Page 47 of Bloody Bargain
“Best not to wearmyn chalis.She is far away, and I am hungry for her.”
My voice was as deep as a mountain cavern as I lifted my great head and bared thousands of needle teeth in my long snout. Scales rose across my lithe serpentine body like tinkling glass that echoed throughout the mountain and clashed with the thunder.
“You are easy to follow, my friend, what with that very impressive light show.”
Gamil stood on the banks and their visage speared me. Tessa. Her stormy gaze, such a cold brown as to be almost grey. Her brassy curls stuck to her forehead from the rain. They glared at me through her eyes, and I hummed appreciatively, writhing over my hundreds of spinal tines, slipping through the muck and sediment as I snapped my jaws and the sound echoed like a bite of lightning.
“Did I not make myself clear, Gamil? I will devour you whole if you insist on looking so delicious.”
“We do not choose how we look.Youdo, you stupid eel.”
I lowered my nostrils to them, pulling their clothing and hair towards my lungs with the force. They were only as tall as my major fangs, but unperturbed by my form as an unbound spirit. I was the sea serpent of human legend, decorating maritime maps and illuminations throughout written history. Ancients believed I was the guardian of life, death, and rebirth, the god of the sea.
Withmyn chalisto complete my spirit, perhaps I was.
Gamil felt the smug shift in my thoughts as I wondered what a true god would taste like, and their jaw ticked. It was most becoming. Even if her scent was marred by their swill, it was worth dragging in again to taste that faint–
“When you came to me as my brother, you never smelled of him.”
That tick in Gamil’s jaw tightened, then released into a smirk.
“We nevervisitedyour brother, did we?”
He had visited—
My vision exploded in a veil of white anger. I reared above the fallen god and smashed down onto their shoulders, battering them into the ground like a meteor. The tail anchoring me to the lake bed ripped free as I broke into hundreds of thousands of waves, filling the lake up with a column of tidal force that crashed over the banks and dug new groves into the land.
I dug my forearm into their neck, leaning the weight of my most human form—the one mine Tessa knew—against their trachea. My tail whipped behind me in agitation, cracking like lightning as the end broke the air faster than sound.
“What did you do to her?” I snarled.
Gamil shrugged one shoulder, playing a nonchalant game. It was ruined by their life essence oozing from one nostril, bright orange and full of the stuff of creation.
“We simply lended her a hand while shopping. Hardly a trespass. You really should complete your exchange, though. A leviathan in a suspended mating is the surliest creature we’ve ever encountered, and our children eat people for sport.”
I pressed my claws harder into the ball of their shoulder and Tessa’s face grimaced. Orange stained the inside of the collar of her shirt, catching my eye.
I ripped the fabric to find a wound. It smelled of her, therealher, and warmed my scales.
“She stabbed you?” I asked, one brow piqued.
Gamil’s smirk widened, exposing a mouthful of curved fangs. What an oddly warming sight, mine Tessa with a b’adruokh’s mouth. Their eyes lit with mischief as the curl of her hair relaxed and leeched of color, growing to the lengths of my brother’s tresses.
“With a fork, if you can believe it. We like her very,verymuch.”
Something cold slid between us and my scales stood on end. The hilt of my meteoric dagger split the breath between our chests, and my brother’s face replaced that of my beloved. The scar I’d left between his ribs the last time I used it was luminous where it rend his scales.
“You will aid us?”
“We’re helpingher.Be a pity if our children killed her, is all. Your dagger will give her a fighting chance. For a while, at least.” My brother’s four pupils glanced to the northeast. “Biggest family reunion we’ve ever seen, and they’re all headed towards your coast, D’abeloloa. Same way as your golden cup. Really, we suggest you drink your fill of each other soon, lest they catch up before all’s done.”
I stood, my clawed feet sinking into the mud for the first time in two days, tail skimming over the engorged embankment. I unsheathed the dagger that had been my closest weapon for millennia, a gift from a long forgotten pharaoh of Kemet. The meteor had still been warm from collision when the blade was smelted, and now the universe glowed in its ripples like Damascus steel. It hadn’t aged a day.
Or perhaps Gamil was helping me more than they would admit.
“Thank you,” I said, returning it to its sheath.
“Oh, there’s no need. We sincerely hope you die. As we said, it is for your chalice. A gift of matrimony, let’s call it.”
