The Strigoi Chronicles Box Set

by Nya

  The real Dreu would leave. He would free his lover from his toxic embrace and take his chances with the pack that stalked the night.

  The coward could not bear to leave, could not ever again lose the warm, loving presence of the boy-man who drove him to the peaks of perfection and the depths of despair. Fueling his hunger, feeding it, leaving him wanting, begging for more.

  Fane was my final, most complete addiction.

  He would ever be my biggest regret.

  ****

  The morning light was weak but at least it wasn’t snowing. I looked at the teen on the bed and registered the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

  “Finish him.” Fane’s voice was oddly cold, edged with a harsh reality that cut through me.

  “I don’t need…”

  The wolf, the alpha brooking no argument, snarled, “They will tear him to shreds.” There was no compassion in his eyes, no spark of sympathy. He said, “It will be a kindness,” but he didn’t believe it, nor did he care.

  It wasn’t a request and fear knotted my belly as I complied. I wanted to gag and vomit the unhealthy soup of drugs and weakened hemoglobin, but my body adjusted as usual.

  Vampyrs survived, that’s what we did.

  When I finished, I asked, “Where will we go?”

  Even after a lifetime of exploring my world through the wonders of cartography, I still had no clear idea of the geography of this area, no clue as to what north, south, east or west held in store as we dashed headlong in some direction, seeking to outwit the pack. We needed to get to relative safety, buy ourselves some time before deciding what to do next.

  The prospect of running all over central Europe held little appeal. Been there, done that. Had the scars and the psychoses to prove it.

  Fane once more wore his clothes, leaving us both with a single layer as a barrier to the chill. The teen had an old wool jacket hanging on a nail. It fit me so I slipped it on. It barely made a difference.

  In answer to my question, Fane explained, “We approach Crișana. The plateau,” he waved an arm toward the north and east to indicate the section I thought might be near Transylvania proper, “is to the west, near the border. I have family near the Tisa.”

  I assumed he meant the river and when I asked he nodded yes. Distracted, Fane kept his head cocked, listening. That wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  “We must to go. Now.”

  Riding was out of the question. It hadn’t been until I woke up that I noticed the blood caked in his paws, his blood, not from the kill. The pads were raw meat from carrying me. If we tried that trick again, we wouldn’t get far.

  “We run?”

  “Da, fugim.” Opening the door, he sniffed, listened, sniffed again. “Is okay. Follow. Keep up.”

  Bolting uphill, back the way we’d come, he led us into a wilderness of ravines cutting randomly across open snow-covered meadows, following his instincts while I concentrated on putting one foot in front of another.

  On a narrow ridge, the ground opened up to our right and fell off steeply to the left. The snow was only a few inches deep, allowing us to jog steadily north aiming for a pass cutting through the ridge in front of us.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I slammed to a halt, craning my neck in every direction, sensing danger but unable to pinpoint it.

  Ahead of me, Fane crumpled, weaving, staggering … and the bloom of his life force sprayed the snow in elegant droplets, like a frilly lace doily. Time stood still as he slowly toppled to the left, pitching over the edge and disappearing from view. Only then did the crack-snap-hiss of air split in two, echoing off the ridges, reveal the sniper’s position.

  A second, a third barked in anger and I dove to the ground, staying low, as I crawled to the edge, desperate to see where Fane had fallen. Something metallic pierced flesh, jabbing red hot coals into my shoulder and shrapnel sprayed the ground in a teasing pattern.

  Another slug drove through my thigh, the same one so ignominiously speared when the pack attacked my father’s dacha, and the shudder of pain drove all thought from my brain. They would continue to fill me with metal until I could no longer move.

  They would disable, but not kill.

  I wanted them to kill me, I silently prayed for it. I needed to die.

  “Let me die, please…”

  “Not today, Sire.”

  Jefrumael’s voice was the last thing I heard.

