Bitter Aries (The Zodiac Book 1) Read online

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  Acknowledgments

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  Chapter 1 of The Horn of Taurus

  Bitter Aries

  Book 1 of The Zodiac Series

  Paul Sating

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any situations or similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2020 Paul Sating

  All rights reserved.

  No parts of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Editor: Cindy Niespodzianski

  Cover Design: Jake at jcalebdesign.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7322617-4-7

  To Eric Thomas, for opening my eyes to the genius that is Christopher Moore and helping me see that 'funny' has its place in fiction.

  Your review is important!

  If you enjoyed this book when you've finished, I would appreciate getting a review from you.

  Reviews not only help other readers find something they might like, but they help me as an author. Your reviews are important to me because they allow me to see what readers like you enjoyed about the book and what I could have done better.

  Thank you to each and every one of you who takes the time to leave a review!

  1 - Underworld

  Let's get a few things straight.

  All demons have magical Abilities—except one, and we'll get to that. Also, we don't look like those ridiculous caricatures you humans paint us as, even in Hell—which most demons, not me, prefer to call the Underworld—or walking the Overworld. Red skin and horns? Silly artifacts of ancient mortal political plays. Everything you've heard is an ugly stereotype, and more than a little offensive, if I'm being honest.

  Before I get too far, let's address the minotaur in the room that is everyone being able to cast spells except for me. Being the only demon in the history of our race who can't wield magic is not something to brag about.

  How did it happen? No one knows. Mother and Father—yes, us demons are victims of procreation too—have been shamed and criticized by the community from the beginning, so they stopped talking about it well before I turned three thousand years old. I mean, who wouldn't? Never in the million year history of our kind was there a demon like me.

  I guess that makes me special, though you wouldn't know it by talking to Father. But he's an ass. He was from my earliest memory and I don't see him changing soon. I'm the shame of the family. The Segregate, different from everyone in the Underworld. Lucifer's reject.

  "You're pathetic, Zeke."

  That's me. Pathetic. The oddball. Nearly friendless and constantly getting my ass kicked by my closest friend.

  I dodged the giant boa's strike, tucking and rolling behind a log before leaping on the fallen trunk and racing its length, knowing the snake would not be able to climb on it. Having put distance between me and Bilba's hellacious beast, I pushed my hair out of my eyes to look for an escape route.

  There were none.

  "Yeah, I'm well aware," I reminded Bilba Ravenous. "And you've got a stupid name. What of it?"

  The blood on my lips, the result of tripping over Bilba's conjured snakes and falling face-first to the ground, left the taste of iron on my tongue. I was swallowing blood. My stomach was not going to be happy with me later, and I wasn't happy with my friend using his go-to spell—though I was more upset at myself for not anticipating him using it. He always did. Sometimes, I wanted to punch him hard enough to knock his stupid buzz cut hair off his even stupider head. Bilba could cast a number of spells, but most of them were half-ass attempts to learn something new. Snakes were his thing. How did I not see it coming?

  After he tripped me with those slithering nightmares, he was kind enough to let me get to my feet before sending them after me. A simple task for him.

  I ran for the nearest obstacle, a large, round evergreen shrub, thinking it would impinge the boas' ability to crush me. It circumvented the bush by cutting through the middle of it and was at my feet before I'd rounded the stupid thing. I jumped for the branch above my head, thanking Lucifer that he'd put it within my reach. Fate and all that, you know? How else could someone under five foot seven reach the blessed thing?

  And there I hung, giving my temporary enemy the cockiest smile I could form.

  "That's cheating," Bilba crossed his arms, pulling his loose shirt tight across his flabby chest.

  "And you promised to try new spells and stop using those dumb things." I jerked my head at the coiled boas beneath me.

  "But I win when I use them."

  "Oh wow," I grunted as I pulled myself up to sit on the branch. "You beat the only magicless demon in Hell. Good job, buddy. You must be so proud of yourself. Let's agree to fight without magic and see how it ends."

  "Fat chance," Bilba smirked.

  I was drenched in sweat and he was barely breathing heavy, and he was the one who was desperately out of shape.

  Bilba threw his head back, releasing a guttural laugh from the deepest part of his extended belly. Thankfully, he spared me the sight of it bouncing up and down by placing both of his hands over top of it, his long, black nailed fingers crisscrossing.

  "I could crush you," he said in between chortling like a sow stuffed on a trough full of garbage.

  I flicked my hand at him, unimpressed. "You and everyone else on the Fifth Circle. Heavens, everyone in any Circle of the Underworld. Big deal."

