A Mermaid's Ransom by Joey W. Hill Page A

returned to her. Perhaps he could have stretched it out to one more dream, taken it slower, but the ritual was draining, and he couldn't afford to be weak too frequently in his world, even behind closed doors.
    His lips curled as he recognized that as a lie. He should despise what he'd done because it was a loss of control. He hadn't wanted to wait, and could have missed his chance irreparably by rushing himself. He'd certainly felt bloodlust before, and knew how to manage that. But when he put his mouth on her flesh, his cock had become a monster with a mind of its own, demanding he rut on her like he was a lower echelon Dark One with no control at all over his urges. Once he was inside her, it had gotten worse. He'd wanted to take her again and again, in all sorts of twisted ways, mark every part of her with his claim.
    It had nothing to do with her, of course. He'd snapped because he was so close to his goal, after planning and waiting for so long. Inside her body, it was bliss, sheer bliss, cool and heat at once, but not like the ice and fire of his world. Different, like her world.
    "My lord?" Epherius, possibly the most advanced of the remaining Dark Ones, spoke through the closed doors. "May we see your victory?"
    We. More than one of them, always a situation to be approached with caution. But this would confirm he was supreme over all of them, and the ongoing possibility of challenge might lessen. Not that he intended to be here for much longer.
    "Enter," he said brusquely, going to his throne.
    Epherius was accompanied by eight of the others, the nearest to him in intelligence and strength, obvious because of their similar height and upright stance. The lower echelon was often commanded by these when they went on scouting expeditions in the primitive worlds Dante had been able to access. They all had the deceptively skeletal arms and legs, leathery wings that slapped against the stone as they pushed into the room. All were naked, their genitals hanging between their legs in grotesque bobbing display. Dark Ones had unrelenting carnal urges, which they relieved upon any weaker Dark One who could not repel them. At one time, they had relieved them on him.
    Sometimes, just the sight of those naked organs incited a cauldron of simmering rage in him. He'd unleashed it before, incinerated a few with the powers he'd cultivated in the Dark One texts none of them knew how to read. It had gone a long way toward making them wary of him. No one touched him now. If they did, it was an attempt to kill, not subdue or sodomize.
    They hissed excitedly at the sight of the female in the circle. She'd asked him to call her by name, and he'd done it that one time, but it disturbed him, almost as much as having her say his name had wrenched something inside of him. Names meant nothing and everything. He didn't want to think of her name.
    She had roused at their knock on the door, as he suspected she might, with so much evil gathered close to her sensitive mental receptors. With them crowded around her, he knew she would see all of their hideous faces first. It would disorient and terrify her further. She might try to get out of the circle, but without him releasing the wards, she would simply burn herself further. He heard her startled scream as she caught her first glimpse of their world. Should he revel in that? If so, he was as dead and empty as he often felt. It didn't matter. He needed to get out of here, and she was the way to that. That was all. Nothing else was required of him but that objective.
    One of the Dark Ones surged forward, apparently intending to enter the circle, and was flung back, light strobing over his thin flesh, illuminating the skeletal contents within it.
    "Do not touch the circle's edge," Dante said, dark satisfaction in his voice.
    "But we want to touch her. Play with her."
    "No. You may look, and then you will go. I will need more blood to hold her here as long as I want her to be."
    "What if we insist? She is