The Edge

by Annie Windsor

  But part of Ezri did know. The ageless part of her had spoken, and her human incarnation agreed.

  Don’t let us die…

  Her eyes began to flutter, and with it, her life’s energy—and that of the babe. The future of Ezri’s line, and perhaps the future of the world rode on Chant’s decision.

  “Please,” Ezri murmured as she began to pass into oblivion.

  So helpless. So earnest.

  Her humble plea drew a roar of denial from Chant’s depths.

  He swooped down, wrapped his arms around Ezri, and nudged her head to the side. Her vulnerable neck and throat colored his vision red.

  Like a desert breeze, her mind-voice burned his thoughts. You have always been mine.

  “And you have always been mine,” he growled, then plunged his fangs into the sweet river of Ezri ’s waning life.

  Chapter 5

  Ezri returned to herself slowly, as if sailing to ground from a great height.

  Eyes still closed, she thought first of her babe.

  Is she alive?

  Yes, a mind-voice whispered, so gently Ezri didn’t think to react. She is sleeping, as do all of the Redevence bloodline for the first day of life. She will not wake ‘til morning—and you will know, for your milk will come. Fear not. She is safer now, even, than in your womb.

  Where is she? Ezri fretted.

  Reach out with your thoughts, chére. The deep voice stroked Ezri’s nerves, calming her. She stretched out her senses—and then she sensed her bébé, her precious daughter. Alive, well, and sleeping a few rooms above. Ezri could hear her daughter’s soft infant-sighs, mingled with the dog-snores of Papa Loa as he kept watch over the child—all nearly masked by the cacophony of the swamp outside.

  I can hear them. But…that’s impossible.

  The next thing Ezri understood was that she was naked.

  The bayou swelter licked her skin like a heated tongue, making her nipples bead and pucker. She felt no pain from childbirth, no aches from her scratches and bruises—and in seconds, Ezri grasped a third fact. She had been healed. Brought back to her original state, as if she had never been beaten, never gone West, never delivered a child, never been bitten by—

  Her eyes flew open.

  She tried to move, but realized metal bracelets and ankle cuffs held her fast against fur-covered stone, and her feet rested on the same soft coolness. She was spread-eagle in some sort of basement with a single window. Outside, she could see a half-moon, almost as bright as the sun, blazing through fingers of cypress and endless moss and vines.

  And he was there, pacing beneath the window, still dressed in nothing but tight red breeches.

  The shadow man. The dark beast who changed to leopard then cat-bird and brought her here, and—

  “What have you done to me?” Ezri strained against her confinement, but movement touched off a quick rush of fire through every vein, every sinew.

  The shadow man—Méchant, or Chant as he called himself—kept up his pacing. She could see him as if the basement were as bright as day. The curve of his muscles, the blaze of his eyes when he stopped to gaze at her—all of her, from her head to her toes, and back up again. Every few seconds, he growled like the leopard he had been when she first encountered him. His cock swelled against the fabric of his pants even as he blended in and out of the room’s gloomy spots.

  Despite her fear and confusion, Ezri’s body began to ache. She wanted him to rub against her, to share the bayou heat. She wanted that pénis hard and fast inside her, pumping until she screamed.

  “It’s the change,” Chant murmured. “Your senses, your emotions—even your flesh becomes more alive during first bloodfever.”

  Ezri gnashed her teeth. No. Fangs. She had fangs.

  Chant’s scent of man’s musk and fresh earth drew her, along with the flush of red in his cheeks.

  Blood.

  Her blood.

  In her mind, she saw herself mounting his rigid cock and ravaging his neck. They would share her blood like elixir. A shade of old power grasped her, and Ezri had a flash of everything, past, present, future. Her mind expanded and contracted like the universe, spawning stars and comets and endless black depths. She knew exactly who she was and who she had been—and she knew what she was now.

  A hybrid. Montre and Redevence. A nightwalker, and one of Earth’s eternal guardians. A human might call her vampyr, but that would be a simplification. Yet, one thing would be true. She had the thirst of a regular vampyr. If five necks were bared before her, she would drink each dry without a second consideration.

