by Jade White
Either way, Devado needed this girl with the clan, and not with her beefcake.
It was simple to follow them, she seemed to know nothing of hiding her true nature; whatever power she may have, she had no training, and Devado had spent a lifetime training.
* * *
Reign sensed that something wasn’t right. There was a feeling of closeness; she felt a hand on her back, pushing her forward. She stopped. Her legs obeyed but then she fell forward a step, Richard had her arm, balancing her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a whisper.
Reign shrugged. “Something, I don’t know what. Stand in front of me,” she commanded. He did. She fell into an easy hug with him. The sun was bright but the cold spring air was still a little crisp; his body produced more than enough heat for the two of them. With him holding her up she could feel it more, a presence behind them, something, she didn’t know what, told her it was like her.
“Have you ever held two positive sides of a magnet together,” she asked looking up to him. He nodded.
“It’s like that, I’m being repelled from behind, I think… it’s hard to explain, but I think there is someone like me following us, watching us.” Richard was looking down at her, but she could see his eyes scanning the crowd. So far the two uniformed cops had held their distance, but they were probably waiting for a place to pull them aside privately.
“Find me something to look for,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her. She leaned up on her tip toes to meet him; she could have stopped at his lips and whispered, but she wanted to kiss him, to feel his lips on hers, his tongue in her mouth, and she did. They kissed for a long moment, she felt his hands relax and roam her back. Her scars from the whippings were still there, they still ached when she used her power, and they positively buzzed now.
That’s it, they sense the Fade.
“Whatever it is, it’s directly behind us, and close.”
Richard pulled up reluctantly from the kiss and brought her face to his chest for a tender hug. It also gave him an excuse to look backwards.
“I have her, blond, blue eyes, pale skin, black jacket, red scarf.” He paused to sniff the air. “I have her scent.” She could hear the smile in his voice, the smile of a predator.
“Here’s the plan; leave me, I’ll walk toward the ladies room over there, you circle around behind her and take her out. I’ll deal with the cops.”
She could see the reluctance on his face to leave her, to have her fend for herself, but she smiled with more confidence than she felt.
“It’ll be okay love, trust me.” And he did, she noted, with one last brush against her cheek he moved off in the direction of a nearby coffee stand.
Reign was alone, she watched him walk away with a heavy heart. She was not confident in her abilities at all, and while she didn’t doubt them, it was a different thing altogether to go from using them, to relying on them. With a deep breath, she set off for the ladies room. She just hoped that the two cops took the bait. She resisted the urge to look around, she knew she didn’t have the skill to do it and not be seen. As soon as she started moving, she felt the pressure on her back, but at a different angle now.
Good, she isn’t following.
The public restroom had a mirror fixed atop of the door for security, but Reign steadfastly ignored it, instead, she pretended to text on her phone all the way inside. It did make her miss her mom, they used to text constantly. Now she could not even remember the last time she spoke to her. Reign figured that they would wait a moment to make sure no one else was in there, so she used that moment to throw away her ice cream, empty her bladder and wash her hands.
While she was drying, they came in. They were big men, one black, the other Hispanic; both looked like they worked out a lot, made even bulkier by the gear they wore.
“Can I help you, officers?” she said, a forced smile on her face.
“Hands up miss, you’re under arrest,” the black one said, while his partner awkwardly made his way toward her. Their faces were not devoid of emotion, there was something sick on them, something wrong that made Reign’s skin crawl, and if she didn’t already know they were trouble, this would tell her. The Hispanic had one hand out toward her, the other held a zip tie.
Confident that she could use her powers regardless, she let them zip tie her hands behind her back. The Hispanic, whose name was Dias, forced her up against the wall, pressing his whole body into her as he tied her hands behind her back.
She heard the door lock.
“We were told to bring her in, Paul,” Dias said to his partner.
“Look at her man, she’s hot, and they didn’t say we couldn’t have a little fun first, it’s not like this bitch is going to complain when they are done with her.” She could feel Dias relax; he agreed.
“What do you say, honey, a little double dipping?”
He turned her around and slammed her back against the wall, pinning her legs apart with the sink. His partner was already unbuckling his gun belt. The fear that knotted itself in Reign’s stomach was not unfamiliar. It was the fear she felt since she was twelve years old. The fear that every boy she ever dated gave her. The fear she felt the night she met Richard, when Edward attacked her, but it was just fear. And she knew, knew she was safe, because these two didn’t know who they were fucking with.
“I would say yes, but your dicks are probably too small, you know, once you go wolf, you never go back,” she said with a smile.
The surprise on their faces was priceless, they were hunters after all, they were not used to being the hunted.
