The Lamb, the Wolf and the Devil

Hello all. Sorry it's been so long, but this is my new brainchild. I hope it reaches your expectations and, be warned, I couldn't find an editor... so I did the best I could. I have been working hard on my writing and writing styles so I hope you find it easier to follow. If anyone has any suggestions for an editor, please share them with me.

Comments and feedback are appreciated.

There will be more of this story coming!

-Lotus

Epilogue

Mar A Gealladh occurred every three decades. It used to be exciting. Something where all who met qualification for its invitation would spend weeks in advance preparing for.

Now it was more like a dental checkup: necessary, but loathed nonetheless.

The tiny hairs that stood on end at the back of Tali's neck said otherwise. She sensed this was different. This one was different. This girl was different.

Tali shivered as an iciness began at her spine and rippled outwards.

She approached the young woman who sat on the oversized and overfluffed bed with her legs folded beneath her and her hands tethered together behind her back.

She could sense the unique aura that haloed around the girl. The glowing violet made her think of how it shared a likeness of a scorpion under a blacklight. It had been over 300 years since any like her had been found. And Tali'd thought her kind had went extinct. They all had.

Tali's nostrils flared and her lips pursed at the sight of the dark purple and blue hues that stained the flesh on her ribs, arms and throat. Baroque and Addoniach knew better than this. Thinking their work was futile was no excuse for abuse.

She ran a finger through the middle of a particularly angry looking bruise on the girl's upper-left rib cage. It left clear skin in its path as if the wound had been but condensation on a window.

Tali began to hum out of habit as she gently smoothed the hair, so blonde it was almost white, down the girl's back, catching a snag or two with her fingers as she did. The girl had already been bathed and groomed before being placed inside the sacred offering room of Mar A Gealladh, as was ritual. She needn't any sprucing up, however.

Truth be told, she didn't need any assistance pertaining to her appearance. Her beauty so evident, it demanded any onlooker to be forever its messenger; like a mermaid sighted or a glimpse of heaven itself.

Tali could not deny the twitch of her fingers and the need to touch the statuesque enchantress. She convinced herself it would physically pain her if she didn't brush her fingertips against the pale skin. And connect the dots of the few freckles that dusted it. Not out of lust, but to be sure what she saw was no illusion. That this was happening. That she was really real.

The girl sat motionless. Her breath even and steady with her eyes fixated on something in front of her, but at nothing in particular. Tali leaned forward and to the side of the girl. And in a language indecipherable by all but her people, she spoke a simple, common inquiry that would have sounded like a choir of cherubs to anyone not of Fay heritage.

The girl's dilated pupils constricted, then widened again like a lens on a camera. Showing Tali her brain had received the question, and was hard at work making sense of it and forming an answer.

"Relic," she said.

"Relic," Tali echoed as a grin pulled at her plum-colored lips, " of course. It's befitting."

She couldn't help herself. Her fingers twisted and played in the natural curls at the ends of Relic's hair, "Just as prized. Just as precious and irreplaceable," she cooed.

Relic did not answer. But Tali didn't expect her to.

Suddenly, a frown vanquished the happy glow that had just been there. "You'll not remember any of this. The tranquility spell won't allow it."

Tali stopped the toying of the locks the color of gold-dusted snow, " But he'll know you. The moment he lays his sights to you, or his nose picks up your scent," she paused, recalling the scenes that had played out in this very room many times before her. But so long ago.... Too long ago.

"He'll rush to you like a mother to her missing babe," she leaned close and touched her cheek to Relic's s she whispered a blessing of a life lived in peace, and a bond she'd never experience if her fate had been set to intertwine with a human, such as she was, "And you will never forget that".

As if summoned, Tali heard the first of the many males that had come to see if the promise made to their ancestors, centuries ago, had came to make good.

The air thickened with static. It felt as if an entire thunderstorm would form in the large, dimly lit, and ancient room.

Tali's grin made its reappearance as she lifted from the bed, knowing they'd expect nothing and be met with everything they'd thought was long dead, would be nothing short of a comedic tragedy.

This was it.

She turned to Relic.

"You are it."

