Getting shot hurts a lot. It's not something I'd choose to repeat but it's happened to me more than once. When it does happen I deal with it and do what I can to move on till the next thing clobbers me even worse. It's a shitty life but I make due.
In the course of my career as a wizard I've been beaten, shot, stabbed, mauled, gored, flayed, cooked, scorched, and scourged but nothing - and I mean nothing - hurt as bad as waking up from that damn lightning. Every single muscle and fiber of my body was clenched up, a fact exacerbated by the thick manacles keeping me strapped to the wall.
Hell, I had a freaking charlie horse in my spleen and I'm not even sure what that part of the body does. Hey, GED remember? Human biology isn't exactly my thing. I can tell you what parts are supposed to be on the inside and how to do basic first aid, but more that that and you're out of luck.
Peering into the near darkness of the room, I could barely see anything. What I could see didn't do much to enhance my calm. Flickering torchlight illuminated the vague outlines of ornately carved furniture, shaped into beasts and birds. Sneering jackals and ibis stared back at me through the dusky shadows, jeweled eyes sparkling with anticipatory glee in the near dark.
I breathed in, and hated myself for it. I breathed out and hated myself more as I blinked the starlight out of my eyes.
Get a grip Harry, I thought to myself. You're a wizard, you're unstoppable, you're... naked….
The jerks didn't need to take my clothes. That was just cheating.
They'd even taken my rings and shield bracelet and they'd bathed me. That was… new, even for me.
I'd been knocked out a bunch of times before, but this was the first time I woke up clean for my troubles. Now if only my ears would stop ringing it might even be a nice upgrade from the usual post-knockout capture. I could still smell the odor of flowers and perfume on my skin. And, unless I was highly mistaken, my face had been shaved.
Wait- my face and my head?
Not just my head - Oh hells bells, my everything had been shaved bald.
That was just wrong on so many levels.
I didn't know what Heka had planned for me that required me to be hairless but I damn well didn't plan to stick around and find out. I focused my magic to break the locks on my cuffs and screamed in pain. A searing sensation of pure agony shot from the manacles into my body, pulsing through me without mercy. I managed not to pass out, but just barely.
I tried to do it a second time when soft hand caressed my cheek and a beautiful voice whispered softly, "I would not do that, my host. They were made to restrain your kind."
The fallen angel ran her hands over my chest, pearly white digits glowing slightly as they caressed my muscles with delicious deliberation. Every place she touched went blissfully numb, agony dissipating under her ministrations. God it felt so good I didn't even have the heart to stop her.
"Those were created in the time before we were allowed to return to Earth, forged by the old gods to restrain your kind. Nicodemus made his thorned manacles in imitation of them." She sighed sadly. "Magic will not avail you my host. The more you try to channel, the more pain you will inflict upon yourself."
"But you could numb the pain then?" I groaned petulantly, looking for something to talk about that wouldn't draw my attention closer to the etherial woman's prominent and exposed bosom as she drew close to me, massaging my arms.
"Enough for those? In my current form?" She chided, "Unlikely, there are limits to my power."
"Let me guess?" I snorted derisively, "Call the coin, join you and we shall rule over the galaxy together as fallen angel and mortal puppet?"
"I prefer to think of it as a working partnership." Lasciel sighed irritatedly, caressing my face. "Have I done anything to earn your mistrust?"
"I've seen what happens to long term members of the Nickelheads Lash, it aint happening to me. Not while I can still draw breath." I winced in agony as she pulled back her hands and scowled at me, a hard edge working into her voice.
"That may cease to be relevant sooner than you think my host. I do not think you appreciate the gravity of your situation." Her lip curled in disgust. "The old gods were nightmares, skilled in ferromancy beyond your wildest imagining. Whatever you think of Nicodemus, I assure you Heka is worse."
"Oh come on," I groaned. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Dresden," My ears twitched at Lasciel's use of my proper name. "Fear of the Egyptian pantheon is why we were first allowed to interact with mortals after the death of the Son."
That the we in question was the cadre of fallen angels attached to a handful of silver coins needed not be said. That it scared me silly hardly needed be voiced either. "Come again?"
"My host, have you never stopped to ask why groups like the Vampire Courts came to be? Have you simply assumed that the creatures that go bump in the night have always been there?"
"Uh." I'd never even begun to consider it.
"The Drakul? The Incubus? The blood-born? The sons of Jade?" The Fallen angel leaned in and whispered into my ear, her hot breath tickling tantalizingly against my skin. "They have not. Weapons, all of them, forged to expel those who do not belong. Even they have forgotten, but the memory of the fallen is eternal. The desperate will seek what allies they may."
