s hard to believe,” I say, openly admiring her.

“What?”

“That any man would last more than a minute.”

“Yes, well,” she says, smiling deeply. “Perhaps you’ll be the exception.”

“Shall we find out?”

A predator’s grin splits her delicate features. She’s having fun.

Good. When she lets her guard down…

I’ll have to be fast. Fighting her compulsion is hard enough. But high vampiresses are some of the most dangerous vampires that exist. Faster than thought. Stronger than a wyvern. She stands, and I’m surprised to see that she’s as tall as I am, a man that stands a head above most that I meet. She smiles and shows her little teeth and sharp vampire fangs; a predator that’s sure of her superiority. I don’t blame her. She’s probably never encountered something strong enough to take her.

But she’s never met me.

“Let’s have a look at you, my new lover,” she says, gliding toward me. Her naked toes whisper through the thick fibers of a carpet she almost floats over. I stand completely still, watching as she struts around me. Her arms cross imperiously as she studies me, and her tits swell, coming dangerously close to bursting free. “Not bad, at first blush,” she says, her voice like liquid sex. “Bit hard to make out, though, under all that.” She gestures to my greatcoat. “Off with it.”

It slides from me before I’m realize I’ve taken it off. Her compulsion slips between my thoughts, whispers through my blood. I don’t fight her anymore. I’m not sure if I could.

My greatcoat hits the carpet, and the vampiress purrs in approval. “Good. Good. This is all so much better, so much more pleasurable,” she says with a little moan that lights me afire, “when we cooperate.”

“What’s your name?” I ask to distract myself from the miles of pale flesh that make up her flawless body. Anything to cut through the rampaging lust coursing through me. Anything to keep me from taking her and bending her over her couch and gripping her perfect, rounded ass before I push deep inside– “Name?” I ask again, desperate.

She cocks her head. “Taking an interest? Ready to admit that you’re here for more than an old painting? Excellent.” She takes a step forward and rests one fingernail at my throat. My fists clench. She can probably take my head off with that tiny red length. Can stab deep into my body and silence me forever.

Now? My thumb twitches toward the rune on my right middle finger. Am I fast enough?

Her glittering red eyes watch me intently as she trails her finger down my chest, severing the buttons of my shirt one by one.

No. Not yet. She’s too close. Too fast.

“My name is Salana,” she says, close enough that her breath brushes my lips. I open my mouth involuntarily, want her so badly that even her exhalation on my tongue is delicious torment. “And what is yours, my new pet?”

“Rend,” I say as her finger comes to rest on my belt buckle. My shirt hangs loose, exposing my chest.

“Rend,” she repeats, rolling my name around her mouth like fine wine. Oh, Gods. I can’t take this. “No surname?”

“Not anymore,” I say, then curse myself. My secrets are my own.

My answer intrigues her. She waits, fingernail tapping the protection crystal at my waist. Deep orange and the size of a small prune, it pings each time she strikes it. She continues waiting, lips curving in a slight frown. “Not going to elaborate?” Her hand whispers over my abs and up to my chest. Her nail hovers over Jade for the briefest moment as she examines the unassuming medallion, and my breath catches a moment. If she takes Jade, I’ll have to move. To fight.

But thankfully, she moves on, finger curled at my breastbone. “No matter. There’ll be time to learn your secrets later. When we’re done, I will know everything about you, Rend.” She hits my chest. It’s the tiniest flick of her finger, seems like it’s barely enough to dislodge a crumb from a countertop.

The protection gem explodes.

I stumble back a step, eyes wide, and she laughs. Deep and throaty, she chuckles at my alarm. “Oh, come now,” she says, following me. “You must know what I am. What I can do. Those worthless villagers must have clued you in.” She holds up her finger, a finger that’s just hit me hard enough to shatter a gem that I’ve poured enough power in to withstand a landslide. “You can’t be surprised.”

“I am,” I manage. Might be time to appeal to her vanity, distract her from any violence she’s imagining. “Everyone knows of you. The exquisite vampiress that lives at the fringes of civilization. As powerful as she is beautiful.” I lick my lips and pant as if out of breath. “I… I had to see for myself.”

She purses her lips. “Flattery will get you nowhere, love. If you came here to court me, or to fuck me, then why do you have protective charms? They are adorable, by the way. So quaint.”

“I live weeks from here. The land isn’t safe. Bandits, and… you know.” I swallow, can’t think straight. “More bandits.”

Her eyes twinkle with amusement. “Indeed.” Then they harden. “I know you’re lying to me. Know that the villagers finally found enough balls amongst their number to put another contract on me.” She casts a baleful look to the door. “Last time, I only took their elder. I could have done more. He was a symbol, hardly worth the time it took to harvest him. Old and frail. Unlike you,” she says, eyes flashing appreciatively to my chest. “But this time… I’ll have to teach them a harsher lesson.”

“Not… lying…” I try.

“Nonsense. But it doesn’t matter.” Her fingers snake back down my belly, then grip my belt fully. “As I said… before I’m finished with you, I will know you, Rend.” Her grips tightens. “Inside and out.”

“Yes, mistress.” She grins at my words. Good. Let her think I’m totally under her power.

Truth be told, I’m close. But I’ve been doing this a long time, and if she thinks my throbbing cock is a sign that I’m totally gone, she’s in for a big surprise.

She releases my belt with a gentle shove and steps back, taking me in. “Not bad at all,” she purrs. “Take off what remains of your shirt.”

I do, almost too quickly. I can hear Jade’s admonishment. Careful, Rend. Want her to think you’re completely gone, but don’t overdo it.

“Now the pants,” she says, blood red lips pursing like a beating heart.

Shit. Standing naked in front of a vampire queen sounds like a death wish, but she’s a yard away now. Too far for me to try anything. Not before she takes my head.

Swallowing deep, I try to look slack jawed as I unbuckle my belt, then my pants. My cock springs forward like an eager pup as the material slides down my legs and pools at my feet.

She bites her lip in appreciation. “Oh, my. It’s been a long time since I’ve had prey that was so… endowed,” she says, hanging on the last word like she’s already considering taking my length down her throat.

My cock throbs, bouncing in the warm, still air. Goddamn traitor.

She takes another slow walk around me, coming close as she runs her hand along my abs, my thighs, my ass. She strokes me like a prized animal, her fingers touching hard ridges of muscle earned on a hundred adventures. She lingers on my scars, especially the long one along my thigh, and almost seems like she’s about to ask about my rebuilt leg. But then she moves on. Through it all, I stand still as stone, letting her have her fun. My blood pumps in my veins like raging rapids, and my breath locks in my lungs.

Gods, I want her. More than I’ve ever wanted a woman. Her compulsion whispers in my ears, caresses my throat and my shaft.

Jade hums against my chest, barely contained.

Not yet, I think to her. She can’t hear me, but I pray she can sense the thought under my raging torrent of desire.

“Your tattoos,” she says, voice low. “What do they mean?”

She’s finally noticed. I’m not surprised. Most of them are on my fingers, but a tiny trail of runes runs along back from the bottom of my neck and along my spine. Most people don’t notice them.

I shrug. “Family thing.”

She stops in front of me, one delicate eyebrow nesting in the sweep of hair at her forehead. “Interesting family,” she drawls.

“Do you recognize them?” I ask, faking interest. “I got them in the far east on a trip with my Da. But I’ve no idea what they mean,” I lie.

She cocks her head, measuring my every word. “I’ve never seen their like.”

Is she lying, too? It’s impossible to tell. Her porcelain and crimson features are impassive, giving away nothing. She’s hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years old. She probably knows things that almost no one else alive does. She probably saw them. But my runes are obscure knowledge earned in fire and blood, and the only other person I’ve ever known that had them is dead.

Is she bluffing? I don’t think so. If she knows what my runes are, I’d probably already be dead.

“What happens now?” I ask, changing the subject. I have to distract her, somehow. I mimic her and bite my lip hard enough to draw blood.

Her eyes widen as the thin trickle snakes down my stubbled chin. She leans in, so fast I barely see her move, and licks it away.

Gotcha. Compulsion? Two can play at the game.

She doesn’t back away, panting at my throat like she’s having an orgasm.

Then she leans back, eyes narrowed. “Your blood is exceptional. What are you?”

“I’ve been told I have mage’s blood,” I hedge. This is dangerous, now. Give away too much and she might not think I’m worth the risk.

But she took Sinshade and his guards. A fourth circle mage and his cadre of elites. I doubt she’s that worried about me.

She stares at me a long moment, her crimson eyes measuring.

This is it. In a moment I’ll be in. Or dead.

Then she laughs, a light exhalation that’s more lust than mirth. “How tiresome. Let us move on to something more… diverting.” She turns on her heel and saunters over to a small bar set against one wall. Her scrap of clothing is a tiny strip between the thick cheeks of her ass, hiding absolutely nothing, and every little bounce of her pale flesh pulls me closer and closer to making a mess on her fine carpet.

She deftly pours two glasses of wine that looks like old blood. Her movements are slow and almost lazy, but I can see through her facade. Underneath her unhurried pouring there’s a spareness, a competency I’ve only seen in old warriors who realize that efficiency is far more deadly than flourish.

My breath quickens. If I can harvest the golem soul from her, it’ll be so powerful. And if it’s imprinted with her mind, like Jade? Damn. She’s so, so dangerous.

Exactly what I’m looking for.

She turns with another heart shaped purse of her lips. Her eyes drop to my cock and she beckons with one glass, the wine within sloshing dangerously close to the rim. “Come, my new pet. Let’s begin your…” She pauses with a light flick of her tongue across perfect lips. “…education.”

“I am eager to learn,” I say, already following the sway of her ass across the room to a low divan.

She gestures. “Sit.”

I do.

She hands me one of the glasses. “Drink.”

I do. Just a sip. I’m already losing myself to her compulsion, and alcohol will definitely not help matters. The warm liquid tastes like sweet berries and sin, and it tingles at my tongue and down my throat.

The effect is immediate. My head swims. Damn. I’ve got a good head for liquor, and I only took a small sip, but this is something else. “What… What is this?” I manage.

She takes a long sip of hers, purring with pleasure. “Good, no? One of my rarest bottles. Cintrid 8567, imbued with the soul of a woodland elf.”

I almost choke. Pouring a soul into food or drink? That’s impossible.

I don’t say this, though. Nothing would give me away faster. “It’s amazing,” I say, trying to hide my horror at ingesting a soul.

Salana doesn’t answer, smiling slyly. She’s not holding her glass anymore. I don’t remember seeing her put it away. She takes mine with delicate fingers, drains what remains of my wine, and puts that aside, too.

Then she reaches up, pulling first one and then the other strap of material from her shoulders. Through some back magic, she manages to hide her tits with her forearm while pulling her top her to waist with only one hand. It might be the most impressive thing I’ve seen her do so far.

She glances to my cock again before lifting her perfect tits. She pulls her arm away, dropping them. They bounce with the rhythm of my throbbing, dark nipples begging for my tongue as I stare, rapt.

Somewhere inside, my mind and Jade’s whisper a warning. I can barely hear it.

I can’t look away as she lowers to her knees. She leans forward, so close that her breath paints my cock. “Let us begin, love,” she whispers, and her breath caresses me like a hand.

Before I have time to respond, her mouth dives over my shaft, enveloping me in her heat.

I don’t know how the fuck I don’t cum there and then. Her compulsion washes over me in waves as she works my cock deeper and deeper, taking its full length. Her throat bulges in the dim light as her lips reach my balls, and then she holds there, so tight I can’t breathe. Can’t think. My mind dims.

“Gods,” I whisper, fingers kneading the soft velvet of the divan.

She chuckles against flesh like stone before slowly sliding her lips back up my length. My head comes free with a vulgar little pop before she looks up at me. “I told you that this would be good for both of us, pet,” she whispers.

“Mistress,” I say, equally quiet. “Please…”

Am I begging, or pretending to? I don’t know anymore. On some level, I don’t care. As she takes me deep again and start to suck in earnest, I almost stop caring about anything. My revenge. My lost souls. It feels so good, her mouth is so hot, so soft. Her compulsion batters down my defenses with each flick of her tongue, with each suck of her lips, and the closer I come to finishing the more of myself I lose.

Jade is cold as ice. A warning. All she can do in her present state.

I barely feel her.

Questions swim in and out of my consciousness like flashes of silverfish from the shore of a deep, blue lake. Why is she doing this? Why prostrate herself and service me like this? Why am I not on my knees, my tongue deep in her heat? Why…

My thoughts scatter at the image of her little pussy spread before me. I’ve never seen it, but somehow I know its every detail, every curve. Perfect and pink, spread like a flower as my mouth works her clit.

I arch back at the thought, pushing deeper down Salana’s throat. How do I know all that? How…?

The compulsion. It spikes into my brain, and with every pulse are images. Sensation. Lust.

Oh, Gods. She’s the most dangerous creature I’ve ever encountered.

And she’s sucking me off like a high-class courtesan.

Why?

Salana’s fingers knead my thighs so tight she’ll leave bruises, and suddenly I don’t care about the why. All that exists is her mouth, and I’m so, so close.

A final spear of compulsion pierces me, stronger than any before, and when I finally fall over the edge and cum down her throat I do it with my whole body. Pleasure wracks me in waves, and I grit my teeth so tight I’m afraid they’ll shatter. It’s so good that it’s painful, plumbing so deep into my body and soul that… that…

I lose something of myself. As she swallows the last drop my cum, I feel strangely bereft. Empty, like a dried out well. Like I’ve lost part of myself.

My soul.

“What… What did you…”? I whisper, collapsing back.

Salana gives the head of my shaft a last little kiss before leaning back, grinning impishly. “What did you expect, love? A girl’s gotta eat, after all.” Her eyes shine brighter than before. Her hair is more lustrous. Her skin shines like ivory.

“That’s… How you feed?”