“Oh, boys, you just are not in your league.”
She focused her power. Dias screamed as he was holding her waist, the electricity jumped through him to the floor. Paul went for his gun. The electricity that poured out of Reign arched across the floor with sparks and latched onto his feet. He screamed and spasmed as it clenched every cell in his body.
She cut the power and both men fell to the ground. Little wafts of smoke curled up from their unconscious bodies. Her hands were free, she noted, the electricity melted the zip-cuffs.
She took their cell phones, radios, and guns and dumped them in the waste basket in the corner, they would probably assume she took them and not look for them. She took one more moment to look at them… their auras wavered, no longer just gray, there was a bit of pink on the edges.
She reached down to Paul and placed her hand on his head, she closed her eyes and could still see him, could see the tentacles in his aura, the hooks of evil there.
To her surprise, she reached in and brushed them aside, like brushing aside a fly in the air. The hooks fell, then came back, she brushed them again, this time harder. They vanished.
She opened her eyes and Paul was awake, barely. “Thank you,” he muttered before falling back unconscious. She moved to Dias to see if she could do the same thing, she couldn’t. There were no hooks anymore, like an infestation or parasite, all that he was, was the parasite.
The door to the bathroom crashed open. Reign jumped to the back wall, heart pounding in her chest. The blond woman Richard described was there, but so was Richard. He held her around the neck with one hand. His arms looked burned.
“Are you okay?” he growled, his eyes were thick with the gold of his wolf blood, and he could barely speak.
“Am I okay? What happened to you?”
“She likes fire,” he said pushing her into the bathroom and closing the now broken door with his foot.
“Who the hell are you?” Reign demanded.
The pretty blond remained silent, but Reign could feel the wave of…force? It pushed against her, both physically and mentally, she fought against it. To her surprise Richard took a step back.
“Why can’t we touch?” she asked, taking a different approach.
“You’re just a child playing with forces you cannot understand,” the woman replied. She had no accent, or at least she had a ‘Seattle’ accent that told Reign that she was at lea
st a local.
“You mean the Fade?”
That got a reaction.
“So you know what it’s called, but do you know what it is?”
Reign seemed to have piqued her curiosity; many people had a subconscious desire to teach, to show their superior knowledge. Reign ran into it a lot as a violinist, everyone older wants to believe they are smarter than those younger.
“Not really, I visited it once, in a dream, it left these on me.” She pulled up her shirt to her breasts and turned sideways, the long scars puckered white against her dark skin. The woman nodded as much as she could with Richard’s massive hand around her throat.
“It’s the mark of the Fade, we all have it, one way or another,” she said.
Reign pulled her shirt down. “We?”
“Fade Touched is what the vampires call us, mage is what we call ourselves, I’m not sure what your dog calls us, though.” She grinned until Richard squeezed. “Down boy,’ she said through clenched teeth.
“Are they dead?” he asked.
“No, one of them is ‘cured’ though, I don’t know what vampires do to enthrall people, but it has these hooks on them, and I removed them, so he,” she pointed at the unconscious black man, “should be fine. The other one, though, well, there was nothing left to save,” Reign explained.
“What do we do with her?”
“You are asking me?”
“It was your plan,” Richard responded with a shrug.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to leave me alone,” she asked of the other mage.
“If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be here, but it’s not, so no.”
“That's what I thought.” She looked to Richard. “Can you knock her out without killing her?”
He squeezed, the woman tried to cough, to struggle, her hands shot out wildly, clawing at Richard's massive fist and wrists, but it only took seconds and she was limp. He laid her down carefully, head resting on Paul's torso.
Richard asked Reign, “Is she how they are their finding us?”
“I think so, let’s get out of here.”
*
The bus ride back to the city took forever. The vehicle was so crowded that Reign was forced to sit on Richard’s lap, not that she minded. She cuddled up to him with her face in his neck. Somewhere along the I-90 bridge, she started kissing him, long warm kisses that pushed all thoughts of vampires, thralls, and the Fade out of her mind. Her face was flushed and her body tingled from the attention, she hoped that they could always be like this. Despite the stress of the day, a few minutes of kissing him and she was ready to have sex with him.
She slipped a hand under his shirt to feel his warm skin. It tingled under her hand. His hand found its way under her shirt, to run along her back. Her scars itched but did not hurt as he traced the delicate lines with his hand.
“God, I need you, and I mean right fucking now,” she said breathlessly into his ear. He grabbed her by the hand and led her to the door. The bus stopped and the two of them got off. The neighborhood was residential, nowhere near downtown.