  The Underworld has nine Circles. The Fifth Circle was home. A boring, crowded realm about as stimulating as having 'that' talk with your parents. It isn't at all like what your mortal Dante says. It can be nice in places. We have spots of open land, gardens, and prairies, that are designated as public spaces. My parents live near a garden, which makes it nice at times like this when Bilba wants to spar to improve his casting. Eve's Sanctuary—look, don't get mad at me, someone named these places long before I got thrown into the Underworld like a pariah—was today's location of my ass-kicking. A small but lush garden, it had become a regular spot to hang out and spar. Few demons used it, allowing me to lose to Bilba without completely being humiliated in the face of witnesses. I've had enough humiliation so there was no reason to pile more on.

  Reaching down, I brushed the clumps of wet soil from my pants. Those were temporary; the grass stains were not. The small clumps fell and hit one of the boas on its stupid, small head. It looked up at me with a vengeful glare.

  Bilba chuckled. "Your mother is going to kill you."

  "You know what would be cool?" I asked, now adjusting to brush off the seat of my pants. "If you stopped abusing our friendship and the fact I'm the Segregate."

  He cocked his head.

  "What?"

  One corner of his lip pulled up, making his chubby cheek look lik
e it was rolling into his eye, made funnier because his thick eyebrows scrunched down, cutting his face in half. "Why do you call yourself that? It's a bullshit name, but it's one you can reject, you know?"

  "Don't know."

  Bilba shook his head. "I think you do."

  "Maybe I'm into masochism?"

  Bilba snapped his fingers, cutting off his spell. The two terrorist snakes puffed out of existence. I watched the grass for a moment longer.

  "I won't conjure them again, I promise."

  He was telling the truth, suddenly turning serious. Jumping from the tree and landing softly, I approached him. "Good, because I would have stepped on that one's head. I don't think he likes me."

  "They're spells, Zeke. Nothing more. I'm pretty sure they don't have feelings."

  I shook my head. "You don't know that for sure. Watch how he looks at me sometimes. I don't trust that little bastard."

  Bilba slapped me on the back, still serious. "Stop avoiding the question."

  "I'm not."

  I was the Segregate, Lucifer's Council—oh, we'll get to them, trust me—made an official declaration when it became clear that I lacked Abilities in my first year of school. During the basic Abilities curriculum, all the other imps got to explore their magical gifts, and when my teacher discovered I could not even boil water, she isolated me until the school figured out what to do—which was to assign special homework, which was nothing more than busy work to keep me out of the way. Plenty of parent-teacher conferences and medical appointments followed and, after it was confirmed that I could not cast the officials got involved. They confirmed the findings, made an announcement that ostracized my family and created the societal reject that was me. At least I still had access to social programs like medical care and the such, but I lost the ability to go to a good university after school, making finding a reliable job nearly impossible. After the initial media frenzy, life returned to normal for everyone except me. Even my parent's friends and coworkers accepted them back into their circles after a time. Few demons my age gave me that same allowance, and only Bilba publicly allied himself with me, though he also accused me of holding on to my resentment, telling me for the past few hundred years that I needed to let it go or it would make me angry and bitter.

  I resented him for telling me that.

  Bilba gripped my shoulder firmly. "Screw those morons. Who cares what they think?"

  "I do," I said, pulling away, pretending I had to adjust my pants so he would not see the pain in my eyes.

  "You shouldn't."

  I jabbed a finger at him, our signal from the time we were only a few hundred years old that one of us was just about done with the other. "You don't get to be the judge of that."

  I turned to walk out of the garden, Bilba's heavy footsteps thumping on the soft grass sounding behind me. "Come on, I didn't mean anything by it."

  We walked in silence. In a few hundred yards we'd be back among our kind, hundreds of us milling around, buzzing with the noise and annoyance of demons with too much time on their hands to realize how mundane our existence is. Though he always won our sparring matches, I appreciated my time with Bilba in the garden, time away from the buzz of Lucifer's spawn, because loneliness sucks, in case you didn't know. This session, however, held a darker element to it because it made me think about something I'd rather forget; a secret I had not shared with my friend.

  Before stepping through the gateway that shielded this silent realm from the natural noise of the Underworld's populace, I turned to Bilba, giving him the warmest smile I could manage. "I know. And I'm aware I can get sensitive about the crappy life Lucifer dealt me. I'm just dealing with stuff and the reminder didn't help. That's all."

  "What stuff?"

  I turned away again. The gateway drew closer, the low hum of its energy cutting through the silence of Eve's Sanctuary. Pressure of stress and anxiety pushed down on my shoulders. I didn't have time to explain. I didn't want to explain. Regretting I opened my dumb mouth in the first place, knowing Bilba would not let it go, I said, "I found something out today."

  "Want to give me more?"

  My shoulders slumped. Bilba had a knack for making me feel a few things beyond pain, and exasperation was one of them. That's what friends were for, right? "Something I'm not ready to deal with."

  He pulled up, waiting for me to turn around. The hum of the gateway grew louder, hiding the buzz of demon activity on the other side. "Tell me."

  He wouldn't budge if I didn't.

  So I did.

