Dracula must have drained the man pretty quickly because he was soon by my side, kneeling before the woman. He began to feed on the other side of her neck and in other places, too, as he sometimes fed on me and the brides. I think that he realized I didn’t like him to do that because he whispered, “Don’t be jealous; you do it too.”
I made no reply, but instead sank my teeth into the woman’s breast and began to feed. This was not sexual. It was good to feed there because that was where her heart was, that wonderful, blood-filled organ, throbbing with life.
“Organs are best, for they are like casks of wine to us...”
Yes, his words to me.
Suddenly, Dracula began to fondle me. To feed and be caressed at the same time is pleasurable in the extreme. When I knew I had drained the woman, I moved away. Then, in the shadows of these bloodless corpses and feeling every bit as evil as the other brides, I coupled with Dracula. Both our passions were raised by our feeding. Yes, it was true. The passion was most definitely in the blood.
Dawn had nearly broken when we left. So full of blood, we found it hard to move, but move we did because we had to.
Purchase at Amazon:
The Blackstone Vampires Series, Box set $2.99. Includes:
Book 1 The House on Blackstone Moor
Book 2 Unholy Testament - The Beginnings
Book 3 Unholy Testament - Full Circle
Book 4 The Fourth Bride
The Fourth Bride
AEVITAS VANUM
By
Fiona Skye
1611 was a very important year in the history of Western Civilization. King James I released his Bible, the version still used almost exclusively by Protestants to this day. William Shakespeare's masterpiece, The Tempest, debuted on the Globe's stage. Henry Hudson was set adrift in the bay named after him and was never seen again. And I died on the dirt floor of a tenement in the Whitechapel area of London.
It was May... or possibly it had been June of 1611; you'll forgive me if I can't exactly recall the date. It was, after all, four hundred years ago. I had been born seventeen years previously, in September of 1594, during the reign of that redheaded virgin, Elizabeth I. My mother was a whore much adored by the so-called nobility of the city, due to her fair skin and pretty blonde curls, and the fact that she did not look or act like a whore.
The night I was conceived, however, she had enjoyed the company of a Gypsy thief from Bucharest, Romania, and not one of the nobles who were her regular customers. She said she fell in love with the Gypsy that night and willingly bore his child. She said that I was very much like him: dark of hair, eye, and skin; lithe and flexible with quick, dexterous fingers. I've always doubted these stories, playing them off as the fantasies of a woman with too little common sense and too much romanticism in her blood.
Regardless of the truth of my parentage, whether Ma bedded Dorin Dragomir for love or because he paid her well, I grew up hard, living on the streets, learning to survive by my wits alone. I stole my first purse at the tender age of five, and soon graduated to breaking into homes and businesses. I was small of frame, skinny really, and could contort my body into all sorts of odd positions, making it easy for me to slip in and out of tiny windows, small holes in thatched roofs, or chinks in walls before anyone inside knew I was there.
Stealing became a way of life for me. It was much more than simply a means to survive. It was an undeniable compulsion, a way to keep from becoming what my mother had become, a way to take care of myself and occasionally the other children who huddled with me at night in the ground floor of a dirty, wretched building in one of the dirtiest and most wretched parts of London.
For years, there had been rumors about an Albanian Count who kept a townhouse on the Strand, near the Savoy Palace. People said he was a demon, or a Satanist, or an evil sorcerer. People said that his wealth came from deals with the Devil himself. People said that if you were caught looking into his eyes, he would own your soul and you'd be turned into some kind of unthinking, unwitting monster. All these rumors were ridiculous, of course, but they made stealing from him all the more attractive to me.
I spent a month sneaking out to the Strand, watching the comings and goings of the Count and his household. I learned his habits and his schedules and even got friendly with one of the scullery maids. She told me of a big party that the Count would be attending at Westminster Palace, and I selected that night to break into the townhouse and take whatever easily portable loot I came across. The Count would be away from his home for the entire night, leaving the place wide open to a quiet sneak-thief such as myself.
