When Destiny Calls

by Eric Asher

  “Military family?” She asked before taking a sip from her glass.

  She caught me off guard with that one. “What?” My heart rate spiked at the realization that the vampire had knowledge of my personal life.

  “Relax, girl. You’re strung tighter than my mom when she realized I’m a vampire.” She took another sip of her drink.

  I narrowed my eyes. “What else has Ashley told you?”

  Samantha sucked in her lips and seemed to be hiding a smile. “She may have mentioned the fact you aren’t very fond of vampires.”

  “Oh. My. God! I’m going to kill her. Did she set this up? With you coming here to scare my socks off? Was this her idea? Unbelievable. You just …” I slammed the rest of my beer and growled.

  Samantha wore a smile fit for a cat before she shook her head. “No, it wasn’t her. It was me. I’m sorry. Damian was rambling about the book and how it came from Koda. I don’t think he’d even bothered to verify it actually was from Koda. He can be reckless, you know? You know about Vicky?” Sam took a deeper drink from her glass. “I don’t want to see him get hurt. I don’t want to see either of them hurt.”

  I only nodded.

  “You know he’s planning to go after the devil that bound her?”

  “What?” I said. “He means to cross over?”

  “Yes. He can be … stubborn.”

  When our server came by again, Samantha handed her a hundred dollar bill. “For both of us. Keep the change.”

  “Of course,” the server said. “Tell Vik hello for me.”

  Samantha gave the server a weak smile before turning back to me. “When we face the dark-touched, and my family puts their lives on the line, where will the blood mages stand?”

  I blinked at the vampire. She changed topics quickly. I wondered if she was always like that, or if she was in a hurry. “You mean with the Fae?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t speak for Cornelius, but I know he has loyalties to Damian’s master, Zola.”

  “They go back a ways,” Samantha said. “That’s my understanding. Zola is not someone many people would be crazy enough to cross. Where do you stand, Elizabeth?”

  I thought about that. What she was asking, and what my answer might really mean. An alliance with the Fae could mean a conflict with the commoners, if not a war. An alliance with the wrong Fae could be just as deadly, forcing us into being a target of beings far more powerful than me or Cornelius.

  I raised my eyes to Samantha’s. “I’ll stand with Cornelius, so we’ll be playing for the same team.”

  The vampire seemed to relax. “That’s a relief. I’m glad you’re being honest with me.”

  I frowned slightly, wondering how she could know how honest I was being.

  “I can hear your heart,” Samantha said, answering the question I hadn’t asked aloud.

  At that, I was ready to leave the vampire’s company. I stood up and adjusted my bandages. “Thanks for the drink, Samantha.”

  “Call me Sam. It’s what my friends call me.”

  “Sam.”

  WHEN DESTINY CALLS

  BY LARA HENLEY

  FAITH

  If it were just a ringing phone, I’d answer it. The only person on the other end of the phone line would be Ronin. He knew I was in this room with Mr. Kirkwood. The bastard tried to beat me with a belt, and now I’m looking at his cold, dead body lying at my feet, blood splattered all along the walls. My hands were covered in blood from when I sliced his throat with a box cutter I had found in the drawer by the night stand. If I hadn’t grabbed it, I’d probably be dead.

  Why did Ronin send him to me knowing he liked it rough? The only roughness I liked was with Ronin himself. The phone continued to ring becoming more and more deafening to me. If I were to answer the phone, the life I knew as Faith would be over.

  I rubbed my face, smearing the blood over me, savoring the memories that had happened only moments before. I even dared to lick the sticky crimson goo off my hands. Have you ever tasted blood against your tongue—the sweetness of knowing you had hurt something or someone to get the iron taste in your mouth?

  The phone kept ringing making me jerk it from the wall and hurl it across the small hotel room I had rented. The sound of it smashing against the wall made me ball up in the fetal position and await my punishment I knew would be coming for being a bad girl.

