by Sage, May
Three Words
Watching the retreating figure, dumbfounded, Avani couldn’t believe her eyes—or ears for that matter. And she sure as fuck couldn’t believe her nose. The hot dude walking away from her and her five-foot-eleven, two-hundred-pound charge might be an absolute asshole, yet he smelled so damn good she wanted to lick chocolate sauce off his abs. Woodsy, with apple tart and pine tree; all her favorite things.
Right after she punched him in the face and got him to deal with the hexed guy she’d dragged all the way up this hill.
All her instincts told her to follow him, make him obey, but she stayed put. She could imagine that people didn’t easily make that guy do anything he didn’t want to.
Dammit. She really should have stayed away from vamp business.
After calling him every colorful name she could think of, including "twatwaffling cuntytart," she forced herself to breathe out to calm her racing pulse. She wasn’t sure her Zen practice helped much, but he was too far to hear her now anyway, so she concluded her tirade with, “Fine. Whatever.”
If he didn’t care about the huntsman puppet, there was no reason why she should. She let go of the zombie dude’s arm, shrugged, and started to walk down the hill just as a breeze of air passed in front of her.
The hairs on her arm stood to attention, and her body tensed, adopting a protective stance—a natural reaction for a wolf faced with outsiders, potential enemies. The next instant, six other vamps appeared.
She felt so terribly foolish watching them stand so close, their bright eyes fixed on her. They were clearly predators, and she was terribly outnumbered.
Even she recognized the two leading them. His damn highness Levi De Villier, the owner of Oldcrest, who let her pack stay here out of the goodness of his dark little vamp heart. Or something like that.
The pack couldn’t stand him. They needed his charity; that didn’t change the fact that they hated it.
And of course, his mate, the object of all the attention on their territory, Chloe Eirikrson.
Avani had met her a few months back, during her first week in the territory. She seemed nice. And naive. Or stupid. Which meant she was potentially an evil genius who wanted to appear all three? Jury was still out.
“Avani?” Chloe said.
She was surprised the girl recalled her name before remembering that vampires had freaky memories.
“Hey. I found that guy on the path, so I helped him up the hill. Your troll let me through.”
She’d seen the guardian of the Night Hill gates from afar before, but actually speaking to the colossal beast had been a little more intimidating than she’d liked to admit. She knew his kind was freakishly strong and a lot faster than they should be, given their imposing stature.
“Thank you, Avani,” said the damn fucking king of vamps.
Well, not literally. Levi didn’t hold a formal title. Nonetheless, he could have if he’d wanted to. And he was talking to her. Politely. Using her name, even.
Today was weird.
“I recognize the boy. He’s…”
“A huntsman,” Chloe supplied. “Easton Reeds, I think? He started school the same day as me. Bash would know more.”
“Mikar?” Levi said.
There must have been some sort of underlying order there because without requiring further prompting, a dark and handsome shadow disappeared in another fast breeze, running at full speed up the hill as though Levi had brandished a whip.
Chloe stepped forward tentatively and called softly, “Easton? How are you doing?”
No answer came from the huntsman; he kept mumbling, his gaze fixed unwaveringly ahead.
“What’s wrong with him?” she mused.
There was another unnatural gust as more vamps approached. Mikar was back, with another hot man and woman in tow.
Why were they all hot? Avani felt cheated. Pack members were gross. Okay, not all of them, but none looked anything like these vamps.
She wondered if going through surgery to look Photoshop-ready was a rite of passage before becoming immortal.
“Easton?” the man called, stepping toward the zombie huntsman, close to Chloe.
If he heard him, Easton didn’t react at all, still muttering his weird-ass spell-like chants, though his voice had become lower and more distorted.
It was starting to creep her out. Time to head back home—before she was missed. She’d have to sneak in and wash the scent of vamp off her, too.
“I think he might be…”
“Yeah, he’s dead,” Levi confirmed.