I broke into his home and made off with a handful of gold coins. This windfall was enough to feed me for the next six months, provided I could keep them secreted away from the other street kids in my tenement. I had no idea that the man was in the house at the time, no idea that he could hear my entrance and exit through the tiny window in the kitchen, or my quiet steps up the stairs to the main floor and into his study, where he kept the sturdy iron box with the huge padlocked chains about it, where he kept the entirety of his cash fortune. I couldn't have known that he heard me pick that lock and loosen the chains, or that he followed me home that night and watched me intently for the next five nights in a row.
And I had no idea what sort of future he'd already decided for me.
Six nights after my windfall at the Albanian Count's house, I was moving silently across the rooftops of the buildings surrounding the tenement in which I was currently living. It was habit for me, before entering the building, to check all the entrances and exits, all the lines of sight to make sure there were no surprises in store. I'd been assaulted once by a gang of thugs who'd come across me on my way home after a lucrative night of thievery; they beat me bloody and stole my ill-gotten gains, forcing me to seek out my mother, who nursed me back to health and never let me forget what a disappointment I'd turned out to be.
There weren't any hidden surprises that I could detect, so I carefully scaled down the side of the building and slipped in through a high window in the back, landing perfectly silent on the dusty dirt floor. A shadow moved in the doorway, and then suddenly, there was a vise grip around my throat and my feet hung some six inches off the floor.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move.
Panic rose up in my breast like a bubble, exploding into my head and sending me into mindless frenzy of sheer terror. I tried to scream, but couldn't get the sound around the thing at my throat. I clawed at whatever was pinning me against the wall; I tried kicking and bucking, but couldn't dislodge it.
A face swam into focus in front of me; a pale-skinned, emotionless face, with eyes the color of moss and lips a pale blue. Those lips skinned back over neat, white teeth... and revealed fangs like a snake's. My panicked efforts to free myself redoubled as I realized the thing holding me aloft by my throat was the Count I'd robbed. My head shook back and forth and I grabbed at his wrist, for it was his hand wrapped around my neck. He chuckled, a sound like two slabs of rough stone being dragged against each other. "Hush, child," he said softly, an eerie familiarity in his tone. "It won't take but a moment."
The Count pressed his body against mine. His flesh, cold and hard like the marble pillars in the foyer of his home, smelled oddly, like dust and old books; there was no stench of sweat or food about him, nothing like the miasma of scents that surrounded people of the day. He put his lips against my throat in an obscene parody of a kiss. A sound like the strangled growl of an angry cat escaped him and then I felt those fangs sink into my skin.
It was like being pierced with ice... until my blood began to flow, and then it was as if my entire body was on fire. He took his hand from my throat and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, clinging to him like a drowning man clings to a rock. I whimpered softly, caught up in a pleasure so intensely painful I thought I would die. Then I knew that he was killing me. I was dying. I could feel my life's blood seeping away into his mouth, where he lapped it up like a kitte
n with a bowl of cream.
It went on and on forever and was over in the blink of an eye. I slumped to the floor, strength leaving my body, warmth fleeing my limbs. My vision went blurry. The Count's face became hazy and indistinct as it hovered above me. My last conscious thought was, "So this is how it ends at last." My last conscious feeling was the Count scooping me up against his body. I spiraled up towards the ceiling, on wings of molten light, and turned, looking over my shoulder at my tiny broken body being cuddled in the lap of a monster. It didn't matter; I wasn't angry with him for killing me. My entire being was suffused with peace. Heaven awaited, just beyond the edge of the sky.
The sharp, coppery scent of blood hit my nose and my body lurched. I was suddenly trapped inside it again, my hands clamped around the Count's wrist, holding it against my mouth. His blood – sticky, salty, thick – flowed into my mouth and I swallowed it down greedily, a starving man at a sumptuous feast. Nerves that I thought dead flared with heat; my body tingled, it burned. I try to scream, but the risk of losing a single drop of that precious blood stayed my voice.
