Vampire Mage 5: An Urban Fantasy Harem (The Vampire Mage)

by Joshua King

  "Um, Hayden," Bugs said, stepping up beside me with a hesitant, almost regretful look on his face. "I don't recommend you get inside the computer. There's not much space in there, and you might have heard people talking about files and folders and things, but they don't actually exist inside the machine, so you don't need to try to crawl in and find something."

  I looked at him for a few blinks.

  "Thank you, Bugs."

  "Sure thing."

  Jaxxim held his hand out toward Bugs.

  "This is what you brought to help us?"

  "Yes. Bugs knows computers. That was his job when he was in the other world. He thinks he can figure it out for us."

  Jaxxim looked him up and down again, then gave a single nod.

  "Fine," he said. "Come on. I came down to meet you to get you back up to the restricted floors."

  We stepped into the elevator and started up.

  "Is everybody all right?" I asked. "Did anything happen while I was gone?"

  "Nothing happened. We were all waiting for it. I figured if the tracker chip's power has really been spreading through us, Darian might be using it to watch where you're going and know when you were the furthest away so he could send Shades while you weren't here to protect anybody."

  "He wants me. Why would he do that?"

  "He wants you on his own. We are obstacles and he wants to eliminate us. But no one came. Brielle has been shielding us since you left. It must be working, but I'm glad you got back. She seems like her strength is fading and I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to hold it up."

  "Who is Brielle?" Bugs asked.

  "The Fae woman who joined our group in the woods. She is a healer and can create protective shields. I asked her to shield the rest of the group to hopefully counteract some of the tracking abilities of the chip and provide protection if they did attack."

  "You sure do have friends everywhere, Hayden," Bugs said with a hint of awe in his voice.

  "Thanks. Jaxxim, has there been any progress on the computer at all? Did any of you try anything else?"

  "No progress. None of us can figure out how to get in."

  "I'll figure it out," Bugs said.

  Jaxxim's eyes slid over to him. The elevator suddenly stopped and I looked at Jaxxim.

  "What's going on?"

  "It stopped us," he said. "It won't let us go to the restricted floors."

  "Did you use your access chip?" I asked.

  "Of course, I did." He examined the panel that utilized the access chip to provide access to the upper floors of the Tower to those who had been authorized. "I've never seen it do this."

  I hit the open door button, expecting the elevator to slide open so at least we could get out and try the stairs. It didn't move.

  "It won't let us out."

  Bugs wedged himself between Jaxxim and the panel and examined it. He ran his hands along the side and detected an edge. He dug his fingertips into the slight juncture between the panel and the rest of the wall. I cringed as his fingers bent and squished, but Bugs didn't react. He continued working that way until the entire panel disconnected and came off the wall. Inside was a series of what looked like lights, switches, and discarded video game guts. He examined them and then reached inside and adjusted a few things. Suddenly, the elevator lurched and started up again.

  "I'll figure it out," he said again to Jaxxim and moved over to reclaim his corner of the elevator.

  "What did you do?"

  "The system wasn't recognizing your access chip, so I overrode it on a fairly permanent basis."

  "You broke it," I said.

  "Yes, but elegantly. This way, the elevator will still work."

  "Son of a bitch," Jaxxim murmured, running his fingers along the side of the panel.

  The elevator stopped and the door opened on the floor where I'd left everyone. No longer in the office, the group had congregated in an empty conference room and were clustered tightly together in the middle. A faintly shimmering golden glow around them indicated Brielle was still doing everything she could to guard Bex and the women, but there were sections of the shield I could see weakening and fading. As soon as she saw me walk through the door, Brielle's shoulders sagged with exhaustion and a smile touched her full lips. She fell into my arms and I gathered her close, giving her a kiss on her head.

  "Are you all right?" I asked.

  "I just need to rest," she said.

  Scooping her up, I held her close to my chest and looked at the others.

  "Let's go to the office. Everyone." I looked at the newest face in the room. "This is Bugs. He's here to help."

