Devoured: A Dark Monster Romance Novella (Pythonissam Filia), page 3
“You think yourself my equal? To be my bride? Quite bold for a human. Perhaps I will let you tell me more of these jokes before I eat you.”
Before I could react he was on me, his too large hand wrapped completely around my face like a vice. My hands clung to his forearm that felt like iron as he lifted me up into the air. My feet swung freely as I struggled, and I watched in horror as a dark tongue that was far too long lashed out his mouth, tasting the air between us.
“Let us be honest with each other, little human. I do so hate how humans refuse to say what they truly mean. You say you will be my bride, but what you mean is that you will give me your body, to debase however I see fit.” His hand tightened around me until I could hardly breathe.
“And there are so many ways in which I could ruin you. Your body is so small, so fragile. How easily I could break you while I pumped you full of my venom and my come, until you were bursting and begging me for more.”
I was shivering as his words caressed my ear, the facsimile of a lover’s whispers. It was fear, I was no fool. But what he didn’t know is that there was no pain he could inflict on me I had not suffered before, no horror that was worse than what waited for me back in that villa. I was afraid, but I had killed that part of me that reacted to fear a long time ago.
“Yes, that is what I offer you.”
Something hot and wet snaked up the side of my neck, that horrible squelching sound echoing in my ear as I tried not to squirm, not to give him the satisfaction.
Then it halted suddenly and he dropped me. My knees buckled as I hit the ground, and I felt them split open on the forest floor. He turned his back on me, waving one hand.
“Unfortunately for you, bodies—especially human bodies—are cheap. Expendable. You would trade me one for the near hundred you wish me to slaughter? No, that is no trade at all.”
I was so stunned I barely felt the pain in my knees. I hadn’t expected him to ask for more. Mother had said to never let a demon suggest a price. It would always be too high. But I was past the point where the price would matter. My death was imminent, I was now only negotiating the method.
“What do you want then?”
He was on me in a flash again, his hand crushing my throat as he pressed me into the ground with the weight of his body. His face was so close to mine I could see the slight difference in color between his dark irises and the pupil of his eye.
“Bodies are cheap, but the mind, now that is a valuable thing, but I think even that is not enough, in this case.”
He grinned that too wide grin again, and his elongated fangs flashed in the moonlight.
“No, for what you ask, I would need your soul, little human.”
“My soul? How can I—”
“You will be mine, mind, body and soul. You will obey me, my every whim. Should I desire you kneel, you kneel. Should I desire you suck on my cocks, your mouth will water. Should I wish to hang you from the trees and slowly consume the delicious nectar of your liquified insides, you will accept. That is how you give me your soul. Obedience, without question to any and all of my desires.”
So he was no different than any other man. Control. But he was honest, at the very least. I would move from a heated cage to an ancient one. But I would have my revenge. I could never kill all the men in my villa alone. But he could. And once he had, I would escape. Even if that escape was death.
“I agree.” I said with no hesitation.
He pulled back slightly.
“You are either very brave, very stupid, or pathetically desperate.”
“You have told me your price, and I accept. What else could you want?”
“Look at me, little human. Really look at me.”
I held his gaze, but as I did, another set of eyes opened below the dark ones that held me. Then another and another. Despite my best efforts, I gasped.
The new eyes were smaller than his human ones, clustered like black gems along what I had thought was the shadow beneath his cheekbones. They blinked, a ripple of obsidian that reflected the web’s ethereal glow. Each pupil caught the light differently, creating the unsettling impression that he was seeing me from multiple angles simultaneously, studying me with the calculating patience of a predator that had all the time in the world.
He chuckled, “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
His robe flew back with a whisper of fabric against night air, and I saw four more arms unfurling from his sides like some terrible flowering. But they weren’t human—they were black and segmented, covered in a chitinous shell that gleamed with an oily iridescence. The joints made a soft clicking sound as they moved, each segment grinding against the next with a sound that echoed with death. The ends tapered to points sharp enough to pierce armor, and as they flexed, I caught glimpses of serrated edges that could rend flesh from bone.
The additional limbs moved with their own intelligence, independent of his human arms, reaching toward me with delicate, almost curious gestures before pulling back. One traced down my cheek, the touch surprisingly gentle.
“Scared?” The word carried amusement, but underneath lay something hungrier.
“No.” The lie came easier than breathing. I had learned long ago that showing fear only fed the appetites of monsters, whether they wore human faces or revealed their true nature beneath the moon.
He shook his head, and the motion sent ripples through his additional eyes. “All humans do is lie.”
He pulled back and I thought perhaps he had acquiesced to my show of courage, but then that deep chittering returned—louder now, insistent. It seemed to come from everywhere at once: the web above, the bones below, the very air between us. The sound burrowed into my bones, a vibration that spoke of hunger as ancient as the forest itself.
The shadows around him began to shift and dance, not cast by any earthly light but seeming to flow from his very being. His form stretched upward, growing taller, but it was wrong—all wrong. His human legs were dissolving into darkness, replaced by something that emerged from the shadows like a nightmare birthing itself into reality.
