by Riley LaShea
Every cell in her body seeming to produce pure, potent pleasure, the climax came so fast and hard, Chelsea couldn’t stay on her feet. With a shout of all but pain, she gripped more tightly to the woman’s jacket until she could no longer think, no longer feel, no longer hold on.
Body going limp against her, Haydn pressed the woman back against the wall to help support her weight, nursing at the spot until she got every last delectable drop. Or until she thought she did. Well run dry, she could still smell a small reservoir as she pulled away, and, when she listened for it, she detected the trace of a heartbeat making a last, valiant effort at survival. Hand pressing to the woman’s stomach, Haydn could feel it there too, weak and fluttering, before the new life came to a sudden, inevitable end beneath her palm.
Realization dawning too late, she lowered the woman to the ground as the sleet turned to snow around them. Eyes rising to the sky with some wonder, she watched it fall in huge, magnificent flakes. The sleet all too frequent, she couldn’t remember the last time she was actually in the city for a snowfall. 1795, was it? No, it had to have been 1847, during the famine, when the food supply had withered for them all.
At the snap of a flash fire capsule, she took a step back, feeling something curious, almost melancholy, as the body - both bodies - went up in flame, leaving ashen angel within ashen angel in the lightly falling snow. Hard edges softened by the two distinct outlines, she didn’t perceive a threat until she turned and felt the sinew jerk inside her chest. Blood spattering Gijon’s white scarf, it took a moment for Haydn to recognize it came from her, and, pain setting in with a vengeance when she did, she cast her eyes to the steel bolt embedded beneath her sternum.
Spinning head tearing her muscle into pieces, Haydn yanked the bolt free, turning her head too late to prevent the sting of shrapnel against her cheek as the triangular head detonated.
Hearing the latch of the crossbow release again, she spun out of the way, glancing toward the adjacent roof to see a glint of platinum before Slade’s satisfied grin retreated from the edge.
Bounding onto the nearest balcony, Haydn scaled the five stories, hearing Gijon and Auris at her back as she vaulted the roof’s edge. The sound of a hammer dropping, she rolled to avoid the bullet Sean fired to cover Slade’s escape, and looked up from a crouch as Gijon and Auris rushed past in pursuit.
Watching Slade and Sean drop over the far edge, she pushed up to follow, making it as far as standing before weakness overtook her. Hand pressing to her chest, the blood surged between her fingers, like water springing through the weak spots in a dam. Just making it to the other side, she dropped onto the roof’s ledge. Below, she could see Slade and Sean jump into their flashy jeep, as their minions fired silent rounds from the back seat, forcing Gijon and Auris to take to higher ground as the jeep peeled away.
Kneecap striking stone, Haydn twisted around to fall back against the ledge as her legs gave out, staring across the rooftop at the trail of blood she’d left behind, none of it hers, but still all she had to give.
She should have heard them coming, but the sleet and snow whisked the hunters’ footsteps away in a flurry. She should have smelled them, but the stench of the scorched dross and the savory flavor of the woman’s blood filled her senses. She should have detected their presence. Instead, she detected the tiniest of heartbeats.
It was distraction for which she would pay.
Relinquishing to her frailty, the only frailty she still possessed, Haydn closed her eyes, seeing darkness, not all that different than the darkness that had been her domain for a thousand years.
3
Pain searing her heart, it beat in thunderous protest.
Lurching upright, Haydn’s gaze fell to the metal probe protruding from her chest, peripherally recognizing her whereabouts, before she looked up and felt violated all over again by the twisted enjoyment on Auris’ face.
“Feeling better?”
“I think that’s sufficient.” Haydn felt the stretch of freshly scorched tissue as she pushed the blonde’s hand away.
“Don’t be so sure,” Auris returned. “Fucker got you right through the vena cava. You should be dead by now. Well, deadish. Since you’re not…” Tip of the probe trailing her exposed torso, electricity pulsed Haydn’s skin where it hovered a hair’s breadth away. “Anywhere else you’d like this?”
