To Live.
Before we get started. This piece is the continuation of this one. I was inspired very much by Will Ramos’ cover of Chokehold by Sleep Token. So if you didn’t catch it read story 1 first I also included the last paragraph from that part here, then if you want to check out the music you can do so. Enjoy!
Lostrus stood up and when he let her hand go she ran her hands over his arms, picked his hands back up to look at them, then she put her fingers in his beard and smiled. “Did the bloodsucker give you a name?” He had to clear his throat, “Naram-Sin.” She nodded and put her arms around him to pull him into a tight embrace, “good news Naram-Sin. You, are not the father.”
–
He sighed and wanted to squirm out of her embrace but allowed it. She was taller, she wore a face different to the one she had worn, he bent to smell her hair and smiled without realizing it. Even under the thin faux human scent he could smell her, after so long apart he realized she did not in fact smell like the other woman, the woman they both thought to have been her mother of sorts, hell she didn’t even smell like him beyond their common alal blood. When he got her at arm’s length he stared in her big black eyes, no I’m not your father.”
A sense of relief he did not want to think about washed through him as she finally released him, she was laughing and did a little twirl. “Now, Naram-Sin we must talk. Sit, this place is ours until I tell them otherwise. How was your visit with the leech? Is she really as changed as I’ve heard?” He held her chair out and she tittered, “manly and mannered.” He just stared at her then took off his jacket and sat, still frowning. “She is, changed. She doesn’t seem to remember her life. She was-” as he settled in his chair, he frowned trying to find the right phrase, “she is a new thing.” Lostrus grinned at him, “aren’t we all.”
She was watching him closely; he was still settling into his human skin. He was trying not to squirm, and she watched him struggle to just sit in the chair rather than perching on it as had been his habit of doing for years. “Is this form comfortable for you Naram-Sin?” He tried his grapefruit juice again and liked it, he needed to gather his flying thoughts. “Yes? It is, small.” She laughed, “no it isn’t. It just isn’t as big as your other.” Naram-Sin fell quiet, he still wasn’t used to conversation. She was patient, he appreciated that she didn’t endlessly yammer to fill the silence. He had too many questions, he needed to know so much and had no idea how to begin. Unlike his childer, he had never been able to see into Lostrus’ the way he could the others, even when she’d just arrived, she was opaque to him.
He watched her order them a table full of food, her big black eyes were bright and happy she gestured. “I love this food. I went to the nation of China and there are so many people. So much food. Here.” He watched her dish food onto a plate for him, babbling about spices, textures, mushrooms. It made him smile, since her strange toddlerhood she had loved Chinese food almost to the exclusion of other human foods, she pointed at the spicy things, poured him tea and settled happily. He watched with the chopsticks and picked up his own; it took a few tries to get the tiny things to work right but he managed to get some food in his mouth, “this is, delicious.”
They ate in companionable silence, Naram-Sin occasionally held up something with a brow arched and she explained. When the table was cleared, the tea poured and the humans left them alone in the building, she leaned back and smiled. “Ask.” He frowned at her; she had always been able to read him in a way he hated. “You said I am not your father; how can that be so? I remember your mother.” She nodded, “that’s reasonable. But was she, my mother? I saw her, I remember her too.”
He shook his head slowly, “was she?” His memory of the time was still clouded, “no. I-” the memory surfaced clearly for the first time in years. He’d been incandescent with rage and pain, lost in the Abyss ready and willing to destroy everything. The succubus who wandered into his path; her arrival telegraphed by the luscious fertile scent of her, it was the right creature in the wrong moment. In his haze he’d not seen the seven-foot tall, scaled creature as she came out of the darkness to him, no he saw the other woman, the one he’d left behind.
Naram-Sin leaned back in his seat; his gaze unfocused as he let the memory spool out. In that moment he knew deep down his anger was pain, mourning. He’d had so many dreams. Not the least of which had been a child. A beautiful little brown child with her mother’s eyes and his long, beautiful hands, when he closed his eyes her face, yes, he remembered the flash of it in his thoughts as he’d taken the succubus. Worst, he thought he remembered how he felt the first time he saw what he thought was his daughter, but he pushed that away. “All right. Where did you come from?”
She nodded, “that I do not know. I heard you, Alal. I heard your heart and I understood we have a connection. Your heart said little girl, child. The succubus was perhaps only good timing, I needed a gateway.” He nodded a little, “and you were born.” She held up her glass of grapefruit juice for a toast, “yes and so I was born. It only made sense to be your daughter. No?” Of course, it did. He thought about that hazy time, had he let himself remember incorrectly?
He leaned back in his chair staring down at the glass in his hand, with time and distance he knew he did remember what really happened the night Lostrus followed his trail into the world. She leaned back and watched him work it out, it took him a bit to figure out what he needed to ask. “I see. Do I understand then that you are, not Alal?” He said the words slowly as if they tasted strange, she shrugged. “Yes. No. Does it matter?” She tilted her head and blinked at him; the acute angle made him smile. The smile felt good, easy, natural and it made him touch his face.