"What?" I squawked, agitating my neck in a way I immediately regretted.
"The usurper gods swam the stars in their husk like bodies, leathery snake-like monsters red in tooth and claw. Monstrous scavengers of the ruins of the children of Eden. They conquered all creatures in the sky, slaughtering the things they met till they came to a land touched by the first blood of Eden," The Angel spoke clinically. "And they found the fruits of Eden, the children of the first blood. "
"Fruits of eden." I sighed. "Want to give me the cliffs notes on that one Lash?"
"The Old Gods adore mortal bodies." Lasciel sighed. "They were taken with a deep lust for manflesh."
"Lusted for?" I blanched, looking down at my nude form.
"Not that way my host." She snorted in amusement at my relieved expression. "Don't get too relaxed. He still desires your flesh, but as his host. You are far preferable to his current mortal man flesh or even the flesh of their nigh immortal monsters."
"Uh… why would a 'nigh-immortal' creature be a worse host than humans? It's not like we -" I swore as it hit me. "Hell's bells and buckets of blood. Wizards, they want wizards."
"Yes my host." She smiled approvingly. "Precisely. And you know what is coming. "
The soul gaze I'd nearly been drawn into with Heka played back across my mind. Oh my god, the soul of his host was still there, trapped like Rasmussen had been. A slave to his own body, it was a fate I didn't care to contemplate.
"So why haven't they been back if they wanted us so much?" I queried, shivering as breeze swept past a part of me not used to breezes. "If we're so ideal?"
"Wizards are long lived stock, but even the talents of the usurpers gods can only extend the lives of their shells so long. They do not have the fires of hell or creation burning in their veins. What wizards they took were hollow and insane after the first millennia, useless husks that had to be replaced." A superior note of satisfaction eked into her voice at the idea of the 'usurper gods' being inferior. "By which time there were too many predators seeded within the mortal races, too many hidden wizards to control. They forfeited the mortal realms for their hiding places in the shadow of stars and hidden realms of creation. But their lust continues long after for the forbidden fruit."
"Lash what are you saying?" I swallowed nervously.
"Dresden, today you will become a host. " The fallen Angel's lip curled in satisfaction. "To me or to the usurper but it will happen."
"Oh fuck that!" I growled, twisting in my bindings till the pain became too much and I hung there, panting. Lash stood there in her Roman tunic, arms crossed beneath her generous bosom, chuckling to herself. To hell with her, I wasn't anybody's sock puppet.
I was so busy glaring at her and trying to figure a way out of the room that I hadn't even noticed that we weren't alone any more. Three women walked into the room carrying clay pots, naked as the day they were born. Carmel skinned and tattooed with sweeping patterns of ornate hieroglyphs that led up to a thick gold collar covered in hanging hunks of jade, they sauntered over to me, chanting in high pitched unison as they approached me.
"Uh, hi." So it wasn't my most articulate moment, sue me.
They ignored me, busying themselves with paintbrushes and clay pots. They mixed tones of henna from them and approached me with brushes, continuing their chant. Ritual magic, it had to be.
"Get away from me, You slutty knock-off Cleopatra wannabes!" I snarled, trying to knee them away from me.
The shackles binding my arms and legs yanked back hard, propelled by some unseen force, stretching my limbs tight to prevent their motion. I cursed at them, screaming the most vile and anatomically impractical obscenities I could think of as I struggled to shift my chest to prevent them from finishing the ritual symbols.
The lead woman scowled at me and pulled a long rod from the wall. She pressed it against my chest and pushed forward. With an energetic orange crackling burst of power that set my teeth on edge the device pulsed through my body, numbing my muscles beyond use. I fell slack in my shackles, only my eyes able to move under their own power.
At least nothing hurt any more.
Lasciel's shadow wandered around the women, observing their ornate patterns of painted henna. She chuckled to herself in amusement, "Must you endure this on principal alone? Does it serve a purpose to be degraded like this? Take the power that is yours, summon me!"
"Gufynae guuu," I slurred though my numb lips and tongue, vainly willing my chest to move away from the henna brush. The beginnings of an intricate helix of wrapped serpents now wove it's way down my chest.
"You are a fool my host," Lash growled in desperate irritation. "Summon the coin! Summon it!"