Jerking as the current seized her just below the belly button, Haydn forced the probe away again.
“I don’t have the energy for this,” she uttered, and, lip jutting into a frown, Auris abandoned the cauterizing wand to the metal shelf, hands returning to Haydn’s shoulders to ease her back to the table with a disturbingly gentle touch.
“How did you get me back here?” Of all the evidence Haydn had she’d been balanced at the edge of purgatory, the tender treatment was the most convincing of just how close she had come to tumbling into its abyss.
“We found a man on the street,” Auris said, reaching for the spool of surgical silk and a curved needle. “Not exactly top-shelf, but desperate times. Another at the docks. Two in the boat. You drank all the way back.”
Unable to ignore the pressing fact that, if she drank in her condition, it meant someone had hand-fed her, Haydn wasn’t sure if she should be thankful or mortified they had tended to her in such a delicate condition. In a thousand years, not once had she been unable to feed herself, and it wasn’t exactly a precedent she wanted to set, being weak and incapable. She should have been able to catch up. She should have devoured Slade. Of course, if she had, she suspected she would need just as many palate cleansers to get the taste out of her mouth.
“There was something different.”
Left as she was, the possibility of how she might have ended up, though, was truly troubling, so, babied or not, Haydn had to be somewhat grateful to wake in the familiar surroundings of the lab.
“Clearly.” Auris moved closer to her, and it was absurd that, after the far greater pains she had suffered in her lifetime, and that very night, Haydn could still dread the discomfort of the needle.
“Anti-coagulant?” She tried not to let it show.
“And something far stronger than ginger or garlic.” Finger running along the swell of her breast, it drew up blood that flowed recently enough to still lie warm and wet against Haydn’s skin. “It’s clinging somehow. Still not entirely out of your system. I have no idea what it is.”
“That’s troublesome,” Haydn declared, though it was with admitted distraction as Auris’ fingers gravitated toward her nipple. “What are you doing?”
“Just making sure my work is going to hold.” Her firm pinch drew a gratified moan from Haydn’s weakened body.
“I think it’s adequate,” Haydn said, but Auris’ wicked grin of response lasted only a second, fading into something almost solemn, another sure sign things were as bad as they felt.
“I hope so.” The hand that stroked Haydn’s side was abnormally demure. “Do you want something for this? You’re running on empty. You’ll have to eat again anyway.”
Not sure if she was more disinclined to getting into the habit of indulgence, or of letting the extent of her injury show, it was with some hesitation, and the acceptance that her gaping chest was pretty telltale, that Haydn gave into the promise of less pain.
Glancing away as Auris readied the syringe and inserted the needle into one of her many exposed veins, Haydn’s still felt its pinch, though the unpleasant sensation eased in the single heartbeat that carried the drug outward to the rest of her body. Lethargy settling into her arms and legs, she couldn’t move if she want to, but Haydn had no such ambition.
Smile spreading sluggishly, she watched a corresponding smile flicker over Auris’ lips, but couldn’t find it in her to care that she was a source of amusement. Delightfully cozy and free of all burden, she had an acute understanding of how dross became dross. There was a lot to be said for feeling good all the time, for spending hours, or even days, lost in tranquility, even if it d
id turn one into a parasite capable of nothing more than feeding and repulsing anyone who came within fifty meters.
Auris’ smile fading to concentration, she lowered the needle into the cavity of Haydn’s chest, and the first poke felt like a tickle.
“Don’t move,” Auris set the seemingly impossible rule, but, when she set more fully to the task, sewing the interior wall of Haydn’s chest closed with delicate stitches, the feel of her hands against Haydn’s weakly fluttering heart turned into one long caress.
Realizing Auris held her life in her hands, Haydn was so pleasantly doped, she wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, objected if Auris chose that moment to end it. It was the fact that Auris didn’t, when she had plenty of power to do so, that felt like something, or close enough to something at least, that Haydn reached out a lazy hand, fingers closing around Auris’ leather-clad hip to draw her closer.