  Chapter Ten

  Michel du Velours settled his elegant, well-coiffed arrogant self onto the leather chair, crossed his right leg over the left, smoothed out an imaginary crease and gave me his smarmy grin.

  It was a newer look for him, the others—fatherly concern, annoyance, anticipation, more annoyance—had pretty much been a wash. And while rightly speaking, I needed to lay blame for my untimely rescue at Jefrumael the demon assassin asshole-from-Hel’s combat booted feet, the ultimate responsibility rested with dear old dad.

  Fane was dead, blown apart: blood spatter and flying internal organs the first thing I saw when I closed my eyes, the last thing I remembered every single minute of every single fucking day.

  So the demon king could take his fatherly concern and stuff it where the sun don’t shine.

  In my world, I was dead vamp walking. Caught in a time warp that I would rectify the minute I figured out a way to slip the clever silver chains eating valleys into my flesh every time I so much as twitched a finger.

  Topside, silver didn’t work. Here, in the caverns of Demon Central, they did a damn fine job of inflicting pain and guaranteeing restraint.

  Nothing said I care for you, my son like torture and torment. Or he could just be getting his jollies in pounds of flesh as repayment for my taking out the minion worker bees. I didn’t know the man well, but I don’t think I’d be far off the mark to say that Monsieur du Velours was capable of holding a grudge.

  Scootching the chair a bit closer to the bed, he said, in his modulated, über-controlled fashion, “I see you are feeling better today.”

  He could thank Rafe, his clever field surgeon, for that. As far as I was concerned, getting better wasn’t even a blip on my personal agenda.

  I’d given struggling against the restraints a good go, had tried living inside my head and shutting out his world, I’d even gone over to praying and reciting bible passages from memory. Nothing helped, nothing changed.

  Fane was dead.

  I wasn’t.

  I needed to be.

  It was really that simple. And I definitely did not fathom why anyone would care one way or the other.

  One thing I hadn’t tried was getting answers, mostly because asking questions might come across as me giving a shit about living. I was never the sharpest tool in the shed, but I had some street smarts, enough to know that knowledge often yielded results far faster than wallowing in self-pity or employing brute force.

  The one thing that was a given: we all had time. My challenge was making the best use of what I had left. To do that required me understanding how and why I’d gotten into this pickle in the first place.

  So I asked, “Am I the prize or am I the turkey?”

  He shrugged, his mouth doing that annoying little uptick that indicated amusement.

  “I’m both, aren’t I?”

  This elicited a belly laugh, an oddly disquieting sound: deep, cavernous and menacing.

  I didn’t mean to appeal to any sense of compassion, it just slipped out, ragged and needy and raw.

  “I loved him.”

  Staring at his trousers, he frowned, contemplating the implications of that simple avowal for what seemed like an eternity. Finally he looked at me, really looked, his brows creased over eyes a startling clear greenish grey, with a hint, a mere hint of sympathy in their depths.

  “I’m sorry, Son. Jefrumael was watching but he wasn’t able to get to you in time to save you both,” and he held up a hand when I huffed doubts about that. “It’s the truth. He was to bring you both here if the wolve
s managed to track you down.”

  I didn’t expect an answer but I asked anyway, “Why wait, if you wanted us here, why not just pick us up at the cabin? Why all the drama?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  Shit, Jefrumael. That mutherfu—

  Jefrumael, the jilted assassin, the one with the hots for my wolf, the one who sucked dick while I watched: me sobbing like a little girl because he had stolen my lollypop, him making my pup moan in ecstasy. I should have known. The look on his face when Fane chose me…

  The assassin had done his job all right; he’d come to the rescue, plucking me out of harm’s way, but only after I’d taken a few hits for the team and Fane’s body lay bloody and broken at the bottom of a ravine.

  For dear Jef, no didn’t mean no, it meant later, when he could act within the letter of Dad’s directive, if not exactly in the spirit.

  The thought occurred: was Jefrumael the traitor in Dad’s midst? It seemed hard to believe that Michel du Velours could be hoodwinked by his right-hand man, but history was replete with such betrayals.