  2 - Underworld

  Day-in and day-out for the past six thousand years, I'd been taking it from someone in one form or another. If I'm correct, I was five steps outside of Eve's Sanctuary before Bilba bolted over to a particular demon who also happened to be the last demon in the Underworld I wanted to see.

  With Bilba Ravenous, secrets were like germs; they spread in any semblance of shared space to anyone he came in contact with. Yes, I should have known better, but when you don't have anyone else in your life to be vulnerable with, you either swallow your agony and suffocate, or you risk the chance that they might blabber. This secret could not have been swallowed if I'd coated it in grease.

  Besides conjuring his creepy snake, Bilba wasn't good at much. He was terrible with succubi, worse than me, and took to running like angels take to heavy metal music. But he excelled at keeping momentum on information that needed to remain close hold. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut and left him standing in Eve's Sanctuary, basking in the glory of his sparring victory over the only demon without Abilities. But I know him better than anyone. Doing so would have resulted in Bilba following me like a devildog pup follows an owner holding a treat, pestering me until I caved.

  The demon he spilled my secrets to was none other than Ralrek Burning, a friend of Bilba and someone I tolerated for Bilba's sake. Ralrek is an ass on his best days, insufferable on his worst. He was already running around with Bilba when we became friends and was as much of a jerk then as he is now. I had little hope for his recovery because he never appeared interested in not being ugly. Something about cocky incubi that rubs me the wrong way, I guess.

  Standing at nearly six and a half feet tall, Ralrek was a dominating presence. His oil-black hair—it's a common color down here—and broad shoulders didn't hurt his prospects either. Unfortunately for the ladies and much to the fortune of the rest of us demons looking for a mate, Ralrek was also decidedly only interested in other males. At least he had that going for him.

  Yes, I know that sounds petty, but my mother always told me that if you can't say anything nice about someone, then you're no better than an angel. The fact Ralrek was not competing for the attention of neighborhood succubi is the only positive thing I can say about him.

  Ralrek lifted his chin when I approached. Part of me wished the group of succubi walking by would take the chance to punch him in the face. I knew by the glint in his eyes that Bilba had dropped the news.

  "Zeke," he said by way of a greeting.

  "Ezekial," I corrected. Only Bilba was allowed to refer to me by my nickname because only Bilba cared enough about me to not reject me for being who I was.

  "Whatever."

  Bilba punched Ralrek on the shoulder in the manner testosterone demands. "Can you believe it? Zeke, going to the surface."

  Ralrek crossed his arms, looking every bit of jealous a demon could muster. Even if our kind could turn green with envy, he would have worn that well too. "I'd love to know how that happened. Your daddy call in a favor?"

  My father had the influence of a hand fan on the hottest day in the Underworld, and Ralrek knew it. My fate bothered him, obviously, a thought that brightened a dark day.

  "Wouldn't surprise me." I smirked, knowing that would irritate him even more and feeling safe out in the open as we were that he would not take the nudge to cast a spell and light my shoelaces on fire. "His life without the Underworld's Segregate would be a heaven of a lot easier, and guys like your fat
her would stop giving him shit all the time."

  Ralrek's smile looked like a snarl at the mention of his absent father. "What the heaven are you going to do up there, anyway? You've got no Ability."

  A chimera-drawn carriage, one of the few in this part of the Fifth, rumbled by. I heard Ralrek perfectly fine but still used the animal's thumping steps and the cracking of the carriage wheels on brimstone to pretend I did not.

  "What?"

  "You heard me, Sunstone," he said.

  Toying with him was fun, especially since he always reminded me of my lack of Abilities each time we saw one another, like he was worried I had forgotten in the intervening time. I knew I possessed nothing, and Ralrek knew that I knew that he knew that.

  "I have no idea," I replied, looking into his soft, brown eyes that hid his nasty streak.

  He stared at me for what seemed like an eternity before doing the same to Bilba. "You believe him?"

  Bilba nodded, his cheeks giggling. "Zeke wouldn't lie about going up."

  "Hmmmm," Ralrek said.

  Now it was my turn to cross my arms. It felt awkward, and likely looked pathetic to Ralrek. How did looking intimidating come naturally to guys like him? "I'm not excited about it and I don't plan on rubbing your face in it, Ralrek, if that's why you're worried."

  He scoffed. "Worry me? If I wanted to, I could do whatever I want to you. Trust me, you don't worry me."

  "I can be terrifying," I assured him, knowing neither one of us believed that.

  Ralrek didn't have to humiliate me because he didn't get the chance. Bilba bent over, laughing and holding his side. More than a few passing Fivers—that's what we call the fellow residents in this Circle—turned to look for what he was laughing at. Finding nothing, they carried on.

  "Are you done?" I asked, deadpan.

  Bilba pinched his eyes and laughed harder. "Stop it, Zeke. Man, you're hilarious."