he could taste the tang of tears in the air. Not embarrassment, he realized, shame.
“Never mind,” she began.
He held up his hand, cutting her off mid-sentence. He needed a minute, damn it. He’d been asked out before. He wasn’t some untried youth to be intimidated by a pretty girl. But this wasn’t just any pretty girl. This was Lia, the one woman in the world, hell, the one woman in the history of the world, that made him want to be something other than what he was, something better. He cracked the top of the water bottle and poured the cold liquid into his mouth. And immediately spit it out.
Instead of the sterile taste of purified water, the water inside the bottle was salty, rich with the taste of the ocean. He held the bottle up to the light and peered through the transparent plastic. There was nothing different about the bottle or the liquid inside, no obvious signs of taint or tampering.
Distantly he heard Lia ask what was wrong but he ignored her. He pulled out another bottle, twisted the cap and took a drink. Again, he spit out the water when the briny fluid touched his tongue. Over and over he repeated this process, his movements frantic until the last of the bottled water had been tested and tossed aside. All had the unmistakable taste of ocean water. He dashed to the sink and cranked on the faucet. He ran his fingers under the stream and brought them to his mouth. Salty. Briny with the flavors of the sea.
In his pocket, Duke’s ring began to vibrate. He could feel the growing heat of it against his hip.
Omar braced his clenched fists on the bar. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, pounding the nicked wood. “No. No way. This can’t be happening.”
Lia’s small hand tentatively touch his back. “Omar, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
He straightened and whirled to face her in one quick movement. “You need to go. You need to leave now. Hurry. Just go.” He grabbed her coat off the hook and pushed her away from the bar towards the front door.
She dug in her heels. “I’m not going anywhere until you explain what’s going on. You’re scaring me.”
“I don’t have time to explain,” he growled.
A rumble like distant thunder shook the room. Bottles fell from shelves, framed pictures and awards crashed to the floor. Objects began to fly through the room like broken toys being thrown by a toddler in a tantrum. Lia screamed as a broom winged through the air towards them. Omar batted the thing out of the air and drew Lia closer to his body, protecting her from other flying debris. He cursed as a chair whacked into his back, one of the legs glancing across the side of his head. It was crazy. It was pandemonium. It was chaos.
Amid the swirling wreckage, a puddle began to form on the worn linoleum floor. It bubbled and churned, taking on unnatural depth, darkening and thickening until it resembled a steaming mud pit. He heard Lia swallow heavily as she drew closer to Omar. He held her trembling body tightly and inched his way to the entrance. This did not bode well for any of them, and he had to get her out of there, away from him. It was the ring, the bloody Tablets of Destiny, which drew the turmoil. If he could get Lia away from it, she’d be safe.
“I should not do that if I were you.” A guttural, echoing voice chided them from the surrounding chaos in a language he’d not heard since his creation. “Neither you nor your mortal toy will escape me.” Gods! It really was her—Tiamat, creator of chaos, primordial goddess of the oceans, had returned.
Omar’s entire body stiffened as smoke seeped in from below the door. It smelled of foul herbs and sulfur and caused the demon inside of him to demand release. The scent was familiar and unwelcome.
It smelled like enemies.
If felt like family.
Sharp fangs exploded in his mouth and his hands grew bigger, longer, and developed razor-sharp talons. Aware of the fragile female huddled against his chest, he fought his body back. He had two contradictory needs: to defend and protect Lia from what he knew was coming and to protect himself from Lia ever discovering his demon nature. He had limited success in holding his demon back. The teeth and claws receded only slightly, and his overall girth increased, but to nowhere near his full size. He managed to keep the curved horns from sprouting atop his head, and the hard carapace that should cover his upper-body stayed hidden.
The dense smoke solidified, separated and formed hundreds of giant scorpions, each steel grey and the size of a grown-man’s forearm. They buzzed and clicked as they scurried towards them, stingers raised. They crawled over each other, wave after wave of poisonous beasts, targeting Omar and Lia. Lia screamed and tried to climb up Omar’s body. Her breathing came quick and harsh. He swung her up into his arms, pushed her face into the crook of his neck.
