by WEST
“Elvie? Elvie!”
“Elvie is an old and respected Faery name. It means warrior.”
Cole wrenched his arms away and stood up, pointing an imperious finger down at Levi. “Never call me that name again. Of all the stupid names that ever…Elvie? Really?”
Levi stood up beside him and took his finger in his hand. He knew that Cole was focusing on the name to avoid thinking about the extraordinary tale he’d just been told. He was still partially in shock and trying to wrap his mind around all this. “All right, Cole. Calm yourself. Get your things together, because we have to go. If Marek’s agents succeed in capturing you, they’ll take you straight to Marek, who won’t hesitate to kill you to secure his place on the throne.”
Cole allowed Levi to push him toward his suitcase and finally he started to move, picking it up and turning to face Levi. “If I ‘shine’ like you say I do, then how can we hide? Why not just face them head on and fight them off like you just did.”
“There are too many of them. And while it’s true you shine, you don’t shine as much as I do. One reason why my father assigned me to guard you. I’m the son of a demon, remember, and a full-blooded Sidhe noblewoman. My brilliance in this realm will shield yours. Besides, I can easily do a spell that will disguise both of us once we leave here.”
Cole huffed out a breath. “Think pretty highly of yourself, don’t you? Then how in the hell did they find us before?”
Levi shrugged. “I neglected to use the proper shields. I thought we might have more time. Someone must have seen us and reported your presence in our group. It’s hard to say. And irrelevant. Now come with me or I’ll carry you.”
“I’m coming,” Cole said querulously. “But what about the others? Aren’t they coming with us? What if the-the goblins attack again?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
Levi turned back toward him, keeping his face as solemn and serious as he could. “Because Elvie will have left the building.
****
“This place is a dump. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had bedbugs.” Cole folded his arms across his chest and gave Levi as mutinous a look as he could muster. “Maybe I’ll sleep in the car.”
“You won’t do anything of the sort, so stop acting like a child.” He muttered something under his breath and Cole challenged him immediately.
“If you got something to say, don’t be a pussy about it. Say it to my face.”
Levi turned to face him. “All right. I said, you are a child, actually. In faery years, twenty-six is very young. More like fourteen or fifteen or in human years.”
Cole’s mouth dropped open in shock and he folded his arms petulantly over his chest. “Fuck you.”
Levi opened his mouth to reply but must have thought better of it. He shook his head. “I’ve already had the maids change the sheets to shut up your complaints. You can live with the rest of the dirt until we can get out of here.”
Cole glanced down at the gray linens on the bed in the cheap motel Levi had found for them in the nearby tourist town of Pigeon Forge and shuddered. “I’d rather lie on the floor.”
“Suit yourself,” Levi said, and without warning, turned and took him to the bare wood floors. Cole landed hard, bruising his already injured hip and would have bumped his head if Levi hadn’t put a big hand behind it to soften the impact.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“We were interrupted at the other hotel by unwanted guests.” The weight of Levi’s shoulders pushed Cole beneath him and his hands were already busy at the fastenings of Cole’s pants. “And I always finish whatever I start.”
He pushed up his shirt and Cole’s stomach clenched at the fiery heat of Levi’s breath on his skin as Levi bent to take a nipple between his teeth. Cole moaned and arched his back as Levi teased the sensitive nub and then skated his mouth down his chest, headed straight for his newly uncovered dick and balls—because somehow Levi had already managed to strip his pants to his knees as if he really was undressing a child. How could he be so strong, so quick? Had he used some kind of demon powers to dazzle him?
Cole gave a broken moan and Levi whispered to him. “Shh…we need to get a few things straight. And number one, you’re going to let me take care of you.”
Yeah, sure, like he’d taken care of Cole up to now. Since he’d met the half-demon, Levi had upset his entire world, spun him through the dark to unholy realms, gotten him attacked by goblins, told him fantastic, crazy stories about parents who were Faeries, for fuck’s sake—so what was next? Cole vowed to himself not to give in, not to crumble under this new attack, even as he was writhing and sweating under Levi’s heavy body on the dusty floor of this dirty little motel room.
