Mortal Danger

PROLOGUE

The audience hall was vast, hot, and noisy, an echoing oven of a space hollowed out of the remains of an ancient volcano. Gan scurried across the stony floor as fast as its stubby legs would carry it, watching out for shadows. Sometimes the crevices shifted. What looked like a shadow one day might, on the next, send you plummeting. Or make you look foolish, which was almost as bad.

There was no roof. The walls climbed jaggedly up and up to the exposed sky at the rim of the caldera, black and empty. Gan’s skin crawled at all that overhead emptiness, though it knew Xitil’s pets wouldn’t bother it. Not this time.

Courtiers of every ilk fought or chatted among the carved columns thrusting up from the floor—here a fourteen-foot granite phallus, there a set of gaping onyx jaws big enough to swallow an ox.

Not that half these idiots knew what an ox was, Gan thought with a sniff as it rounded a set of rosy labia formed from quartz. Gan did, though. It might be young, it might be small, but it knew more about the human realm than any of them.

Which was why it had been summoned. A shiver of mingled dread and anticipation fled down Gan’s spine. Drawing the notice of the Most Feared was not safe.

But oh, it was apt to be interesting.

Gan was so busy mentally chortling over the possibilities that it trotted around a grasping stone talon a little too quickly—and dropped flat to the ground, its hearts hammering in terror.

A long snake of a tail, spiked and deadly, whizzed over its head.

Idiot! Gan screamed at itself silently. Acting like a two-year imp instead of a full demon—daydreaming in the hall! It had almost bumped into one of Xitil’s Claws. You did not want to startle a Claw. Their reflexes were as swift as their wits were slow.

At least Gan had stopped short of real insult. It hadn’t actually touched the Claw.

“What’s this?” The high-pitched voice came from several feet above Gan’s head. This Claw was female, or mostly, Gan decided. “A bug?”

Gan’s field of view consisted of the dusty rock floor, but out of the corner of its eye it saw a scaly foot as long as one of its arms. The claws protruding from the four thick toes were thick and yellow and sharp.

Don’t breathe yet, it told itself. The immediate danger was over, but Xitil’s Claws were as touchy as they were stupid.

“Maybe.” The second voice was raspier, possibly male, and came from the left of the first one. By cutting its eyes as far to the right as possible, Gan could just glimpse another pair of clawed feet. “Or some kind of parasite. Better step on it.”

“Great One,” Gan squeaked, “a thousand pardons. This one deserves to be squashed, yes, squashed flat for intruding upon you, but I beg you to withhold your foot. I am summoned.”

“Summoned?” A clawed foot curled around Gan’s ribs. Idly the Claw rolled Gan over on its back, and Gan stared up into the golden glow of the Claw’s forward pair of eyes. “You think it’s stupid enough to try to lie about that, Hrrol?”

“Looks stupid enough for almost anything. Better step on it.”

“Oh, Great One, I am stupid indeed for having offended, yet not brainless enough to lie about the Most Feared. If I do not speak truth, punish me twice, thrice over—punish me endlessly—but for now, allow me to answer my summons.” You great, dumb doff! If I were stupid, I couldn’t lie, could I? Not even just with words. And if Xitil’s unhappy with me for being late, she’ll be unhappy with you for having delayed me.

“Won’t be much left of it to punish if it’s lying,” the Claw on the left observed. “Better smash it now. Or at least remove that puny excuse for a tail.”

Gan bristled. It was quite proud of its new tail— which maybe wasn’t as long and prehensile as the Claw’s, but was wonderfully strong and had lovely spikes along it.

“No,” the first one said regretfully. “If Xitil has some use for this bug, she might wish it to keep its pathetic little lump of a tail. Later,” she decided. “I will punish it later. What’s your callname, bug?”

“I am called Gan, Great One.” May worms eat you.

“You are a lucky bug, Gan, for I must bow to the whim of the Most Feared, who may prefer you whole. I release you.”

“Thank you, Great One.” Gan scrambled to its feet, bowing as it retreated. “May your claws grow ever longer and sharper, the better to rend your prey.” And may your prey not hurt itself laughing at your stupidity.

