The Strigoi Chronicles Box Set

by Nya

  He topped me by nearly six inches, his breadth massive, hard and unyielding, and I wished, oh how I wished I’d been more like him: commanding, assertive, powerful. Unforgettable.

  The ego and the id tap-danced over my shortcomings, my lack of style, my naiveté, my woeful lack of ambition. Laying the blame at the feet of a lifetime of seclusion was no excuse. There had been warrior priests and warrior monks, trained in the martial arts and willing fighters for the Lord, both secular and sacred.

  The path of least resistance had been my chosen avocation. Yet a lifetime of study had failed to achieve either knowledge or wisdom.

  I stayed forever the neophyte, never worthy, never memorable.

  Until Fane.

  “Dear sweet God,” I moaned into the still, late morning blush of hazy somnolence, “I miss him.”

  The hand on my shoulder squeezed once. Just once. Then it rested quietly, making no demands.

  I was perfectly capable of making enough of my own to sink the ship that was Dreu, the cleric with no family name because Maman’s relations disavowed my existence and the bâtard that would be Vampyr had no claim to rights beyond self-flagellation and the pump of cum deep into a throat made for no other purpose.

  Michel du Velours said, “I’m sorry,” his tone oddly dissonant with what I expected, with the merest hint of forlorn flirting with repentant. And understanding.

  It gave me hope and that was such a dangerous emotion, one I could ill afford.

  “What can I do, boy?” It was a simple question, devoid of quid pro quos and the multiple layers that greased his normal discourse. He’d emphasized the ‘I’, keeping it between us, personal, father-to-son.

  It nearly broke me once more and I asked myself, how many pieces of you are left, Father Dreu, how many shards remain before your essence is nothing more than dust on the wind?

  “Michel— Père,” and the word hung as fragile as angel’s wings between us, “will you teach me to fight?”

  “Fight.”

  “Yes.”

  Something rumbled deep in his chest, a guffaw, a chortle, one of those odd sounds a person makes when confronted with the theatre of the absurd and actors on the stage looking for cues to lines that never existed.

  For some reason, I cycled round to the question he hadn’t answered. “Where are we?”

  Withdrawing the hand from my shoulder, he reached into a pocket and withdrew a silver box, extracting a Gauloise and taking his time to light it. He drew the pungent mix of Syrian and Turkish tobacco deep into his lungs, holding onto the ripe fullness as if waiting for a hit. When he exhaled, the rich, distinctive aroma settled about my head and I breathed deep of the second hand smoke, the filtering through alien demon anatomy somehow enhancing the effect.

  I felt giddy and slightly drunk.

  And randy as hell.

  Grinning, he said, “Jef is working in the dojo after lunch. I will see that you are … undisturbed.”

  As usual, he’d avoided answering my question, so I pressed, “I need to know where we are,” because the sea, the sound of a distant ship’s diesel engines chug-chugging across the darkling waters were too vivid in my memory.

  Pointing to the sweep of cliffs to our right, he said, “Cape Kaliakra,” and waited for recognition, but I had none so he explained, “…close to Balgarevo?” The uptilt to the name indicated it was one I should recognize. I didn’t.

  And then I did.

  “That’s where the werewolf pack held us … held me prisoner, isn’t it?”

  He nodded and waved in the other direction. “Romania lies that way.”

  That sent my synapses firing into overdrive. There was no reason to believe that the wolves would opt to stay in Romania without their prize: me. They could prowl the forests hoping to score a scent but without knowing exactly what, or who, to look for they were pretty much shit-out-of-luck. That meant returning to home base and regrouping. It made sense.

  As dumb as Elliot was, even he would recognize that as a viable plan and Samuels would back him up.

  Mine papa had cleverly positioned us within easy distance of the pack’s stronghold. If I were wrong, the other option was to scour the Adriatic coastline, scaring up the odd were pack but not a guarantee that the perpetrators of my lover’s demise would ever surface.