Ew. She’d carried a corpse up the hill? “Wait, what?” Avani scowled. She didn’t mind hunting down squirrels and eating them raw, but decaying huntsman creeps grossed her out.
“He’s been hexed so that his corpse could come to us. I guess that’s a message of some sort. Or a threat.”
Great. Now she had to wash off voodoo, vamp, and corpses.
“Did he say anything comprehensible?” a black vamp guy she didn’t recognize asked.
Avani shrugged. “No, he’s been muttering like this all the way. Something about a queen, having to speak to a master, and some nonsense about a blood link. Good luck making sense of that.”
“You speak Latin?” Levi was surprised, and she couldn’t take umbrage. Her pack wasn’t known for its scholars. They never attended school, and the lessons they taught the kids of the pack could be summed up by How To Kill That Thing 101. Some pack members had developed interests outside of hunting, but they were rare.
“My mom taught me some stuff,” she replied, leaving it at that. “Still, I couldn’t make sense of what he said overall.”
“Thanks again. It’s helpful.”
Levi and his posse were obviously not as squeamish as she; they circled the eerie corpse and started to poke him, sniff him, ask questions.
Avani cleared her throat. “Well, so long, everybody. Let’s never do this again.”
She started down the hill, never expecting an answer. To her surprise, steps soon trailed her.
“Wait!”
She turned to find Chloe walking right behind her.
Immortality suited the other woman. She’d clearly been made for it. When they’d first met, Chloe had felt shy and unsure of herself. Her aura had been all over the place, a strange mix of fear, eagerness, curiosity that made her feel scattered.
The woman in front of her was a different animal.
A dangerous one.
The wolf inside Avani, never far from the surface, observed her every move with wariness. One wrong movement, and her furry counterpart would burst out of her skin to attack the vamp.
Avani wasn’t sure she’d win against the fledgling, young and inexperienced as Chloe was.
She tried to hold the beast back—for that reason, and because she was absolutely, a hundred percent certain that she would lose against whoever was sent to avenge Chloe if she did manage to take her down.
Part of her was irritated; it would be a good fight. Too bad they couldn’t spar for kicks like she would with another pack member. But the dynamic between wolves probably didn’t apply on the hill. If they’d both been wolves, no one would have raised an eyebrow at two dominant females challenging each other for no reason. Avani remembered enough of her life before the Elder Pack to know that wasn’t standard everywhere.
Besides, Chloe hadn’t actually shown an inclination toward starting a fight yet. Just because she was an immortal bloodsucker from a family known for their cannibalism and savagery didn’t mean that Chloe was violent.
“What?”
“I’ve lived in Oldcrest seven months and it’s the second time I've spoken to you—to any wolf of your pack. But although you stay on your territory, you’re part of our little world. If something happens here, you guys will be affected. I feel like we should get to know each other a little better.”
Avani laughed. “What, braid each other’s hair, talk boys, and exchange dresses? Come on, Eirikrson. Vampires and wolves
are enemies.”
“Are we? I have wolf friends.”
Not from her pack, Avani wanted to say.
“That’s not possible. Our alpha hates your guts—all of you.” Everyone who wasn’t a pure werewolf, basically.
“And what do you think?”
Avani lifted a brow. “It doesn’t matter what I think. He forbids interactions with your kind, so that’s the end of it.”
“And yet, you’re here,” Chloe challenged with a lopsided grin.
Damn, the girl had a point.
“Do you always do as you’re told?” Avani asked her.
Chloe laughed. “I can’t take orders. Like, at all. So, no. But your kind have to obey the alpha, is that right?”
Avani inclined her head in acquiescence, slowly. It was the way with shifters, especially when the alpha was a born alpha.
“What if I could help you with that?” Chloe said, tilting her head.
Avani frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What if I could make it so you don’t have to obey anyone?”
It was a trap. A trick. When something sounded too good to be true, it was, end of story. Especially when it came from a stranger.