  5

  I carried Brielle down the hallway toward the office. Her head rested on my chest and I could feel her breath moving along my skin as it got slower and deeper. She had been pushing herself to the edge of her abilities every day since we added her to the group, and I wondered how much longer she was going to be able to keep going like this. She was powerful in her healing ways, it was obvious, but that didn't mean it didn't take effort to force herself beyond what she was used to and use her magic for situations for which it had never been intended. She'd already told us her powers were most effective when used on the Fae, but now I could see that it wasn't just that the magic worked better for them. It was far more difficult for her to try to use what she could do to help us. It didn't stop her. She was willing to put every ounce of herself into the cause, fighting alongside us in every way she could even when it brought her so close to destruction.

  I could only hope this would make her stronger. Just like me, if she continued to work and push herself, maybe her powers would sharpen, and she would teach herself to be able to tolerate more. Until then, I would take care of her the best I could and protect her when she needed to rest. That's what I did now, as I brought her to the side of the office where one of them had gathered all our bags. Finding the softest bag, I rested her on the gray industrial carpet and nestled her head on the bag. She sighed into it and relaxed, falling deeper asleep. Bugs was already at the computer when I turned back around. He stood at the side of the desk, staring at the strange machine with an expression somewhere between awe and confusion. One hand reached out and ran along the top of the monitor like he was trying to lull it into complacency before sitting down to dig through it.

  "Well, you weren't kidding, Hayden. This is the strangest computer I have ever seen. Looks like someone made a prototype out of bits and pieces they found after a high school theater production of A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum done with a sci-fi twist."

  I had no idea what that meant.

  "Do you think you can do anything with it?" I asked.

  "I'm going to do my best. No promises." He sat down in the chair and scooted up to the desk. His eyes scanned the keyboard and his fingers tapped out a complex rhythm across the keyboard before he gave one emphatic poke to the enter button. "I'm in."

  "What?" I asked in shock, leaning against the desk to look at the screen.

  “I’m in the program at least."

  "How the fuck did you do that?"

  "Simple interface when you think about it. Several different moving alphabets, going at a cross axis, but if you line them up just so, it's easy enough to see it’s English. Old English, but English. Then it's just a matter of figuring out the password.”

  “What was the password?” Aurora asked.

  “Password.”

  "Of course, it is. Darian never thought anyone would get near his computer, so why would he need anything more complicated than that?"

  "If that was really the case, why would he need a password at all?" Bex pointed out. "He could have just programmed the computer to operate under his instructions without having to protect it at all."

  "It probably just amuses him," Aurora said. "He would love the idea of doing something so mundane as having the world's stupidest password to protect a core element of his evil, all the while believing no one would ever find the comput
er, much less attempt to use it."

  "What happens now?" Ashe asked.

  "Now I just need to figure out how to override the program not just so it can't work anymore, but so it can't be rebooted at any point. It won't do you a whole lot of good for me to deactivate the tracking technology only for Darian to come here and restart the enchantment a few hours later."

  "No. I think that would actually make things worse."

  "Exactly." He started clicking at the keyboard again. "So, I need to break apart the program into its individual elements and figure out how to remove their effectiveness as parts, and then as a whole."

  “But you think you can stop it?” Ashe asked. "You'll be able to get in there and make it so Darian can't find us anymore?"

  “That's tougher than cracking into the computer, but I'm pretty sure I can do it. Turns out Darian isn't as sophisticated as he might think he is. All I have to do is figure out how he executes the programs and then where they are rooted and then how to deactivate them individually, then as an entire overarching matrix. I did this sort of thing once before, for… some people. Bad people. It wasn’t my favorite thing I ever did, considering what they used it for, but I enjoyed the challenge of it so much. Plus, I got to wear costumes and be like a spy.”

  That was a moment when I really wanted to think he had just started babbling again and it was all just words tumbling around in his head. But I couldn't bring myself to actually believe that. He was concentrating on the computer much too intently to let his mind wander into the realm of storytelling at this point. What he was saying was a confession, a revelation that started coming out of him whether he meant it to or not.

