The Infernal Itch Ch 08

Zarel heard the click of claw on stone and sensed the ambush coming. She turned, swinging a big muscular paw like a club and felt the satisfying crunch as it slammed into the white werewolf's face, sending her sprawling away. Salis would be feeling that one for a while.

Knocking Salis down had the advantage of forcing Alva to charge at her as well, lest she set on the smaller woman and do her some real damage. Alva, one-eyed and battle-scarred, was a canny fighter and more of a match for the inexperienced Zarel. But both of her antagonists were still smaller than her and she'd learned that in a scuffle of claws and fangs size really did matter.

With a roar of effort and a spray of gravel, Zarel drove Alva back against a wall hard enough to dislodge tiles from the roof above it. The other werewolf, normally a somewhat dour dwarf, lost her grip on Zarel and could only swipe ineffectually at her retreating back as Zarel's black and orange form turned and sprinted away.

That bought Zarel a few minutes of peace at least, if she could put enough distance between herself and the two pack members watching over her. The bright full moon, in its third and final night, lit the road before her clearly as she thundered away from them on all fours.

She was thinking more clearly tonight. It took immense concentration, but she could remember their names, her name, and why they were dogging her footsteps. 'Keeping her out of trouble' as they'd explained, as a favour to their pack chief Marek.

Marek.

She was strongly considering hunting the elder werewolf down and challenging him. He was the reason for her curse. Both of her curses, in fact. He was also the reason why five of her friends and former Seraph colleagues were in the hands of a devil. Yes, she had a score to settle with Marek.

But not tonight. He didn't know where her captured friends were, so he was no use to her. No, tonight she wanted to put her new senses to the test and see if she could sniff them out.

She hadn't been close enough with any of them to remember their scent in the same way she had with Aavi on that first night, but she could remember the smell of Seraph armour. The metallic, almost acid tang of bronze and the tart smell of oiled leather beneath it. Maybe they still had their armour - she could look for that.

That was a plan then. She'd done a lot of thinking. Good thinking, but it made her head hurt to concentrate for too long. She dropped her pace to an easy lope, something she could keep up all night. She'd follow her nose and her paws and see where they took her...

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"Aavi~"

The voice was a hoarse scratchy whisper, but enough to awaken him.

Aavi sat up, feeling a page that had been stuck to his face tear, fluttering away in two pieces. Guilt consumed him immediately - falling asleep in a lesson

and

damaging a library book! He'd be in so much trouble!

But he wasn't in a lesson. This wasn't the Abbey. He was in a dark abandoned library in the dangerous lower city and someone was calling his name.

Ardour. He breathed a sigh of relief as it all came flooding back. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, in fact it was a very foolish thing to do in an unfamiliar place like this, but no monster was sneaking up on him. It was just Ardour.

He stood and looked for the tiefling, peering around the darkened scriptorium. It wasn't until the last few days away from the candlelight of the Abbey that he'd appreciated quite how well he could see in the dark. It wasn't perfect and he couldn't read by it, but his sight was surprisingly strong in the gloom. He couldn't see Ardour though.

Actually, he could hear her. There was rustling and shuffling up on the balcony, the sound of books and parchment being clumsily moved. What was she doing? He climbed the narrow spiral stair to investigate.

Already grey-skinned in colouration, the tiefling was a perfect monochrome in his darkvision. All except for her eyes which shone lava red, brow furrowed, as she worked at whatever it was she was doing. She seemed to be stacking books, emptying the shelves of a particular bookcase and dumping their contents into messy piles on the ground beside it. Her movements were trembling and faltering, her breathing raspy.

"What are you doing?" he asked, perplexed.

"Found something..." Ardour's voice was hoarse.

"While you were asleep?" Aavi didn't think she'd been awake much longer than him.

"Dreamed..." she wobbled a little and put an arm on the bookcase for balance. Aavi wondered if she was still dreaming in fact. Sleep-walking would explain the strangeness.

"Can you fetch... water?" she rasped, sounding like she needed it.

Aavi nodded and hurried downstairs to fetch their packs. He stopped to strike up a lantern and colour returned to the gloomy library in a warm orange glow.