  The tapping on the door startled me as I was still curled in a ball against the wall. He was going to beat the living crap out me as he did the last time this happened. The tapping continued as I fled to the bathroom locking the door behind me. God, my life used to be roses and sunshine, and now I knew I was doomed to spend my after existence in hell. Hell was too good for me at this point...

  “Get down on your knees,” he ordered me in his rough, sadistic voice I had come to love.

  I kneeled down before him as I’d always done and looked up at him with puppy dog eyes. Great big alligator tears poured down my face. I knew he liked it when I was vulnerable to him. He was holding something behind his back, and I couldn’t quite make out what it was. I only knew it was long, black, and circular shaped.

  “Beg me,” he ordered… and the thought of doing that thrilled me to my core. The thought of pleasing my master brought me joy. The last time he made me beg on my knees, I had eight glorious lashes to my back. Just thinking about the pain brings a smile to my lips. God, it felt so good.

  I know, I know. You think I’m crazy, but, in fact, I’m just the opposite. In the world that has consumed my life, these actions are completely normal. Okay, you got me, it isn’t normal, and I wasn’t always like this. Contrary to belief, I once lived an ordinary life—well, one I’d call normal.

  Growing up, we lived in a cul-de-sac surrounded by streets lined with houses, which looked the same varying only in the shade of color painted on their exteriors. Our house was on the corner lot with a white picket fence. I always felt out of place growing up in our neighborhood. School was a bore, as I liked to let my mind wonder to gross places. Like, for instance, slicing the girl next door’s throat and watching her bleed out. Miranda was as sweet as pie but worked every last nerve in my body. You know those blondes who would always use the word LIKE obsessively and twist their hair while popping gum. Well, yeah, that was her—POP, POP, with that damn gum. I wanted to take her gum and shove it so far up her butt she wouldn’t even be able to poop it out. Yeah, I’ve been having those types of fantasies since I was a teenager. Of course, I never acted on any of them until I met the dark man who I’m kneeled in front of now.

  What can I tell you about Ronin? As the love of my life, I’d do anything he asked of me. And I do mean anything. If he asked me to jump off a cliff, I’d do it. That’s how crazy and jacked up our relationship is. I know you think I’m one of those stupid women obsessed with a man. You have it all wrong though. Think about it. Have you loved anyone so much you’d literally die for them? It’s the same thing here. My Ronin was the best and worst thing that had ever happened to me. How did I get so lucky to be kneeling in front of this God-like creature you ask? Here, let me start from the beginning.

  I first met Ronin Davis during my freshman year at NYU. He had a dark, mysterious look about him, and I knew from minute one I was doomed to the hell I’m in now. But I’d call it a heavenly hell. As I said before, I’d always had abnormal fantasies I never acted out. At first, Ronin and my relationship was as vanilla as you could get. The sex was vanilla. The dates were vanilla. Heck, even the conversations were vanilla. I thought I had pegged him all wrong. I thought I was getting me a bad boy who was going to broaden my horizons. He kept this charade up for more than six months. He must have sensed I was going to break up with him because, one night in late October, he showed me a different side of him. A scary side of him.

  We were on one of our numerous dull dates when I excused myself to the bathroom. Upon giving myself a pep talk in the bathroom to get through the night, Ronin came barging into the bathroom lo
cking the door behind him with a dark look in his eyes. He nearly made me jump out of my skin.

  “Ronin,” I gasped in surprise. After all, we are in the ladies room. “You can’t be in here,” I told him as I backed up into the wall behind me. He said nothing and kept stalking toward me. Before I could breathe another word, his hand was raised, slapping me across the face, nearly numbing me with pain. Now most women, and I do mean most, would have started to scream or even cry. But not me. That slap burned a fire within me. It made me want Ronin in so many ways. I wanted him to take me against the wall right then.

  A pounding on the door startled us both. Still not speaking, he grabbed me and pulled me out of the bathroom. My mind was whirling with the possibilities of what was about to happen next. The man I thought a dud was now suddenly full of life. A life I sordidly wanted. Ronin took me back to his place and continued his little slapping escapades leading to the roughest sex I’d ever had in my life. God, I didn’t want to admit how good it felt for him to take me like that. To make me feel like a whole woman.