  Ezri shivered, and the shade of omniscience turned loose. It left her as quickly as it came, and Ezri came back to herself again, but enhanced. Naked, excited, and chained to a wall near the most handsome man—creature—she had ever known.

  “Come here,” she demanded. “I want you.”

  Chant stopped his pacing. “It’s the bloodfever. The urge to feed and the urge to mate can’t be separated between Maker and Made.”

  Ezri gnashed her fangs again. Jealousy thrummed through her veins like Voudon drumming. “How many have you made?” She bucked in her restraints. “Tell me, or when I’m free, I’ll kill you!”

  The shadow man approached her, flowing through the moonlight like quicksilver. He didn’t touch her, no. He stopped short, so close to her flesh she could feel his skin humming to hers. Ezri’s nipples were so hard they ached. Her mound throbbed in hopes Chant would lose control and take her against the wall, hard and fast and without mercy.

  “Do not threaten me, chére.” His timbre dropped so low it made her shiver and ache all the more. A delicious copper odor made her see red—literally—and she wanted to bite him and fuck him all at once.

  Now. Now. Now!

  “No.” Chant was breathing hard. “If I take you, it will be when I choose. As Maker, I must be the master here. We go no further—and god or no, you stay chained—until you understand that.”

  “I am no god.” Ezri lunged against her bracelets, but still failed to touch flesh. She wanted Chant more than she had ever wanted a man.

  Chant’s dark eyebrows arched. He moved a fraction closer, and Ezri felt fireflies wink in her mind. His thoughts against hers. For a moment, she understood his struggle, the need to balance his powers against hers, to protect them all.

  “She is there, yet not,” he said more to himself than to her, but Ezri knew what he meant. “Some of her essence has migrated.”

  It was true.

  The old soul who had been a part of Ezri was partially gone—and yet, more present than ever before. Ezri could remember the bits of the past and pieces of the future she had seen. She retained the knowledge of Chant’s origins, and what she had become.

  As for Chant, Ezri could feel him fighting his own physical urges.

  Bloodfever , he called it.

  She strained forward once more, working to rub her body against his, but he eluded her. Moved just a fraction. Still so close not a finger would pass between them, but still so far.

  “Take me,” she pleaded, more excited than ever.

  A kiss, a nudge. If he didn’t touch her soon, she would die from desire.

  In the silvery moonlight, Chant’s lips curved. His fangs gleamed, thrilling and terrifying Ezri. “If you want relief so desperately, what will you give in return?”

  Ezri pulled against her shackles hard enough to break bones. “Anything.”

  “Anything, Master.”

  Chant casually tweaked her nipples before she could tell him to go to the devil. Ezri screamed. Her body shook. She moaned from the force of her soul-level want, and the fire in her mound became unbearable.

  Wet. Sweet gods. I could take two men inside and fuck them both. But I submit to no one. No one!

  “You have been abused, chére. Victim of a man who controlled himself no better than a hog at wallow.” Once more, Chance stroked her nipples, and once more, Ezri screamed. His caresses felt like branding irons, marking her as his
property. “I am not such a man. Mais, non. Do you believe me?”

  Fighting an urge to draw upon barely remembered Voudon curses, Ezri glared into Chant’s fathomless eyes. Her body stretched like catgut, strung to breaking point. Her nipples, pulsing from the heat of his touch, thrust out like divining rods. And between her legs, the burning…the longing. Her throat was parched, and yet she sensed only one man could slake her thirst.

  This man.

  Always mine. And me, always his. Do it. Say what he wants. Anything to bring him closer.

  “I believe you,” she whispered.

  Chant laughed and pinched her nipples hard.

  “No, you don’t,” he challenged as she bucked and cried out. “But you will, ma boo. That I promise, yeah. That I guarantee.”

  “Go to hell.” Ezri snapped at Chant’s face, but bit only air.

  Once more, his laughter filled the space around them. Then, his expression shifted to one of red-eyed lust. He pressed forward and stretched out his arms, joining their bodies from shoulder to toe, and kissed her, slowly, deeply, probing her very soul with his demanding tongue.