“One way, yes,” she says, standing. She eyes my still hard cock, squeezes her legs together like she can barely contain herself. “Not my favorite way, but I’m going to play with you for a long time, Rend. I thought I’d start with a treat for you. And I get my reward either way.” She reaches down, pulling the material at her crotch to the side. Her pussy is wet and perfect, exactly like I’d imagined. Her smile is breathless. “And now, one for me.” She leans close, kissing me almost gently. “I think you’ve got a bit of soul left.” She chuckles at the look in my eyes. “Don’t worry. We’ll give you a break after this. You’ll need a few days. Wouldn’t want to use you up too quickly.” She lowers herself, and her pussy’s so close to my cock that I can feel her heat.

I close my eyes and she moans, her hands braced on my chest. She lowers further. Her delicate lips rest at my head. Her compulsion caresses my mind as she prepares to take me deep.

Yes. Gods, please. I want this. Want her. Want her to consume me. To keep me forever. Please.

Jade is a glacier. My mind swims, but something… something breaches the surface of my thoughts like an ancient monster exploding from the sea. Need. Need to survive. To escape.

Laskel’s face as I fall from the bridge.

Hatred.

Now!

Salana’s guard is down as she rests against me. My fist comes up like a hammer, my thumb touching the severance rune on my middle right finger.

To her credit, even taken unawares, even thinking that I’m completely under her spell, she still almost escapes. Her eyes widen faster than thought, writ with confusion, and her forearms bunch as she tries to pull away.

Too late. My fist impacts her chest.

She screams. In her eyes, surprise. Shock. That a creature so powerful, one that’s won countless battles, could have been taken so suddenly. So easily.

Blue light. Blinding. The golem spirit explodes from her back, torn from her body by my spell like a heart ripped from a chest. Her shriek cuts short as she dies, the light leaving her eyes as she slumps over me bonelessly. Nothing can survive the severance rune, not even her. The golem spirit she’d absorbed was as much a part of her as her blood or bone, and I push her off me, quelling any guilt with the knowledge that every skull in the hallway above was someone she consumed and cast aside.

I would have been next.

No time to worry about that, though.

It’s time to harvest.

4

The golem soul hangs in the middle of the room, a lattice of blue electric light that still vaguely holds Salana’s form. It’s not her, never was, but it’s been imprinted over countless years with her essence. It opens its mouth in a silent scream, a mirror to its former shell’s a moment before.

I pull a prison gem prepared especially for this moment from my belt. Have to act fast. Have to hope that the golems’ rage, a remnant of Salana’s, is enough to cause it to attack me. When it does, it will be mine. Souls like this one are always more vulnerable on attack then defense.

It hovers a moment, crackling with impotent rage.

I crouch, touch runes on both fingers in a cadence I know by heart.

The golem soul contracts, about to spring.

I hold the gem up, ready, and…

The golem soul flees, tearing from the room.

Balls.

No time for clothes or to grab any of my protective gems. I barrel after the soul, flipping Jade open as I bash my shoulder on the open door. I curse, stumbling into the stone wall of the hallway. Grinning skulls tear the flesh of my shoulder as Jade shouts. “Hurry, hurry!”

What in the hells do you think I’m doing?

At least it used the door. A soul like this one can travel through solid matter, could have flown straight through the ceiling. But imprinting’s a bitch, and because Salana couldn’t turn insubstantial, the soul probably thought it couldn’t, either.

Small blessings.

I wish I could say that running naked down the hallway of an ancient mausoleum while hundreds of skulls leer at me is the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, but in truth, it’s not even in the top ten.

Doesn’t make me feel less vulnerable, though. There’s not much that’s less dignified than your half hard cock flopping against your legs as you chase the rapidly dwindling form of a lost golem soul.

It’s fast. Much faster than me. No way I can catch it like this.

Not that I need to.

Salana’s stolen golem soul hits my rune trap like a runaway carriage slamming into a tree. It spasms in the air, expanding and contracting and smashing against the walls of my circle as I skid to a halt, my bare feet diggings furrows in the dust as I heave huge breaths.

“Gotcha,” Jade cackles. “Now, onto the fun–” She cuts off, sounds like she chokes on her words.

My blood is ice. “Jade? What’s wrong?”

“Wight. Coming fast.” She takes a ragged breath. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that she breathes. Or, at least, sounds like she does. Like she’s trying to be more human.

Why am I thinking about this right now?

Oh, right. To stave off blind panic.

I had a feeling this would happen. Alvo was only partially correct. Wight’s don’t bother with people, and don’t seem interested in much more than wandering the world like wraiths.

That is, until they smell a golem soul. That’s the point when they become ruthless killing machines that will stop at nothing to swallow said soul. The kind I’ve got floating in front of me right now.

And anyone that gets in their way?

I try not to think about it.

I rush the trap as the golem soul pings off the circular barrier my runes have created. Each time it impacts one of the walls, it’s a hammerblow of power against my meager trap. Gods damn, this one’s strong.

The thought is both thrilling and terrifying. If I can collar it, it’ll be a valuable fucking addition to my team, and another step toward my revenge.

If I can collar it.

As it slams into the barrier again, igniting lances of blue lightning that spiderweb across the translucent rune wall, I have serious doubts. And now I’ve got a fucking wight to worry about, too.

I don’t hesitate. Hesitation is death. I learned that on the bridge all those long nights ago.

Well, I didn’t die that night. But there have been times I wished I had.

My reconstructed thigh aches as I crouch before the rune trap and press the prison gem to the edge of the glowing circle. Instantly, warm orange light radiates outward in lances of light that crawl around the surface of the spirit trap. They spread like spilled wine on paper until they cover the entire surface of it, staining the cylinder of magic until the trap is fully visible.

But it doesn’t expand inward, trapping the soul.

Nope. That’s my job.

I take a deep breath in anticipation.

This is going to be rough.

“Where’s the wight?” I grit as I place both hands at the edge of the barrier.

“Half mile, maybe,” Jade frets. “Coming this way like a carriage falling off a cliff.”

“Nice metaphor. You should try your hand at poetry.” I push my senses into the trap, toward the soul. It’s still, now, not throwing itself at the barrier to escape.

Waiting.

“How do you know I haven’t?” Jade quips lightly, but I can hear the fear in her voice.

“Another thing I don’t know about you?”

“One of many,” she says, and there’s something lurking beneath the surface of her words I can’t decode. Something like desire. A remnant of what just happened in Salana’s chamber?

Whatever it is, it’s something I don’t have time to ponder because there’s no more time to waste.

“Going in,” I say. “Wish me luck.”

“I wish us luck,” she whispers fervently.

Gods, I hate this part. The soul seems to watch me with real malice as I push my hands slowly through the magical barrier. Energy crackles along my bare arms like electricity, and every hair on my body stands on end. My bones feel like dried twigs and my internal organs roil, seem to swap places in my chest.

And this isn’t even the worst part.

Lesser monster souls are used for many things; powering the gems I use for protection, the automaton guardians the Inquisition uses back home, or even trivial banalities like enriching beauty products for the stupidly wealthy.

But a pure golem soul is something else entirely. Pure, unfiltered, unmatched power. The power to create a living, breathing golem; a creature that can think and act and love. Tapping into a pure golem soul is like diving into a crystal mountain lake made of pure energy. Invigorating, empowering. Delicious.

Tapping a golem soul that’s been corrupted over hundreds of years by a vampiress whose main concerns are sex, pleasure, and finding young men to use for both until they’ve been sucked dry?

Less pleasant.

The second my mind touches the golem soul, it’s as if black oil’s been poured into my veins. I shiver uncontrollably as ice grips my heart. My limbs droop and I moan. Not with pain.  My mind tries to black out. To protect me from what I’m about to do.

I fight it. Techniques I learned two decades ago slam into place like gears in a clockwork machine to block out the corruption. To stop my body from rebelling. I close my eyes, concentrate, reach for my center.

There. Like a glowing ball of heat at my chest, it sits. Power I was born with, power passed from my mother. Power the monks of Shel taught me to harness so I wouldn’t burn out and die before I became a man. Power I use unconsciously a dozen times a day; to power gems, to fight.

I take it, shape it, push it along veins clogged with decay and filth from the golem soul. Gods, it’s hard. I’ve only felt a golem soul like this once. Jade. And she was far more willing to work with me, had only spent a little time in her host. And that had still almost killed me.

But that was different. I wasn’t the same man back then.

The emptiness in my soul, the part of me that Salana took, aches as I push my senses deeper into the trap. As I grip the golem soul with my mind. I’m not at my best, not by a long shot. Not after what she did to me. Gods, I should have acted sooner. Should have taken the chance. What happened was pure pleasure like nothing I’ve known, but if I’d been stronger, I would have fought back her compulsion.

No use crying over spilled ale, though.

“Not much time,” Jade says, voice thin with fear. “The wight is… I’ve never felt one like this… Just hurry.”

Trying, I think, because speaking requires more concentration than I can spare. But her fear tugs at me. Wights are common enough that just about everyone’s seen at least one in their life. Drifting over the rooftops of the city in the dead of night or whispering through the woods illuminated by the full moon. But wights as powerful as the one that’s on its way to tear me to pieces are incredibly rare. Why is one here? Why now?

Was it waiting for a moment like this? Staying near Salana so that, when she died, it could make its move?

It’s a troubling question. When a soul’s imbued into a golem or taken by a creature like Salana, it’s supposed to be invisible to a wight. How would it know to be here?

Shit. Concentrate, Rend.

Final step. I steel myself and grip the golem soul with my mind.

It’s like trying to stop a falling boulder with your face. The golem soul thrashes in my grip like a wild animal, ripping and tearing at my consciousness. I’m already weak, mentally compromised, and I almost lose control before I’ve even begun. It almost tears free, ripping through my defenses and my trap in one fell swoop.

I shore up my mind, and using every trick the monks taught me, I assert control. It’s a laughably simple process, normally. I imagine an iron cage that represents the prison gem. It’s squat and boring, but unbreakably thick bars are its only requirement. Its door sits wide, open and waiting for its new occupant.

The soul sits in my arms, thrashing and squealing as I push toward the cage. It lashes at my face, my chest, and each strike pushes into my body. Assaulting my soul.

I stagger, but push on. Another step. So close.

The soul is frantic, now. My strength, my mental walls, strain at the soul’s immense power. I try to lift my imaginary leg, take another step, but can’t. It’s too strong.

Fuck.

I can’t fail now. Not so close.

“Rend,” Jade shrieks, frantic. Her voice is so far away. In the real world. “It’s here! Rend!”

I’m not strong enough… Not…

And image intrudes. Stabs into my mind like a hot knife, as it always does when I’m about to die.

Laskel. It’s always Laskel. His face as I fall into darkness. Jade in my hand as I plummet from the bridge, leaving her sisters behind. They scream my name, but they’re lost to me.

Lost.

I will not fail them. I will get them back. And I’ll kill the motherfucker who stole them from me.

And this golem soul is how it starts.

Familiar rage boils through my veins. My grip on the soul firms. My arms in my mind are bands of iron, gripping the terrified golem soul. It knows that something’s changed. Knows that I’m going to win.

“Rend! Now!” Jade cries.

I push.

The golem soul crashes into the cage. The door slams shut.

It’s mine.

I collapse to the mausoleum stones, my head hitting the ground hard enough to dizzy me. I can’t stop myself. Don’t have enough strength left to lift my head.

But I can open my eyes.

I wish I hadn’t.

The wight crouches over me, a beast out of a nightmare. Its massive, shimmering grey and white body fills the large hallway. And it’s crouching. It’s an amalgam of a hundred things; a slavering dog’s head with teeth like blades erupts from a skeletal body of missing flesh and patchwork bones. Two mismatched arms dangle to the floor, apelike. One ends in a blade where it’s hand should be, and the other is a fist bigger than my torso. Legs like tree trunks crouch, ready to stomp the life from me.

Jade quivers at my chest. I lay, naked and helpless, still not even able to lift my head. My throat closes, pinched so tight I can’t breathe as I try to find the strength to… To…

Who am I kidding? If the wight wants me dead, I’m dead.

But for some reason, it doesn’t attack. Its enormous head cocks slowly, and though its eyes are nothing but inky hollows, I can detect something like curiosity in its gaze. It’s completely silent, which fucks with me more than just about any other part of this. Something this huge should make sounds. Bones cracking as it bends toward me. Hissing, fetid breathing. It’s as if it doesn’t actually exist.

Until it inhales.

Its canine nose almost touches my chest as it pulls in air like a bellows, so much that I feel the rush wind caressing my chest.

It’s searching.

It doesn’t understand where its quarry disappeared to.

Inside the gem, or inside Salana. It’s still hidden from the wight.

I hope.

Please… please… The word repeats in my head over and over. Strength slowly seeps back into my exhausted limbs, but I don’t move. Not a hair.

The wight sniffs along the length of my body, then the ground around me. It twitches when its nose touches the rune circle, but then it moves on dismissively, pawing the ground with its non-blade arm and smudging my chalk.

Interesting. Wights are supposedly insubstantial, though everyone knows that they can kill if they want to. I can barely see the wall of skulls through this one’s shimmering paleness, yet it broke my circle with a very substantial hand.

As the wight sits back on its haunches, head still ticking from side to side in consternation, I catalogue the information. Even through the fear, my mind works. Knowledge is survival. Knowledge is advantage. Knowledge is power.

And I need a lot more power.

The wight rises, still paying me almost no attention. I dare a long breath, pulling stale air into starving lungs as it turns like its… leaving?

Then something catches its attention.

The prison gem, pulsing gently at the center of the rune circle.

It bends like a building collapsing in slow motion until its nose is a finger’s width from the gem.

Fuck.

I pray to every god I can name that my wards are strong enough to shield the golem soul. That my skill is enough to hide it from a beast created to hunt souls. A creature that could smell this golem soul from miles away the moment I separated it from Salana.

The gem still fades from bright to dull. The golem soul, testing the bonds of its new prison. It won’t truly be bound to me until I put it in a new body and then join with its spirit. Until then, it’s an unwilling passenger.