“You helped me once. Let me return the favor.”
“I showed you out of the woods. That’s not exactly a huge favor.”
“And all you get from me is two words,” Chloe said. “I’m not even sure it’ll work. But I think so.”
She was rambling and it made no sense. Still, there was something about this girl. Something that made Avani want to believe her. Feel like she could trust her.
Trap, trap, trap. Her animal disagreed. It felt a little cornered, so close to the petite blonde.
“What words?” she said.
The air changed around Chloe. Her deep brown eyes turned bright blue, flashing in the moonlight. Avani would have sworn the earth itself stood still, paying attention to that force of nature.
“You’re free.”
That was all she said. Two words, as promised. Whispered, sung in a way that resonated deep inside Avani.
You’re free.
She shook her head. Just a trick. It’d just been a strange trick, that was all. Stuff like that was easy to say for someone like Chloe Eirikrson, mate to a badass royal vamp, heir to a well-known family of psychotic bloodsuckers. She didn’t understand what it was to be a werewolf—the pack dynamic. The price Avani would pay if she ever stepped out of line.
But the other woman meant well. Ignorance didn’t make her a bad person.
“Thanks, I guess,” Avani said, waving again as she picked up the pace to leave the creepy hill and its weird inhabitants.
The assholes, the royals, the weird-ass witch princesses.
Avani rushed back to pack territory—a hamlet with red brick houses built in a circle around a tiny town square—and headed to one of the smallest homes. As a single female without pups, she was only entitled to one bedroom. It was clean and comfortable inside. She headed straight to her bathroom and started a shower.
As cold water rushed down her skin, she smiled, though with some reluctance. What a strange night. She couldn’t remember a day quite as interesting as this in a long time.
Gilded Cage
Alexius had expected a visit eventually; not tonight, perhaps, but at one point or another. And sure enough, the Leviathan was at his door at three in the morning.
Lise had left his apartment by the time he’d made it back, so he’d spent his time doing what he did best. Tweaking his fusion spell. He’d found a way to bind two elements in one object, as the great mages of the old days had done—an art lost to the current inhabitants of this planet that he’d been determined to perfect.
Mostly because he could. He had no specific reason for wanting to break the laws of physics and magic, other than boredom.
Vampires needed to sleep—though far less than mortals. Just like they needed to eat, drink, to maintain their corporal bodies' functioning. The blood was something else—a carnal desire and need born of their duality; it maintained their immortal essence.
Alexius had suffered from insomnia for almost a thousand years. On the rare occasions when he finally passed out, exhausted, three or four times a year, the nightmares started. The memories of who he used to be, what he’d done, twisted by time and magic.
So, he worked, night after night, day after day, until he finally had to give in to sleep.
“Am I disturbing your rest?” Levi asked.
Alexius rolled his eyes. “That’s actually not possible.”
No one, nothing, could wake him up when he did finally manage to fall asleep. Until his mind consented to free him from his dreams, he was a statue, a corpse.
“Just because you can’t sleep doesn’t mean you aren’t resting,” his friend pointed out.
Though “friend” was perhaps a bit of a stretch. Levi had shown nothing but contempt for Alexius for the first several hundred years of his residence on the hill; then later, some indifference. They’d only seemed to get closer five hundred and twenty years ago, after the Eirikrson massacre.
Neither of them had known that anything had been going on. The royals had called a meeting, which meant that Alexius had headed right to the Adairford pub—an excellent brewery, even back then—to get drunk off his arse and forget that his family existed. As for Levi, he’d heard the term politics and hightailed it out of there. Then the next thing they knew, there had been screams on the hill, terrible screams that still haunted Alexius’s nightmares.
It took an unholy amount of alcohol for a vampire to get even the slightest bit tipsy, and the haze soon passed; but the night of the meeting, Alexius had drunk enough booze to be completely out of his wits. He’d imagined that the screams were his nightmares come to ruin his life during his waking hours for a change.