He held out pretty well with Levi’s first devastating kiss, even though low moaning escaped his throat despite his best efforts. He even held out as Levi’s sharp white teeth nipped his bottom lip and then his rough tongue lapped over it to bathe away the sting. Even when Levi’s tongue traced over the vee on his lower torso that led down to his groin, he managed not to scream. But when he bit down on the tender skin between his thigh and his groin, it was almost more than he could stand. Cole yelped in surprise and pain and wiggled beneath him in a fruitless effort to escape.
Levi dug his fingers into Cole’s hips and stared down at his cock. With a wicked grin, he lowered his head and buried his nose in the blond bush of pubic hair and sucked in a deep breath. “You smell delicious,” he said, his voice a deep, rumbling and demonic growl. Too far gone in lust to even pretend to be human, Levi snaked out a long pink tongue and licked a stripe of fire down Cole’s dick. Nuzzling his balls, he continued downward as he pushed Cole’s legs in the air and folded him in half to expose his ass.
Cole screamed as Levi’s tongue continued on to burn a path up the crease of his ass until it reached his puckered hole. Levi thrust in his long tongue as Cole groaned out wanton lust and beat on his shoulders to make him stop—or was it to make him keep going? He was no longer sure.
Levi’s lips and tongue felt so good on Cole’s body that he wasn’t capable anymore of coherent thought. Levi moved wickedly back to hover over Cole’s dick where he traced delicate circles with his tongue around the head of Cole’s cock. By this time, Cole was certain he’d lose his mind completely, and would have to be confined for the rest of his life to an institution somewhere.
Levi’s tongue darted out to lick at Cole’s pre-cum. “No more complaining, do you understand? Your brother is trying his best to kill you, and I’m not going to let him, but I need your cooperation.” His hands held Cole in place, exactly where he wanted him and he slanted Cole a look that shot through his body and curled around his spine. “Say yes or I’ll keep you here all night.” He flashed Cole an evil grin. “And maybe for several days after that.”
“Please!”
“I’ll do whatever I need to do to keep you safe, do you understand? And you will do whatever I say.” Wet heat engulfed the head of Cole’s cock and a long tongue slipped inside his slit. “Tell me you understand and that you’ll do as you’re told!”
Cole cried out, his orgasm tingling down his spinal column and lodging in his balls. If he could concentrate for just a moment more and Levi would touch his tongue there one more time, then…
“Say you understand.”
“You understand.”
He bent suddenly and nipped sharp teeth at the head of Cole’s cock, making it wilt. “Smartass. Talk back to me again, and I’ll keep you like this for hours. Days. But I won’t let you come.”
Cole moaned and shook his head wildly, and Levi grinned an evil grin down at him. His head bobbed up and down over Cole’s dick, causing his cock to plump quickly back up, and bringing him right back to the edge.
His finger thrust inside Cole and crooked up to find his prostate. Cole screamed again and surged first toward him and then away, unable to decide what to do, where to go.
Levi pushed in another finger and plundered around to join the first. Cole rocked his hips to the rhythm of those talented fingers and sought to bury him as deeply as he could. His poor cock was so over stimulated, it was weeping pre-cum and Cole was shivering with need.
Levi’s fingers danced inside him and Cole thrust toward them mindlessly. When they suddenly pulled away, his ass clenched and he cried out, reaching for Levi. “Please, I need...”
“What do you need, sweetheart?” he murmured into Cole’s mouth. “Do you need this?” The wet tip of his massive cock kissed Cole’s hole and nudged its way inside. He thrust in suddenly and nailed Cole’s prostate again, sending a bolt of pleasure from his ass to his dick. Cole’s toes curled inside his shoes and he whimpered just once, too blissed out to say a word.
Levi’s sinful lips slammed down onto his and his tongue thrust inside. He hadn’t used any lube and Cole couldn’t understand why he wasn’t being torn apart, but though he felt Levi deep inside him, there was no pain, just a desperate fullness and a need to get him even closer.