Can the wight sense it? Like an echo?

I can feel Jade reach toward the soul. She sends clairvoyant waves of calm to it. Be at peace. You are safe, now. Rest. No need to fight anymore. We will take care of you. I add my own reassurance, piggybacking along with her aura as she blankets the gem with calm.

The wight straightens slightly. Its blade arm comes around, and its ghostly point hovers above the gem.

No. No, no. If it shatters it…

Peace… peace… peace… Jade repeats it over and over.

The blade lowers.

I get ready to run. Where? Salana’s chamber? If it gets the gem, maybe it won’t care about me…

I know it’s bullshit. I’m linked to the gem, now. And if it escapes its prison, the wight will feel that tether.

Peace…

The blade’s a hair from the gem.

Orange fades to nothingness.

I can feel Jade slump with relief as the soul finally calms.

The wight sits for ten seconds that feel like a lifetime, as frozen as I am. As it considers. Weighs. I pray that it’s too stupid to reason what’s just happened.

Finally, its head raises, and the black pits of its eyes stare into mine.

I shiver.

And then it stands, turns, and disappears through the wall.

Jade and I sit a moment longer, too stunned to move.

“Holy… Fuck…” she finally breathes.

I slowly reach forward and take the stone. Hold it tight, feel its hard ridges dig into my palm as I slump back and rest my head against cold floor. “Gods. That was…”

“Too close,” she finishes. “I need a hot bath after that one.”

“Would you even enjoy it?” I ask absently, still waiting for my blood pressure to drop to the point where it doesn’t feel like my heart’s about to explode out of my chest.

“Maybe come in with me and find out.”

“Ooh, someone’s feel sassy.”

“Yeah. I read something about near death situations and arousal, once.”

“Reading again?” I laugh. “Wait, you can get… you know…”

“Horny?” She makes a little pff noise. “Rend, how long have we been bound?”

“Five years, give or take.”

“Five years, sixty-two days, thirteen hours, and a handful of minutes. And you don’t know by now that if I had a body, I’d climb you like a gods damned tree?”

I cough to hide my surprise. “Jade!”

“Hah!” She crows. “Told you that you didn’t know everything about me.”

I laugh silently, still laying. It’s uncomfortable, the bare stone digging into my back, my ass. I don’t care.

I’m still alive.

“Speaking of which,” she says as I finally sit, “thank you for not telling me your plan ahead of time.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she says. “If you’d told me that letting a vampire queen have her way with you was your grand plan, I would have disassociated right then.”

I laugh. It feels good. “Jealous?”

“Maybe,” she snarks. An invisible hand slaps my bare ass. I yelp, earning a giggle. “Not your smartest plan.”

“Wasn’t part of the original version,” I say. “It was something about playing to her vanity, challenging her to a game of wits. Appeal to the fact that she was probably bored as fuck down here, all alone.” I shiver as I remember her compulsion washing through me. Her full lips wrapped around my cock. And then I go cold as I remember what she took from me. What must have died with her. “That didn’t last long.”

I poke my mind at the missing part of my soul, then shy away.

One more bit of the price I pay for my revenge.

“Worth it,” I mutter as I start back to Salana’s chamber for my clothes.

“Oh, hells yes,” Jade says, giddy. “I’d tell you to fuck a thousand vampire women if that’s what it took to finish this. Men, too,” she says with an invisible grin I can feel.

“Men aren’t really my thing,” I say, smiling. She misunderstood what I meant by worth it, and I don’t correct her. I don’t want to spoil the mood.

“Back home?” Jade asks. “Time to make a golem?”

“Time to try to make a golem,” I correct. “We’re not out of the woods, yet. But yeah. Back home.”

It’s time for the next step.

5

“Rend, wake up,” Jade whispers, her voice like a lover’s whisper in my ear.

My eyes snap open, and I shake off exhaustion that still plagues me since my encounter with Salana. “Wasn’t sleeping.” I rub my chest, massaging my heart. It doesn’t help ease the sense that something’s still missing.

It’s been a week. Will my soul repair itself? Or will I just have to get used to this?

She snorts. “Oh, so fifteen leagues worth of orchestra level snoring were for my benefit? Oh, Rend. You shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, yawning before I can snipe back. “Where are we?”

“Just outside the city,” she says.

“In that case, thanks for waking me.”

She cackles. “Knew it!”

“That’s it. No oil for you when we get home.”

“Now you’re definitely bluffing,” she says. “You are bluffing, right?”

“Maybe.” I peer out the window of the still bumping carriage, gauging how close we actually are. Maybe five minutes from the gates. Perfect.

I bump the roof of the carriage, signalling the driver. I hear a shouted word from above and horses whicker as the carriage slows.

“Have I ever told you how handy you are? You don’t sleep, can move things with your mind…”

“...Go on…” Jade drawls.

“And you’re better than a cock’s crow in the morning,” I finish, grinning as I stretch my back. Slumped in a rickety carriage is definitely a shit way to sleep.

Jade’s silent a moment as the carriage finally stops. “So, you’re saying I’m a glorified alarm clock?”

I blink. “Alarm clock? What in the hells in that?”

“New clockwork invention I read about before we left,” she snaps. “And don’t change the subject.”

“You’re doing an awful lot of that.”

“What?”

“Reading, apparently. I’m not sure I like the effect it’s having on you. And I still haven’t got the how of it, but it makes me wonder what else you get up to while I’m asleep.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“So smug.”

“Your fault. Tell a girl she’s great enough times and she starts to believe it.”

I laugh, not answering as I open the carriage door and step into the dirt. I snag my small pack as the driver, Trav, leans over the railing. “Something wrong, boss?”

“Nah. Just feel like walking,” I say, gauging his reaction.

A brow like a side of beef comes down over deceptively intelligent eyes. The man’s built like a brick outhouse, but the scant conversation I’ve had with him over the last few days have revealed a deceptive quickness of mind.

And a thief’s willingness to work outside the law. Which is why I hired him.

But is he a selling you out to an information broker the moment your back’s turned kind of thief? Or is he a honor among thieves sort?

I’ve found that greasing the wheels swiftly turns a worry like this into a moot point. I toss him a small purse, at least three times the amount we’d agreed on.

Trav catches the bag, and the weight immediately registers. He gives me another shrewd look before shrugging. “Good travels, boss. You need another ride anytime soon, hit me up. I’ll be at the Baker’s for the next three nights, and after that I’m for hire.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I smile.

He flicks his reins without another word, moving off toward the city.

Gotta love a man of few words and fewer questions.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Gods, yes,” Jade breathes. “It’s been a long trip. I need a drink. Or a bath. Or both.”

“Definitely getting you drunk when…” I trail off, banter dying.

“...Someday,” she says, wistful.

“Someday,” I agree, running a finger along her smooth surface.

I finally turn to take in the city.

Ahh, Blackstone. You gorgeous son of a bitch.

The city sits like a glittering gem, sliced in half by the cerulean length of the Caspish River. It’s buildings curve around the Bay of Salt like a lover, and a hundred wharves extend like fingers into the vermillion water. Red rooftops, a requirement of most buildings built in Blackstone, extend like an ocean of rubies across the landscape. Some old ruler decided to build a wall something like a thousand years ago, but it’s more of an afterthought at this point, swallowed by warehouses and tenements on both sides. Blackstone’s a city of industry and fabulous wealth and its expansion has continued unabated for as long as anyone can remember.

But none of that’s the first thing that I, or anyone else, notices.

No, it’s kind of impossible not to lock your eyes on the Highpeak the moment the city comes into view.

It’s not really a peak, or a mountain of any kind. It’s not a hill, either. In fact, no one knows what it is, just that it’s existed longer than the city. Highpeak is a pillar a quarter mile high and half that diameter that sticks straight up from the center of the river. It thrusts from the middle of the Caspish like a God pushed his mighty finger upward from underground. It’s made of an unknown black stone that exists nowhere else on Ecosa and is unharvestable. I’ve examined it myself, wondered if I could imbue a soul into its material, but was thwarted when I tried to chip off a piece. As everyone in history before me was. The moment the piece of shimmering black stone hit my hand, it dissolved into sand finer than dust.

But its miraculous qualities haven’t kept the elite of Blackstone from using Highpeak for defense and entertainment. The sides of the pillar are festooned with hanging restaurants and shops that the lesser souls of the city are too poor to even look at. Tiny walkways and spindly elevators lattice the black stone like spiderweb. As far as I know, none have ever been pulled free of Highpeak, and some of the more ostentatious buildings are enormous but still hold fast. It seems that as long as you don’t remove the dark rock, it’s solid enough to trust your life to.

The latest addition to Highpeak, though, is its most impressive. A tower of dark metal and stone that juts from the apex of the finger, the Spire is an airship dock that defies imagination. Commissioned by Duke Rolfo, its used mostly by the military, though airships owned by the city’s wealthiest citizens hover gently, nestled amongst the larger and darker warships like sheep in a herd of wolves.

I had tried to buy a spot in one of the civilian owned airships for my trip to capture the golem soul, but decided that I’d like to keep the arm and leg they’d asked for. Travelling via carriage and on horseback may take a bit longer, but at least I wouldn’t be indentured for the rest of my life.

I stand, hands on hips, watching the city a moment. The scurrying people amongst the red roofed buildings, the fishing ships in the bay, the airships debarking and sailing through the sky toward the capital far to the north.

Blackstone. I love and hate you.

“Always takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful,” I say.

“No, I mean, your breathing literally stops when you stare at the city,” Jade snarks. “I can feel it.”

My brow furrows. “I knew you were in me deep, but I didn’t realize you were that deep.”

She laughs. “I’m not. I’m sitting on your chest, Rend. Not hard to tell when your breathing stops.” She heats up, wriggles against my chest. “Or speeds up.”

“Stop it, you,” I grin. “We’re on the public thoroughfare.”

“Fine, fine,” she laughs. “Just get us home. You smell terrible.”

I don’t bother commenting that she has no sense of smell. It’d just offend her, and I’m a bit preoccupied, anyway. I start toward the city, pondering Jade’s newfound… sexuality. She’d never shown signs of it before aside from light flirting, and though we care for each other deeply, it’s never extended beyond that. I’m not sure if this new development is the result of us growing closer and surviving death so many times, or if something about Salana’s compulsion affected her, too.

No. This feels older. Like something she’s been mulling a long time. Maybe the only thing Salana’s compulsion did to her was release her inhibitions.

I think I like it. Though, it’s dangerous. The dream of finding a body for her, of moving her from her medallion into that body… it’s insidious. Keeps me up at night. And not just because of the temptation.

There’s also danger. When a soul gem shatters, the soul inside loses so much of themself. Memory, mostly, but identity, too.

I can’t lose Jade. Putting her into a body would be amazing, but if she’s not herself when she gets there?

I don’t want to think about it.

I enter the city without incident, wading through the crowds like a fish through the sea. I was born here, grew up on the city’s streets, and know them like I know myself.

The main gate opens onto a huge, carefully tended square of golden brickwork fountains. Clusters of carefully tended trees provide shade against the humid bay heat. Mobile shops and stalls dot the square like a pox, their owners shouting in at least dozen languages at passersby. The main road extends from the gates and cuts through the square, and it’s filthy with people. They are multicultural, hailing from every continent on Ecosa, come to make their fortunes or die trying. Even in the south district, which is one of the city’s poorest, the people are almost uniformly well dressed and clean. Well, as long as you stay on the main streets.

Squinting, I can make out elvish refugees and orphans huddled between distant buildings. Brought in as easy labor, automation both soul driven and clockwork have left them homeless. Jobless.

Forgotten.

I sigh, putting them out of my mind. I’ve got my own problems.

Smells of salted fish and vinegar wrinkle my nose as I make my way under drooping trees whose dangling branches feather my hair. I want to get home as soon as possible, but it’s always best to get the feel of the city when I’ve been away awhile. Rumors have swirled for months about the Duke’s new airships, about the city’s growing military and financial prowess. It’s been said that King Tarn at the capital’s grown afraid, threatened by the Duke and Blackstone’s riches.

I haven’t seen much effect on day to day life in the city, but you never know.

“Where is he?” I say, resting my shoulder against a tree in a secluded spot.

“Probably wrapped around some unwilling elven girl whose too poor to say no,” Jade says quietly, voice cold. She’s always quiet in the city. Neither of us are eager to see me executed without a trial. “Must we seek him out?”

“Hey. Dap’s not as bad as you think. Yeah, he’s a cad, but he’s also connected.” I chew my lip. “If dealing with him’s the price we pay to not–”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Jade interrupts. “It’s worth it. Just… hurry. He gives me the creeps.”

“Be done with this a lot faster if you’d use your dark elf witchcraft to help me track him down,” I say, scanning the square. Damn. Definitely more stalls than I remember from even a few weeks ago.

Jade gives a long-suffering groan before heating slightly. I cup my hand over her as if palming her for luck. In reality, I’m hiding her glow from anyone who might wondering why the tall man in the giant coat is talking to himself. I’ve been in city for less than ten minutes. Be nice not to have the guards called on me.

Or worse. Inspector General Temple.

After a moment, Jade cools. “He’s over there, near the Cock and Crow.”

“Thanks, you’re a gem,” I say cheekily.

That earns an invisible poke to the ribs. “Rend.”

I grin before reaching to close her. “See you soon.”

She sighs theatrically as I shut her. To the casual observer she looks like jewellery, but I can’t risk having her open when I talk to Dap. Or anyone else.

I make my way through the crowds and stalls until I spot him. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Dap was a golem himself. He’s at least two heads taller than me, but is bent like a question mark, so low that I tower over him. Shrewd, dark eyes peer from between lank black hair as I amble up. A half smile plays over his perpetually chapped lips and he smooths his ratty clothes from behind his rickety wooden stall.

