Saul felt The Guard’s presence in the yard, their eyes still on him. Even when he sensed that they had left, he could still feel their eyes on his back, blazing into his flesh like fire.
5
In a darkness that made a moonless midnight seem bright, the creature known as Benali lifted its head. He’d been here for three months, cast down by The Guard into an oblivion that he had always heard about and even threatened others with. But now he was here and by God, it was miserable.
He had spent these three months waiting in the dank darkness with the knowledge that he would not be here for long. Three months was nothing to him; what was three months in the face of eternity, anyway?
Benali had been expecting a visit, someone that would brave this darkness that sat between two worlds. So when he sensed the faintest rays of light enter his place of dark confinement, he knew that the time had come.
Benali stood up –or, rather, he assumed he was standing; it was hard to tell what was up and what was down in this intangible place –and peered into the darkness ahead of him. As he had been expecting, he saw the luscious body of Magdeline enter the darkness. She was looking around with great trepidation. It was clear that she did not want to be here.
“This place is wretched,” she said.
“That it is,” Benali said. “You come with news, I take it?”
“Yes.”
She came closer to him and cupped his face in her hands. Benali was neither male nor female and had always considered himself a creature with a masculine heart and feminine tendencies. So when Magdeline caressed his face, he did not find her attractive. Rather, he found the gesture oddly comforting…something that he was not accustomed to feeling.
“Everything is set in place,” she confirmed. “But there is one setback—something that we had not expected.”
“What’s that?” Benali asked.
“The Marked are much stronger than we thought. Your Rogue left behind nearly fifty vampires. Many of them were dispatched by The Marked and the Benton family last night. From what I gather, they will hunt the rest of them down today and kill them. This alarms me, really. I practically set them up to fail—I started them early and had them all in the same location. And they were still able to perform well.”
“And Gestalt?”
“He escaped. He has not contacted us yet.”
Benali nodded.
“Do you truly know where he is?”
“I believe so,” Benali said. “He’ll return to Red Creek soon enough, I think. And one way or the other, we will have our battle.”
“What is it about that town?” Magdeline asked.
“I don’t know. The power there is incredible. If we can claim it as our own, we can rule the whole miserable world. Are the others in agreement?”
“Yes,” she said. “If any problems should arise, I feel like it would come from Polyxia. She is very stuck in the old ways.”
“A shame. She’s such an amazing sorceress. But we will cross that bridge when we get there.”
“Indeed.”
“What else is being done?” Benali asked. “Did Saul Benton take my bait?”
“No. Gestalt told him that he killed his father. By default, Saul thinks you had knowledge of it. He wants you to rot.”
Benali smiled. “Well, then he’ll be very angry when he sees me, won’t he?”
“Yes.”
They stood there, next to one another in the ethereal darkness between the mortal world and the realm that had blessed them with the magic their bodies possessed. They were old spirits, and the knowledge that the very thing they had been working towards for more than four thousand years was about to come to a head was exhilarating. And it will all take place on the quiet little streets of Red Creek.
“Come,” Magdeline said, offering him her hand. “You’ve been here long enough. There is no longer a need for the ruse.”
Benali took her hand and she led him out of the darkness.
6
Gestalt watched dawn trickle into the world from inside an abandoned woodshed in a small town that sat roughly one hundred miles to the west of Red Creek. Paula was with him, tired but refusing to sleep. She was clinging to his side and running her hand over his bare chest. On occasion, she would run her hand over the place where he had been stabbed by Saul with the tree branch and leave her hand there as if looking for a heartbeat.
“How much longer before we strike?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Not long. The Guard will tell me when it’s time.”
“Do you trust them?”
Gestalt thought about this for a while. He’d hated The Guard for his entire life and now he found himself wanting to trust them. They had approached him shortly before he had fought the Benton family and offered him a deal that had been quite tempting. It seemed almost too good to be true.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. It was the first time he had felt vulnerable in a very long time.
Paula kissed him on his shoulder and drew him closer to her. “Should I be scared?” she asked.
“No. You are mine. I will protect you, no matter what.”
“This is…” she said, pausing. “This is not love, is it? This is servitude.”
“Yes. I doubt I will ever love you. It’s not part of who we are.”
“That’s okay,” she said. Her hand slid to the waist of his pants and slowly unbuttoned them. “Love would only interfere with pleasure. And if I had to choose between the two, I’d always choose this.” She ran her fingers gingerly along his cock as she said this.
Gestalt grinned, delighted that she was understanding it all so quickly. She fell to her knees in front of him and stared at his manhood, as if it fascinated her.
“I am your servant, yes?” Paula asked. She asked this playfully, but he didn’t mind. There was time for serious questions about her role…but for now, it was okay for her to enjoy her slavery.
“You are,” he confirmed.
“Then what can I do for you, master?” she asked.