The Count and I became one, joined through the river of my stolen blood, which I stole rightfully back. Thoughts fired in my brain – vampyri! – and I opened my eyes. He smiled and I knew I was Damned.
About The Author
Fiona Skye, Author of the Revelations Trilogy
Fiona Skye is an urban horror and fantasy novelist currently living in the deserts of Southern Arizona. She shares a home with her husband, two kids, three cats, and a Border Collie.
Fiona’s passion for story telling began early in life. At age twelve, she wrote her first short story, which was based on a song by a 1980s hair band. She has dedicated her life since then to writing, only to be occasionally distracted by her insatiable love of yarn and crochet, and the dogged pursuit of the perfect plate of cheese enchiladas.
She counts Diana Gabaldon and Jim Butcher as her favorite authors and biggest influences. Joining these two on the list of people she would wait in queue for a week to have a coffee with are Neil Peart, David Tennant, and Neil Gaiman.
Read more about her at: www.fiona-skye.com
TO TOUCH THE SUN
An Excerpt
By
Laura Enright
Narain raised his eyes carefully, staring at the body-strewn field known as “No Man’s Land” lodged between the trench systems of the Allied and the Central Powers. Bird song could be heard in the distance, as could the groans of those men still alive and suffering from their injuries. The air was thick with the stench of gunpowder from that day’s raid on the German line, as twilight closed cruelly over them. Narain’s head throbbed and his arm had gone numb from lying on it while unconscious. The shrapnel from the mortar rounds found its mark, slicing deeply into his right side and left thigh and yet, he had felt nothing as he fell; barely felt the impact of the ground. Regaining consciousness, he lay face down on the cold, moist ground, the pain of unattended wounds causing his body to contract before the wave slowly passed to a dull, sickening throb in his leg and stomach. The commotion of the push over the top had quieted now. There were neither shots nor mortar blasts, just the cries of his fellow soldiers who had streamed over the trenches and the enemy soldiers who raced out to meet. In a variety of languages, they begged for water or relief. Many begged for death. Raising his head slightly, Narain looked around, trying to get his bearings, which seemed impossible in that featureless landscape of craters and the mounds of dirt blown from them. He tried to get to his hands and knees knowing that there was still danger of sniper fire if he should stand and make too large a target. It was as he groaned and lifted his fevered body that he saw it: a figure, shadowy and strange, threading its way through the bodies. To his right, he caught a glimpse of another, and another following behind that. Shivering, Narain willed himself to be still, squinting as he tried to make out what they were. They were human in form, but they moved with a terrifying grace, not the dazed agony of desperate soldiers. Like jackals, slunk low to the ground, they investigated the bodies they came across and, to Narain’s silent horror, fell upon some of them. He counted nine; there may have been more, and what he thought was initially the robbing of the dead turned out to be much more sinister.
Narain’s blood froze as one scrounged by a body near him. Vivek, staring lifelessly, was an arm’s length away when one of the creatures began to nose around his body. Easing back onto his stomach, Narain tried to control his increasing panic as the being moved on to the next body. Private Charlie Perkins was not far and Narain could see by the shallow rising of his chest that he was still alive. The creature, up close, was noticeably human but strangely grey, as if all the blood had been drained from him. His head looked slightly misshapen, especially around his jaw, as if his mouth wasn’t large enough to hold the teeth within it, and his clothes seemed to be rotting off his body. Perhaps he was a poor peasant made homeless and desperate by the vicious war, now hoping to make some money by stealing the effects of the dead.
It was very possible he once was.
But as he lurked around the bodies near Narain that night, the creature was something more. He had crouched near Vivek’s cold body briefly, but turned up his nose in disgust. He focused instead on the still breathing Perkins, who was beginning to regain consciousness.
“Don’t awaken!” Narain mouthed the words, but Perkin’s eyes opened as he weakly raised a hand to his temple.