My vision swam in agony as I tried to will the cuffs to open, causing another burst of pain from the cuffs powerful enough to knock me senseless, causing the women to yelp satisfyingly as they were caught peripherally within it. I couldn't say how long I was out, but by the time my eyes opened again the women had already finished their task. My body was entirely covered in intricate patterns of henna, ritualistic markings of very alarming portent.
The trio kneeled on the ground before me, heads bowed in deferential silence. I suppose it wouldn't have been appropriate for them to speak now that they were in the presence of their god.
Heka towered above them, rubbing at his bare chest with his ornately jeweled hands as he surveyed my body, "Good, good. This pleases me. You have done well for your god. A worthy avatar of my magnificence."
"A porto-john isn't as full of it as you are." I mumbled through tingling lips. "Do you actually just read from the handbook of douchey villain phrases or is this a custom brand of obvious evil?"
He chuckled idly as he stared into my groggily squinted eyes, "You're awake already?"
"What can I say." I spat a messy glob of phlegm on the ground, lamentably missing his feet. "Didn't want to miss the show."
"Defiant," The man ran a jewelry encrusted finger tipped in an ivory claw over curves of my chest and down to my belly button, surveying me with an almost hungry gaze. "How amusing. A fine specimen but I wonder -" He snapped his fingers waving at my waist. "Sarna, I need to examine this."
The closest of the three women crawled across the floor and between my legs, taking me in her mouth. I tried to think of baseball, old people, anything that wasn't the first person touching me since Susan but my id was having none of that. Contrary to every signal I sent his way, my man parts were entirely in favor of this new development.
And let's be honest, there are only so many baseball statistics that one can think of in a crisis.
An awkwardly enjoyable moment passed before the servant was ripped from me by her master, tossing her to the floor roughly by her hair so that he could observe the results. She cracked hard against the tile, crying out in surprise. Oblivious to her pain the god tutted sadly, "I suppose even the gods cannot have everything."
"Fuck you king Tut!," I yelled in outrage, earning a backhanded smack for my snark.
"I do not tolerate that from mere mortals."
"Deal with it asshole."
He leaned up close to my naked body, pressing himself against me as he whispered into my ear, "I will enjoy crushing you Dre'su'den. Of the host nothing remains"
He bowed down to the nape of my neck, licking it before widening his jaw and extending his - tongue?
Not like any tongue I'd ever seen.
A fanged serpent jutted out of the man's mouth, waving in the air hissing reedily .
ripping into my neck and burrowing into my skin. The human shell of heka fell to the ground as the foot long serpent swam through muscle and flesh, digging through me like an eel at the bottom of a river bed.
I'd like to say that I fought back, that I said something clever, or even that I'd had a moment to feel sad for myself but I was too busy screaming. I screamed myself ragged till the twisting serpent coiled round my back and spine burrowing into my head. I screamed so loud that it started to feel like it was a different person screaming, like I was just watching a movie.
And then it was another person yelling and I was a guest in someone else's body. My eyes shifted, my lips moved, my chest rose and fell but I was not responsible for any of it. I screamed louder but my mouth refused to move under my own power, my body was no longer my own.
Memories of my apprenticeship whipped past me, vague visions of Ebenezer and Justin teaching me to manipulate the elements. My joy at first being able to summon the wind, a thousand times over a thousand ways I practiced to use that skill ran through me in an instant.
And a set of memories alien to me shoved their way into my mind, nightmares I could not escape. Blackness, blind emptiness, Murder, violation, blood sacrifice and power, and endless and insatiable need for power. A million times a million holocaust and they were all mine.
My hand reached out towards a torch on the wall and a voice that was not my own yelled, "Vintas servitas!" Summoning the torch into my outstretched hand.
The not-me looked at the torch and whooped with joy. A feeling of detached happiness washed across me from his distant mind.
"Yes!" I felt myself saying. "I am at last whole! I am at last perfect. Let Sokkar and the other gods try to defy me now. I am Heka! I am king of all Gods! I will ascend as Anubis before me!"
The me that was not me snapped my fingers, summoning the servants to strip the clothing and jewelry from the sobbing man who had once been a god. He was a gibbering shell of a man, shaking and whispering to himself, repeating a word over and over. "Free, free, free…." as though refusing to believe it.
The cool material of the many ornate bracelets and rings slid ominously over my skin, tantalizing ripples of power emanating from them. Magical foci for energy, powerful, ancient and cruel they throbbed with generations of malice. Millennia of ill use had poured a well of suffering into their ambient power reserve.