What had Levi done to him? Cole focused on relaxing his muscles and letting him fully inside as he set up a wild rhythm that pulsed throughout his entire body. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I saw you,” Levi said, grunting as he fucked Cole. Cole’s back bowed up as Levi raked across his prostate again. “You with your ugly green tie the exact color of your eyes and that beautiful face. I wanted to take you in my arms and kiss this smart little mouth. I wanted it so badly I scared you by changing to my demon in front of you. I had to do something to distract myself or I’d have thrown you to the floor then like I did just now. Thrown you down and fucked you till you screamed.”
His hips thrust again and again before he pulled away to stare down at Cole, his eyes greedy and predatory. “Ride me, Elvie. Ride my cock and show me how much you want me.”
Cole groaned and writhed beneath him as he held his cock rigid and still buried deep inside him. He thrust upward, impaling himself and riding that big cock hard from below. Trying hard to maneuver his hips so he could rake Levi over his sweet spot, Cole shimmied and wiggled shamelessly until at last he chuckled and whispered in his ear. “Good boy.”
He spiked that long cock into Cole’s ass again and made him yell out hoarsely as he gripped Levi’s shoulders. Cole began to come with each of the heartbeats he could hear thundering in his ears, the cum spurting wet and hot between them, long streams of it that splashed up on their chests and coated their stomachs. Levi was right behind Cole with a huge roar, his dick like red hot iron in Cole’s ass as he held himself rigid and shot deep inside Cole.
Levi collapsed on top of him, then fell off to the side, panting for breath. Even demons, it seemed, could exhaust themselves with pleasure so intense it was painful. They lay silently side by side for a few moments until Levi’s cell phone started ringing. He fumbled for it in his discarded clothes and held it to his ear. After listening intently for a moment, he grunted something and turned to stare into Cole’s eyes.
“We have to go. There’s been another murder.”
Chapter Four
They stripped him to his little shirt,
bound him in an iron chain,
And burned him in a holy place.
Little Boy Lost—William Blake
The small farmhouse sat on a small patch of ground on a narrow two-lane mountain road not all that far from Pigeon Forge, but heading south and closer to a little place called Townsend. Despite the tourism in the nearby area, and the many stores, restaurants and hotels nearby, the homes outside the tourist centers were often far from affluent. This house was a small, single story with a long front porch running along its entire length. The stair rails leaned drunkenly on one side and the house desperately needed a fresh coat of paint. An ancient, battered truck was sitting up on blocks by the side of the house, next to a rusted-out child’s swing set. The front yard was green and soggy from the rain, and behind the house, at some thirty yards distance, lay the dark, verdant woods.
Cole looked up at the gray sky and wondered if the rain was about to start up again. It had been coming down off and on all morning, and a rainy day in the area caused these thick clouds that gave the Smoky Mountains their name. The fog settled near the ground in the valleys and along the ridges, lending the scene an added degree of eeriness, as if it was even needed, considering they were going to the scene of a multiple murder. Cole glanced over at the woods behind the house. The low-lying fog crouched near the ground among the pines and leaned out from the tree line as if listening to the screams that Cole could hear even from where he sat inside the SUV.
It sounded like the hoarse screams of a man, but Cole couldn’t be sure, and even as he rolled down his window to hear, the sound was suddenly cut off, leaving an uncanny silence. Cole got out of the car and walked around to the other side to join Levi, feeling unaccountably nervous. He’d been to plenty of crime scenes before, but he’d had a feeling of dread ever since Levi got the call from Gonzalez, and he couldn’t seem to shake it.
Levi had pulled up at the end of a long line of vehicles with flashing lights and Blount County sheriff’s logos emblazoned on the sides. Bill Gonzalez and a member of their team Cole only knew as Fredericks got out of their own dark SUV as they pulled up. Both men’s faces were grim as they stepped up to greet Levi.
“A neighbor made the call to the sheriff’s office after hearing the sounds coming from the house.” He pointed down the road to a small mobile home some hundred yards away. “Neighbor lives down there. He’s upset at what he saw when he finally decided to investigate. It was pretty bad. EMTs are treating him.” Gonzalez nodded toward an ambulance pulled in the narrow driveway. Cole realized that it was from this vehicle that the screams he’d heard had emanated. One of the back doors was open and Cole could see men moving around inside.
