Dark Obsession

by Aja James

  “Rhys intends to join the Chosen,” Maximus declared.

  “If you accept his pledge, my king,” he directed the comment to Ramses.

  “Duly accepted,” was the ready answer. “Welcome to the Cove, Rhys Evans.”

  “Shall we convene in the conference room to debrief your adventures, Commander, or do you intend to rest up first?” Devlin inquired languidly.

  “Rest first. I’ve had the longest week of my life just now, and I need to get my bearings again,” Maximus replied.

  “But first, I have one more introduction to make.”

  Everyone looked around his person, wondering if he was hiding someone from view.

  There was the eagle-man, Rhys, and there was Simca.

  No one else.

  “This is Ariel Kyles,” Maximus said, gesturing to the black panther by his side, who was even now rubbing her sleek coat against his borrowed clothes like Simca loved to do.

  “Who are you pointing to?” Ana asked, perplexed. “That’s Simca. Have you decided to give her a new name?”

  The panther looked up at him adoringly. As per usual. She practically vibrated with a full-body purr.

  Rhys hid a smile while Maximus sighed.

  “Ariel… you’re making this difficult.”

  Would you like me to shift into human form and stand naked before your friends on first acquaintance? Her wicked, sultry voice sounded in his mind.

  You know them all already. It’s not the first acquaintance, Maximus growled subliminally back.

  It’s the first time they will see me in my nekked human body, she pointed out.

  Maximus pulled off the jacket he took from one of the vampire guards and draped it on top of the panther’s back.

  His comrades looked at him as if he’d just passed obnoxious gas, but they were pretending not to notice it.

  “Sooo,” Ava hesitantly broached the silence. “Where is this Ariel Kyles you’re wanting us to meet, Maximus? Did you leave her in the elevator?”

  “Ariel…” Maximus growled out loud this time through his teeth, glaring at his four-legged companion.

  The black panther wearing his jacket stretched on her hind legs, then swayed back on her front paws, opening her jaws in a feline yawn.

  Rhys snickered under his breath.

  The Chosen didn’t know where to look, their eyes darting all around.

  Surely, their fearless leader hadn’t begun to lose his marbles? Perhaps they should debrief the events of the past week while he was still lucid, and help him through whatever mental situation he was battling right now.

  And then, in the blink of an eye, the panther was gone.

  Replaced by a woman of average height with short black hair and almost translucently pale skin, wearing nothing but Maximus’s jacket.

  She had golden green eyes. The same shade and shape as the black panther.

  “Ariel Kyles,” she gestured to herself and cocked a smile at her audience. “Pleased to see all of you again.”

  After several beats of breath-holding silence, Ryu cleared his throat.

  “Again?”

  “Oh yes,” Ariel nodded. “Until a few nights ago, you knew me as Simca. She’s part of me now. As you just saw, we even share the same black panther form. I have all of her memories too.”

  “You… you’re Simca?”

  The rest of the group thoroughly empathized with Ana’s state of astonishment.

  Ariel smiled broadly.

  “Wanna test me? You have an unhealthy addiction to Dove dark chocolate,” she said to Anastasia. “Especially since you eat a bag of it before turning in for the day. Every single day. Good thing your vampire metabolism takes care of the excess fat and sugar so you don’t wear it on your hips and thighs.”

  Ana’s chin pulled back, flummoxed.

  Ariel turned to Devlin and Grace.

  “The two of you love birds like to pass little poems and verses throughout the day and night, and I’ve been tasked more than once as the messenger since I couldn’t read when I was a panther. You should think twice about asking me now. I haven’t tried reading in my feline form, but chances are I can. Doesn’t mean I will. But you never know.”

  Devlin goggled at her while Grace blinked with interest.

  Ariel addressed Ryu and Ava next.

  “You like to call her Bumble Bee when you’re feeling romantic, and she calls you Dark Chocolate Fudge Arabian—”

  “Enough,” Ryu cut her off, swiping a hand over his face, which was hot with embarrassment.

  “How did this happen?” he asked.

  It seemed to be the most pertinent question.

  “Long story,” Maximus muttered, pulling Ariel close to his body. He didn’t like that the jacket was slightly gaping and didn’t cover enough of her.

  “It can wait until after we rest. We’ll reconvene in the command center in eight hours.”

  “See you later, alligators! I gotta go subdue the beast!” Ariel chirped cheerfully and waved her fingers as Maximus dragged her away, moving determinedly down the hall toward his chambers.

  “Oh! And wait until you see what Maximus turns into!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Returning empty handed,” the Creature mused.

  “I thought you were all-powerful with your newly enhanced strength and speed.”

  The Pure warrior did not respond. It didn’t seem necessary. He wasn’t asked a question, after all, or required to give an opinion.

  He simply stood at attention and awaited his Master’s bidding.

  The Creature sighed. It hated having to spell things out.

  “Did you at least make some sort of progress? Tell me you got a hold of one of the specimens? What exactly happened?”

  “The Tiger King stayed behind to ensure that the rest of the animals escaped,” the warrior reported by rote.