“Dap,” I say when I’m close enough. “How’s tricks?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, eyes darting to the crowd behind me, “same shit…”

“...Different outhouse,” I finish. “You know, I’m not sure if that’s how the phrase goes…”

He blinks slowly, and it’s hard to miss that each eye opens and closes at different rates. In fact, he looks a little like Alvo. Is he stoned? Drunk? I don’t smell alcohol, but it’s impossible to tell with Dap. “What do you need, Rend? You’re driving away paying customers, looking like that.” His gaze darts to a young thing that sashays past us with her nose in the air. Her dress is tight and almost diaphanous, a common garment from the island nation of Sool.

I roll my eyes and don’t bother pointing out that if a girl like her and a guy like him ended up in back alley at the same time, there’d be a lot of screaming and running and calling for the guards. “Just the usual. Information.”

Dap runs his fingers along the odd collection of knickknacks resting in front of him. I’ve never seen him sell an item, yet the stock seems to rotate daily. Small blades, kitchen utensils, even sex toys… I’m pretty sure he raids the filth bins of the city to find his wares. “You know how this works, Rend…”

I sigh and hand over a few crowns. “I don’t want any of your… items, Dap. Just the information.”

He shrugs. “City’s tense. Kingsguard everywhere,” he says, nodding to a line of soldiers marching past. Their silver and gold armor shines in the sun, polished and blinding, marred only by dark red tabards with golden wyverns. “Been a couple of off hours scuffles with the Duke’s men.” Dap’s chin points across the square.

Different soldiers in black and grey watch the Kingsguard balefully. Their hands rest on the pommels of their short swords in silent threat. The Kingsguard, haughty and disdainful, ignore them as far as I can tell, but the tension Dap mentioned crackles in the air.

Huh. Yeah, that’s not good for anyone. I push aside thoughts of civil war and the city shutting down from my mind. Nothing I can do to control that, and I’ve got bigger worries.

Like the golem soul that I need to get to my laboratory as soon as possible.

“Anything else?” I ask, returning my attention to the merchant.

He rattles off a quick list of major happenings from the last few weeks, and I only half listen as I scan the crowds; one of the most popular whorehouses in the city burned down, the Duke made a rare public appearance at the christening of his military’s newest airship, and the second most powerful gang leader in the city had been caught by Inspector General Temple’s men. He’d been executed shortly after for–

“Wait, what?” I say, snapping to attention. “What was that last one?”

“Rooker,” Dap says, annoyed at having to repeat himself. “Temple caught him. They were going to try him for the usual litany of crimes… You know, murder, rape, blah blah blah. But then they found golemancy shit in his basement.”

My blood is ice. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Temple scratches a wart big enough to name that perches on his chin. “Hidden room. Not sure how they found it, just that they marched him to the doors of the Duke’s estate. Duke comes out in his finery and raises up that terrifying sword of his and lops the Rooker’s head off right the then there.” He slices his hand down for effect.

I have to stop my hand from darting to my neck. “Damn. How’d they know to look for the hidden room?” I ask, trying to sound casual. Conversational. Dap doesn’t know what I am. Only a few do. Golemancy isn’t illegal. But using it like I do? Like Rooker must have if he was executed without a trial?

My neck aches at the thought.

Dap shrugs shoulders like executioner’s axes. “They don’t tell me everything.”

Figures. “Well, thanks, Dap,” I drawl, fighting a shudder. “Same time next week?”

“Sure,” he says, already dismissing me as another island girl walks past. She’s on the arm of a guy big enough to be a golem, and I glare at Dap meaningfully. If he wants to get killed because he can’t keep his dick in his pants, that’s his business, but he’s the best information broker I know and it’d be pretty inconvenient if he got hammered into the brickwork by a human behemoth.

Whatever. I need to go. I turn to leave when Dap’s hand on my wrist stops me. I have to fight back the urge to yank my arm from his clammy touch.

“One more thing,” he says, furtive. “Temple’s looking for you.”

My mouth opens and closes a few times. “Temple…”

“Asking around about you. Asked me.” His head tics, nervous at whatever he’s seeing in my face. “I didn’t mention you, of course. Wouldn’t want to get my best customer in trouble,” he hisses.

“And you didn’t think to mention this to me first?”

He frowns, confused. Sweat beads at his brow and he trembles slightly. “You didn’t ask.”

I close my eyes for a long moment, recite a calming mantra the monks taught me. Then another. “Dap. If Temple’s looking for me, don’t wait for me to ask.”

This is what I get for working with human hardons with drug habits.

I move off, ignoring his strangled apology.

Need to get back. Right now.

“Thoughts?” I whisper, opening Jade.

“Nothing good,” she says, equally quiet. “Probably just a check-up. Like he does.”

“Yeah.” I can’t keep my thoughts from probing Dap’s words. Rooker, cut down for golemancy. “Timing seems… suspect.”

She sighs. “True. But he doesn’t hate you. At least, not like he hates most people. And we have to get home.”

My turn to sigh. “Yeah. Might as well get this over with.”

6

I’m unsurprised and resigned to find Temple outside my home.

Well, if you can call it a home.

I live in, and under, a brothel. Agatha’s Folly sits nestled at the edge of the canning district, imaginatively called “The Cans” by locals. It suits me just fine. The smell of the canneries washes over me like a familiar blanket, simultaneously comforting and gag inducing. Most of Agatha’s customers are dock workers, blue collar types that don’t ask questions and don’t give a shit about the strange man in the greatcoat that appears and disappears at random times for weeks on end. Agatha runs the brothel like a military operation; girls and bodyguards and food and drink come and go with admirable efficiency, and the place is always warm and inviting.

And packed with enough delicious herbs and perfumes to cover the smell of fish the moment you walk through the door. Thank Eros.

A door that’s currently blocked by Inspector Temple. He stands a head shorter than me, a plain man in plain clothes. Unassuming, which is absolute deception. He swings his black cane, an accoutrement he never leaves home without, as he speaks to someone inside the brothel. Efficient and intelligent, he’s like every beat cop’s soul in history was harvested and cast into a golem. The kind of man that puts you at ease before hanging you, who befriends you before sending you down the river to the prison island of Sayle. The type who seems so blended in with the world that it’s almost easy to forget that he’s one of the most dangerous men in the city.

Not hard to remember today, though. I snap Jade shut without a word as I size up the twin golems Temple has with him. Roughly ten feet tall, they’re mammoth, unthinking soldiers that live to follow his command. Gray stone is marked only by tiny eyes and mouths, unnecessary yet intimidating details all the same.

I bite my lip as I fight back familiar anger; it may be highly illegal for me to practice golemancy like I do, but apparently it’s fine for the government. I knew that, already, but it still pisses me off. Temple and his Inquisition use monster souls as soldiers, as laborers, even as whores so simple they don’t understand the word ‘no’. I even suspect they have a few golem souls stashed away, though I can’t prove it.

Why else would they have executed Rooker? Did he have a golem soul? Or was he trying to create something else?

Someone else stands at attention at Temple’s side, almost forgotten under the shadows thrown by the golems.

Sasha.

Fuck.

Temple’s chief enforcer. Terrifying, gorgeous, and one of the only people more dangerous than he is. She watches me, the only person on Agatha’s porch quick enough to notice me lurking in the shadows.

Well, so much for sneaking around the back. Ruby lips purse as she flips her long blond braid behind her shoulder. Her black armor’s cut close, some style from the far west exotic and rare enough that she’s the only person I’ve ever seen who wears it. It’s almost skin tight, barely hiding a slim, dancer’s body. A body that belies terrifying strength and the strange martial arts she practices. I’ve never seen it in action, but people tell stories.

She motions me forward with one slim finger. Come on, Rend. Don’t be shy.

Once more into the breach…

“Inspector General Temple!” I call, striding across the street like I’d always intended to. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Temple spins, words spoken to someone in the doorway I can’t see dying on his lips. Probably arguing with Agatha. She’s a battle-ax and is probably one of the only people in the city that wouldn’t take Temple’s shit, even with Sasha and two golems at his side.

Temple smiles broadly, thumbs hooked in his belt as he ambles down Agatha’s old wooden stairs. “Master Rend!” he calls amiably. “Just the man I’ve been looking for.”

“Oh?” I say, guarded. “For me? Surely you’ve got more important business.”

“Nonsense,” he says, patting my arm as he draws close. “I always keep up with my… projects. Hate to see talent wasted, you know.”

I shiver inside, but leave the smile plastered to my face. Sasha stands, taller than Temple, almost as tall as me, watching my face like a hawk about to dive on prey.

“I’ve told you. A thousand times,” I say, miming boredom. “I don’t do that, anymore. Not since…”

“I know. The unfortunate accident,” Temple finishes, words he’s spoken a dozen times before. Words for our audience more than for me, as he knows about the betrayal. “Such a shame, your former partner. Such skill, wasted.” His small brown eyes watch me closely. “I can’t help feeling partially responsible.”

Partially. I want to laugh. Temple’s the one who started us on this path, one that ended with Laskel taking everything from me as I lay at the bottom of a gorge.

Everything but Jade, that is. My hand twitches to hold her a moment, take comfort from her, but I stay still.

“We will find him, someday. Make him pay for what he did to you.”

“I’m sure,” I say, not letting my guard down for a moment. “What happened was personal to both of us.”

“You’re not wrong.” Temple dismisses the subject with a quick wave of his cane, though I don’t miss the slight stain of anger in his cheeks. “So, tell me, Rend. How are things? Do you need anything?”

“Temple,” I say. Sasha bristles at my informality. “You didn’t come down here to the Cans to chitchat, and I’m tired. Dirty.” I raise an arm and sniff at my pit for effect. “I need a bath.”

Sasha’s eyes turn deadlier. I grin at her. “You can join me, love.”

She takes a step forward, hands like blades. Temple stops her with a beefy forearm. “He’s just baiting you.” He purses his lips. “Bad habit of his, as I remember.”

“Yeah, just can’t keep my mouth shut,” I say. If Jade was open, she’d be shaking with laughter. “Back to business? I have this blister on my foot, and if I don’t get this fucking boot off in a hurry, I’ll–”

“Yes, yes,” Temple says, adjusting his cuffs. His plain black clothes fit him like a glove. “I think we both know why I’m here.”

My blood thunders through too small veins, but I don’t show my fear.

Never show weakness.

“If you’re referring to my trip–”

“I’m not.”

“Then…”

Temple sighs. “Don’t waste my time.” His black cane digs into the unpaved street. No fancy paving stones for the Cans. “I’ve recently found myself in need of someone with your set of… skills. Now, I know that you’re not–”

“Not interested,” I interrupt, at once relieved that he’s not curious about my jaunt and resigned to the argument that’s about to ensue.

Sasha looks like she’s ready to chew metal and spit out nails at my rudeness. Even Temple’s golems bend forward, menacing, tuned to his mind.

Temple just looks sad. “How long, Rend? How long will sit in this shitpile and wallow? Come with me back into the fold. Let us fix it like it should have been years ago. Find you legal employment.”

“No thanks,” I say, thigh aching at his words. “Who says what I do now isn’t legal? And anyway, I know what kind of work you’d have me do. I’m not interested in putting souls in golem whores for the Duke, or whatever other shit he’d force me into.”

Temple’s face turns grave for the first time. “I would be careful of what you say regarding our dear leader,” he drawls quietly, and I can’t help but notice his sarcasm. “Not everyone keeps secrets like me.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Not at all.” He nods. “You may not believe this, Rend, but I care for you. As I said, I feel responsible for your current… predicament.”

“You can save it,” I say, tired already. So tired. “I don’t need your pity, or your work.”

“Let me have a private conversation with him,” Sasha says, speaking for the first time. Her voice is a viper’s hiss. “I can be very convincing.”

“Not today,” Temple says, patting her outstretched hand like it’s not a terrifying weapon that can kill him in several thousand ways. “Rend’s earned his rest, earned his amusements,” he says with a disdainful glance to Agatha’s. “And there’s always next time.”

I groan. “Must there be?”

Temple smiles warmly. “Absolutely. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t know you were out here, fucking whores and tinkering with shitty gems. No, no, that wouldn’t do at all.”

Despite his snark, there’s something almost sincere to his tone. His words. I take a long breath. “Thank you, Inspector General.” Sasha deflates as I use his title for the first time. “But for now, all I care about is a bath and a drink.”

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot.” Temple snaps his fingers, and one of the golems reaches into its own body with a giant first. When it retracts, it holds a bottle of liquid the color of honey. I suck in a breath as Temple takes it from the golem’s surprisingly gentle grip. “For you, a gift. The Duke… found… a crate of them making its way through the northern blockade. Their owner… well, let’s not speak of him. They belong to the Duke, and now, this bottle belongs to you.”

I take it slowly, searching Temple’s eyes for… something. Deceit? Is he trying to buy me?

“Absloth 5679,” Temple intones, as if the liquor could be anything else. “Your favorite, if I remember.”

He doesn’t mention that it’s worth as much as the brothel that he stands in front of. Or that fact that I’ve only ever had one tiny glass of it, the last time he gifted me some. The night that shit went bad. “Thank you,” I say simply. I’m not a man of many words normally, and at the moment, I’m too floored to think.

“No thanks needed. Think of it as a long due apology. Sasha?” He turns to his bodyguard. “Onto the unfortunate business at the docks.” He raises a brow at my quizzical gaze. “Right. You’ve been out of town and haven’t heard. Riots, if you can believe it.”

“What, here?” I ask, blinking. Blackstone may not be perfect, but its people are surprisingly happy.

“Elves and fae,” Temple says sadly. “The Duke’s done everything he can for them, but they’re still pissed.” He sighs. “Understandable, to be honest. But still my problem. Let us be off.”

He turns to go, and I do likewise, mind churning. Riots and Temple and Rooker and the Kingsguard… The city’s closer to boiling than I’ve ever seen it.

“Oh, one more thing,” Temple calls, hand raised.

Shit. I turn slowly. “Yes?”