Levi nodded grimly and walked toward the house beside Gonzalez. Cole fell in behind him, along with Fredericks. The little living room was crowded with uniforms as Cole followed them to the doorway, leaning over Levi’s broad shoulders to take a look inside. Levi stood for a moment, blocking the view, and when he turned, the look in his eyes was stormy and hard to read. His lips were pressed together in a firm line as he moved across the room to talk to the investigators.
The victims had been removed from the scene, but outlines were on the floor showing where their bodies had been. Two of the outlines were adult size, but most shocking were the two smaller outlines, indicating children. Blood congealed in thick, black pools and spread out over the walls and floor as if in a slaughterhouse. The smell of blood and excrement was almost more than Cole could stand, and he put up a hand to cover his nose.
Cole backed out onto the front porch. They weren’t there to take charge of the crime scene, but merely there to observe. Even so, the deputies standing uneasily around on the porch and in the yard while the forensic teams were doing their work gave him some suspicious, unfriendly glances as he took a deep breath of fresher air.
Levi’s broad shoulders brushed past him as he came out and went down the rickety front steps. He headed for the ambulance and as Cole started to follow him, Gonzalez caught his arm. “Levi wants us to go out back and look around for any signs that whoever did this came out of the woods. Obviously, don’t disturb anything—just take a picture of anything you find and note the exact location.”
Cole nodded, a little irritated. It wasn’t his first time around a crime scene, by any means, and the entire yard already showed evidence of many footprints having already tromped through, probably ensuring they wouldn’t find much of anything at this point. He followed the others anyway, and made his way toward the back yard.
The ground was so wet the tracks in the yard had partially filled in with muddy water and were badly degraded. Most of them looked like boot prints, which were undoubtedly from the investigators, and Cole carefully avoided the areas that had already been taped off with the yellow crime s
cene tape. By the time news of the attack had filtered down from regular law enforcement channels to the WPDA and even more time had elapsed as the word finally got to WRAITH, it was probably too late for their team to learn much of anything new from the scene. Cole took pictures of the small backyard and turned to look at the little hill rising behind the house.
The backyard butted up to a rocky rise that led up into the forest. The hill was pretty steep, and Cole looked around for a path or a way to climb up next to the tree line. He found a way to get there by going up through the mountain laurel growing on the side of the house, and made his way carefully up to the top. He noticed Fredericks coming up behind him, cursing a little as his feet sunk into the soft, wet ground that sucked at his shoes. Cole, who was much lighter than Fredericks, wasn’t having nearly as much difficulty.
Cole had noticed that wherever he went, Fredericks seemed to follow, and he wondered irritably if he’d been assigned to watch him. That whole faery prince deal had been such an obvious crock of shit. Cole wondered again why Levi had told him such a psycho story. He hadn’t had time to fully process all the things he’d said, and that ridiculous name Levi had called him. The truth must be truly bad if he’d had to resort to such insanity. The monsters Levi had called goblins had been true enough and he’d been to the Vargr Realm and seen the demon king. Indeed, the goblins had seemed intent on killing him, but they tried to kill Levi too. There was no reason to think that Cole himself was their specific target, so why was Levi trying to frighten him?
Cole heard another muffled curse from behind him and looked back to see Fredericks bent over, trying to pull his shoe from the mud that had sucked it right off his foot. Cole smiled a little as he made it to the top and stepped inside the tree line.
The ground here was a little drier, since the trees grew so thickly together. A mixture of cedars and the twisted trunks of laurel trees mixed in with the southern pines and the leafy rhododendrons that seemed to grow wild everywhere. The thick fog swirled around his feet and climbed up his pants legs. The trees were dripping with moisture, so he’d only gone in a few steps before his clothes were wet through and beginning to cling to him. He bent down closer to the ground, looking for—he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, really, but possibly tracks or some sign that someone had come this way to get to the house below. Fredericks had finally managed to extricate himself from the mud and was standing just outside the trees, watching him silently.
