Bone Lord (Book 3)
Dante King
Copyright © 2019 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
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About the Author
Chapter One
I stared out over the waking city as the sun crept like a tired and ancient fire giant over the peaks of the distant western mountains, mountains where dragons had once been rumored to dwell.
Closer than those craggy spires and spear-like peaks were the dense forests that had provided my forebears with timber and firewood for generations, stretching back a thousand years. Like Kroth—the town wiped out to a man by the Blood God’s Demogorgon—a small logging settlement where the Tree God had once been worshiped had existed in those woods. But one day, that particular deity fell from prominence—died, or was killed, some even said. I didn’t quite believe it, since I hadn’t found any conclusive proof of that, and I owned a weapon of his, the wrist crossbow, that still possessed potent Arboreal magic. Everyone agreed this was why that village had then slowly withered and died.
Many of the Old Gods, of whom there had once been hundreds, maybe even thousands, were now dead and gone, or at least in hiding. The zealous Splendorous Army of the Lord of Light—that pompous, holier-than-thou, puritan cocksucker—had swept like a destructive plague across Prand and wiped them and their followers out, “converting” most of the populace at swordpoint, and slaughtering those who refused to submit.
Some gods and goddesses had survived, though, eking out an existence here and there…and I’d found one of them. I fingered Grave Oath’s demon-head pommel as I gazed contemplatively out over the dawn landscape. Simply by touching the magic weapon I could feel a powerful crackle of energy, a connection to other planes, to potent magic, to the Sea of Souls beyond this world, where the spirits of the dead waited in limbo for reincarnation…
And I could feel the bodies of the dead too, sunk beneath layers of earth, sandwiched between slices of sediment and rock. Some corpses were still bloated and rotting and writhing with fat maggots; others were so old that the bones, buried under a mile of dirt, had fossilized into rock.
I could feel them all, sense their cold power… for I was a god. A living, breathing god. A vengeful god. A god with boundless ambition and an insatiable taste for women. I turned, leaning my hands on the carved marble railing of the balcony, and glanced over my shoulder into the king’s chamber of the enormous castle—my castle, the Keep of Brakith—and the corners of my mouth curved up into a grin as my eyes traveled over the sleeping figure of Elyse, the Bishop of Erst, powerful Cleric of the Church of Light who lay naked and sprawled out on my enormous canopy bed, her large, round breasts heaving slightly as she snored softly in a deep slumber, her gorgeous mane of blond hair cascading over the down-filled pillows on which her stunning face was resting.
My eyes roved hungrily over her silky, flat belly, and then further down to her pubic mound, which was smoothly shaven, and—unfortunately—half-covered by a sheet. Her long, shapely legs were half tangled in that sheet, and the sight of their sensuous curves and delicate muscles jolted a flashback into my mind—a very pleasant flashback, from a few hours ago. Those long legs were wrapped around my waist as I thrust myself into her tight, wet pussy with furious vigor while she screamed out my name over and over, bucking and writhing with bliss as orgasm after orgasm had crashed through her.
She would be sleeping for a while after that encounter, I thought, grinning smugly. As for me, though, I no longer needed to sleep. Well, I barely needed to; an hour of shuteye would have me feeling just as rested as 10 hours of sleep would for most other people. I was looking forward to the time when my powers would increase to the point where I wouldn’t need to sleep at all.
I’d gained a great many powers as the God of Death, but there were still many more to obtain. The gray tree on the black plain—the mysterious tree whose fruit held my skills, my magic—still had many branches frustratingly obscured by thick fog. This fog only dissipated and revealed fresh, juicy skills through the sacrifice of more souls, reaped by Grave Oath whenever I or one of my troops, undead or living, took a life.
It had been three months to the day since I’d taken back Brakith and my rightful lordship over the city and county from my uncle Rodrick, the vile usurper. He’d escaped by the skin of his rotten teeth, but his evil oblates hadn’t. I smiled grimly to myself as memories of that battle, right here in the bowels of the castle, came back to me. The motherfuckers had nearly raised the Blood God’s Demogorgon from a boiling vat of virgin’s blood, but we stopped them. Only just, though. As strong as I was, I still wasn’t able to take on a beast like the Demogorgon. I needed more potent powers than I currently possessed to handle a demon of the ancient world.
And as great as it was to have my rightful lordship back, as well as the adulation of the townsfolk of Brakith, I couldn’t kick back and relax. Not while Rodrick was still out there, spreading evil and murdering scores of peasant girls in his quest to rule over Prand as the Blood