Paula took him in her hand as she asked and looked up to him. She flicked out her tongue and ran it along the entire underside of his member. She moaned as she did so and without waiting for her master’s reply, she took him into her mouth.
Paula worked with force and fervor, wasting no time. She worked on him in a way that had nothing to do with passion. She was serving her master as far as she was concerned. She took his entire length into her mouth and grabbed his backside, making sure her mouth never left his flesh.
Gestalt felt himself reaching orgasm fairly quickly. While he was impressed with Paula’s speed and tenacity, he didn’t want it over so soon. He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her up just hard enough to cause her a bit of pain.
“No,” she said. “I want it. I want you in my mouth.”
“Wait.”
He went to his knees and shoved her down with him. He lay down on the floor of the cabin and the moment his cock was accessible again, she devoured it. She worked continuously, still fast—almost at a violent pace—and with great precision. At an angle on the floor of the shed, he managed to remove her pants and, in an upside-down position with her sex at his face, drew her to his mouth. He rolled onto his back, her buttocks above his head, and drew her down to him. He tasted her in his mouth as she worked at him below. He gently spread her open with his fingers and when he flicked his tongue slowly inside, she moaned.
He increased his speed and slipped two fingers inside her. Paula gasped and let out a scream that she interrupted the moment she realized that he was no longer in her mouth.
They writhed together like that on the floor for several minutes. As they did, Gestalt tried to feel something as they enjoyed each other; he tried to remember what this had been like as a mortal.
Paula did not remove him from her mouth, even after Gestalt had found release. She kept him there until he was completely done. When she finally removed herself from him, she was smiling.
> “What?” Gestalt asked.
“You’re already getting hard again,” she murmured.
“It does seem that way,” he said.
“Hurry,” she said, rolling over onto her back and spreading her legs.
“Oh, I’m ready now,” he said.
And although Gestalt wasn’t quite fully recovered from her amazing performance, he went to her. After she worked him fully erect with her hand and clawed at his back, he slipped himself eagerly inside of her.
When he did, he almost caught a glimpse of his mortal life—of what it had been like to be with a woman. And when he reached his climax half an hour later, it was even closer.
But why? Why did he want to remember being a human?
Gestalt wanted to hold Paula when it was all over, but did not allow himself to do so. Instead, he looked back out to the dawn and thought of The Guard.
There were evil, bloody times ahead and Gestalt knew that The Guard had spent a long time orchestrating all of it. But now that he had been asked to be a part of their ultimate plan, he couldn’t help but wonder what was in it for them.
And, even worse, what would become of him when it was all over.
END OF BOOK IV
VEILED - BOOK FIVE
REVENGE OF GODS
Copyright © Laudanum House, LLC.
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CONTENTS
CONTENTS 5
CHAPTER ONE 7
CHAPTER TWO 38
CHAPTER THREE 62
CHAPTER FOUR 88
CHAPTER FIVE 124
CHAPTER SIX 137
END OF BOOK IV 163
CONTENTS 166
CHAPTER ONE 167
CHAPTER TWO 194
CHAPTER THREE 219
CHAPTER FOUR 245
CHAPTER FIVE 273
END OF BOOK V 295
VEILED - BOOK SIX 297
CONTENTS 298
CHAPTER ONE 300
CHAPTER TWO 324
CHAPTER THREE 357
CHAPTER FOUR 388
CHAPTER FIVE 417
CHAPTER SIX 427
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR 448
CHAPTER ONE
1
Saul Benton stood at the threshold of his home's main doorway, still as a stone. His large frame blocked almost the entire opening – a door of flesh and blood and all the more immovable for it. Still, he made a poor substitute for the Cabin's actual door which, Saul thought, he still needed to replace. The events of the past year had been quite hard on everyone – his home included.
Saul looked out from the doorless doorway of his cabin and into the morning light. It spilled onto his yard like melted gold – dirty, metallic, but beautiful for all of that. His skin gave the slightest complaint in the form of a dull itch as he stepped outside, onto his porch. Saul was wearing a thin rain slicker and a baseball cap that would keep the sun from making him too ill to function. He pulled a pair of dark tinted sunglasses from the pocket of the rain slicker and placed them over his eyes.
Saul was covered almost from head to toe. He’d experimented with his capacity for tolerating sunlight on a few occasions throughout his life. He was fairly certain that he would be able to stay out in the sun for at least five or six hours while dressed this way. Maybe more, depending on cloud cover. Any longer, and he would likely begin to sicken; his skin would blister and he would grow wan and nauseous. The accompanying headache would make what humans called migraines seem like a scalp massage in comparison.
Nikki stepped up behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re good to do this?” There was anxiety in her voice, but the scent of her was hopeful – excited, even. It filled Saul with energy.
“Yes,” Saul said. “The situation needs to be contained, before it really gets out of hand.” Nikki nodded. She had not, of course, expected him to say anything else.