“No, it doesn’t. What have you been doing? Why now?” Naram-Sin watched her, there was something still slightly off about her glamour. She was beautiful yes, her brown skin radiant, full lips soft and lush, but as he leaned closer, he got it and she frowned at him and leaned back, “what, why are you looking at me like that?” He stood and moved around the table; his brows still knit. He took her face in his big hands and let himself feel a kind of warm pleasure spread from his palms, to touch something so soft, so sweet smelling that didn’t reek of terror touched something in him. He ran his thumb over her cheekbone, “your eyes. You still can’t quite get human eyes right.” She blushed a little and he smiled wider a little amazed.
“Neither do you. Did you look at yourself Naram-Sin?” Without intending to Naram-Sin leaned forward a little more, his big hands still on her face, the little smile tugging at his mouth. He spent time examining her face for the first time in many years, he could see beyond the beautiful but silly glamour. He didn’t move back when the glamour disappeared, he moved as her body adjusted and changed, when her human face was gone, he touched her cheek.
Her natural form was breathtaking, her skin soft as buttery leather, black as night. He ran his fingertips softly over the bony protrusions on her cheekbones, down the ridged center of her nose to the cupids bow of her lips. He looked at her with different eyes, a gaze unclouded by pain and rage, unclouded by his own assumptions of his power. No, this was not his child and she never had been. “Is this real?” He caressed the delicate thorny ridge of her brow. She turned her face into his palm and her eyes closed. She heaved a deep sigh and he wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck.
Emboldened by her apparently pleasure he took his time touching her face, the thick locs hanging down her back, he felt her start trembling and he didn’t pull away, but his roaming fingers stopped moving. “Is this, is it too much?” Anyone who knew either of them would have been shocked. He felt her throat move under his fingertips, he answer was a hot whisper that made him shiver. “No one but you has ever touched me with-”
He started to pull his hands away, uncertainty mingling with the slow arousal and hunger he felt. She put her hands on his to stop him, “with reverence.” It was true, he couldn’t help himself. He felt his body trembling and couldn’t stop it, he moved his fingers again along the soft black skin on her neck, his fingertips moving to brush her collarbones and the elegant way the markings etched into the flesh felt. His fingers stopped on an intricate sigil at the base of her throat, “how could I not? You are- this” he stroked the sigil, feeling the lines, some raised others cut deeply into her flesh, “this is true?”
Lostrus finally opened her eyes and looked up at him, he cupped her chin and rubbed a thumb over her lower lip thoughtfully as she decided if she wanted to answer. “That is the question we must answer. But first life.” He frowned and started to pull away, “I’m not fucking breeding you like some gods damned-” before he could get into his rant her giggle stopped him, “so eager Naram-Sin. You have much to remember, fun first. I will show you how to hunt.”
When she stood up so close to him, he let himself look again but, with a gaze unclouded by the lies he’d tried so hard to force himself into believing. He still felt hesitant, but she put her arms around his waist and pulled him close, her black eyes never leaving his. “You still hang on to those human thoughts. We do not obey their rules. I am not of your blood. Not of your flesh. You were never my father. Why do you think it is that the others never destroyed me? Do you think Dayna never tried?” He frowned at her, “she did what?” Lostrus laughed, “more than once. Even when I asked her to. Dayna doesn’t hate me for being like her, she hates me because I am not.”
He stroked his hand over her coily hair and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, holding her tight enough to hurt. “If you knew, why did you call me that.” Lostrus chuckled, “oh you’ll see. Now look at me again Naram-Sin.” She stepped back and straightened her back; he gave her a long up and down look. “See me Naram-Sin. We will live in this world of men and their rules but, fuck this world their men and their rules. We will do as we fucking, please. This is what I have learned and what you must remember. And so Naram-Sin what do you see?”
He stepped back and really looked at her. Yes, the human skin she draped herself in was attractive. When he looked past her glamour, he saw the monster she truly was. She started to walk around him slowly, he turned just as slowly to watch her. Naram-Sin didn’t feel only simple human lust, that would have been simple. If he’d only wanted to take her and tear her apart after, he would have felt more at ease. No, he wanted her and what she offered.
From the outside, the few humans in the empty restaurant saw only the woman they viewed as their goddess allowing the strange man access to her, they could only dream of. None of them had been blessedly allowed so close and Naram-Sin felt their fear, their jealousy but beneath that, beyond it he felt that they would take his place in a heartbeat. Several of them knew she’d kill them, she’d kill them badly and yet, they wanted it and he wanted her.
“I see you Lostrus.” When she passed again, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her close, he watched the white bleed out of her eyes, his own followed. “Show me.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek she hesitated, and he put his arms around her and pulled her off her feet to kiss her lips. When she didn’t fight, she didn’t flail, she got her arms around his neck and let him kiss her as he needed to, when he pulled back, he leaned his forehead against hers and whispered, “I see you. Ana Harrani Sa Alaktasa La Tarat, the road-”
She finished for him, “Whose Course Does Not Turn Back.”
Around them the restaurant fell away to encroaching darkness, there with their arms around each other, Lostrus’ servants were used to her doing such things and stayed far back. She whispered as they were enveloped in the shadows, “we’re going to have so much fun.” He knew she was taking him someplace and when they arrived he looked down at her after glancing around. “Back to the beginning I see.”
They stood on the sidealk in front of a small dive bar, a single neon sign flickered as cyclically as it could and flashed light on all manner of creatures going inside, bickering, feeding, it read.
Ben’s Tavern.