“Your little jaunt… What was that about? My agents lost track of you somewhere in the Eastern Marches… You went a long way, this time.”

Ah, there it is. Temple’s favorite tactic. A barrage of news and questions and banter to leave you muddled before springing. Shit, this time he even brought a gift. I’m actually less offended by the fact that he’s actively tracking me than the idea that I’d fall for his bullshit.

But I’m ready for this. I know him, something he seems to forget. “A lead. On Laskel.”

Temple steps closer, intrigued. Mentally, I cheer. I knew it was the right tack to take. “Oh?

“A merchant came through three weeks ago, from beyond the Marches. Said someone fitting Laskel’s description had set up shop at Gorm. Suitably mysterious, spending money but being secretive about it, blah blah blah. I had to…” I quiet, pretend to choke on my words as I stare at the ground. “I had to find out.”

“Ah,” Temple says with surprising sympathy. “Based on our previous conversation, I imagine things ended poorly?”

“As usual,” I say.

“Shame. Shame.” Temple’s mouth crooks. “I would like to believe you, Rend. And, depending on what happens next, I might.”

“What happens–”

Sasha moves like liquid, blurring forward so fast I don’t have time to react, or channel from my soul bank into a protection gem. One moment, she’s still, and the next, her fingertips impact my chest just above my sternum. I spin, thrown by the force of it, and she snaps her fingers to my neck in three quick motions in less than a heartbeat.

My body goes boneless. I can’t even cry out as I fall to the street.

Temple kneels next to me. Sasha stands behind him, holding the bottle of Absloth. Gods, I didn’t see her snatch it. She’s so fast.

Temple frowns. “Apologies, Rend. I have to be sure.” He stands, steps back. “Search him.”

“For what?” Sasha asks, donning black gloves.

“Oh, you’ll know if you find it,” Temple says, smiling sadly, as if he hates the necessity of his actions. “Pay no attention to any smaller baubles you find on his person. He’s a skilled manipulator of monster souls.”

A golem lifts me, still boneless. Another roughly pulls my greatcoat and belt from me, giant fingers deft. Clad only in my pants, boots, and shirt, I dangle like a caught fish. A line of drool threads its way from my mouth and down my chest. I can’t even close my mouth to staunch the flow.

The golem soul. He suspects.

Oh no.

Temple pats at my chin with a handkerchief as Sasha’s hands move across my body, into and under my clothes. She’s ruthless, efficient, as she searches under my shirt, in my pants, in my boots. She uses a knife to pry at the soles, then tosses them aside when she finds nothing. She even reaches into my pants and between my legs, shoving my business district roughly to the side and heading deep downtown. I’m surprised she doesn’t shove a finger up my ass.

Finally, Sasha lifts Jade, peering closely at the closed medallion.

My breath freezes in my lungs. She’s got no way to tell what Jade really is, and Jade’s chain is unbreakable as long as it’s touching my body, but if she decides to make an issue of things…

Her eyes raise to mine. Flint gray.

But thankfully, she steps back. I’d shiver if I could. She’s thorough. I really, really regret that I’m incapacitated and can’t say the words that want to escape from my lips. Probably a good thing. If I managed to speak, she’d probably rip my cock off before Temple could stop her.

But she doesn’t find anything. No golem soul. Because I knew this would happen, and because I’m smarter than them.

Or to be fair, Jade is.

The hiding place was her idea, after all.

Finally, she turns away, pulling her gloves off with disgust. “He’s clean,” she says. “Nothing out of the ordinary.” She tosses them to the street.

“Sorry,” Temple says, nodding first to me, then her. “In my business, you must always be sure. Sasha, please return Rend’s faculties.”

She taps something at the side of my neck. Hard. I gasp in pain as my limbs spring to life, as my arms windmill against the golem’s grip.

He drops me. I go to my knees in the street, gasping.

Temple kneels again, face to face with me. “Remember, Rend, what I value more than all other traits.”

“Honesty,” I cough.

“Right.” He pats my shoulder. “Once again, apologies.” He stands. “Now, to the docks.” He says the last word like a curse. “Until next time.”

I wait until they move off before picking up my belt. Wiping spit from my lips, I stand, wincing. Gods. Whatever that snake did to me hurts like six motherfuckers.

Agatha’s at my side almost instantly. She must have been watching. “Those godsdamned cunt shits,” she curses, “fuck him and that fucking bitch he fucking brought,” she rants.

I laugh, earning another wince at bruised ribs. “Agatha, calm down. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

She breathes, tiny and murderous. She barely reaches my chest, but is deliciously voluptuous, and even at north of forty years old she’s absolutely stunning. Her hair is gray by choice, full and luxurious as it spills over her shoulders. It frames a face marked by startling blue eyes and high cheekbones. Her makeup is immaculate, but I can still see the rage stinging her doll like features. “Sorry, Rend. Sorry. When I get angry…”

“...The old sailor comes out of you,” I finish. “I still have trouble believing you ever ran a ship.”

“And why is that?” she asks, hands to hips as she thrusts her chest out. It’s a delightful effect, and her thick tits punish her brassiere and threaten to explode up and out. “Think I can’t keep a band of jackass sailors in check?”
“No, no,” I say, hands raised in self-defense. “Just that I’m surprised any of them survived long enough to get you back to shore.”

She whacks me. “Pff. You know I know how to take care of men.”

And she does. She worked at this brothel after her sailing days for a decade before inheriting it. My face warms at a blush. “Yes, you do.”

“Someday you’ll let me take care of you,” she says, licking full lips. “But not today,” she says, taking my hand and tugging me into the Folly before I can sputter a retort. “Today, you’re home.”

She pulls me deep into the house. As I pass through the garish main hall, a chorus of greetings chase me; Agatha’s girls, human and otherwise, lounging inside rooms as they wait for the workday to end. They whistle and catcall and yell “Give ‘em hell, Agatha!” or “I thought you weren’t taking men anymore!” as the madam tugs me along.

Agatha gives as good as she gets, smacking me on the ass or calling sass back to her girls. She loves them like a mother and sister at the same time and doesn’t take their shit lying down. The whole time, she keeps up a running commentary of retorts or saucy one liners that dissolve the girls into puddles of giggling nonsense.

She’s amazing. A master spy in the making, considering the fact that she’s the only person in the world that knows everything about me and has never betrayed it to a soul. About Jade and my mission.

Finally, we reach the far end of the house to my room. It’s a sprawling apartment at the back of the brothel. She follows me inside the main living space, then into my bedroom, past furniture and decorations she picked for me and a few of my own. It’s a mix of archaeological and scientific oddities along with her more practical lighting and necessities. All in all, it’s lovely without being ostentatious.

I regret not spending more time up here.

Agatha turns on the light before closing the door to my bedroom.

Then she turns, all humor and sauciness melting away. Her face falls as I sink to the bed. “No luck, then?”

“What makes you say that?” I say, unable to keep from teasing.

She cracks her knuckles. “Rend, if you make me drag it out of you…”

I laugh, nod in surrender. “I got it.”

She sits next to me with an undignified plop like she’s about to faint. “No. After all this time.” She turns to me, blue eyes luminous in the dark space. “But how… When that golem picked you up and that hateful shit started searching you…”

My grin is smug. I know it. Can’t help it. I tap my stomach.

Her eyes widen. “You didn’t.”

“Only way to be sure.”

Agatha cackles, smacking me again. “That’s not one of your ideas. I know the real mastermind, here. Let me say hello.”

“Hey!” I say in mock outrage. Mock because I know she’s right. I’m practical, and think on my feet, but Jade’s a wonder with planning and clever ideas I’d never think of. I’d be lost without her.

I reach up, hesitating only a moment. Not out of distrust for Agatha. If she wanted me dead, wanted to turn me in, I would have been lost long ago. No, the pause before I reach up to unsnap Jade is more habit than anything.

“There she is,” Agatha coos. “So beautiful. How are you, dear one?”

Jade shivers against Agatha’s hand. “Lovely, just lovely. Especially now that you’re here.” She whispers, conspiratorial. “He’s not the best company when he’s got a bug up his butt about something.”

Agatha gives me an admonishing glare. “Not taking care of her? How could you?”

Jade’s sigh is pure fiction. “Long nights on the road, him snoring like a barn burning down, and the smell…”

Again with that? Seriously? But I don’t interrupt. I can let them have their fun.

Bug up my butt. Right.

“Oh, darling. Brilliant, just brilliant keeping the soul from that vile man,” Agatha’s cooing. She leans forward and kisses Jade, a light tough that makes the gem shiver with pleasure. I wrinkle my nose as Agatha’s hair ruffles my nose, cinnamon and vanilla. Familiar smells that take me back to better times. I shut my eyes a moment and let the scent wash over me. Forget, for just a moment, everything but the past.

The three of us. Drunk at the bar. Her arm around his waist, leaning on my shoulder as she laughs at some joke he’s made. The smell of her hair. Desire I hid, because they were my best friends. My only friends.

Desire that changed after the betrayal.

I shake away the memory and the scent. That’s all over, now.

Agatha hasn’t noticed my distraction. She’s still sassing, her eyes crinkled with mirth. “As I said, just brilliant. I knew he wasn’t quick enough to come up with something that clever.”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” I say, sitting back. “Are you both done? Gods. The two of you together is enough to make me second guess heading downstairs to make another co-conspirator.”

That silences her jabs. Her features smooth, and her eyes are serious. “You still think you can… you know…”

“Make a golem, act as its master, and use it to right what’s been done to us?” I give her a single nod. “Yes.”

She folds her hands in her lap, wringing her fingers. “Good. Good. I’ve waited… I mean, we’ve waited… to be so close…”

I put my hand over hers. Squeeze. “I know. Soon, this’ll be over.” One way or another. I take a long breath, ask the question I always ask. The question I already know the answer to. “Have you heard from him? Any word?”

She turns away. “No.”

I lace my fingers with hers. “I’m sorry to ask. I just…”

“I know.” She turns back to me, eyes shimmering in the low light. “I would do the same.”

I hug her tight. Two broken souls that’ve patched themselves together from spare parts. Both shattered by the same person.

Laskel. Someday, you die.

I don’t tell this to Agatha, though. I’m usually vague about what I plan to do to him when I find him.

He’s hurt her enough.

“Hey, you two,” Jade quips, voice light and hiding concern I can feel through our bond, “enough of that. Enough sadness. Don’t make me spank you both.”

Agatha wipes away a single tear and cracks a grin. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, lass.”

“Yeah, might enjoy that,” I say. “Been beaten up enough lately that I’m think I’m developing a kink.”

“Oh, God,” Jade groans. “If you started getting hard every time a monster bats you around, we’re going to have a serious conversation about you gifting me to another golemancer.”

Agatha moans in mock pleasure. “Don’t stop. I’m almost there.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” I laugh, standing. My knees crack alarmingly, I’m exhausted, and my head still aches from when it cracked the pavement. I lift the bottle of liquor Temple gifted me and slosh it. “Anyone want a drink before we get down to business?”

Agatha snatches the bottle from my hand. “Is this… holy shit,” she breathes. “Fucking Absloth?” Her eyes narrow. “We aren’t drinking this. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

“Poison doesn’t really seem like Temple’s bag.”

“Poison?” Agatha chuckles. “Not what I was thinking. No, we’ve saving this.” She tucks the golden liquid aside and reaches beneath my bed, under the bed skirt. She grunts, rummaging around.

“As far as I know, I don’t keep anything under the–”

“Hah!” she interrupts, straightening with another bottle clutched tight in her hand.

Whiskey. “Black Tom?” I blink. “I don’t remember stashing that there.”

“That’s because she did,” Jade says sagely. “About fourteen months ago.”

Agatha pouts. “You knew?”

I wave fingers at my head. “She knows things,” I say. “She reads now, apparently.”

“I have to amuse myself somehow,” Jade says, “while you’re experimenting and having alone time with your gems. Or letting a vampire queen suck your–”

“Whiskey!” I say, uncorking the Black Tom. The room instantly fills with the scent of brown sugar and molasses. “I can’t believe you remembered.” It was my favorite cheap swill before… before everything changed.

Agatha smiles. “Always, hon. Always.” She takes the bottle from me and pulls a long sip, wincing. “Ooh, that’s a kick to the cunt. You don’t forget that.” She hands me the bottle. “Tucked it under your bed for the day that you finally came home with one,” she says.

“The perfect plan,” I say. “I’ll drink a shitload of this and getting the gem back won’t be any trouble at all.” I take a small sip, savor the burn as it clears my sinuses. At Agatha’s horrified look, I laugh. “Kidding. I’ll just have a nip. I still have a lot to do tonight.”

“I know.” Agatha stands, offering me a hand. “Best get after it. And leave out the details. Whichever hole that gem comes out of, I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Me neither,” Jade shivers. “But yes, no more dilly dallying.” Jade wriggles at my chest. “I can’t wait to meet my new sister.”

Agatha blinks slowly, already half drunk. “Hey, is it true what they say? The rumors about how… how golemancers bond with their creations? You know…” she trails off, wiggling her eyebrows significantly.

I bite my lip, trying not to blush. “You really want to know?”

“On second though… no. No, you know… Some secrets are best left untold.”

“Gods damned right,” Jade says fervently.

Agatha’s right, though. It’s something that I’ve pushed to the back of my mind these long months as I’ve searched for my first golem soul. Up to this point, I’ve only created sentient gems like Jade… It’s all I had the skill for. All I needed for the job Temple hired Laskel and I for. And as close as I am to Jade, I’m not connected to her like I will be if I succeed in creating a real golem girl. If I plant my gem and myself in one.

I’ve read stories about golemancers placing a single hair in their creation. Or a vial of the creator’s blood.

But there are other stories. About golems that take the form of women, and how a man’s seed is the strongest bond.

Nope. Not going to think about that right now. First thing’s first.

“Rend? Rend?” Jade sighs, then whispers to Agatha. “He’s spacing out again. It’s a new thing. I think he thinks it makes him more attractive. Broody.”