  “My squadron and I engaged him half a mile from Chinatown. He took out several soldiers before taking to the rooftops. We pursued him as far as the river. I was the closest. But even then, the probability of capturing him alive was below ten percent.”

  “So what did you do?” the Creature prompted.

  “I shot him with a long-range rifle.”

  The Creature blinked with unhappy surprise.

  “You killed the Tiger King?”

  Those were definitely not his instructions!

  “I shot him with the DX365-C insert,” came the terse reply.

  The Creature was dangerously close to sputtering upon hearing this.

  “But it’s just a prototype. We don’t know if it works. It could have unintended side-effects…”

  “If it works,” the warrior cut in, unperturbed, “the Tiger King will be forced to maintain human form. He will not be able to communicate telepathically with others of his Kind. He will be much more vulnerable and easier to track down.”

  “You shot him near the river, you say?” the Creature backtracked a bit, trying to think through how in the blazes shooting the tiger in the back of the head would be a good idea under any circumstance.

  “Did he jump in? How do you know he didn’t drown?”

  The Pure warrior did not seem concerned with whether or not his target drowned, but he answered anyway.

  “He is not human, no matter what form he is in. Although he will be significantly weaker than in his tiger form, he will still have magnified healing abilities. Chances are over forty percent that he’ll survive.”

  “But sixty percent chance that he doesn’t!”

  The Creature didn’t usually get worked up about any particular scheme. Things went awry all the time.

  But it had its own reasons for wanting to study the Tiger King, though it had counted on killing two birds with one stone working with the researcher to round up the animals.

  Myths and lore had it that all beings who could shift shapes had a Beast or two in their ancestry. Goya was the only Beast it had (almost) encountered in the many millennia of its existence. It didn�
�t have the patience or the resources to find another one.

  It wanted to know its origins. There must be some reason beyond being the perfect tool for Medusa that dictated its existence.

  It had never pondered these things before. What was the point? But now that it knew it had a son, it suddenly needed to know about the whys and the wherefores, about its own parentage.

  Surely, it once had a sire and a mother? Surely, it couldn’t have been hatched from stone like the Monkey King in Chinese mythology?

  Four thousand years ago there had been no genetic engineering, so it couldn’t have been created in a test tube like some of the Pure traitor’s experiments.

  Even the goddess Athena sprouted from Zeus’s head. From somewhere.

  “If he dies, the GPS locator in the insert will alert me,” the Paladin said emotionlessly. “I have received no such alert an hour after I shot him. The GPS indicates that he is moving. I suggest we keep track and wait until he rendezvous with his clan to take action. This would be the most efficient approach.”

  The Creature collected its cool once more and considered silently for long moments.

  “How do you know he will attempt to contact the others? And even if he wished to, he can no longer communicate telepathically over long distances if the device you shot him with is working.”

  “Animals always go back to their clans. Especially the Beasts who do not fit into human society as easily as the Lesser Beasts. This information can be gleaned from Ariel Kyles’ memory banks.”

  The Creature was impressed.

  “You’ve been busy.”

  The Paladin merely looked at it, not comprehending the relevance of the statement.

  Of course he had done the necessary research to fulfill his program—to recapture the animals dead or alive, preferably alive. That went without saying.

  “Good call, my zombie warrior,” the Creature mused.

  “Let’s see where following the tiger tracks leads us.”

  *** *** *** ***

  Alend Ramses swirled the blood wine in his goblet as he sat in the deep-seated leather armchair beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked his penthouse balcony.

  He’d moved from his old chambers as one of Queen Jade’s Chosen to the Queen’s quarters behind the throne room.

  Well, King’s chambers now.

  How strange Fate was.

  How fickle and ironic.

  Never had a Dark King ruled over the vampire race, not in all the millennia since its creation. Both Pure and Dark Ones were organized around matriarchal societies, led by powerful queens.

  He’d known the most powerful Dark queen of all.

  Intimately.

  Pity that Jade Cicada abdicated her rule. She might have been the wisest. She’d certainly been the fairest. Though she was by no means soft.

  He’d wanted her.

  Few males could claim not to want her on sight. It was part of her Gift, after all, that irresistible sexual allure.

  But he never would have loved her.

  Any ability he had to love had atrophied a very, very long time ago. It’s what happened when you gave everything of yourself to another, only to get nothing in return.

  Over and over and over again.

  He never learned his lesson.

  Until almost the very end.

  Three thousand years was an obscene amount of time to be stubborn. To place another’s needs always above his own. To give endlessly without receiving in return.

  He’d never make that mistake again. Put his body, heart and soul at the mercy of a female.

  He was King now, even though he never in his wildest imaginings thought this day would come.

  But now that he was sitting on the figurative throne, he was going to be the greatest ruler the races had ever seen.

  And he’d start by squashing the venomous upstart Medusa.

  She had a lot to answer for, and it was high time someone taught her a lesson.

  Who better than him?

  She was amassing a formidable army, and so was he. Already, Maximus had brought back two animal spirits. Fantastic additions.

  Maximus, himself, Alend suspected, had more to reveal.