  Mom and Dad would be mortified if they knew I was partaking in this type of life. You see, my family was as normal as you can get—my father, a doctor and my mother, a lawyer. My sister, who is two-years-older than me, was the world’s perfect child. Heck, we both were. We both got straight A’s in school. Jessica was captain of the cheerleading squad, and I was captain of the track team. I mean, looking from the outside in, we were the perfection of families. Except for the fact, I was very different from my family. Very different from the way Ronin took my body that night. We won’t go into detail about my sexual sex-capades with my Ronin. But I will tell you he definitely knows what he’s doing in the bedroom. The hairs on my arm started to tingle from the mere thought of him.

  Anyway, back to that night. Ronin took me into a heavenly bliss. After all of that, he still didn’t say a word to me until the next morning.

  The morning sun peered through the blinds to wake me to a pair of black eyes looking down on me.

  “Well, that was certainly different than anything we’ve ever done,” I said sleepily and thoroughly satisfied.

  “I figured it was time to teach you a thing or two about me.” His voice was rough. “You need to know the real me, Faith. The guy who first attracted you to me. I can’t hide him any longer.” He paused for a moment to think about what he was going to say next. “That vanilla stuff was really wearing on my nerves, and I know you craved more. Tell me I’m not wrong.” Ronin looked at me. I mean, he really looked at me as if he knew I was hiding something.

  My voice caught before I could even answer him. “Thank God, Ronin because I was beginning to get very bored. When I first saw you in the quad, you had a bad boy persona to you. To my surprise, I found you to be quite the opposite of what I was hoping you to be.”

  “You have no idea how much I’ve been holding back on you. But no more, baby. From this moment on, you will see the real Ronin Davis.”

  And since that night, Ronin has yet to disappoint me. Still, how did I get from having rough sex to killing someone in my hotel room, you ask?

  Truth be told, my head is still swimming at the idea of murder. Ronin, to put it lightly, was a man of his word. He introduced me to a world of drugs, sex, and pure madness. He played the college student well knowing he wasn’t even a student at all. He pretended to attend college to lure young girls like me into his world. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t care what type of world it was. All that mattered was I loved it and had no interests in leaving it.

  Now the guy who was lying at our feet dead was a man who got out of line. The deal was I was supposed to come in, give him a great time, be paid, and I leave. This guy, on the other hand, had a different approach. He thought I was going to let him do what he wanted to me. As in beat me. Now, I’m into all the BDSM stuff, but what I’m not into is being hit for no good reason. The only person I allowed to beat me was Ronin, and the dead man before me was no Ronin.

  Mr. Kirkwood met his match when he tried to whip me with his belt. Ronin taught me how to take care of myself. When that phone rang, I knew he’d be pissed I had taken it to this level yet again. You know, I could care less because, truth be told, I enjoyed it. Now, here I was, kneeling before my God with anticipation of what he was going to do to me next.

  RONIN

  When Faith didn’t answer that phone, I knew something was seriously wrong. She was beginning to be a pain in my side due to how I had to continually clean up her messes. The girl was seriously more twisted than I could ever imagine. When I first met her, I thought perhaps she was a little off her rocker. She admitted to me she had fantasies about slicing people’s throats, but I took it as a joke. But now, seeing this guy dead in front of us tells me everything she had said was true.

  Seeing her kneeled down in front of me gave me my own set of kicks, though. Faith would do almost anything I told her to do. How many people can you say would do that? Do I love her? Who knows, I think I might. She is beautiful in her own right and by far, makes me the most money out of any of the others.

  Her eyes peering up at me made me want to slam her body up against the wall and make her scream. I needed to hold back that desire because now I had to deal with this dead body.

  “Faith, how many times do I have to tell you to stop doing this? I can’t keep cleaning up your messes. One day, you’re going to go too far, and there will be nothing I can do to help you.” This was the second time Faith had killed someone I had sent to her. If word got out that she was killing people, my business would be doomed.