Agatha sways slightly in place. I notice the bottle’s emptier than before. “Might be working,” she slurs, winking at me with both eyes.

I smile sadly. She drinks away the hurt.

Wish I could.

“Alright,” I say as I stroll to the door. “Bedtime for you, young lady.”

“Uh, fuck you for telling me what to do,” Agatha says, burping, “and love you for calling me young.”

I roll my eyes and open the door a scant inch, watchful.

Coral, a dark-haired beauty with flashing purple eyes and the body of an acrobat, stands just down the hall. On watch. I knew she’d be there. Her or Amberlain. Agatha’s girls don’t know what I am, but they know their madam loves me, and so they do, too. They watch the streets and doors for trouble when Agatha’s not doing it herself.

I beckon. She sways up the hall, a broad smile softening her harshly exotic features. “Yes, Rend? Finally decide to take me up on my offer?”

“Tomorrow,” I smile, finishing an exchange that’s almost a ritual between us. “Agatha’s feeling a bit… happy. It’s getting late. Escort her up to bed? I have some final business before I retire.”

“Course, love,” Coral says, brushing her ass against me with some sort of black magic movement as she sashays by. “Come on, madam… let’s get you to bed.”

“Fuck that,” Agatha slurs. “Can’t tell me what to do. Cut you from cock to chin, I will, like I did that bastard on Feather Island. I was just fifteen, and he tried to grab me by the…” Her voice fades as Coral ushers her down the hall, and I can see by the way her slim shoulders shake that she’s choking back laughter.

I shut the door, shaking my head.

I’m surrounded by crazy people.

“Ready?” I ask.

Jade voice is eager. Scary eager. “If you ask me again, I’ll do something terrible to you while you sleep. Let’s go.”

Crazy people.

The wall at the back of my wide room is covered by a long, dark curtain. Ostensibly, it’s because there are no windows and the dark red bricks are unattractive. At least, that’s what I tell the girls when they ask.

In reality, it hides my biggest secret.

“Jade, will you do the honors?”

“You didn’t say please.” She laughs at the sound I make before her glow intensifies slightly. She wasn’t expecting me to answer. Just giving me shit.

Oh, Jade.

Without further teasing, the curtain lifts, rolling upward and hooking itself over three pegs that hang from the ceiling.

“Thank you. Always as pleasure to watch you work.”

“I know you’re being sarcastic, but I’m going to take that as a compliment, anyway.”

I smile but don’t respond as I walk to the wall. I lay a palm flat against the bricks and close my eyes as I extend my senses into the stone.

There they are. Six gems are arrayed in a geometric pattern inside the wall. They rest inside long, horizontal slots that are completely hidden by the stone, invisible to anyone but a skilled golemancer. Splitting the grooves are vertical shafts, creating a lattice.

My combination lock. Setting the gems in the correct endpoints opens the door to my laboratory. More possibilities than I’m intelligent enough to figure, and only I know the proper setting for the gems. Even if this was discovered by another golemancer, they’d never figure out how to get inside. I finished off the whole thing with the single greatest imbuement of monster souls I’ve ever used, both bought and harvested myself, to render the brickwork impervious.

Well, if dragons still existed, one could shatter my wards, but they haven’t been seen in close to fifty years.

I shiver a moment at the thought of harvesting a dragon soul. Something no one in history has ever done, though many have certainly tried. Dying like that? Burned from the inside out the moment your soul connects with the dragon’s? Worth almost certain death. If you succeed? Unlimited power. If you died?

What a way to go.

I clear my mind. The gem that currently rests somewhere inside me is prize enough, for now. Enough for my purposes.

My breath quickens.

So close, now.

I close my eyes and shift the gems inside the wall. One after another, I slide them smoothly through their grooves until they rest in the proper positions.

A door materializes, shimmering into place at the center of the wall as if it had always existed.

I stand, hand now resting against smooth, dark wood, and breathe in. Ready myself.

This is it. The culmination of years of planning. Dozens of failed expeditions.

I have a golem soul.

It’s time to use it.

7

Ah. Home sweet home.

Well, if you can call a dank underground lab that’s half trashed and half perfect organization “home,” that is.

In my defense, when it comes to the messy part, it’s by design. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. I know where everything is. But if someone was to somehow infiltrate my inner sanctum, they’d be left so confused and baffled by my system of cataloguing items and equipment that they’d think I was some crazy gem collector. Definitely not someone who creates the gems.

At least, that’s how I justify the mess.

In reality, I just haven’t had time to clean. Haven’t had time for anything but my mission. Time spent here has been time spent perfecting my craft. Getting material ready. Depositing the souls of harvested monsters into my gems as I prepared for my next wild goose chase.

Until now.

Carved out over roughly a year, my lab is a huge stone cube a few hundred yards below Blackstone. An odd assortment of benches and tables span the space, and each is littered with constellations of gems or half gems. Some are purchased, trades for monster souls; rubies, emeralds, even diamonds when I can afford them. They all hold charges for varying lengths of time, and generally, the more valuable the gem, the better it is as a vessel. Some gems, like the soul banks, are my own creations.

Pretty proud of those.

Jade’s half of the room is far neater. I mean, it’s not like a disembodied soul stuck in a gem needs much. She has a small bed on one table inside a grand jewellery box. A small stack of oils and polishes. Soft rags and cloth. All the stuff she demands I use on her whenever we have time.

It hasn’t been often, of late. I touch her unconsciously, pushing away guilt.

This is all worth it. We both know it.

The rest of the space is dominated by beakers and books, stolen scrolls and half-filled bottles of wine. Bookshelves line one wall, half filled with ancient tomes I’ve “procured” over the years and half with my own writings and theories about golemancy. I haven’t discovered much new over the years, but I have learned to be more efficient. To make more powerful gems. And, after three years of research, I learned how to create life from a golem soul. Something I had a terrifically difficult time of, considering the texts and books telling a golemancer how to do it are forbidden, and even one in your possession’s a quick way to get strung up by the balls outside your local Inquisition barracks.

At the thought, I finally turn.

I’m ready.

At the center of the room is a low table, the kind you’d find in a surgery. Laying atop it is my most prized creation. My own cocktail of clay, precious gems, and lesser monster souls used to strengthen and bond, my deactivated golem lays perfectly still. Awaiting its final element.

An element currently inside me.

I lay my hands at the edge of the golem’s table, breathless. “Jade?”

“Rend?” Her voice is tight, as excited as mine.

“Ready?” An unnecessary question, but we’ve worked so hard for this. So long.

“Ready? Am I–” Jade sputters. “If you’re trying to be dramatic, you’re just coming off as irritating.” She gives a little wriggle. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

“So sure it’s going to be a her?”

“You saw where she came from. You know about imprinting.”

“True. Just… I’m assuming nothing, here. It’s all theory until the shit hits the barn.”

Jade snorts in disgusted laughter. “The what hits the what?”

“Hey. It’s a saying. Backwoods thing. Don’t question it.”

“Sure,” she giggles, giddy. “Okay. Shall we, ah… You know. Pull it out, so to speak?”

“If this is more innuendo, you’re not very good at it, yet.”

There’s a tug inside me. Jade, seizing the soul gem and yanking it around. “Don’t make me pull this straight out instead of working back up your throat.”

I smile. Time to surprise her. It’s so rare I get to… she’s always with me. “No need.”

“No–?” She pauses. “Rend, you know we kind of need the soul gem, right? For the golem? Unless… oh dear.” She tuts. “Ingesting it’s given you some kind of brain fever, hasn’t it? Must I solider on alone? Sit at your side as you go slowly mad and start eating your own feces? Face this dark world without you? Oh, woe is me!”

“Hush,” I laugh. “There’s no need because there’s I’m not removing it.”

“Still not making sense,” she drawls.

“Just watch.”

I stare down at the dark, vaguely human shaped lump. At its center is a hole, and in that whole is the most complex gem I’ve ever created. A soul housing capable of accepting and containing the power of a golem soul.

I hope.

I take a long breath.

Enough fucking around. Enough steeling myself.

It’s time to make a golem.

I reach inside myself, find the soul gem. I seize it with my mind, feel the power of the soul within.

Jade can sense what I’m doing. “Rend, what are you up to?”

I hold the gem tight, a gem I created. A gem I can destroy. I grip it tighter, squeezing. Harder.

“Rend, I don’t think this is a good–”

The gem shatters.

Under normal circumstances, a jewel shattering inside your body would be a bad thing. Tiny shards and blades of stone slicing your insides apart.

But this is a soul gem. And it is mine to control.

When it explodes, it turns to dust.

“Rend!” Jade screams as the golem soul explodes from me; There’s no pain, no blood and gore, just the same shimmering figure from Salana’s mausoleum that springs free from my chest. All I feel is a vague sense of anger. Of betrayal. The residual emotion of the golem soul’s imprinting from Salana.

A creeping worry skitters across my mind, but I don’t have time to wonder at it.

My meal ticket is currently tearing toward the high ceiling, intent on escape.

“Rend, stop it!”

No need.

It hits the roof and is rebuffed, bouncing off the stones like a ball. I watch, breathing heavy from the effort of shattering the gem, as it tries again, hitting the dark stone more carefully. It’s stopped again, and it shivers in rage as it turns and spins toward a wall.

“How in the hells…” Jade whispers, voice quiet.

“The room,” I say, unable to keep the smugness from my voice.

The soul bounds off one wall, then another. Then the floor. It even tries the doorway as I stand, arms crossed, watching as I regain my strength.

“The room what?” Jade asks, obviously out of patience.

“The entire room is a ward. I infused the stones before we left.” I’d been building up to it for awhile, learning the techniques. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, considering my first time back is the first time I have a golem soul with me.

She has no face, but I can imagine Jade’s jaw dropping open. “You didn’t tell me? And when… when did you have time? How did I not notice?” She sputters as the soul finally stills, drifting above us as it stares balefully downward. “Rend, I don’t sleep. How did you…”

I can’t help a little smile. “You don’t know everything about me.”

“Ohhh, hooo.” Jade takes a long breath. If she had hands, she’d be slow clapping. “Well done.”

Uh oh. Gonna pay for that one later.

I reach for the golem soul with my own, feeling strong enough to tackle this. To wrestle it into a new prison.

I gasp as it slips into my mental grip with almost no resistance. Is it… is it giving up?

I tug it downward. Toward the soul gem inside my golem.

It comes willingly.

“What the hell…” I whisper. I almost stop the process.

But no. The soul entwines with mine, and I can feel it inside me, now. Bonding.

What’s it doing? I expected it to resist me, to fight being captured by the soul gem that awaits it. Instead, it’s embracing me, embracing my control. It’s…

Oh fuck.

“Jade,” I croak. “It’s…”

I can’t speak further. My throat closest against my will.

The soul’s trying to use me as a host. It batters at my mind, muscles its way into my thoughts. Relax, it whispers in Salana’s voice. This will all be over soon.

No. This can’t be happening. Nothing I’ve read, no book I’ve ever found, no monk or scholar I’ve ever spoken to has prepared me for this. Has mentioned that this could happen.

Is it Salana’s influence, stretching from beyond the grave? Something inherent to the soul gem that no one knows?

Right now, it doesn’t matter. Its attack is so sudden, so consuming, that I almost lose control of myself then and there.

Somewhere in the distance Jade screams my name as I struggle. Fall to the floor and curl into a ball. My body doesn’t exist. I can’t give any thought to movement, to control of my muscles.

All that matters are the walls of my mind, and the ballista bolts of raw will the golem soul batters at me with.

Relax, the soul whispers. Let me in.

No, I shout into the void of my mind. No…

But it’s too much. Caught unaware. Wasn’t ready for this.

I’m losing myself.

Another blast of will batters my walls. Almost takes them down.

Jade is like a sun at my chest. Calling my name over and over, like an echo across time. She may as well not exist.

Relax. Another shattering blast of will.

Relax. My walls crumble.

I lay boneless, and for a singular moment the golem soul retracts. The arrogance. The vampire queen revelling in her victory before consuming her prey.

It’s the last mistake she’ll ever make. It gives me time, time to relax long enough to think. To realize that I’ve been going about this all wrong.

I shouldn’t be resisting.

I need to redirect.

The golem soul seems to take a shuddering breath I can feel in my bones, and then it dives into my center.

I don’t throw up more walls, this time.

Instead, I connect directly with the soul gem lying in wait. I am no longer a host.

I am a conduit.

Before it realizes what’s happening, before the golem soul can stop itself, it funnels through me. Into the soul gem.

Trapped.

It worked.

I gasp, claw the ground. The first breath I’ve taken in an eternity. Jade is sobbing. “Rend. Rend. Please…”

“Still… here…” I manage, sitting up shakily. That was too close. “Barely.”

“Oh, Eros,” she gasps. “What the hells… what was that.”

Strength returns quickly now that the soul’s free of me. I grip the table, eyes closed. “Soul tried to… use me.”

“Use you?”

“Like… Rend doesn’t live here anymore. Hope you like the new boss.”

Jade shudders. “Golem souls can do that?” She’s silent another heartbeat. “Interesting.”

“Hey, don’t get any wise ideas,” I say, standing on shaky legs. “If I have it my way, we’ll both have bodies someday.”

“Promises, promises. Shall we check on my new sister?”

Absolutely.

I realize I’ve avoided looking, so far. Everything I’ve worked for, years of effort, and I’ve finally done it.

Relief threads through me like warmth. Jade’s laughing. I think I am, too.

We’ve finally done it.

I turn and take in my golem.

“What…”

It’s Salana.

She lays, naked and perfect aside from the hole in her chest where the soul gem resides. I watch in disbelief as her skin puckers, sealing the gem inside. Other than that, she’s flawless, exactly as I remember her from the mausoleum. Long, luscious red hair framing her perfect face. Breasts large enough that that seem to reach for me and barely pool, even as she lays on her back. Her trim, smooth belly, the thatch of auburn hair between her long, muscled legs. Her skin, pale and unmarked.