  Moaning, Ezri met his kiss, felt the sweet sting of his fangs against her lips.

  Everything felt so different, but so right.

  She had to have this man, and soon. Maybe more than once. Maybe always.

  Chapter 6

  Crazed by bloodfever, Chant barely managed to pull back from the kiss and stare at his prize. Heat flared between the two of them, burning him inside and out. His cock felt like molten rock, and he wanted nothing more than to taste Ezri again. Her essence—so sweet, so different than any he had ever known. Ancient wine, perfectly preserved. He was still drunk from saving her—and savoring her.

  And yet, he could not be foolish. That piece of old soul within her was more powerful than anything known on Earth. She could kill him with a word, and yet she had become one of his Made.

  He was Maker. He was Master. That couldn’t be disputed, for her safety and his own. For the safety of the world.

  Was I mad, to join my power with hers? Have I created a monster beyond reckoning?

  He studied Ezri through his blood-filtered gaze, felt her throbbing warmth along his exposed skin.

  No.

  This woman was no monster. She was a classic beauty in the throws of first bloodfever, wanting, needing exchange with her Maker to survive.

  “Ezri, the bloodfever brings your desire,” he began, but she cut him off with a growl.

  “I wanted you before you bit me.” She lunged against her restraints, managing to brush her hard nipples across his waiting chest. The contact made Chant’s cock pulse. “Before. Before, damn it! Damn you!”

  She howled, too high pitched and too piercing, and he barely contained the sound in a kiss before she woke the sleeping dog upstairs and set him to barking. Part of Chant’s consciousness monitored the babe at all times, with the help of a now transformed, sighted, and willing Papa Loa.

  A Made dog was a formidable guardian indeed.

  Ezri’s lips, pliable and eager, sizzled against his mouth. Her fangs, new and knife-sharp, scraped his tongue, then his cheek. She wanted his neck, and he wanted to give it to her—but first things first.

  Binding his own desires by force of will, Chant once more pulled back and used his enhanced and practiced quickness to pin Ezri hard against the wall, touching only her wrists. He lifted his knee and caressed her vulnerable folds, slowly, gently—and then he applied pressure up, up, grinding into her slit until she moaned and begged for mercy.

  “I am in control here, Ezri. For the good of all involved, you must accept my instructions without question, at least through your first bloodfever, or this ends.”

  “You would kill me, after saving me?” She rode his knee as best she could with ankles clamped and wrists so firmly pinned.

  Chant hesitated. Any other Made and yes, he would do just that. But this one…kill her? Could he ever so much as put her at risk?

  “I cannot kill you, chére. But I would turn you and the child over to Manman Rubie, a mam’bo down the basin. Manman, she know what to do with you, yeah.”

  Once more, he moved his knee against her wet lower lips. “But I would rather keep you with me. Give you the attention you deserve.”

  Ezri groaned as he kept up his slow thrusts, moving his thigh up and down the length of her well-spread center.

  “Tell me what you want, Ezri.” Chant pressed harder against her wrists and nipped her bottom lip with his fangs. “Will I be your master, or will you go to Manman before sunrise?”

  “That’s no fair choice. Ah, god! I want you.” She shuddered against his leg, her juices spilling onto the tight fabric of his breeches.

  The smell of her woman’s musk mingled with the thumping of changed blood in her sweet veins. Chant’s dizziness threatened, but he kept hold of himself and her.

  “What do you want?” he asked again. “And how much do you want it?”

  Ezri snapped her fangs together, nearly capturing his neck. He used his knee and leverage to control her, pressing against her yet holding back. Part of him wanted to make love to her slowly, until she had no choice but to submit. The wiser part of him knew she had to surrender voluntarily, totally, or he would have to make good on his threat.

  “I won’t be asking again,” he warned, his voice no more than a rasp in the hot bayou air.

  “Ah, damn!” Ezri slid herself down his leg as far as she could. “I want you to take me in these chains. Fill me up. Fuck me now!”