One of the many things he’d never atone for: not even trying to help as an entire family was slaughtered by his kin.
Some of the Eirikrsons deserved a good beheading. There always were assholes in each family. But there had been innocents—children, men, and women who weren’t inclined to fight anything or anyone unless it was self-defense. Even among the warriors, some were fair, honest, even kind.
And necessary. The Eirikrsons had been the one thing that had kept their kind in check. That had kept him in check.
Young vampires could lose it. Easily. The newfound bloodlust, the great powers suddenly at their fingertips held an intoxicating lure. And there also was the way their brains worked. Faster. Taking in everything and nothing at once. The lack of focus was their greatest curse.
Alexius used to be lazy as a teen. Too lazy to pay attention to his lessons about control. Or any lesson for that matter. He did what he pleased, and nothing else. His family never bothered to correct his behavior. He was a prince of the Helsing clan; rules were for other people.
Then he turned at age twenty-five, and he became something dark, twisted, a predator without a care, without a thought about his victims. Without a thought at all. He was a lion and the humans crossing his path, prey.
If that had happened now, in year 134 of the Age of Blood, he would have been killed on sight by huntsmen. Back then, it had been the Eirikrsons and their slayers who kept vampires in check, and they made a different call.
He still remembered Viola Wild pinning him down under her heel, both of her curved blades at the ready. She awaited her orders from her mistress.
Alexius had thrashed against her like a caged animal, desperate to get free, but he lacked discipline and strength. There was no way he could have done a thing against the likes of Viola, a soldier trained since infancy and turned into a vampire only when she knew every single one of her strengths and weaknesses.
Liz Eirikrson, the light-haired, blue-eyed, blood-drinking warrior who commanded the slayer, looked him right in the eyes and Alexius stopped writhing, recognizing death when he saw it. Even in his blood-filled haze, he’d remembered what he’d been told about
the Eirikrsons. They were vampires who drank from vampires—from predators like him. He knew the blonde would drain him and enjoy it.
Alexius looked down.
Liz lifted one brow. “Well, this one looks reasonable enough, for a feral. Not even trying to fight me. He might have a brain cell or two left.”
Instead of drinking him dry or burning him, she had him brought back home to Oldcrest, and with his family’s blessing, bound him to the territory until he’d paid for his crimes.
What that meant, Alexius had stopped guessing at a long time ago. Nine hundred years hadn’t done the trick. He just knew he couldn’t leave; his flesh began to desiccate and rot every time he tried to cross the borders hiding their world from the mortals. And he tried once a year, every year, like clockwork. Given how many lives he’d taken, he doubted he’d ever free himself.
As Alexius regained his sanity, he remembered the hundreds—thousands—of deaths he’d caused, and he’d been fighting a losing battle with depression since. The one thing that seemed to help was healing people. And distracting himself with work. Inventions, discoveries. Things that challenged his mind. He was the brain behind most of the technological advancements of the last hundreds of years; he’d sent letters to Gutenberg, Da Vinci, Newton, tweaking them in the right direction. There were only one or two potion masters who could hold a candle to him. Alexius’s nature made him too volatile to wield magic directly, but he could mold it, infuse it into cursed or blessed objects. Changing lead to gold was child’s play.
And it wasn’t enough.
Sex helped. A good screw definitely figured among his favorite distractions, although he rarely indulged in the activity. He lived here, twenty-four seven, every day of his life, without a chance for a jailbreak in sight. Complicating his stay with a huge line of conquests wouldn’t have helped his case.
“The guy was dead. I would have helped if I could,” Alexius told Levi before the other elder had the chance to launch into a lecture.
“I know,” Levi replied simply, walking in without an invitation. “I thought you’d want an update. Jack gave us a list of the locations the boy visited over the last few years. Apparently, he disappeared for a little while, only turning up a month later after an assignment. It’s worth looking into.”