“I just got off of the phone with Kara,” Nikki said. “The Marked are meeting at her house in fifteen minutes. I told her we’d meet her there.”
Jill emerged from the cabin as Nikki explained her short conversation with Kara but, unlike her brother, wasted no time lingering on the porch. She walked directly past them and down the front stairs.
“Then let’s get this show on the road,” Jill said.
Jill carried a duffel bag over her shoulder. It was filled with makeshift stakes that had taken her most of the early morning hours to make. Like Saul, Jill had taken care to dress in a way that covered most of her skin. She wore sweatpants and a thin, hooded sweatshirt. As she stepped out into the sunlight, she pulled the hood up over her head. Saul couldn’t help but grin. She looked like a medieval warrior about to head out into battle. It actually suited her well.
The three of them headed out to Saul's car and piled in. Nikki took the driver’s seat without so much as asking. Her face was set in an expression of sheer determination; Saul wished he had the same focus. Nikki was ready to get out into Red Creek, to destroy as many Rogues as possible. Her goal was simple and straightforward – and pure, for all of the violence it entailed. Saul, on the other hand, could not achieve the same sense of unbreakable focus.
Less than six hours ago, Saul Benton had stood up to the Guard; he had been mutinous, insubordinate, and uncaring for all of that in the face of the most powerful beings on the planet. And still, he had walked away alive. Saul did not delude himself by thinking the danger had passed, however. The members of The Guard were powerful, and took pride in their power. It was not desirable to get on their bad side, and quitting on them had likely accomplished precisely that.
Saul sighed and pushed thoughts of The Guard away. He had to concentrate on Red Creek. The town was likely composed of nothing but Rogue vampires by now. If there were any humans remaining, they’d be eliminated by a small army of Rogues tonight—unless Saul, Nikki, Jill, and the Marked could manage to kill them all before the sun went down.
As Nikki sped towards Kara’s house, Saul thought about the enormity of the task before him and his family. There was a heaviness to all that had happened – a feeling of destiny, as cheesy as that sounded. It was as if everything in Saul's life – all nine hundred years of it – had been centered around this moment. And it was all coming to an end.
For Saul, the beginning of that end had begun when Leibald Greely had come to Red Creek. Leibald's failure had set something equally terrible in motion, the events unfolding quick and unforgiving – like a freight train with no brakes down icy tracks. The end remained unseen: Saul thought it might be some sort of confrontation with the Guard, or Gestalt perhaps. Whatever the case, Saul was certain he would find out sooner rather than later.
The sunlight grew brighter as the morning blazed through the windows of the car. Saul looked over to Nikki and saw that her face was still hard, almost blank with the completeness of her determination. It made his heart ache a bit.
Oh, Nikki, he thought. I am so sorry I got you into this.
Saul had no time to torment himself with his regrets, however. He had been so lost in his own thoughts that the trip to Kara’s house had gone by in a flash and Nikki was currently in the process of pulling her car into Kara’s dirt driveway. Saul noticed that there were two cars parked out front. A member of the Marked was standing by the opened trunk of one of them—Ray, if Saul remembered correctly.
“Looks like we aren’t the only ones that are anxious to get down to business,�
� Nikki said as she pulled the car to a stop alongside the other cars.
Saul knew that Nikki was right, and that scared him more than anything else. Anxious or not, none of them knew just how deep into the thick of it all they were getting—not even Saul himself.
2
Once everyone was accounted for, the members of the Marked and Saul’s little group all gathered in Kara’s living room. Silence reigned for a good while as those present attempted to reconcile their lives up until now with the horror that had overtaken Red Creek in the past twenty four hours. The situation was dire, and their role in what was to come was crucial; of course, that did little to raise the spirits of the humans in the group. It was ten-fifteen in the morning and they figured they had roughly eight hours before dusk. Saul thought it might be enough time, but that really depended on how well the Rogues had hidden themselves.
And how well the Marked had adapted to killing vampires.
The one thing they did have to their advantage was that the Rogues appeared to be the epitome of old vampire lore. Crosses, holy water, sunlight – it all seemed to do wonders against this particular breed of blood-drinkers. That being the case, Saul thought they’d be rather easy to find during the day-hours. Most would be in their homes, or other places that were familiar and suitably dark. It was how vampire instinct worked – a feature that was likely more pronounced in Rogues than in vampires of Saul’s caliber.
Saul took a moment to take an inventory of their ragtag little group. There were seven of them in all and although Saul had his doubts about the members of the Marked, he had to remind himself that they had been selected for a reason – thousands of years ago, at that. The fact that The Guard had tried to get rid of the Marked – as much as Saul wanted to think otherwise, there really did not seem to be another explanation to the Guard’s behavior the night the Rogues attacked – was another proof of the Marked’s importance in the events to come.
VEILED Complete Boxed Set Page 41