By lantern-light Ardour looked like even more of a mess. Her skin was flushed dark and shiny with sweat, hair plastered to her face. There were dark bags under her eyes, which looked tired and a little haunted. He could tell without touching her that she must have a bad fever.

"Bad dream?" he asked as he uncorked his waterskin.

Ardour took it and drank greedily, water spilling down her chin. She smacked her lips in obvious relief and poured most of the rest over her face, heedless of the delicate books and papers getting wet around her. She screwed up her eyes and then opened them wide, blinking owlishly a few times as if trying to shake off sleep.

"Thank you," she mumbled at last, handing back the mostly empty waterskin. "Strange dream..."

She went back to clearing the bookcase, hands a little less clumsy. She still wasn't

right

though, Aavi knew.

"Are you looking for something?" he tried, "I could read for you...."

He drew closer to examine the books she was removing. Some primal instinct in his brain was telling him to keep his distance, that she wasn't safe. But that was silly, he trusted Ardour.

"There's a passage..." a bemused Aavi thought she meant a specific piece of text for a second, before she continued. "Behind the bookcase..."

Huh. It didn't look any different to any of the other heavy bookcases in the library. Well, she was the rogue. Aavi started moving some of the dropped books and papers before she trod on them.

"Strange dream..." she mumbled again. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

"Do you want to sit down?" he asked gently, "I could try to heal you."

"There's a seat inside," the tiefling pronounced with a certainty that worried him, "I'll sit there."

He had all the books out of immediate danger now, so he stood back to watch as Ardour cleared the top shelf. She was still wearing the new outfit, all dark leather straps and tantalising glimpses of grey flesh beneath. He'd been trying not to stare at it all day, but he was fairly certain that the distinct bulge in the front of her leather skirt had not been there earlier. But if she was aroused, that made her current obsession with rearranging the furniture even stranger.

With a triumphant grunt, the tiefling finished dumping the contents of the bookcase and reached around it to grasp one edge of the heavy piece. She set herself there and heaved, trying to pull it away from the wall. Her tail arched upward for balance, lifting the back of her skirt and affording Aavi an eyecatching view of her strong glutes as she worked. He tried not to stare.

The bookcase resisted, top-heavy and awkward, as Ardour growled and pulled for all she was worth. Aavi could see she was trying to swing it away from the wall, but it wasn't cooperating. In fact it was wobbling alarmingly.

"Careful, it's going to tip-" he cautioned, unsure whether to intervene.

"Just need to... drag..." Ardour had her teeth clenched with the effort, sinewy muscles standing out on her bare arms as she heaved at it.

She clearly had a vision, but the bookcase wasn't going along with it. In fact, Aavi could see the moment that its swaying progress reached the point of no return.

"Look out!" he cried, just as the tiefling threw herself aside with a curse. The heavy bookcase pitched forward and crashed down onto its front with a boom that rattled the balcony. A dark space lay behind it, where there should have been only a wall.

"Are you ok?!" Aavi scrambled over the fallen bookcase and through the choking cloud of dust it had thrown up to find Ardour sitting on the ground clutching her shoulder. She was grinning though, sharp pearly teeth bright in the lantern-light.

"Found it."

She had, Aavi had to agree, found something.

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The faintest desert breeze brought a thousand scents to Zarel's nose. It was a sense she still didn't understand, maybe never fully would understand, but it was always working. Her concentration wandered, mind flickering between conscious thoughts and base bestial impulses, but her nose was always alert, always trustworthy.

Right now she didn't know whether to trust it. Her nose said there were Seraph, or at least people wearing that familiar bronze armour, where Seraph most definitely should not be.

The ruined church before her was much too far from the Abbey for them to have visited safely. Its narrow windows were dark and admitted precious little of the ambient moonlight, leaving the interior shrouded in gloom. The roof looked ready to collapse inwards at any provocation. Zarel's Seraph training told her this was a potential deathtrap of either monsters or falling masonry.

And yet, that familiar scent drifted out through the darkened doorway. Acrid metallic tang of bronze and copper, oiled leather, human sweat. It had to be Seraph. And that meant it had to be her missing friends.

