“‘Not entirely legal’? Zane, what are you getting mixed up in? Does this have anything to do with that Raith-dog again?”
Zane sighed, “Don’t call him a dog.”
Celine glared and took her first few steps into the room, “I knew it! That mongrel’s been trouble for you since the day you met him!”
Zane narrowed his eyes at that, “He saved my life! If it hadn’t been for him, the vampires who turned me wouldn’t have left enough to wake up!”
“So when is your brain going to wake up, Zane? Just because some stray therion showed up in time to chase off some delinquents doesn’t mean you have to be his best friend, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you need to tag along on his little—”
“Enough,” Zane kept his voice low, but the anger towards her words drove the single demand with enough force to achieve the desired effect.
Celine stopped.
A painfully silent moment drifted between them, making the distance that much more obvious.
Zane looked at her, taking in the beautiful vision. She was hardly made-up for the quiet evening in, but, in her rawness, he saw exactly what he’d fallen in love with. Wild, copper-red hair and blue-green eyes as deep and promising as ocean waters; she was a wild flower of a sangsuigan vampire.
He truly loved her.
And that was why he needed Raith’s jobs; jobs that brought power and wealth.
Jobs that would secure him with an official warrior status and enough money to promise her the kind of life he wanted to offer her.
She would never understand how much that sort of life meant to him—what that sort of life could mean for her—and she’d never see the jobs as anything more than a reckless danger. She’d turn down the offer of the “fairy tale” life just to keep him from taking on the jobs.
Zane sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
Maybe there was more to it than the power or the wealth…
Maybe it was the thrill…
Maybe he needed—
“I just don’t want to see you hurt,” Celine finally offered.
Zane blushed and, finally, nodded. “I know… but this is important to me. I need you to understand that. And Raith is my friend—my best friend—and I can’t not be there when he needs me,” he sighed and looked down, “Please understand…”
Another long silence.
“You’re taking our weekend,” Celine scolded him.
He nodded, “I know, but I’ll make it up to you.”
Her fingers captured his chin and raised his face to take her in. As she came into focus Zane became aware that she was no longer wearing her blouse, and as her pert, puckered assets appeared at the level of his eyes he could no longer bring himself to worry about anything else.
“Oh… Evening, ladies, I wasn’t expecting to see you two out and about tonight.”
Celine giggled and pressed her breasts closer towards him, “They’re disappointed to hear about you leaving this weekend, too.”
“Oh my,” Zane frowned and offered a nervous glance upward, “You don’t think they’ve told the kitty yet, do you?”
Another giggle slipped free before Celine adopted a stern expression and shook her head, “I can’t make any promises. Word travels fast in these parts.”
Zane whimpered in mock-guilt, “Maybe I should talk to her myself…”
Celine nodded, “Perhaps you should,” she leaned in and slammed her lips to his before moving her mouth to his left ear. “Just remember that she’s hard of hearing; be sure to talk real slow, and don’t forget to annunciate clearly.”
Zane smirked, “Oh don’t you worry about that, dear,” he wetted his lips as she joined him on the bed, “I’m a truly cunning linguist.”
Raith checked his surroundings for easily the hundredth time as he pulled himself onto a ledge on the cliff and slunk into the familiar chasm. Though it was too dark to see through to the other side, he’d navigated this particular passage enough times to know to duck his head eight paces in—the jagged stalactite that had been the cause of many previous night’s headaches rustling through his hair as he passed underneath—and braced himself for the sizable step down that indicated the halfway point to the secret cave.
Their secret cave.
Before he could even see her, he could see the glow from her tattoos. Though she’d offered on several occasions to explain how the ink of her people’s sacred tattoos worked, Raith had refused to let the magic be explained as anything but just that.
Magic.
Just like her.
“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Nicc’oule’s voice echoed all around him in the small cave.
Raith smirked, “Really?”