  “What do you mean, like a spy?” I asked.

  “I don’t like to talk about it. I didn’t know what they were doing when I first got started. Everything I'd done up until that point was totally on the up and up. Legit. Above board. White hat."

  "On the straight and narrow," I offered.

  "Yes," he continued. "So, when they approached me to give me a few new projects, I thought it was going to be pretty much the same thing. Then things started to get a little dusty. Not outright dirty, necessarily, but they could have tolerated a good swipe with a wet mop, if you know what I'm saying. I'm not proud to say I went along with it. The money was good, then it was fantastic, and the ethics of it were all a bit tangly. Even when I sat down to try to have a good hard talking-to with myself, I couldn't find anything really bad that was happening because of it. A little bit bad, but not really bad. They were really careful to make sure I never got the full information and didn't know what they were actually up to with what they had me doing. When I found out, I wasn’t happy. Then I couldn’t play spy any more. I made them very mad.”

  He hadn't taken his eyes off the screen as he gave us the Reader's Digest Abridged version of what felt like the last portion of his time in this world.

  “What did you do?” Aurora asked.

  “I made sure they didn’t get to hurt anyone for a long time. A very long time. Thirty-to-life kinda time. But they had friends, and their friends weren’t nice and I had to go away. There. I think I figured it out. Seems like I should be able to just…”

  He typed a few more commands into the computer and Jaxxim hissed. One hand clutched the inside of one forearm, then clawed at the back of his shoulder. His head fell back and his neck rolled, stretching until the tendons strained on either side.

  "Jaxxim?" I said, stepping up to him. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

  "I think it worked," Bugs said. He pointed at the screen. "The tracking indicator is fading. It's losing connection with Jaxxim, and with the rest of you."

  "What's happening to Jaxxim?" Aurora demanded.

  "The tracker chip became a part of me," Jaxxim told her through gritted teeth. "It's as much an element of my body as my blood and bones. My body is feeling it shut down." He growled through another wave of pain. "This must be what it feels like for an organ to stop working." He drew in another breath. "It isn't fun."

  I laughed and gave him an encouraging pat on his back.

  "You're going to get through it," I told him. "I watched you literally get smashed into pieces by a train. This should be a breeze."

  Jaxxim's eyes squeezed closed and he struggled through another few breaths before his body relaxed.

  "Walk in the park."

  "See? Everything's good."

  He opened his eyes just enough to look at me for a few seconds and then closed them again, shaking his head.

  "If it's all the same to you, Hayden, I'm going to keep poking around in here a bit," Bugs said. "Just to make sure there's nothing else in here you might need to know about."

  It seemed much more likely he just wanted to be nosy and poke around to see what else he could find in the intriguing machine, but I was willing to take any help I could get, even if it came in the form of a fringe benefit. I'd only nodded when a hand slipped around my arm and slid down to wrap around my wrist. Aurora's face appeared over my shoulder.

  "Come with me," she murmured in my ear.

  "Where are we going?"

  "I need to feed." She flicked the tip of her tongue across my earlobe. "And I want you."

  She took my hand and led me out of the office to another at the end of the hall. I kicked the door closed and turned to her. Aurora’s hands found my cock before I even knew what was happening. Her mouth clamped onto mine and our tongues danced rapidly, hungrily across each other. She was rubbing me through my pants with one hand, the other filling itself with my hair. The energy in her kiss propelled me as well, and my adrenaline took over, filling me with an intense desire to be inside of her as fast as possible.

  I pressed her against the wall, pulling back to look at her for a moment. The smile across her face told a story of a woman in need, desire dripping out of every pore of her, and her eyes danced with a hundred different options for getting what she needed. I crushed my mouth back into hers and grabbed her arms by the wrists. I lifted them above her head and pressed them against the wall as I moved my lips over her chin and onto her neck.