“My children return to me, Imhullu. Will you, too, return, my son?”
“Not a chance, Mom.” Omar kicked at a mutant scorpion that had skittered close to his foot. It squealed as it winged through the air. The venom of the creature wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like hell. Lia, on the other hand, would die a horribly painful death if one stung her. The clicks and shuffles of the armored creatures increased in intensity, as though they were angry on behalf of their punted brethren.
The cacophony of breaking bottles, crashing picture frames, colliding chairs and stools was deafening. Omar twisted and ducked, doing his best to keep Lia out of the line of fire. Though her weight was negligible to him, still it was awkward. Lia muttered against his neck. “This isn’t happening, it’s just a dream.” She whimpered as a wooden plaque whizzed by close enough to ruffle the ends of her ponytail. “It’s just a dream. Please, just a dream.”
“If you will not return, then you will die.”
Omar snorted. “Hell, I’m ready to get off this ride anyway. Things get a little boring after so many years, you know?” Though he addressed the bodiless voice, he focused his attention on the mass of scorpions that closed in on him and Lia. Hoping that Lia was too shocked to really pay attention to him, he allowed some of his power loose, sweeping a blast of wind towards them, knocking them back. It wasn’t much; he’d need to be fully manifested to do much more than that, and he was unwilling to risk that much unless he had no other choice.
The mud pit in the center of the room began to boil and steam, an odor like rotting fish permeated the air. The combination of the foul herb and sulfur scent of the scorpions and the rotting fish of the mud pit was nauseating, even for a demon like him. Long fingers of muck formed at the edges of the bubbling mass, stretching and twisting outward. Amid the gurgling and popping noises of the pit, an insidious hissing began. The slimy tendrils broke away, forming into writhing, sinuous individual creatures.
“Serpents.” Omar growled. Tiamat had always had a penchant for serpents. These were smaller than those she created at the height of her power, maybe three feet in length, but he had no doubt they were perilous. While he watched, details became more distinct: patterned scales in muted grays, browns and greens; featherlike fringes creating a mane below arrow-shaped heads; tiered rows of sharp venomous teeth. Nasty creatures. Dangerous creatures. In many ways, the serpents of Tiamat were worse than the scorpions. The scorpions’ stings would kill painfully, but quickly, which would be a blessing compared to the bite of a serpent. Just the tiniest nick from one of those sharp teeth would render its prey—human, demon, demigod, whoever—completely paralyzed. A victim would be fully aware but unable to do anything to stop the attack. The serpents would then proceed to eat their victim, much like a school of piranha devouring a cow. A horrible way to die, for anyone.
Though it made him feel like a parasite, he harnessed the energy created by Lia’s terror. Feeding from the darker human emotions was a standard demon trick, but he found the idea of using Lia in that way distasteful. However, needs must, as the VFW’s patrons like to say. If it came to a choice between feeding from Lia’s emotions and allowing her to die a viciously horrible death…well, there was no choice. Omar gathered the power, letting it build inside him. He visualized the energy as hundreds of in
dividual threads. Gathering them, one strand at a time, he threw them towards the serpents. Each strand became a crackling bolt of lightning—not large, no more than a couple of feet long—that targeted a serpent. With many sizzles and hisses, the serpents exploded into charred pieces. It wasn’t enough, though. For every creature he destroyed, two more crept out of the pit.
A piece of wood, probably from one of the many shelves set up along the walls to display veterans’ memorabilia, slammed across his back, reminding him that he had more to deal with than the multiplying serpents. The chaos of the room, the randomly flying objects, breaking bottles, toppling tables, seemed to be increasing in intensity. A step back to avoid a flying bottle—the Chivas from earlier—nearly had him tripping over a World War II era footlocker. The motion had Lia jerking her head away from Omar’s neck. Her scream coincided with the shocking pain that suddenly lanced from his back. He stumbled, one hand reaching back to toss away the scorpion that crawled up his leg and stung him. Though not a mortal wound, it would certainly slow him down.
With the force of his will, and the last of the power he’d taken from Lia, he sent a whirling dust devil, filled with shards of glass from the broken bottles, racing across