by Nya
Rafe crossed his arms and leaned against the far wall while my brain wandered off into pseudo-academic la-la-land. I was buck naked, with a deflated ego and a sore butt. What was left of my heart had shrunk to the level of retribution and revenge.
Interrupting my reverie, Rafe said, “You told him you changed your mind,” and shifted slightly so as to watch both me and the doorway. As if we might be overheard. Through the open door. Obviously I was a long way from understanding demon psychology.
I answered, “Yeah,” and left what’s it to you hanging out there just for shits and giggles. When my prostate and I were on a voyage of discovery, I did not appreciate interruptions and withdrawal of affection.
The doc ignored me being surly and instead pressed for elucidation on the whole changing mind thing. As well he should. I had a bad case of tunnel vision.
Fane was dead, pitched over the side of a cliff, probably lying in a pool of black blood and splintered bones. An ignominious end to a pure and noble creature that cried out for payback. I said as much.
Not bothering to keep the snark out of his tone, he rejoined with, “Thought you wanted to die,” leaving the last word less a question, more like a dare.
“I do.”
He lifted a brow at that, as if mourning a lover wasn’t worth the time of day, that vowing to rejoin Fane in some fictionalized hereafter wasn’t just the stuff of overheated hormones and vapid teenaged angst.
He shrugged with that why don’t you just off yourself and save us all a boatload of trouble? His loyalties did not align with mine; that was clear enough. But if Pops said keep the kid alive, he would obey his sovereign to the letter of the law. It didn’t mean he had to like me.
In fact, this new, irritated Rafe messed with my head. The demon had been nothing but solicitous in relieving me of my little priapism problem, stitching the love muscle with care and concern after metal met flesh, and even going so far as to appear entertained by my misadventures. He’d also graced me with the blond bombshell, the enforcer with a hard-on for me and my very special talents.
If Jef was Michel du Velours’ right hand, Rafe was like some variation on internal affairs coupled with a medical mandate to rule on a capo’s fitness, playing Bones to Dad’s Skipper. Pops had legions of lackeys in various stages of feudal service and a surprisingly complex system of rules and regs to secure his rights and responsibilities.
What he hadn’t secured was right of succession … until me. Like I said, he’d gone topside to get satisfaction, steering clear of the dubious affections of the s/hemales. When Maman had popped me from the womb-of-shame, I suspected my father had gone all regal on her ass and threatened to whisk me off to the confines of his inter-dimensional hierarchy.
Ergo, that made me public enemy number one because of my euphemistic mixed heritage, a scandal that approached heresy for both sides of that genetic lottery. One other thing I’d long suspected was that my acceptance into orders was a peculiar validation for the clerics at Cîteaux Abbey, especially the Abbot who’d embraced punishment via fellatio with an under-aged half-demon, half-Vampyr boy as a suitable indulgence for his many sins.
If anyone ever cared to accuse me of having a flexible moral code, I could point with authority to a long history of indoctrination at the feet—or the cock—of clerics who had insinuated my every thought, desire or need with enough rationalizations to sink any soul into oblivion.
Of course, Michel’s threats had also stirred the motherhood genes in a woman who by blood was well-connected to say the least. With time on everyone’s side, and few precedents to suggest any other course of action, sequestering me was ingenious and prudent.
But prudence aside, the bottom line was that none of the hoity-toity wanted me, least of all Maman’s family, but what those aristocrats wanted even less was for my father to have me. So like a specimen in a jar, I got shuffled off to a life of asceticism, out of sight but not exactly out of mind.
After all, when you create a monster, it’s sometimes worthwhile waiting to see what transpired. During medieval times, children were assets so it got no one’s nose out of joint to exercise a little patience, because … well, hell, you just never knew.
Pre-Fane’s assassination, Rafe had been all yes, Sire, no, Sire, how can I be of service, Sire, borderline obsequious but not ringing false. A fine line, perhaps, but one that fit into my comfort zone.