Hunger flashing in blue eyes as they glanced up, Auris fought to refocus on the task at hand, tying off the stitches and moving out of range, to Haydn’s disappointment, to cast the needle and thread into a bin.
“Now for the fun part.” Plucking a shiny stapler from the counter, she twirled it in her hand, leaping onto the table with the alacrity of a cat. Knees pressing softly against Haydn’s hips to hold her in place, Auris’ free hand pinched the skin of Haydn’s chest together, and, though she felt little, Haydn flinched at the sound of the first staple as it went through her flesh.
Three staples more, and she lifted her head to watch Auris cast the stapler aside, but was granted only a glimpse of the short, metallic line before Auris’ mouth converged upon her. Exceptionally warm, Auris’ tongue stroked against the steel bars, the coagulant and antiseptic properties in her saliva far more effective than anything she could give Haydn from the lab’s stores.
“What if it gets in your blood?” Haydn was too content with the treatment to offer more than token protest, hand going to the back of Auris’ head to unconsciously encourage instead.
“Then, I guess you get to take care of me,” Auris murmured against her skin, at last lifting her head to lick the last of the blood from her lips. “How do you feel?” she asked, and Haydn felt one thing and one thing only.
“Alive.” Hand twisting Auris’ shirt, she brought their mouths together in a painful collision.
“Thought you didn’t have the energy.” After all the teasing, Auris actually had the gall to pull back.
“I don’t,” Haydn said. “That’s why I’m just going to lie here and let you do all the work.”
Smile coming to Auris’ lips, they covered Haydn’s again, teeth and tongue nipping and licking Haydn’s mouth raw, before they moved over Haydn’s chin and down her throat to latch onto her shoulder.
“Starting without me?” Gijon’s voice drew their eyes to the door just as Auris was reaching the line of her handiwork, and Haydn rumbled as she took in the young man he brought with him. Guessing him just out of college, and finding him quirkily handsome, she was ravenous at first glance.
Pacified by the sight of them on the table, and the tempering touch of Gijon’s arm across his shoulders, the young man let himself be led as Auris shifted off of Haydn and helped her sit up. Hand going to his cheek, Haydn dislodged the man’s gaze from the grotesque line at her chest, and, compelled to give him one last experience when his eyes moved to the better parts of her, she guided him down, feeling the anxious suckle of his lips at her nipple as she brought him to her chest.
Were she in the market, his eager tongue might prove him worthy as more than just a meal, but, starved as Haydn felt, the man’s enthusiasm would just have to live on through her.
“My turn.” She dragged him back up, looking into his expectant gaze. Lips pressing against his, Haydn borrowed his passion for a moment, accepting, with some disappointment, her state of fluid serenity was about to come to an end. Fangs emerging against the man’s throat, they broke skin, absorbing his soft hitch of surprise, before he gave into the fantasy.
Poor thing, she realized, when his panting gave way to a grunt and a groan in all of twenty seconds. It was clearly the first and last of more than one experience for him.
Licking the last drop of blood from her lip, Haydn let him fall, and, catching the man by the shirtfront, Gijon dragged him out of the way.
“It’s a shame.” Auris watched the man’s shell land against the wall. “I wouldn’t have minded playing with him first.”
“You still can.” Gijon smirked as he started back to them.
“They’re no fun without blood.” Auris pouted, but was over it in an instant as she shifted back before Haydn. “You, on the other hand… even running low, you were getting on quite nicely.”
Renewed by the fresh blood, Haydn felt all the more alive, all the more herself, but, the drugs flushed from her system, she also felt the pain. Newly mended flesh pulling, she tried to conceal the wince as her fingers buried in Auris’ blonde hair, pulling lips that never failed to satisfy back to her own.
Auris’ hands working the clasp of her pants, Haydn slid from the table so the fabric could move down her legs, feeling the press of Gijon’s hard chest against her back as he slipped into the space behind her.
Hand snaking back for him, Haydn ignored the pull of the staples, but couldn’t withhold the groan that wasn’t entirely pleasure as Gijon’s short hair scratched against her palm. Graceful fingers dancing up her arm to her wrist, they pulled Haydn’s arm back to her side.