A huge black carapace unfolded beneath him, broad as a table and segmented like armor forged in the depths of some infernal smithy. From it emerged eight legs—true spider legs, each longer than I was tall, covered in the same chitinous shell. They moved in a staccato of motion, each step making no more sound than a whisper despite their obvious strength.
His torso remained recognizably human in shape, but it had elongated, stretching like clay pulled by invisible hands. The pale skin was now flecked with patches of that thick black chitin, creating a mosaic of human flesh and insect armor.
His hands—his human hands—began to change as well. The fingers stretched, joints popping audibly as they extended beyond any human proportion. Long black talons emerged from his fingertips with the sound of bone piercing flesh, curved like sickles and wickedly sharp. When he flexed them, they caught the light and threw it back in cruel crescents.
But it was his face that completed the transformation into something truly otherworldly. That wide grin I had noticed before now split his features literally in half, the corners of his mouth extending far beyond where any human smile could reach. From within that terrible void, two mandibles emerged—insectoid mouthparts that clicked and rubbed together with the sound of bone grinding against bone. They moved independently of his human mouth, creating that infernal chittering as they tested the air, tasting my fear despite my best efforts to conceal it.
The multiple eyes along his face now made perfect sense, part of a visual system designed for hunting. They tracked my smallest movements while his mandibles continued their hypnotic dance, and I understood that I was no longer looking at something even pretending to be human.
This was Ysu in his true form—ancient, demonic, and ruled by the hunger that consumed him.
My body froze despite every instinct screaming at me to run, to flee this grove of bones and silver webs, to return to the familiar horrors of human cruelty rather than face this embodiment of otherworldly hunger. I wasn’t held by any supernatural compulsion, but by the simple understanding that if I ran, I would have risked everything for nothing.
I would have my revenge, and no demon would steal that from me.
I had sought him out. I had called his name.
And now, surrounded by the remains of those who had come before me, I finally understood the true price of the bargain I was so desperate to make.
The grove held its breath as Ysu moved over me, eight legs carrying him with ease. The luminous webs above pulsed in rhythm with his movement, as if the entire space bent to his will.
“Last chance, little human,” he said, and his voice had changed too—layered now with harmonics that shouldn’t exist in a single throat. The mandibles clicked punctuation to his words. “Run back to your heated halls. Tell them you found nothing but shadows and old bones.”
One of his spider legs lifted and pushed the hair out of my face. In the sharp tip I saw my own terrified reflection multiplied in its polished surface.
“They’ll hurt you for failing,” he continued, circling me now, his massive form moving with impossible silence. “But their pain is known, quantifiable. What I offer…” The chittering grew louder, hungrier. “What I offer has no human words.”
I lifted my chin, meeting those multiple eyes with courage I didn’t feel, instead depending on that fire that wanted to see it all burned to the ground. “I didn’t come here to run.”
“No?” All eight eyes blinked in sequence down his transformed face. “Then what did you come for?”
Before I could answer, he moved. One moment he was circling me like a cat with a mouse, the next his human arms had seized my shoulders while his spider appendages wove around my body, lifting me from the ground as easily as a child lifts a doll. Those inhuman limbs were surprisingly cold against my skin, hard and smooth as polished stone.
He brought me level with his face, close enough that I could smell something sweet and corrupt on his breath—like flowers rotting in summer heat. His mandibles spread wide, revealing the human mouth behind them, and for a moment I glimpsed rows of teeth that belonged to neither man nor spider.
“I can taste your pain,” he whispered, and one mandible brushed my cheek with terrifying gentleness. “Years of it, soaked into your very bones. Such exquisite suffering. Such carefully cultivated despair.” His grip tightened, spider legs adjusting to hold me more securely. “But also... something more.” He paused, his mandibles testing my skin, tasting me. The horribly light sensation of them passing over my skin was agonizing, but he just observed me with no reaction.
“But perhaps I will just devour you. It has been so long since something so delicious has wandered into my web. And I am so very hungry.” He wanted me to beg, to squirm in his grasp.
My mother’s warnings echoed in my mind—guard your sorrow, maiden fair. I would, and I would never beg again.
“Do it,” I breathed, surprising myself with the steadiness of my voice. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it. I’m tired of waiting for the next horror. But promise me you will destroy them.”
Something shifted in his expression, a flicker of what might have been surprise—or was it approval? Then his head tilted back, mandibles spreading impossibly wide, and I saw the glistening sacs at their base, swollen with venom that caught the web-light like liquid moonstone.
“As you wish, little human.”
The strike was swift. His fangs pierced the soft flesh where neck meets shoulder, twin points of agony that made Gaius’ careful knife work seem like gentle kisses. But the pain lasted only a heartbeat before the venom began its work.
Fire raced through my veins, but it was a cold fire—burning and freezing simultaneously. My vision fractured into prismatic shards, each showing a different version of reality. In one, I saw myself as Ysu must see me—a small, broken thing leaking pain like perfume. In another, I glimpsed something else, something with scales beneath its skin and hunger in its belly.