  An assistant poked its head in the door and made some voodoo signs that had dear old dad springing to his feet and stalking out of the room. He didn’t say goodbye, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  That gave me time to seethe and ruminate over all my options. I got to thinking on Jefrumael and his possible collusion with a band of merry revolutionaries, or even Jeffy as the lone gunman, out to grab power and influence for himself. Both scenarios logical, both fantastical, both lacking any proof whatsoever.

  When you hate someone at a visceral level, when you can lay righteous blame for the death of your lover squarely on his broad shoulders, it’s easy to imagine the worst.

  Perhaps too easy.

  Bottom line: I didn’t have enough information. I had a few gut-level guesses and a ton of what-ifs. And my list of assets was skimpy at best.

  I had Fane’s memory, an ache that would never leave, misery and sorrow so fierce it nearly tore me in two. A definite downer, but on the plus side, it could be a powerful motivator.

  The assassin had had a taste of my charms, and I knew from the way he looked at me that he still harbored fond memories of our brief time together. If dear Jef was the traitor, then hooking him was my best option for discovering the scope of the cartel hatching plots against my father. If he wasn’t, then I had a drop-dead gorgeous fuck buddy. The more I thought about it, the more it looked like a win-win for me.

  They say revenge is a dish best served cold.

  I had to disagree.

  Revenge is best served hot. And hard.

  I called to the medic-keeper positioned outside the door. He poked his head in, curious.

  “I have a message for His Highness.”

  “Yes, Sire?”

