The Strigoi Chronicles Box Set

by Nya

  Stroking his throat, the artery palpated and threaded into a tight vine of such ropey insouciance I had no recourse but to suckle and teeth the impudence into submission. And when, butter-soft, the surface yielded, then resisted, I drove down, down, down, piercing layer by layer as he hissed and twisted away, tightening the rope until the anticipation consumed both of us and it was he, not I who savaged the final barrier, releasing a geyser of life into my parched throat.

  Like a sacrament, it trickled, then streamed, and finally flooded and the taste was a miracle and I humped his groin, sweat and passion lubricating my engorged cock and the more I drank the harder, thicker, tighter it got until that conduit from my throat to my phallus was my entire universe.

  With his fingers he nudged me away from my fountain of strength, instead urging me lower to pay obeisance to the trail of fine golden hair veeing into his erect cock and the heavy sac festooned with stainless steel rings and barbells parading up and down the glorious length.

  Nearly tapped out, drained to the point of danger, my demon croaked, “Ride me,” and pressed his knees and thighs together to cradle my ass with friction as I eased onto his length, inch by excruciating inch, filling and stretching and squeezing the channel against the metal and the flesh, finding the sweet spot and rotating my hips to hit it again and again.

  Bracing with steeled spine, rigid and unyielding, he demanded full access, his huge hands encasing and cradling my length as I lifted and thrust, repeating in a masturbatory frenzy until we both yowled our release, and like bucks in full rut, descended once more into a mindless drive to endless orgasmic bliss.

  We had no sense of time, it may have been hours or even days before, sated, we curled and twined together, my ear pressed to the rhythm of his steady heartbeat; and I knew, finally, after nine centuries of searching, that I had come home.

  The words formed thick on my tongue. My will, my courage ached for sleep, but a voice in my head chided that I would rue the day if I failed to breach the final barrier between us.

  Eyes the color of the Aegean on a cloudy day gazed down with hope, a thumb caressing the coarse hair on my cheek, our bodies, our spirits distilled into this single, precious point in time.

  Backing away, I slid off the bed, biding him to join me as I pledged my troth. Sinking to the cold stone floor, I prostrated demon and Vampyr before the archangel and said, three times, “Je t'aime, je t'aime, je vous aimerai à jamais,” and sliced my wrist, offering my life’s blood and my devotion.

  Crouching, my demon gathered me close and whispered words in the old language, the voice of the angels, and he swore his fealty, then suckled the thick crimson heat, thrusting his head back so I could watch the long, slow swallows and I knew, never again, would I walk the earth alone.

  ****

  Their voices carried, the one tightly controlled, the other raging in trills of violence that rattled the windows and sent night terrors to wreak havoc with my brain. I woke, befuddled, my thoughts fogged and confused. The cocoon of Jef’s embrace had been replaced with a fluffy quilt, and squishy goose down pillows coddled my back to give the illusion of form and substance.

  Besotted with lust, sedated, witless, my body had finally succumbed, encased in the safety of my lover’s true form until the sweet succor of stasis took pity on us both.

  They were on the balcony, the early morning light filtered and weak with high clouds skudding across a troubled sky. The Mediterranean oscillated far below us, the villa perched with angular disregard for the natural contours of the bluff, relying instead on modernity and the strength of iron and concrete to buttress and bully nature into accepting the visual monstrosity.

  It had all the elegance and style of a Soviet bunker, yet, from the inside looking out, the vistas were captured like impressionist paintings, the horizon forever at infinite remove under the bold relief of heavens in turmoil.

  It gave meaning and form to forever, much like my feelings for the archangel squabbling with my pater familias, the slings and barbs hurled with disregard for station or allegiance. I stood at the French doors, curious about the row, barely catching a word here and there. Too often my name came up, though that seemed incidental. There were other concerns at play here, concerns that transcended the missteps of the idiot savant ex-monk. The argument reeked of their past history and differing visions and insinuated that so-called selfless choices had finally played their world false. They spoke of blame without placing it, though the tone and volume hinted that the words preceding regret would soon follow.