This Rafe, however, looked down on me like I’d brought STDs into the wicked world of the ninth circle. I might be Daddy’s little boy but on the demon doc’s scale of worthies, I was now somewhere south of abomination and to the east of revulsion.
The one thing dearest Rafe wasn’t getting was that I could be dangerous, and not just to myself. As far as I knew, the rabble in Demon Central assumed I’d capped a few thou of minions accidentally: pushed a button, hit a switch … causing a temporary inconvenience with a techno-device in one of Pop’s labs. The old man and I had decided to keep the real reason to ourselves, a discussion we’d had on the fly, so to speak.
Or maybe I should say … on the flee, with me doing a jailbreak and Dad hot on my heels with full intent to take me to the woodshed for a millennium or two. Or he was going to have me clean up the mess on aisle five with a spoon. Neither option sat well so I bolted and hid in a cave on the Black Sea, re-enacting my porn and living large with the local virgins.
Since I’d stuttered through my mental history lesson and apparently bored my audience half to death, I decided I needed sustenance and a change of clothes.
Speaking softly just to see if Rafe had actually drifted off during my extended internal review, I stated, “I need clothes,” without a please or by-your-leave. When he opened his eyes, he had a glazed expression, so I repeated, “Clothes?”
“Uh, I’ll see what I can find.”
As he left, my buddy Jef sidled through, giving the doc as much room as possible. The demons did a nod of sorts but without making eye contact. Not exactly strangers in the night but a definite homage to potential bad blood between them.
Interesting. Was there trouble in paradise? What the heck was I missing?
Going from Daddy’s special boy to near pariah had me spooked on a level I had trouble putting my finger on.
Looking at Jefrumael decked out in eyebrow studs, hoop earrings and short, spikey gelled-to-stiff blond Goth locks had me from Oh fuck, yeah. Sauntering in, he salsa’d his way across the linoleum in black spray-painted tights and a nearly transparent muscle shirt clinging to his cut abs like saran wrap.
Mouthing, shut the door, I backed toward the bed and awaited his pleasure, my skin going into a five alarm sizzle as nerve endings imploded, pop pop pop fizz. This wasn’t the gorgeous young man who’d sucked Fane into denial, nor was he the compliant donor of blood and semen when I’d bestowed a mind-numbing blow job and secured his undying allegiance.
This creature was something else completely, not entirely demon, not entirely humanoid, but fully fashioned. A complete package: assassin, lover, tormentor. If he’d been sent to dispatch me to the light, I knew … knew … I’d die a happy man. He was a wet dream, an Adonis, the fulfillment of every fantasy I’d ever had, or ever would have.
He was temptation on a stick.
Shivering, no longer in control, my eyes tracked the talons flicking idly at the Prince Albert piercing, tinking the balls, left, right, left until the reverb exploded in shafts of metallic melodies along the length of my phallus. Clapping my hands over my ears, the screech of frequencies just at the edge of pain oscillated in sweeping rhythms, groin to belly to throat to eyeballs.
He murmured, “How quaint. Is that the best you’ve got?”
I stammered, “B-b-best what…” unsure of his meaning considering no one had ever faulted me on performance or attributes. Besides, he was the one who had installed the tracking device. He teased me, baited me, taking me back in time to when I’d lost one kind of hope, reminding me of that special well of agony and despair.
My
head went to that coy place that refused to acknowledge the down and dirty bits swelling like velvet over steel over a rapidly expanding innerverse of gorging vessels primed to blow. Attempting to ignore my body was one thing, ignoring his was … impossible.
The tights melted into his skin, leaving a dusting of dark feathery tendrils undulating with the tension of his muscle contracting along a march of thick silver hoops, a frenum ladder, and I asked, “Will it hurt?” because I didn’t know and desperately wanted the answer to be yes.
Yes to his rape of my resolve.
Yes to caving to my basest nature.
Yes to anything and everything that would wipe away the image of my wolf tumbling off the mountain.
He asked, “Do you want it to?”