Richard raised his nose in the air and sniffed. Reign tried to focus on what he was doing, but the passion in her heart made everything dim and cloudy. Richard led her to a small house a half block from the street. He pushed the door open and pulled her through. The house was empty, no furniture, no paintings on the walls, nothing but bare carpet.
She lunged at him. She had to have him, to feel him, to be with him. Her soft lips found his and she moaned. His hands unbuttoned her pants, she pulled her shirt up and over her head exposing her hard nipples and large breasts. She couldn’t think, she was so overcome with desire.
“Fuck me, fuck me right now,” she pleaded. He spun her around, pinned her head to the wall so her torso was bent over, and in one swift motion freed his large dick from his pants and placed it at the entrance to her pussy.
She rolled her hips back to him, her whole body on fire, her heart and mind wanting, needing him to be inside her, she couldn’t wait, with one hand she reached back behind her and guided him in.
She moaned as he entered her, a low guttural sound of pure ecstasy.
“Ohmyfuckinggod,” she said in a rush as his full length was in her. Whether his passion spurred hers, or he simply needed her to, she couldn’t tell, but he was as hard as he had ever been. Holding her head in one hand, her waist with the other, Richard pounded her into the wall. She screamed and gasped with each thrust. Each time he pulled out, her body shuddered, and each thrust in, she nearly came.
“Harder,” she moaned. He obliged. The wall was in danger of collapsing as he thrust into her.
Her toes curled, her spine tingled, and her belly ached as each thrust sent waves of pleasure into her. After a few minutes of his ministrations, her stomach muscles tightened and she could feel the glow of an impending orgasm.
“Faster Richard, fuck me faster,” she moaned.
He grunted, unable to speak. Sweat poured off of both of them as they were one person, their hearts and bodies mingled together in a dance as old as time. With one massive push, Richard grabbed her hips with both his hands and thrust so deep into her she thought she would die. He jerked as his sperm exploded into her, she screamed as her own orgasm hit her. Her body quivered, her back arched, her eyes squeezed shut as wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her.
When she opened her eyes they were laying on the carpet, she was on top of him, her back to his front, her legs spread wide and his dick buried deep in her. With one hand, he held her around the waist, the other he massaged her pussy, breathing life into the fire of her passion.
“Oh god, Richard, yes,” she moaned.
They spent the night in that small house, wanting nothing but each other, and only needing each other.
Reign woke early, snuggled next to Richard. Their clothes lay scattered about the empty room. His body heat was more than enough to keep her warm, even in the chill morning. He lay breathing on the floor, her head on his chest. She watched his lungs fill, then deflate, then fill again. She felt fulfilled. She lost count of the orgasms they gave to each other; it was just one long night of passion.
She ran her hands down his taut stomach, watched as, even though he was asleep, his massive member stirred to life. She hoped he had nice dreams. But she was too sore to cash the check she was writing, so she let him sleep.
She stood in the empty house and explored a bit. She could smell the fresh paint, feel the new carpet between her toes. The place was recently made over, but with the housing market the way it was, she was not surprised he was able to find an empty place for them to spend the night.
Too empty. The kitchen had no food and she was famished. It was too early to order pizza, but she did recall seeing a gas station not too far from the house. As quietly as she could, she slipped into her clothes, and as she put each piece on, the memory of the night before gently swam in her head. It was something she would remember forever.
Without waking Richard, she slipped out the back door and headed for the gas station. It wasn’t too far away and while she knew the food would only taste mediocre, it would be food. Once inside, she found what she wanted -- soda, chips, some crackers, canned cheese, plus all the corn dogs they had cooked. Richard would be hungry when he woke up, and he would need the calories. That much bulk took a lot to maintain. While she was checking it out, a police cruiser pulled up, two men got out and looked around. She didn’t recognize either of them, but she could see in their aura they belonged to the vampires.
Shit, how are they finding us?
She had to be doing something wrong, some inadvertent broadcast that other mage could see? She paid the cashier and left. She took an immediate right, away from the market and in the opposite direction of the house.
She wasn’t sure she could get back there unseen, but she also was pretty sure they made some strong emotion last night. She closed her eyes and focused. She could see the inside of the house with perfect detail, her
strong emotions labeling everything, every place her knee had been, where her feet touched, where her face rubbed against the carpet while he fucked her from behind, everywhere. She opened the door and she was there.
She was not alone.
Devado stood there, holding Richard by the neck this time. He was bound with some sort of slim silver chain and three policemen in riot gear flanked them both.
“Holy shit,” one of the cops yelled. He brought his gun up reflexively before Devado swore at him to freeze. Reign already had one hand up, lightning crackling about, sparking down her arm to swirl about her waist and leave little burn marks on the floor where she stood.