  Nothing made sense. Then Rafe stepped into view, glanced at me briefly and said, “He is expendable,” and I knew he meant me.

  My father sat with his back to me, facing out to sea. Camos and combat boots encased his lower body, his torso was bare and silked with a sheen of sweat. The contours of his shoulders sloped into long, lean muscle, still quivering from an effort I’d missed.

  Rafe paced back and forth between Pops and Jef, just out of sight to my right. When my demon finally hove into view, I nearly gagged at the bruising on his handsome features, his bottom lip split and bloody, the left eye swollen shut and purpling. He wore loose sweats, slung so low on his narrow hips that they bordered on obscene. His torso was a roadmap of punches that had connected with the intent to not just incapacitate but to maim, perhaps even kill.

  I mouthed, “What the hell is going on?” but Rafe saved me the effort of seeking an answer by launching into a lecture, his voice brooking no resistance.

  “You two aren’t going to solve this by trying to kill each other.” He held up a hand to stay a retort from Pops, then glowered in my direction and growled, “You might as well join the party since it’s about you.”

  Jef shouted, “Leave him out of this, damn it, Rafe, this has nothing to do with him and you know it.”

  Rafe stepped aside and let me pass. I parked myself on the stone wall and stared from one man to the other. The demon liege lord in camos, the father who never ever dressed down, never had a hair out of place, rarely if ever raised his voice, was squatting on a cheap plastic chair bleeding copiously from nose and mouth and glaring at Jefrumael with an expression I couldn’t begin to interpret.

  In answer to Jef’s statement, Rafe continued, “It has everything to do with,” and he paused to look down his aquiline nose at me, sneering, “…him.” Then he launched into a tiresome rehash of here’s how Dreu fucked up everything, including the delicate balance of power in Demon Central, and not being content with that, proceeded to spread mayhem and discord throughout the land. The only things he lacked were a white board and colored pencils, backed up with a PowerPoint slide show and pie charts.

  He expounded on how I’d failed to take advantage of an opportunity to wipe out the annoying werewolf faction and had set our liege lord up for an end run on his throne because with a loose nuke and sociopaths unconcerned with long term consequences, it had gotten to the point where no one had anything to lose.

  Whether or not that was true was immaterial. So long as the interested parties saw nihilism as a viable option, we were all, in a word, screwed. And to reiterate, just in case no one caught it the first time around, he said, “That’s why he is expendable.”

  Rafe was a self-righteous prick. Early on I’d questioned his loyalties. I’d even gone so far as to consider him the primary traitor in our midst, the mole leaking intel to the lower levels and even to topside, primarily to the wolves.

  But the thing was … neither Pops nor my assassin shared that viewpoint. Their faith in Rafe remained unshakeable, even now when he’d placed himself in a very tenuous position of offering to throw their second-in-command’s lover and the King’s only viable offspring to the wolves, literally and figuratively.

  And I had to admit, he was right. Not about everything but the fact remained that circumstances and fate had gotten their jollies from the juxtaposition of me in stasis, cuddled up with a dirty bomb, and then you throw in pirates and werewolves, and drama of Shakespeare
an proportions… Hells bells, a Hollywood screenwriter on crack cocaine couldn’t come up with this shit if he tried.

  Act two: monk meets first love, loses first love, meets Daddy Dearest, discovers he’s a walking munitions factory, and then finds true love only to lose it in a final cataclysm of a human chain reaction of insanity.

  All because Dreu du Velours couldn’t keep it in his pants.

  Rafe continued, his voice sanctimonious to an extreme, “And let’s not forget the small matter of…” and he literally went nose-to-nose with me, “…the, the… The. Fucking. Contract.”

  Substitute ‘you green-blooded…’ with ‘the fucking contract’ and you had the platinum standard for moron without a clue. Demon Bones crossed his arms over his scrubs and looked smug, as well he should, having fulfilled his role as moral center in this theatre of the absurd.