With a squealing growl, the creature dove toward his throat and Perkins screamed, struggling pathetically, unable to dislodge him. Briefly, the creature raised his head, a slightly elongated tongue reaching out to lick the dripping blood from the sides of this mouth. Then he moved back in and reattached himself, Perkins’s pointless struggles growing weaker until his arms fell to the ground and he remained still.
Narain’s mind was ablaze at the sight of this cannibalism. Swallowing the bile rising in his throat, he tried to take advantage of the fact that the creature’s attention was lost in the blood lust and squirmed away from the scene, desperately praying not to attract attention. He had to get away from the horrible sight, the awful wet sucking sound, and the creature’s unnerving purrs of contentment.
He passed the bodies of men he had served with: Fred Blythe, Sunil Patel, Captain Reginald Jameson. Half-conscious, the captain, face streaked red with blood, reached out to Narain, but made no sound. When he felt it safe, Narain took the chance to go from squirming to crawling.
In the distance, he could see the entrance to a forest, which stood untouched by the brutalities of modern warfare. It might offer better cover from these beasts or could offer no safety at all. Narain couldn’t be sure. He was just certain that he wanted to get away from the fresh brutality happening on the field, already soaked with gore. His own wounds throbbing mercilessly, his mind hot with fever, he decided make a dash for the trees.
He never made it.
~ ~ * ~ ~
Eyes flashed silver in the half moonlight of a cloudless sky.
Mouths watering instantly, there was little hesitation to the wolf pack’s scavenging, despite a strange feeling to the clearing; a haunted energy, which raised their hackles a bit. As each one loped onto the field, they took a quick swipe from a nearby body. It was indeed a feast with enough to fill every wolf’s belly, so all were allowed to feed as equals with no squabbles over meat. Still, in an instinctual understanding for the need to show dominance, the alpha male sauntered from feeding party to feeding party to chase the feeders away before taking a few bites and moving on.
A few of the humans were still alive and groaned pitifully until a fierce ripping of their throats silenced them. The fact was that never had the pack eaten so well with so little effort and more than likely never would they have the chance to again.
Still, the field made the leader uncomfortable. There was nothing to fear from the humans scattered around. Even those still groaning didn’t possess the strength to pose a threat. He looked at his mate, w
ho seemed as uncertain as he was, but they were both too much the opportunists not to take advantage of this lucky find.
A two-year-old raised his head from the shoulder he was gnawing on and yawned. Deciding to sample other dishes, the impulsive fearlessness of youth led to a reckless curiosity that encouraged him to ignore the very same disquieting energy that was making the alpha couple so nervous. While the alpha male might have sensed it, the two-year-old was oblivious to the pair of eyes staring at him hungrily. As he sniffed around three bodies that had seemingly fallen a top each other, the two-year-old was certainly not prepared for what came next.
The yelp of surprise echoed across the field and then there was silence. Raising his head, the alpha male stood stiffly, staring ahead, his ears tuned to any other noises of distress. Licking at his blood-soaked muzzle, he sneezed, then walked forward a few paces. The others had heard it too and were testing the air for any foreign scent. He did as well, but all he picked up was the scent of his pack and the delicious meat dotting the field. There was something, though. That strange energy that had been teasing his fight or flight response ever since.
The other wolves went back to their feeding, but the alpha male sauntered on, taking a mental note of each adult he went past. There was one missing. One that had seen only two winters. He moved in the direction where the yelp seemed to come from and soon picked up the scent of the two-year-old.
There were disturbing areas to this field that made his hackles rise, as had some of the dry bodies he’d turned away from. Very little frightened him in the forest, but this field terrified him the longer he stayed in it.
Stopping short of a strange pile of bodies, he picked up the scent that indicated the two-year-old had gone closer to it, but a quick circle around the perimeter indicated that the younger wolf never left. The alpha male stood before pile, staring at it, an occasional soft growl disturbing his panting. Body stiffened, his ears moving back, his lips pulled back in a toothy snarl, but his tail dropped low until it went between his legs as terror swept over him.
Vampires Romance to Rippers an Anthology of Tasty Stories Page 10