  Revenge tasted best when the dish served was the one ordered off the menu, and although a scorched earth policy appealed, it also wasted assets. The old man looked like he’d be amenable to fronting a few resources but when push came to shove, Dreu the Warrior Monk was on his own.

  Speaking of which, I needed clarification on that favor he’d yet to agree to. So I asked yet again, “Will you teach me how to fight?”

  Folding one leg over the other, he rested a hip on the railing and looked me up and down, more with curiosity than in an attempt to find me wanting.

  “Have you ever killed anyone, son?”

  He called me ‘son’, not boy, an elevation in status that had me giddy again, this time not from second-hand narcotic-laced smoke.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Did you like it?” He waited for an answer that wasn’t forthcoming, mostly because I’d never really thought about it.

  I tried to explain in terms he would understand. “I need to feed. I’m half…” then stutter-stopped because he already knew why, so I went off in a different direction. “Sometimes, the donor,” oh the wonderful euphemism of ‘donor’, “…the, uh, donor isn’t strong enough and I might take too much.”

  I didn’t mean to, honest I didn’t, it was a mistake…

  His crystalline blue eyes pierced my skull, willing his one and only offspring to grow a set and fess up to who and what he was, sans excuses and pretty justifications.

  The best I could do was equivocate with, “Sometimes, yeah, I liked it.” As in really liked it … in a carnal, orgasmic drench of my senses. The kind where I got my rocks off on draining a victim dry until the spirit dissipated into the floorboard and my belly engorged on the putrescent masturbation of lust masquerading as metabolism.

  In nine hundred years, I could count those times on the fingers of both hands, mostly in my early, unformed years, but that fact wouldn’t hold much cache with a demon sire admiring of body count.

  And that reminded me of the legions of minions dispatched like so much vermin with a mere expression of pique on my part.

  Dreu did it on the fifth level of Hel with a brain fart.

  “I will instruct Jefrumael to begin your training immediately.”

  As I was going for the gush of oh thanks, Dad, you rock, he stopped me with a frown.

  “You do understand that there will be certain … conditions.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Your performance will be evaluated on a regular basis.”

  And there will be punishments, right, got it.

  “If you perform to my standards, you will be rewarded, but if not…” He allowed that threat to hang for a heartbeat, letting me absorb the implications.

  “Fuck.”

  “I’m glad we understand each other, son.”

  I watched him saunter off, disappearing around the corner of the dacha, and tried to come to terms with the fact I’d just bartered my nookie away for a shot at a brass ring.

  Damn it, karma sucked.

  And I still hadn’t gotten those yoga lessons.

  Double damn.

  Chapter Three

  The minion oozed me through a wall of haze, my molecules contracting and expanding willy-nilly. It only paused when I disgorged my breakfast against a dank stone wall. It wasn’t pleased.

  Minions were ever on the clock, task oriented to a fault. This one’s duties did not include coddling a nauseous Vampyr with anticipation anxiety. It charged ahead, leaving me to wipe my mouth on my sleeve and patter behind on bare feet.

  The slap slap slap on a slimy floor of indeterminate construction did nothing to improve my mood, one that bordered on truculence. It would do no good to as
k the creature to slow down, let alone render assistance, so I skidded my way along the narrow passage, reciting all the reasons why this insanity was a good idea and how it just might lead to me reuniting with my beloved.

  Or not.

  If nothing else, learning a few thrusts and parries of the tae kwon do variety could only enhance my pleasure as I single-handedly wiped out the werewolf population.

  I had the cape and a strikingly bold codpiece bookmarked on eBay…

  Dojos were uniformly a joyless space, fitted out with mirrors and thick plastic mats, large enough for a dozen munchkins to HAH! in unison, or two diminutive Asian men to defy nature’s skeletal structure with rollouts and carefully modulated kicks that stopped short of impact.

  Invariably there would be an anteroom with hard folding chairs where soccer moms and single dads could thumb magazines or troll for companionship while waiting for their younglings to log yet another notch on their self-actualization ledgers.