  I stood and invaded Rafe’s personal space in a full frontal assault. There was no periphery, this was tunnel vision in extremis, the assassin and our liege lord receding into the shadows at the edge of vision. I boxed us into a dimensional space where time slowed to a crawl.

  Rafe blinked but gave no quarter. And I gave him no time to object.

  “Listen to me, medic, and listen very closely. Here’s what’s going to happen.” He blinked. I allowed that. There were other things I wouldn’t allow. I made a verbal list, speaking slowly so he wouldn’t miss any pertinent points.

  “First off, you will fix them.” Them being my lover and my father, neither of whom looked especially attractive when beaten to a pulp.

  “Secondly, you will tell me everything you know about my genetics.” There had to be some way to control the weaponized me and who better than a brilliant certified scientist to help me unravel that mystery.

  “Third, and this one is mission critical, so don’t lie because if you lie, I’ll be pissed. And trust me, you won’t like me that way. Nod if you understand.” He did, so I continued, “You know who is behind this, don’t you?” It sounded like a question. It wasn’t. Rafe’s eyes bulged because I was about to weasel a confidence, probably one he’d been sworn to uphold for, oh, I’d guess nine hundred years or so.

  We were close enough for our groins to rub together. I held him impaled with a slow oscillation, the kind of dominance display that, if I continued with it, he’d be peeing his scrubs and sobbing like a little girl.

  I knew a thing about Rafe. He was a homophobe of the first rank. And yes, I was small-minded enough to use that to my advantage.

  The ex-monk suggested that new Dreu stop playing with his toy and get on with the big reveal. Not that it was going to be a huge surprise. The Vampyr’s subconscious had been hard at work for days, putting two and two together.

  And then presto, chango, here we were in the south of France, not far from the land of my birth and one of the few places on the continent where the veil separating dimensions thinned to convenience.

  Co-incidence? I didn’t think so. There were things I believed in, lots more I didn’t: co-incidence stood at the head of that last list.

  Cupping the demon’s balls, I enjoyed a rush as the blood drained from his face. I husked, “Tell me,” and pinched to the point of pain. “I already know, Rafe, but,” and at that point I purred the words into his open mouth, “I’d really, really like to hear you say it.”

  “Let him go, son.”

  I ignored mine Papá and pressed closer to Rafe, muttering, “Give me a good reason not to crush these.”

  Michel du Velours spoke softly, his voice filled with remorse. “You know who it is, boy. Don’t punish loyalty for the sins of another.” He placed a hand on my shoulder, breaking the glamour and deflating the bubble of venom I’d constricted around my heart.

  He didn’t need to ask again. I backed away from Rafe and turned to stare at the sea. My liege lord and my lover bracketed my body, and strangely enough Rafe stood his ground behind me, the three men a wall of solidarity. One I loved, one I respected, the other … I wasn’t sure about. One thing I did know, I trusted them because they were … family.

  Steepling my fingers, I said, “Aveline du Languedoc will be expecting us.” I turned to face the three men who now mattered most in my life and smiled.

  “Let’s not keep her waiting.”

  Chapter Nine

  One thing the popular media don’t do is give you a good primer on launching an assault on a hard target. After centuries of making it through incessant wars, pogroms, a few really nasty-assed religious entertainments, and the occasional two-step with irate husbands or fathers, my experiences with confrontations of a physical sort had been mostly limited to a quill in an eyeball. And that had been a mistake, a simple misunderstanding, both of us intent on going public with select revelations and conspiracy theories.

  Of course, all that ended when I woke up in the company of werewolves, with my caboose hitched to a nuclear device, and everybody’s fingers pointing at Dreu-the-monk, shouting ‘He did it!’

  Dreu-the-Demon badass, on the other hand, shrugged into a three piece silk, single-breasted, light-gray striped custom job that Pops had his tailor whip up in, like, ten minutes. Jef wore leather, tight, form-fitting—the kind of ‘can’t take my eyes off the package’ distraction that should appeal to either or both sexes. My assassin was going in hot, in more ways than one.