I looked down at the man, and a disgust that was not my own washed across my mind. Look at that thing, useless, weak, obsolete, whimpering and ungrateful. It should be thrilled to have been part of a god, part of the wonder of creation. But it was not, it was just a shell of flesh, a disposable meat sack that had lasted past it's prime. It was a liability, thought the other mind against my will.
My arm, controlled by the god, pointed to the man and a burst of will from the evil not-mind. Three bursts of lightning shot out, obliterating the man from existence. Satisfaction rumbled past me, oblivious to my disgust. My lips spoke words I knew to be a lie, "I pass you on to the next world, to glory."
"To paradise," replied the women eagerly anticipating their reward. The not mind eyed them hungrily, the old form had not been well suited for libidinal recreation and the new form was starved for it. Sake the flesh and dispose of the chattel after, for none who touch a god should ever be with another. Sarna, yes she would do nicely.
The not-mind would dispose of Sarna for her carnal knowledge of the Dre'su'den anyway.
The doe-eyed Sarna stared reverently at my feet, knowing what came next, knowing it would end her life but resigned to accept her fate. She breathed heavily with the fear and lust the not-mind preferred from it's partners, it's prey. A lust that I pray to god was not my own stirred in my loins as the not-mind grabbed her by the hair, intent upon using her roughly. The not mind-smiled eagerly, whispering in a terrifying hungry moan, "Prepare to worship your god."
A feminine curse of disgust from a phantom source was the only warning Heka got from an extremely pissed off fallen angel.
"Usurper!" Howled a feminine voice as an invisible hand grasped at my throat, clamping down too hard to breathe and forcing me to my knees. "Pretender! Coward! He. is. mine."
Heka clawed at the invisible attacker in confusion, searching through my memories to explain what was happening to him. Thousands of memories came to play but no memories of a tunic clad beauty came to mind, no memories of silver coins, and a whispered titter of amusement echoed in my ear as a brief ray of hope popped into my mind.
His servants backed away from him in fear, screaming for the guards as their god howled in pain fighting off an invisible attacker.
Was I saved? Could Lasciel expel Heka?
"No my host," a sad whisper hissed into my mind even as a louder voice screamed "Defiler, betrayer, worm!" and a thousand phantom wounds tore at the god in imitation of every injury I'd ever received. "I can only delay the inevitable."
A tunic clad woman appeared behind me, finitely giving the furious god a target. My eyes widened in horror as Heka fired his lightning at the apparition of Lasciel, only for it to dissipate across her chest. The apparition waved it's hands, inflicting new phantom pains upon my body; broken bones, and gunshots, lacerations and flaying all hammering at the mind of my captor. I had a wide range of memories to choose from, each more painful than the last.
What can I say? I've had a busy life.
The whisper turned desperate, "Harry, please I cannot hide your mind and my shadow forever. You must summon the coin. You must summon the coin before it is too late."
"There has to be something," I willed at her. "Can you create another illusion like you did in the apartment building? Convince him that he's better off leaving me than staying."
"It's taking all that I have to ensure we can speak properly. " She snarled as time seemed to slow to a stop around us, everything moving like something out of the matrix. The lightning streams crawled lazily across the room towards her apparition.
I lost myself for a moment in the revelation that Lash could apparently stop time.
"Time does not exist. to keep you conscious and I've sped up your mind so that we can have this conversation. If I keep it up for too long it will cause an aneurism and kill you." A pained tone entered the whisper.
Well, ok at least that made sense, the magic required in stopping or reversing time would have been insane, and it's not like we use our entire brain's capacity to -
"Dresden," Barked Lash, "Focus."
Oh right, enslaved by an Egyptian god. Got to keep in the moment. I mentally imitated a sigh, knowing that another offer I couldn't refuse was in my near future.
The whisper screamed in exasperation, "You are impossible my host"
Eh, everybody has a skill.
"Heka believes your other is the only part of your mind, once he realizes that there are two more he will crush us. Summon the coin wizard summon the coin or accept oblivion there are no other options."
I could summon it, become one of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. Power to free myself, power to crush the Jaffa, power perhaps even to get back home. But that power would come at a price. I would be exchanging one monstrous master for another and though Lash talked a good game it didn't take a genius to figure out that I'd be back at square one before I knew it. Back to being a sock-puppet for evil.
"No." I refused her, a deep sense of resignation seeping into me.
Whatever power she had over Heka was slipping, and fast. The bolts of lightning were already moving at a brisk clip," I cannot keep this up forever wizard."