  Her breathing intensified as she pulled her arms together, lacing her fingers into my hand so that I could hold both of her arms with one, letting the other free to explore her heaving body. I ran the free hand down her face and traced her right breast before letting it slide down to her hip. The tight, silky dress she wore clung to her and I could feel the heat coming from her middle. I grabbed a handful of the dress and slowly slid it up, allowing it to glide up and expose her legs, up to her upper thighs. I glided my hand underneath it, and the dress fell back down around me, but I was already tracing her hipbone and heading for her core.

  I had reached the lacy panties she wore underneath, and I pressed my mouth down on her again, muffling the soft moan that escaped her chest as I pulled them aside. I ran my thumb across her clit and her body began shaking underneath me. Two fingers dipped inside of her as I rubbed the pad of my thumb across her pearl, stroking her in a rhythm that she matched by rocking her body toward me. One of her legs moved between mine and she curled it around me, pulling me closer to her and I pressed my hardened erection into her thigh as I sunk my fingers deeper into her.

  My mouth moved down to her neck again and dipped into the center of her chest. I let go of her hands and she immediately pulled the dress off her shoulders, exposing her perky breasts to me and I took one in my mouth at once. I played my tongue across the nipple, sucking on it to pull it tight before turning my attention to the other. Aurora’s body shook under me and I could feel her reaching her own hands down to find the button of my jeans.

  As I felt the button open and heard the zipper fall, Aurora slid down the wall to her knees. My hands went to the wall in front of me to steady myself as she tore at my clothes until my throbbing cock was exposed. It only felt the cool air of the room for a moment before it was buried deep in her mouth. My knees nearly buckled at the sudden sensation of her warm, wet tongue gliding acr
oss my shaft and swirling around the head. She drew me deep into her throat, her lips pulling for my base as she moaned against the shaft. The vibration of her voice sent a shiver through me and her head bobbed for a moment as she continued to cover me in her saliva. She began to stroke me, allowing her tongue to play all the way up and down my cock before taking my hanging fruits into her mouth to suck on them for a few moments, the intensity of her desire almost driving me to a climax right there.

  I reached down with one hand and filled it with her hair. I pulled her back up and she trailed kisses up my chest as she pulled my shirt off of me with one hand and continued stroking me with the other. When she was fully back on her feet, I spun her around and bent her over a desk that was nearby. She giggled as I dropped the jeans fully off of me, kicking them away, and flung her dress back up so her bottom was exposed. She spread her legs and looked back at me, biting her bottom lip as I positioned myself behind her.

  I dropped to my knees to worship her with my tongue. I slid across her silky folds until I found her pearl and flicked it lightly. Her legs trembled as I swirled the tip of my tongue around and then plunged it into her. I savored the taste of her for a few moments and then stood again, unable to wait any longer to be inside of her.

  My head found her opening and I slammed into her, eliciting a loud groan from deep within her chest. I sunk deeper and pushed as far as I could go before rearing back to go again. Her hands clasped the desk she leaned on, and my hands fell over the top of hers. I rocked back and forth, thrusting into her, feeling her walls stretch to accommodate me. Her breasts bounced with every thrust, and I let go of her hands to clasp them, kneading them and filling my hands with them as I continued to pound into her. Soon she released her hold on the desk and pushed gently on my chest to get me to step back. As I did she turned around, sitting on the desk with her legs spread wide, and pulled me back to her.

  I sunk deep into her again, and our mouths crushed into one another. Her legs raised until they were on my shoulders, showing impressive flexibility that only fueled my desire for her. As I thrust, I could feel us both inching closer to a mutual climax. The sensation rose higher and higher until I felt like I was on the brink of losing control. Just as I was about to come, her teeth sank deep into my shoulder and I released into her as she suckled from my veins. Her core vibrated with her own orgasm, as she sunk her teeth deeper into me, gasping as she alternated between feeding from me and moaning in pleasure. I pulled her body tightly into me as I came hard, and soon I felt the blood trickle from my shoulder and down my chest as she had finally had her fill. Her teeth pulled out from me and her tongue ran across the streaks of red, removing every drop of plasma, letting none go to waste.