  Rafe sulked in his scrubs, relegated to backup and triage. He was running communications and orchestrating the rescue teams should we need a bolt hole or wire cutters. He was also tasked with finding a manual on disabling small nuclear devices without shrinking gonads from stray radiation. Supers were super in name only. Mostly that designation meant weird, different, eeuw to all but the most rabid comic book aficionados. To the rest of humanity, we were largely invisible, and we liked it that way.

  It hadn’t always been so. Old-fashioned, three-tined rakes made out of hardwood could and did do a surprising amount of damage, especially when wielded in the company of hordes of rabid fanatics. Humans got touchy about food supplies. They didn’t like being the main entrée on the Vampyrs’ menu, nor were they appreciative of the wolves chowing down on secondary sources like sheep or cattle or companion animals.

  Most of us learned to be circumspect, to stay low, make do with the choice cut instead of prime rib. Most, but by all means, not all. Samuels was a case in point. As was Maman, though her motivations had more to do with deep-seated rejection issues that would take an army of shrinks to unravel.

  Pops had filled me in with a few theories that a son really didn’t want to hear about his mother, no matter what his own personal feelings were, given her casual disposal of said fruit of her loins into the bowels of the church. That simple act had resulted in a lifetime of self-indulgence that had kept her one and only offspring in a juvenile state of denial for nine centuries.

  Rafe had said, “Why don’t you just kill the bitch and be done with it,” which might have something to do with him not joining the away group. As for me, I was easy one way or the other. With patricide already on my plate, a dish just waiting to be heated up, doing away with a woman I’d not seen since age thirteen seemed inconsequential in the big scheme of things.

  I said as much to the minions patting me down and smoothing imaginary creases. The legs had a full cut that hid a blade above the left ankle and a clever pea-shooter on the right. The cut of the suit coat effectively masked the twin Glocks without ruining the drape of the material. The soft poly harness was visible with the coat unbuttoned but that simply added to the panache of the outfit.

  Looking over at mine Papá I smiled at the dapper image: tall, dark and deadly done up in Euro-trash elegance with uptilted collar and a soft turtleneck in monotone dark gray. Lean enough for a Prada walkway, with cheekbones that would slice parchment, he oozed style and refinement. If you liked those things with a side of menace, Michel du Velours was your man.

  I joined him at the three way mirror, both of us reflecting a shared gene pool. Him: calm, cool and confident
. Me: a younger version but unformed, like clay that hadn’t quite set. He palmed his chin and glanced my way, obviously considering adding a close-cropped beard to the look.

  Not usually a fan of facial hair, I’d kept the addition because it masked the über-pale complexion that was a dead giveaway for vamps. That and the weird eye color had me reaching for the Ray-Bans.

  Maman’s family’s base of operations traditionally had been in the area known as Roussillon, bordering Catalonia and the eastern Pyrenees. That gave her, and her family, a Spanish connection that should have rung some bells back when the old man and I were working through a few scenarios trying to pin down who might have been behind the Soviet arms heist originally.

  Jef poured tumblers of bourbon and added ice, the clink a satisfying distraction from all the thoughts coming to a slow boil in my head. We had time to kill until sunset, so I launched into my usual verbal stream of consciousness.

  “Why didn’t I see the connection with Eduardo? It was all there, right in front of my face. I missed it, completely.”

  I was doing a mental head slap over that one. The demon had hit my radar hard after I’d recognized a pattern during a rehash of what I’d learned during one of my liege lord’s gatherings, back when I was still Dreu-the-monk, more Vampyr than demon. Unfortunately, we hadn’t gone far enough, leaving open too many possibilities.

  Jef said, “First off, you said you never met him, that it was all hearsay. And after they shut down the Santa Hermandad, you said he went to ground and didn’t hear about him again.”

  Pops took a sip of the liquor and appeared to savor the feel of its cool burn slip-sliding down his throat. Eduardo had been one of his, not exactly a trusted lieutenant, but a lackey who had served him well, ensconced as he’d been between the reliable Level Two and the uncertain loyalties of the clan controlling Level Three.