Hey lady, don't rush a wizard when he's planning a miracle or you get a shitty miracle.
"Must you prolong this?" Lash hissed in pain. The effort of suppressing Heka was getting to her.
If I submitted to either of them I would be surrendering who I was, who I wanted to be, to a monster. And I would become a monster with them. That wasn't going to happen. Not now, not ever. I would not become a weapon for some supernatural nut job with a god complex.
"Please," begged Lash. "Please let me help you. I don't want you to live as a slave to this monster for eternity."
Eternity was a long time, even for a wizard.
"Harry, in order to subdue you he will crush me."
And then me with her.
"Then summon the coin. Accommodations can be made, agreements can be reached. It is a better option."
A better option, well she was the devil I knew in every possible sense of the word. And as long as I followed her every whim we'd get along swimmingly. Never mind that she'd be asking me to bring about the apocalypse on a weekly basis.
"But you would be alive. Not just some zombie moving at the will of a pretender to power."
No, I would be a puppet to actual hellish power.
"Do you have a choice?"
It took a real effort of will to think, "No, no I don't." towards the Denarian.
"Then hurry, focus on the coin in your mind -"
No, that wasn't an option.
"Then what can you mean to - Harry no!"
It was the only way out.
"Harry, I - I can't let you do this. It's -."
Yes, it would be.
"She, she would never forgive me for allowing you to - I could never go back."
I didn't intend for that to be an option for either of us. She would be coming along for the ride.
A very human twinge of fear worked it's way into her voice, "I… I don't want to die."
Living was nice. I was particularly fond of being alive, sort of a hobby of mine. But sometimes knowing when to end is as important as knowing how to live. And it was time to end, for all three of us.
"I can't let you do that Harry. You know I can stop you."
"No, I don't Lash." I willed at her. "And neither do you. We're weak, both of us. And you can't make me summon the coin. But I can have my dignity, and I can have my peace. Let me have that Lash. Let me do what's right one last time."
"I - She..." Lash's voice took on an almost childish voice of resentment, the phantom image of Lasciel torturing Heka synching with her speech in wonder and a deep note of sadness that hurt as much as anything else that day, "We - don't deserve you."
Taking that as consent I focused on the task at hand, rushing to do the impossible as time sped back into normalcy. Heka's incoherent rage pumped through me as wave of pure will collided with my own mind, thrusting towards what remained of my mind.
He was too late.
Heka had taken my voice, he had taken my body, he had taken my foci, my staff, my cloak, and my memories but I was still a wizard dammit. I still had my will.
Magic isn't about the words or the rituals or the foci or any of the showy things that we wizards do to speed things up. Ultimately magic is all about intent and resolve. I forced myself to remember the things I'd seen in Heka's mind, centuries of rape and death. Every single sobbing and suffering face I could stand till I knew, not just thought but knew I could do what had to be done. My nostrils filled with the familiar scent of sulfurous hellfire as I focused on the wriggling snake within my own body, wrapped in my head and neck, and willed a scalpel of spite at the god.
I tapped into my own memories, to a memory of a dark basement and the one pain that Lasciel couldn't tap into when she'd been throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Heka, the one memory I repressed even from myself. The reason my hand was a charred hunk of meat, I latched onto the fear I'd even refused to admit to myself.
My fear of fire.
I remembered the terrible flames as I dug deep into the of power in my own will, latching onto the trapped well of suffering emanating from the god's own foci.
I thought the words of power, turning the simple spell I used to light candles into a surgical weapon, "Flickum bicus"
It hurt. Oh God but it hurt as the confused god boiled alive within my skull, burning as the sinews of his body were used for tallow along with my own. My neck and skull ripped apart messily as the intruder's body from the force of my curse, tearing my body beyond repair as the foot long serpent cooked alive. It was suicide, plain and simple.
But as I crumpled to the floor, limply clutching at the ragged meat of my larynx, I was content.
I won.
I was free.
The servants, not privy to any of what had been going on, continued to scream for the Jaffa to save their god. I watched their attempts to push the organs back in my body as the Angelic apparition of Lasciel crouched down next to me. Her soft blond tresses buried in my chest, soaking with my blood as the woman hugged me in a way that would have been agonizing had she been real. She held me and sobbed as the darkness drew closer, the end would come for both of us.
It was nice to have someone who cared there for me, even if she was imaginary.
And on that though I, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, died doing the right thing.
At least I hadn't died alone.
A/N: As always feel free to point out any spelling and grammar issues you see.