“Give it time to heal,” Auris said, mouth returning to Haydn’s neck, and it sounded enough like concern to remind Haydn why she had kept the same two lovers for more than two hundred years.
Of course, Auris and Gijon couldn’t say the same. Nor would she ever expect it of them. They each had sires of their own, appetites that could only be fulfilled by the occasional human encounter. Haydn had eight hundred years of sexual liberation before it started to feel empty. Gijon and Auris, they were practically in adolescence. For them, meaningless sex was still one of life’s great gifts.
Hands at last finding a comfortable place to rest at the curves of Auris’ hips, Haydn tilted her head back, watching the trace of a dimple come into view before Gijon’s lips met her own. Licking his way into her mouth as he dropped back against the table, Haydn felt him grow harder against her as he pulled her into his lap. Strong hands parting her legs, Haydn ripped her lips from Gijon’s as slender fingers thrust into her without warning.
“I thought I needed to heal.” She turned to Auris’ satisfied expression.
“Only your chest.” Auris drove impossibly deeper. “The rest of you is in prime condition.”
Teeth digging into her neck from behind with just enough sting to take her mind off all other pains, Haydn’s head fell back against Gijon’s shoulder as Auris’ lips returned to her skin in a gentle contradiction of Gijon’s bite.
With a slight lift, the sensation of Gijon’s firm thighs shifted against the backs of Haydn’s legs, and Auris’ fingers abandoned her, slipping between Haydn’s legs to close around Gijon and guide him into her. One hand against her spine pressing her forward, Gijon’s free hand gripped Haydn’s hip as he buried his ample length inside her, and, when Auris’ hands pressed back against her shoulders to keep her from tossing forward to the floor, Haydn wasn’t sure if she was being worshipped or used as their personal plaything. Perhaps, two-hundred and fifty years of companionship allowed for a little of both. If they handled her in necessity, they could handle her in recreation, and, if the smirk she wore as she stared into Haydn’s eyes was any sign, Auris certainly did appear to enjoy the show of watching Gijon fucking her from behind.
Reaching out to her for support, Haydn lifted one foot to the table’s edge, testing her flexibility and opening herself to Gijon’s steady thrusts. Smiling at his unfiltered groan as she ground more tightly against him, the gratification Haydn felt at still holding some power, even in her seemingly vulnerable position, was overshadowed instantly by the feel of Auri
s’ fingers on her clit.
The combined sensations of them carrying her away, from the room, from the night, to someplace free of thought, and of pain, and of hunters with weaponry that was getting far too sophisticated, Haydn was vexed by the sound of the metal door slamming open. Unexpected, it wasn’t unexpected enough to stop, or even pause, until she looked up at the worried looks on the faces of Indigo and Cassius where they stood in the doorway, Vinn dangling like a prisoner between them.
“Slade?” Hands on Auris’ shoulder and Gijon’s thigh put them both on hold.
“No.” Indigo’s braids flew as she shook her head, anguish pressing lines into her face as she glanced to Vinn’s motionless form. “We didn’t see any hunters.”
“We were at a club,” Cassius took up the explanation, and Haydn felt a deep chill as Auris abandoned her position to go get a closer look. “We were dancing. He just went down.”
“Is he in limbo?” Indigo watched Auris inspect Vinn from top to bottom, before returning to the top to start again.
“He’s dead.” Auris glanced back at last, and, accepting there would be no orgasm in the next few minutes of her existence, Haydn detached herself from Gijon’s lap, letting him help when she struggled to get back into her blood-stained shirt, and walked over for a better look of her own.
“Dead?” Indigo uttered as Haydn cupped Vinn’s chin, tilting his head up and looking into eyes that couldn’t possibly see. His skin deathly cold, she could hear the absence of Vinn’s heartbeat, feel the stillness of the blood in his veins, and was certain Indigo had to feel it too. It was only her desire not to believe it that had her dragging his body all the way back to The Rock to get the truth verified by someone else.