Once out of range of the Claws, Gan paid better attention to its surroundings as it hurried to the hottest end of the hall. Here the rocks glowed dull red in their artful tumble around the entrance to the tunnel that led to Xitil’s private chambers. No courtiers lingered at this end of the huge hall. If Xitil wished to see her subjects, she joined them. If she didn’t, who would go to her uninvited?

Gan was invited. With dread and a chest-puffing sense of its own importance—not to mention very hot feet— Gan crossed the threshold.

It immediately felt more comfortable. The ceiling of the rocky tunnel was irregular, but nowhere was it higher than twenty feet. There was only one sharp defensive twist in the tunnel, a mark of Xitil’s confidence. No one had tried to depose her for a long, long time.

The tunnel narrowed at the end; few of her courtiers and none of her nobles could pass into her chambers upright. Gan could, though. It trotted toward the pinkish-purple light at the end of the tunnel, its brow wrinkled. Pink usually meant she was cheerful, or maybe horny. Purple, though…

Gan stepped from the hot, dry tunnel into steamy pink mist, as if the air itself were sweating in the heat Xitil craved and created. The floor here was polished obsidian, slippery and wet. And there facing it, lounging on the mounded pillows on her couch, was Xitil the Most Feared—rockshaper and tyrant, weathermaster and prince of hell. A paroxysm of awe and lust froze Gan in its tracks.

“Gan.” Her voice rumbled through the mist, an audible caress. “Come here.”

Shivering in fear and arousal, it obeyed.

Her immense, undulate form glistened in the directionless light, the flesh as rosy and damp as an aroused vulva. And dense, oh so deliciously dense to Gan’s üther sense, each roll and fold of her packed with lives. Her foremost arms were bent to prop her up, the jewel-tipped claws partially retracted.

Xitil favored breasts lately. She’d grown six of them, and the upper pair were bare. The nipples were hard little nuggets framed by aureoles as red as her eyes—which crinkled with amusement.

“Gan,” she whispered, “you haven’t greeted my guest. Do so.”

It jolted to a stop, eyes widening. Would it be punished? She’d told it to come to her, but… obey, idiot, Gan told itself. It tore its gaze away from Xitil, and its eyes widened as it at last noticed who—or what—stood to the left of Xitil’s couch.

A. human. How odd. They did show up from time to time—many of the courts had private deals with one or more of the species—but why would Xitil want Gan to meet one?

No, it realized a second later. That was no human, whatever form she might be wearing. She’d done something to cloak her energies so Gan read little… but what it read made it shiver again.

The rumors were right. Xitil was entertaining a very strange ally.

Or potential meal? Surely even she wouldn’t dare… but Gan had been told to greet the Most Feared’s guest, not to speculate. It cleared its throat and bowed deeply. “Revered One, forgive me if, in the depths of my ignorance, I address you incorrectly.”

The girl—for that was what she looked like, a brown-haired, brown-eyed human girl of perhaps fifteen years— smiled kindly at it. “Many from this cycle do not know Me. You are forgiven.” She glanced at Xitil. “You are sure? This one looks rather…”

“Unprepossessing?” Xitil chuckled, a low rumble that made her breasts quiver. “It’s young and weak and too curious for its own good, but you do not require a warrior. Gan has the skills you do need. It can cross unsummoned, and I can use it to pass instructions and information to your tool.”

“Ah. And the other tool I requested?” the girl asked.

Xitil ran a claw idly along the great mound of her hip, parting the veils so the lush curls of her pubes peeked out. “That was predicated upon our original plan. You did not open the Gate. Nor have you been willing to honor my one personal request.”

Threat—challenge—power rippled through the air, power so vast Gan had no reference for it. In one quick, nauseous plunge, it fell into vertigo as gravity tugged, released, and clenched again around it. Its hearts stopped beating altogether.

As quickly as the storm had hit, it passed.

The girl laughed, a light, carefree sound. “Oh, look— we have frightened poor Gan. It would be a shame if we harmed it with our little testings, wouldn’t it? But really, Xitil, it is too bad of you to taunt me sexually. You know my feelings about that sort of thing.”

Oh. Oh! So that’s who She was…

Xitil shrugged and didn’t reply.