“No,” Nicc’oule giggled, the intricate, body-shaped network of glowing tribal shapes that was Raith’s only clear view of his lover bobbed towards him. “I was certain you’d be here sooner or later. I just hate waiting.”
“They say it’s the hardest part,” Raith chuckled.
“Do they?” Nicc’oule’s hand brushed the crotch of his pants and she cooed at the find, “I don’t think they were waiting for the right thing.”
Raith chuckled and brought his hands to Nicc’oule’s hips, pleased to find that—as he’d suspected—she was already naked. With her tattoos’ magic glow illuminating her, he took a moment to quietly appreciate her dark skin and all the splendors it had to offer before locking his gaze on her own and kissing her.
Unfortunately, though it hurt him to pull himself away from what they’d already begun, the visit was, first and foremost, one of business.
Nicc’oule’s tattoos faded slightly as he stepped back and she offered a solemn nod as she retrieved her jacket. As she shrugged her naked body into the garment—a sight that Raith felt was even more distracting—she focused her powers towards an oil lamp that they kept in the corner and the small cave was soon awash in light.
As Nicc’oule’s features came into focus, Raith felt another tremor of regret at having broken the embrace with such a tantalizing creature. Everything about Nicc’oule reminded him of earth; her strength, her fluidity, the deep, dark richness of her brown skin and the perfect, flowing mane of black hair that framed it all. She was built every bit as beautiful and powerful as a panther with all the mystery and majesty of moonlight in her enchanted tattoos.
And now he was expected to ignore all of that to talk business…
“So…” Nicc’oule leaned against a large rock, “I suppose things worked out then?”
Raith nodded, pausing on the rock and recalling the many times that he’d laid Nicc’oule on top of it in far less serious encounters. Remembering how she’d looked below him on those occasions made him realize how impatient he was to get the formalities over and done with.
“I’ll have to pay my friend out of my own pocket just to get him to come along, but it’ll be worth it,” he explained.
Nicc’oule frowned, “He doesn’t know the truth?”
Raith shrugged, “As much of it as he needs to. If he thinks we’re being paid by some wealthy, faceless members of some hoity-toity vampire clan to rob from your tribe, then he won’t see a problem with it.”
“But if he knew that you were doing it as a favor for your lover…?”
Raith nodded, “Then he’d be worried about me and try to talk me out of it. Look, he’s a good friend; he’d rather think we were stealing from the taroe because somebody he’s never met is greedy. He’s trying to save up some money for him and his lady, anyway.”
“Then wouldn’t he understand your need to help your lady?” Nicc’oule frowned, clearly unsettled by the conditions.
Raith shook his head, “Then he’d want to know why my lady was asking us to steal from her own people; something that I can barely understand!”
“I told you already,” Nicc’oule stepped away from the rock, “this relic is”—she shook her head and tossed her hands into the air—“I don’t know, Raith, it’s evil; just evil! The damned thing se
ems to have put a dark cloud over the hearts and souls of all of them and every day it sits on that shrine they just seem to sink even lower because of it! That thing needs to be taken away, and I hope once it’s gone you’ll destroy it before it has a chance to poison you or anybody else.”
Raith nodded, “You won’t have to worry about that. Zane and I have done plenty of jobs like this—easy in-and-out robbery—and as long as Zane sees his cut of the profits he never asks any questions about who has what we stole.”
Nicc’oule bit her lip, “So how much are these ‘mystery clients’ paying him, exactly?”
Raith shook his head, “I don’t want to tell you that.”
“Oh?” Nicc’oule frowned at him, “That bad, huh?”
Raith nodded, “Bad enough that you might not let me finish this boring talk and bend you over that rock.”
Nicc’oule glanced over her shoulder at the site of countless other romantic encounters and smirked, “My… that is bad.” She nodded and slipped out of her jacket, her tattoos beginning to glow again and the lantern’s light suddenly snuffing out. “Well then, I’d say it’s best if you don’t tell me.”