Zarel drew closer, letting her bulk block out the moonlight passing through the building's entrance. She listened for any reaction, but the ruin remained as still as it had been. The doorway was human-sized and she'd be vulnerable as she squeezed in through it, but there was nothing else for it. She ducked her head, hunched her shoulders and squirmed under the ancient stone lintel.

Nothing attacked. She squatted in the cramped vestibule and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, ears straining for movement. The church was a small one, just a single hall with an altar at the far end. Rows of uncomfortable looking stone pews sat under a low dome that was probably ornamented with religious imagery, but she couldn't make it out in the gloom.

Nothing moved, but the smell was stronger here. Human bodies, metal armour, the constant arousal caused by the Itch. Something else, too. Anticipation? Fear?

Zarel stalked forwards. It was ok if her friends were afraid - they'd been through the same things she had and they didn't have the lycanthropic curse to protect them. She would protect them, they could join Aavi and the tiefling in her unlikely pack. She made an encouraging sort of whine, the most nonthreatening she could manage.

There was a flutter of motion from the dome above and a lot of things happened very fast. Something heavy crashed down over her shoulders, just as a bright flash erupted before her face and stole away her darkvision. Figures were standing up from behind the pews, audible from the scrape of metal on stone. Somewhere, an owl let out a piercing screech.

Zarel roared and tried to rush forward toward the source of that blinding bright light, but the heavy net tangled her limbs and sent her sprawling. She thrashed, panicked, trying to kick it off. Footsteps echoed around her as the figures converged, seizing the edges of the net and dragging it tight. She could overpower a single human easily, but not the combined strength of so many.

The overpowering light - apparently a spell - winked out as quickly as it appeared. Someone struck a lantern in its place. Panting, trapped and beaten, Zarel looked up at her captors. Staring back at her in a mixture of triumph and fear were her five missing Seraph companions.

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Aavi watched as Ardour padded about the secret room, dutifully angling the lantern to illuminate wherever she wandered. This didn't seem like the purposeful 'checking for danger' she'd done when they entered the library, though. The tiefling shuffled dreamily around the room, muttering to herself.

"No chains..." he heard her mumble as she poked at a shelf high on the right-hand wall.

"And no locks..." her tail thrashed in unconscious agitation as she plucked a bright red leatherbound book from a shelf and turned to Aavi. "What is this book?"

Aavi, lingering on the room's threshold, squinted at the title. Oh dear. His blush was instant and hot.

"It's called, um, the

Tome of Carnal Power

..."

"Huh." Ardour's grunt was hard to read. She tucked the thick tome under one arm and continued poking and prodding at the shelves.

"Huh?" Aavi found he was growing impatient with the inscrutable tiefling. "What do you mean? And why did you pick that one specifically?"

"Dreamed it was chained up there." She shrugged and waved more books at him, these selected seemingly at random. "What're these?"

"That one is an 'erotic bestiary' and the other is something about harpy mating habits..." Aavi hoped he wasn't going to have to read off every title. "They're all books about sex."

"Huh." She discarded the two books to the floor and wandered off to inspect a shelf on the opposite wall.

Aavi took a deep breath, reminded himself that he liked the tiefling when she wasn't... whatever this was... and reshelved the two ancient books. There was something about that first tome though, the one she was still holding. He wanted another look at that later.

His eyes fell on a dusty leather couch in the centre of the room. She'd said something about there being a seat and sure enough, there it was. It faced the back wall of the room, where a silver vase affixed to the wall held the skeletal stalks of some ancient flowers. Beside the vase were a pair of drapes, ancient tattered things that had sustained centuries' worth of moths. They were so ragged that he could see through them in places, to what looked like a painting hung on the wall behind them.

Curious, Aavi made his way over for a better look.

"Stop!" He was just reaching for the curtains when Ardour's yelp made him jump. She hurried over, suddenly alert.

"It's trapped," she pronounced with that eerie certainty again.

"You dreamed it?" Aavi asked and got a nod.

"It's important, I think. But it... uh..." she floundered, seemingly lost for words for a moment. "It got weird. When I looked at it."

She was at his shoulder now, very close. She was staring at the wall though, even as she spoke to him. He had a feeling he knew what she meant by 'weird', but he still had to ask.

"Sexually weird?" he tried to sound as detached as he could, even as he noticed that bulge in her skirt again in the corner of his eye.