The girl who wasn’t a girl at all turned to study Gan. “I suppose such tools are not plentiful, and yet it’s so small. The size of a human child. No matter how its form is altered, it won’t present the appearance I need.”

“You think not?” Xitil’s eyes glowed, “Gan.”

Gan’s attention fixed entirely on its prince, for beneath the syllable of its callname reverberated a tug on its true-name.

“Grow.”

Gan scrunched its face unhappily and obeyed—a trifle slowly, perhaps, but she hadn’t said to hurry. It was twelve feet tall and very uncomfortable when Xitil spoke again.

“Stop.”

Gan obeyed that command gladly and then concentrated on holding itself steady while the nongirl studied it.

“Amazing,” she said at last. Her voice sounded distant;

Gan’s ears were too attenuated to catch sounds properly. “I had no idea you could disperse yourselves that way.” She cocked her head. “I can see through its hands.”

Xitil chuckled. “Poor Gan. It lacks the substance to expand greatly, but it will do for your purposes. Resume your usual size, Gan.”

Gan dropped back into its normal density with a sigh of relief.

“I have a job for you,” she told it. “How would you like to drink a little blood?”

“I would like that,” it answered honestly. “Whose?”

“A human’s. She will be brought here.”

Brought here? Gan’s eyes grew large. This, it realized, was why Xitil had allied with the one who looked like a brown-eyed girl. Part of the reason, anyway. Xitil’s games were never simple. Xitil’s guest would bring a human here for Gan to… to… Gan whispered, “You wish me to possess this human, Most Feared?”

Xitil smoothed her hair over one breast with a ruby-tipped claw. “There. I knew you couldn’t be entirely ignorant. You did eat old Mevroax, after all.”

“And—and the human will go back to its realm?” Gan’s senses were whirling. To be able to experience the human realm as a human—it would eat and drink and fuck as humans do, and see so much! So much more than it had ever been able to see or do before—

“She’d be of little use to me here. Of course she will be returned. But you will not be able to possess her immediately, Gan. She is a sensitive.”

Gan’s mouth opened. Just in time, it closed it again. The Most Feared must know some way to get behind a sensitive’s barriers, or she would not have brought Gan here. And it was never a good idea to question her.

“Very wise, Gan.” Fortunately, Xitil was amused rather than annoyed by Gan’s near gaffe. Whatever she planned to do with the human, it had put her in a high good humor. “Your unvoiced thoughts are quite correct, though. Normally breaching a sensitive would present a problem, but my guest will deal with that.”

Gan’s gaze swung back to the brown-eyed girl. It swallowed. Xitil had earned her title of Most Feared, yes. But this one…

The girl smiled at it sweetly. “Don’t fret, Gan. What I will use to open the human to your possession won’t harm you. Demons are not subject to guilt.”

Gan felt a wave of relief. That made sense. Humans, with their pesky, mysterious souls, were always vulnerable to guilt. Even sensitives could be reached that way. Not by demons, of course, but the gods specialized in souls and guilt and worship and such, didn’t they?

“You will be directed by another tool of mine,” the girl told it. “Xitil, with your permission… ?”

Xitil didn’t reply, but the rocks near the girl groaned and parted, revealing another tunnel. A few minutes later, a human male stepped out. His face held the usual assortment of features—unremarkable, Gan thought, even for a human. He wore one of those suits that betokened status in the western nations of Earth and carried a black staff that matched him in height.

Gan sniffed. It was to take orders from this man? Why, he was no more prepossessing than Gan was. His energy was thin, not at all powerful.

The staff he held, however… Gan squinted at the length of wood, reading it more carefully. Huh. That was odd. The staff had power, but it read as empty rather than dense.

“Most High,” the man whispered, his attention fixed on the girlish avatar. His eyes glowed with what Gan supposed was worship. “How may I please you?”

She smiled at him. “This little one is called Gan. It will do your bidding when you return. Gan.” She turned to it, still smiling. “This is the Most Reverend Patrick Harlowe. When the time comes, he will assist you.”

Gan dared a question of the brown-haired girl, borrowing the mode of address the human had used. One could never be too courteous in dealing with such as She. “May this puny one ask who I will be drinking from, Most High?”

“Her name is Lily. Lily Yu.”