“So how did Celine take the news?”
“How do you think she took it? She nearly boiled my balls!”
Raith laughed, “You get kicked out of the bedroom?”
“Well, not exactly,” Zane chuckled.
Raith paused and looked back at his friend.
Zane felt his smirk betray him.
Raith shook his head, “Tell me that I didn’t indirectly get you laid!”
“I would,” Zane shrugged, marching past him, “but that’d make me a liar.”
The two laughed as they sprinted towards a vertical rise of the mountain. Launching themselves into the air, they planted their feet along the rock and used their remaining momentum to sprint to the jagged ledge nearly ten-meters above them. Reaching the point first, Raith grabbed the lip of rock—willing his arm and hand to transform into its clawed, bestial form to offer better grip—and looked back in time to see Zane about to miss the mark.
“Little help!” Zane called out as gravity began to pull him back down the mountain.
Catching his friend by the wrist in his free hand, Raith shook his head and grinned down at him, “Being post-coital going to be a problem? I can’t be catching you all day, you know!”
“Shut up and pull me up,” Zane grumbled. “We can’t all have been born to mothers who weren’t ashamed to fuck mountain goats!”
Raith raised an eyebrow and let his grip loosen enough to let Zane slip several inches. “It was a puma, actually.”
“Whoa! WHOA! Alright! I’m sorry! You’re part puma! YOU’RE PART PUMA!!”
Still laughing, Raith pulled him to the ledge and they continued up the mountain towards the isolated village of the taroe tribe.
“As we draw nearer to the peak,” Raith explained, “we’re going to begin seeing more and more glyphs. From what I’ve gathered, these are meant to channel the right energies into their village while blocking out the bad. While all this jargon doesn’t mean a thing to us, we can at least gauge how close we are by how densely the symbols are grouped. Once we’re sure we’re close, I’ll use the intel our client provided to direct you to the relic. They tell me that these guys keep the thing pretty well guarded, but, despite their magic, they’re still only human.”
Zane cocked a brow, “Which reminds me: why am I sharing the pay with you when I could just as easily do this whole thing myself? I could be in, out, and halfway down the mountain before one of them could blink an eye, and short of a few magic tricks there’s not a damn thing they can do that any other of their species can do! What are you gonna be doing?”
Raith sneered and gave his friend a punch in the shoulder, “Same as usual: keeping your ass out of trouble! You remember Paris?”
“Alright, Paris was not my fault!”
Raith rolled his eyes, “You tripped on your own feet and set off the damn alarms!”
Zane shook his head, “Only because you bought those piece-of-shit shoes!”
“Uh huh,” Raith shook his head, “And was it the shoes’ fault that the guard shot you four times?”
“In my defense, that asshole was clearly eager to pull the trigger on anybody!” Zane shook his head, “If I’d have been human then there’s no way I’d have survived.”
“Yea, I think that was sort of the point.”
“Look, man, you don’t have to get snippy just because I proved that you’re only here to keep me from getting bored.” Zane hip-checked Raith and watched as he stumbled beside a cluster of rocks, “I’d split the earnings with you either—Hey! It’s one of those cliff-things!”
Raith frowned and followed Zane’s gaze to the rocks and, sure enough, caught sight of a few partially faded symbols carved into them.
“They’re called ‘glyphs’,” he corrected, glancing around for any others, “And good eye.”
The two grew silent as the promise of their goal grew nearer. Continuing on, they began to spot more and more of the symbols carved into the varying-sized rocks littered about the mountaintop until they finally came to a polished portion of the ground that was littered in them. Marveling at the spectacle for a moment, they drifted into the center of the site.
“Their village must be just over that pass,” Raith nodded towards a rise ahead of them, “Which means this is as far as I can go without risking being seen.”
Zane nodded, sliding his backpack from his shoulders and retrieving a few of his blades. As he began to secure the weapons to his hips and left leg, he looked up at his friend, “Northern side of the mountain, right?”