"Yeah... I, um... there were ghosts and I fucked myselves and everything sort of got ruined? Like years passed while I did it." Ardour cleared throat. "That didn't make much sense did it?"

It didn't. And yet...

"So it's a magical trap." Aavi suggested. "The dream was a warning from the gods about it. Maybe it paralyses the victim so they're stuck here forever."

He noticed her small flinch at his mention of 'gods' but his own mind was racing now.

"But there's something important in the image, so we need to look," he decided. Time to try some more paladin magic.

Lyrti had given him healing powers and a power to sense evil creatures, but he knew there were talents he hadn't tapped into yet. Spells like those practiced by the Abbey's clerics. What he needed here was more than mystical senses - he needed defences from external influences, protection from evil.

The proper gestures and words came to mind even as he thought it, sparking into thoughts so fast that he had to act them out now or risk forgetting again. He intoned the words, hands glimmering with soft golden light as they formed the required shapes and motions. He heard Ardour gasp a moment later.

"Your eyes are glowing," she breathed, eyes focusing on him properly for the first time since she'd awoken. She bit her lip. "And your hair is sort of... floating..."

Aavi could feel his hair standing on end, tickling his ears. He blushed and cleared his throat, secretly pleased with the attention. Then the magic was done and he was ready.

"Let's find out what's so important that your dream sent us here."

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"Got her?" someone asked.

Zarel knew the voice, but right now she was too distraught to put a name to it. The net tightened and flexed as many hands worked at it, tying the heavy weighted ends together. The result was a shifting and constricting prison that defied her attempts to wriggle free. She let out a frustrated snarl and snapped at the strands that held her, but they were uncannily strong.

"That's tight enough," said Tomasz. She recognised her old leader's voice. Efficient, decisive. A little strained?

"It's your fingers she'll have off if it's not," the first voice warned. Eiga, Zarel remembered, always a pessimist.

"We'll all do it," that was Clare, softly spoken but usually full of conviction. "We owe her that at least, for the betrayal."

Zarel could hear the sound of a jar being unscrewed. She snarled and snapped at the net again, making no headway.

"It's no betrayal. She'll be better off - just look at her." Stefan was the oldest of their admittedly very young cohort, at twenty five. "Do you think she even understands what we're saying?"

Zarel let out a thunderous growl, leaving no doubt that she absolutely understood. She wanted to speak, to curse them, to ask what they were doing. Her long muzzle wouldn't form recognisable words though.

"Zarel, listen-" Tomasz had moved to where she could see him, illuminated by the flickering lantern he was as square jawed and handsome as ever. He had an odd hungry expression about him though, a desperation. "She wants you to come over to her."

She

was presumably the devil, Lael, who'd taken them. Zarel's nose twitched. There was a new scent in the air, something maddeningly familiar she was trying to place.

"But she can't just take you. Something about a deal." Someone handed Tomasz a jar and he dipped his gloved hand inside. His fingers came out shining with translucent oil. "So we have to encourage you. It's not going to be pleasant. I'm sorry."

He brought his glove closer to her face and she finally recognised the smell. Smoke and sulphur, spice and musk, inciting and arousing. The devil's smell. Concentrated corruption in a small glass jar. Why was her mouth watering suddenly?

Zarel howled and snapped frantically, ferociously, forcing Tomasz to withdraw his hand swiftly lest he lose some fingers. The smell was lodged in her nostrils already though.

"It's not so bad," Clare breathed, and she felt a slick glove brush over her shoulder. A moment later she felt her skin begin to warm with corrupting heat. "You can learn to live with it."

Zarel was aware of their arousal, much stronger now. Three women, two men, she could scent each of them individually. They had the Itch bad she could tell, far worse than her. Worse than anyone she'd met so far. They practically radiated it.

Someone seized one of her legs and started massaging the contaminating oil into the fur of her calf. Her skin prickled and burned with a tremendous aching that seemed to jump straight to her groin. She whimpered and groaned, twisting to try to break free.

"And we'll be together again, the six of us," Eiga encouraged, spreading slick corrupting fluid over her back. Zarel wished she could sink her own claws into the itching skin there and flay it away before the sensation spread. "She has big plans for us..."