Chapter One: Lost Boys

Lorkan ran his fingers through his dusty blonde hair as he waited for Apollyon to catch up to him.

The sworn enemy turned friend, crept out of the shadows like a bad omen. His demonic ancestry evident on his every feature. His deep, malevolent scowl to his eyes the shade of ignited jade. Those eyes had seen a many a soul to the bowels of hell. And were made more fierce by the dark brows which hooded them and mimicked the color of the cropped hair on his head.

"Wait right there and I'll hold your purse as I assist you across the street, mam," Lorkan chuckled at the insult directed towards his old friend, "wouldn't want you to sprain a tit".

"You'd still suck on it," Apollyon growled. He was in no mood. These... assemblies were absolutely useless. And he'd better things to do than stand in a crowd of immortal hard-ons. He could only imagine how they relieved their dead-end excitement after they were, once again, let down.

If it was anything like he had done, then he could only assume this night, along with those predating, in 30 year cycles for the past 300 years, would be a night of mandatory curfews and bolted doors.

He grinned like the devil he was, unable to stifle the way the sexual carnage bloated his wicked ego.

"I don't understand why you're so excited," Apollyon grumbled as he neared Lorkan.

Shoving a reaper out of his way , he growled when the dark entity, cloaked in the flesh of a handsome Italian man, shrieked a warning.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Lorkan's brows lifted as he addressed the reaper, "Pissing off a prince of Hell is bad enough. But one with blue balls...."

"Shut up!" Apollyon snarled back as he joined him on the cobblestone stairs that led to the massive, ancient castle.

He breathed deeply. His squared shoulders and barreled chest rose and fell at the sight. All shapes and sizes of male immortals flocked inside. He was tired of this. They were all hoping and chasing something that was long dead.

He would never find her.

His nostrils flared and a remorseful murkiness clouded his tired eyes. This show of irritation was all the outward display that hinted toward the inward sorrow he felt. Coming here only ever ground salt in his wound.

A heavy hand slapped his chest, jolting him back to the here and now and his face twisted back to its former scowl.

"This time is different," Lorkan, being his closest and most trusted friend, spotted the small fractures in his, otherwise steel, exterior, "I can feel it".

Apollyon shrugged the hand off of him. Lorkan had obviously become delusional and his mind was projecting what he wished so much to be true...Or he was merely coddling him.

He didn't know which angered him more.

"You don't believe me?" Lorkan's optimistic expression had died and now mirrored that of his irate friend.

"You want it to be true," Apollyon rubbed a palm against the back of his neck as he turned his back towards his friend and eyed a stained window depicting a Greek woman with a dragon shifter bending her over a chaise lounge.

They were the only ones standing on the entrance's steps. All the others had gone inside.

He heaved deeply with another defeated sigh. This was all so... it was just... another dead end.

Apollyon turned and lashed out at Lorkan "That doesn't mean it is! If wanting it badly enough would have made it- her... materialize, she would have shown herself centuries ago," He rubbed his temples with the other hand on his hip. He was over all this.

Lorkan snorted and gritted his teeth.

"So, because I don't carry on like a young lad told to wait his turn for sweets..."

Apollyon growled a warning but Lorkan ignored it as he went on indirectly insulting him.

"...Because I accepted this consequence and choose to be patient and not curse the winter, because summer won't move fast enough for me-"

"Watch your tongue brother. I believe I've withstood my share of suffering for the crime I committed," Apollyon's features hardened more and streaks of red colored his irises.

Lorkan circled Apollyon. As he always did when someone had enraged him,

"Because I know it to be true- Believe that she will come to me when it's my time," Lorkan's eyes shimmered a warning of their own, "...This makes my senses null and void?!"

Lorkan shouldered him, shoving him violently out of his way. If he hadn't been nearly his equal in size, Apollyon would have fallen on his ass.

"You're full of shit, Apollyon! Don't you remember?! Have you forgotten?!"

Apollyon sneered and roared in anger for the unwanted memory summoned forth, " I have not! But I'm not a fool to hold onto what has been. I will not worship a sun when I've been locked in an underground prison! There. Is. No. Hope!"