  Eli and Clara had also given their answer earlier today. Eli would join the Chosen as well, serving the new Dark King as he’d once been the fearsome right hand of the Dark Princess Anunit, before she became the monstrous Medusa.

  With Lord Wind at the Cove with his human wife and their adopted daughter, Alend could keep a close eye on the woman and child.

  Clara and Annie had special gifts. They probably didn’t know the full truth of it. But Alend knew what it was they possessed. In time, they would become part of his arsenal too.

  All the chess pieces were lining up beautifully.

  He couldn’t wait to start the game.

  *** *** *** ***

  Ariel stretched out lazily on Maximus’ gigantic bed in her black panther form and proceeded to meticulously bathe herself with her sandpaper tongue until her fur glistened a bluish black in the darkened room.

  There. Better than having a bath.

  Though, she’d be perfectly happy to have one, and a shower too, if her Mate joined her. Or, she could always give him one herself and contribute to global water conservation.

  A tongue bath, that was. In both of his forms.

  But he got to his chambers—their chambers—before she did, since she spent an hour with Ava doing a physical diagnostic. He was already making use of the installations.

  No matter, she could always lick and kiss and suck him all over just to be thorough.

  Oh, it was good to be home!

  She flung herself diagonally across the bed and pedaled her paws with glee. The scent of Maximus and Simca were faint on the sheets after several days of being gone, but she was about to change that.

  She rolled around and around, tangling herself in the sheets, marking the pillows and covers with her scent glands and purred to her heart’s content.

  The shower turned off in the en suite bathroom, making Ariel pause in her celebratory play and raise her head with alertness.

  A few seconds later, Maximus emerged through the open doorway, in the process of toweling off his hair, the rest of his freshly washed body still damp from the shower but drying quickly under the blast of the central AC and the heat of his skin.

  Such a familiar sequence of events. Such a familiar sight.

  And yet, everything was brand new. Because she now viewed him from a whole new perspective.

  Ariel avidly perused the vampire male’s naked body from head to toe with her keen, golden-green eyes.

  Hallelujah and praise the Lord!

  She’d died and gone to kitty heaven!

  That there was the finest representation of maleness she’d ever laid eyes on. And he was one-hundred-percent bagged, tagged and dragged-back-to-her-lair-to-devour-at-leisure hers.

  From his rough, sharp-cut visage, his ice blue eyes, to his long, strong throat, powerful shoulders and deep, muscular chest, down the tantalizing groove that bisected his middle, partitioning explicitly his eight-pack abs, tapered to a cut waist and narrow hips, supported by beautifully proportioned legs dusted by dark hair—

  He was a glorious, endless feast to a starving feline predator.

  Ariel licked her chops with barely leashed greediness.

  But she wasn’t done with the meticulous visual assessment. She had to circle back to her favorite parts:

  His large, vein-wrapped hands that gave her so much pleasure, whether stroking through her panther fur or caressing her naked human skin.

  His full, generous mouth that went soft and pliant, as well as firm and demanding, only for her.

  Most of all, the gorgeous, monstrous, primal maleness of him, hard and thick and hot and smooth, jutting from the nest of hair at his groin. Proud and ruddy, ready to please her, to take her and enslave her to his will.

  She rolled shamelessly onto her back and tucked
her paws under her chin, her eyes wide and beseeching as she stared at him upside down. They said—

  Oh please come and fuck me hard and deep like there’s no tomorrow, my magnificent Mate! I’ll scratch your itch if you scratch mine!

  Maximus tipped up a corner of his lips in an irrepressible smile and shook his head at her. He’d love to give her everything she desired, but first thing’s first.

  “All squared away with Ava?” he asked.

  Yes. She did a thorough scan of my body and brain. There’s nothing physically inside of me controlling my “program.” Not visible without a microscope, anyway. Ava hypothesizes that I’m regularly injected with, or I regularly ingest, something to enable Medusa and the head researcher to mind-control me.

  Ariel blinked in consideration.

  I did always take vitamins to maintain full capacity as a super-soldier. At least, that’s what I thought the pills were for, and of course, I never questioned the regimen. I’d also go into one of the facilities to get checked out every six weeks, and sometimes the dosage was changed; sometimes I got extra injections. The researcher said they were inoculations.

  Inoculations indeed, Maximus thought. If you could be inoculated against having a mind of your own.

  Although I was acting according to my program to seek you out, what happened after Simca’s spirit possessed me was completely unplanned. And my obsession with you before our encounter wasn’t part of my program either.

  Unwittingly, though, whatever thoughts I did have on my own were always monitored by Medusa’s team and used for her purposes. Ava suspects that they were using my blood to access my memories, at the same time infusing my blood with a stronger, longer-lasting control agent with each dosage. Since I haven’t taken the pills for over a week, Ava couldn’t detect anything abnormal in my blood, but she will run more tests over the coming days.

  Maximus nodded, a concerned frown darkening his brow.

  It wasn’t that he doubted Ariel. He knew her.

  He knew her mind and her heart. He trusted her fully.

  But he worried for her safety against Medusa’s machinations. Every time they foiled one of Medusa’s plots, they discovered two or three more subplots that they hadn’t anticipated.