I take a step back. How…

Salana’s eyes open. Red like chips of ruby. She turns her head slowly. Languidly, taking me in.

“Hello, master,” she breathes.

And then she grabs my throat.

8

I choke, gasping, unable to breathe as she slowly gets to her knees on the table. Her face is twisted with rage and something else, something I can’t place and don’t care to because she’s killing me. Killing me. Her grip is iron, as strong as Salana’s was.

Is she Salana? The golem?

What the fuck is happening?

She stands, lifts me until we’re face to face. She has the grace to take my shirt with her other hand so that she doesn’t break my neck as she pulls me from the ground, but it’s cold comfort. I struggle, fingers twitching toward destruction runes at my fingers.

But I hold off. If I shatter the golem soul’s gem, it’ll find a way to escape. I have no backup prison gem capable of housing it.

I try to read her. Try to send my senses along our bond, to reassure her and let her know that I mean her no harm. Her thoughts are a wall of rage and desperation, too panicked to receive me.

She’s scared.

My vision blackens as she stares me down, eyes like blood. Jade batters at her, swipes of power that roll off her like beads of water from a leaf.

Have to try… to convince her...

“You killed me,” she hisses, breath so close it feathers my face with deceptive gentleness.

I try to speak, can’t. Claw at my throat.

Her lips purse and she releases her grip enough that I gasp a ragged breath. “No…” I manage. “Killed… host.”

“Host…” her eyes lose focus as she thinks.

“Salana. Trapped you.”

“Salana…”

“Listen,” Jade begs, voice desperate. “You are not her. You are not Salana.” She emphasizes each word slowly. Carefully. As if speaking to a rabid animal.

“Not Salana…” The golem stands for long moments, holding me effortlessly four feet above the ground. My legs dangle bonelessly as I watch her mind work.

“Please…” Jade whispers. Because I can’t.

“I am… Salana… no…” The golem’s eyes focus on my face. They widen in alarm. “Oh, no…!”

She drops me.

I fall unceremoniously, hitting the ground and only slightly catching my fall. I go to my knees, fingers at my neck, sucking long breaths into starved lungs.

“Master!” the golem cries, leaping from the table. She’s at my side in an instant, pressing against me, hands everywhere. “I didn’t mean… I’m so sorry…”

“I’m… I’m good,” I manage, patting her arm. The golem’s change is so sudden, so absolute that I don’t question it. Couldn’t if I wanted to. This is more in line with what I’ve read happens when you create a golem. The immediate worship and deference to their new master. It must be the imprinting.

“Rend!” Jade cries. “Are you okay?”

I give her a thumbs up. “And don’t worry. Flag’s only flying at half-mast.” Though with the golem’s perfect body almost sculpted against mine as she tends to me, that won’t last long.

Jade laughs, a bit hysterical. “I take back what I said. Get as hard as you want. Just don’t die on me.”

“Hard?” The golem blinks slowly.

I put hands to her shoulders and push her back so I can sit to gather my strength. The golem plops backward, bare ass on the cold stone, but doesn’t seem to care. About that, or the fact that she’s naked with legs spread toward me.

I wipe my hand across my face. Thoughts chase their way through my addled mind. Have to be scientific. Have to get a hold of myself. I tear my gaze from her heaving tits, from her soft belly, and I definitely don’t let myself stare at her perfect little pussy.

Hey, is it true what they say? The rumors about how… how golemancers bond with their creations?

Yes, Agatha. That’s what they say.

I won’t think about it.

At least, not yet.

I turn, knees to the golem. She mimics my pose, repositioning with a lot of jiggling and stretching.

Gods damn, she’s stunning. She’s not even using compulsion on me and all I can think of is…

She watches me intently, eyes half lidded. A slow smile plays across her lips, something of Salana’s self-indulgent pleasure in her expression. She straightens, bringing her chest up as she bites her lip.

Like Salana would have.

So, maybe she’s not completely changed. I’m glad the murderous rage is gone, but the sensuality seems to be perfectly intact. I wonder how much more of the vampiress has imprinted on the golem.

Obviously, the super strength. God, my throat hurts.

I gently push her back again and take a long breath to calm blood that thunders through my veins. “I have a few questions.”

She nods. “Yes.”

“You are not Salana.”

“As you said.”

“But you look like her.” I reach forward impulsively, pushing a stray lock of crimson from her face. She leans into the touch, brushing her lips across the runes on my fingers. “And you act like her.”

The golem thinks about this. “I am me. Salana was my… prison… for a long time.”

“Hundreds of years,” Jade says with real sympathy in her voice.

“Indeed.”

“What do you remember?” I ask, tentatively poking at my neck. Gonna have some fun bruises, that’s for sure.

The golem’s eyes grow distant. “Not much, master. Feeding. Fucking. Killing.” Her face is expressionless, like she isn’t sure what to make of her scattered memories. I know that golems lose much of themselves when they’re transferred, whether that be from host to host or gem to gem. It’s the main reason why I haven’t attempted to put Jade into a body, yet. If I lost her…

The golem seems to deflate. “Oh, my. My former host was… naughty.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Jade quips. “But you are not her. Don’t have to be her.”

“Yes,” she says, laying a hand on mine. “I am yours, now.”

“You have a lot more autonomy than you had inside Salana,” I promise.

“You’ve given me a body.” She runs her slender fingers downward, across her breasts. Her dark red nipples poke between her fingers as she moves her hands lower, across her belly and then her thighs. “Thank you, master.”

“Is this the body you…” I swallow, momentarily distracted as she digs her nails in her pubic hair and runs her fingers through it. I tear my gaze upward. “Is this the body you want?”

“Oh, yes,” she drawls, watching me watch her. “It pleases you, and so it pleases me.”

I won’t argue with that.

“Clothes?” Jade asks. “Can we get her a robe?”

“Why?” the golem asks, face screwed up in confusion. “Master obviously enjoys me this way. I can feel him through our new bond, and based on his state of arousal, he’s–”

“I feel it, too,” Jade says, choking back laughter. “Just… in polite society…” we trail off together as the golem spreads her legs wider, smiling deeply as she somehow pulls a blush from me. “You know, fuck it,” Jade says. “We’ll get to that later.”

“The imprinting,” I say, desperate for something else to focus on for a moment. “It’s more powerful than I imagined.”

“Imprinting?” The golem considers. “Yes. When I found myself in my new vessel, I had a moment to form. To choose. And this was natural. It felt… right.” She purses lips that I still feel on my cock when I close my eyes. “As you said, I am not her. But I believe there will always be something of her in me.”

“You need a name,” Jade says, mercifully helping us stay on the scientific track.

“Yes. Salana won’t do,” the golem says, thoughtful. “Master, what would you name me?”

“Ruby,” I say without thinking.

Jade shivers with delight. “I like it.”

The golem cocks her head, bare shoulders rolling as she seems to let the name spread through her. “Ruby.” She smiles slowly. “I love it.”

“Do you remember anything else?” I ask. “Of your life before you became a man killing seductress?”

“No.” Her eyes roll back slightly as she thinks. “My newer memories are fresher.” Her eyes lock back on mine. “I remember you,” she says. Her breath comes quicker. “Of pleasuring you. Of the excitement at having such a strong mate. Of being sure I could use you for…” Her excitement falters at whatever she sees in my face. “I am sorry, master. That was not me.”

“It’s okay,” I say, remembering how close I came to losing myself. “Just don’t use that compulsion on me again. Unless I ask you to.”

“He might,” Jade pipes up. “He likes the abuse.”

“Oh?” Ruby leans forward, then goes to all fours, crawling toward me. “There’s something else, master,” she says as her bare nipples brush along the harsh material of my pants. “Something else I found inside me.”

“What–”

Her lips meet mine, so soft. I can’t help but kiss her, slip my tongue into her mouth. She’s delicious, somehow tastes like dark red wine and sin, and I close my eyes as she sucks my lip.

As she kisses me, something passes through us. Infusing me. I gasp into her mouth as energy presses against my soul, pours in like a bucket of water dumped into a tub.

The missing part. The part that Salana took.

Ruby leans back, hand trailing down my chest until it rests on my cock.

I barely feel her touch through my pants. I heave another huge breath, smile. “You gave it back.”

“It was yours, master.” She scratches at my crotch with long nails, sending delicious shivers into me. “She should not have taken it.”

“Thank you.”

“None needed.” She slowly moves toward me, and I lift my hands to meet her as she straddles my legs and rests her heat against my crotch. “I know what comes next, master. I can feel it, deep inside. I am not complete.”

“What did I miss?” I manage. I know what she’s talking about, but to say so seems so… crass. I’ve never had a problem with women, never had an issue taking one home from the pub. But this… this is different. So sudden. So unbelievable. Like fantasy made real. “You’re my first golem.”

“Nothing you could have put inside me before now,” she whispers. Her tits pool at my chest as she whispers into my ear. “We must complete the bond. I need part of you.” Her pussy grinds against the bulge in my pants as she emphasizes each worth with a little press.

“We’ve just met,” I protest. Why am I protesting? This is fucking heaven. Bond my golem like this? I couldn’t dream of something better.

But I’m not a total cad. “You know nothing of me. Of the world. Of why I put you into this body. Of what I need you to–”

Ruby silences me with another kiss. “Later. When I am finished.” She wiggles her shoulders, pressing a little line of kisses along my jaw. “When I am perfected.”

There’s only so much a man can take. I nod as she raises, running her tits against the stubble of my jaw. She moans, low and hungry.

I reach up to close Jade.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Her voice is… it can’t be. She sounds close to orgasm herself. “We’re in this together. All the way.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The golem smiles and leans down, pressing her lips to Jade’s surface. The gem trembles, heating at Ruby’s touch. She whimpers.

Learning all kinds of new things, today.

Ruby digs her fingers into my pants. “Bond me, master.”

“Yes,” I hear myself say from what seems like a thousand miles away. My blood thunders in my ears. “But not here.”

The trip back to my room at the brothel involves a lot of touching. A lot of groping, mostly by Ruby. At one point she runs her palm along my cock so roughly that I almost cum in the middle of the stairwell. I give her a quelling look, but she’s only slightly abashed. She bites her lip, and the smallest wave of compulsion washes over me. It’s not enough to affect me, is barely enough to tug at my mind, but it is enough to plant an image in my head. Her riding me, my cock buried deep inside her as her fingers rake my–

“Cheater,” I say, staggering a step.

“I like her already,” Jade says. She sounds way more breathless than a soul stuck in a gem with no body has any right to be.

“I broke the rules, master.” Ruby ducks her head like she doesn’t feel a whit bad about it. “You must punish me.”

Ohhh man. I’m in trouble.

But a thought occurs, penetrating the fugue of lust in my mind. Her strength when she lifted me. The compulsion.

That answers that question. Salana’s imprint extends to the vampire’s powers, too.

Which is fantastic. Exactly what I need. When I infused the golem soul, I just knew it would be powerful. Probably strong. I didn’t know it’d come with full vampiress abilities.

This is getting better and better.

She beats me to the door, and in truth, I let her. The thick, heart shape of her ass ripples as she climbs the long stairway leading to my combination lock wall, and every time one of her long legs rises to take another step its delicious torment. By the time we reach my room, I’m convinced that a stiff breeze can finish me.

Ruby walks around my lavish room, oohing and ahhing. “Master is rich,” she coos approvingly. She runs her fingers along a velvet bench Agatha gave me a few years back, bending at the waist as she moans at the touch. “I approve.”

Definitely a lot of Salana left in there.

“Not rich,” I say. “Just well taken care of.”

“Master is doted on.” Ruby’s banked stare is hungry. “Even better.”

Watching her stride around my room naked, touching and murmuring her approval, is surreal. This creature that didn’t exist an hour ago, that I created…. She’s so here. And the fact that she looks like this… I never imagined my first creation would take such a turn.

Ruby finishes her circuit at the bed. She sits primly, legs closed, and leans back on her hands. “Master. Why are you all the way over there?”

“Probably wondering if he’s going to make it out of this alive,” Jade says, still sounding breathless.

“Oh, don’t worry, master. I won’t feed on you like Salana did.” Her eyes drop to my crotch. “At least, not in the same way.”

“Oh Gods. If you don’t get over there and take care of her, I will find a way to do it myself.” Jade’s words are accompanied by a smack to my ass that’s definitely harder than it has any right to be.

“Hey,” I say, protesting weakly as my feet move toward the bed of their own accord. “Who’s the boss, here?”

“Oh, you are,” Jade chuckles. “I am nothing but a doting golem that wishes to take care of her master.”

“Yes,” Ruby says, fingers catching my pants when I come into range. “Let me bond you. Let me complete this.” She pulls with a savage burst of strength that tears buckles and cloth. My cock springs up, eager, ready.

So, so ready.

A bead of moisture rests at its tip. Ruby leans forward, takes it with a slow lick that buckles my knees. She grips my cock at the base with just enough pressure to tear a moan from me. The thought that she could crack rock with that grip flits through my mind like a distant warning, but I’m too far gone to care.

Jade cuts the buttons from my shirt with sharp little slices of her power, and then tugs it off my arms with a few more.

I’m going to need a new wardrobe when these two finish with me.

I momentarily consider closing Jade, again. Wonder if this is too much. I love her, have for a long time, and know how she feels about me. But it wasn’t until recently that her jokes have turned sexual, that she’s shown desire in such a way. I’m not sure how it came about, but I wonder if fucking this golem in front of her is cruel. Her presence doesn’t embarrass me. I have no secrets from her. But I don’t want to hurt her.

Don’t you fucking dare…

She may be my golem, but she has a mind of her own. And if her mind’s made up, I won’t argue.

Ruby stands, gripping me, and turns us like dancers until my back’s to the bed. Then she gives me a little shove, just enough that I fall on my ass. She goes to her knees, takes off my boots one by one. Pulls the remnants of my pants down my legs. Undresses me slowly. Subserviently.