The venom flooded deeper, and with it came visions that weren’t my own. Ancient forests spread like green fire across the land. Stone circles raised beneath stars that had different names. Blood spilled on altars while thirteen voices chanted in languages that echoed in the hearts of the deep forest. Deep within me, something dark and hungry began to uncoil. And through it all, a presence—watching, waiting, weaving its vengeance across centuries.
My body convulsed in his grip, muscles seizing as the venom rewrote something fundamental in my flesh. I tried to scream, but what emerged was a sound I’d never made before—a long, harsh hiss.
He chittered in what might have been laughter. “Such strength for one so small.”
The world tilted, colors bleeding into impossible spectrums. I felt my consciousness fragmenting, and the last thing I saw clearly was his face above mine, fangs still dripping with venom, his expression one of terrible satisfaction.
“Sleep now, little human,” he crooned as darkness rushed up to claim me. “I can’t wait to devour you.”
Chapter 5
Ysu
Her pale limbs were caught in my silk, hanging like a broken doll. The threads cradled her with a tenderness I had not intended—my web responding to her as if she were something precious rather than merely prey.
Interesting.
The word surfaced in my consciousness unbidden as I observed her continued breathing. Hours had passed since I sank my fangs into the tender flesh of her throat, pumping her full of enough venom to fell a bull. By now, her life force should have been flowing through my silk, sustaining me as countless others had before.
Instead, she breathed with stubborn persistence.
I’d toyed with her. I couldn’t resist. But it had been so long since something as tender as her had wandered into my domain, and the hunger within me never slept. I had intended to consume her from the moment I had sensed her at the edge of my web. But she had surprised me with her bravery. I didn’t know humans still possessed it in such quantities. Then again, perhaps she was merely more desperate than I’d accounted for.
It was intriguing, either way.
How long had it been since something unexpected crossed my path? Decades? A century? The new humans from the south brought their rigid roads and ordered settlements, their predictable patterns of expansion and conquest. Even their cruelties followed templates—crucifixions, arena games, systematic torture performed with the tedious efficiency of bureaucracy. Where once warriors came seeking glory in single combat, now only cowering servants fled through my domain, carrying messages between their stone fortresses.
The Romans. They had drained the mystery from this land like water from a marsh.
I circled the web, each of my eight legs finding purchase on the anchor strands without so much as a whisper. My eyes tracked every detail of her suspended form. The way her moon-pale hair cascaded through my silk—the color eerily similar. Her torn clothing sagged to reveal the constellation of scars that mapped her torment across skin that should have been flawless.
Beautiful, in the way that broken things sometimes were.
The thought irritated me. Beauty was irrelevant. I was hunger incarnate, desire stripped of sentiment. I did not pause to admire my prey any more than a wolf contemplated the elegance of a deer before the kill.
And yet...
I extended one clawed finger and traced the skin above the burn scar on her shoulder, careful not to touch the web and disturb her precarious rest. The mark was fresh enough that I could almost smell the heated metal that made it; could imagine the sound of her flesh sizzling as her tormentor pressed their brand against her skin. Such deliberate artistry in her marking. The burns spoke of malice applied with patience, the cuts arranged in patterns that suggested aesthetic consideration alongside cruelty.
At least some humans retained imagination in their darker pursuits.
My eyes tracked every detail as I adjusted my position for better observation. The way her chest rose and fell. The slight flutter of her pulse at her throat. The faint scent that clung to her skin—something wild and green, like herbs crushed underfoot or smoke from sacred fires.
That scent... it stirred memories worn smooth by centuries. Priestesses who once walked these woods, women who knew the proper words to speak when darkness fell and ancient things stirred. They carried that same green fragrance, that same otherworldly quality that marked them as bridges between realms.
Bloodline. Of course.
She carried the old heritage, however diluted by generations of human breeding. I should have known. She knew my ancient name, after all. A daughter many generations removed from the priestesses who had transformed me into what I am. A strange game played by fate, that she now found herself trapped in my web.
My venom could not claim her because she was protected by those who placed this curse upon me. But even the ancient bloodline should not have been enough. No, I saw the true reason when I had held her in my arms and she had challenged me. Rage, a fire burning so deep and hot she simply refused to die. Admirable...for a human. If my venom did not kill her, she would be a different creature when she awoke.
The prospect should have left me indifferent. Transformation was simply another form of consumption, after all. The old must die for the new to be reborn. Yet I found myself descending to her level, my legs adjusting the web’s tension to bring us face to face. This close, I could observe the beauty of her face, the softness of her form. Features that stirred something deep inside me, a different kind of hunger.
When had I last witnessed such metamorphosis? When had anything in my domain surprised me with change rather than merely feeding the eternal sameness of my hunger?
She shifted in the web, and the movement sent vibrations through every strand. My mind registered each tremor, alert in a way I had not been for longer than I cared to remember. Her body twitched violently, and I thought perhaps she had at last succumbed to my venom.