“Yes, please yes.”
Chapter Two
A thin blanket weights the air, colors leached, uneven. It warms without warmth, ne'er a promise nor a threat, it just... is.
Michel du Velours lounged at a granite-topped round table with intimate seating for two, sipping a cappuccino, his feet propped on the extra chair. His eyes were closed but far from unaware. Without seeming to, he focused on the skritching of pen on parchment, a scrabbling mouse-like rhythm oscillating as the distant waves receded, only to return with gentle susurrations onto the gravelly beach far below us.
I don’t remember getting here. I do remember Jefrumael, my body still humming with contrition, sore to the point of regret. The assassin did not go softly into my goodnight. Someday I would learn to be less literal, more circumspect in my choice of companions.
Someday.
But not now.
Turning his head with casual grace, his elegant body eased further into the plump cushion, still indulging in a moment of peace and contentment.
Does he fancy himself my bonded mate now? Bloodied, my body had yielded in every way possible until I drove us both to the edge of insanity.
Had we gone too far?
Had I gone too far?
Was Fane to be only a distant memory now?
“What are you writing, boy?”
Cringing, I mumbled, “Nothing,” as once more I’d been caught out in a moment of introspection, my journal too private even for mine own eyes. That I dared to scribble my feeble musings in his presence spoke to my utter fear of confronting the pain that pricked with unrelenting intensity. Pain that succored my perversions, pain the man in Armani would appreciate at a level I had yet to explore.
He hummed an ‘um’ and returned to an ease of careless inversion, the transposition so seamless it played my memories false, trebling the agony while graying out the pastiche of events, forcing me to reach deep to draw them out.
Which master does he serve, my assassin, my lover? I wouldst not be so foolish as to imagine that he seeks me for his own special purposes. Or that my gifts mean no more than a momentary suspension in a vortex of pleasure, the anticipation of release far more compelling than the act itself.
There was a thing I’d learned when far too young for such knowing… We seek the light, the warmth, the glow of satisfaction that permeates every pore, radiating from a pinprick. Sensation like wavelets, the nerve explosion like a pebble dropped in still waters drawn tight and viscous, skinned flesh, melting bones and screamless screams of relief as the din of bliss dampens and ceases.
And then the cold rushes in, chilling in its fortitude, shocking because it denies and drains sensation, leaving a wanting that’s never satisfied.
Such is the nature of the body’s betrayal: acts of kindness, measures of mercy, exploitations and perversions and sins revisited over and over and over.
He, the demon who would be father, stared with something resembling concern. A chasm of ceramic tile and wrought iron balustrades separated us, yet my every curlicue, dot or dash, each dip into the pigment of despair, bared a litany of angst I had no wish to share. Not with anyone. Most definitely not with him.
It was a matter of trust.
Rafe had been tasked to see to my well-being, and until instructed otherwise his allegiance to this mandate remained clear and uncluttered. At least on the surface. But in that cabin, in the back of beyond, I’d skewed those loyalties, giving the assassin a taste of the exotic and forbidden. That made the blond giant my sycophant, dividing his loyalties. It was a punishment he did not deserve yet it assured obeisance until I withdrew my affections. Addiction sometimes cut both ways, setting traps of co-dependence and control.
Trust and distrust spun on an axis of complicity. There was neither wrong, nor right, the impersonality of it all a jarring, balls-aching realization that the comfort zone was a construct built on lies and misdemeanors. Such was the way of it.
Michel du Velours was outside my experience, too complex for a simple cleric to ken, a puppet-master, a manipulator of the highest order. I should have been too humble, too obscure to merit his undivided attention. But accidents of birth happened. Call it fate. Call it karma. Call it being fucked six ways from Sunday, it was all of that and more.
What I knew was that there was an agenda. The how, the what, and the why would be revealed in due course. I did not plan to stay around long enough to watch that unfold.