  “He tried to beat me with a belt, Ronin. You know that’s only reserved for you.” Those damn tears always got to me. “He literally tried to kill me. I was only attempting to defend myself.” Faith was the only one of my many employees who I let get to me.

  “I know.” I sighed. “But, Faith, what am I supposed to do with this? Last time I had to pull a lot of strings to make that girl disappear.” I shuddered at the thought of the other person she had killed. “This guy is better known and someone will definitely be missing him.” Deep down, I knew someone else should have been sent, but Kirkwood insisted on Faith. Bet he never thought this would be his last screw or it was his last night to be alive.

  “You’ll think of something. I have faith you will.” Damn her and for her confidence in me.

  “Go get cleaned up and let me make a few calls,” I said, but she didn’t budge an inch. “Did you not hear what I said?” I growled. “Get up and get cleaned up.” Still, no budging. It was then I knew she was baiting me. Making me angrier so I would hurt her. The girl got off on stuff like that and, to tell the truth, so did I.

  “I said...” I grabbed a fist full of her dark, black hair that felt like silk in my hands. “Get up...” I said again as I began to drag her by the hair into the bathroom. She was smiling at me—actually smiling at me. I yanked and pulled on her hair dragging her and then throwing her into the bathroom. I turned the water on warm for her.

  “Clean yourself up while I go make some calls,” I growled at her again.

  “Please, come wash me.” She blinked. “I know you want to.” She began to peel off her remaining clothes and turned away from me. As she removed her top, I saw the red marks that he inflicted on her and it made me want to go crazy. No one was allowed to mark her body but me. Especially, not some fat creeper like Mr. Kirkwood.

  “He did this to you?” I gently traced the marks on her back and saw her cringe.

  “Yes,” was all she said as she continued to undress under the spray of the shower. She turned back to me with her breasts exposed. I couldn’t help but to undress myself. Faith had some type of spell over me. My eyes traveled the length of her body wondering how this breathtaking woman was in my world. She could be anything she wanted to be. A doctor, lawyer, hell, even a store clerk, yet she chose this life. A life that would inevitably destroy her if she didn't leave soon. She was the only person who had ever made me question myself. Questio
n what I’m doing with my life, and yet here I am standing in front of her about to wash her body. About to care for her as I’ve never cared for anyone in my life.

  I know what you’re thinking—that I must have come from a pretty rough life to be doing this. But you couldn’t be more wrong. Like Faith, I came from a very ordinary family. We were literally the All American Family. Dad worked, Mom stayed at home to raise my brother and me—who, by the way, turned out to be a doctor. We had the dog and a house with a white picket fence. Mainstream corporate America life wasn’t for me. For me, I craved danger and adventure. I wanted something to make me rich instantly. Not some job I’d have to work fifty-five plus years to gain wealth.

  My mother had a hissy fit when I dropped out of college and I told her I wanted to travel the world. Knowing good and well that was not what was about to happen. When my college year began, my major was undetermined which my father detested. “Pick a major, son,” was what he always told me.

  One evening, my friends and I went to a bar to get drunk after finals when the most stunning woman I’d ever seen walked into the bar. She was tall, slender, and had the perkiest breasts I’d ever seen. You know the kind who made you wish you were a baby again. Yeah, she was that type of woman. Made my freaking mouth water just thinking about it. She was dressed to kill in a black dress so short it barely fit over her ass cheeks. When she walked, all eyes turned to her commanding everyone’s attention, even the women. She glanced in my direction, winking at me giving an invitation to go to her. See, I never had problems with the ladies; in fact, they usually flocked to me when I smiled at them. This woman was different though. She didn’t need me to smile at her. Her wink was all she needed to trap me in her web and I’ve been trapped ever since. From that moment, I knew my college days were over.

  I walked toward her all smooth and confident, the way I approached most women. Her eyes locked onto mine as I approached making my palms sweat. This was something I had never ever endured before. Upon my arrival, she turned back to the bartender and her sweet voice spoke asking for an apple martini.