  “Tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

  ~~~~

  MICHEL

  MICHEL

  The Strigoi Chronicles

  By

  NYA RAWLYNS

  The liege-lord of Hel is the demon Michel du Velours. Suave, debonaire,

  and always well-groomed, he is the antithesis of his vassals.

  A man who rules with an iron fist. A man with enemies.

  Dreu, the half vamp/half-demon cleric, spent 900 years avoiding

  his father's clutches. When his werewolf lover, Fane, is assassinated

  by his own pack, Michel offers Dreu sanctuary.

  Hel is exactly what Dreu expected... and then some. As the heir apparent,

  the simple cleric finds to his dismay that the right of succession has some pitfalls.

  With the road to Hel paved with bad intentions, Dreu will have to learn

  a new set of skills if he is to survive.

  Chapter One

  Rafe huffed and minced no words. “You look like shit, man.” Peeling away the thin silver chains holding me in bondage to the hospital bed, Doc Demon exercised his rights to a medical opinion with, “I mean, really…” and let that trail off with a wrinkled nose and a call for backup.

  Two nurses of dubious genders twaddled into the room armed with linens and bedpans.

  Somebody had forgotten to let the dog out.

  Nurse numero uno said, “He’s not supposed to…” and didn’t bother finishing the sentence because obviously wasn’t supposed to didn’t mean Michel du Velours’ one and only son, Dreu, couldn’t.

  And I had. In stasis, no less. My Vampyr heritage had gone walkabout, leaving me with a rather disgusting metabolism and a need for adult diapers.

  Eeuw, indeed.

  Rafe instructed the demons-of-mercy to clean me up post haste and he’d be back.

  When Kinky Nurse produced a clawful of dry brillo pads, I went to my happy place, to that Vale of remembrance…

  To watching my Stefan’s body jerk and spasm and spray the icy ground in a floral pattern of Queen Anne’s lacey crimson splotches. Plink, splat, pfft. Him, the love of my life, huffing against the insult, staggering, tipping forward with arms raised against empty air. Disappearing into a ravine with no bottom.

  Werewolf justice made no sense.

  With my face turned away from the flight path of the bullets, I’d had no way to triangulate and confirm my suspicions.

  Elliot, the alpha, was big and dumb, meaner than a snake, but his second, Samuels, knew the value of things and Fane had merit in a pack with declining members. Samuels also had to recognize the signs of a budding alpha: the independent thinking, the intense loyalty, the going the extra hundred miles to safeguard a mate. All that spoke well of young master Fane and his glorious future as a strong, compassionate leader.

  My lover had been a pup destined to take Elliot on and show him the error of his ways. Preferably by beating the shit out of the fucker…

  My happy place was usually a bit more placid, more amenable to the sensual arts of tension and release in all their glorious forms, including my personal Holy Grail. Jeffy had promised me some personalized rehab post recovery, including new yoga positions, a tease that kept me marginally engaged and hopeful for my future.

  Staying faithful to my lover’s memory skirted the issue of celibacy, not something I’d been terribly good at throughout these last nine hundred years. Good intentions aside, the only way I was staying loyal and true was to find entertainment options that satisfied my overactive libido and salved a very guilty conscience.

  I’d already assumed the mantle of adulterer with Jefrumael, bonding him to me in a most unholy fashion, and the demon’s silver tongue and wily ways did little to cool my jets and my devotion to all things carnal.

  That’s the problem with not buying into the hereafter. It left someone like me, honed under a system of self-sacrifice and denial, with far too much time and too little outlet for all that energy, especially when forever and a day was a reality the human population could nary conceive.

  For the Vampyr half of me, why the hell not was as good a question as any.

  He’s gone, Sire.

  Gone. Gone. Gone.

  And with him went the final barricade against corruption, the last bastion of nobility, relinquishing redemption and salvation and what might have passed for a soul.

  If only I believed in such a thing.

  If only my sad litany of excuses could erase all lingering thoughts of my wolf.

  If only…

  Rafe re-entered the room and paused, watching with interest as my errant body twisted with sniveling abandon, my head cocked in the direction of the door and my fists grabbing wads of cotton blanket.

  Eyes locking with mine, he gave an uptick of a smile, no doubt curious about how I’d managed to impale my lower lip with fangs that threatened to eject from gums raw with lust and need.

  Nurse Kinky had trespassed where no one had gone before, into uncharted territory, using a talon with a rough steel wad of stimulation massaging my prostate, a felony so intense I’d have paid currency to keep her in my service for the rest of hereafter.

  Daddio�
�s man-of-medicine decided I’d had sufficient stimulation for the day so he barked, “That’s enough,” and made it clear to me that he was serious about denying my gratification.

  The pathetic ‘thuth thuth thuth’ sounds of my wretched tongue prying lips apart, the ones for all intents and purposes stapled shut, over-rode the ‘OW’ growling deep in my throat as the Kinkster withdrew her affections, bowed and sauntered off, taking that bit of divine inspiration with her.

  When the incisors finally retracted I muttered, “Damn,” and licked the bloody holes shut, enjoying the unusual fragrance of fear intermingled with my own spicy bouquet. Now that the makeshift sex toy was no longer providing pleasurable sensations, the realization that a brillo, applied judiciously, could indeed shave off and reduce a gland to which I’d developed a certain attachment hit with a jolt. And not in a pleasant way.

  Thinking back on my last aborted visit to the realms of Hel, I recalled that there weren’t many female demons. The ones I’d seen had been on the butt side of ugly, which explained why Pops trolled the upper levels for companionship. I assumed that was the case across the board.

  It might also explain why the s/hemales were routinely conscripted when torture was on the menu. Nothing said post-modern feminism like taking your patriarchal oppression and shoving it literally where the sun don’t shine.

  I’d read Hélène Cixous and much admired her version of écriture feminine, being a man of letters and devoted to language and all things literary, including my vast collection of classical pornography, now forever lost in a dank Ukrainian cave.

  The ladies of Hel seemed to favor a misandrist outlook, a word I’d had to look up after my father dropped it on the head of one of his servers like an eff-bomb. The s/hemale had simply bared her pointy teeth and bowed, not in respect, but in acknowledgement of the truth. S/he and her cohorts never had and never would have any love for their male counterparts.