I had one and only one allegiance: to finding and killing the rat bastards who had ripped me in two, stripping me to my most elemental form. Victimizing me until retribution was the air I breathed, the sustenance in my belly, the explosion of my seed into whatever vessel would receive it.
I have a favor to ask of him. It will put me in his debt and for that I will truly learn the meaning of regret.
I know what I need. But I have not the words to frame the question. The hypocrite revels in the conundrum of fools bespeaking fools on a fool’s errand.
I can see the endgame laid out, diamond bright. What I cannot fathom is if my fantasy to rejoin my beloved would take the shape, the form of my desires, or wouldst it cast me out into a joyless emptiness?
There is no such thing as nothing, no such thing as nothing at all…
Strange that a melody should echo my heartbeat, lending truth to the lie.
There is no such thing as nothing, there is only hate now.
The ink glistened wetly in the still, humid air and once more I wondered where this place was. It had a vaguely familiar smell that went beyond the acrid bite of salt and crude oil and nitrate-rich guano. On the cliff edge we should have been high enough to perch outside the air inversion, yet the burden of scenting infused the very act of breathing, and try as one might, there was no escape from incessant reminders of place.
It was a hair shirt for the lungs, a punishment that might have been calculated if the man reclining in casual elegance had not shown such obvious enjoyment.
I asked, “Where are we?”
Michel took his time considering the question. That seemed unwarranted. We were either here or there, or we were the beneficiaries of a holographic projection, the two of us squirreled away in some booth, monitored by a phalanx of minions and guards.
The prospect that a demon, this demon in particular, could share a moment of surcease from his liege persona seemed wrong on too many levels to count. Especially not with me, the lone gunman, the idiot savant with shit-for-brains and a hard-on for revenge.
Daddy’s little boy had things to do, villages to ransack, heads to mount on spikes, rape and dismemberment and general mayhem to rain down on every shifter in the back of beyond. Crossing borders, creating international incidents, leaving a trail of blood and broken bodies across half the continent.
He also had a journal to hide because the fruit of Michel’s loins had turned into a nut case with delusions of grandeur and little skill outside of sucking dick and taking names.
Pops laughed, a deep growl of mirth, and I realized my penchant to verbalize once more overrode good sense.
Sprinkling sugar sand over the parchment, I let the fluid soak into the quartz crystals, then tipped the blackened particles into a receptacle and huffed a breath over the page. T
he ancient book had a tooled leather cover, the pages thick with jagged edges, unevenly sized, raw and rough like my thoughts. I latched it, though there was no locking mechanism. For some reason I knew he would not pry. Perhaps because he already knew me from the inside out, blood-to-blood. That was comforting at one level, that small matter of trust rearing its estranged head.
For the first time in my long lifespan, the element of time itself had become rate limiting, as a mathematician might say. I might have forever and a day but my quarry did not. If I were to exact revenge, now, not later, became the heartbeat driving my resolve.
I stood and approached the table and the man. He did not turn but I had his full attention, the air between us sparking with energy, the discharge eking paths along flesh gone turgid, raising barriers against penetration.
My mouth filled with the regurgitated bile of second thoughts, saliva thickening as my fangs extended, battle ready and foolhardy. Turning away, I licked the tell-tale drool off the corners of my mouth, too embarrassed to face him with my failings.
A monarch deserved a warrior for a son, not a driveling, sniveling ex-monk with semen choking his conduits and his next fix never far from his thoughts.
Gods, what the assassin had done, filling me, destroying my will, the metal rolling harshly chilled, ring after ring after ring, pressing with exquisite tenderness as his claws raked my scalp and arched my neck into submission until air ceased and the little death vibrated in my bones.
This man was not my enemy, not this day. But he had the power to grant a boon and I had nothing to offer in return.
And I no longer had anything to lose.
So I said, “I need for you to do something for me.”
The chair legs objected to the weight shift, wood-on-ceramic a flat sound, dulled to incompatibility. Then he stood next to me, a hand on my shoulder, two bodies groin-to-railing and I shivered in spite of myself.