  Topside, the old man indulged in satellite TV, ebook readers and a host of computers mostly devoted to hacking world bank databases and Interpol. He’d generously loaned me a laptop for my surfing pleasure; ergo, my extensive knowledge of unsubstantiated arcane facts about popular culture.

  I approached my first training session in the martial arts expecting a sterile storefront in a shopping center, ablaze with fluorescent lighting. Color me stupid when my minion guide stepped aside for me to enter a cavernous space, easily two or three soccer fields in length—and that was the bit I could see. The rest lay hidden in shadows.

  Theatrical floods mounted somewhere in the space above created harsh circles of glare, the light white to the apex of pain, approaching that point of retinal refusal to accept it as light at all. The circles intersected in a very specific pattern, a monumental Venn diagram of thou shalt not pass, and my gut informed me I’d best learn the rules of the road before venturing anywhere near those traps.

  The walls to the left and right sported sconces for thick columnar candles, the scent of beeswax and smutty air familiar from my days in the monasteries. The flames danced of their own accord, as flames do, and that was a small comfort as mind and gut argued against this fool’s errand.

  Jefrumael skirted the rings of crystalline brilliance, reinforcing my fears that the stadium itself might become my biggest challenge. He shooed the minion away and bid me follow him, avoiding eye contact.

  The assassin wore the standard issue gi, a loose heavy cotton duck fabric faded to yellowish-gray, probably in an attempt to bleach out blood and other fluid stains. It was definitely a working outfit, not the ceremonial white uniform tied off with a black belt. Rather than a length of dyed cloth functioning as both belt and symbol of achievement, a thick chain interspersed with nail-like protrusions held the tunic closed over his massive frame. I had no idea what that signified.

  What I did know was if I ever got that good as to rate a pit bull leash around my skinny waist, I would be badass indeed.

  For now I gingerly fondled the soft cotton clothesline holding my outfit together and prayed it wouldn’t be used to strangle me if I somehow didn’t meet expectations.

  Speaking of…

  “Jef?”

  He paused and turned to look at me. Was that sympathy in his eyes?

  “Sire.”

  Yes, yes it was. Sympathy, regret, anticipation. Each emotion attached to a freight train barreling toward me, out of control. Out of my control.

  Convincing myself that death was nothing to fear had been easy. Living was hard. Living without love was harder yet. What fears I had were of the mundane variety: embarrassing myself or my sire in front of his hordes, failing in my quest to wreak justice and mayhem on the murderers of my dearest Fane, or never again experiencing the highs of an orgasm and the shock of withdrawal when the flesh confirms that that is all there is.

  Swallowing my anxiety, I said, “You do realize I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  Grinning, he said, “That’s why I’ve brought in a very special sparring partner for you today.”

  “Oh.” There didn’t seem much more to say on that matter since special and sparring partner offered a range of possibilities that bordered on ominous.

  Jef continued on his way with me in hot pursuit until we came to an alcove to our right, this section dimmed to near impenetrable blackness. My Vampyr senses kicked in, though my eyes still registered the space as blank as we traversed it cattycorner, finally emerging into a more recognizable arena.

  Rectangular in shape, the room was cordoned off into separate areas. As we entered, I saw to my left a glassed-in viewing area with bench seating for observers. In a traditional dojo that would have been the shimoseki. If I had any currency I’d bet that thick glass was, at a minimum, bullet-proof, maybe even demon-proof. Of course, whoever was behind the transparent wall was in no danger from me, being well-protected against sprays of vamp blood and errant intestines.

  The other side of the room would have been the joseki where higher ranked students congregated. There was usually a changing room hidden by a wall or some other barrier, but instead of that a small tent, perhaps eight by ten, occupied the space, closed on three sides but open toward the central training area. Nurse numero uno puttered about, arranging boxes of medical supplies on a folding table. A cot and a few machines on rolling carts completed the strange ensemble.

  I asked, “What’s that for?”

  “Triage.”