The sky cracked and the ground vibrated as the storm moved in. A shift of the wind, a drop in temperature. Even as scents of things dead and rotting on the surrounding forest's floor that skirted the castle, were replaced by a sweetness that hadn't been there before, told of change.

Apollyon remained ignorant to it. The fear of being right and the feeling of dread, like a perpetual hurt without a means to an end, clouded his ability to sense the obvious.

But Lorkan had been awaiting this day. He'd known it was here long before any other had.

"We've been here hundreds of times, Apollyon," Lorkan paused at the door, his expression and tone a bit softer, "... and even before the females brought in began turning out false, I never once suggested that one was different. I'm telling you... this is it, dear friend".

With that Lorkan pushed through the heavy door and disappeared inside.

Chapter Two: Cursed

Apollyon growled as he approached the door. What Lorkan had said was true. His senses had not only proven dependable but necessary. And they'd saved his ass more than once.

He and Lorkan had been warriors, back before this curse, before the Earth had been maimed, or a peace treaty implemented in Ac Tenebris.

Translated to 'The Darkness', it was the realm of the immortals.

Apollyon had dead their home dimension no longer large enough to contain him and the others. So he'd forged an army of the most repulsed members of his race.

And they'd very nearly wiped out humankind on their rampage to gain control of it all.

Mortalities had increased at a faster rate than births could compensate for. Most were cross-fire casualties; simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Others simply refused to bow and accept their fate as Apollyon's foot-rest.

But a few were killed because they tried, and failed, to rebel against the great war and save their world from total destruction. And this is where Lorkan and his irritating nobility came in.

He, and a few other immortals who'd found value in fragile humanity, rose up to defend them and fight against their impending eradication.

He remembered the day they'd met. The day they'd promised each other a painful death.

Apollyon had heard of, and came looking for, this great vigilante warrior that had taken up defending the human race. The idiot who chose the side of peace and coexistence.

Apollyon thought him a fucking weakling. He hated soft spots, found little use for them. Facing off with what was then his greatest enemy, Lorkan shifted to a great beast, twice the size of his human counterpart.

He'd stood upright. His mouth open and teeth bared. His claws like daggers and a roar more ferocious than that of a hellhound.

Lorkan's sights were locked on Apollyon like a predator to its prey. But Apollyon was no one's inferior.

He hadn't the ability to shed his flesh and sprout his weapons. But he was no less a monster than the angry werewolf in front of him.

Black splintering that moved much like lighting began to decorate Apollyon's flesh. The ground trembled. The wind squalled. And even those who fought on his side of this war gave him a wider girth.

This battle would be bloody and a death would be all that would stop it; a rarity amongst immortals. Before Apollyon assumed the position of God, of course, and sought to strike down anyone who'd refused to acknowledge that.

Apollyon stepped forward unsheathing the sword that had been handed down in his family for centuries. Lorkan lowered into a crouching position, ready to charge. Yes, a death had been imminent.

...But not before a warning.

It had been like a unanimous auditory hallucination amongst all the immortals:

"Stop now or suffer. Cease the killings, find a common ground with your brethren. Or be cursed."

He and the others had ignored it, of course.

After all, Apollyon was a god of festering hatred held-fast.

After years of keeping it imprisoned, he'd felt himself a prisoner. And once the carnage and savagery infected the earth he'd proclaimed himself a free man.

Free to cause torment instead of swallowing it and suffering silently. All for another's expense.

Being held accountable and punished for a thousand human deaths and sins not your own from birth, courtesy of his demented father, can turn even the most gentle existences into carnal beasts.

It'd made him what he was- The personification of fear and demise. Death be but his trailing shadow as was life the broken flower beneath his boot.

He did not heed warnings; not from gods fretting the extinction of their play-things, and not from this fool who'd die for them.

And he would treat this mountainous adversary like he had anything else in his path and lay it to waste.

But Lorkan was sharp witted and fast for a behemoth. And there was something hidden in him that Apollyon had never expected.

Lorkan had never been born, but created from half thr soul of the great, mortal warrior Cuchulainn by the goddess of war, Morrigan.

She'd bonded it with a half of the guardian Dire Wolf's he'd slain when he'd refused her gift of mortality.

Karma's a bitch...But Lorkan seemed to have faired well from it.