It’s fucking with me something fierce to see the proud vampire queen, or at least a perfect replica of her, prostrate herself and undress me like a king. I have to wrap my mind around the fact that she’s not the golem soul, and she’s not Salana. She’s something new, something in between.

When she’s finished with my clothes, she stands. Tall, imperious, impossibly beautiful. A perfectly sculpted creature, half pride and half lust. Sins that I find I’m having no trouble forgiving at the moment.

Her half smile undoes me. Blazing eyes flash as she climbs onto the bed. Straddles me. I can feel the heat of her pussy as it hangs above my straining cock.

We freeze like that, memory stealing over us both. Salana’s mausoleum. The same position. Her hanging above me, about to plunge me deep inside her. About to steal my soul. My hand coming up, killing her, tearing the golem soul from her body.

Our eyes lock. Hers are wide, almost frightened.

“That wasn’t you…” I whisper it quietly. Gently.

She blinks. Her nostrils enlarge as she sucks a long breath through her nose. “No.”

We hang like that, waiting. For what?

“Oh, for Eros’ sake,” Jade mutters. Something like invisible hands grip Ruby’s ass, dimpling her soft flesh. The golem’s eyes widen a split second before Jade pulls her down, swallowing my cock in soft heat.

I cum. I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve never been the type to leave a woman wanting, but this has been a long time in coming. Since downstairs, eternal minutes of Ruby’s perfect body taunting me. Her fingers running across the bulge in my pants. Jade’s breathless whimpers, as if she can feel my pleasure.

I’m a live wire, ready to spark. And Ruby is that spark. I buck, lifting her as I pump deep, hands gripping her ass as I hold her tight against me.

Her eyes widen a moment before she dissolves in a puddle of moans, slumping over me as orgasm grips her and takes her along with me. Her fingernails dig furrows in my bedspread, splitting the blanket as she loses control. Her pussy convulses, gripping me as tight as her fingers, and she cries out in my ear over and over. “Master! Master!”

Between us, Jade trembles, moaning. Connected to me, she writhes with each pump of my cock. As if it was inside her and not Ruby.

I don’t understand how. We’ve been together so long, maybe her connection to me is more than emotional. Maybe she can feel my pleasure.

I don’t care. The three of us cum together, our bond in perfect harmony, vibrating like the string on an instrument.

Finally, we finish, resting in a breathless heap.

Ruby raises her head, lips parted just enough to show her little vampire fangs. “Master…” she repeats, her breath caressing my lips. “We must do so much more of that.”

“Gods yes,” Jade sighs.

“Did that complete the bond?” I ask.

“You tell me.” Ruby shivers, opens herself, and I can feel her.

Lust, first and foremost. Some fear, lurking beneath the surface. And adoration for me. For her master. I feel it all, thundering along the bond as she opens herself to me. A bond that is definitely stronger than before I finished inside her.

Her final piece. Me.

Master. The words echoes in my mind, from her lips. From the bond. I don’t want blind devotion. I want golems that think and act independently. That follow me because they want to, not because they’re compelled to. Like Jade.

But this is an incredible start.

I’m a lucky fucking man.

And I’m not done yet.

Ruby squawks in surprise as I lift her at the waist, tearing her free of me. Bits of my cum spatter the bedspread as I set her beside on her hands and knees. I raise, kneel behind her.

She peers at me over her shoulder, a question and amusement in her gaze.

“Bond needs more strengthening,” I manage, laying my hands on the flawless cheeks of her ass.

“You’ve ruined him,” Jade laughs.

“Let’s ruin him some more.” Ruby strains back against my hands, and her white flesh puddles between my fingers. The pink lips of her pussy part slowly, still sticky with my cum.

My cock is still rock hard. Once wasn’t enough. Not after all that. And regaining the missing part of my soul was a tonic. Even after travel, after being nearly choked out by the last burst of Salana’s influence, I feel like a million crowns.

I push into Ruby with one long thrust.

She cries out in surprise and loses control, face hitting the blankets. The only reason I don’t slide free of her is my grip at the sides of her ass, holding her tight against me. I’m so deep my balls dangle against her clit.

Good. I start slow, then speed up, fucking her ruthlessly. My balls slap her tender bud over and over again, and with each impact she lets out a little whimper into the bedspread.

She cums almost as soon as I’ve started, body shivering as waves of pleasure wash over her. Jade doesn’t join her, seems more in tune with me, with the rising waves of heat in my belly. Her little moans intensify as I fuck Ruby harder and harder, and with each pass of my cock into the golem’s heat Jade’s voice gets higher and higher. Her breaths faster and faster.

My grip on Ruby’s ass is tight enough to bruise. She moans as I shift my fingers, pushes against me tighter. Her face creases as her soft flesh bunches between my fingers.

Experimentally, I release one hand. Give her a soft spank.

She whimpers, bites her lip. “More.”

I spank harder.

“Yes. Please, master.”

One last smack, full palm. Her thick ass rebounds, ripples deliciously. The spank tears her past the point of no return, and she cums again, her sobs swallowed by the bed.

She stays like that for a moment, unmoving, whole body trembling like a leaf. I take a moment to admire her; the blossom of her hair thrown over the ivory bedspread, the long arch of her back still curved with residual pleasure, her pale ass curving toward me invitingly. One red handprint marks the right side, almost points to where my cock sits buried half in her quivering pussy.

Gods. Am I dreaming? If so, don’t wake me up. Not ever again.

Jade is silent, as if she’s as speechless as me, but I can feel her. Disbelief, too, along with a lust I’ve never sensed from her before. One that’s new? Or something she’s hidden from me? Maybe this has pushed her past a wall of some kind… maybe it’s something she’s dreamed about as I lay sleeping, something she’s never acted on because we can never do what I’m doing to Ruby right now.

Thoughts for another time. Right now, I’m not even close to done with these two.

Ruby finally rises on shaky hands, glances over her pale shoulder at me. Her grin is feral, hungry, and the next time I thrust she squeezes the walls of her pussy, hugging me so tight I can’t draw free.

I gasp, dig fingers into her flesh. “How…”

“Vampiresses have control over their bodies in ways humans will never understand.” She gives a low laugh. “So, I guess I do, too.”

I try to withdraw. Probably could if I pulled hard enough. But she wants to play games? She’s got tricks?

I’ll play.

I reach down, wet my hands. A combination of my cum and hers, it coats my index finger. A finger that so happens to have a rune of pain carved above the second knuckle. Pain that I can control and intensify.

Pain that she seems to enjoy.

I touch it, activate it at its lowest intensity. A bee’s sting, nothing more.

Her ass is spread wide, inviting. I thrust my finger deep into the little star of her asshole.

Ruby squeals, so surprised her grip on my cock releases. She goes boneless again, falling to the bedspread with a cry that’s a combination of pain and pleasure. I follow her down, with my finger and my cock, as she lands on her belly.

“What… What did…” she manages.

“That was underhanded,” Jade chuckles.

“You loved it,” I say. And she did. I can feel it through the bond.

“More.” Ruby writhes against me. “Harder. Stronger.”

I turn up the pain. Only the tiniest nudge, the burn of your hand against a mug of boiling water.

It’s enough. I fuck Ruby with my cock and my finger, alternating one thrusting for the other. Her pants are desperate, hungry, and when she claws my blankets they come back in tatters. I can feel my cock through the walls of her body, feel the pain that passes into her, a remnant travelling through her into my shaft.

It’s delicious. I might have a pain kink.

Jade definitely does. Her moans are deeper, more frantic than Ruby’s. There’s something incredible in knowing that she can’t release until I do.

Which won’t be long. Ruby massages me with her pussy on every pass, now, milking me over and over again, watching me through that curtain of crimson hair. She bites her lip hard enough to draw blood at what she sees in my face, and with one last savage push against me, takes me to the point of no return.

I pull my finger free and grip her again as I cum. It’s somehow harder than the first time, pulling from deep inside me, and I empty what feels like a bucket inside of her. Jade cums with me, a process I still don’t understand and don’t care to, her medallion shaking and vibrating against my chest like it’s been electrified. Ruby’s orgasm takes us further, and her perfect heat pulls every drop from me.

We collapse to the torn bed, barely able to breathe. Through some black magic, Ruby wriggles from under me, then shoves me onto my back with a little push. She wraps around me, one hand on my chest and one leg over mine, her thigh snugged up against my wet cock. Her breath is hot in my ear.

Our bond thrums. I can feel her, feel Jade. Feel their absolute satisfaction. None of us speak.

We don’t need to.

For the first time in years, I feel something like happiness. Contentment. For a moment, with Jade at my chest and Ruby draped across me, I don’t think about revenge or anything else.

I exist in the moment.

And I fucking love being a golemancer.

9

Heavy knocking pulls me from sleep like a bucket of water poured over my head. It hammers the door like… well… a hammer, shaking the walls of my room. My lamps vibrate on their tables.

“What…” I try to sit up, but Ruby’s still wrapped around me like a second skin. Her eyes are wide, watchful. She’s not asleep, so why won’t she let me up?

Her lips peel back in a snarl.

She’s protecting me.

I pat her still bare ass with my pinned arm. “It’s okay. Probably Agatha.”

Jade frets. “No way. That was way too hard–”

The pounding repeats, so powerful the door almost comes off its hinges.

What the fuck?

There are murmurs behind the door. A woman cries out and a body hits the ground. Coral?

“Let me up,” I say.

Ruby detaches, springing to her feet with preternatural speed. Her fingernails are like claws poised at the door. Jade trembles, ready. I stand, fingers running across a series of runes. Protection, minor because I don’t have gems to power it, but better than nothing. Pain, ramped way higher than I used on Ruby. What else?

What is up with finding myself in dangerous situations completely naked, lately? Don’t want to make a habit of this.

I don’t have time to consider. After a quick murmur at the door, a voice pipes from the other side. Temple. “Rend! Rend, I apologize for my golem’s… exuberance. Open the door, please.”

I place a placating hand on Ruby’s wrist. “Let me. I know him.”

“Yes, master,” she snarls. “But if he tries anything, I’ll take his head.”

“One moment!” I call, wondering how Temple got past Agatha and her girls. They’re no slouches, and many are fighters or minor golemancers.

Then again, against Temple’s hulking rock golems and Sasha, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Why is Temple here? Our confrontation outside the brothel was less than twelve hours ago. What business could he possibly have so soon?

Rooker. The name intrudes, freezes me in place.

But no. If he thought I was up to anything like the former crime boss was, he wouldn’t have stopped his golem from taking the door off the hinges.

Nothing to do but find out.

I dash over to my wardrobe, pull a robe free. Securing it with a quick tug, I grab another. I have no women’s clothes, so it’ll have to do. I toss it to Ruby, then turn to open the door. I close Jade before I take the handle.

I crack it. The Inspector General peers through at me, face red with excitement. “Temple? What time is it? What happened to the girl outside the room? Why are you here?”

“If you’d allow me inside, I’ll answer,” he said. “One at a time.”

I sigh, making out Sasha just over his shoulder. Down the hall, Temple’s golems stand like mountains, filling the wide space. “They stay outside.”

“Not a fucking chance,” Sasha snarls.

Temple shrugs. “She is rather convincing.”

“Fine. Just her.”

They file in, then stop, eyes widening with surprise as they spot Ruby. I turn, a lie on my lips… That she’s one of Agatha’s new girls, and its none of their fucking business where I take my pleasure, and if they could kindly stop gawking…

Until I see why they’re staring.

The robe I tossed her lays on the ground, as if it’d impacted her arm and fallen. She hasn’t picked it up, hasn’t put it on. She stands, hand still up in a fighting stance, watching Temple and Sasha file in. Still completely naked.

Gods.

I rush to her, pick up the robe, and drape it over her shoulders.

“Polite society,” I murmur.

She doesn’t respond. Just watches Temple and Sasha like a hawk.

I turn, take in their appraising volley of glances. “She’s foreign,” I manage.

“Clearly,” Temple says, eyes still roaming curves barely hidden by the robe. It covers Ruby’s shoulders and not much else, considering her still upraised hands hold it open. “Nice to meet you.”

Ruby doesn’t answer, but her eyes dart to mine. “Old friend,” I murmur.

She relaxes, but only slightly, because along the bond I send a cocktail of emotion. Caution. Distrust. Be on guard.

She nods, the tiniest greeting to Temple.

She ignores Sasha completely. The other woman’s eyes narrow, sizing Ruby up.

Try it, bitch.

Or maybe not. I’d rather not have my room splattered with blood. I raise my hands. “Peace, everyone, peace. Temple? Scary girl? Can I get you a drink?”

Sasha’s cheeks flush, but Temple chuckles. “No, no thank you, Rend.”

I turn and pick up a decanter, pour myself a glass of wine. “Then, maybe we can move from the ‘dramatic mystery’ portion of your visit to the ‘answers’ part?”

Temple nods. “Absolutely. One, it is just after four in the morning.”

“Gods, don’t you sleep?”

“Not if I can help it. Two, I got in here by overpowering the girls that guard the place.” At my look of alarm, he pushes on. “Don’t worry. They aren’t hurt, aside from the firecracker outside your room. She was quite… angry. But she’ll wake with a slight headache and be none the wiser.”

“Not a good start, Temple. Hurting my friends.” A friend that had probably heard everything that’d happened in the room that night. I have to fight back a blush.

Well, she is a prostitute. I hope she enjoyed herself.

“Three,” Temple says, then hesitates, eyes darting to Ruby.

“I trust her,” I say.

Temple’s brow furrows. “I don’t.”

“Then… I don’t know.” I wave my hand. “Keep it general? Nonspecific?”

Temple considers, then nods. He steps forward to take my glass. “We’ve found him,” he says. Then he drains my cup.

“Found him?” I trail off. He can’t mean what I think he does.

Temple wipes a drop of wine from his mouth. “Yes.”

My vision darkens. I can’t breathe. Blood pumps in my ears like a dam collapsing.

Laskel.