  My throat didn’t close up right away, at least not until he answered my question, “Do you always have that…?” with, “No, His Majesty thought it prudent…”

  To my credit, my eyes did roll up in my head but I didn’t pass out.

  Two doors led to another part of the facility, exiting on either side of the shomen, the main wall of the dojo and usually adorned with the portraits of past sensei. This wall was blank. Given that demons were surprisingly traditional, the absence of icons had me thinking that few ever met Père’s high standards. In this case … apparently no one.

  The old man had certainly thrown down a gauntlet for his only son, and though no one would ever mistake me for a genius, I had enough street smarts to realize there was more at stake here than a simple test of manhood.

  This exam was going to be of the pass-fail variety and there was no blue ribbon for just showing up.

  That left me with a mouth devoid of spit and a violent urge to pee.

  Hello, demon Dreu, welcome to the wide world of sports.

  Jef tongued the stud on his lower lip, reminding me of better times when that lovely bit of titanium had coaxed a ropey vein into a sultry tango of joie de vivre. With a furtive look at the viewing area, he whispered, “Are you wearing protection?”

  “Protection.”

  “Shit. Follow me.” And off we went to find that changing room behind the triage unit. Nurse Ugly gave me a desultory look and continued filling a syringe with what looked like cat barf. It had that thick, greyish hairball consistency smushed into a 60cc barrel. The needle was held just out of sight, a mercy to be sure.

  My cock twitched with unhappy memories of Rafe aspirating my love muscle with a large bore catheter.

  Jeffy glanced at my groin and hissed, ‘Not now,” and rifled through a bin of sturdy synthetic leather groin and ab protectors, pulling one from the XL side and holding it against my awakening phallus.

  We both nodded no but Jef said, “Drop ’em,” and reached for the next size down. I did as I was told, allowing Mr. Happy to alert Jeffy to my unflagging interest in his tender ministrations. Papa-san had insinuated no sex with my paramour unless I came up to snuff, but there was sex … and there was sex. Without a very specific list of do’s and don’ts I was willing to think outside the box, perhaps push a few boundaries.

  After all, what was the worst that could happen? I broached the topic with my lover as he helped me step through the elastic leg straps, sliding the device to fit snugly over my gonads, then adjusting the wide e
lastic band around my waist. Since I was used to codpieces of various manufacture and fit, this bit of shielding was reasonably comfortable. It seemed a shame to cover it up with the pants but Jef insisted. After retying my belt he indicated I was good to go.

  Jef did consider my question of what was the worst that could happen should we ignore my sire’s prime directive. While his handsome face gave away little in the way of emotion, it was clear that castration was on the table, for both of us.

  He sealed the deal with, “And he’d let you live.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that so I followed him back to the mats and my new sparring partner.

  “You have got to be shitting me, Jef!” Truly, my jaw dropped to the floor. “Nurse Kinky?”

  “Who?” He looked confused. Apparently he was unaware of our very special relationship so I whispered a quick explanation, making sure to emphasize the s/hemale’s unique talents and creative application of common household products.

  Excusing himself, Jef trundled off, leaving me to shuffle from one foot to the other while Nurse Kinky picked at every hair follicle on her knuckles with a sharpened talon. When my bedmate returned, he had a post-coital glow that only came from a quickie in the john.

  Keeping my voice low, I said, “I have concerns.”

  “Like what?”

  “She’s a she, isn’t she?”

  “Um. Not exactly.”

  “Then, what exactly?”

  “It’s a little hard to explain.”

  “I have time.” Loads of it, the more the better.

  “Actually, you don’t. Rafe’s here, along with some of the Council. We need to get this show on the road.” When I objected, he explained, “S/hemales are smaller, less powerful than full bloods. S/he will do less damage.”

  “Ah.”

  Nurse Kinky was taller than me. Hell, everybody on the damn planet was taller than me. That wasn’t my main concern. What got my brand new pube-protector all wet with expectation were muscles I’d only see on my wolf, ridged and cut and taut, blue-veined to near transparency and no body fat. None, zero, zilch.