And Apollyon was made aware of it within moments of engaging him in battle. It was the hardest he'd ever fought and the closest he would ever come to death.

After all but killing each other, Apollyon was about to take the opening shot the beaten and fatigued, Lorkan, had left open. But then it happened.

A thick smoke blanketed the battlefield. Moving outwards, engulfing everything as far as the eye could see like a toxic fog. And it seemed as if time had frozen at that moment.

All immortals watched it closely as it swirled and ate up everything. No one jabbed, kicked, not one sword clanked. Not a single degrading slur spoken. They all stood in wait.

But nothing happened...

Not one immortal disintegrated or wailed in agony. None went blind or deaf. None had their mind toyed with or twisted into thoughts of self-annihilation.

Not even a sudden epiphany to do good and stop the slaughtering, pillaging or torture. Or to join Apollyon in total domination of both worlds.

Nothing.

After it took its leave, Apollyon had laughed in reaction. He'd taunted those who reigned over them, who he'd forgotten reigned over him just the same.

Shouting insults and mockeries to the skies as well as below before reengaginig Lorcan. But he didn't know what had happened was worse than any average, run-of-the-mill death.

Before this moment, there was a pain that had never been endured by an immortal. More or less, burdened by only those with a life expectancy.

The immortals shared few similarities with them; The love of a good meal. The indulgence in mind-altering substances. The appreciation of the arts, both poetic and visual.

But the most potent and of highest importance, and what even Apollyon showed empathy for when stolen from a human, was a mate; the other half of a severed soul. Where, in uniting the two-halves, you'd find that even the most wayward and jagged found comfort.

Apollyon, with ice in his veins and a sledgehammer for a heart, even dreamt of the day he'd find his.

But she'd never come to him. Not anymore. Not ever.

The curse had turned all the mated female immortals, mortal. And the first death cry had came shortly after the smoke returned to the earth, in the similar fashion in which it had came, and the chaos resumed.

The screaming was like a battering ram to the chest of every male within earshot.

It'd been Estonia. She was mated to a Fay warrior named Tiernouk and had been fighting alongside him, against Apollyon's army, when a spear impaled her.

He'll never forget the silence that came after the last words ever to pass the new bride's tongue: I-I'm dying.

The audible memory echoed and ricocheted inside Apollyon's skull.

After the consequence's magnitude was revealed, and what the curse had actually bestowed, every sword, bow, tooth and claw were sheathed and dropped.

Not even the brokenhearted warrior, holding his lifeless lover, attempted to retaliate.

Yarco, a crocodilian shifter, had pleaded forgiveness.

But how could he have known he'd the ability to murder a mated?

Although females fought beside and against males when the rarity of a war broke out, it was an unwritten rule that no real harm would come to her at the hands of a male.

Even Apollyon didn't dare do such a thing.

But even after receiving forgiveness, Yarco had never forgiven himself. He took that self-loathing all the way to his grave, in which he prepared himself.

To this day Apollyon still didn't know how Yarco had done it. Shifters could only be killed by decapitation, followed by burning the headless corpse.

Poor bastard. But he was just the first of many.

After the mated females had died of disease, old age or whatever fatality befell a perishable, self inflicted deaths and suicide pacts began within the male immortals. Many had lost their reason for living, others didn't see a point.

They'd also found later that the unmated females were sterile and could not experience, nor emit, the once irresistible need to be mated.

Making all remaining females looked upon like adolescents or weaker males. A brotherly-sister bond was all that was possible.

To many of the males that remained, this insult to injury, along with the wailing and gnashing of teeth of their brethren at the deep, all controlling anguish of his bride lost, was simply too much. And they joined those before them in everlasting sleep.

Still, several clung to hope and attempted to rebuild and sacrifice in an effort to bring things back to the way they had been. After setting aside their history, even Lorkan and Apollyon banded together to right things.

Searching every crypt, bargaining with every witch, venturing into any cavern, castle... hole in the ground they'd thought would lead them to whomever birthed the curse. Between them, a brother-like bond rooted and grew.

They'd unified and helped to reverse most of the damage the time of war had caused. But they'd always failed to break the curse. Or even find the one who'd given it life.