Raith nodded, “Closer to the Northern side, but still occupying the center region. I’ve been told you’ll see a large structure that’s been carved into the mountain; this serves as their church. The relic should be just beyond that.” He frowned at the blades, “You’re not planning on using those, are you?”
“Not unless I have to,” Zane shrugged before he returned the now-empty backpack to his shoulders. “But I don’t take any chances ever since getting shot by a trigger-happy French security guard!”
Raith scoffed, “These guys aren’t going to use guns on you, Zane.”
Zane shrugged, “Acid cannons, laser pistols, or magic wands! Either way, I’m prepared.”
“Magic wands don’t sound too farfetched, actually,” Raith laughed.
Zane smirked, “Yea, too bad I didn’t bring a camera. I’m sure snapping a picture of something like that would make you die laughing. Anyway…” He gave his friend a nod, “Be back in a flash.”
“Be sure you are,” Raith offered.
But Zane was already gone.
Zane groaned as he was dropped on the frigid stone slab.
Where was he?
Hadn’t he been…?
Light. He remembered blue light.
Like lightning.
And pain.
Had he tripped agai—
Hands began to grab and pull at him; yanking his limbs and slamming his head back into the rock he lay upon.
“H-hey! Ow! What the fuck?”
His eyes opened and the vicious glare from the sun blinded him as his senses reawakened all at once.
The scent of blood and…
And the sound of tortured cries.
“Raith? RAITH?” Zane thrashed against the binds and hands that held him against the frigid stone slab, “G-get off me! GET OFF! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO HIM? RAITH? RAITH!”
The blood curdling cries of his friend were all the evidence Zane needed to know that, whatever they were doing to him, it wasn’t something he’d want to see. Fully registering this, however, he couldn’t bring himself to stop his struggling against his captors to see past them; to get a glimpse of what the taroe chief was doing.
It wasn’t supposed to have been like this!
It was just a job!
A simple job!
It was n
ever supposed to—
There was a pause in Raith’s cries—a bitter-sweet break in the pained howls—that was occupied by a jagged and tortured hiss as Raith struggled to inhale.
~Five Minutes Earlier~
Somehow they’d known!
Somehow they’d been prepared!
It had all happened in a flash. Practically the moment Zane had vanished from Raith’s sight the ground had gone electric beneath his feet. All at once his body ceased to be his, and his therion form had exploded to the surface in a single moment of bone-and-organ twisting agony. He’d never felt the change like that—his entire body growing and shifting all at once—and it had been enough to force him to his knees.
Only by the time he’d fallen he was in his human form once again.
Unable to muster enough control to move his eyes, let alone transform again.
And then they’d closed in on him…
By the time the taroe soldiers had dragged him to the center of their village, Zane was already stripped and bound to a slab of rock; his eyes swimming lazily about within his skull as he mumbled incoherently in response to the taroes’ harsh treatment.
“You came here to steal from us, yes?” A deep, gravelly voice that sounded as though it was coming from the rocks themselves issued from the depths of the temple. A moment later, a tall, robust silhouette appeared at the entrance and a dark-skinned man brandishing one of Zane’s blades stepped towards them. As he drew nearer, the others of the taroe tribe paused in their onslaught and half-knelt before the newcomer long enough for him to offer a nod at their gesture. No sooner had they dipped their bodies in his direction then they’d returned to their tasks. Closing the distance between him and Raith, the man—his enchanted tattoos already glowing bright enough to cut through even the daylight—brought the flat of the long blade against Raith’s naked side with enough force to make him flinch. “Answer me, you wretched cur! You and that leech came here to steal from us, did you not? To steal this?”—one of the nearby taroe subjects suddenly lifted the relic into view—“This is why you’ve come?”
Raith struggled to pull away, but his weakened body was unable to shake the men that held him.
Scarlet Dawn Page 9