  “Fuck me now, Master.” Chant glared into his Made’s defiant eyes. “Submit, Ezri. Trust me.”

  For a long moment, he feared he would lose her, that he would never have what he so desperately desired.

  And then Ezri closed her eyes.

  “Fuck me, Master,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Chant released a sigh that turned into a groan as he kept his hands against her wrists, bent and took her wine-colored nipple in his mouth, and sucked hard.

  So soft, yet rough like a heated stone. With his tongue, he teased the pebbled end, and with his fangs, he gently stroked first one side, and then the other.

  Ezri bucked and shouted.

  Only his grip and the iron bracelets kept her in place.

  Carefully, he pierced a small hole near her nipple and allowed himself a taste as he pleasured her. The tang of blood on his tongue turned his vision deeper red, and Ezri sensed their enhanced connection instantly.

  “Take a bigger bite,” she pleaded. “Drink more deeply.”

  No, Chant told her mind-to-mind. When I say, and not before. Keep your place, Ezri, and learn before I’m forced to teach you.

  Shivers racked Ezri’s body at his words. Her thoughts were defiant, but aloud she said, “Yes, Master.”

  By all the gods, he wanted to thrust into her so deeply she split in two. He wanted all of her, and more. And still he made himself take his time.

  Slowly, gently, he trailed his fangs and tongue to her other breast and nipped and sucked until Ezri nearly ripped her hands free of both iron bracelets and his firm grasp. He could tell she was sinking deeper into the change, surrendering more and more to first bloodfever.

  The perfect moment approached, satisfying Chant. He knew he couldn’t wait much longer, either.

  Chapter 7

  Ezri hung on the edge of mind-collapse, of explosion or unconsciousness. The silk of Chant’s breath, the steel of his fangs, the way he held her firmly, possessively against the wall, taking what was rightfully his—none of her fantasies had ever been so perfect.

  Sweet gods. I’m vampyr , part of her mind gibbered. A tiny part. The rest simply gloried in the newness of this particular edge, the sensory awareness, and her Maker. She knew so much more now, about her own endless past, about the Montre. As if Chant’s first bite had unlocked her slumbering brain.

  As for her Maker, her Master, Chant tasted her like a feast, first one nipple, then the other. Then her
shoulder, with the sting of penetration, the sweet flow of blood. Just enough. Not too much. And now, moving his hands away from her shackled wrists, lowering his mouth to her belly…and now…

  As Chant moved his tongue and fangs to her completely opened and exposed swollen mound, Ezri shuddered, out of control. Tiny pricks, top and bottom—and then he licked her clit as if he might take the night to complete the motion. All the while, she had a sense of tiny amounts of blood flowing into his fangs, down his throat, mingling with her juices.

  He’s drinking me totally. Completely.

  Ezri came instantly at that thought, shouting out louder than she knew she could.

  She was still flush against the wall, spread as far as her legs and arms would go, and he could lick, suck, and taste as long as he chose.

  And he chose a long, long amount of time.

  Come for me again, he mind-whispered, flicking his tongue against her throbbing clit.

  “I-I can’t,” she gasped, but this only made Chant increase his efforts.

  Still sucking, still drinking, he slid three fingers deep into her slit, burying them knuckle deep.

  “Yes!” Ezri lurched against her restraints, wishing she could sink down, down on his hand until she took him up to his elbow.

  Chant’s rumbling growl of pleasure gave her more chills. He pumped his fingers in and out of her mound, thrusting, exploring, driving her to the brink of insanity before she indeed came again, just as her Master demanded.

  Master, for now. Master, always? Have I lost my sanity?

  He kept at it, fucking her with his fingers, harder, then softer. Faster, then slower. Ezri felt helpless to stop him. Her nipples throbbed and stung in the most perfect way, and when she came again, she sagged in the metal bracelets.

  It was then Chant stood, apparently satisfied with her submission, and stripped off his breeches.

  Ezri’s eyes widened. His cock—it looked huge. And so, so good. A pulsing golden rod, silk but hard as iron.

  Give me that, Master, she pleaded mind-to-mind before she thought better of it. Ram it in me like a bull.